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Outside of the cockpit window, all I could see was the darker-than-black of Brian’s ECM smoke. The sensors on the Skitter were all dark except for the seismic data, which was just enough to keep me from bumping into any of the Undersiders as we followed the Grue’s lead.
This was our first time dealing with a Breach Event inside of the city, which meant that we were moving through normal civilian roads with cars under our mechs’ feet. With Grue masking our movements, I had to trust Lisa when she’d said that the Undersiders’ mysterious benefactor was getting any civilians to safety on the route ahead of us, but I already had visions of returning to the hangar and finding red blood smeared across the hard edges of the Skitter’s feet.
I could hear Rachel’s voice echoing in my head, calling me out for being a pussy, making the point that dozens if not hundreds of civilians died in almost every Breach Event anyway. I dismissed the thought and returned my focus to the map on the screen in front of me and the four dots that represented the Undersiders.
Every minute or so, the seismic sensors would have enough information to identify a specific mech, and it would display the name with a friendly IFF tag. It made sense, was practical to have their mechs registered as friendly so I didn’t accidentally end up shooting one in the middle of battle. But it still made my gut twist to see that tag on the people that I was going to turn in to the authorities.
Just a few more missions, and I’d have the information to be able to expose this whole group. I just had to hold on a bit longer.
I pressed my head back into the headrest, feeling the tremors that made it through to the cockpit and the thrums of my Core resting just behind the seat. Mom, Emma… would you be proud of me? Would you hate me for what I’m doing with what you left me?
It had been the worst day of my life, when I got my Tragedy Core. Just like every pilot, as I’d since learned. I’d hoped that I could use it to make a difference, to save lives.
I was still doing that, I reminded myself. Renegade Pilots like the Undersiders were dangerous, and I’d seen first-hand how violent some of their members could be. And as long as I was with them, I could help blunt that edge a bit, make sure that everyone stayed safe.
A change on the map screen drew my attention; the Grue had disappeared from my sensors, which meant it had stopped moving. I eased back on the joystick, bringing the Skitter to a smooth stop. One by one, the other Undersiders disappeared until the map was completely dark. Aside from my Core, I was alone in the void. I took a moment to make sure my gloves were on tight, and the straps holding me into the pilot seat were secure.
The silence didn’t last for long after that. As the ECM smoke faded away, the Skitter’s sensor displays lit up, pinging every new bit of information that it thought was relevant. We were gathered in the middle of a four-lane intersection, a handful of cars pulled over to either side but thankfully none crushed beneath anyone’s mech. One block down and just around the corner, Manton Field readings were spiking. No doubt, the Breach portal was there. There were also several mechs that the Skitter tagged as the Aegis, the Gallant, and the Vista. It was all too close. We couldn’t see the portal from here, but there should have been Nephelim corpses and general destruction for several blocks around the portal in every direction. Beyond the abandoned vehicles, there wasn’t anything unusual that I could see through the reinforced cockpit glass.
“Okay team,” Brian’s voice came in through my helmet, “we all know the plan. Watch each others’ backs, and we’ll all get back safe-”
“And rich!” Alec’s voice overlapped Brian’s, creating an annoying static.
And then, we were moving. The Undersiders were a fast unit, not designed for long, drag-out fights, so that wasn’t the plan. The Hellhound had the carrying capacity of two basic mechs, so it would be going through the portal into Gomorrah to grab as much as it could, and I would be assisting with my drones. The Tattletale and the Regent both moved into a support position behind the Grue as it charged toward the corner, with Rachel and I taking up the rear of the formation.
With motions as routine as tying my shoelaces, I reached up and pressed in a line of three switches before reaching a little higher on the same panel and hitting a large blue button. My map of the area expanded and gained detail as three of my four sensor drones took to the air, and I could see exactly how bad things were as we approached.
When a Breach Event occurred, there were usually a bunch of Nephilim on the other side already, from the zombie-like grunts to hulking Bilemaws that could take down some mechs single-handedly. At first, I’d thought that the city had gotten lucky, that the only Nephilim that had come through had been held back by police while the local mechs geared up. But then my drones got direct visual contact on the portal, and I realized what had really happened.
The next two blocks were devastated, human and Nephilim corpses piled up in and around the rubble of some restaurants and what looked to be a bank. My heart skipped a beat as I registered a downed mech- the sleek white chassis resembled the Clockblocker, and the cockpit was completely blown away- but after a moment I remembered that it was far more likely that the pilot ejected than that the whole section had gotten ripped out. The Aegis’s oversized arms were pinning down a large Nephilim and holding it in place for the Vista’s laser cannons to bore a hole in its armored hide. The Gallant was closer to the portal, its clawed forearms spinning up and charging some sort of attack. The Grue was about to turn the corner, within the Gallant’s line of sight, and I couldn’t be sure that the Protectorate’s mech wouldn’t turn and unleash that charge into my teammate. My thumb shifted the selection slider down the joystick and I pulled the trigger, unleashing a pair of mortar shots.
