Armageddon (35 page)

Ethan shook his head. “I’m guessing they weren’t firing missiles at us for a reason. They use quantum launchers, right?” Atta nodded. “And these simulators are programmed for the upcoming battle at Avilon, where we’re going to have the
Eclipser
jamming quantum fields.”

“Get to the point,” Magnum said.

“The point is, Omnius won’t be the one piloting those drones; the Eclipser will cut him off, and regular comms, assuming drones even have them, are too slow for remote-piloting, so that stunt I pulled will only have to defeat the on-board intelligence of a drone, which means it might just work in a real engagement.”

Atta inclined her head to him. “I’m going to report that tactic to Wing Commander Axel while you two finish your ground simulation.”

Ethan nodded and they left the Nova simulator room together. Atta left them at the door to the mech simulators, and Ethan assumed that meant he would be on his own.
So much for Atta’s plan,
he thought.

* * *

Magnum led the way to a pair of mech simulators at the back of the room. Ethan noticed the mech simulators were shaped differently from Nova pods, with arms, legs, and head. Ethan watched Magnum place his palm on one of the simulator’s chests, and it opened up like a mechanical flower with an accompanying
hiss
and
whirr
of hydraulics. Ethan followed Magnum’s lead and waited as his own simulator peeled open. He stepped inside, lining up his legs and arms with the simulator’s corresponding parts. Ethan kept still for a few seconds, and the simulator automatically sealed around him.

The HUD glowed to life, and Ethan began familiarizing himself with the controls while the simulation loaded. He found that all the mech’s systems were either gesture or voice-activated.

Ethan took a moment to study the HUD while the simulation loaded. Of particular interest was the small rear view and peripheral visual feeds at the top of the HUD. That would certainly help with situational awareness. Now all he had to do is figure out how to activate the mech’s weapons…

Then the simulation finished loading, and suddenly he was back on Avilon. Kilometers-high towers soared, colorful glass shining bright in the sun. A cloudless blue sky stretched overhead. Air traffic traced dotted lines against the sky. Vast tracts of green urban parks stretched between the bases of the monolithic towers. Fountains bubbled, trees swayed, and luminous white-robed pedestrians ran in rivers along the footpaths. This was Celesta, the uppermost city of Avilon.

Magnum’s voice growled beside his ears: “This time you won’t be so lucky.”

Then came a ground-shaking
boom,
followed by people screaming. Ethan turned toward the sound, servos in his suit whirring as his Zephyr-class light assault mech matched and amplified his movements.

A crashing starship had hit the ground nearby, digging a fiery crater in the cityscape. Above and behind the flaming ruins, one of the skyscrapers was also on fire with a chunk bitten out of the side, halfway up. The debris must have nicked it on the way down. As Ethan watched, the tower began leaning precipitously, collapsing on the damaged side. On the ground below, white-robed Celestials ran screaming in all directions.

A torrent of lasers flashed out of the blue sky,
booming
as they connected with a fuzzy gray shadow overhead, and then that shadow began falling, gushing fire.

Ethan spun around to find Magnum already running away at top speed.

“Get out of there, Ethan!” Atta screamed, proving that she hadn’t left him alone, after all.

He ran, jumping over debris and crashing through pristinely-landscaped parks. His armored feet kicked up great chunks of dirt and grass as he ran. The simulator aided his movements the same way a real Zephyr would. He heard and felt more impacts shaking the ground underfoot, but so far nothing catastrophic.

“Better pick up the pace, greeny!” Magnum said.

Ethan risked a glance over his shoulder just in time to see the falling tower briefly blot out the sun.

Then it hit.

A racing gray cloud of bactcrete dust rippled out from the impact, engulfing everything in its path. Then came the belated
boom!
and a subsequent
roar
of settling debris that rattled Ethan inside his armor.

