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  “This planet is messed up,” Roar said. “Ugly ass xenos everywhere.”

  “Not as ugly as that one planet?” Shock said. “What was it called?”

  “Choofas?” Roar asked, taking a step. The creatures adjusted and stayed out of her way. “Or Balnep?”

  “Who names those places?” Shock said. “And, yeah, Balnep. Remember those snakes that laid the pyramid eggs?”

  “Oh, those were gross,” Roar said, taking another step. The creatures adjusted again, still moving constantly, but easily avoiding the massive mech foot. “They’d rot and the young would come up out of that rot.”

  “Yeah! Then they’d eat their own tails off, bleeding that yellow pus everywhere before slithering off to complete their circle of life,” Shock said. “I mean, what kind of deity invents–?”

  Roar took a third step and the creatures stopped moving.

  “Roar. Get back here,” Shock said.

  “I see it,” Roar said, angling her rifle down at the creatures, moving slowly so as not to spook them. “Sending you my vid feed so you can share in the creepy.”

  “You aren’t kidding,” Shock said. “What’s the call?”

  “I’m calculating mass,” Roar said.

  “Doing the same,” Shock replied.

  “There’re enough of these things to swarm me, but not enough to take me down,” Roar said. “I’m gonna move.”

  “I’ve got your back,” Shock said, turning to push past the palms. He paused. “Hold up. I see something.”

  “What?” Roar asked, about to take a step, her mech foot paused about a meter off the ground. “What, Shock?”

  “We missed it,” Shock said. “But I dialed up every sensor when yours stopped picking up those things.”

  “Enlighten me, please,” Roar said.

  “Pheromones,” Shock said. “These palm trees have sap that is stinky with pheromones.”

  “So?”

  “Now you’re stinky with pheromones,” Shock said.

  “Okay, what does that mean?” Roar asked.

  “Not a clue,” Shock said. “But I think the pheromones help mask the creatures somehow.”

  “Why?” Roar asked.

  “Again, I don’t–”

  “Holy shit!” Roar cried as the creatures leapt as one and began covering her mech. “They’re on me!”

  “I’m coming!” Shock shouted and crashed through the palms.

  “Get them off! Get them off!” Roar yelled, swatting at the things.

  “Uh, Roar? Stop it. You’re hurting them,” Shock said.

  “I don’t care! They’re all over me!”

  “But they aren’t hurting you,” Shock said and started laughing. “They aren’t even hurting each other. Look closely.”

  Roar looked out of her cockpit and gasped.

  “Are they…?”

  “Yeah, they are,” Shock said. “You have little xenos trying to make more little xenos all over your mech.”

  “This is so gross,” Roar said. “I’m getting out of here.”

  “Careful, don’t squish them,” Shock said, still laughing. “They’re kind of adorable when they copulate.”

  “You suck,” Roar said as she started walking while trying to wipe the creatures off her mech as gently as possible.

  She only managed to get a quarter of them off by the time she reached a different set of palms. The second she pushed through those palms, the creatures dropped off on their own and scurried back to where they had been.

  “Dammit!” Shock snapped. “Now they’re on me!”

  “They’re territorial,” Roar said. “Keep moving and they go away. I guess that spot is their love spot.”

  “Crazy ass xenos, man,” Shock said as he got past the second set of palms. “I guess we all got our kinks, though.”

  “I guess so,” Roar said and kept walking.

  She made it only about ten more meters before she stopped dead in her tracks.

  “We’re here,” she said, staring out at the carnage of the drop zone. “Sweet Jesus…”

  “No shit,” Shock said, coming up next to her.

  Broken and twisted battle armor lay everywhere. Warped carbines littered the ground. In the middle of the drop zone stood an obliterated drop ship. It looked like something had cracked it open like a nut.

  “What’s that?” Shock asked, pointing at a pile of white that flashed in the sun.

  “I’ll check,” Roar said and moved out into the drop zone, her rifle at the ready.

  She turned in a slow circle as she made her way around the cracked open drop ship then froze when she saw what the white was.

