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Malika reflected that it kind of sucked to be deployed to guard your hometown.
Her left hand let go of the control structure and slowly rose through the inertial fluid inside the cockpit. She rubbed her eyes, a habit from inhabiting a human body. Inevitably she yawned.
Had she really been a soldier long enough to be bored before the start of a battle? That was (if you tried to be reasonable about it) pretty insane.
Hopefully the sun would rise soon. The sky to her left was glowing faintly over the young forest the human settlers had planted. She had been stationed outside the southern wall of the city, basically guaranteeing she’d be in the thick of things. As she preferred it.
Malika resisted turning around to look at the wall. As though looking back toward safety was the best way to repel invaders. Today was unique in a few ways. It felt different than when she had defended the other cities and outposts. Malika couldn't stop imagining clawing her way over the wall's hundred meter height, going right past a cannon, and leaping down to the streets on the other side. Her machine, for all its five-story bulk, would be lithe enough to handle it.
On the other side she’d carefully walk over hastily abandoned cars and empty streets until she could position herself beside her parents’ house. She wanted to personally make certain that no insectoid got near her family and her childhood home. Wasn’t that why she’d joined the corps in the first place?
Malika wondered if they’d had time to legitimately evacuate. She doubted it.
Her desire to enter the city was a foolish impulse. The rest of her division was here, where it was important to be. They were between the city and the place where plasma cannonfire would fall. Cannons couldn’t do all the work. The frontline needed her. Beyond that, it wasn’t like she knew how to wield her plasma hammer in a cityscape without leveling an entire block, though she supposed it must be possible.
If a meaningful number of aliens got past the wall today then that would mean they had already failed. Truly, the best place to fight was where she currently found herself. She remembered the mission parameters. They hadn’t been all that different from the instructions she’d received during her other battles, as she skimmed them while half-asleep, but the header of the report had given her pause.
Mission Start: 0600
Expected Duration: REDACTED
Simulation Results: REDACTED
Extraction Coordinates: .XX9577, -.XX5391
Every other mission had at least included the odds of success. She wanted to know if she had to worry about her hometown: why couldn’t the mission planners just be honest with her? If she would be forced to abandon her city and her family during a mandatory retreat… well, she at least wanted to know about it.
She had witnessed the process personally on her third mission. It was frustrating to have to retreat.The military didn’t have the resources to evacuate everyone at once, so she had been forced to march for two hours while waiting to be picked up. Not that her M-suit got physically tired or anything, but still. The marching really put her own irrelevancy in sharp relief--if they evacuated cannon before you, how important were you really?
That time it had only been a mining outpost, far into contested territory. Not worth losing your life over. During her reminiscence, a window with an official communique opened itself.
Automated defenses will activate momentarily.
Enemy ETA: 350 Seconds
Malika straightened up in the cockpit, her arms tensing. The battle really was going to start before sunrise. She zoomed in with her display. Sure enough, in the faint pre-dawn light she could already see the dirt cloud. At least today she wouldn’t have to sit idle in her cockpit for several hours, or something useless like that. She heard a deep thrumming from behind and above her.
Despite herself, and as a compromise with her impulses, Malika opened a display for a camera overviewing the walls. Her knowledge of M-suit comms allowed her to tap into the feed, but it was admittedly a breach of etiquette. The fortifications were only about a kilometer behind her. She saw that the cannons atop the wall had come to life and were tracking still-unseen targets. One twitched, undoubtedly following something hidden by the dust cloud.
Battle excitement started to overtake her. Hometown or not, that aspect didn’t change. Through her M-suit she gripped the haft of her weapon but she refused to pick it up from where it rested on the ground: too much excitement indicated inexperience. In a wave, the cannons on the wall automatically started charging, the electrical sound a rising chorus of anticipated destruction. Her display revealed crackling electricity and a blue glow punctuated by small streaks of lightning. Both the backline and the snipers atop the walls were restless. The smattering of mechs spread out with her on the frontline were all gripping their hammers. Most of them shifted nervously. Remembered sensations of charging cannons spoke directly to their hindbrains, as it did to hers: “You will soon fight and you may die.”