The wave of dust and debris hit a split second later, picking them up and launching them through the air. Ethan felt a brief, gut-dropping sensation of
falling,
followed by the jarring
crunch
of his landing. He was surprised that the fall actually
hurt.
Bouncing up and shaking it off, he spun around. Blinded by the swirling dust clouds, he snapped on a sensor overlay to help him see. Up ahead Magnum appeared as a bright green outline.

“You still alive back there?” Magnum asked.

“For now,” Ethan croaked, jogging up beside the lieutenant.

“Do a systems check. Wouldn’t want you to call foul because your weapons are all jammed.”

“That was close,” Atta whispered. Ethan noticed that she was speaking to him on a private comms channel. He switched to that channel so that Magnum wouldn’t hear what he said next.

“I thought you were going to fight this one for me?”

“Not for you,
with
you. I’m auditing the battle from the instructor’s pod next to yours. I had to wait until Magnum wouldn’t see me climb in.”

“Hey, Greeny! Look alive! We’ve got incoming.”

Ethan whirled around to see a few dozen red enemy silhouettes advancing on them.

“Get behind cover!” Magnum roared, pulling him down behind a giant boulder in the middle of the park where they stood.

Then lasers
screeched
out toward them and
crunched
as they bit off chunks of the rock they were hiding behind. Magnum peeked around the corner and returned fire with gauntlet-mounted ripper cannons. High caliber rounds
thumped
out, and one of the red outlines vanished from Ethan’s HUD. There were still plenty more, approaching fast.

“We’re going to be in melee range, soon,” Magnum warned. Better arm your energy blades.”

“Energy blades?”

Ethan heard Atta sigh meaningfully in his ears. “Make two fists and flex them down. The blades extend from the top of your gauntlets. But watch it! You need to—”

Ethan armed the blades and a pair of swords slid out from his gauntlets, hitting the rock in front of him with a shower of sparks.

“—hold your arms above your head,” Atta finished.

Once fully extended, the blades glowed bright blue, shielded to protect the nanometer-fine edges from breaking. Being careful not to accidentally touch Magnum—or himself—with one of the blades, Ethan held his arms up as Atta had suggested. He leaned back against the rock, and steeled himself for what was to come.

Vibrations shuddered through the rock, along with the faint rumble of
whirring
and
clanking
footfalls. Magnum took another potshot with ripper fire—
thump-thump-thump—
and Ethan saw a second red outline vanish from his screens.

The enemy returned fire, and chunks of rock went flying. A pitter-patter of pebbles rained down around them, and Magnum withdrew to reveal that his arm had been reduced to a laser-scorched stump, sheared off at the shoulder.

“Frek it…” Magnum said, panting noisily over the comms as he flexed his smoldering stump in a circular motion. “Looks like you’re going to get a chance to make up those kills, greeny.”

Ethan grimaced, his eyes fixed on the charred flesh of Magnum’s missing arm. This simulation was getting too real for his tastes.

Magnum extended a single energy blade from his remaining arm, and they waited, listening to the vibrations coming through the rock as the stampede drew near. The HUD showed the nearest drone just ten meters away, then two, then—

Ethan leapt up and slashed over his head. A drone went flying by in two pieces, severed wires gushing sparks.

Beside him, Magnum roared and pirouetted, slashing sideways as a drone raced around his side of the boulder. Ethan lashed out on his own side and cut another drone off at the knees. Then the remaining drones swarmed them, firing lasers at point blank range, and using grav guns to push and pull them around. Ethan narrowly missed being bifurcated by Magnum’s blade. A stream of lasers glanced off his left arm, blasting off armor plates to expose bare, burned skin. The sudden sting of those laser burns took Ethan’s breath away, and he stumbled.

Drones grabbed him and began hammering him with metal fists. His armor dented and crumpled under the strain, and the impacts actually took the wind out of him.

Simulated pain? What the frek?

“That’s just 10 percent of the real thing, Ethan!” Atta said. “Don’t let it distract you! You’re about to win!”

Ethan gritted his teeth and spun in a circle with his arms outstretched. His blades cut through both of the drones busy hammering him, and they fell in a puddle of twitching parts.