  “Bones,” Roar said. “It’s a pile of bones. Jesus, Shock, it looks like every single soldier is piled here.”

  “Let’s call it in to Chomps,” Shock said then cried out.

  Roar spun about and Shock was gone. She double checked her scanners and there was no sign of the mech. Absolutely no sign of a thirty-foot-tall battle mech that weighed tons. She opened the comms, but before she could call the rest of the team, everything in front of her went dark.

  6.

  Shock grunted as his mech hit hard. He had no idea how far he fell, but it was far enough that the cradle gave his body a good thump. His spine protested at the jolt, but he recovered quickly and sprang to his feet.

  The top of his mech cleared the ceiling of the tunnel he found himself in, but not by much. He looked up and could just barely make out an opening far, far above.

  “Shit,” he mumbled to himself. “That’s one hell of a fall.”

  He turned his scanners up to full, but all he got was static and feedback so he dialed them down until they stopped glitching. The lower levels didn’t give him any useful readings, but they did keep him from developing a migraine.

  “Alright, alright, how do I get out of this?”

  He tried the comms, but as he suspected, the signal was worse than his scanners.

  “Gonna have to use eyes and ears.”

  Shock switched on his halogens and the tunnel in front of him was illuminated with enough wattage that it could have been day down in the subterranean wherever he found himself in. The feed from a dozen external microphones crackled in his ears and he stayed put, listening hard for any sign of movement.

  Nothing.

  “Right,” he muttered. “Climb up or go forward?”

  He looked up again and visually studied the earth that surrounded the chute he’d fallen down. He wasn’t a geologist, but he knew mech physics. There was no way the earth would hold if he grabbed it. So, he tried anyway.

  “Yep,” he said after a few fistfuls of earth collapsed on top of his mech.

  He lowered his arms and turned in a circle. The tunnel extended for as far as he could see in either direction. The halogens lit up a path for a good two hundred meters, all Shock had to do was decide which way he wanted to go.

  “If the drop zone is above,” he said, “then that means we came from that way.”

  He pointed in the direction he thought would lead back towards the LZ.

  “But, what good does that do me? I can walk as far as I want and I’ll probably pass right under the LZ. Might as well go exploring.”

  He turned and walked his mech in the opposite direction of the LZ.

  “Probably a bad idea,” he said to himself. “Gonna get lost without…”

  He stopped, popped open a hatch on the thigh of his right leg, plucked out a pole about half a meter long, and jammed it into the floor of the tunnel. A beeping noise filled his comms and he smiled. Then he frowned.

  “That’s going to get annoying,” he said.

  He started walking again. And walking. And walking.

  ***

  “Goddammit!” Roar yelled as she threw punch after the punch.

  The massive xeno dodged each punch she threw, answering the attacks with whipcrack shots from its tentacles, knocking Roar off balance again and again.

  “Chomps! Anyone! Can you r
ead me?” Roar yelled into the comms. “Come in, goddammit!”

  “Roar? Your signal is weak. What’s going on?” Chomps replied.

  “In the shit!” Roar shouted. “In the shit!”

  She cried out as pain shot from her left wrist up her arm. She looked down to see five tentacles wrapped about her mech’s wrist, all squeezing and twisting with enough force that the metal alloy was showing signs it was about to buckle.

  “No you don’t!” Roar shouted and slammed her other fist into what she thought might be the xeno’s face. It was very hard to tell.

  The xeno let go of the mech’s wrist and hopped back out of reach, its body shaking and shuddering in what Roar hoped was pain. She took a precious second to look around for her KYAG, but it was nowhere to be seen.

  “Gonna need some help here!” Roar shouted as the xeno came at her once again.

  She dove, tucked her shoulder, and rolled clear of the attack, letting the xeno fly over her with barely ten centimeters between them. Roar came up on a knee and smacked at a panel on her left hip. A one-meter-long wand popped out and she grabbed it, snapped her wrist, and smiled as the wand crackled with electric energy.

