Trapped in the metal grip, the creature swung its hind legs down and began to rake, long claws gouging chunks of armour of Brutiful’s thick torso. For a moment Graves thought the creature might get through, but then the suit’s grip tightened and the creature exploded into a multi-coloured burst of flesh.
He didn’t even see the other one coming. It was big, strong, and travelling at speed, and barrelled the heavy suit over like a man pushing over a child. Brutiful’s gyro-stabilises shrieked in protest as they tried to correct the unexpected fall, but to no avail. With a loud thud, the exomech went down, the fall stunning Graves for a moment.
When he came to, the creature was on top of him, clawing and biting away at the glass canopy, only a foot or so from his face. The heavy glass was holding for now, but wouldn’t for long…Graves needed to end this one quickly and get Brutiful back on its feet.
The creature was inside his reach, so his two heavy weapons would be useless. I Instead, he activated the cutting torch on the exomech’s smaller right arm. With variable settings for welding or cutting through thick steel, the torch was a legacy of the suit’s original purpose, and one he’d never gotten around to replacing.
Pushing the flame against the creatures hide brought a shriek of pain, which did nothing to reduce the creatures frenzied clawing on the glass canopy; in fact, it only seemed to make it worse. He couldn’t quite bring the torch to bear on something that might prove vital, and he had to endure the creature’s attacks for another 30 seconds before he finally managed to find something important. The creature gave one enormous spasm and then died.
Flicking off the torch, he pushed the creature off him and slowly struggled to rise. The exomech wasn’t designed for agility, and it took him a good five minutes to finally get back on his feet. If there’d been any more aliens around, he’d have been dead for sure.
Sweating — the suit generated a lot of heat — he checked his scanners and toggled the radio.
“Honey?”
“Here Hank,” Beth replied. “You okay?”
“Scratched up, a little bruised but otherwise okay. How’s everything else look?”
“Honey, I think we might have a problem…”
Unlike the other colonists that ran one small family unit per farmstead, the Singh family were a polygamous family collective that ran a farmstead twice the size of the others. Graves and the others figured there to be three distinct ‘marriage arrangements’ amongst the Singh farmstead, which gave them a requirement for three exomechs in accordance with the colony’s laws.
Crescent Moon was piloted by Jaswant Singh, the elder of the family. Based on the chassis of an old construction suit, it was well suited for the slabs of thick armour and heavy weapons the Singh family had added to it over the years.
The other two suits were Hawk and Eagle, two much smaller exomechs based on warehousing droids. Fast and nimble, the two light units were built for close-quarters combat only, and spent most of their time keeping Crescent Moon clear of deebees so it could do all the long-range killing.
The three suits had cleared their first two clusters of gates, and were advancing on their third, Hawk and Eagle scouting ahead as Crescent Moon followed slowly along. Putting his suit on autopilot gave Jaswant time to update his tactical display from the various sensors around their property and from the satellite above. His update was showing some unusual activity, something he felt warranted caution.
“Hawk, Eagle,” he said into the radio, “hold on the next hill… something is amiss here.”
“Hawk acknowledging,” replied Agun, Jaswant’s eldest son. “Hill clear, covering left flank.”
“Eagle acknowledges,” replied Kubai, his daughter’s husband. “Will clear the peak in fifteen seconds, will cover the right flank.”
The two smaller suits took up covering positions atop the hill as Crescent Moon trundled slowly up behind them.
“There’s nothing here, brother,” Agun said. “Should we push on to the next hill?”
“No,” Jaswant said. “I need to assess the situation before we get too far from home.”
“The place is barren,” Kubai replied. “There’s nothing to assess.”
“Exactly… but there should be.”
Jaswant’s exomech drew level with the smaller units and looked over the flat, ploughed field below. The next hill was a mile away, and beyond that was the next cluster of gates, which should be opening any minute.
“Our initial reading showed six gates opening beyond that next hill… readings now show only four.”
“Fewer gates are a good thing, isn’t it?” Kubai asked.
“Gates never just disappear,” Jaswant replied. “They open then they close. These ones haven’t opened, yet two are missing.”
“I don’t understand,” Agun said.
“Neither do I,” Jaswant said, “But now sensors are showing only two.”
“Hank, the gates on top of the ridge are disappearing,” Beth said. “Not opening, just disappearing, a few every minute or so.”
“Do we have a visual on the ridgeline yet?” Graves replied. “Something might be messing up the sensors.”
“I’m sorry, honey, something knocked the drone out.” Beth said. “I’ve powered up another three and having them fitted with cameras now, should be airborne in a few minutes.”
“Good thinking, honey. Anything else to report?”
“A little. Jenkins is shutting down his gates, but taking his time about it, and Crazy Bill Anderson wants to know if anyone needs his help…he seems to still have gates open on his property though.”
“Jenkins is just taking his time so he won’t have to help clear the ridgeline,” Graves said with a chuckle, “and Crazy Bill wants to be able to claim ammunition and fuel from the Colony account for helping others.”
“Other than that, the Singhs look like they have their area under control, as always, and the others are mopping up as they advance towards the ridge. Oh, and the drones are on their way.”
Moments later, Brutiful’s sensors picked up the flight of crop-dusting drones as they sped towards the ridgeline. As they passed, Beth switched the video feed over directly to the suit and Graves toggled between the three camera views.
At first there was nothing but the well-ploughed fields he expected to see. As the drones moved beyond his property the vegetation grew wilder, mostly tall trees. As the passed over the first growth of forest beyond his fence line, one of the cameras went out.
“Beth, what was that?”
“No idea, honey,” Beth replied. “I’ll go back over the video feed and check.”
The drones were approaching the ridgeline now, and Graves toggled the controls to make them move in a more erratic manner. Even as he did, a second camera went out.
“Honey!”
“Working on it, Hank, working on it!”
The remaining camera made it to the ridgeline, Graves piloting this one manually now to be as erratic as he could make it. The sight wasn’t a good one.
The gates were disappearing, in a manner of speaking. As Graves watched, two gates slowly expanded until their edges touched, and then they merged into one larger gate. All along the ridgeline, gates were coalescing, and at the rate they were merging they’d be one giant gate before too long.