Battleframe (The Mindwars Book 1) Page 6

  “No sir.”

  “Gather your things and meet us at the spaceport in three hours. You are dismissed Privates Whizzbang and Bosk.”

  Ray and Thomas spun on their heels and strode purposefully down the steps and back to the shooting range. So many questions were running through their heads.

  They had just been promoted to private!

  More importantly, where did they get all of those insights? It was as if the both of them knew what the Colonel and Captain were thinking. Something more to think about…

  Chapter 7

  Fighting For His Life

  Peering over the railing, Whizzbang looked down at the top of the battle-pod that had just landed in the central courtyard below. The energy orb perched on the apex of the dark metallic pyramid powered the pod during its rapid flight and once landed it connected through subspace to the Scourge base on the other side of Alpha Three. Each battle-pod was capable of warping in a Scourge fist every five minutes. From experience, he knew that each Scourge could be from a variety of disciplines.

  On a blaze of jets, Whizzbang sped from his exposed position on the scanning tower platform across the courtyard to the roof opposite. The plasteel metal roof slanted upwards away from the courtyard and provided cover for an excellent snipers-eye view of whatever materialised around the battle-pod.

  Below Whizzbang, the battle-pod hissed and billowed smoke as it spun up its energy reserves to compensate for the drain of the TransWarp. One after another, the Scourge warriors began materializing amongst a haze of blue and purple sparking energy. Within a few seconds, they took form and instantly started firing their guns indiscriminately at anything and everything. Bullets ricocheted off girders, small holes were vaporised in beams and white-hot plasma turned sections of walls into molten slag.

  Whizzbang took a few slow deep breaths to calm his racing heart. He aligned the cross hairs of his Charge riflescope on the forehead of a Shock trooper. A slight pressure on his trigger finger and a deadly blue beam raced across the courtyard to strike the warrior in the chest in a pyrotechnic blaze of molten armour and burning flesh. Before the Shock trooper had hit the ground, he had shot a Scourge Slayer and ended its life in this plane of existence.

  An eerie high-pitched whine intruded into his consciousness and he instinctively ducked to the right just as a red beam of super-heated energy lanced out from a Scourge Sniper on the far side of the courtyard below. The roof where he had just been lying spewed incandescent metal fragments into the air from a hole the width of his thumb. If it was not for his Raven’s armour plating and reflexes honed from many such engagements then he would have taken a direct hit.

  Before his counterpart reacted, Whizzbang again raised his riflescope to his eye, sighted the Sniper and depressed the trigger. The shot pierced the Sniper’s ammunition re-energiser and the image in the scope flared briefly as his enemy erupted into a ball of flame. If there was one thing that he loved doing, it was taking out Scourge Snipers.

  Another screeching sound entered the battlefield and was followed by yet another. The crack of gunfire could never overcome the sound generated by two more battle-pods as they came screaming down out of the sky and crashed into the courtyard below.

  Whizzbang growled between clenched teeth, “Oh frap! Let’s play fair! One I can deal with but three!” He just finished that thought when a fourth pod smacked into the ground just below his firing position. It was clear that this was not normal Scourge tactics; this was part of a grander plan, a plan that meant the eradication of humanity from Alpha Three. It was a complete invasion.

  Scourge jostled each other in the courtyard below even while more continued to materialize. Rolling onto his back Whizzbang pulled out his grenade launcher. “This will be like shooting fish in a barrel,” he thought to himself.

  Pointing the muzzle over his shoulder Whizzbang lobbed the egg-sized explosives amongst the fists of Scourge warriors. The roar of the full complement of six grenades exploding one after another was deafening.

  As if in counterpoint to the grenade’s bass notes, bullets pinged off the rock face above Whizzbang’s head. Like a deadly symphony Scourge Sniper, energy beams joined the concerto as they zinged passed and drove neat circular holes into the plasteel roof next to him. Whizzbang clamped his teeth to stop himself from retching as the battle-pod stench combined with the sharp pungent smell of tellurite infused cordite and the particularly distinctive bloody aroma of crispy Scourge bodies.

