Weekly Drabble #251: Forward (Patreon)

A couple announcements: the polls have closed, so this month, the most voted for options are more Ozymandias and a different serial work, with All the little lost boys and girls getting the most requests.

And this week's drabble uses Xpholia's 'glory, guts and bits of spine' and Lincoln Neal's 'forwards ever, backwards never' to present my own unique take on the trope of five teenagers with attitude getting access to giant quasi-mythical war machines.

Netflix, give me a call. 

~

Forward

“Ha!” Mike cheered, his voice so loud it blasted static through the comm lines. “Look at ‘em run!” Red Bear’s massive plasma cannon hummed and cracked as it discharged writhing star-hot boluses after the fleeing Imperial mechs and armoured vehicles. “Can’t stand a fair fight, can you?”

“Easy, Mike,” Luke, piloting White Lion reprimanded his hot-headed teammate as his own mech picked its way through the wreckage of Downriver City. To the north, Jasmine had Green Rhino hunkered down in defence mode, its shield raised as the retreating Imperials shelled the city to provide cover for their retreating forces. On the southern front, Chikao and Yellow Eagle were doing recon sweeps and harrying the enemy command groups to prevent them from reorganizing. Within the city, Priyanka had Blue Wolf doing search and rescue for civilians trapped under buildings and clearing roads to allow medical and fast response teams get to where they were most needed.

The Empire had said they were going to crush Downriver City and break all resistance on Nakir, but the Totems had made them choke on those words and now it was the Imperial forces in full retreat, not those of the United Worlds. “Just keep them on the run.”

“It’s like fish in a barrel, though!”

“They’re retreating,” Priyanka cut in testily as Blue Wolf pulled a downed airliner out of a blocked street. “We already won.”

“Yeah, and we’re going to make sure they keep retreating,” Mike snapped back. The hot-blooded redhead and the calmer black-haired young woman were frequently at odds. Even their Totems reflected that; Red Bear was the largest of the five, a hulking and heavily-armoured machine with a massive plasma cannon, missile pods and a wrecking ball for a right hand. Blue Wolf was the second smallest Totem with delicate laser cutters and energy claws as fine as a surgeon’s scalpels to allow the towering mech to quickly effect repairs on damaged units, cut trapped crew from buildings or vehicles and even disarm hostiles while leaving them largely intact.

Mike complained endlessly about Priyanka’s distaste for combat and she was disdainful and mistrustful of his excitement for it. In battle, both of them could count on the other to have their backs, but the back-and-forth between them was wearing at times. After a mission, Luke had had to break up more than one argument back at base as the Totem pilots, fresh off fighting back-to-back, decided to have words with one another regarding real or perceived failings during the operation.

“Enough,” Luke told them both. “Mike, don’t push them too hard or they’ll turn back on you. The United World lines are over-extended here and you don’t have enough support.”

“Not like I need it,” he snorted. “I can handle these losers on my own.”

“Just be careful. Priya, do you need help in the city?”

“No, Blue Wolf and I have cleared most of the main access ways by now. United forces and medical teams are no longer impeded.”

“Good, then link up with Jasmine and assist the ground troops with their defences. Chikao, what’s the word?”

“I am harrying the enemy commanders,” Yellow Eagle’s pilot replied. “They are drawing support from the main body to secure their defences and push me back.”

“Just what we wanted. Keep any one of those columns from getting too big and too brave. Are you in any danger?”

“No more than usual. Once the situation becomes too risky, I will withdraw.” Yellow Eagle was the smallest and most nimble of all the Totems, able to maneuver in ways more akin to a martial arts expert than a ten-meter tall war machine. With Chikao in its pilots’ chair, Yellow Eagle was fast and lethal, able to dismember an enemy mech with a flurry of strikes from its curved energy sword, or place its sniper rounds with preternatural precision. “Yellow Eagle is picking up increasing comm chatter from the Imperial HQ units, but she cannot decipher it.”

