Combat Frame XSeed Read online

  But they’re distracted, thought Ritter. Don’t let Max’s courage go to waste. Run while you can! Ritter gripped the Mab’s controls so hard his knuckles popped.

  He didn’t leave me.

  Ritter drew the Mab’s railgun from the charging rack on its back. He took a deep breath, centered his reticle on the gray lead CF, and pulled the trigger. His railgun’s barrel pulsed with electric blue light. But he’d undercompensated for his aquatic firing position. Sparks flew from the leader’s pauldron as the hypersonic dart grazed its shoulder.

  The Soc leader and the two CFs beside him pivoted toward the river. Ritter jammed his stick forward and toggled the drive selector. His Mab hit the shore running. A cry burst from his chest as he fired again. The lead Soc’s plasma rifle exploded, leaving its right arm warped and sparking.

  Both CFs flanking their disarmed leader opened fire. Their wild shots blasted craters in the concrete to the Mablung’s right and left. The Mab was aquatic, but it retained a Grento’s mobility on land. Ritter drew his curved sword and closed with the leftmost Soc CF. He sidestepped to keep his target between him and the other hostiles as he slashed the superheated blade. A cloven plasma rifle barrel hit the ground.

  “Not a bad idea,” Max said over the comm.

  The Thor Prototype descended in a smooth arc with a roar of vectored thrust. Its afterburners swung downward on hinged struts that reminded Ritter of chicken legs. His jaw dropped when the mystery nacelles under the jet’s wings unfolded into a pair of combat frame arms. Each arm wielded a long, tapering heat sword.

  Max had said the strange pods were for emergencies. Right now definitely qualifies, thought Ritter. He’d disarmed two hostiles, but they were still active, and their four friends had rifles that could burn holes through steel as if it were paper.

  Max threaded the needle between the two rightmost enemies and struck with his heat swords as he zoomed past. Aided by his momentum, the superhot blades finally penetrated the enemies’ armor. One dark blue CF clutched its gouged side while another lost its left arm at the elbow.

  The hybrid CF-jet turned right and accelerated down the base’s main thoroughfare, blasting cars with jet wash as it careened between buildings. Two armed CFs, including the one with the damaged side, lifted off on rocket thrusters and gave chase as screaming pedestrians hit the deck.

  Ritter saw only a red flash as a plasma bolt slagged the left side of his skirt armor. One of the three Soc CFs with a working rifle had risked shooting past his teammate in a bid to take down Ritter. I don’t know if I should be terrified or flattered.

  Ritter’s nearest opponent lunged, grabbed his sword arm with both hands, and pulled the Mab forward. The railgun’s long barrel was pinned between the grappling CFs.

  The last armed Soc CF on the ground moved in for a shot at the Mab’s damaged left side. Ritter fired his trapped railgun and vaporized a parked car down the street. His encroaching foe stepped back. The two other hostiles circled around to his right.

  “What do you think you’ll accomplish?” a male voice mocked over the main CSC channel. Judging by the exertion in the Soc’s voice, he was probably piloting the CF arm-wrestling with the Mab. “Your Mablung would be outclassed by a single Ein Dolph, and you’re up against four.”

  “Only one that counts,” Ritter said. “Your Dolph can take a beating, but it’s got no offense without its sparkle gun.”

  The Dolph’s hard-edged knee pistoned up into the Mab’s torso. Ritter’s cockpit hatch groaned as the impact threw him back in his chair. The Dolph pried the sword from his grip.

  “Don’t think our Dolphs can’t brawl because they’re the first energy weapon-optimized CFs,” the Soc pilot said. “We’re gonna tear your Mab apart. Then we’ll pry you out and pull your limbs off like a bug.”

  “The first?” a voice quivering with rage repeated over the comm.

  A purple flash blew away the front wall of the hangar across the street. All four Dolphs turned their helmeted heads toward the smoke-filled building.

  “Dead Drop is the first.” The voice on the comm rose from a growl to a bluster. “Your cheap knockoffs copied the tech I built with my own hands.”

  The black combat frame strode out of the flames engulfing the hangar. Its purple visor flashed as it raised its left arm. “No one steals from me.”

  “It’s the prototype!” said the pilot of the Dolph to Ritter’s left. The dark blue CF leveled its plasma rifle at Dead Drop.

