Department 9 Read online

  “Hunters,” Bronze replied. “Hansen-Hyperb Hunters with seriously large custom rocket pods on the shoulder mounts.”

  There were two of the forbidding machines. One appeared to be powered down, the other had its canopy open and looked about ready to go into action.

  “The message from Fitzwilliam said to meet him here,” said Sybutu. “He said nothing about mechs, nor this slaughter of civilians. Can’t believe those machines are with Fitzwilliam, and they aren’t painted with REED markings. So, who the hell are they?”

  “SpecMish,” Bronze growled in response, his voice rough with shame. “Bears all the hallmarks. Don’t ask me how I know.”

  Sybutu gave him a piercing look. “Fine, I won’t. Do you know how to pilot one of those beasts?”

  “Drive, Sarge. Yes, I can drive one. They’re designed to terrorize soft targets. Their mobility is limited. But stand in the way of their miniguns, and you’ll be shredded.”

  “Let’s not do that then. Zavage will head north and distract the one booting up. Bronze, you get in the other one and shoot it from the rear.”

  “No,” said Bronze. “There’s no need, and the situation is too chaotic for us to split up. Follow me.”

  He sprinted across the ground, making for the Hunter on standby.

  A man popped his head out of the open mech and looked at him in astonishment.

  Bronze fired at him, but missed, so he tossed a puffer grenade instead.

  The man jerked his head back inside and closed the clamshell canopy.

  The grenade bounced off the canopy’s rim.

  Bronze hit the ground and covered his head as the pressure wave blew over. The time wasn’t wasted, though. Using his brain augments, he sent the secret SpecMish backdoor codes to shut down the mech.

  Metal fingers the size of hams twitched beneath the miniguns.

  “Bad luck, asshole,” roared the mech’s speakers. “That won’t work with us. I’d like to know how you found those codes, but you won’t live long enough to tell me.”

  The Hunter’s body hummed with power as its fusion reactor went live. It lifted an enormous leg and stomped into the open.

  “Just one chance,” Bronze muttered and ran at the metal monster.

  He must have presented an unlikely sight—a slender man wearing civilian garb, charging at a mech that weighed eleven hundred kilos. But he had no choice. He had to close with it before its targeting systems booted up and acquired him.

  Twin miniguns cycled and then spat a hail of rounds through the air.

  Bronze evaded the crossfire by mere inches and leapt for one of the armor plates over the knees.

  The mech driver tried to flick its leg to shake him off, but mechs were no good at dancing, and despite the name, Hunters were more like mobile weapons platforms than those intended to engage in close combat. All it succeeded in doing was stumbling and flailing with one arm to avoid falling over.

  His familiarity with the access recesses made Bronze’s ascent easy. He climbed up the mech’s torso, dodging the arms trying to brush him away, and clambered over the smooth dome that topped the canopy, before dropping down the other side.

  He’d meant to climb down, but there were no climbing points, and the mech’s gyrations finally won out. He lost his grip.

  As he slid down the rear of the mech, fingertips of one hand still in contact with the Hunter’s hull, he slammed the patch in his other hand over the point on the mech’s back where the kidneys would be in a human. It was where Hansen-Hyperb mounted their fusion powerplants.

  “And that,” he shouted in triumph, “is why Hunters aren’t combat rated.”

  He grunted as he landed and braced for the possibility of the mech transforming into a massive fusion bomb. Not that he would have time to know about it if the worst happened.

  The device he’d slapped on it was a mag-spike. It played havoc with mag-clamps and quenched superconductors and screwed with linear accelerators and fusion containment fields.

  He’d guessed the mag-spike wouldn’t be powerful enough to collapse the containment field catastrophically, just enough to trip the failsafes that would shut it down hard.

  Since he hadn’t been blasted into a cloud of hot, ionized gases, he had to say he’d called that one right. The Hunter should be rebooting into safe mode, unwilling to activate until it had run a diagnostic over the fusion plant.

  How long that would take, he had no idea.

  “Hey, Bronze,” called Zavage from the other mech. Its canopy was open, and the Kurlei was dangling from the harness inside as he booted the machine. “Are you gonna drive this thing or what?”

