Combat Frame XSeed Page 12

  Silence filled the open channel. Every minute that passed heightened Ritter’s unease. He was treading water ten meters from a key Soc installation in a stolen Mablung. His CSC combat frame might fool base security at first, but they’d inevitably ask questions he couldn’t answer.

  “Ritter,” said a sweet, lightly accented voice, “This is Lieutenant Li. Colonel Larson, Major Collins, and I have confirmed the obstacle you mentioned.”

  “You couldn’t take my word for it?”

  “You’re a newbie who just got the rocker on his mosquito wings,” Larson cut in. “Be grateful we let you pilot a multimillion dollar war machine.”

  “That wall doesn’t show up on current satellite images because they’re redacted by the CSC,” explained Li. “We had to dig up records from before the Collapse. According to environmental impact surveys made by the Chinese colonial government, that wall is part of a lock and dam system built to regulate water traffic. It also provided the spaceport with hydroelectric power until the Coalition installed a fusion reactor.”

  “Is there a way around it?” asked Ritter.

  “The best way around is through,” said Larson. “The Socs channel their reactor runoff through the old hydro plant pipes. Look around, and you’ll find one of the outflow vents.”

  Ritter focused his Mab’s sensors on the submerged wall and felt along the algae-coated concrete with the CF’s left hand. Pressure sensors in the Mab’s fingers alerted him to the presence of a metal grate. Thermals showed a plume of warm water pouring out.

  “OK,” Ritter said. “I found a vent, but it’s only five meters wide. There’s no way my Mab can fit through.”

  “The Mab doesn’t have to,” said Larson. “Just you.”

  “Hold on. You want me to swim up a drainpipe filled with nuclear waste?”

  “It’s a fusion reactor,” Larson explained. “The only waste product is hot water. Now hop in there, get inside the base, and steal one of the Socs’ new combat frames.”

  With a sigh, Ritter punched in the vent cover with the Mab’s finger. “Looks like this is goodbye,” he told the Mab. “It’s a shame I never got to pilot you in combat.” Ritter reached for the torpedo-shaped diver propulsion vehicle stowed behind his seat but decided against it. Won’t be much use in such close quarters. He pulled up his wetsuit’s hood, secured his rebreather in his mouth, and opened the cockpit door.

  Sanzen stood at the Metis observation deck window, dividing his attention between the live video feeds of technicians readying the asteroid’s immense engines and his personal view of its vast hangar. The Operation N shuttles are en route to Earth with two thousand of my loyal Kazoku aboard, the Director mused. His soldiers’ presence had been leaked to the EGE. The fallout promised to be spectacular.

  Metis would descend into the chaos following Mitsu’s failure like the Second Coming from grounder mythology. The orbiting asteroid would be Sanzen’s kingdom, the Kazoku his angelic host; the hangar below him the gate through which they would issue.

  Sanzen glimpsed a point of light through the huge oblong aperture of the hangar doors. Dim and distant at first, the light intensified as it grew closer. “An approaching vessel?” Sanzen puzzled aloud. It couldn’t be. The first shipment of Ein Dolphs wasn’t due for three days, and no other arrivals were scheduled. “I want the approaching object identified,” he barked into the comm.

  “It’s a shuttle from the Ministry of General Affairs,” said a soft-spoken man standing behind the Director.

  Sanzen wheeled on the speaker, who turned out to be a dark gray-uniformed Kazoku officer with short brown hair and an impassive face. “Mitsu’s lackeys are on their way here?” marveled Sanzen. “Why wasn’t I notified?”

  “Because you’re no longer in command,” the officer said as if stating that grass was green. “The Secretary-General has stripped you of your post. She has also issued a warrant for your arrest on charges of gross negligence, espionage, and treason.”

  With a guttural growl, Sanzen turned back to the comm. “This is Director Sanzen. Shoot the shuttle down. That’s a direct order!”

  The only sound was the soft rush of air through the ceiling-mounted vents. Work continued on the asteroid’s engines. The shuttle drew closer.

  Sanzen slammed his fists on the control panel and bolted from the room, pushing the young officer aside. He raced down to the hangar as if he could smell the brimstone breath of pursuing hellhounds.