  A barrel popped up from Dead Drop’s outstretched arm and emitted a violet flash. Gouts of fire and oily smoke belched from the Dolph’s cockpit and back. The dark blue CF dropped its weapon and crashed to the ground.

  “Retreat!” ordered the Soc CF team leader. All three surviving Dolphs, including the one grappling Ritter’s Mab, disengaged and blasted into the air. Dead Drop followed. Ritter marveled at the black CF’s blinding speed. A burst of white fire had turned it from a jet black colossus a hundred meters in front of him to a speck in the sapphire sky faster than his eye could follow.

  “Negative,” a Dolph pilot replied to his team lead. “We’ve got that hybrid aircraft on the run. Give us a minute to finish it off, and we’ll regroup with you.”

  Ritter checked his screen. The Mab’s radar was making intermittent contact with three high-speed craft flying through downtown, but the tall buildings kept getting in the way. His cameras caught sporadic red flashes and smoke rising from the glass towers. He squelched the Socs’ channel, which was mainly transmitting the Dead Drop pilot’s wordless cries, and radioed the Thor Prototype.

  “Max! This is Ritter. I’m still on the riverbank. Swing past me and see if you can make those Dolphs follow.”

  An uneasy silence fell. Did they shoot him down? Ritter pressed his transmit switch again, but the Thor Prototype—back in full jet mode and trailing smoke—came screaming out of the urban canyons to the Mab’s left.

  Ritter raised his railgun and held it steady on the jet’s smoke trail. Two Dolphs soon emerged from the skyline, hot on Max’s tail. At that distance, they resembled wargame miniatures held at arm’s length. When the lead Dolph flew into Ritter’s sights, he pressed the trigger on his control stick. A hypersonic steel dart blasted from the railgun’s barrel.

  An orange explosion against the Dolph’s blue armor told Ritter he’d hit the mark. His rising spirits fell when the Soc CF merely slowed with a slight wobble but stayed airborne.

  That armor is tough! Ritter’s fear for Max became more immediate panic as the Dolph he’d hit rocketed straight toward him. Reflex overrode his shock, and the Mab leapt aside an instant before the bank where it had stood erupted in a red flash. Ritter returned fire, but his shot streaked over the onrushing Dolph’s helmed head. The Dolph took aim for a point-blank shot.

  A black blur swooped down and slammed into the Dolph, knocking it off course and into a squat concrete building across the river. Ritter lost sight of the dark blue CF under an avalanche of broken masonry and a roiling debris cloud.

  Dead Drop landed next to the Mablung. Ritter swiveled the Mab’s grilled face to the left.

  “Hi,” Ritter transmitted to the black CF.

  “Hi.” The reply came from Dead Drop’s pilot, who sounded out of breath but still overflowing with rage.

  “Thanks for the help. I’m Tod Ritter.”

  “Zane Dellister. I wasn’t helping you. I was destroying them.” The last word dripped with contempt.

  “Oh,” Ritter said. “I lost track. Was that the last one?”

  With a whine of vectored thrust nozzles, the Thor Prototype descended and hovered by the Mab’s right side in hybrid mode. “It was the last of the team the Socs launched against us,” said Max. “Thanks for getting that Dolph off my six. The diversion let me shank his wingman.”

  “I didn’t know your jet was part CF,” said Ritter.

  “Seed Corp is known for combat frames,” said Max. “This wasn’t just a jet prototype.”

  Dead Drop’s visor fixe
d itself on the hybrid aircraft. “You work for Browning?” asked Zane.

  “I defected to the EGE a while back,” said Max. “We could use a pilot like you.”

  “The rubble pile across the river shifted. A dusty but intact Dolph rose from the wreckage and lifted its plasma rifle.

  Ritter, Max, and Zane fired as one. The Dolph vanished in a rumbling fireball.

  “See?” said Max. “We work great together.”

  “They’re hardened against electrical attacks,” said Zane, “and my shot breached the reactor before Ritter’s kinetic round caught up.”

  “That’s just bragging,” said Max.

  A red pulse from the heart of the spaceport sent Dead Drop reeling forward with smoke spouting from its back. Zane grunted over the comm.

  The Thor Prototype jetted upward and hung in the sky facing the base. Max’s words came over the line in a torrent. “Marilyn says the Socs just deployed five more Dolph teams.”

