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Swords
Submitted on July 2, 2001 by dpbille
Daniel Bille
October 8, 1994
Swords
I
A human life is like a single letter in the alphabet. It can be meaningless. Or it can be part of a great meaning.
-Jewish Theology Seminary of America
The ground was so close under Royan’s feet, he felt
he could reach down and grab the blades of brown grass.
Air currents mixed with morning thermals rising off the
wastelands were not forgiving toward his hazardous flight.
Neither were the two Earth aircraft following him. Their
ion blasts did not aid his efforts to keep from nosing into the ground. Traveling at .97 M.A.C.H. Relative he had to keep his attention on maneuvering, not on evading bolts of
charged particles.
Royan was the last of a dying race. With the recent death of the Masters, most of his squadron had given up, puppets with their string’s cut. Royan had been a painter before his people pressed him into service. With the guidance of the Masters he became one of the deadliest
Bioroid pilots in the Tyrolian Guard. With their death,
Royan felt dazed and lost in an alien world, so different
from Tyrol, his home. None of that mattered now. All that
mattered was the structure looming ahead.
Royan’s flight brought him to a large crater. There
had once been a metropolis here, but the new reflex cannons
the Masters had enrolled shortly before their defeat had
changed that. A glass ring surrounded the five mile wide
impact crater, and this building stood lopsided just outside that ring. With only a quarter mile between Royan and his pursuers, he hoped that would be enough. He throttled back pushed the flight sled’s nose up as he passed the building. Airspeed bleed off exponentially, but Royan was still traveling too fast for his comfort when he jumped.
The weightlessness of the fall did not daunt him. He bent his legs and reached out his arms for something to slow him down. He grabbed a twisted girder that bent under the thirty tons of Bioroid weight. Executing a gymnast spin, he released the girder tucking into a ball, and extending his legs again just before touchdown. The landing was hard, and Royan fell to one knee unbalanced. Spinning on that knee and drawing his weapon drum from its attachment on the Bioroid’s leg, he almost missed his target.
The first Veritech Logan screamed by at just over
M.A.C.H. 1, kicking up two vortices of dust behind it. The
Logan was tracking the sled as it flew uncontrolled down
into the crater, and did not notice Royan’s red Bioroid taking aim. The Logan let off a burst of auto-cannon fire that destroyed the sled just Royan’s plasma rounds found their target. The Logan’s reactor went up in a flash, and Royan involuntarily raised a metal shod fist in front of the cockpit to shield his eyes. One Veritech left.
Royan came to his feet again, noticing the increased angle of the building. His audio pickups amplified the sounds of twisting metal and collapsing concrete. The Veritech’s sonic boom coupled with exploding reactor finished a job the Masters started. Royan did not ponder the strange grace the building had, showering glass and concrete like tears, he just ran for his life. Only when he saw the shadow of the skyscraper overtake his did he leap for his life, bringing his arms to a protective position above the Bioroid’s head and cockpit. He was still a good two stories short of clear when the building crashed to the ground.
The Bioroid was swatted out of the air mid leap.
Luckily, time and damage had weakened the ferro-concrete
reinforced alumnasteal walls, or Royan would have died a
road crossing animal's death. Instead, he was buried under
several feet of powdered concrete. He pushed himself up,
emerging out of the rubble like a sphinx. Chunks of wall fell away, showing the Bioroid powdered gray. The shiny anti-laser coating of the armor scored, but the armor itself undamaged. Royan brought the Bioroid standing to it’s full 50 feet of height, shaking off rubble like a person shrugging off the rain. He stood, testing the joint actuators to see if they too still worked.
The first shot from the EP-laser struck Royan in the leg. Collapsing back into the rubble, only the dust hindering the Logan’s targeting system from finishing him with the next shot. The Veritech Logan had changed from fighter mode, and now stood straddle legged, blazing away with the EP rifle. Royan rolled over onto his chest into a prone position behind a large chunk of ferro-concrete, laser fire walking along behind. Royan tried to fire back with his weapon drum, but instead of plasma rounds carving their way toward the target, he got an angry warning light on his VR display. He looked at the weapon, seeing it crushed like an empty barrel. He heaved it overhand, intending to land it next to the Logan. Instead, the weapon drum landed closer to him, and the ensuing explosion as the charge containing the plasma ammunition gave out, nearly finishing Royan.
Royan recovered quickly. Knowing that Earth pilots
are not renown for their keen tactical abilities, Royan
limped his Bioroid to a position one thousand yards from his old cover and waited. The Logan stood its ground, waiting for the dust to clear. Royan could imagine the Earthen checking his sensors, seeing them fouled with all the high intensity beta particles in the air. Within a minute, the Logan came cautiously stepping toward the crater formed by his exploding weapon. This pilot showed experience, moving slowly always watching his target area.
It took too much nerve to wait for the Logan to come closer. With a prayer to the spirit of the Masters, Royan leapt from cover. Hobbling as fast as the damaged armor would allow, he charged the waiting Logan. The Logan
dropped to one knee and began firing fully automatic.
One thousand yards. Four shots missed completely.
The fifth grazed his shoulder. The electrical feedback
through the neural interface was not completely filtered, and Royan felt his legs go numb.