  His panic only abated when he stood in front of his personal combat frame: a modified Grenzmark II painted navy blue and charcoal with a high gain antenna on its forehead. He rode the adjacent lift to the cockpit and climbed inside. “I’ll destroy the shuttle myself. Then I’ll restore discipline here and launch an invasion of L1.” Sanzen grinned. “Mitsu thinks she can strip me of command? The CSC will show her otherwise.”

  Sanzen took off without asking for launch clearance or warning the soldiers at work on the floor. Several hit the deck as their commander’s combat frame blasted across the hangar, out the door, and into space.

  “There you are!” Sanzen gloated as his targeting reticle locked onto the inbound shuttle. He raised his Grento’s machine gun and aimed at the center of the bullet-shaped vessel’s blunt bow. At his command the CF’s finger held down the trigger. 115mm shells raked the shuttle’s nose. Sanzen reveled to see the cockpit windows blown out a second before the rest of the ship erupted in a ball of incandescent gas.

  “So shall it be with all who betray me,” Sanzen boasted. “Do you hear, Mitsu? You’ll follow your bootlickers into oblivion!”

  The Grento’s comm crackled. Megami’s airy yet grave voice spoke. “If you want revenge on everyone who betrayed you, I suggest you deal with me next.”

  Sanzen couldn’t help laughing. “A poor jest, my dear. Then again, humor was never your strong suit.”

  “True,” Megami said. “Elizabeth Friedlander, though—she had a delightful sense of humor.”

  Panic renewed its grip on Sanzen’s heart. “You can’t know that.”

  “You gave me new memories,” said Megami, “but you looked in the wrong place when you tried to root out the old ones. I dream about the family you took from me. But that’s okay. I have 300,000 new brothers and sisters, and all of them live to please me.”

  Impossible. That little bitch!

  Sanzen’s proximity alarm pulled him out of his dark reverie. Another combat frame was approaching fast from Metis. The angular pauldrons of its midnight blue armor flared up and outward like devils’ horns. It carried a long staff in its right hand and a tapered shield in its left as it trailed bright fire across the black sky.

  I wasn’t aware of a customized Zwei Dolph aboard my station, Sanzen thought with growing dread. The Ein Dolphs hadn’t officially rolled out yet, and their planned successor was still in the prototype stage. “Tell whoever is piloting that combat frame to break off and return to base,” he ordered Megami.

  “No,” she said. “I promised Masz he’d get to kill you, and he’s a pain in the neck when he’s disappointed.”

  “Call off your attack dog and face me, coward!” Sanzen raged.

  “You haven’t earned death at my hands,” said Megami. “The grounders are another story. A slight change to your plan should do for them. Not that you’ll live to see it.”

  The Zwei Dolph entered weapons range. Sanzen spun his Grento and unleashed a hail of automatic fire with a visceral cry.

  Sanzen put no stock in transcendence. He’d learned too much about man’s true origins to believe in a benevolent creator. Yet he could only classify what he saw then as a miracle. Or perhaps it was black magic, because the Zwei Dolph’s pilot flew like a demon. He danced between the shells Sanzen sprayed at him and halved the distance between the two CFs.

  The last round in Sanzen’s gun burst harmlessly against the Zwei Dolph’s shield, the tip of which flicked upward to point at the Grento. Sanzen found himself staring down the black muzzles of the double-barreled pla
sma cannon mounted inside the shield.

  “No,” shouted Sanzen. “I was meant to conquer!” He spun the Grento about and punched the throttle. The blackness of space gave him no sense of forward motion, but the g-forces pushed him back in his seat. His aft-facing cameras caught two simultaneous flashes of blinding red light. Sanzen’s combat frame and the air in his cockpit and lungs dissolved in white fire.

  With a final heave, Ritter pushed the drain cover open and slid it aside. The heavy steel grate ground against the concrete floor. He climbed from the cramped dark tunnel, his wetsuit dripping with warm water and smelling of ozone.

  I came to the right place.

  Ritter stood in a colossal warehouse. A flat ceiling crisscrossed with white girders hung far overhead. Combat frames stood in recesses along the walls fronted by movable scaffolding. Those aren’t Grenzmarks!