“Confirming that,” Jasmine replied from where Green Rhino was hunkered down, warding off artillery strikes with its powerful shield and array of point defences. “United forces at my position are reporting some kind of disturbance in orbit. An Imperial ship has arrived and broken through the blockade.”

“They’re a little late to the party,” Mike quipped. “But at least they can help give their friends a ride home. What’s left of them, anyways.”

“I don’t believe that’s the intention,” Jasmine answered. “Something else is going on. I’m not sure what.”

“Can you find out?” Luke asked Green Rhino’s pilot.

“I’ll confer. Stand by.” Jasmine, a former devotee of the An-Arten League was the closest any of the Totem pilots had to a military background. She’d only just made neophyte-officer before the Empire had crushed the League and she’d found herself on a refugee ship with the rest of her counterparts, never knowing what was in store for them. In the beginning, she’d clashed often with Luke, reasoning that her experience should make her the leader, not a “privileged high-worlder boy”, but the Oracle had made its selection and even she had grudgingly come to accept that Luke had grown into the role – though she would never make a secret of her opinion if asked, and in private the two of them had had extremely vicious arguments about Luke’s style of leadership. Just like Priyanka and Mike though, they worked together seamlessly in the field.

Maybe the Oracle was on to something after all.

“The command units are splitting up,” Chikao quickly added. “One is continuing to the evac zone but the other is doubling back towards Downriver.”

“Can you intercept it?”

“Negative,” Yellow Eagle’s pilot replied tersely. “The reinforcements I mentioned are not coming to protect the evacuation caravan. They are coming directly for me.”

Luke didn’t know what was happening, but he didn’t like it. They’re up to something. He could see Yellow Eagle’s telemetry on the HUD White Lion was projecting inside his head. Unlike other mechs, each pilot was part of their Totem; the ‘heart’ as the Oracle had called them. They saw what their Totem saw, felt what it felt and when they moved, it moved. It was almost an information overload, but each of them had learned to handle the deluge pouring through their brains.

“Mike, you’re closest,” he said. “Move to intercept that column.”

“Aw, but me and these guys are having so much fun over here,” Mike protested.

“Get on it, Mike. Whatever they want with Downriver, it’s not going to be good.”

“Right,” the other youth agreed without further argument. Mike was a fighter and sometimes he let his impulses get him into situation a cooler head might avoid, but he knew his responsibilities. “On it.”

“Good. I’m coming up on your six, ETA ten minutes. Chikao, break off and join my position. Jasmine, Priya – as soon as your front is stabilized, you do the same.”

The rest of the team chorused their responses. With a mental nudge, Luke urged White Lion forwards, the towering and ancient machine loping through shell-shattered suburbs and vaulting over broken rail lines like its namesake as it raced out of Downriver, towards the dusty plains and the swirling dust clouds that marked the approaching Imperial forces’ position. On Luke’s HUD, he could see the yellow icon of Chikao coming towards him, but on White Lion’s visual sensors, there were clouds of smoke and flashes of light as Yellow Eagle fought its way out of the counteroffensive, unable to break through and intercept the Imperials racing for Downriver.

Fortunately, Red Bear and Mike were there to greet them. The red-haired youth whooped as his plasma cannon blasted holes in the front lines, the Imperials seemingly eager to face the same indestructible Totem that only minutes ago they’d been in full flight from. Mike didn’t notice or didn’t care; he was in his element but as White Lion ran, Luke’s worry increased.

Something was wrong.

“Luke,” Chikao suddenly said, the teen’s normally controlled voice edged with urgency.

“I see it.” Energy readings from the middle of the HQ column were spiking. “Priya,” he said, though he already suspected the answer. “Analysis?’

“It’s a scatterstorm,” she confirmed gravely. The Imperials had developed that trick months ago. An artificial cyclone that blinded sensors, raging so thick that even simple vision was useless. “Shiva, they’re insane.” Mechs and heavy armour could survive inside a scatterstorm. The troops and light vehicles that made up that column would be dead in moments. “We have to stop them – hundreds of people, Luke!”