The shells arced just over the corner building and impacted across the Gallant’s oversized shoulder plate. I’d been aiming for its feet, but it did the job- the Protectorate mech brought one arm up defensively, the energy at the tip dissipating as the Grue came around the corner. The Regent scampered further, keeping the portal between himself and the Gallant while the Grue charged straight forward, his lighter machine guns firing at the Gallant’s legs, mostly pinging off of the metal plates. I had to assume that he was firing on the chance that one of the hundreds of bullets would ricochet inside and trip up the heavy machine.
This side of the portal was full of some kind of structural foam, completely obscuring the scene in Gomorrah beyond. It made sense that the Protectorate would foam one side to reduce the angles that they would have to protect against, but that didn’t explain why the destruction that had occurred before the Protectorate had arrived was only in one direction. I flipped the switch on the final sensor drone, directing it to head into Gomorrah through the other side of the portal; the one that hadn’t been foamed. While I was at it, I also reached over to another panel to release two light combat drones.
When the sensor drone went over the portal and took a tight downward u-turn into Gomorrah, my sensor readouts went wild for a moment before the onboard computers realized that I was dealing with two different planes of reality at the same time, and the map screen split into two half-sized displays.
Gomorrah was a desolate place, the air choked with pollution and flakes of dust, and it was populated entirely with hordes of hostile beings that ranged from cybernetically reanimated corpses to dinosaur-like robots with acid blood. It was an unprecitable place, so I was only a little surprised to find that the other side of the portal was at the top of some kind of metal or stone spire the size of a skyscraper. The drone’s penetrative sensors couldn’t pick up many details of the interior, but there was an indication of movement, which probably meant more Nephilim down in the spire, coming up, drawn by… whatever drew their kind to our world.
I used the dials on my map screen to take a snapshot data packet of the drone’s readings and with a couple of presses on my comm screen, sent it to the Hellhound.
“Gotcha, bitch!” That was Alec, and a glance to the side confirmed that he was using his hijack cables to take over control of the Gallant. They wouldn’t last long before the Gallant’s Core could reject them, but until then, we definitely had the numbers advantage.
Rachel loped her mech around to the open side of the portal, and I followed close behind. Ironically, the Hellhound was too strong to be very useful on the Earthside of this conflict: her large-bore cannons could deal serious damage, but even she wasn’t willing to risk killing a member of the Protectorate with an accidental shell to the cockpit. She was much more useful in Gomorrah, where collateral damage wasn’t a concern and there were usually lots of Nephilim to aim at.
The polluted air of the other world did leak out through the portal somewhat, but passing through into Gomorrah was like going from standing out in a light rain to being fully underwater. The surface of my cockpit was instantly clouded over, and if not for the readouts on the screens around me, it would have been hard to know what was going on more than a dozen feet away.
I’d almost been expecting a fight right out of the gate, but here at the top of the spire there was just the Skitter, the Hellhound, and the roaring wind. I took the opportunity to launch my heavy combat drone and two collector drones, and then get my HUD helmet on.
It was cramped, and using it too long gave me a headache, but this was Gomorrah, and I needed to be able to see clearly. I reached overhead and pulled down the helmet; there was resistance as the cables attaching it to the cockpit slowly spooled out. Placing it over my head, I wiggled it a bit to stuff it over my hair, and I turned the large dial on the side to activate the HUD.
Green lines flickered to life, presenting a wireframe collage of all the data that my mech and its drones could scrape together. I could see the entire top of the spire- a wide, flat disk with a spiral staircase at one end- as well as several stories of the interior, which included dozens of Nephilim clambering up toward us in a kind of stampede.
“Incoming, west side!” I called out. The Hellhound was already moving before I spoke, though, turning on its hind legs and bounding forward towards the staircase.
A beeping sound from one of the drone panels caught my attention: the Vista’s lasers had clipped one of the light combat drones, detonating its ammo stores. I swore under my breath and took my hands off the joysticks so I could put more focus on the drones.
I brought one of the sensor drones through the portal to Gomorrah and sent it down the length of the tower; if there was any Lott Salt to be harvested, it wouldn’t be up here. I set my heavy combat drone to automatic, slaving it to the Hellhound’s targeting systems, and I took manual control of my remaining light drone back on Earth. Its camera feed took up the entirety of my map screen as I used a smaller control stick to maneuver it.
Things had turned against us pretty quickly. With the remaining Nephilim taken care of on Earth, all of the Protectorate forces were focusing on the Undersiders. There was a hole in the side of the Regent, spouting dark fumes and small jets of flame, but he still seemed to be in the fight. Half the battlefield was covered in the Grue’s EM smoke, but outside of its range, I could see the Gallant face-down and unmoving, the Vista with some superficial damage along one flank, and the Tattletale just at the edge of the smoke cloud. I knew from experience that Lisa liked that kind of positioning, where she could still make the most of her sensors and comm suite, but she had an out if the enemy closed in too much. Normally that would be fine, but an unmistakable golden light was approaching just above the rooftops; my drone’s camera couldn’t pick up any details beyond the glare of the thrusters, but it could only be the Glory Girl.
