Wholesale Slaughter Read online

  “Thanks, Colonel Anders,” Logan transmitted, unable to hold in the deep sigh, relief at the rescue and disappointment it had been necessary.

  "Wait for your platoon before you rush in headlong, Lieutenant," Donnel Anders chided him, his soothingly deep voice softening the impact of the words just a hair. "These may be bandit trash, but don't underestimate them."

  "Yes, sir,” Logan acknowledged, abashed.

  They were touching down all around him now, jetting in only seconds behind him though it might as well have been days later. There were three of them, all in Golem assault mecha, just slightly smaller and lighter than his Vindicator. Always four machines in an armor platoon, that’s what Colonel Anders had told him, a tradition dating back a thousand years.

  “The compound is secure,” Anders declared. “Captain Randell has the captives in hand and her Rangers have neutralized the dismounts.” Neutralized was such a sterile word. The Rangers had killed them. “I want your platoon to run a patrol spiral out to ten kilometers, then circle back in to the landing zone for dust-off.”

  “Roger that, sir.” He turned his mech away from the Colonel’s fifteen-meter Sentinel strike mech, facing his people.

  “Follow me, First Platoon,” Logan said, heading for the wire with quick, tromping steps. “But keep your eyes open,” he added, trying to take Ander’s criticism to heart. “There’s no way of telling how many of the bandits might have been outside the compound.”

  His Vindicator walked through the fence as if it weren't there, the remaining three machines following behind him in a wedge. In the tiny rear-view image at the corner of his HUD, Logan could still see Ander’s tall, hulking grey mech standing, watchful as its namesake. He wondered if the man wished he could still go on patrols like this instead of ordering other people to do it. Logan led from the front and couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.

  The mechs ate up ground quickly, each plodding step covering twenty meters, their spiked foot pads ripping brush by the roots and sending up white sprays of snow. They passed by the main mech hangar, a ramshackle structure, barely more than three corrugated aluminum walls on a concrete slab, and Logan was beginning to think they’d been dead lucky and caught everyone with their pants down.

  “Logan.” Marc Langella, the platoon’s Sub-Lieutenant and the only one of the three who could get away with calling him by his first name, was in the Golem to Logan’s right and he automatically glanced toward his subordinate even though he could see the image of the other man’s mecha in the HUD. “We got multiple thermal signatures out to the southwest, maybe one-five-zero meters.”

  Logan checked his own sensor readout and spotted the flickering red dots a moment later, fitful and intermittent through the snow. The flurries had turned into a full-fledged blizzard as the night wore on, the wind pushing the white-out snow nearly horizontal now, and he could make out little detail past the floodlights of the bandit compound, just a vague sense of the surrounding trees.

  Same trees out here as back home on Sparta, some tiny partition of his thoughts devoted to inanities noted. This place was terraformed way back when. Maybe the Empire, maybe before.

  And somewhere back there, behind trees transplanted from Earth fauna centuries or even millennia ago, were at least three heat signatures so big they could only be mecha. Not dead lucky, after all. Only one thing to be done about it.

  “Prevatt, Coughlin,” he snapped to the two Warrants who filled out his platoon, the decision made almost as he said the words, “put your backs against the main hangar back there and prepare to provide fire support. Marc, you and I are jumping two hundred meters southwest, fifty meters up.”

  “Roger that, boss,” Langella replied easily, as if this were just a training simulation and they’d be heading out for a beer after.

  Langella’s Golem stepped abreast with Logan’s Vindicator, twenty meters off to the left, shoulders hunched like a lineman preparing to rush the passer. The cockpit canopy of the Golem was flush with the chest, a jack-o-lantern of transparent aluminum carved into BiPhase Carbide, and Logan thought he glimpsed the motion of a thumbs-up through the surface.

  “On three,” he said, making sure he had his weapons systems ready to go. “One… two… three.”

  Both mecha rose on columns of hot gas, arcing over the camp to a wide, dirt trail leading up the plateau from the valley below. While still in mid-air, above the interference of the thick forest, Logan picked up half a dozen Hoppers bounding up the trail, coming back, he guessed, from a patrol.