  “Hell, yeah,” he answered. “I’m in the mood to stomp a few heads.”

  Zavage jumped out, and Bronze clambered aboard.

  “Neat trick!” called a voice before he could slot inside the haptic sleeve.

  Bronze whirled around to face whoever had spoken. Before he’d even drawn his pistol, he knew it was Fitz. In a greasy trucker hat.

  He drew his pistol anyway, not sure how much the smuggler with a past could be trusted.

  “I had the same idea of stealing one of the mechs.” Fitz pulled a cigar from a sleeve on his arm. “Gentlemen, thank you for making the rendezvous. The rest of the team are being pursued. They need help.”

  “The team?” Sybutu queried.

  Bronze listened but concentrated on getting inside the sleeve and getting the mech battle ready.

  “Yes, of course, the team,” Fitz responded. “Chimera Company. That is why we’re here, after all.”

  “Funny,” said Sybutu. “I thought we’d been marooned here.”

  “We were.” Fitz thought better of his cigar and stowed it away unsmoked. “We can discuss that another time. Come on! Focus, people! We’ve been scattered by these SpecMish murderers. There’s one active mech and at least one operative on foot. Probably more.”

  Lights flared to either side of Bronze’s head as the mech’s systems came to life and reported green status.

  “First things first,” said Bronze, his voice through the external speakers making Sybutu jump. “The other mech could come to life at any moment.”

  As the clamshell shut with a hiss of pressure seals, Bronze lifted a leg inside the haptic sleeve, which, despite the name, consisted of a series of white bands that wrapped around his torso and limbs. Most of the haptic sensors were in the gloves and socks.

  The mech lifted a leg in response and then followed its driver’s lead in stomping it down, pounding an inches-deep print into the ground.

  Yeah, the Hunter’s controls were all too familiar. Driving this giant was like wading through thick mud on a heavy gravity planet while shackled to a ball of neutronium.

  Bronze stomped off toward the other mech, crashing against it belly-to-belly like an overweight metal wrestler. He spread his fingers wide in the haptic glove, and his mech reached out with one hand and grabbed his opponent by the wrist.

  He squeezed hard and his mech tried to obey by applying a crushing force with its metal fingers, but they were too fat to get behind the armor and sever an actuator cable or pressure feed.

  No matter. Bronze raised his mech’s free arm high and pointed it down at the other mech’s elbow joint.

  “Stand well clear,” he yelled. He waited several seconds and then opened fire with his minigun. Sparks flew as the rounds ricocheted off the two metal giants. The thunderous noise had to be insanely loud outside the protection of his mech, but Bronze didn’t care. He wielded his minigun’s firepower like a blunt scalpel, slicing through the weak points at the elbow joint.

  An amber warning flashed on the HUD schematic for his right minigun.

  Ammo level 50%.

  Damnit!

  The minigun’s demonic death rattle shut down with a coda of spinning barrels. Bronze gripped his opponent’s shoulder with his right hand and pulled down on its wrist with his left.

  The lower arm came away at the elbow, spraying coolant and hydrau
lic fluid. Fitz threw it to the ground.

  “You’re gonna be dis-armed, killer!” he roared at the SpecMish mech driver. “I’m gonna make you as helpless as those civilians you massacred. See how you like it!”

  He grabbed for the other wrist, but his opponent’s mech sprang to life as he moved across its front.

  A burst of fire shredded the armor on Bronze’s right flank. Before it could eat all the way through, he body-slammed his ton of mech into the other Hunter.

  It staggered back…and used the space it had won to try grabbing the right hand of Bronze’s mech. Bronze ripped his arm out of the enemy’s grip and fired with his right minigun. It exploded, spraying shrapnel that bounced off their metal chests.

  Damn! The skragg must have damaged it in his attack.

  He tried angling his left minigun to do damage, but his enemy came in too close and began grappling.

  Even with half an arm missing, this guy was good, and Bronze had to work hard to keep his balance.

  A boarding alert flashed red. Rear quadrant.