The New Wave PMC was a family-owned mercenary company, one of the few that regularly took on the open calls that the Protectorate issued whenever a breach went unnoticed for too long and the Nephilim were able to gain a foothold on Earth. It was dangerous work, involving a lot of clearing out Nephelim and not many opportunities to harvest Lott Salt, but it was a task that their mechs were well suited for. Each mech that used a Tragedy Core was unique, and many had abilities that couldn’t be explained by science. New Wave’s mechs combined forcefields and powerful laser blasts with flight modules to create an agile, durable, and destructive team. The Glory Girl was their flagship- an invulnerable powerhouse of a mech.
I kicked on my drone’s forward thrusters, but almost ran right into a beam from the Vista. I had to jerk the control stick down and around to put the drone into a downward spiral that only just avoided the laser beam, and brought the drone down low far enough that the Vista wouldn’t be able to pull the beam after me without taking out buildings downtown. That mech was a menace to fight, but like Rachel, its pilot probably had to be careful about where and when it fired its weapons to avoid taking out a whole city block with a misaimed laser blast.
Without looking, I reached over to the comms panel and switched the tight-band from the Hellhound to the Tattletale, going by feel so I didn’t have to take my eyes off the drone screen. I spoke while I brought my light combat drone low, flying toward the ECM cloud and spraying a few bullets at the Vista while I strafed. “Glory Girl incoming, should we pull out? The portal opens onto the top of a spire, I haven’t found anything worth grabbing up here.”
“Shit. I just need a f----or-----ond--to crack this.” Lisa’s reply was interrupted by one of the Hellhound’s cannons firing down the stairwell, into the spire. Even inside of my sealed cockpit, the tremors were rattling me around, putting static into my headset.
“We have five seconds before she gets here!” Still corkscrewing the drone, I had it fly forward, skimming over the ECM cloud towards the Glory Girl. Anything to buy some time. I set the drone’s target and looked up to switch the comms panel to Rachel. “We might need you back through the portal, I’ll hold the stairs!” It would be easier for me to hide in Gomorrah for the time being, since my drones could be operated at a distance, even through the portal across worlds. Honestly, I had to envy pilots that could just hunker down and take hits. The Skitter was lightly armored and had too many critical systems close to the surface so it could interface with docked drones, so I was always hiding behind someone or something, plinking away from five different angles.
Speaking of which, I set a rally point for my unassigned drones just outside of the portal on Earth, behind the foam. Three sensor drones and two collector drones all moved to obey their orders. I’d need the remaining sensor drone on this side, scanning down the Spire, and for good measure, I launched my final two light combat drones, one of which had been recently modified to fire lasers instead of bullets.
The larger control sticks once more filled my hands, and I sidestepped the Skitter out of the way of the Hellhound’s bulk, moving to take up her duty of suppressing the oncoming tide of Nephilim. There were still dozens, maybe hundreds, making their way up through the inside of the tower, but there was no coordination. Small ones climbed on top and over the big ones, weighing them down, and the big ones trampled small ones underfoot. I spun up the rotary defense lasers on either side of the cockpit and moved so that the Skitter was standing at the top of the stairwell, angled slightly down into it. The first Nephilim around the corner- a group of metal-plated zombies with gray skin- tripped the Skitter’s targeting system with a series of beeps as their weak points were locked in. I thumbed the weapon selector back up and pulled the trigger, and a pair of stuttering red points of light connected my mech to their bodies, each new flash hitting a different part and lancing through it.
And then the Glory Girl arrived.
I still had that combat drone’s camera up on the main screen, so I could see as its machinegun fire pinged uselessly off the Glory Girl’s thick armor, not even kicking up sparks. The massive mech’s twin rocket jets went from a full-throated roar to dead in an instant, and the air intakes on the front let out a sudden, tremendous blast of golden flame, acting as a counter-thrust to slow the Glory Girl so that it didn’t overshoot the fight. The sudden turbulence made my feed go staticky and caused the drone to veer off course, but I was more worried about the effect on Brian’s concealment.
Unfortunately, my attention was split two ways. I wanted to keep on top of the fight outside, where and when I should leave Gomorrah and when to bring my drones to bear, but if I let up on the Nephilim, they could make more progress towards the Skitter than I was comfortable allowing.
And just as I was wishing that I didn’t have to multi-task so much, my sensor drone inside of Gomorrah pinged a mech’s Core.
There was a small tab announcing the discovery, and after setting the combat drone on Earth back to automatic and directing the two drones here to defend the stairs, I hit the corresponding button on the side of the main screen, bringing up the full view.
The sensor drone didn’t have a direct camera feed through the wall of the spire, but it was able to provide a visual based on an amalgamation of its various sensor inputs. The target was a fast-moving quadrupedal mech with a pair of long blades along the underside of its forelimbs and a snub-nosed cannon mounted along the top. I would have recognized it even before I saw it use its signature ability, disappearing from the sensors for a moment and then reappearing several dozen feet away, plunging its blades into the back of a large Nephilim.
The Shadow Stalker was a dangerous mech, especially in the hands of its pilot, who had a reputation for being especially cutthroat against other mech pilots. Lisa had also mentioned that its pilot was likely skimming Lott Salt off the top, which tracked with it being about halfway down the spire, alone.