Five hundred yards. Three shots missed kicking up
dirt around his charging Bioroid. The fourth and fifth hits
reflected off his torso, the laser resistant coating doing it’s part to the last.
Two hundred yards. Two square hits to his torso
punched trough his armor. The shots pass right though and
out the back, fusing wiring and knocking out his sensors.
The electrical shock made Royan grit his teeth against the
pain. The Bioroid stumbled a few steps before Royan
regained his sense of balance. The third shot, aimed for the head narrowly missed, audibly hissing as it split the air next to the cockpit.
One hundred yards. The Earth pilot was now
desperate, firing blindly as Royan raised the girder like a
Samurai. Royan felt no pain as the shots penetrated and
fused vital components, his brain’s pain center had been
cauterized by a power serge. His ears bleeding, he brought
the girder as hard as he could.
Fifty yards. The building girder slammed into the
wide glass of the Logan’s cockpit, shattering it, even as the pilot tried to jump its Veritech of the way. The Logan’s shot punched through the protoculture generator and the Bioroid fell limp. With his last strength, Royan launched his Bioroid into an uncontrolled tackle. Royan was not conscious when Logan put one last EP laser shot into the cockpit. He exploded into a red mist as the water molecules in his body were super heated and expanded into steam. The Bioroid hit the Logan head first, knocking it backwards and impaling it against a broken wall with alumnasteel beams spiking its surface.
II
Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek
the road which makes death a fulfillment.
-Dag Hammarskjold
It was just after dark when Andrea regained
consciousness. She woke from a dream where she was
running along in a field of newly bloomed daisies. The
darkness was so terrifying, that she thought death had taken her into the bowels of hell. Rational reasserted itself when her eyes focused on the stars shining above. She sat for a long time thanking God she wasn’t dead. She looked at her broken legs, and added ‘yet’.
She exhausted herself struggling out from under the
girder, and went unconscious again until morning. She
didn’t awake till the sun had risen again. Her concussion
lulled the ache of her crushed legs. The heat of the sun
beating through crushed windscreen was making her sleepy.
Her mouth was dry, so she mopped her head with a rag, and
sucked on it.
Andrea knew she wouldn’t last long if she stayed
here. Her Veritech’s reactor shut down when the cockpit
was breached, but the Bioroid still laying on top of her
Logan had also breached the core. Radiation, already high
near the crater, doubled with the exposed reactor fuel rods. Andrea’s suit protected against hostile environs, but with such high exposure, she might as well be sunbathing nude. Her emergency transmitter was working, but this far out, no one would be likely to respond. With the global satellite system destroyed, her only hope was that the surviving members of her squadron would come searching.
With the choices at hand, Andrea opted to leave
behind the two mecha, locked lovingly in their death
embrace. A small rise a half mile away would offer meager
protection, yet a better option than staying put and becoming a TV dinner. Before she left, Andrea had one more duty. Struggling out of the shattered pilots couch, and pulled herself along to the Bioroid’s scored armored skin.
She peered into the darkness where the face plate
once was. She saw the sludge remains of the pilot inside
and retched. Pride kept her going, and she reached into the spherical Bioroid cockpit and pulled out the jaw bone. It was already bleaching in the intense sun, skin and tissue shriveling away. Andrea slid it into her pocket, patting it. Kill number three, she was now an Ace. Undeniable proof she had knocked out one of the finest fighting machines this world had ever encountered. She moved away from the grisly cockpit and back down the Bioroid’s skin.
She had to stop and rest at its foot. Her little chore had taken up most of the day and her remaining energy. She slept under the stars that night, along with the slumped forms of the mecha. Silvery moonlight shining off the pitted armor, giving the impression of two immense lovers sleeping in each others arms. Andrea dreamed heavily, fatigue making her oblivious to the cold air.
She dreamed that she was still the anti-military
protester of her youth. She was being dragged away with
her homemade sign by the United Earth Government police
and brought before a Judge who’s face was hidden behind
his hooded cloak. The judge ripped off his robe, to reveal
drill sergeant McConnel, leaning over the bench to yell
obscenities in her face. She had to stand at attention while his spit flew freely, spattering everywhere. He came closer and closer, till she struck out at him. The left hook was about to turn her sergeant’s face inside out when she awoke.
She dragged herself along the wasteland floor.
When the sun came high into the sky, she took off her helmet and casting it aside. Her tangled blond hair blew gracefully in the breeze. She slept that night in the open, not more than a hundred feet from where she started. She awoke the next morning hearing the beat of an approaching search and rescue (S.A.R.) chopper, but it was only wind. She continued on, but dehydration kept her from going far.
Sitting in the shade of a concrete block, she stared up at the sky. She knew there were no more S.A.R. craft. She knew that she was the last surviving member of her squadron. Even if someone did rescue her, she would soon die of radiation overexposure. She wasn’t sad really, just disappointed. She had enjoyed her nineteen years of life, lived them as best as anyone could with the world’s
besieged state. She wouldn’t end like she should, a fiery
death in her mecha in some insignificant battle. No, to spite everything she would enjoy a moment of complete peace. She pulled out the trophy she collected from the
Bioroid.
“I will be joining you my friend, and we can talk of the things we did before they beat us into swords.”
She laid it on her lap, and fell asleep for the last time with a smile.
END
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