  Bronze glanced at the rear viewscreen to see what the hell was going on.

  Had the rest of the SpecMish team arrived?

  But the person climbing the rear of his Hunter wore a space trucking cap and had a cigar between his lips.

  Fitz…what the hell…?

  How the man got there without slipping off was mystery enough, but it got even weirder when Fitz took a hand off the mech and drew his weapon, aiming it through the mech’s armor at the back of Bronze’s head.

  Bronze searched the controls frantically, looking for any anti-personnel defenses. The combat mech prototypes he’d trialed years ago could electrify the outer shell, pump out clouds of plasma, or even emit intense sonic pulses, but he could see none of that in this Hunter.

  Sybutu and Zavage were out of sight.

  His SpecMish opponent probably had no idea Bronze had been boarded, but he seemed to sense his opponent’s distraction and made the most of it, pulling himself away from the grapple hold.

  The other Hunter stumbled back a couple of steps, throwing out his half arm for balance, while the good arm brought its armament to bear on Bronze.

  Bronze brought his left arm up too.

  Fitz blew a smoke ring into the back of Bronze’s mech and followed it with a round from his hand cannon.

  Bronze flinched and fired at the same time.

  But…he hadn’t been injured.

  And the other Hunter wasn’t firing at him.

  Other than his ruined gun, the status readouts on Bronze’s mech were green across the board.

  So, what the hell had happened?

  “Hot holy shit!” Fitz was on the ground, hopping mad. “That was my last pop-up round.” He took off his cap and glared up at the back of Bronze’s mech. “The other driver’s dead, Bronze. I shot him. Now disarm his mech and get moving. We need to save the rest of my marines.”

  My marines?

  A round that could pass through Bronze, through multiple layers of thick armor, and kill the driver inside the other mech?

  Colonel Malix had thought Tavistock Fitzwilliam was someone who could change the galaxy. Finally, Bronze was beginning to suspect he had a point.

  “Do as Captain Fitz says.” Sybutu was approaching from deeper inside the village. He and Zavage had acquired blaster rifles.

  “On it, Sarge.”

  Bronze made short work of the other Hunter, kicking it from behind so it toppled over and then stamping on the remaining minigun until its barrels were as bent as a federal senator.

  “Follow me,” said Fitz.

  They moved quickly through the burning village, Fitz leading them to where he said they’d hidden a hover flier. Zavage and Sybutu took the flanks while the Hunter marched behind as heavy fire support.

  Everywhere…bodies! Bronze had to concentrate harder than he wanted to avoid squashing them. He would have preferred to focus on watching for threats, and if this had been a normal battlefield he would have. But these were civilians. There were things in his past for which he could never atone; their dignity was his priority.

  As they approached the southeast edge of the village, they heard miniguns cycling short bursts of intense fire. It was coming from the trees.

  “Hurry!” Fitz jogged toward the sound of the guns. “But stay alert. These are tricky bastards. That burst of fire might have been intended to lure us into the open.”

  Bronze threw caution to the wind and stormed ahead, each step of his lengthened stride a battle to avoid tripping. His human legs burned with lactic fire, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on anyway.

  They met their opponents in the open ground between the village and the forest.

  Arunsen and three of his troopers had their hands on their heads—four hands in the case of Enthree—as they were being marched out of the trees. Behind the prisoners were another Hunter mech and two men on foot, one human and one Zhoogene.

  The two lines paused, just twenty yards apart.

  “Fitzwilliam,” called the Zhoogene. “I was hoping you would show. I need to know why so many people have an interest in you and then I want you dead. You won’t leave this place alive, but I’ll trade the rest of my prisoners for you. I’ll let them scurry away into the woods to live their insignificant lives if you surrender yourself and your secrets.”

  Fitz stroked his chin for a moment and then screamed at the captive troopers. “Down!”

  The troopers threw themselves to the ground, and Bronze opened up with his minigun, spitting a hail of 20mm rounds at the knee joints of the enemy mech.

  He had to trust the wireframe sight picture in his radar targeting screen because the visual was blinded by the heavy enemy fire that rattled and screamed against his armor.