  And then he and Langella were in the midst of the ostrich-legged machines, landing back to back. Logan expelled a flight of missiles instinctively, without thought, all of them impacting on the center torso of a Hopper to his left and about forty meters out. The machine was consumed in an incandescent cloud of smoke as the armor-piercing warheads ate through the honeycomb boron, through the depleted uranium beneath that and into the fusion bottle. Plumes of plasma shot out from the machine and both shoulder-mounted, spiked-plasma MHD turbines blew outward, taking the machine's arms with it.

  Logan turned his mech away from the blast and caught a brief glimpse of Marc Langella firing the Electro-Thermal Chemical cannon that was his primary weapon, mounted like an oversized rifle cradled in the Golem’s right hand. The 100mm tungsten slug was invisible, a streak of light at six thousand meters a second, riding the flames of igniting gasses lit with an electrical pulse in front of the main charge, a plasma afterburner. The round cored one of the Hoppers like an apple, blowing its reactor in a starburst of plasma plumes and Logan was blind again, thermal and infrared useless, the optical cameras whited out for a moment. All he had to go on was active lidar and radar painting the best picture they could in his HUD.

  But it rained, as his father liked to say, on the just and the unjust. The remaining bandit Hoppers tried to return fire at near point-blank range, but they were frightened and confused, and just as blind as he was. What missiles, lasers and cannonfire didn't go streaking off into the night actually wound up striking their own machines. For Logan Conner and Marc Langella, it was like hunting baby whales in a bathtub.

  No bonus for coming back with unexpended ammunition, he thought, an echo of a phrase he’d heard over and over in the Academy and mecha pilot training.

  Logan cut loose with everything he had, the fingers of his left hand stretching out to hit three firing controls at once. His Vulcan and the twin five Mega-joule chemical pulse lasers in the Vindicator’s upper chest taking out the right-hand turbine and igniting the flamethrower fuel in one of the Hoppers. Sheathed in unquenchable flames, the Hopper's pilot ejected, his canopy blowing out and his control couch rocketing into the sky to come down kilometers away on a billowing white parachute. Logan ignored it; pirates were fair game in or out of the cockpit, but he just didn’t have the time.

  He squeezed the trigger pad on his right-hand joystick in an almost sympathetic reflex to the motions of the left and his main gun spat out what looked like a flash of ball lightning. The plasmoid exploded against another Hopper’s right leg joint, severing the limb in a spray of molten metal and sending the small mech lurching over to crash heavily into the snow-covered ground. He had the space to breathe and he used it to check on his wingman—and best friend.

  Langella was too close to the remaining two machines to use his missiles and he’d opened up with the twin Vulcans mounted just above his Golem's hips, chewing at the armor on one of the smaller mechs' left chest in a firework display of sparks. The other tried to get in close and use his left-arm flamers, but Langella jammed the muzzle of his ETC against the mech's "chin" and fired at contact distance. Logan flinched, worried the massive weapon would backfire and take the mech’s right arm with it, but the huge round tore through the bandit’s cockpit, vaporized the pilot within and soared upward into the sky. The headless machine tottered backward, fell with a shriek of tearing metal.

  The last mech, battered by Langella's Vulcans, tried to jump out, the hy
drogen jets in its broad feet carrying it about twenty meters off the ground before Logan expended his last flight of missiles into it. The warheads struck along the Hopper’s right flank, stripping armor from the leg and chest and, most devastatingly, blowing out the right-leg jump-jet. The mech's left leg jerked upward from the unbalanced boost of the remaining jet, tore loose of the main body with a shower of hydrogen plasma and the Hopper spun crazily back to the ground. It laid silent for a moment before the hydrogen fuel went up, consuming the torso in a shower of flame.

  Logan leaned back into his easy chair, his mech mirroring the motion as it straightened, and let go a long-held breath.

  "White Leader, this is White One," he radioed Colonel Anders.

  "Go ahead, White One," the Colonel replied.

  "Neutralized six unfriendlies," Logan Conner reported. "All light scout types. Going to make a quick sweep of the area..."