She closed the camera display and waited.
Automated Defenses: Online
Prepare for March
Enemy ETA: 260 Seconds
Cylindrical plasma vortices leapt out of the cannons and flew over their heads, the sound ponderously rising. She barely heard the explosions where they landed far away. The dust cloud became darker as the detonations threw up more dirt. That darkness was punctuated by flashes of orange, purple, and blue.
Malika knew that each vortex could transform the ground into a spray of molten earth and rock. Flames erupted from anything the plasma touched, and directly-impacted soil flung bits of debris at speeds great enough to crack even a thick carapace. Exploding bodies became fatal shrapnel. There was a reason that the cannons couldn’t even track targets on the city side of the barrier. Aimed at concrete, a stray shot would level multiple buildings with its cloud of debris. If the enemies were high-density a cannon could kill fifteen or twenty with every single blast.
Her hammer was more of a mop, honestly. All she had to do was clean up the (un)lucky survivors while leaving just enough aliens that the backline could get their practice in. The aliens would charge forward, not-quite mindlessly. If the new recruits behind her failed to kill them, there were always the snipers. If the snipers didn’t do enough--well. They’d better. Their job was to head off threats climbing the wall. The cannons were atop the wall. If the cannons went offline all was lost.
Oh sure, on the other side of that there were also intra-city specialists to protect civilians from the odd invader that fell into the city. But even they would be ordered to retreat if the wall fell. Honestly the specialists weren’t nearly as important as the snipers, or the recruits. Or the frontline!
Enemy ETA: 118 Seconds
Once Malika had survived four more battles she would qualify to start training as an intra-city specialist herself. It was a relatively-safe job for a tired veteran--just challenging enough to keep your skills sharp while you provided your knowledge to bootcamp--but she probably wouldn’t apply. Intra-city specialists undoubtedly had uselessly stressful lives. Nervously flitting through the city to head off potential threats that seldom arrived; that is what would really be agonizing. Doubly so in this case, since one part of the city was so much more important to her than the rest. She tried not to think about it.
Malika remembered the recruitment poster and chuckled. “You can make the difference!” A platitude. One pilot made basically no difference whatsoever. She hadn’t been fooled, even then. Here she was anyway. All one could really do was try to improve her skills as though it mattered, and enjoy herself.
Now she could see some of the frontrunners. All of them had the same armored, ten-legged body plan. These were the first arrivals and were therefore the smallest and fastest. At two meters tall, they were a bit more than ankle-high to her M-suit. Although... were some of them larger than that? The distance made it hard to tell, exactly.
A full-grown one would be twice as tall as her mech or more, but she wasn’t likely to see one of those. It was taught that the larger ones kept busy with attending to their queen. The battle would be won or lost before the adults even entered the field.
March Begins: 20 seconds
Enemy ETA: 54 seconds
Cannonfire continued to rain down on the distant foes as the survivors ran forward. Isolated enemies weren’t worth the cannons’ energy. Malika shifted impatiently, breathing a bit hard. She sucked inertial fluid through clenched teeth.
March Start
Good luck!
Finally, she thought. The nearest enemy was perhaps six hundred meters distant. She hefted her plasma hammer in both hands. The entire frontline moved, their footfalls discordant but unified in purpose. Her nearest peer was fifty paces away, a considerable distance if you paced in a mech suit. The line moved as one, but they didn’t support each other. Everyone on the frontline fought alone: it wasn’t safe to stand too close.
Her heart pounded. She felt the working of the motors as though her own muscles were lifting the giant hammer--a function of her neural overlay. The sensation was like being a paralyzed sleeper and moving through a dream, all the while pressed on by a blanket. The dream, however, was her clenched fists and immobilized spine in the cockpit. Reality was creaking metal lifting a massive weapon, one that weighed almost half as much as the rest of her machine body. Malika’s mechanical arms fought against the weight and handily won. She was suffused with strength.