I pulled the trigger again, and this time held it as the giant spider-like Nephilim refused to go down to a few lasers. The Skitter beeped at me, warning about the heat buildup in the weapons. I eased off and switched to machine guns, picking off the last two zombies by drilling leaden holes into their heads.
There was another rumbling, but this time I didn’t hear the Hellhound’s cannon accompanying it. The sound was almost hollow, like the rumbling of thunder without the initial boom of the lightning strike. A glance up at the drone panels revealed that a few more drones were offline, presumably taken out as they went through the choke point of the portal. My light combat drone that I’d had harassing the Glory Girl was unsurprisingly among the number of the downed drones. I highlighted one of the remaining sensor drones and pulled up its feed, sharing screen space with the drone here in Gomorrah.
A quick glance didn’t tell me nearly enough, especially with the Grue’s ECM smoke now clouding where the downed Clockblocker had been. I could see the Vista, one of its larger laser canons blasted off; it seemed to be facing the Hellhound, which was back on Earth and using one of the larger Nephilim corpses as cover.
On the right side of the screen, I was seeing nothing useful, so I directed my drone to move along the outside of the spire, locking its distance from the Shadow Stalker’s Core. To my surprise, the drone started moving down towards the base of the spire. Was the Shadow Stalker out of communication with its team back on Earth, or did its pilot not care that the Undersiders were here making a play?
I had to spend a few more seconds focusing on Nephilim trying to come up to the top of the spire. There was a bulky one with a hard shell that my smaller armaments couldn’t pierce, so I fired a mortar shot in a low arc to explode just beneath it. The Nephilim’s legs gave out, and the smaller Nephilim crawling over it were too heavy for it to make any more forward progress.
An odd motion caught my eye; on my main screen’s right side, with the drone monitoring the Shadow Stalker, it was close enough again to get an image of what the mech was doing, but that wasn’t what seemed odd. It took a moment, but I realized that I was looking at a part of the spire that was moving relative to the rest of it. What I’d thought was a metal spiral coiling around the outside of the spire as some kind of decoration was actually a separate entity that had been wrapped around the tower. And now it was moving.
I reached up and switched my comms setting to a wide, unencrypted broadcast. “Attention everyone, there’s a giant Nephilim on the other side of the portal. Endbringer class! Undersiders, disengage!” Brian would probably chafe at me giving orders like this, but it was an emergency. Since comms could be unreliable in Gomorrah, while I maneuvered the Skitter back towards the portal, I switched my main screen to the sensor drone and used the controls to switch its mode to a tight-beam transmission aimed at the Shadow Stalker. Enemy or not, its pilot needed to get back to Earth before the portal closed.
“Shadow Stalker, there’s an Endbringer-class Nephilim around the outside of the spire! Get out of there!”
A moment later, a female voice responded, “who the fuck are you?”
“Does it matter? I don’t know how fast you can move, but there isn’t much time.”
I almost missed her response, as one of the Hellhound’s cannons sent a backblast through the portal, cracking the surface of the spire. I knew that Rachel was volatile, but would she be dumb enough to start a fight with an Endbringer-class Nephilim on the other side of a portal?
“-going to come up there and kick your ass.”
…as long as she was making her way back up, fine. I rotated the Skitter’s torso backwards and sent another pair of mortar shots toward the stairwell, blowing apart a few small Nephilim that had made their way up. Belatedly, I directed the two light combat drones hovering around the Skitter to instead guard the stairwell and fire at anything that moved.
When I got far enough to peek through the portal, what I saw was an absolute mess. The Glory Girl had a foot on top of the Tattletale, some kind of large cannon aimed directly at its cockpit. There wasn’t a single mech on the field without serious damage aside from the Glory Girl. It really was invincible; there wasn’t even a scratch on its paint.
Since I was only a few dozen feet away from the portal, the interference from Gomorrah was weak enough that I could start to hear the radio chatter on Earth.
“-sh-------k Amy wha--she-”
“Don’---- dare mention my sister!” There was a piercing metal shriek as the Glory Girl’s foot pressed down harder on the Tattletale.
Lisa was trapped, literally staring down the barrel of a pissed-off mech pilot, and she was trying to get under the pilot’s skin. I didn’t know what her plan was- if she even had one- but I had to do something.
As the scene through the portal came into full view through the side of my cockpit, I swept my eyes over the Skitter’s controls, looking for solutions. I had close-range countermeasures, mortars, a caltrop spray… nothing that could even touch the Glory Girl. I had one drone in Gomorrah following the Shadow Stalker, two more guarding the stairs, one sensor drone and both collector drones hiding behind the foamed part of the portal on Earth… what else? From what I could see, the Regent was still able to fight despite its damage, but it would be a gamble using its hijack cables against the Glory Girl. That might just piss off the pilot even more, and that would endanger Lisa. The Hellhound was maybe our best bet for a frontal assault, but if that shot I heard earlier had been directed at the Glory Girl, it hadn’t done anything.
The spire shook again, and I could swear I felt the floor beneath me begin to tilt slightly. If that Nephilim could bring down the spire, every second I spent in Gomorrah was a risk, but so was going back through the portal to Earth.