  The unknown CFs exceeded nineteen meters in height. They were painted darker blue than a Mab, and unlike the Grenzmarks, squares and rhombuses dominated these machines’ design. The stock of some new type of rifle jutted over each unit’s right shoulder. Instead of grilled domes covering circular camera arrays, the new CFs had actual heads resembling blocky helmets with shoulder-length neck guards. Each unit’s face featured a black, v-shaped visor.

  These must be the Socs’ new combat frames, thought Ritter. The sight filled him with awe, until he saw what waited at the hangar’s far end.

  The black combat frame superficially resembled its hangar mates, but its unique coloration and lack of Coalition markings suggested it was a custom job. A narrow purple visor covered its main camera array. The black CF carried no visible weapons but exuded menace like a coiled mamba.

  Ritter knew enough about combat frame design to connect the dots. That black one must be the prototype. It might still have design schematics and combat test data onboard. Larson will eat his words when I bring this beauty back!

  Making it to the black combat frame would mean crossing a hundred meters of open floor, almost certainly in full view of multiple security cameras. But taking any CF would blow Ritter’s cover, so he figured he might as well go for the gold. He broke into a sprint across the hangar.

  Ritter’s pounding heart swelled with pride when he reached his target’s glossy black foot. He hopped onto the steel mesh lift built into the adjacent scaffold, closed the chest-high gate, and slammed the “up” button. Hydraulics whirred, and the lift ascended.

  The rising platform jerked to a stop at a catwalk that traversed the black CF’s chest. Ritter dashed to the cockpit and reached for the lever. A bullet ricocheted off the railing to his right as a sharp crack echoed throughout the concrete and metal warehouse.

  “Don’t touch!” someone shouted from below.

  The fevered command drew Ritter’s eye to a white-haired man who otherwise looked only slightly older than him. Smoke curled from the pistol in his hand. He wore the dark green jacket and pants of a CSC Southern Africa Region uniform, but Ritter doubted anyone that intense could be a Soc.

  The gunman took aim at Ritter. “Dead Drop is mine.”

  Ritter vaulted over the catwalk’s railing and slid down a support beam. There was no point arguing, and if his intrusion hadn’t alerted security, the manic stranger’s gunshot certainly had.

  Sure enough, alarms blared. CSC personnel stormed in through every entrance, including the far door that the black CF’s owner had left open.

  Ritter charged the oncoming guards, passing the white-haired gunman who dashed toward the lift. A volley of gunfire turned the hangar into an echo chamber, but Ritter kept running. A bullet grazed his shoulder, tearing his wetsuit and the skin beneath with a stab of hot pain. He slid the last couple of meters to the open drain and fell into the dark.

  17

  Zane basked in Dead Drop’s embrace. The bank of monitors arranged to his personal specifications remained black, shrouding the cockpit in darkness. Radio chatter—mainly from base security ordering him out of the combat frame—faded to white noise.

  I’m whole again. Zane could only compare his euphoria to having a severed limb reattached, even though Dead Drop hadn’t always been with him. But it always has been, he realized. His labor had given the black combat frame physical form, but its design had existed long before he’d soldered the first two wires together.

  A strange hollowness marred Zane’s contentment. He’d fulfilled his quest to recover Dead Drop, but his peace was shaken by a hunger he couldn’t name. He set the puzzling emotion aside for later consideration and reveled anew in his victory.

  “I’ll never let them take you again,” he vowed.

  The warm current almost pushed Ritter past his Mablung. He avoided being swept down the muddy river by latching onto a seam in the Mab’s arm. He crawled along the outstretched limb to the combat frame’s chest and fumbled for the hatch controls. At last his fingers closed around the door handle. He opened the cockpit and spilled in, along with a torrent of dirty water.

  Ritter scrambled to orient himself. When he was secure in his seat, he closed the hatch and drained the cockpit. He spat his rebreather onto the main monitor, which bore a thin film of river slime, and savored a deep breath of coppery air.

  Made it! He thought with a deep exhale. Only then did he notice the burning in his shoulder. They’ll patch me up on the Yamamoto. Too bad I’m coming back empty-handed.

