Arbelos Chapter 5: Dead Sprint
By Max Brooke
“The trail that led me into the Icano Disaster Area was rough and bloody. I don’t think anyone who died on the way down there deserved it. Not Borread, not Vedos, not the enemies who we never identified.
Now that I know a bit more about what motivated the mission in the first place, I think maybe there are some other people who do deserve it. Regrettably, right then, none of them stood between us and survival. The people who deserve it usually don’t.”
-Excerpt from In the Serpent’s Maw: The Secret Conflict on the Icano Peninsula
Silent certainty settled over the trio of survivors, and it was no comfort. Their convoy—now just Hazhlet’s M-Trak and the sputtering hauler—unwove the treacherous route through the forest of spires. Hazhlet’s machine rattled over uneven ground, the land’s memory of the collapsing fault line that long ago dragged much of the city to the bottom of this massive crater. The farther their convoy drove from the Dropbase, the more Hazhlet felt the coming fight in her restless sinews.
Before they reached the site of their last battle, though, they cut to the northwest, following the lines Doctor Etaic had drawn on their maps. He had scribbled out some of the notes originally left for Borread with the harsh red strokes of a disappointed instructor. Riston behaved as if he understood the markings, although Hazhlet suspected that his comprehension was an act. But as Riston called out the turns, the caravan continued without incident. Maybe the old trak jockey isn’t all charm and war stories, Hazhlet thought. A clearing opened before them, and in the far distance, Hazhlet’s optics could make out the wall of the crater through the twisting fog.
In the half-shadow of a sagging obsidian tower, some instinct caused Hazhlet to snap up her M-Trak’s arm to call a halt.
Hazhlet shone down a light upon the path, and it shimmered off something. It took her a moment to recognize it as the upper half of an M-Trak, or at least the frame of one. The engine had been ripped from the back, and was nowhere to be seen. The smashed optics glinted in the sharp light. But the cockpit door hung open. Tahl’s machine? The surface metal was too scoured and pitted to make out any unit insignia. Drag marks trailed in the sand behind it. It hadn’t driven here under its own power. Her eyes swept fervently for some sign of the pilot.
Then, she heard it. A grinding, crunching, and a dreadful groan of static. The mists billowed in a sudden breeze, twisting away to reveal the hunched, cyclopean form. Red sparks crackled around it as it bent over the engine section of the M-Trak. Bright motes filtered slowly from the drive, back into the palm of its good arm.
The dreadful machine’s head sparked and creaked. It couldn’t quite turn to look at the source of the noise, and its taloned hand reached up to adjust its gaze. Long, trailing cables connected the head to the spine, but the remnants of the neck were still shattered and the head lolled unnaturally in the iron grip. The glare from the eyes fixed on the little convoy, tired flames sparking in recognition. For a fraying moment it stood, then it took a lurching step forward.
---
Auglez awoke to the roar of the M-Trak’s autocannon. She was braced in the cabin, seated with a view out the front port. She watched as Hazhlet’s first shot skittered off the shambling hulk’s right forearm. The second whipped into a damaged section of its torso. The third struck below its left shoulder pod, severing the dangling remains of the arm below. Several other bullets sprayed wide into the mist. Each time a shell struck, a crunch like buckling ice rang out and ruddy, glowing cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact point.
On the shadow came, racing on unsteady legs. Riston threw the U-Trak into reverse and backed along the obsidian of the sagging tower, shearing away razor-sharp chips as he drove. Watching through the front visor, Auglez saw Hazhlet kick the M-Trak into a standing position, and vault sideways, legs skidding over the thick, porous dirt. The shambling frame smashed into a structural support holding up the great edifice, throwing off another shower of daggers. It staggered, then turned, aggressively pursuing the M-Trak. As it did, swarms of red motes descended upon where Hazhlet’s M-Trak had been a moment ago, flashing clods of dirt into dark smoke in an instant. Hazhlet kept firing as she retreated, her rounds now vanishing into the shimmering curtain of red between them. She kept her M-trak’s other arm behind her, Auglez noticed through bleary eyes. Something bulky had been lashed to it. Why would Hazha unbalance the weight of her trak with that? Was it a weapon of some kind?
Auglez watched as the vile machine closed the distance again, its cloak of red flicking out to lash at Hazhlet and shearing a deep gouge in the knee-guard as Hazhlet hard reversed, vanishing from their sight behind a crumbling concrete edifice.
“We need to help her.”
“I’m open to suggestions.” Riston cranked the hauler 45 degrees, re-centering on Hazhlet’s M-Trak stomping backward, trying to create distance from the pursuer. The red talon of sparks lashed again, missing narrowly to turn a broken chunk of some long-forgotten concrete structure into powder. “But I don’t know what we’re going to be able to do in this rustbucket. Hazhlet said she had a plan, and then didn’t elaborate. I assume it has to do with the new hardware she installed.”
Auglez tried to focus, but felt her concentration slip as nausea set in. She forced her unsteady mind to dig for answers even as her guts turned to ice. “If she has a plan, then she needs an opening. The red motes can only burn through things so quickly. Could we choke them? Like the old trick of pouring sand onto the biophagic reactors to slow their dispersal?”
Riston shrugged. “Maybe. There’s plenty of sand around, but how do we pour it?”