My secondary monitor beeped to grab my attention- the Tattletale had sent a transmission: a data packet from its sensors. I pressed the transfer button at the bottom of the monitor and it moved to my main screen. It took a moment for me to process the diagram and the symbols linking to it, but I was able to make sense of the message.
With the Glory Girl so close, the Tattletale had been able to perform a deep scan of its systems, and discover the mystery of its invincibility. It wasn’t just armor- the armor was actually fairly thin- but there was a device integrated throughout the mech that produced some kind of shield or forcefield. I couldn’t tell exactly how it produced the protective field, but one thing stood out to me about its function. A short cycle time meant that even when the shield was downed by large munitions, it would be back up before the enemy had time to fire a second shot.
Even if we synchronized two shots, it might not be precise enough, but if the shield itself was coated in something, the instant it went down, that substance would transfer to the armor itself.
My mind immediately went to my fight against the Lung, when I’d learned for the first time that my drones’ power cores could melt down into a kind of napalm.
I reached over and switched my comms to the Tattletale only. “Message received. I hope you know what you’re doing.” I took direct control of one of the collector drones and used its manipulator arms to rip into the side of the other collector, exposing its power core.
With a deep breath, I used the drone to grab its sabotaged companion and sent it on a spiraling path towards the Glory Girl.
The pilot clearly saw the approaching drone, or maybe the Glory Girl just had really good automatic point-defense, because a brace of lasers shot out from emitters along its arms and torso. Several of the lasers hit home, shearing off parts of the sabotaged drone which was acting as a shield. Once it was close enough, the collector drone let go and spiraled away, allowing the momentum of its payload to do the rest.
The instant that my drone impacted the Glory Girl, rupturing its small core, the Tattletale fired its backup cannon up into the mech.
Instead of unleashing fury down into the Tattletale, the Glory Girl stumbled back as if stunned. I could see the glowing blue fluid of the drone’s core splashed across its front, letting up a thin stream of smoke as it ate into the Glory Girl’s armor. Some even seemed to get on the cockpit glass.
I moved the Skitter in through the portal, and as soon as its foot left the spire, there was a terrible grinding sound and I saw in my rear camera that a crack had formed down the middle of the spire’s roof, each side rising up like tectonic activity in fast-motion.
“Hellhound, knock her down!” Lisa called out. I scurried to the left as the Hellhound to my right unleashed a pair of roaring cannon shots at the Glory Girl. The shells didn’t breach the armor, but the impacts did send the already-backpedaling mech into a full tumble.
Things seemed to be turning in our favor. The Regent had somehow gotten behind the Vista, and had used its hijack cables to take temporary control. The Gallant was being driven to the edge of the battlefield under laserfire, and while the Grue had a hole clean through one shoulder from front to rear, it still seemed operational, and I saw it exchanging fire with the Aegis, which itself looked like a heavily used chew toy.
I leaned forward and reached up to flip the switches on the two light combat drones still guarding the staircase in Gomorrah as well as the remaining collector drone, and sent the command to bring them back to orbit the Skitter. We’d come expecting to gather the valuable Lott Salt crystals from Gomorrah and get away before the Protectorate could field a substantial response, but with the location in Gomorrah that this portal had connected Earth to, so high up and barren of everything but Nephilim, our options for profit were limited. The Undersiders’ mysterious benefactor was giving us danger pay, but I wasn’t planning on spending the dirty money anyway. I needed to impress, needed to move up the ‘ranks’, and a botched mission like this wasn’t going to help with that.
The sensor drone in Gomorrah beeped as its proximity sensor went off. A glance at its feed on a secondary screen showed rocks falling past, but the drone was smart enough to dodge debris like that, so I let myself focus more on the matter at hand.
The Glory Girl’s back hit the ground, cracking the pavement and sending out a tremor that lit up the Skitter’s seismic sensors.
I switched the comms over to the Tattletale. “Are you okay? Can you move?”
Her response was chipper, as if she hadn’t just been seconds away from death. I felt annoyed at that, even if I knew that there was no reason for me to feel that way. “That shot fried my weapons systems, but I can still walk. You’re a life saver, Skitter.”
I fired a pair of mortar shots at the downed Glory Girl, more to keep its pilot disoriented than anything. Adjusting my signal to reach all of the Undersiders, I said, “We gotta get out of here, now.”
“What about the Salt?” Alec asked. I saw him disconnect his hijack cables, and immediately fire a ball of electricity into the back of the Vista. “I’m gonna be pissed if we came here for nothing.”
“There isn’t any, and if the portal is open much longer, we might have an Endbringer-class Nephilim in the city.”
“The Salt was only half the point,” Tattletale said. “Trust me, this is mission success.”
“Are we going or not? Glory’s going to get up soon,” Rachel growled.
“We don’t have to worry about her, she’s dow-------” Lisa’s response was drowned out as a sudden gust of polluted air from Gomorrah rushed out of the portal, blasting past both sides of my cockpit and obscuring everything more than a couple dozen feet away. I immediately triggered my sensor drone to exit low-profile mode and start chugging away with all sensors. Just like in Gomorrah, I got a wire-frame view of the area overlaid on the rusted air outside my cockpit, marking everything clearly, except for a lumpy bubble where the Grue’s ECM smoke still lingered.
