In the centre of the chamber was a giant metal frame equipped with restraint clamps and a set of robotic arms. Housed in the frame was a mobility platform: a piloted mechanical walker twice the height of a Human, consisting of an armoured cockpit with mechanical legs and arms. Mobility platforms were typically used for heavy lifting.
This one was equipped with military-grade weaponry.
The squad froze. They kept their weapons trained on the threat, but it wasn’t clear they could win this fight; at least not without heavy weapons or explosives. They had been lured out into the open against a threat they weren’t equipped to fight, with limited cover and nowhere to which they could fall back.
A klaxon sounded and yellow lights flashed around the mobility platform’s support frame as the restraint clamps were retracted. The walker took a slow, heavy step forward and stomped its foot down loud enough to echo throughout the chamber.
“Cover, now!” Gabriel shouted.
He took aim and fired.
THE MOLE
Eternity passed before the work day finally ended. Doing the same checks and diagnostics again and again while waiting for instructions from above was mind-numbingly tedious; and the cloud of scandal and uncertainty that hung over the place didn’t help either. The project was pretty much ready, but with the company’s future in doubt, there was no point in the board of directors authorising a final test.
That was the least of Aster’s worries as she passed through the security checkpoint with everyone else. Except for a smartphone – which had to be checked in and out of storage – nothing electronic was allowed in or out of the building. Barring a power failure, smuggling the data chip out of the building would be next to impossible. Still, it was safely tucked away inside the activation key safe, so she could figure out what do with it later.
Aster joined a group of other people in the elevator back up to the station. Awkwardly, Felix was part of that group, and she tried to stand as far away from him as possible. The two spent an incredibly uncomfortable minute trying not to exchange glances; Felix started typing out a message on his smartphone whilst Aster stared intently at the wall. The hypocrisy of doing exactly what she had refused to allow him to do was almost too much to bear.
When the elevator doors finally opened, Aster all but fled the awkward space, racing to the platform and joining the tussle to get aboard the first mag-train that turned up. Only when the doors had closed and the mag-train had started moving did she start to breathe normally. After a ten minute ride to the medical centre, she could pick up the children, hail a sky-car, and they’d all be home before sundown.
Aster looked out the carriage window and took in the breath-taking scene before her. The first time she had seen it was almost a decade ago, and the shimmering forest of skyscrapers still looked like a heavenly citadel to her; a far cry from the tiny mining colony where she had grown up. But as she looked out on the man-made vista below, Aster’s sense of awe was tinged by a familiar emotion, like a bad aftertaste: resentment.
Like hundreds of other frontier colonies – not to mention the intermediate hub-worlds – her own home planet had supplied some of the ore and that went into building this city. The pay-per-tonne offered by the corporates for each ore haul was usually paltry, the better to sell it on at a profit to the manufacturers.
The whole arrangement was a racket in which the frontier worlds were bled dry to sustain the core worlds. As a consequence, most of the frontier worlds were desperately poor. Few could afford to go it alone, and many survived on financing from the same corporate parasites who fleeced them. Parasites like Jezebel Thorn.
Aster’s smartphone buzzed, informing her of a new message. She fished it out of her pocket; and her face darkened when she saw who it was from.
‘I’d need to speak with you, urgently.’ Said the message from Jezebel Thorn.
As Aster glared at the screen, a follow-up message arrived.
‘Ignoring this message would be inadvisable.’
Was that a warning or a threat? Knowing her, it was probably both.
‘I’m picking up my children from their check-up.’ Aster messaged back, then put her smartphone back in her pocket. It buzzed again almost immediately.
‘Already done. Come here first.’
Aster’s heart leapt into her mouth. Had Jezebel picked up the children from the medical centre without her permission? That seemed to be what she was saying.
‘Where’ she messaged back bluntly, not even bothering to type a question mark.
* * *
“Cover, now!” Gabriel shouted.
He took aim and fired, squeezing off a single, high-powered shot at the titanic mobility platform. A flash of blue energy covered its armoured skin as its shields activated. Unfazed by the shot, the mobility platform extended one of its arms and Gabriel dived into cover with the rest of the squad as it opened fire.
Literally opened fire. From the mouth of the nozzle mounted on its right arm spewed a stream of bright orange flames at high speed. The squad barely made it to cover as the infernal jet doused the floor and wall, leaving black scorch patterns wherever it touched.
But the flames didn’t persist, they dissipated almost as soon as the jet of flame had ceased, and the jet itself didn’t drop with gravity whilst travelling through the air. It must be a pressurised gas mixture, maybe even plasma based. If that was the case, then the fire would burn at a much higher temperature than a liquid fuel.
The mobility platform stomped towards them like a heavyweight wrestler, bringing its railgun-equipped left arm to bear, and taking aim at the cargo crates. A single, supersonic round tore through the boxes, eviscerating their contents, and leaving Bale and Doran exposed. Bale managed to scramble to cover, but Doran was thrown to one side by the blast.
The whole squad opened fire as the mobility platform advanced on Doran, who rolled onto his back and sprayed bullets on full auto at the advancing mechanical enemy. It didn’t do any good; the mobility platform’s shielding rippled and flashed with sapphire-coloured light as the hypersonic rounds were deflected to either side.
Doran was a sitting duck as the mobility platform focussed on him exclusively. He tried too late to scramble to his feet, and the mechanical walker took a swing with one of its arms, knocking him back down to the ground. He was helpless as the mobility platform raised its mechanical foot and stomped down on him.
“Doran!” one or more squad members screamed as their squad-mate bore the full weight of a multi-tonne metal foot crushing him.
Doran’s life-signs turned red, and so did Gabriel’s vision.
Violating every possible rule of combat training, Gabriel broke cover and ran straight towards the mobility platform. Taking a running jump, Gabriel removed an explosive from his belt and leapt into the air, the exoskeletal motors in his combat armour boosting him by several feet. He primed the explosive in mid-jump and landed on the mobility platform’s back, shoving the explosive into the mechanical enemy’s shoulder joint.
A flurry of crackling energy erupted between himself and the mobility platform as their shielding interacted in a dramatic feedback loop. The resulting interaction produced mutual repulsion, sending Gabriel flying backwards in a spectacular storm of energy and light. As he hit the ground, he rolled back onto his feet in one movement.
The explosive Gabriel had used was a special anti-armour limpet mine equipped with a shield dampener. When it detonated, the shaped charge directed all of the explosive force down into the mechanical joint of the mobility platform’s right arm.