When the first insectoid drew near she took an extra half-step to line things up. She removed her hammer from the idle position over her shoulder and thrust it forward. The hammer then swung down past her ankles, back up behind her, and whirled over her head. At the top of the arc she let go with her left hand and extended her reach with the right, the hammer’s momentum carrying it into a precision dive back toward the ground. It smashed into the alien ferociously, obliterating it in a booming gush of purple blood.
That was how you handled enemies smaller than yourself.
Her hammer’s plasma didn’t activate--she hadn’t pushed the button--and she jumped at the moment of impact, using the momentum of the giant swing to propel herself over and forward. The weapon’s haft helped her guide the landing. Malika touched back down on the other side of the dead insectoid, then leaned forward to lift the hammer behind her with a wet wrenching sound. She pulled it close as she continued to march. The hammerhead had traced a one-and-a-half circle during the maneuver, which brought it from in front of her to the side and back. No need to slow her advance.
You’d call it a textbook move, except the perfection of the strike outdid that of any demonstration or theory. It was an integrated motion, a skill earned during her earlier battles. As natural as walking, but something those poor intra-city specialists wouldn't ever be permitted to do. Just now two large aliens were approaching her.
For a brief moment, just before the second insectoid entered striking range, Malika had a strange feeling of hopelessness. Like it would be less trouble to just lay down and die. It was an entirely foreign sensation to her. The insectoid that now approached was four meters tall without rearing, more than twice as big as the first. In other words, it was huge for such an early arrival--but not all that difficult to handle.
Where was this lack of motivation coming from? The battle had just begun!
She had more important things to focus on just now. The feeling of helplessness was a flashing perspective that she ruthlessly smashed down, killing it before it could reach the walls of her own survival instinct. She should focus on the things in front of her. The second alien was about to enter her range, a third right behind it.
Malika lifted the hammer high behind her in preparation, thinking of a golf club. Then she swung, but halfway through she let go with her right hand to let the hammerhead fly forward and up. Her feet crushed themselves into the ground as she did so, the massive inertia of the hammer extracting its toll.
The hammer connected with the armored chest of the rearing insectoid. It made a metallic clang and cracked the plates there. Conventional hammers needed another surface to work against to be truly effective--a hard place to help transform all that energy into destruction, or at least an enemy whose massiveness exceeded its toughness--but now that the insectoid’s plates were damaged the ‘plasma’ of her plasma hammer could do its part. She had already pushed the button.
The hammer’s core lit up. Panels on the sides of the device twisted open to reveal a bright blue sphere within. Humming bolts of electricity flashed out, buzzing, and flashed between the alien’s shattered armor plates. Wet flesh frothed and exploded in a fraction of a second, shattering the insectoid like a tree struck by lightning. Armored plates burst apart ahead of a hissing shower of purple gore. Pieces of its carapace flew high into the air, trailing blood and steam.
Malika didn’t waste her remaining momentum, spinning the hammer up and around. Her left hand shot out and grabbed the handle. At the height of the hammer’s arc her feet briefly left the ground. One foot touched back down and she twisted upon it expertly, starting the next maneuver. She tightened her grip. Her machine body was leaning far backward to balance the hammer’s motion as she swung it forward again, much more violently than any baseball bat.
It smashed into the third alien’s side. Plasma flashed with its characteristic hum and the insectoid exploded, splattering the ground with a wave of steaming entrails. These were just different enough the human equivalent that Malika could ignore them. She spun once and brought her hammer to a stop. The nearest living alien was now at least a hundred meters away, so she set the hammer back on her shoulder in the idle position. The shuttering mechanism had closed: she was protected.
Her hands gripped her hammer firmly as Malika continued her march. To her left and right other M-suits were doing much the same work. Striking the ground aided movement, sweeping with plasma killed quickly. Booms rang out over the battlefield. Malika instantly forgot the aliens she had just killed. The first kill of a battle was always memorable, a flashing scene to characterize the entire engagement. By the fifth kill she was so fully focused on the fight that keeping tally became impossible. She danced unthinkingly to the booming sound of hammer strikes and exploding aliens, drinking deep from the electrostatic underneath.