My sensor drone in Gomorrah was still complaining about falling debris, and I had to take manual control and maneuver it away from the spire to avoid some larger chunks of stone… or whatever the spire was made of.
I turned the Skitter sidelong to the portal, so I could look through back into Gomorrah. With the wireframe letting me see even the inside of the structure, it was clear what was happening: the giant Nephilim wrapped around the outside of the spire was starting to stir, and the structure itself was collapsing. Already, the top of the spire had started falling away, leaving the portal hanging in midair.
The Shadow Stalker was still climbing the spire. It wouldn’t be able to make it back up before the whole thing collapsed.
Once more, I used the sensor drone to send a tight-beam transmission to the Shadow Stalker. “That place is falling apart around you, you need to get out now . Does your machine fly?”
Not likely, based on what I’d heard about it. The Glory Girl could, but… could we salvage its flight pack, toss that down? Mechs were almost all based on the standard military model, adapted to their current forms by the unique Cores each pilot had. Since the flight pack was an adaptation, unless the Shadow Stalker had some sort of tech-integration ability, they would probably be too different for it to use the salvage.
“Get that creepy-ass peep drone to stand still.” The Shadow Stalker’s pilot wasn’t as freaked out as I would have expected, but there was no way that she wasn’t at least a little rattled. I did as she asked, using the controls to steady it in the air.
Wait, she wouldn’t… would she?
The Shadow Stalker bunched up and leapt directly at the sensor drone, phasing through the collapsing wall of the spire and slamming into the drone, sending it spinning off course, its power core struggling to keep it from falling with the added weight. It quickly lost the fight, and started falling. The Shadow Stalker shoved the drone down, phasing at the same time and gaining a surprising amount of height. It made it up several floors of the spire before passing back through the crumbling wall.
I tried to bring the sensor drone up higher to repeat the maneuver, but the impact with the Shadow Stalker must have damaged its thrusters, because I couldn’t get it to do more than slow its own fall. At least I could still use it as a relay while I sent the other drones- one with sensors, one collector, and two combat units- down into Gomorrah.
“Shadow Stalker, this is the Skitter. I have four more drones to repeat that maneuver, but you won’t be able to use the same drone twice. Make it count.”
The spire was collapsing in earnest now. Large chunks were falling away, and the distance from the portal to the highest point in the spire was growing.
The Shadow Stalker leapt again, phasing through the wall and launching much further than it should have been able to for a mech of that size. My sensor drone was able to track its trajectory, and I got the collector drone in its path. The Shadow Stalker caught on it with a single claw, spun from the change in momentum, and leapt up again.
“Skitter, what are you doing?” Brian’s voice. I was too focused on maneuvering the drones, had to rely on the others to explain what was happening.
The Shadow Stalker was getting closer to the portal, already above what was left of the spire, but when it was jumping off of a drone, it didn’t gain as much height as when it jumped out of the spire. Probably because it didn’t have a solid surface to push off of. With so few drones left, and that much height gained each time…
She wasn’t going to make it.
Without looking, I reached up and double-tapped the comms panel. Undersiders-only transmission. “Regent, how much weight can your cables carry? If you hit the Shadow Stalker with them, could you pull it up through the portal?”
The collector drone was able to keep its height after the Shadow Stalker used it, but it wasn’t able to get enough power to move up any more. I let it be and focused on the remaining drones, getting them where they needed to be.
I pulled the helmet off of my head with one hand. It was too stuffy, easier to work without it.
Alec responded to me, “What am I, a tow truck? It might work, but I don’t know why I should bother-”
The Shadow Stalker hooked off the combat drone, flew up towards the next one. After that, only my sensor drone left. It wouldn’t be enough.
“-risking my neck for someone who’s tried to kill me before. When was the last time the Protectorate actually thanked a merc for putting their ass on the line, let alone paid them for it?”
I needed a platform, something large and heavy that the Shadow Stalker could push off from. My eyes darted around across the battlefield. Large chunks of debris that would take too long to bring to the portal. The motionless Glory Girl mech… I couldn’t do that to her, and it would be too heavy to drag over, besides.
“Skitter, where next?” A transmission from the Shadow Stalker. “Don’t tell me you’re out of drones already!”
She was jumping for the sensor drone, nowhere else to go. I was out of drones. But that wasn’t my only option.
“I must be an idiot,” I said to myself, and then I pulled back on the control stick and sent the Skitter back-stepping through the portal into Gomorrah. My surroundings immediately changed, the blue sky replaced by a rusted haze, the ground below suddenly becoming much, much further below me.
“Taylor!” More than one voice, overlapping. I reached down between my legs, grabbing the eject handle and pulling with all of my might. For a single heartbeat, I felt hard resistance, like it was welded in place, but then it gave, and I was being pressed back into my seat as the cockpit of the Skitter detached and rocketed up and forward, toward the portal back to Earth.
