“Duck!” Ali yelled before taking me into her arms.
The explosion blew us away against one of the aisle’s charred abutments. I didn’t know what was the more dreadful between the toxic dust searing our lungs or the pews breaking our spine. The answer was obviously the massive Scorpio-tank emerging of the smoke. Its five rotative red eyes flickered as it was scanning the area, looking for survivors. On its back, the 406 mm Mark 7 canon expelled the fuming cartridge case which loudly fell on the floor before rolling to the burning choir behind its crushed rear legs.
“Quick! To the pillar!” I ordered as the TK’s head tilted.
Her face and clothes whitened by the plaster, Ali coughed as an answer.
“Its rear legs have been hit. He can’t move from the altar,” I tried to reassure her as I started dashing towards “Come!”
My partner crawled beneath a bench. “But the cannon is—” Another explosion smashed a pile of electronic supplies next to us, spraying mud, splinters and shrapnel all around.
“Ali!” I screamed before being snatched from behind as a falling stone almost turned me into a crêpe.
“That was close,” my helpful partner answered. “What do we do, now?”
I pulled out a piece of stained glass from her shoulder then leaped on the floor. After waiting for the dust cloud to settle, I cast an eye over the altar. The heavy Scorpio had slipped back because of the recoil but remained highly dangerous. “Jump to the second pillar. I saw an RPG laying against it—use it!” After catching my breath, I left our cover but Ali instantly hauled me back by the tail.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she muttered.
“A diversion!” I yowled.
“Are you juiced? It’s firing shells bigger than your ego!”
“Do as I say or we both die, human!”
Ali grunted then waited for my signal before dashing to the rocket launcher. The moment I sprang out of the pillar, the Scorpio’s head revolved towards me as it clapped its last remaining pincer. I heard a sizzling sound before its front legs expanded to lift off the ground its blue armored body covered with blood and oil. A loud click warned me that the Mark 7 had armed its shell. Stabilized, this monster of doom was ready to fire as I rushed to the right wing’s chapel, jumping from drown bodies to burning pews.
A detonation occurred as I closed my eyes. It wasn’t the sound of the deadly 406 mm but the soft lullaby of a rocket hitting a gas tank. My skilled copilot had taken her time to aim for the TK’s only weakness beneath its segmented tail, and it exploded like a Ford Pinto. The Mark 7 sank in the morass; defeated.
“Well done, part—”
A flash flowed by a blast blinded me. And everything faded to black.
“If you’re dead, I will chuck your beloved PEZ dispensers’ collection, furry ball.”
I instantly woke up, gasping for air. Squatting, my human was looking at me from the top of the deep hole I fell in. “If you do that, I’ll come back to haunt you,” I managed to groan. My saliva tasted like copper and black powder.
“Sorry. Pottery’s not my jam!” Ali teased me while letting her drop by my side. “Can we celebrate our victory somewhere else than a mass grave?”
Half-conscious on my partner’s shoulder, I watched her back while we left the church through a hole in the retroquire. I glanced one last time to the smoking TK before we walked towards an abandoned observation post on the hillside.
“Almost there,” Ali said, overlooking the burning plains. She spat a red gob. The air was poisoned.
“We’re late to the party…” I commented, back on my feet.
In the distance, the city walls were flooded with a yellow fog. The deadly cloud—supposedly banned by the recent Resolution 687 that almost took away our railgun—drove away the Marines and their bulldozers from the fortifications they had just taken. The Separatists were gassing all the troops, allies or enemies, in the outskirts of the town. Distraught, all were fleeing towards us.
“Only dispatch the gray uniforms,” I warned her while descending into what was once supposed to be a rainwater collector. “I don’t want any problems with the Corps.”
“Like I could discern anything with all this yellow porridge…”
Ali put her Walkman’s headphones back on her ears. Dancing through exploding mortars and phosphorus fallout, she spent the next minutes firing at every target crossing our path. Rivers of Babylon seemed to cover the whistling of the bullets as soldiers were dropping like flies.
The poisoned mist enveloped us a few seconds later. Fortunately, we both possessed adequate protection; unless the last group of rebels who just arrived at the collector’s banks. Their eyes melted even before Ali could greet them with her caliber.
“All this sounds like a new failed offensive and here we’re stuck in the middle of a no-man’s-land!” she sighed through the filter of her mask between two muffled curses.
“The city hasn’t fallen. We won’t get through the walls.”
“Those guys…” Ali started, pointing at the dead men. “They give me an idea.” I had doubts but my sapiens was already removing her TMC anorak. Even with one of the rebel soldier’s outfit clumsily buttoned over her black jumpsuit, our chances to sneak into the Separatists’ fortress were still thin. “Here’s the plan: we’ll improvise!” she went on, scratching the mud on the collar tabs. “What rank is this? Ensign? It looks like a cute leaf.”
“That’s a Separatist’s Major insignia. Right before Colonel—like our contract, von Gebhardt—then generals,” I answered before she heaved a sigh.