“You’re up by one!”

Magnum screamed and Ethan saw that a pair of drones had him by his head and legs and they were pulling in opposite directions, determined to rip him apart. Magnum lashed out, cutting off the head of the drone holding his, but it went on pulling. Ethan raced up and punched both his blades straight through the chest of the one that had Magnum’s feet; then he slashed up and out, slicing the drone’s arms off. Magnum’s legs fell with the drone’s severed arms, and he dispatched the drone behind him with another slash. Ethan turned in a quick circle to make sure that more drones weren’t racing up behind them, but all that remained were twitching parts.

Then something caught his eye. A severed metallic claw clutching a flashing silver sphere.

“Grenade!” Magnum called out. He struggled to get up, but his legs were twisted up under him and clearly broken.

Ethan saw the grenade flashing faster and faster, and he knew it was about to kill them both. He dashed toward it and threw himself on top. The ground heaved under him, and suddenly he felt himself weightless and flying through the air. His torso stung fiercely, cut by a thousand knives. Then his displays went dark and the simulator ceased aiding his movements, becoming a hard shell around him.

Ethan heard a
hiss
and
whirr
as the simulator peeled open. Light streamed in, and Ethan stumbled out. He was startled to find his torso stinging with echoes of the pain from his simulated death. His cheeks itched, and he reached up to find them wet with tears.

Beside him, Magnum’s pod flayed open and he came limping out, his expression grim. His cheeks were also wet. The lieutenant strode right up to him, and for a moment Ethan was afraid he was going to get another slap of
re-spect.

What he got instead was a bone-grinding hug.

“You saved my life,” Magnum croaked.

“I—”

Atta climbed out of her instructor’s pod, drawing their attention. Magnum withdrew from their embrace, his eyes narrowing as he glanced from Atta to Ethan and back again.

“I thought you left,” he said.

Atta shook her head. “I decided to audit and give Ethan a few pointers.”

Magnum turned back to him and gave a grudging nod. “Welcome to the Rictans.”

“I won?” Ethan asked, turning to Atta.

“No… final count was five for Magnum, and four for you. That’s counting the negative one you acquired by killing yourself again.”

“But you’re not counting the plus one he gets for saving me.”

“You were incapacitated, so it doesn’t count.”

Magnum snorted. “Sure it does. I left the sim alive thanks to him. Any recovery team could have picked me up and put me back together again. He lost one asset to save another. That means we both scored five. A tie. Put that together with his victory in the last sim, and he’s the clear winner. Come on, Commander, it’s time to give you a real welcome to the squadron,” Magnum said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to guide him toward the door.

Ethan noticed that Magnum was still limping. “Are you okay?”

“Phantom pain. Residuals from all the nerve stimulation.”

“That’s why our cheeks were wet when we came out,” Ethan said, wiping a tear away with one hand and looking at it suspiciously.

“No shame in that,” Magnum said. “Eyes watering is just a reflex.”

“That was only 10 percent of the real thing?” Ethan asked, casting a glance over his shoulder to Atta.

She nodded. “But in a real battle you two would have been auto-dosed with painkillers, so the pain was comparable to what you would actually feel.”

“But why the frek would you simulate pain?”

“You stopped for two full seconds when your arm got burned. That kind of hesitation can get you killed. If we’re conditioned to the pain from sims, then by the time we get into a real fight we don’t even flinch.”

“All those fake deaths make for some interesting nightmares,” Magnum said. “Not sure why the brain likes to relive trauma, but there you have it.”

“No guts, no glory,” Atta said.

“No guts, no glory,” Magnum agreed.

Ethan grunted at that. He wondered how many guts were about to be spilled on Avilon with no glory to show for it. The Union was heading for disaster. Therius knew they couldn’t win, and his plan was to threaten Omnius with their own extinction. Ethan traded glances with Atta on their way down the corridor from the simulator rooms. He could see by the hollow behind her eyes that she was worrying about the same thing.

Something had to be done before it was too late.

Chapter 31