“Mike,” Luke tried to raise his teammate. “Mike, you read me? They’re creating a scatterstorm at your coordinates.” Red Bear should have seen it, but the Totem’s spirit was, like its pilot, headstrong and battle-driven. As they bowled through the enemy lines, neither pilot nor machine would have noticed.

“Let them,” Mike shouted back exuberantly. “We learned how to deal with this trick ages ago. Bear and I’ll wrap these losers up faster if they want to throw themselves across half the planet. Come on!” he jeered at the enemy raining fire onto his mech as the energy signals within the heart of the formation spiked.

“Mike, get in there and shut it down!” Luke snapped. “There’s no telling what could happen to Downriver if munitions start falling on it again.”

“Right, going. Geez, these guys are doubling down. Almost like they don’t want me to get in there or something. Don’t worry, Bear and me’ll handle this.”

“He’s not moving fast enough,” Priyanka said. “It’s going to touch off before he can stop it.”

She was right. Luke could see it on the screen; the Imperial forces were throwing everything they had at Mike, gunships literally sitting between the Totem and the storm generators to block his lines of fire. When he shot one down, another moved into place before his main cannon could recharge. “Jasmine, can you hit it?”

“I don’t have any high-yield warheads left,” Jasmine said, her voice strained. “I have sabot heads, but ECM’s spiking and I can’t get a clean lock. I’m as likely to hit him as I am the Imps.”

“Chikao, can you put a targeting beam on it for Green Rhino?”

“Negative, we’re too far out and the storm is starting to pick up. No line of sight.”

“I got it!” Mike snapped. “Just give me a few more minutes, they can’t keep this up forever.”

“I’m almost there,” Luke said.

“It’s not about Downriver,” Jasmine abruptly said, her voice unsteady.

“What? What’s happening?”

“United Forces got a clean read on the new arrival. It isn’t moving to join the evacuation fleet. It’s taking an attack vector and coming into low orbit. Luke... it’s an assault barge.”

The storm’s not for Downriver, he realized. It’s to cover whatever they’re about to deploy.

“So what?” Mike demanded. “They’ve already lost. What’s one barge going to do to change that?”

Before Luke could answer, the storm generator activated and a column of writhing dirt hundreds of meters across ripped up from the ground towards the heavens, hurling vehicles into the skylike toys along with the flailing bodies of hundreds of men and women, throwing sand and debris in all directions. A jeep came crashing down next to White Lion, wreckage starting to fall like lethal hail.In that same instant, all communications with Red Bear were lost, except for the basic health and status indicators and even that was jumping and fragmented.

“Luke!” Jasmine shouted, catching his attention. “It’s launching!”

In seconds, he had it on his HUD; a quartet of massive drop pods, each far, far larger than any he’d seen the Empire use to date came hurtling down from the sky, aiming for the center of the swirling, deadly storm. Anti-aircraft fire scythed up towards them, splashing harmlessly against the pods’ thick armour. Jasmine tried to lock onto them with her missiles, but they were moving too fast. In seconds they were within the scatterstorm, out of sight and blotted from sensors.

The ground shook with each heavy impact and then... silence. “Mike!” Luke shouted as he approached the edge of the storm, ejected shrapnel and rocks pinging off White Lion’s chassis. “Mike, can you hear me? What’s going on in there?”

“...got... some.... can’t...”

White Lion paced the scatterstorm’s periphery, staying just outside the danger zone of its lethal, armour-shredding winds. Green Rhino and Red Bear were the toughest and heaviest Totems with little to fear from the physical damage of a scatterstorm, but White Lion’s ancient armour would start to degrade if he spent too long in there. Blue Wolf and Yellow Eagle could only risk entering a scatterstorm for a few moments. “Mike!”

Static answered him.