  “You can handle explosive rounds, but not rockets,” Roar said as she slowly got to her feet and took a few steps back, her eyes locked on the xeno that was turning to face her. “Plasma hurts you, but doesn’t stop you. Lasers slice and dice you without a problem.”

  She held the crackling wand out.

  “How do you feel about some good old-fashioned voltage?”

  The xeno started to move in for another attack then stopped as Roar dialed up the energy.

  “Good,” Roar said. “You’re thinking twice.”

  “Roar? We’ve got you pinged!” Chomps shouted. “I’m sending Wall and Giga your way!”

  “I like the sound of that!” Roar replied. “Thanks, Chomps!”

  “Where’s Shock?” Chomps asked. “Can you give me a status update on Shock? We can’t ping his mech. He’s off the grid.”

  “Shock’s location is unknown at the moment,” Roar said, taking a few steps to the side as she tried to circle the xeno.

  It wasn’t having that. It didn’t attack, but it also wasn’t going to be flanked, and matched her move for move, keeping the two huge forms equidistant from each other.

  Roar gave the wand a wave and the xeno twitched, but didn’t retreat further.

  “Did you see what happened to Shock?” Chomps asked.

  “Busy at the moment, Chomps,” Roar said. “Let me handle the super xeno in front of me then I can worry about Shock.”

  “Super xeno?”

  “Sending vid,” Roar said.

  “Shit. Another big one.”

  “Exactly. This one makes the ones up on the Dorso look like kittens.”

  “That a shock wand in your hand?”

  “Nope, just happy to see you,” Roar replied.

  “Glad you can keep your sense of humor,” Chomps said. “Wall and Giga should be to you in less than five.”

  “Tell them to watch out for the humping critters,” Roar said.

  “I don’t know how to respond to that,” Chomps said.

  “Sending video.”

  “Damn… That’s wrong.”

  “Yeah. Now leave me alone.”

  The xeno leapt and Roar swiped with the wand, catching the alien across three tentacles as she dove to the side to avoid the eight that were whipping towards her legs.

  She twisted as she tucked her knees to her chest and tumbled head over heels, shooting her legs out at the last second to stop her fall. Pistons clunked as she pushed her mech to its limits, forcing the hydraulics to increase pressure before her feet even touched the ground. In one movement, she stopped her fall while also jumping back at the xeno.

  The thing opened its maw and clamped down around Roar’s free hand. But Roar was ready and let her momentum take them both to the ground in a pile of black flesh and dirt-coated metal. Then she jammed the wand as hard as she could into the xeno and turned it up to full. Even with the mech’s grounding protecting her, she still felt a tingle in the cradle.

  Roar dialed up the voltage until a loud, sharp beep told her the wand was dead, its energy cells completely spent. She was fine with that. The smoking hunk of alien flesh that had her pinned to the ground was dead too, its body a smoldering mass of quickly dissolving goo.

  “I got this one,” Roar said as she was able to slip out from under the melting muck of xeno. “Hunting for my rifle now.”

  “Wall and Giga are still on their way,” Chomps said. “They’ll help you find Shock while Gore and I keep the LZ secure for Schroeder.”

  “I don’t know, Chomps,” Roar said as she ran through a quick diagnostics on her systems. “You may want Schroeder to hold off before bringing her SpecCom team down. If there are more of these huge ones, then we may have a problem.”

  “Too late,” Chomps said. “I already relayed your vid up to the Jethro. Schroeder is hot to kill some behemoths. The drop ship is on its way.”

  “Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Roar said as she pushed a large bush out of the way to find her KYAG lying underneath. “There it is.”

  Movement caught her eye and she looked up as she reached for her weapon.

  Four xenos, equally as large as the last one, were coming at her fast.

  “Dammit,” she said and dropped to her knee, her finger already on the KYAG’s trigger and firing before she even had time to aim.

  Trees and bushes were sliced apart by the lasers, sending greenery falling and flying everywhere. Then Roar had the KYAG locked on target. She grinned wide even as the four xenos kept on coming.

  “Pew pew pew, bitches,” she said.

