Mission Failed

The enemy scout finally turned from your position, but you remained still. Waiting. It had been sixty-eight hours since you integrated with your combat mech, and you were starting to feel everyone of those hours. The mental and physical toll of being a mech pilot was heavy.

You weren’t thinking of the fact that no pilot had ever been successfully removed from their mech after seventy-one hours of integration. Their minds were flayed, stripped, and they never again woke. You had learned that fact in training, and there was a timer in the display you could only see with your eyes closed. But the hypnotism they gave you wouldn’t let you think of it. No matter how much a little voice inside tried to remind you of it.

Instead, you were thinking of the mission. Drop behind enemy lines and create as much havoc as possible before breaking for retrieval. It had gone wrong at the drop, with anti-air defenses far denser than expected. Only three of your squad made it to the ground out of the six who had dropped, and you had lost those two in the chaos of assault.

You had done well on the mission, but the retrieval was supposed to be yesterday. You hadn’t been able to break free of enemy assault for thirteen straight hours, and your weapons were almost exhausted. The fusion core that beat in time with the heart of your body still powered the lasers, but your missile and mass driver weapons were all but empty.

The scout before you was guarding a supply depot for enemy mechs. Even though they were on the other side of this war, the technology that fueled both them and you was similar enough that you could use their supplies. If you could get to them, and if you could get the time to connect to their supply drones.

The scout turned its back fully to you, and started to walk away. You needed to be fast for this, and you broke cover and started to sprint. The steel fibrous muscle bundles that allowed the twenty-two meter mech you were piloting to sprint flexed and pulled as you pushed yourself to your top speed. The heat reading on cast in your mind by your integration started to push up, but you didn’t care.

You also didn’t notice the sympathetic twitches rising in the muscles of your legs. That wasn’t supposed to happen, integration was supposed to separate the body from the mind enough that you could pilot your mech without feedback. You don’t worry about it. You don’t notice it. 

And your display still shows time passing.

With a mental push, you leap into the air. The jets in your legs fire, propelling the titanium mass of you higher than you should go. At the sound, the enemy scout starts to turn towards you, but you are already hurtling towards it, too fast for it to account.

The scout is built for maneuverability, for speed. It isn’t the mass of armor and weapons you are, and is half your height. You come crashing down on it, and it crumbles beneath you. Its legs snap and twist, and you stumble clear. It is on the ground, still trying to bring its meager weapons to bear. You step on its head, crushing the cockpit and the integrated pilot inside. 

The way to the supply depot is open on this side, but there will be more mechs. Behind their own front lines, you don’t expect to see heavier mechs to match you. The garrison forces are usually made of lighter mechs, fast scouts supported by tanks and infantry. 

You start into your lumbering, graceless run again, heading towards the supply drone ahead of you. You have barely moved thirty meters when a tank comes around the back of the drone, its cannon coming to bear on you. It fires, and you feel the impact on your thigh.

If you dared open your eyes, you would see the bruise forming on your flesh. If you do that, though, the tactical display will fall away, and you will be left unprepared. You keep your eyes closed, and target the tank.

Before you have a chance to cycle your lasers up to firing power, another comes around the first, with a third turning. You can’t take them all out with your laser, not at the heat level you have been pushing. Instead you paint them with targeting arrays, and fire the last volley of missiles you have.

You feel the shock of them releasing behind you, and a dozen missiles stream towards each tank. The training and skills you have earned on so many battlefields is strong, and each missile lands on target before the tanks can get a concentrated volley off. They disappear in smoke.

You make it to the cover of the supply buildings, and pause. The lack of movement causes your heat sinks to click on high and start venting. It is good that they have, as the flesh you occupy has started to turn red. Slick with sweat, it is sliding within the integration cradle you have been placed in. 

The battle computers ask your permission to try and integrate with the drones, and you authorize hacking. It is a risk, since the enemy could be launching counter-hacking attempts which could rip your mind to pieces, but you need it. Your fuel reserves are low, and your ammunition is gone.

While that is clicking through the various firewalls the enemy has, you once again attempt communication with your higher ups. The sensor array that sits behind the head of the neck, deep in your mind, was damaged, and you cannot signal your commanders or squadmates, no matter how hard you try. You think for a moment of attempting to hack base communication, but you do not know how long that will take.

Pinpricks. The sensation is faint, but you feel it. Along the titanium plates of your calves and thighs. Your sensors are picking up movement again, small and minute. Infantry squads are advancing towards you, pricking you with their machine guns. They hope for a lucky hit, making a shot through the overlapping armor the tender working beneath. You can’t give them that chance.

Pivoting at the waist, you raise your left arm. Usually there are anti-infantry weapons there, but that ammunition was exhausted long before you made it to the depot. Instead, you charge up the laser there. You aim at the center of the advancing line and fire. The heat rises again, and you do not feel your flesh start to cook. You do not allow yourself to.

The laser is a mech killer. It is designed to take down mechs of your own class, and could have holed the scout in a single shot. Against infantry, it is overkill. Anyone within a dozen meters of the thick beam is burst by their blood boiling away inside them. Twenty-five meters, the energy sends them crashing down, charred and lifeless. Anyone with eye protection would be blinded.

You pivot, scanning for more targets. Your mech’s automated system tries to release emergency coolant, but that ran out after the first day. Your heat sinks are registering their damage, but you override it. 

Sixty-nine hours, says a small voice in your head. You ignore it. No matter how familiar it is, you do not recognize it. You can’t.

There is a clock, and the drone behind you comes to life. The one beside it as well, and you turn your back to them. Mechanical tendrils rise from them and connect to the ports in your mech. Ammunition, fuel, coolant, all the lifeblood of the machine-mind hybrid that is a mech and pilot. The coolant spills through the channels of the mech, and the drop in temperature makes your body shiver. There is no accompanying movement of your mech, though. 

You hear a sound, transmitted through the skin of the mech. The deep thrum of combat lifters, air assault and bombers. You need to be on the move again. Your missiles are filled, your fusion heart beats strong again, and your guns are untiring. The enemy is between you and home. The mission is not complete.

And you have two hours, that small voice says again. You shake off the tendrils of the drones and move away. You target the supply depot as you move away, and the blasts of your lasers blow it from the face to the planet. You have denied it to the enemy.

You just wish you could deny that voice.