  Ritter Powered up the Mab. His screens flashed to life, showing the broken grate in the submerged wall. His thumb was hovering over the hydrojet selector when a familiar voice came over the radio. “Come in, Ritter. This is Major Collins. Do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear, Major. The mission hit a snag. I’m headed back to the ship.”

  “I’d hurry if I were you,” said Collins. “Captain Darving’s picked up six unknown combat frames heading overland in your direction.”

  Must be some of those new model CFs. Ritter’s gut clenched—partly in fear, but also with eagerness. “Copy that. I’m pulling out now.”

  “Roger,” said Collins. “A Shenlong squad is inbound, but you’ll want to be far away when the bombs drop.”

  Ritter pushed his Mab away from the wall, spun it around, and engaged the hydrojets. An underwater blast slammed into the Mablung’s back. Ritter lurched forward in his seat as alarms shrieked. That can’t have been a mine. Are they dropping depth charges from the wall?

  The proximity alarm trilled. Ritter jerked the control stick to the left just in time to avoid another blast on his right. The shock jarred his spine, but the Mab’s armor stopped any real damage. One rapidly expanding pressure bubble after another filled the river basin. The shockwaves bounced off the channel walls, shaking the Mab like a can in a paint mixer.

  Can’t stay down here.

  The Mab jetted upward at Ritter’s command. Its domed head broke the river’s frothing surface. As Collins had warned, six of the CSC’s blocky new CFs stood along the concrete-clad shore in a widely spaced line. Each carried a large black rifle with a second barrel mounted under the square main muzzle. The six underslung barrels fired, and Ritter forced the Mab back as a line of explosions sent plumes of white water shooting from the river.

  “Grenade launchers,” Ritter cried. “I can’t get closer or line up a shot!”

  “Relax, kid,” Max said over the comm. “The lifeguard’s on duty.”

  Ritter’s instruments chirped. A green dot appeared at the edge of his monitor and zipped across the screen toward the six red squares in front of him. “Light them up,” Ritter cheered.

  Max clicked his tongue. “Socs don’t have the sense to steer clear of the water in a thunderstorm. Give ‘em a spanking, honey.”

  The Mab’s filters barely compensated for the bolt of light that slanted from the sky into the enemy CFs’ line. One peal of thunder answered another as the Thor Prototype streaked over the heavy smoke cloud enveloping the shore. With the enemy’s bombardment ended, the river resumed its dark smooth flow.

  Ritter heave
d a sigh of relief. “That’s another one I owe you, Max. I take back wanting to fight those things.”

  “There’s hope for you yet,” said Max. “You survived the battle. That’s a victory. Now get back to the ship, and let’s celebrate with a six pack I picked up in Algiers.”

  A red beam lanced upward, given coherence by the smoke cloud. A white-orange light flared above the horizon to Ritter’s left. “Max!” he shouted into the comm. “What’s your status?”

  “I’m hit,” replied Darving, his voice strained. “Bastard blew off my starboard tail fin.”

  A giant stepped from the thinning smoke. Its paint had burned off, exposing bare gray metal. The cloud melted in a gust of wind to reveal the other five Soc CFs marching behind their leader; their blue armor darkened with soot.

  “Shit,” said Max. “Their armor’s insulated.”

  All six enemy combat frames raised their rifles skyward.

  “Max,” cried Ritter, “They’re aiming at you. Get out of here!”

  “And leave you with these pricks? Not a chance.” The white jet rolled right, just ahead of six read beams that pierced the hazy air. It pulled into a banking turn that brought the Thor Prototype about to face the Soc firing squad.

  “We don’t even know what kind of weapons they’re using,” Ritter warned. “Be careful!”

  “Some kind of refined plasma projectors,” said Max. “I thought Browning was years from that kind of tech. And yeah, I’ll try.”

  The jet hurtled toward the enemy CFs, too fast for their pilots to keep the aircraft in their sights. Crimson rays passed over the Thor Prototype’s fuselage, and it opened up with its twin Vulcan cannons. Ritter’s heart sank as the 20mm rounds disintegrated against the CFs’ armor without effect.

  “Damn, they’re tough!” Max cursed as he finished his second fruitless strafing run. The Soc CFs turned to track his flight, their rifles spitting steel-melting fire. They’d already connected once. It was only a matter of time before one of the Socs scored a devastating hit.