Auglez looked up at the obsidian edifice behind them, cracks running through it. It had a menacing, otherworldly building. It reminded her of a cathedral she’d seen as a child. “What about glass?”
---
Riston groaned and hit the radio button. “Hazhlet, we have an idea to give you an opening. Bring old One-Arm to the shadow of the tower about 45 meters in front of us and then get clear.”
Riston let go of the broadcasting button before he continued, wryly to Auglez “But for the record, it’s your idea.”
“I expect you to remember that when it works.” Auglez responded.
“Here I go, then.” Hazhlet sounded off a countdown. Auglez heard the cannon fire before she spotted Hazhlet’s M-Trak stalking at an angle, breaking away toward the tower. Several rounds clipped the colossus before the cloak swirled into position, then it lurched forward in pursuit. The fleeing M-Trak’s legs collapsed into tracked mode on the open ground, dropping its center of gravity and giving it a kick of speed.
In the hauler, Riston had seized one of the supports of the great, glass structure. Under the pressure of the grip from the U-Trak’s arm, the support began to crack.
Auglez watched Hazhlet’s progress over the open ground. Though she had gained a lead to start, the shambling mech’s much greater stride and mass began to give it the advantage over distance. Hazhlet unfolded the legs for a leap, her mech toppling and skidding through the tower’s shadow.
With a resonant, otherworldly chime, the support broke. Shards of volcanic glass rained off the hull of the hauler as cracks ran up the tower. It split in several directions, but a large chunk fell toward the pursuing machine. Letting its head droop, the machine raised its good arm to catch the shard in its good arm, the massive weight pushing its feet into the dry ground. For a moment it stood, death balanced above it.
Then Hazhlet’s M-Trak sprung forth, polysynth tarp flying from a jagged spike of metal and glass bolted to the arm. The glass shattered on contact with the colossus’ chest, and a wave of rust spilled down the makeshift spear as it touched the air. The curtain of crimson sparks flared to life, devouring the spike and M-Trak’s entire arm with it. Hazhlet continued on, letting her momentum carry her past the giant machine and sliding beyond reach of the devouring light. Motes swam back to the mech’s body to integrate the new material into its body, reinforcing it in a million places.
But as its damaged carapace flowed to heal, cracks began to form and spread. The surface of the giant peeled like paint to expose spreading rust underneath. Whatever that spear was, Auglez thought, this thing is allergic to it. One of Dr. Etaic’s unusual finds? The mighty legs screeched, one shattering at the knee. Then the arm broke apart, and the weight of the obsidian spire became too much for it to bear. It slumped onto the machine, crushing it. Its head dangled free of the pile, the crimson light slowly fading. The cloud of motes swarmed around the machine’s spherical core before disintegrating, the empty orb flickering before vanishing entirely. Something fell within the hollow darkness, but Auglez couldn’t make it out.
Hazhlet radioed. “It’s finished.” She didn’t sound satisfied. She sounded tired. Her one-armed mech stared down at something in the hollow torso of her fallen foe.
Riston tapped the radio. “Well done, Hazhlet. Whatever you cooked up, it–“
A glimmer of light from a nearby hillside silenced Riston, and both he and Hazhlet turned their machines in unison.
“Hazhlet, what can you see?”
“Contact unknown. Two people, on foot, flashing a light from the hillside.” Hazhlet’s voice grew strained. “That’s a rescue pattern. I see them now. It’s Tahl and Lodi!”
Riston watched her M-Trak race for the hillside. He could see them on the hauler’s scopes now too, stumbling down the hill. Tahl’s arm was in a sling of some sort, and Lodi was limping from his earlier injury, but they were alive.
“Huh.” Riston said to Auglez.
“I didn’t think they’d be alive either.” Auglez responded dryly.
“Why didn’t you say anything to Hazhlet?” Riston asked.
“It was nice to see her care. Why didn’t you say anything?”
"Because sometimes people get lucky. I try to never write someone off just because of bad odds. Although this guy…”
Riston turned the hauler back toward the wreck of the dreadful machine. Within dark hollow of its torso, he could see the form of a man, slumped. He was naked from the waist up, giving Riston a good look at his emaciated frame. Close-shaved black hair covered his head, and his skin was stretched and pallid, long-deprived of sunlight. Had he been the pilot? Just some other poor bastard, at the end of the day. He was certainly dead, and he looked like he’d barely been hanging on for a while. Riston looked on silently.
“We should bury him,” Auglez said, more emphatically than Riston expected.
“He tried to kill us.” Riston said, without much malice. “Is that concussion getting worse?”
“Maybe. But he spared Tahl and Lodi. That counts for something.”
“We can’t know that for sure. And you were so certain he was a threat.” Riston responded, but he nudged the hauler forward.
“I still think he was. But he doesn’t deserve to lie here forever, without any sky for comfort. We can bury him at the edge of the crater. There might not be stars up there either, but at least the fog’s not so thick.”
Riston pushed the hauler’s hand down and gently picked up the dead man, hoisting him into the air to carry him. The corpse was stiff, and Riston cradled it as carefully as the metal hand allowed.
He watched Hazhlet’s M-Trak return through the fog, Tahl and Lodi hanging off the back behind the head.
Soon, the caravan would set off again, and that battlefield would finally vanish into the mists.