Chapter Sixteen

  Leapers

  “Well, this is different,” Cheape said under her breath as the team looked out from the last of the assembly buildings. There had been very little of interest to her team in the search. The technology was more of a step change from the previous segment than the revolution she had been hoping for.

  Once all the Rigs and Suits were outfitted with the new tri-shot weapons, the turrets had become a negligible threat. To her surprise, each of the other buildings in the lower area was basically a redesign of the first one they had entered. The builders had been determined to ensure that their trap was sprung, no matter which facility someone chose to enter first.

  Other than the posters about the new ‘enemy,’ nothing much changed between them other than the layout. Gas Tank had found something he thought could be used to upgrade the motion sensors, which was good, but that was it.

  While this segment was turning out to be a bit of a bust so far in terms of helping Haven, Cheape was just glad none of her people were seriously hurt or killed so far. The structure ahead might change that, though.

  “To put it mildly,” Sparks agreed. “But does it look a little familiar to you?”

  “How on Haven could it be familiar?” Cheape asked.

  “It doesn’t remind you a little of the Outposts back home?” Sparks waved vaguely. “I mean, what they might have looked like complete.”

  Cheape squinted at the building ahead of them, and then her eyes widened as she recognized parts of the building.

  It was like a magic picture that suddenly cleared, and all doubt vanished in a second.

  “The Builders were on Haven,” Cheape said breathlessly.

  “I’m more worried about the fact that it might be fully operational,” Sparks said worriedly. “Those places looked terrifying.”

  “Fuck that! There might be actual Rigs in there!” Gas Tank said, almost drooling. “Original technology!”

  Five stories tall and taking up an entire block of the segment, the Outpost was an imposing structure. Solid, chunky design with shining metal and narrow slits for windows, it radiated threat. A fact emphasized by the heavy metal door that covered nearly a third of the ground floor.

  The slits and door were almost identical to the ruins on Haven, and Cheape couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before. True, they had only found two partially intact structures so far, but the similarities were too strong to ignore. She should have seen it immediately.

  Seeing the completed structure was a revelation, but by far, the most surprising feature was the row of egg-shaped decorations along the top. They had never found one with the upper floors intact before, so it wasn’t like Cheape could have known. That didn’t change the fact that the design really seemed to clash. The eggs were such a sharp contrast to the blocky design that…

  “FORM UP!” Cheape yelled, “Weapons ready! Everyone!”

  “Cheape, what is it?” Queen Nellie asked over the comms. “I don’t see any readings.”

  “Those eggs, Ma’am,” Cheape reported quickly. “I get a bad feeling about them. They don’t fit.” She raised her weapon and hesitated.

  “Cheape?” Lucy joined the comm line.

  “They might be valuable tech, Ma’am. Permission to—”

  “Do it,” Lucy commanded.

  Cheape didn’t hesitate any longer, firing a combined plasma and slug shot into the egg in the dead center. A fraction of a second before it impacted, the egg launched into the air and grew legs.

  The burning, plasma-wrapped projectile flew through the gap and into the distance.

  Before she could say anything, the other eggs exploded into movement.

  “Kill the bastards!” Cheape yelled, firing the thrusters to shoot up into the air.

  /====<<<>>>====\

  “Remind me to put Cheape down for some R and R,” Nellie said as the woman screamed and unleashed streams of fire into the rapidly moving targets.

  “Good luck with that,” Lucy smirked. “Let’s get a closer look at the enemy units.”

  Nellie nodded, the world slowing around them as they both switched to a higher speed of thought. By the time they were finished, the world was a frozen tableau as the women slipped into the realm of pure information.

  With a mental blink, Nellie was floating above the information table, the screens she had arranged shifting into a dome above and around her.

  Streams of data flowed out of them, forming into a series of still images. The blurred and motion-lagged forms were analyzed and compared, and a wireframe appeared in their center. More and more details were added one split second after another until it was filled, and with a flash, it became a full model and started to rotate.

  Nellie’s mind added tags and information as fast as she noticed them.

  The narrow end of the egg was smooth, while the wider end had a large circular opening that screamed ‘cannon’ to her eyes. Tripod legs had unfolded from the smooth surface, and the long, thin, extended struts looked surprisingly nimble. To her horror, Nellie recognized the springy, hook-like feet as nearly identical to her own foot. She knew from personal experience how much faster it had made her.

  “Another version of the mobile cannon, from the looks of it,” Lucy said drily. “Emphasis on the mobility aspect in this model.”

  “That opening on the front,” Nellie zoomed the image in, seeing the detail on the opening and the ring of hardened metal it held. “Does that look like the turret’s cannons to you?”

  “Yes, but at least twice as large.” Lucy frowned. “To be sure, we need more images of the enemy units with items of known size to add scale.”

  “By the time we have those, the answer will already be obvious.” Nellie sighed. “Ostie, this is getting out of hand.”

  “I’ve sent an automatic activation order to the shield generators on our units, just in case,” Lucy said. “At least we have their prejudice to thank for giving us a chance.”

  “What do you mean?” Nellie asked.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  “They go for strong attacks, not fast ones,” Lucy brought up models of all the other enemies they had encountered so far. “It’s a common theme in their design. I suspect their rapid technological evolution had a lot to do with it. They never lost the ‘power above all’ mentality.” She nodded to another image, this one of the earliest armor display. “Martial societies naturally focus on the most powerful warriors. Even in places that have more agile fighters, the strongest dominate. That creates a mindset that values brute force over speed. Since they advanced unnaturally fast, that mindset didn’t change.”