“Whatever… Hey! Check this out! I have a cool weapon!” she exclaimed before swinging in the air her new cavalry sword. “Do you remember Raï in the mines of Yoyodyne?”
“The libidinous rōnin? Yes.”
The deadly cloud dissipated shortly before we reached the steel and concrete fortifications. The wall had been pulverized in various places, and the makeshift repairs had partially yielded to the armored Scorpios’ hollow charges. Behind the burning carcass of one of them, we discovered a breach wide enough to sneak into the enemy base.
“See? Piece of cake!” Ali bragged, kicking a skeleton to make room for me. The skull came off and rolled a few steps away from a Separatist patrol that emerged from behind an anti-aircraft battery.
Strapped to her bipedal Walker, one of the rebels greeted us: “You crazy loon, out there! Catch that darn cat! We’re starving!”
“Say that again?” Ali grunted. Unsheathing her long sword, she was ready to blow our cover for me.
As I appreciated the chivalrous gesture, one of the soldiers recognized Ali’s uniform, and the sergeant on the Walker quickly apologize after realizing the curious fist-chested salute of the League.
“At ease, chums! This is uhm… my… battle cat,” Ali lied. “He’s fucking useless—most of the time—but it detected enemy’s drones lurking around. Do you mind—I don’t know… patrol? While I report to the…” She looked down at me. A drop of sweat broke from her temple. “…Admiral-stuff von Gebhardt.”
I sighed, picturing us facing the incoming firing squad.
“The Colonel’s gone, Major. Like all the Chief Engineers,” the half-deaf sub-officer answered. “He left inside the last Hornet-9 with a functional Baltimore.” She pointed vaguely to the charred carcasses nailed to the ground by the Marine’s DCA on the open field around us.
“Do you have another shopping cart able to fly?” Ali insisted, raising the tone.
“To go on orbit?” The rebel was surprised. “Well, there’s the old Thunder in Hangar C, but General Aboud Mahmoud will kill us all if…”
“That’ll do! Thanks!” my partner concluded before starting running.
Around us, the whole city was abandoned as many of the surviving soldiers and civilians were hiding underground, according to the insurgents we came across. We quickly found the heavy bomber on the other extremity of the shelled tarmac. I ordered the remaining mechano-droids to disconnect the coolant pumps while I triggered the opening of the warehouse roof.
“Get to the choppa!” Ali barked at me while unlocking the hatch between the cockpit and the huge side turbines.
“You’re banned from action movies until further notice,” I replied after jumping in from the ladder. I had more important things to focus on than my partner’s jests. Because, inside, the control computer dated to the time when soda drinks were sold without an insulin shot. Half the instruments were broken. Yet, the Separatists managed to desecrate the dashboard with a touch-sensitive panel. “A sense of priorities equivalent to their taste…” I coughed, taking place in the cobweb-covered foam seat designed for an out-of-shape human.
The rusty post-nuclear reactor began its cycle by squeaking, but the next minute we were in space. Nevertheless, the spectacle made me regret the mud that Ali and I had spread throughout the cockpit.
“Is it the fourth of July already?” my copilot asked while looking at the rain of flames the two fleets were spitting at each other’s face. “I love these explosions and colors! It’s as mesmerizing as Travolta’s crotch in Perfect!”
“Could you help me locate Gebhardt’s Hornet rather than rave about pelvic thrusts and mass destruction?”
Disappointed, Ali questioned the control computer and the instruments that were still responding. The dashboard kept lighting up like a Parkinsonian’s Operation. Every second, a missile or a 20 mm salvo came close to our ship and her two tons of nuclear charges.
“This old cuckoo is as sluggish as the Alliance’s administration!” I shouted.
“Let’s lighten her up!” my useless copilot replied through the alarms. Pulling the control lever from the cargo hold, she triggered a new siren that tore our eardrums. Our deadly load was slowly poured into space and floated until a Marine destroyer struck it head-on. The deflagration blew our bomber away, and we spun endlessly in the middle of fierce dogfights.
“I prefer when you just stuff yourself with Giggles Cookies!” I roared before hearing my brain-dead baboon muttering inaudible excuses. I then assigned her to the single machine-gun post to cover our back as a TMC dronefighter was tailing us through a corvette’s shattered bits. These flying vultures clung to cockpits before sucking up all the oxygen.
The radar finally detected the starfighter stolen by our target. Catching up, we saw him cross a cloud of sabotage drones. Blinded, his hornet was hit by an Interceptor coming out of nowhere. Both crashed against the fragile hull of a medical frigate. The giant white ship, shaped like a shark’s tooth, wobbled but managed to maintain his course.
After dodging a third missile, my radio sizzled. “Lee? I just had some enlightenment.”
“Oh, no…” I mewed as I lowered my ears.
Ali was back in the cockpit and took the controls. Not surprisingly, she crashed us against the oversized ambulance for another daily war crime. Fortunately, the ship had been evacuated. The large hangar we rammed into was empty except for the remains of the Hornet. As for the Interceptor, it was nowhere to be found.