Malika was the survivor of five battles and an extraordinary pilot besides. Her hammer destroyed aliens almost twice as fast as those of her nearest peers. That was no accident. The battle planners spread skilled pilots out deliberately and had made note of her. She might not have time to keep track, but her machine recorded and reported the kills. Such statistics were always a robotic retrospective. She need not consider it. All Malika did was kill the insectoids ferociously and thoughtlessly, for a time.
A beeping sound broke her trance.
Warning: Return to the Front Line
Close to ten minutes had passed. The message was warning her that she had extended a bit too far. Malika retreated toward the wall: the cannon barrage wouldn’t stop for a mistake like getting in between it and the enemy. Truthfully she hadn’t come all that close. The entire field was getting hazy with disturbed dust and dirt. At some point the sun had risen.
Malika checked the city map at the edge of her vision. All sections showed green, and only a few cannon had quit working. Mechanical issues might arise during the sustained barrage. Some of that was to be expected, so things definitely weren’t going downhill.
Malika saw a crowd of insectoids surging for toward one of her allies. It was a suit she recognized: one from her division. The protocol wasn’t to fight in close proximity, but just now it might have helped.
Several of the knee-high aliens went in at once. Forming up after getting through the cannon barrage was a common insectoid tactic, if enough of them survived. Her companion swung an arc through them and killed many, but one survivor leapt and stuck to his shoulder. Its mandibles shred his suit’s armor and its mass slowed him down. He didn’t seem able to reach it.
Malika ran toward him as fast as she could. Its working jaws would eventually cut off his M-suit’s arm. Before she got there he stuck his hammer over his shoulder and ripped the alien off with its edge. Some of his own armor was wrenched off but Malika could see that her fellow hammerer hadn’t disabled himself. He smashed the alien in a moment.
Her fault, for worrying about another hammerer. That thing with the edge had been clever. She skidded to a halt and turned back toward the main invading force, and another small swarm.
Malika ducked and a leaping insectoid flew over her head. She absent-mindedly swung through the group as she ran forward, shattering two of the beasts. She flitted between the insectoid bodies--the swarm had been pursuing her and it had enough momentum to go past her. Mostly.
One latched down on her forearm. She didn’t stop running. With her other hand she ripped and tore at the insectoid. Damage to her suit was faithfully reported, so the wriggling insectoid felt like it was working its way down to the bones. She had to hit it a few times before weakening its armor enough to stick her hand in. Hissing in pain, Malika cursed her M-suit’s honest characterization of her circumstances. She ripped the insectoid apart. Finally it died. Its mandibles remained embedded in her arm but at least they’d quit crunching against each other.
After she had killed it the pain automatically reduced itself to a light tingling. That was a reminder of her suit’s weakened arm that wouldn’t unduly distract her.
Malika was still being chased by the rest of the miniature swarm. While running she did something risky. Thrusting her hammer forward, she brought it to rest against the ground and arrested her motion. She then leaned out hard and to the left, picking the hammer up into a two-handed spin. That turned most of her forward momentum into angular momentum. Instead of resisting the motion to catch her balance, she immediately fed it and whirled. Malika prayed her right arm was still strong enough to withstand the forces involved.
Her suit spun around twice, then she activated the plasma and shredded the aliens that had been following her. They couldn’t stop in time to avoid her swinging. Two more spins were enough to kill all but one of the oncoming aliens, so she slowed herself by bringing her hammer down to smash the final alien. She huffed, a little dizzy. There weren’t any living aliens in her immediate vicinity.
Malika started to move toward a more active part of the battle, but not without checking the city map. Two sections were orange. She hoped the M-suits there could get the aliens off the wall on their own. Her designated section had turned into a mess, small groups threatening to gather into a large and overwhelming swarm, but at least no aliens had gotten to the wall.
No wonder things were getting harder. More guns had gone offline.
She upped the pace. The frontline and backline were merging themselves as a greater number of aliens pushed them back toward the wall. Malika looked toward it when her display changed color. For a moment she saw aliens scrabbling up, but then she wrenched her gaze back toward the front of the battle and things within her purview.
It would be fine. She smashed one alien, then another. A short run toward another small swarm allowed her to disrupt it before it could get out of hand. Something caught her sight as she fought.