  “This is bad,” said Ritter. He swung the Mab’s railgun toward the base. Through the clustered outbuildings he saw a blue line marching toward him. Red bolts pulsed down abandoned streets wherever the Dolphs had an opening. Ritter’s heart fell into his stomach as the back rank of Soc CFs took to the air while the frontline continued to advance.

  Dead Drop spun to face the enemy. “I’ll take them all!” yelled Zane as his CF’s arm-mounted plasma cannon fired. His shot melted the third floor corner of a skyscraper.

  “Those Soc pilots rely on their machines too much,” said Max, “but thirty machines like those will roll over us like we’re roadkill.”

  “You’re underestimating Dead Drop,” said Zane.

  “Marilyn says you lost a maneuvering thruster. You’re a sitting duck against those plasma rifles. We need to pull out!”

  Crimson fire from above blew smoking craters along the riverbank. Dead Drop tried a rocket-assisted backward leap that failed to fully clear the blast zone. Smoke poured from its singed left forearm. Zane aimed his damaged cannon up at the offending Dolph. The violet flash from its muzzle burned away the armor on the blue CF’s chest but failed to destroy it.

  Ritter fired at another airborne foe. His kinetic darts were no match for the Dolphs’ armor, but he hoped to buy time. For what, exactly, he didn’t know.

  The Thor Prototype’s twin Vulcans laid down suppressive fire. The six Dolphs in the air descended. But their pilots soon learned their CFs were impervious to the 20mm rounds and resumed their advance.

  This is a nightmare! Ritter knew running was the only hope. But the flight-capable Dolphs would catch him whether he fled by water or land. Zane seemed ready to fight to the death. Only one of them still stood a chance.

  “You did all you could, Max,” said Ritter. “Leave these guys to me and Zane.”

  “Bullshit!” said Max. “Get your Mab in the river and swim out of here as fast as you can. I’ll cover you.”

  “Why don’t both of you bug out, and we’ll cover your escape?” said Zimmer. His transmission ended just as a flight of Shenlong fighters barreled across the battlefield, raining earthshaking fire. The bombs raised a flaming curtain between the Dolphs and their targets.

  “It’s the airstrike from the Yamamoto,” Ritter cried.

  “You heard Zimmer,” said Max. “If you don’t get your ass back to base, you deserve to get it shot off.” The Thor Prototype rotated westward, reverted to jet mode, and took off like a bullet.

  Ritter turned toward the river but paused. He swiveled the Mab’s face to see Dead Drop firing into the wall of flame that bisected the base.

  “Zane,” Ritter said. “We’re pulling out. Come with us!”

  Dead Drop gave no sign its pilot had heard Ritter’s plea. Its damaged cannon flashed violet again and again, striking at unseen foes. A red beam stabbed upward through the center of a Shenlong, which went corkscrewing toward the skyline.

  “The Yamamoto is anchored off Moanda,” Ritter told Zane. “I’ll see you there.”

  Ritter charged into the river. The murky water closed over the Mab’s head, and he engaged the hydrojets at full power as bombs thundered and crimson light filled the smoking skies of Kisangani.

  18

  After the Jeddah fiasco, Coalition Secretary-General Mitsu Kasei had anticipated fighting a pitched battle to save her career. Instead, her flagging political fortunes had completely reversed in a single week.

  Each day had brought a new and unexpected victory, starting with the revelation of Security Director Sanzen’s illegal workforce at Block 101. Governor Naryal’s shocking report of Sanzen’s role in staging the Jeddah bombing had soon followed, leading to the Director’s utter disgrace and shameful death while fleeing arrest.

  Today Mitsu sat with her fellow Secretaries, secure in her position as first among equals. She’d convened the Coalition Council for a most welcome task: to replace the late Sanzen Kaimora as CSC Director.

  The gallery of concentric tables radiating from the central podium was packed with bureaucrats, rent-seekers, and even a person or two of importance. A low susurrus of whispered innuendos rose to the Secretaries’ table on the top tier of the gray chamber.

  “Good morning,” Mitsu spoke into her microphone. She relished how the room fell silent at her word. “This Council session is called to order. Before we discuss the CSC directorship’s vacancy, I’ll open the floor to new business.”