Yellow Eagle came to join White Lion, the lighter Totem standing a bit further back as detritus continued to rain down around them. Thunder and lightning erupted as the static charges from the spinning sand built up. Then, a different flash: the blue-green of Red Bear’s plasma cannon and the accompanying shorter, harsher crack of sound. Then, abruptly, Mike’s biosign flatlined, as did Red Bear’s status.

Luke didn’t believe it, not right away. The first time they’d encountered a scatterstorm, they’d lost contact with each other, just like this. He’d thought he’d been the only one left alive, but that had just been a trick of the signal disruption the storms created. “Mike, do you read me?” A moment passed. “Mike? Mike, answer me!”

Nothing.

“Luke, what’s going on?” Priyanka asked. “It’s starting to rain... things here.” Things. She meant the bodies of the Imperial troops scooped up by the storm and thrown kilometers across the flatlands. “Do you have contact with Mike?”

“I’m trying,” he insisted. “Mike, can you read me?”

Nothing.

He was going to go in after him. White Lion was about to step forward when Yellow Eagle grabbed the larger mech by the shoulder. “Don’t.”

White Lion turned to look at the other Totem in perfect mimicry of how one human might glance another in surprise. “What?” Luke asked. “Mike’s in there, Chikao.”

“He isn’t,” the other youth replied. “Not any more.”

“It’s just the storm,” Luke insisted. “You know how it plays havoc with signals. He’s probably turned around and wondering which way is out.”

“Luke. Don’t go in there.”

“This is ridiculous. He’s our friend. I’m not going to-” He felt it at the same time Chikao did, even despite the scatterstorm. The tremors of heavy footfalls coming towards them. That would be Red Bear, Mike ready to tell them to come on in, the water’s fine or something else equally pithy.

Through the swirling sand and wreckage, White Lion could just make out a hulking silhouette, but as it drew closer, Luke’s stomach grew cold. It wasn’t the right height for Red Bear, nor the right shape but step by step, it came closer until it strode through the storm wall and his cold stomach lurched.

It was a mech, but not any Imperial design he’d ever seen before. As big as White Lion, it was hunched, with heavy, rounded dorsal armour like a beetle’s shell. Its faceplace was a skull-like metal helm, but neither animal nor human. Its legs were bent back like those of a dog, or Blue Wolf and its arms ended in hands wider than a man was tall, with clawed fingers that looked like they could rip through a starship’s hull. A massive carbine was anchored toits back, while a pistol the size of a jeep was mag-locked to its right thigh. In the machine’s left hand was a long sword with a hooked tip. Instead of the iridescent shine of the Totems’ energy blades, this was a whirring chainblade, with sharp teeth ready to gnaw through the toughest armour. Smaller gun barrels and missile pods peeked out and around the edges of its black armour, trimmed with burnished gold, the colours of the Imperial Storm Corps.

The Imperial mech stared at White Lion, bright red lenses gleaming out from under its nightmarish faceplate. For an instant, Luke wondered why it wasn’t carrying one of its ranged weapons. He realized why only heartbeats later.There was something clenched in its right fist, something red, white and dripping.

Nonchalantly, it threw the object onto the ground, sending it rolling towards White Lion. It came to rest only a dozen meters away from the Totem’s feet and as Luke saw what it was, he took a step back in shock. It was the crushed remains of Red Bear’s head, the lower jaw torn off and one of the sensor eyes gone. It oozed a mixture of coolant, oil and synaptic boosters.

Trailing down from the base of Red Bear’s mutilated skull was the metallic spinal column that joined it to the pilot’s chamber in the Totem’s armoured core, the filamentous connection fibres that had once connected to Mike’s pilot chair and his own body lying limply in the dirt.

From dead, black diodes Red Bear’s head stared up at Luke accusingly. Where were you?

Before he could put his thoughts in order, the Imperial mech spoke: a grating, sexless tone carried through its hull speakers. “Now then,” it taunted. “Who’s next?”