There was a tilt to the ejection, putting a horizontal spin on it, so when I cleared the edge of the portal, I was almost sideways. The ejector rockets, maybe fouled by the air in Gomorrah, didn’t carry me out of the combat area like they should have, instead puttering out a few dozen feet later. I was totally upside-down, hanging to my seat by the straps, when the nose of the Skitter’s cockpit scraped against the ground and caught on something, sending me on a vertical tumble that felt like I was on two different roller coasters at the same time. I clutched my seat with a white-knuckle grip as my stomach flip-flopped and my inner ear lost all sense of balance. I felt bile rise up into my throat, and it burned as I tried to swallow it back down.
My own personal amusement park ride ended very abruptly with an impact on the left side that smashed the reinforced cockpit glass, heavy enough to break off one of the monitors with a shower of sparks and glass as it flew into the opposite wall. My head kept spinning, faster than the rocking of the cockpit as it settled against whatever had stopped it.
I took a deep breath, my throat burning, and then another, and then my stomach flopped one last time and I felt a surge of vomit pulse up my esophagus. It’s a good thing I already took off my helmet. I leaned over and oh-so gracefully threw up my lunch in my wrecked cockpit.
After I was pretty sure that no more was coming out, I spit away the remaining bile and wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my pilot jacket. Getting out of the seat was a pain; the same straps that had kept me from tumbling around the cockpit during the crash were now keeping me from making a quick getaway. I could hear the sound of mechs moving- like construction equipment run through a synthesizer- but no weapons fire. Not yet, anyway.
I needed to scuttle the Skitter and get away with my Core. The former was a complicated process that required me to remove the pilot chair, revealing the Tragedy Core nestled just behind. There was a panel above the Core access that opened like a drawer. At the bottom of the ‘drawer’, there was a port with three holes, and I fished inside of my shirt for the pilot key around my neck and pulled it out. Aligning the prongs of the key with the port, I plugged it in, held it for a silent count of five, and then pulled it out. Before I could hesitate, I pushed the drawer back in, completing the sequence. When the Protectorate came to pick apart the Skitter’s cockpit, they’d find melted slag instead of circuits.
The last thing I needed to do was retrieve the Core. I shoved the pilot’s chair to the other side of the cockpit, revealing a hatch in the side that I opened to get the survival kit. It was mostly meant to give me a fighting chance in Gomorrah if I got stranded, but the important thing right now was the shoulder bag that the kit came in. I unzipped the bag and dumped out the mask, the spare filters, the handgun, the baggie of chalk dust, and everything else.
I didn’t know too much about Cores. I knew that they were incredible power sources, the only way to close Breach Event portals, stuff you learned in class and on the internet, but I hadn’t ever seen one in real life until the accident, and even now, I only had a small sample size for things like how big they were or what colors they could be. Mine was an amber-colored ball of crystal about the size of my head, smooth to the touch but fractured inside. Too conspicuous to carry through town, but easy enough to hide in a shapeless bag. When I got back to the Undersiders’ hangar, I could put it in the generator of one of the generic mechs there and the Skitter would rebuild itself.
When I stood up, I could feel the fatigue starting to eat away at me. Even when you spent the whole time sitting in a cockpit, fighting could apparently take a lot out of you. Well, I still had a long walk ahead of me, so I’d have to tough it out. When I finally got to a bed, though, I was going to sleep for three days straight.
I walked over to where the Core was plugged in, and then nearly brained myself on the wall above it when the cockpit wreckage shifted, throwing me off my feet.
At first I thought it was just the whole thing settling in place, but then everything moved again, more violently, and I was thrown into the side of the cockpit. Lines of fire shot down my arm as it hit a metal edge, and when I gripped the spot that hurt the most, I wasn’t sure if I was just imagining the wet feeling inside my jacket, or if it was blood or sweat or what.
The wreckage continued to shift violently, groaning and squealing. I managed to get a couple of solid handholds and turn around to look out the broken cockpit glass, and once more the ground was further away than it had been a moment ago.
Now I heard the sounds of mech-mounted weapons firing. Lasers, cannons, something more esoteric.
Whenever a portal opened connecting the Earth to Gomorrah, all of the Nephilim in the area would make a beeline straight for our planet to set up their nests or just eat any meat or technology that was nearby. I’d been so focused on getting Shadow Stalker through the portal before we closed it that I’d forgotten why we needed to close it so desperately.
The Endbringer-class snake Nephilim had brought down a skyscraper-sized stone spire when it woke up, and now I was pretty sure it was coming through the portal to earth. And I was also pretty sure that I was in its mouth.
The angle shifted, and I watched helplessly as my emergency supplies and several busted monitors skated across the floor, flying out of the broken window. I had to hold onto what I could and brace my feet anywhere they fit to avoid meeting a similar fate. Already the ground was four, five, six stories below me. The cockpit tilted further, and I could see the lower body of the snake, somehow held back by the Aegis and the Grue pushing against it like a pair of football players. A flurry of missiles came from somewhere out of my field of view, splashing against the hide of the snake and doing no visible damage.