  Swallowing his bile Whizzbang grimaced and mumbled to himself, “It looks like I’m going to make it out of here alive after all.”

  The distinctive sound of launching plasma cut through the battle noise. Whizzbang peered through a bullet hole in the roof and confirmed his fears by looking directly at a hulking Scourge Juggernaut. Like watching a movie in slow motion, he watched in fascination as the massively armoured Scourge completely flattened a dead Shock trooper’s leg under its huge metallic boot.

  A little over seven feet tall, the Juggernaut behaved more like a humanoid tank than an infantryman. From experience, Whizzbang knew that over two inches of high tensile armour plating surrounded the vital organs and the limbs. The similarities between tanks and Juggernaut’s did not stop with the armour. Like a tank, Juggernaut’s tend to thump around the battlefield with an incredible amount of noise as servo-assisted legs lift their massive bulk and crunched everything beneath them. They carry a heavy plasma cannon that winds up like a jet engine before igniting and launching a mass that could have come from the inside of a star. Concord scientists have wondered over the years whether the canon’s noise was a deliberate attempt by the Scourge to intimidate enemies, as it often worked. The worst thing about a Juggernaut is that their armour makes them hard to kill.

  Whizzbang craned his neck as he watched the first plasma salvos arc through the air towards him and splash against one of the girders supporting an instrument array on the roof opposite. Plasteel instantly liquefied and streamed down in a river of metal onto the grating below. He cursed his predicament of being like a sitting duck up on the roof. The Scourge below had him pinned him down with gunfire as the Juggernaut started winding up its hellishly powerful plasma cannon for a second shot. The noise in the enclosed ravine as the beams, bullets and plasma reverberated off the rock walls was deafening.

  At the last second, Whizzbang rolled to the right just as a globe of plasma struck the roof top where he had been laying. The roof instantly dissolved in the super-heated inferno and streamed like a glowing red liquid waterfall into the laboratories below. Desks, chairs and benches instantly ignited wherever it touched. One stream struck a chemical flask that exploded in an expanding sphere of flame, incinerating everything in its path. Black acrid smoke billowed from the hole in the roof caused Whizzbang’s eyes to smart. Tears poured down his cheeks as he engaged his Raven’s face shield. He could feel the heat of the fires ravaging the research labs below through the still intact section of roof where he was laying.

  It would only be a matter of a few seconds more before the whole structure collapsed beneath him. As suddenly as a battle-pod falls from the sky, the hail of gunfire and plasma suddenly ceased pinging around him.

  “Well, what the frap’s happening now,” Whizzbang said to himself.

  Sliding on his back across to one of the few remaining support beams still able to bear his weight Whizzbang reached out for his Charge rifle lying on the roof next to him. He carefully rolled onto his chest and shimmied over to a still intact corner of the roof so that he could look down at what was happening below. Coming from the open end of the ravine was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Two fellow Concord battleframes were ripping into the Scourge with reckless abandon. The first was a powerful close quarter’s battleframe known as an Anvil and the second an Eagle-Claw specialist sniper.

  While the Scourge were concentrating completely on him, the two pilots had been attacking from the rear and had already thinned out the enemy ranks considerably.

/>   Whizzbang watched as the Eagle-Claw removed the head from a Scourge Engineer with almost surgical precision. Unlike his beam based Charge rifle, the Eagle-Claw used depleted tellurite slugs that fired from an extra-long barrelled sniper rifle. The slugs mass and velocity punched holes through bodies or removed limbs with their enormous momentum. In the case of the Scourge Engineer, it meant that one second his head was atop its shoulders and the next it was bouncing off the ground at his comrades’ feet.

  “It’s time for revenge,” Whizzbang thought to himself as he lined up the Juggernaut in the middle of its back and depressed the trigger. The blue beam flashed out and burrowed ferociously against his target’s back plate but went no further. Not surprisingly, the heavily armoured Scourge turned to look up with angry pink eyes just as Whizzbang fired a second shot through its temple causing the Juggernaut to drop to the ground dead. “I’ve got to remember to tap them in the head next time,” Whizzbang murmured to himself.