Malika watched a heavily-damaged M-suit in retreat. An insectoid had ripped off the suit’s antenna, depriving the pilot of communications. She wondered if the pilot would still be retreating if he or she could see the dire situation as reported by the city map. For a moment there were no aliens nearby, so Malika stopped to watch that hammerer walk away. She was winded even though her human body hadn't exerted itself.
Maybe that person would actually be retreating faster if they knew what was up? She checked the map again. Even as she watched, more cannons went offline. Was it that aliens had gotten to those cannons, or were they simply failing from the sustained barrage? Not even an hour had passed since the start of the battle--but an hour was a long time for guns to keep up a barrage. She wanted to go protect them herself. If the wall fell--
Return to battle immediately.
She had been idle too long. Malika charged away from the wall and any thoughts of consequences. She passed a few craters in the ground, not knowing who had made them.
Several bloody minutes later, she witnessed one of the other M-suits as it was overcome. Between swings insectoids leapt onto the M-suit, slowing it down until it fell in a heap of bodies. As it thrashed on the ground, larger insectoids came over to finish the dissection. One was twelve meters tall: chest high, and tall enough to easily rear over an M-suit. Certainly big enough to tear a hammerer limb-from-limb. Malika tried not to imagine the pilot screaming; whoever they were, they were much too far away for Malika to do anything about it. Beyond that there was a contingency in place for being overwhelmed.
She shouldn’t waste her attention wondering whether the aliens would have time to eat the pilot.
There was a whumping sound. The M-suit and swarm were gone, a crater in their place. Malika felt sorrow, and a respectful gratitude toward the missing pilot. She charged toward the next foe--another twelve-meter alien. A jump and swing brought her hammer down on it, hard. Bigger aliens had thicker carapaces.
She noticed that the hammer from her fallen comrade hadn’t detonated. It lay on the field, forgotten, but she knew it could be blown up as well if circumstances dictated. Perhaps it would be recovered and used in future battles. What a nice thought.
She smashed another alien. There were fewer of them, now. Maybe they had finally pushed the threat away?
Her HUD was flashing. She hadn't noticed. Apparently the east side of the city wasn’t faring well at all. It was flashing red and white--the aliens had started to attack the wall itself. Most of that section's guns were offline. She ran toward it without thinking.
Remain at your current position.
Malika did the only reasonable thing she could do--she skidded to a stop. Then she fought where she was and held the line. No orders to relocate came, so she was still needed at this part of the wall. Her heart throbbed in impotent terror to know that a failure was occurring where she couldn’t do anything about it, but if she left then the failure would happen here as well. She fought on dutifully and rationally, definitely not thinking about her family.
She would go where she was needed. If everyone else did the same they could prevail. Finally an alarm blared out and messages flooded her display.
The city has fallen.
Mission Failed
Proceed to the extraction point.
Escape Simulation Complete
Recoverable forces: 65%
The other M-suits were running. Malika froze. Her suit fell to its knees, as though its wires were cut. Could you really lose everything you cared about that immediately? Her HUD showed it. The eastern wall had collapsed, overrun by aliens. At the moment no insectoids were nearby, but all the ones she could see turned and started skittering toward the breach in the wall.
No wonder the combat had been getting thin, here. This wasn’t where the battle had been decided. Malika screamed, the inertial fluid muting the sound to vibration conducted through her skull. It sounded watery and unnatural to her, as though she were a drowned corpse. She looked around inside the cockpit. She had awoken from the dream.
Proceed to the extraction point immediately.
Malika entered a few commands and got an internal view of the city through a camera near her parents' home. That was a mistake. Aliens were spilling through the streets, the smaller ones flying through doorways and alleyways, the larger ones smashing second and third story windows. Screaming humans were extracted through the broken glass and doors, dragged out of the concrete shells they lived in.
And eaten.
Malika curled up instantly, pressing her forehead to her knees inside the cockpit. Screwing her eyes shut didn’t help since the display was directly piped into her brain. It took a critical second to remember how to shut it off. In pitch blackness her eyes opened wide, the horror still burning through her. She screamed again, softly. Tears leaked out and diluted the inertial fluid, slowly trailing up and away.