Something happened that pissed the snake off, because its head began thrashing, and once more I felt like I was on two roller coasters at once, only now it was without the safety bar keeping me in my seat. Even gripping the handholds with all my strength, I was jerked away from all my anchors, slamming first into one wall, then another and another. Soon my body was screaming at me from so many different places that it all blended into the same general feeling of pain .
Everything was chaos- the view outside cycling randomly between ground and open sky, anything loose flying around and ricocheting off of everything else, and every change in direction sending me flying into some hard edge or sharp angle. Some small object moving too fast for me to identify sliced my cheek, drawing blood.
I was falling. Pretty sure I was falling. What would happen when I hit the ground?
Everything was moving too fast, changing direction each time I tried to focus on anything for more than a second. By the time I could identify something to hold on to or loop my arm around, it was out of reach. Was I going to die? I can’t. Not that I had a choice.
Something impacted the cockpit from the side, shoving me hard against one wall as it began moving the other direction. I took the opportunity to blindly grab at anything and everything that was within reach, and I managed to get one arm around a support strut that stuck out from the wall. The chair, made nearly weightless because everything was falling, flew towards me, and I had to kick it away so it didn’t slam into my stomach. The impact sent a jolt up my leg, but it was still better than the alternative.
Now that I was somewhat stationary, I managed to catch a glimpse out the front of the cockpit- I was definitely falling, and fast. Just the sight made my stomach clench, and I probably would have thrown up if my lunch wasn’t already splattered all over the cockpit floor.
I could only see the city’s skyline, but from the angle, I was pretty sure that I’d be hitting the ground soon.
What would happen to the Core? Would it survive the fall, would it shatter? What happened to Cores when the pilot died? I didn’t know.
The chair had bounced around and was coming back toward me. I brought up my leg to kick it away again when the world went… weird .
Everything changed to some kind of photo-negative color, not quite inverted but definitely strange and alien. And I could see through things; I could see the world outside of the cockpit’s walls, buildings that I could see but also see beyond as if they weren’t there at all. I looked at my outstretched leg and saw only bones and an outline of smoke.
And then the world was normal again and the cockpit was sitting, stationary, on the roof of some building. I had to get my Core and get out, but my legs were like jelly. I was leaning against the wall, holding myself up with the arm that I had looped through the support strut. My legs didn’t feel like they’d support my weight. I took deep breaths and did my best to clench my leg muscles to get them working again.
I had no idea how long it would take to get my land legs again, and I didn’t have the time to find out. I needed to get away, get back to the hangar. Slumping my back against the wall, I carefully removed my arm from the strut and started shuffling sideways toward the back of the cockpit where my Core was. Once I got as far as I could go doing that, I pushed off of the wall, sinking to my knees and crawling the last few feet.
Normally I’d need to go through a process similar to the scuttling procedure in order to remove the Core, but the beating that the cockpit had taken gave me a shortcut. I grabbed the dented cover panel and pulled with all my strength until it gave way, clattering off to the side.
The Core was glowing from the inside, and as I reached out to run my hand over the surface, the glow got brighter. I wasn’t sure if it was just my brain feeling relieved that my Core was intact, or if it was some property of the crystal, but it felt like I was getting a second wind, a surge of energy.
I grabbed the Core and pulled it out of its socket. For a moment, I just hugged it to my chest, holding it close.
Okay, I have to move. Thankfully, the bag I’d been planning to use had gotten caught on something and hadn’t flown out of the cockpit, so I was able to zip my Core into it and sling it across my back.
I carefully stepped out of the broken cockpit, avoiding the sharp shards of glass, and nearly jumped out of my skin when I came face-to-face with the Shadow Stalker.
It was a quadrupedal mass made of metal and sleek, corded tubing with a design that was both sleek and jagged. It was also as big as my house, and staring directly at me. For once, I was glad for Lisa’s insistence on ‘war paint’ to disguise our features even on missions when we never planned to leave our cockpits. “Um. Hi?”
There was a hissing, crackling sound, and then I heard the Shadow Stalker’s pilot over some kind of external speaker. “We’re even now. You get in my way again, you’re scrap.”
With that, it turned and leapt up, phasing into its unique state and soaring across the street.
I rushed to the edge of the roof and looked back out over the battlefield. There wasn’t any fighting; the Undersiders seemed to have made their escape. The portal was closed, and in its place was that pile of structural foam and the severed neck of the serpentine Nephilim. They must have closed the portal as it was coming through. There were deep gashes in the area near its head, which must have been where the Shadow Stalker knocked me out of its mouth.
The area looked like a warzone, mostly because it was. Collapsed buildings, Nephilim bodies, torn-up streets and chunks of smoldering metal that had been knocked off of some mech or another. The Protectorate mechs were still in the area, either clearing the streets or patching themselves up as best they could, and all of them seemed to be ignoring me. I got the impression it was deliberate, that if they acknowledged that I was here, they’d have to do something about the Rogue Pilot, so they just… didn’t acknowledge me. I probably shouldn’t test their goodwill by sticking around, so I decided to get the heck out of Dodge.
I took a few steps back and looked around. How did I get down from here? Was I trapped on a rooftop again ?
I really didn’t like the pattern that this was starting to establish.