  “Madame Secretary,” plump aging Secretary Gohaku said, “we at the Terrestrial Affairs Ministry have overseen the Security Corps since its inception. In light of mounting threats to the safety of our citizens, including yesterday’s attack on the Kisangani Spaceport, I feel it’s time we restructured the CSC’s relationship to the TAM.”

  Mitsu already knew the content of Gohaku’s proposal. Still, she did as advised and played along. “What sort of restructuring do you suggest, Mr. Secretary?”

  Gohaku laced fingers like pale mottled sausages and laid his hands on the table. “For all his faults, we believe Sanzen’s estimate of the resources required to secure safe work and living spaces for SOC persons was correct. Earth’s endemic violence now threatens to invade outer space.”

  A rumble of agreement arose from the gallery.

  “It is our conclusion,” Gohaku continued, “that the CSC’s funding and organizational needs far exceed the legal limits of a Secretariat sub-department. I therefore move that the Coalition Security Corps be dissolved. I further move that its assets and personnel be transferred to a new Ministry of Defense.”

  Mitsu waited for the applause from the gallery to subside before she asked a question she already had the answer to. “Secretary Gohaku, has your Ministry prepared legislation to effect the CSC’s dissolution and the establishment of a Coalition Defense Ministry?”

  “My team drafted the resolution last week and forwarded copies to all Council members,” Gohaku said. “All that’s left is to bring the measure to a vote.”

  “Is one week sufficient time to consider such sweeping legislation?” Mitsu asked, taking care to inflect her words as a request for information instead of a rhetorical question.

  “Emergencies call for swift decisive action.” Gaunt, black-haired Commerce Secretary Satsu was Gohaku’s physical opposite, but both men were equally opportunistic. “I second my honorable colleague’s call for a vote.”

  “Very well,” said Mitsu. “The Coalition Council will now vote on the Terrestrial Security Act sponsored by Secretary Gohaku.”

  Fear is a powerful stimulus, Mitsu recalled as the final tally came in. Just over two-thirds of the Council voted to enact Gohaku’s law.

  “The measure passes,” Mitsu announced. “As per the terms of the act, the Terrestrial Affairs Secretary will oversee the transition with the Defense Secretary-elect. I move that we amend our original agenda and proceed directly to naming our first Secretary of Defense.”

  Gohaku and Satsu both seconded the motion.

  “Precedent dictates that Secretary-level appointme
nts be made by the Colonization Commission,” objected Secretary Vier. The iron-haired Transportation Minister had smelled blood after Mitsu’s failure with Operation Oversight, but his stubbornness kept him from recognizing her strengthened position.

  “Standard procedure hardly applies in such extraordinary circumstances,” said Mitsu. “Besides, the Commission is currently ill-disposed to assemble a list of candidates. Or perhaps you’ve been too preoccupied to follow current events.”

  Mitsu allowed herself a brief smile. The Transportation Ministry shared jurisdiction over Kisangani with the Ministry of Terrestrial Affairs. Mitsu’s barb would sting all the deeper since opposing Gohaku’s solution would be seen as crass brinkmanship on Vier’s part.

  But humbling her rival wasn’t the only source of Mitsu’s satisfaction. A series of scathing exposés had thrown the Commission into chaos. Five Commissioners—all Sanzen’s benefactors—had been implicated in scandals dire enough to force their resignations. As chief executive of the Coalition, Mitsu now had free rein to appoint her own Defense Secretary.

  “Filling a high office entrusted with our protection is not a choice to be made lightly,” Mitsu said. “The only pool of qualified candidates is of course the CSC itself. Unfortunately, most of the Security Corps’ senior personnel are tainted by their close association with Sanzen.

  “There is only one candidate with intimate knowledge of high-level security practices and a history of selfless service to the Coalition. I nominate Miss Sekaino Megami.”

  The Council chamber fell quiet as the void. At length Secretary Vier broke the silence. “With all due respect Madame Secretary, isn’t your candidate rather young to be trusted with our safety?”

  “Secretary Mitsu herself was hardly a year older than Miss Megami when she accepted the burden of governance,” Gohaku replied. “If you withdraw your discriminatory comments, I’m sure Her Excellency will overlook the insult.”

  Vier crossed his slender arms and sat back with an indignant grunt. “Objection withdrawn.”

  “Before we put the appointment to a vote,” said Mitsu, “the nominee is invited to address the Council.”