The order to travel to the extraction point made itself apparent in her vision. When she closed her mouth her teeth grit against each other, her face making a horrified snarl of anger and helplessness. An insistent beeping started.
Proceed to the extraction point immediately.
Your position is being overrun.
She sat up quickly and dismissed the message.
Disobeying orders is treason and punishable by death.
Proceed to the extraction point immediately.
She did not move.
Remote detonation in 25 seconds.
Comply with your orders.
That made things easy.
Malika’s suit picked up its hammer. The weapon was flung up and over her back, where it deftly caught the edge of her antenna unit. There was a searing pain as the unit ripped out of her suit’s back, but the warnings cut out. The pain faded instantly, a gentle tingle reminding her of damage without unduly distracting her. Malika turned her mech toward the city one last time.
The cannon atop the walls had all fallen silent. Her display showed helicopters picking them up one-by-one. They would be carried away to walls that needed defending. Cannon prioritized, then skilled pilots, then mere survivors. She felt sick.
Malika’s suit turned back toward the freely-advancing swarm. Insectoids ran past her and her mech, naturally following the columns that flowed into the city. As far as they were concerned the suit was just another piece of wreckage. Up ahead there were looming shapes in the dusty shadows: that would be the contingent of fully-grown insectoids. The queen was coming, because they had won.
The queen would make a burrow in Malika’s hometown. Then the insectoids would eat all the cropland and human-generated forest, for miles, replacing those human designs with insectoid ones. Giant stalks for aphid cattle, toxic grass to be fermented into a slurry. Malika could see it perfectly, a vision of another species’ happiness at the cost of her own. More insectoids would be hatched and grown. If the new colony thrived it might send out other queens, to lay waste to other human cities. To kill other people’s families.
To eat other human beings as snacks on the road. Her blood boiled.
What had been her reward for those endless days of training, fighting, advancing and retreating? Her family was dead.
Malika intended to jump down the enemy queen’s throat and tear her to pieces, one organ at a time. She fumed as she stood, machine and woman reunified, all else forgotten. She might die in the attempt, but perhaps that had been the point all along.
The dream began anew.
She was sprinting, a wild dash with her hammer held high over her shoulder. The insectoids took a moment to respond. This M-suit that ran the wrong way was a surprise to them.
Up ahead she saw a discarded hammer lying on the ground. She shifted her weight, balancing her own hammer in her left hand. The other was snatched up as she passed. It threw her off balance for a moment but she kept running, a hammer over each shoulder. Further ahead was a churning crowd of insectoids, and two waves of the creatures were closing in from the left and right. She spread her arms wide, mechanical muscles straining, and sprinted even harder.
Malika had trained and fought with only one hammer up until this point. Her reflexes didn’t fully transfer, now that almost half of her total mass was composed of weapons for smashing things. She tried to make up the difference with rage.
They all crashed together.
She tore through, aliens flying in every direction--most weren’t even killed, so much as flung away. There were more aliens behind those. Malika planted the one hammerhead and spun around it, bringing the other to bear, tumbling forward like a train wreck. Her forward hammer lit up and caused an exploding swath to form in the aliens to her side and front. Enough gore flew out to slow the suicidal minions behind the ones she had killed, but she was moving too fast to stop just like that. Her arms stretched out and metal screeched under the strain. Alarms blared and pain blossomed on her shoulders and elbows. She was racking herself as she flew forward, the momentum of her sprint carrying her along. Malika desperately plunged a hammer into the ground and swung the other one out; once again the nearest aliens were obliterated. She repeated the maneuver yet again before overbalancing and falling. Her suit skid for a moment before she desperately rolled, pushing the hammers ahead. The activated plasma carved deep furrows in the soil ahead of her and plowed through enemies. She flipped upright as soon as she was able.
She had no attention to spare for checking the damage. Malika lifted the hammers to her left and right, brandishing them, as though the aliens could be convinced to flee. Plasma crackled continuously. The enemies formed up in a circle around her--there was much hissing and rearing. The insectoids were confused and hesitant, at least for a moment.