  Logan bit down on the next word as something slammed him against his seat restraints hard enough that he thought his shoulders might dislocate, sending his Vindicator stumbling forward, the gyros barely able to keep the mech upright. An incandescent cloud of smoke drifted across his view and by the time he heard Langella’s uncharacteristically panicked shouting in his ear, he already knew what had happened.

  “Missiles!” his friend was yelling.

  "Where, Goddammit?"

  Logan spun his mech, eyes flickering through one sensor after another, trying to determine the source of the launch, turned just in time to see Langella's humanoid Golem rock back, a phospherescent streak of red that could only have been a heavy ETC round catching it in the left shoulder. The tungsten slug tore off the mech's left arm in a shower of sparks, spinning the machine around and sending it crashing onto its back with the finality of thirty tons of cutting-edge technology turned to scrap.

  Logan acted without thought, running on instinct, and slammed his booted soles down on the jump pedals, shooting his Vindicator into the air in the direction from which the cannon-round had come. He came down with an uneven, bone-jarring impact, feeling the metal taste of blood in his mouth. It was inconsequential; he doubted he’d live long enough to find out if he’d bit his tongue or busted his lip. He’d almost landed directly on top of a huge Scorpion strike mech.

  Ostrich-legged like the Hopper, the Scorpion outweighed that light scout mech by at least half-again and mounted much deadlier weaponry. He could see them checked off on a list in one of the familiarization classes he’d taken: a large ETC cannon fixed to the top of its podlike torso, a chin-mounted Vulcan, a six-tube integral missile launch system on either side of the cockpit and a pair of five Mega-joule lasers on its lower torso. But the machine's deadliest armaments were the twin plasma cannons that each formed the end of a long, claw-like arm. It was fifteen meters tall and weighed nearly sixty tons. It was the most fearsome fighting machine in the human worlds, and Logan was staring at it nose to nose.

  His jump, however, had taken the big mech's pilot by surprise; he could tell by the interrupted motion of the big machine’s torso, as if the driver couldn’t decide if he wanted to shit or go blind. Logan Conner was a lot of things, but no one had ever accused him of being hesitant. Moving in closer to the Scorpion, he fired his lasers directly at the mech's cockpit—the polished transparent aluminum diffused and reflected the thin red pulses as Logan had known it would, but the twin blasts temporarily blinded the enemy pilot and burned out the Scorpion’s thermal and infrared sensors.

  He’d bought himself time, now he could do something stupid with it. Logan gritted his teeth, grabbed the Scorpion’s right-side plasma cannon with his Vindicator’s articulated left hand, jammed the muzzle of his own plasma gun against the enemy mech's right-hand weapon and fired. The burst of superheated gas burned through even the thick armor like butter at that close a range, and a flare of actinic light enveloped both the mechs for just a moment. Heat washed through his cockpit like a physical fist slamming into him and he was barely able to retain consciousness.

  Logan wasn’t sure at first if the explosion was just the Scorpion’s plasma cannon blowing or his own main gun going with it, but none of the yellow warning lights flashing in the periphery of his vision on his HUD had turned red, so nothing was that wrong yet. Yet. Logan scrambled to keep the Vindicator from tumbling forward as the Scorpion pilot jerked his mech back, freeing it from Logan's grasp and knocking the lighter machine off-balance.

  Heat filled the cockpit and a sledgehammer vibration threatened to shake the Vindicator apart and Logan was dimly aware the maimed strike mech was hitting him with its Vulcan and twin lasers simultaneously, chewing armor from his machine’s left arm and chest. Those yellow lights were beginning to show red and he knew he had less than a second before the damage would be too much to overcome.

  "Bastard!"

  The exclamation was guttural, instinctive, and so were his actions. Logan lunged forward, let the bigger mech have a wide hook with the Vindicator's armored left fist, smashing the Vulcan cannon and one of the laser projectors off their mounts, the laser falling to the ground in a shower of sparks while caseless ammo for the Vulcan spilled out like coins from a slot machine. The bandit pilot tried to back his machine up, knowing he was at a disadvantage at this close a range, but Logan stuck to him like a boxer trying to get under a bigger opponent's guard, grabbing at the Scorpion’s remaining plasma cannon again to force it away from a firing arc.