  ***

  “Twenty meters!” Giga yelled. “We’re almost to you, Roar!”

  There was no answer from the comms.

  “Roar!”

  “Not getting a signal,” Wall said. “Her comms went dead.”

  “Shit,” Giga replied as she pushed her mech to the limits of its agility.

  She dodged trees, leapt over bushes, shoved away vines, all in a mad dash to get to the ping in her display that showed her where Roar was.

  Wall was less subtle. He didn’t so much dodge trees as barrel through them. Bushes weren’t leapt over, they were trampled. Vines were torn apart and obliterated in his wake. A rather large tree that put the oaks of ancient Earth to shame was sent falling to the wayside as he lowered his shoulder and took out most of its trunk.

  “Leave some planet for the colonizers!” Giga yelled.

  “They can grow more,” Wall replied. “Shit grows on this planet.”

  A screeching noise could be heard ahead and Giga pumped her legs, doubling her speed despite the system protests she received from her mech’s display.

  “Giga, careful,” Chomps warned over the comms. “Your mech is sending me distress calls.”

  “I’m good, Chomps,” Giga said. “I’ll back off as soon as I get to Roar.”

  “She’s lying,” Wall said. “She won’t back off until she finds Shock.”

  “Snitch,” Giga said as she cleared the last clump of trees then threw her mech into the air, tackling a xeno about its midsection, or what she assumed was its midsection, as it fell through the air at an already engaged Roar.

  “Nice!” Wall yelled, following right behind.

  He used his momentum to send a haymaker of a right punch into another xeno. His was missing most of its tentacles, their smoking nubs wriggling impotently at his mech’s armor.

  Giga came down hard on top her xeno at the same time Wall came down hard on top of his.

  Both xenos screeched so loud it almost shorted the external mics then burst open like water balloons filled with black bile.

  Giga and Wall were up on their feet and yanking the xeno off of Roar at the same time, neither bothering to even check to see if their own mechs had been damaged in the ultrafast scuffle.
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br />   “I’ll hold!” Giga shouted.

  “Good,” Wall replied as he let go of the xeno, Giga held it up as high as she could, and Wall hauled off and punched it dead center on the things’ body mass with everything his mech had.

  It exploded all over Giga’s mech and she whooped and laughed as she activated a wave of static electricity to clear the gunk from her cockpit.

  “I love this job so much,” Giga said.

  “Sitrep!” Chomps called.

  “Roar?” Giga asked.

  Roar stood and picked up her KYAG. It was a bent and warped mess.

  Giga waved her huge arms back and forth and Roar turned to her.

  “Can you hear me?” Giga asked, her mech tapping at where an ear would be if the mech had ears.

  Roar copied the movement and waved her hand at Giga to indicate she couldn’t hear a damn thing.

  It was obvious why. Wrapped about Roar’s sensor array on top of her mech was a tangle of severed tentacles that were slowly turning into dripping sludge. Some of that sludge was seeping into cracks in the metal and seams in the sensor array.

  “We need to get her out of there,” Giga said.

  Wall pulled his rifle from clamps on his back where he’d stashed it for the sprint through the jungle and took up a firing position. “I’ve got us covered.”

  Giga motioned for Roar to pop open her cockpit then held out both mech hands. Roar didn’t hesitate. She opened her cockpit and scrambled out, jumping into the waiting mech hands. Giga brought her close then opened her own cockpit.

  “Hey,” Giga said. “Your personal comms out too?”

  “Whole system shorted when the first xeno collided with my sensor array,” Roar replied, climbing up to sit on the edge of Giga’s cockpit. “I thought I was gonna bleed from my ears at the noise that shit made.”

  “They grow them big planet side,” Giga said.

  “No shit,” Roar replied. “Prayers to every god that they don’t get much bigger.”

  “Where’s Shock? You see him at all before you got nailed?” Giga asked.

  “I turned and he was gone then I didn’t have much chance to think about it after that,” Roar said. “I’ll show you where we were though. You’ll want to see this.”