That moment quickly passed. Insectoids surged forth from in front of her. She brought her hands together, the hammers closing, her body lifting off the ground from the immediacy of the movement. The hammers clanged off each other and flew back explosively, threatening to twist Malika in half. She helplessly let go of the one in her left hand. It flew through the air and burst a few aliens before it went out.
Malika brought the other hammer into a familiar spin to build up momentum. She tilted the spin to strike at aliens that approached, then struck the ground, leaping toward her discarded hammer and restarting the spin. When she got to it she jumped while grabbing its haft and deftly reversed direction again. It wouldn’t do to get dizzy now.
She continued to twirl, bringing the hafts close to her body to reduce the strain. Whenever an alien approached she flashed out a hammer. Plasma obliterated that alien and the rest were forced to retreat. None of the aliens were smaller than ten meters, now, and most of them could rear above her. Still, Malika held her own. She could embed a hammer in the ground to burst forward and leap over it, ruthlessly kill any alien within range of the strike. They couldn’t get near without being struck, and her movements were too erratic for their pathetic insect brains to predict. She roared, the slaughter bringing her a brief joy.
Some of the insectoids resisted the blows--even if they didn’t survive, no longer did they explode when she struck them. They were simply too big. It didn't matter to Malika. A precise strike would kill regardless. The aliens had heads she could bash in.
Malika became motion sick and tired. Pain signals from the suit flashed throughout her body and provided less-than-useful feedback about her state, forcing her to ignore them. Arms, legs, shoulders--all systems were overloaded. Finally the neural bridge for pain cut out entirely, mercifully freeing her. She didn’t notice that her right arm flashed out more warnings than the left.
A very large insectoid approached. It was twenty-five meters tall and almost fully-grown, making it head-and-shoulders taller than her even without rearing. It was by far the largest enemy she’d ever faced. She saw an opportunity for relief.
Malika leapt into the air during her spin. With as much force as she could muster she threw the hammer in her left hand down. It cratered into the ground and its plasma didn’t retreat: the force of the impact broke the mechanism that shuttered it.
Throwing that hammer caused her body to fly upward. She flew far over the rearing, giant insectoid, tumbling once but keeping a firm grip on her remaining hammer. As she fell she swung, bringing her weapon down on the insectoid’s back with full force. The blow cracked the plate there and exposed the flesh inside its carapace.
The attack didn’t even come close to killing it.
Malika landed on the monster, her legs sliding over the armor plate. She twisted around wildly. Then she locked her legs around the creature’s back and buried a knee into the ruined flesh beneath the plate she had destroyed. She was facing forward on the alien, which undulated and reared underneath her. It scrabbled backward as it bucked.
Malika lifted the hammer with both hands and bashed down on its head, using her legs for leverage. Plasma arced out, but it was harmlessly deflected by the armor. She hit it again to no effect. Her suit was crunching mechanically under the strain, but she struck again and again with unrestrained fury. Each blow started with a sharp metallic twanging sound that dropped into a thud, electricity hissing throughout. Her hammer’s haft bent and its mechanism failed, causing plasma to gush out and burn everything. It made her face hot. Even through her armor and the inertial fluid she could feel the raw radiation washing over her. Finally the monster’s head broke open. The next blow killed the giant insectoid by cooking the brains and other meat that had been exposed.
Malika rolled forward amid the booming collapse of the giant insectoid’s corpse. Her landing was rough and the suit crunched, its mechanisms popping and screeching. Aliens still surrounded her. A medium-sized insectoid charged forward fearlessly, as though she hadn’t just murdered something five times its size. She raised her hammer behind and to her right, her feet sinking into the ground with the force of the movement, and prepared to smash the new attacker.
Her right arm failed, snapping below the elbow. The hammer flew out of her remaining hand’s grasp. It twirled through the air and hit the ground fifty meters away, her severed hand still attached. Then it exploded.