  Great clouds of noxious fumes continued to spew out of the research lab opposite him as chemical stores below in one of the labs ignited. The staccato sounds of gunfire were interspersed with periodic explosions and the sounds of the dying Scourge. A number of bullets and beams nicked, scorched, scarred and tore at Whizzbang’s battleframe. His nanites struggled to conduct repairs to his battleframe quickly enough to overcome the damage.

  In the middle of the tumult, a low rumbling roar intruded from overhead. The scanning tower had finally arrived! From high in the sky, the massive tower hurtled towards the landing platform and the huge clamps that would secure it in place. The automated guidance systems abruptly slowed the tower on a massive central under-jet that momentarily filled the central yard with a blast of smoke from spent tellurite fuel. Several manoeuvring thrusters fired until the tower correctly positioned itself. With a number of large clanks, the massive clamps on the platform locked the tower firmly in place.

  While this was happening, the Anvil and Eagle-Claw continued to take apart the Scourge. From the opposite side of the courtyard, Whizzbang picked off one Scourge warrior after another. The completely exposed Scourge in the courtyard below and even the mighty Juggernauts could not stand up to the combined firepower of the battleframe pilots. Finally, the four battle-pods were quickly put out of commission and Whizzbang watched with a smirk of satisfaction as plumes of black and purple smoke poured from the their sides.

  As fast as it all started, the battle finished. No quarter was asked for and no quarter was given. Each encounter with the Scourge was a fight to the end. Research Ravine was once again in Concord hands. Whizzbang forced himself to let the tension out of his muscles. He really needed a drink but first he had to say thank his new friends.

  Chapter 8

  New Friends

  Circular energy beam holes and bullet indentations surrounded where Whizzbang had been previously laying prone on the rooftop. Over half the roof had melted and poured like a hellish ravaging river, it flowed, igniting everything it touched in the laboratories below. As he shimmied up a plasteel girder to get away from the flames, he could hear the tinkle of glass chemical flasks exploding in the inferno.

  Whizzbang dropped off the girder just before it collapsed with a metallic crash into the dying research centre. The remainder of the roof that had served as his cover during the recent battle quickly followed the girder. With a short blast of his jump jets, he settled to the ground as the Anvil and Eagle-Claw walked towards him.

  Whizzbang held up a hand in greeting and cheerfully said, “Thank goodness you both arrived! For a minute I thought that I was going to be eported back to Freehold.”

  “eported” was slang for emergency teleporting and occurred when a battleframe was so badly damaged that the pilot was seriously at risk. Eporting could trace its’ roots back to the pre-space age where aircraft had black boxes to provide information to investigators about a crash.

  There were two drawbacks of modern eporting. The first was that it required quite intrusive medical sensors that layered the internals of the battleframe. A pilot did not want to be eported away in the middle of a battle unless they were on the brink of death.

  Pilots avoided eports at all costs because of the searing agony as they were atomised and reconstructed at the nearest Concord outpost. Assuming of course, that there was an outpost within close proximity. Veteran pilots that had experienced an eport, would do almost anything to avoid the experience again. The process was so traumatic that it even left some mentally incapable of piloting a battleframe again for the rest of their lives.

  “We were just happy to help you out”, the Anvil answered with a broad grin on his face. “By the way, my call-sign is ‘Acheron’ and this is ‘Selfia’”.

  Whizzbang returned Acheron’s smile and automatically ran his eyes over the younger man’s highly armoured battle frame. Acheron carried his frame with the confidence of a pilot that had seen too many battles for his age. His broad shoulders and height were further enhanced by his massive battleframe and made him look more as if he was carved from a large block of marble. A mop of dark hair sat like a crown on his head but did not impede his alert eyes from scanning for enemies.

  Despite the recent glide and fight, Selfia had managed to tame her blond recalcitrant ponytail. She was a young petite woman that moved with the easy grace and confidence of her battleframes namesake. Across her eyes, she wore a standard issue wrap-around tinted sniper’s visor. This helped eliminate the brightness of energy blasts and battle related explosions which otherwise would be enhanced by her sniper scope.