  Trying to apply his unarmed combat training to the situation, Logan received a sudden inspiration. Still controlling his opponent's right-hand main gun, he ducked his machine's shoulder under the Scorpion’s torso pod, planted his mech's feet solidly beneath the enemy mech’s center of gravity, and hit the jump-jets. The plasma flame melted snow and turned the sandy ground beneath it to polished glass, pushing the heavy Scorpion backward off its feet and slamming it to the ground with a crash of metal that was quite possibly the loudest thing Logan had ever heard… and then he heard nothing.

  His vision swam, his ears were filled with a hollow ringing, and he wasn’t quite certain if he’d passed out or which way, exactly, was up. His seat restraints cut into his shoulders through his tactical vest, though, and from that kernel of data, he realized the Vindicator was face down and so was he. Logan shook his head to clear it and tried to assess his situation.

  His helmet was still on, and as his vision cleared, he could see on the HUD that most of his systems were operational, so he visualized the correct movements, letting the neural halo inside the helmet read the electrical activity in his brain. He tried to get the Vindicator’s legs beneath it, tried to push down with the mech’s left hand, but the foot pads couldn't get any purchase on the sandy earth and the articulated hand was tangled up with the Scorpion’s arm. The big strike mecha was, at least, equally helpless, unable to roll over and regain its footing with the forty tons of Vindicator laying across it, and unable to reach Logan's machine with any of its weapons.

  Then Logan saw the escape hatch beneath the strike mech's chin swing open, a rope ladder spilling out of it.

  Damn, he thought, not even stopping to consider whether he might be concussed. Can't let this guy get away.

  Logan yanked the quick-release for his safety harness and fell straight into the canopy of his cockpit. He stopped himself with an outstretched arm against the fuselage, reaching out with his other hand and hitting the emergency canopy release switch, allowing the transparent dome to swing outward on its hinges. Cold air slapped him in the face and with it, something resembling reason.

  Gun. Need my gun.

  He patted around his tactical vest with his right hand, finding the butt of his sidearm and trying to remember the last time he’d qualified with the weapon. Had it been a month ago? Two months? Shit.

  Drawing his sidearm, Logan shifted his helmet back, tightened his chin strap and climbed cautiously onto the upper section of the Vindicator’s chest, keeping his left hand tightly gripped around the safety handle built into the side of
the cockpit. Charred, jagged bits of BiPhase Carbide pockmarked the chest plastron and he tried to keep his boot soles away from them, hooking a heel inside the cockpit canopy and wedging his other foot in the only maintenance step left unmangled. He looked down and found himself directly below the Scorpion’s escape hatch.

  It was pitch black outside, with not a hint of moonlight or starlight penetrating the snow clouds, but his helmet’s visor had infrared and thermal optics built in, and through them, he could still make out the shape of a tall, rangy male climbing through the hatch. Bereft of a helmet, he looked to be in his late forties, with long, braided black hair. He wore a pistol in a shoulder holster, but hadn't yet tried to draw it.

  Logan braced himself against the side of his mech's chest, brought up his heavy pistol and tried to draw a bead on the man with the targeting laser built into the weapon. With the IR sighting in his helmet’s visor, he could see the full beam of the laser interacting with the moisture in the air and he brought it around to the enemy pilot's chest. Logan's gloved finger was squeezing on the trigger when the bandit's head suddenly whipped around and he threw himself away from the Scorpion’s hatch, and caught the hanging rope ladder about five meters down. Swinging back toward the main body of the downed strike mech with an impressively acrobatic move for a mech pilot, the bandit drew his weapon faster than Logan thought humanly possible.

  He ducked back inside his cockpit canopy just ahead of a full-auto hailstorm of small-caliber slugs, heard them ricocheting off the armor on the Vindicator’s chest and flinched in anticipation of a killing shot, but it didn’t come. Logan bit off a curse and swung back out, pulling the trigger of his large-bore semiauto slugshooter before he even had it lined up. It wasn’t as loud as he remembered it being on the range, didn’t seem to kick as hard, and he’d fired four rounds before he could let off the trigger.