Malika rolled forward. She desperately elbowed the charging alien as she passed it--that did little damage, but helped her propel herself. Ahead of her was the malfunctioning hammer from earlier. It was her only hope. She ran toward it, aliens jumping at her from all directions. She fought her way through a deluge of small insectoids. In moments she was covered in a dozen pairs of pinching mandibles, which would have been excruciating if the pain had been faithfully transmitted. She blocked an attack from a larger insectoid with the stump of her right arm--it bit through her elbow completely. She stumbled forward toward the hammer, every moment bringing her closer to death.
Situation overwhelming: self-destruct mode engaged
Malika fell beside the sparking, glowing hammer. She carried a squirming mass of insectoids. She knew she was about to die, and once-again felt that impulse to give up and accept her fate. Once again she chose to ignore it. She wasn’t dead yet.
Her left hand reached into the broken hammer in front of her and yanked out the plasma ball within it. It melted her suit’s fingers together. She could see it was pulsing--soon it would destabilize and explode. She waved the ball over her back and legs, jabbing the aliens that gathered there. As she did so she thrashed to the ground, trying to get the aliens off of her. Many burst from the heat of the plasma.
Her suit had a power source similar to this one inside of it, and naturally her suit was shielded against the radiation. But it wasn’t designed to withstand something like this. She could feel burns erupting all along her arms and face. The sensation was real, unfiltered pain, the pain of being burned alive. Malika tasted blood, and felt dizzy nausea entirely unrelated to spinning in combat. She stumbled to her feet, afraid that too little motion would cause her final contingency to activate. Finally, she had sloughed off all of the insectoids accosting her. The larger monsters had backed up, for the moment.
Self-destruct mode disengaged
The ball had melted itself into her left palm. Malika put her wrist to the ground and stepped on it. She then straightened her back and ripped the arm off, breathing deeply as the pain receded. She kicked the arm and plasma ball away. They exploded when they hit something, taking one last alien with them.
Malika ran, unbalanced without her arms but leaping over obstacles, doing her best to find open paths. The aliens pursued her. They weren’t fast enough to keep up--most were too huge for rapid motion.
The queen was near. Malika weaved between the behemoth insectoids. She jumped on top of one, using its rearing motion to leap again and keep moving forward. Any aliens that were pursuing her broke off, and these larger ones were too big and stupid to pay her much mind.
Her mech felt light and free now that there was only the last and final weapon available to her. Even so, Malika’s vision swam. Trickles of blood diffused through the fluid in the cockpit.
Finally, she saw the queen. The mother insectoid was a giant worm, nearly three times as thick as an M-suit was tall. The monstrosity was a mouth in the middle of a giant tube of flesh. It undulated as it advanced, unable to move with only its own power. The queen was flanked by massive insectoids that strained to push her forward. Malika couldn’t tell who was leading who--was the queen the center of this operation, or did her straining attendants choose their path?
Neither. The endeavor was a giant mess of instincts and thoughtless destruction. Malika looked on with disgust.
Here was the final enemy. She might be able to hurt it, or even kill it, by sacrificing her own life. If she destroyed the queen then perhaps the advancing insectoids would be stopped, at least for this season. Her city could even be reclaimed… though the people would never come back. She choked back a sob.
If she died here she would be free of obligation. What more could be asked of her than sacrificing her life? All she had to do was jump in that gaping hole and fall still. The rest was automatic. She glanced up and saw something in the air.
Malika screamed in frustration. One of the massive rescue helicopters was hovering above the worm, its bay already open. She knew immediately why it was here.
The pilot had taken a great risk to follow her this far into the battle, and was taking an even greater risk by bringing the chopper low. Had he been ordered to extract her? The machine swooped forward between her and the Queen, settling on the ground. Men inside gestured frantically, not knowing how unhappy she was to see them.
Miraculously, there were no insectoids ready to pour over the chopper--but why would there be? Most were racing toward the city they had won, toward the easy meal that was the reward for a battle well-fought. There were a few moments of calm, here in the center of disaster.
The queen approached. Malika had a decision to make. Escape had come to her. She did not need to die.
She wasn’t someone who would give up that easily. Without another thought, Malika ran forward.