  Selfia smiled and gave a little girl-like giggle. “I’ve never seen a Raven in such a hot spot before. When the smoke cleared, I was surprised you were still in one piece. What’s your call?”

  Whizzbang shook both Acheron and Selfia’s hand as he said, “I’m Squad Leader Whizzbang and you both were a most welcome sight. I thought that I would be eporting it out of here before you showed up. In all my years I’ve only done it once and the thought of going through it again makes me want to face a fist of Jugs all alone.” Laughing with relief he continued, “Other than to save me, what brings you both to Research Ravine?”

  At a raised eyebrow from Selfia Acheron ignored the question and instead replied, “Whizzbang, I’ve heard of you. The reputation of you and your squad is legendary.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear Acheron.”

  “If half of what I’ve heard is true then frap you’ve been a pain in the Scourge’s backside for years now. Don’t they call you the ‘StarBlade’?”

  “They can call me and my squad whatever they like as long as our cross-hairs are on them. Now that you mention it, I think we have notched up a few Scourge heads over the years. So where’ve you two come from?”

  Selfia jumped into the conversation and said, “For the last six weeks we’ve been helping Digging crews up north. We’ve been working our way towards FreeHold but decided to keep on heading southwards. Acheron just loves fishing off the beaches down near the old Concord outpost.”

  “That would explain why I haven’t seen you two around.”

  Acheron acted his part. “Fishing, I just love getting some of those big guys on the end of a line. I suppose it has been a while since we’ve been down this far south Squad Leader.”

  Selfia looked meaningfully at Acheron as she continued, “We were in the area when we heard the battle-pods coming down and thought we’d investigate. It was just by luck we were close enough to help out.”

  “Have either of you two checked your scans lately?”

  Selfia looked across to Acheron, then back to Whizzbang, and said, “No, should we have?”

  “Give me a second. I think you’ll want to see this.”

  While Whizzbang was distracted with his wrist-comp Acheron silently mouthed to Selfia, “Fishing?” He knew absolutely nothing about fishing.

  She replied with a smile and a shrug of her shoulders before she returned her attention back to Whizzbang.

/>   Now that Research Ravine was once more in Concord control Whizzbang used his wrist-comp to access the scanning tower’s sensor network and check out the state of affairs. Twisting his arm around so that Acheron and Selfia could view the display both of his new friends gave a stifled gasp as the map updated. Freehold still stood clear of enemy control and the Concord Central Command sector was marked as a disputed area.

  Indicating Central, Acheron said, “There must be one heck of a battle taking place over there.”

  Whizzbang replied, “It looks that way. I hope Happy managed to get through and warn them before the action started.”

  “Happy?”

  “A good and brave friend who pilot’s a Rook.”

  Selfia said compassionately, “He’ll be fine Whizz.”

  “I’m sure he will. We’ve been through a lot of scrapes together over the years and we’ve always managed to come out the other side.”

  With a small amount of pride, Whizzbang watched as the Research Ravine sector changed from red to green.

  “What in the frap is going on?” Acheron asked.

  “I’ll put it to you both plain and simple. Every Concord sector from way up north to down south is now under Scourge control. You must have been just in front of the attack wave as you returned south. We’re experiencing an invasion that’s aimed at wiping humanity off the planet. I’m sorry Acheron but your fishing trip has just been postponed.”

  “You think?” Acheron said somewhat sarcastically.

  Selfia said in a resolute voice, “That’s not going to happen while I’m alive Whizz.”

  “Acheron loves fishing that much?” Whizzbang quipped.

  Selfia laughed, she was starting to like this Squad Leader. Despite the dire circumstances, he was still able to tell a joke. “No he doesn’t. What I meant was that together we’ll stop the Scourge!”

  This time it was Whizzbang’s turn to laugh. “I know what you meant Selfia.”

  Acheron looked completely bewildered at the exchange between the two snipers and he said, “I really don’t like fishing that much. Now smashing Scourge is another matter altogether.”