  In place of conventional cameras, which were too vulnerable to use, the Hunter had an array of several hundred pinprick sensors that were stitched together into a field of view by the mech’s computers.

  All it could see was the searing light of blaster bolts and depleted-neutronium tipped mini-shells raking across its armor, destroying its outer layer in clouds of hot ceramalloy fragments.

  Mechs were not built for maneuvering. It was a battle of attrition between two armored brutes, slugging it out until one side was overwhelmed. Miniguns against layers of composite-ceramalloy armor.

  Who would succumb first?

  Doubt edged Bronze’s resolve. His enemy had two miniguns to his one.

  The outer layer of Bronze’s armor was shedding rapidly.

  But not quickly enough for the enemy mech, it seemed.

  After badly pitting Bronze’s torso armor, the enemy drew their line of fire down and concentrated both streams on a single hip joint.

  “Too late, sucker!”

  The other Hunter swayed and shut off its guns. In the radar image in his targeting view, Bronze watched as both of its knees snapped, and it toppled forward into a mound of spent shell cases.

  The firing had ceased—for the moment—but Bronze wasn’t clear about the situation around him. Much of his torso armor had been shot away and nearly all his pinprick sensors along with it.

  “Out of my way,” he bellowed through his speakers and ran at the downed mech.

  He had it in his radar. It was legless, but it was throwing its arms around to right itself, and those arms carried miniguns. He had to put it out of action.

  The image of the flailing mech so consumed his attention that he’d taken three steps before he realized something was wrong.

  His mech’s right leg was trailing behind, dragging his meat leg back with it. He pushed with his thigh in its haptic sleeve, but he and the mech had become un-synced.

  A grinding noise of protesting metal sounded from the mech’s hip.

  Bronze looked down and saw light streaming through jagged holes punched through the leg.

  He screamed in panic and started unsnapping the haptic sleeve from around his leg.

  Come on. Come on! />
  The metal thigh juddered, and he felt the mech overbalance through the haptic feedback.

  His feet were still in the haptic socks. If the mech toppled over, it would rip his legs off.

  “Bronze!” called Fitz from outside. “Quit fooling around and unwrap this bandit from his mech.”

  “Don’t talk to me about unwrapping!”

  Bronze slide both feet out of the haptic socks and drew them up into the main torso compartment. His knees were up against his chest, banging against his viewscreen.

  Just in time. The Hunter’s right leg snapped away from its torso, and the mech went over.

  Bronze punched with his left arm and swiveled the Hunter through ninety degrees as he fell, catching himself with the mech’s hands.

  The overhead view showed the other mech immobilized.

  “It’s quite safe,” Fitz explained. “I shot out the minigun motors.”

  “And the others?”

  “All survived. The human and the Zhoogene, who apparently has been going by the name Lieutenant Deroh Ren Kay, ran off before we could chat with them. Our former Militia troopers are retrieving weapons and equipment from the woods. Now, would you oblige, Mr. Bronze? I want a chat with this mech driver.”

  Bronze was more than happy to oblige. He dragged his mech across the ground with its arms and pounded on the other mech’s torso with his metal fists until he tore a hole in it. Then it was simply a matter of ripping the clamshell off to reveal the driver inside.

  By the time Bronze had popped his own clamshell and jumped out of his ruined mech, Fitz was standing on the defeated war machine, one hand aiming his hand cannon at the driver, while the other activated a cigar. Meanwhile, Sybutu and Zavage kept watch.

  “Who are you?” Fitz demanded.

  “We’re the Blue Chamber, rebel scum.”

  Fitz puffed smoke into the mech. “Oh, you can dispense with that ‘rebel scum’ bullshit. Same with Blue Chamber. Sounds to me like a cover name for Department 9.”

  “Department 9? I thought you were better than that, Fitzwilliam. Department 9 is one of those disinformation stories that gets pumped out to feed the conspiracy nutters. Ninety-nine percent of federal dirty tricks are really garbage pushed out by conspiracy theorists. It makes the one percent that’s real as secure as can be.”