  Nellie looked over the designs again, seeing what Lucy meant almost immediately. Even in the earliest days of the firearm, there had been a drive to make them fire faster and send more bullets at the target per minute. That drive gave birth to numerous inventions, all of which combined into the gattling gun and, later, the machine gun.

  They had only seen evidence of one such weapon since they arrived here, and it had seemed like more of a suppression device than an actual offensive one. The robots had only really used the weapons when their primary ordinance was reloading.

  Which was strange.

  Gas Tank already had a dozen designs in mind for chaingun versions of his tri-ammo rifle, and he had only invented the thing a few hours ago. The Builders had the tech for centuries, but they never seemed to combine their ammo types or produce anything close to a machinegun version.

  The only way any of it made sense was if Lucy was right.

  They had clearly come across the chaingun somewhere since most of their tech in those early days was taken from other planets or societies. They must have encountered machine guns as well. Yet, there was no sign of them or the designs that would naturally have followed. It was as if the Builders took one look at them and discarded the idea immediately in favor of larger, single-shot versions. If even half those turrets had been rapid-fire, her people would have been killed or driven off immediately.

  More than anything, it meant they had finally found what she had been looking for.

  A systemic failing in the First Interstellar Empire.

  One chink in the armor was all she had ever needed.

  “Cheape, listen up. I have a plan…”

  Things moved quickly from then on. The roof of the building had hosted almost thirty of the Leapers—as they had been named in a foul-mouthed tirade by Sparks—and they did indeed fire much larger crystal ammo.

  Nellie had been spot-on about their speed as well. The damn things were like jackrabbits on speed, only stopping to fire a single oversized crystal that shot the Leaper backward nearly as fast as the crystal fired forward. The result was less than a half second of stillness before each attack. The low rate of fire was not exactly an advantage when there were thirty rounds coming at them from all angles.

  Lucy’s decision to activate all the team’s shields remotely had saved them from being wiped out in the first few seconds, and that was all Cheape’s people had needed. The weapons designed by the ingenious Gas Tank tore through seven of the drones before the fight even really began.

  Those ponderous-looking rigs and heavy Boost Suits danced and flew under their control. Those weren’t drivers in those things. Those were pilots.

  Each and every one was skilled in their use as the best the Imperium had to offer.

  As calm under pressure as Crush’s Marshalls, they covered each other. Five times during the battle, Nellie saw someone throw themselves into the way of one attack or another to save a teammate’s shield from being breached.

  If there was a standout, it was the newly rebuilt Sparks.

  Her Boost Suit was fucking everywhere, a Tri-ammo Rifle in each hand as she turned the battle into a ballet of vengeful destruction.

  “Ten Leapers left,” Cheape reported.

  “Watch for reinforcements,” Lucy advised.

  “I have a solution to that,” Cheape replied, and Nellie saw her raise one Boost Suited fist into the air. “Advance!”

  “Wait, what?” Nellie gaped as the squad reformed into a tight group with the Suits in the front.

  They charged forward, catching the drones out of position and trading the lead spot in a constant shift between the three suits.

  In moments, they were mere steps from the large door.

  Nellie opened her mouth to order them into a defensive formation but saw Cheape’s suit leap ahead with a revving plasma chainsaw in each hand.

  She hit the wall, sparks flying in twin arcs as Gas Tank and Sparks grabbed the arms of her suit, forcing them down.

  “Is this for real?” Lucy asked, looking as shocked as Nellie felt.

  “Ramrod!” Cheape stood aside, the team parting as the rearmost Rig glowed with energy for a second before the pilot ejected.

  A split second later, the Rig hit the weakened door and smashed a hole right through it.

  “Recovery!” Cheape ordered. Another Rig snatched the pilot out of the air and ran through, with the rest of the team right behind them.

  “What the fuck?” Nellie gasped as they disappeared inside the Outpost.

  The moment the last Rig entered the structure, a metal plate slammed down over the door, and each and every signal went dead.

  /====<<<>>>====\

  Tee had been right about the lights in the Outposts. They flicked on the moment the team entered. It was jarring seeing everything looking so new and shiny when Cheape and her people had only ever seen them looking all aged and worn in the ruins.

  Still, it was familiar enough that they had a rough idea of what defenses there were and where. It was what she had bet on when coming in here. The first few meters never had any sort of trap other than the emergency door that slammed down in the case of a breach. It was what she had cut through the first time they found a ruin, just her and Tee.

  Still a fond memory, but one Cheape had to banish as the team lined up against the breached door behind her.

  “Everyone get ready; we trained for this.” Cheape nodded to the other two suits, and they moved as one. Gas Tank went left, catching the lowering cannon barrel and forcing it upward again. Sparks did the same on the right while Cheape dashed forward, kicking the central barrier aside before reaching up and catching the dropping weight to hold the second breach barrier for as long as she could.

  The Rigs rushed past her before Gas Tank and Sparks twisted their loads aside and rushed her, tackling her suit out of the way before the drop barrier slammed down.

  It was a perfectly timed and practiced maneuver they could all have done in their sleep. She only noticed the dead comm lines when she tried to report her team past the first barricade.

  “Switch to local radio,” Cheape said, letting the order come out through her suit speakers. “We’re on our own in here.”

  “Remind me never to complain about morning training ever again,” Sparks said with feeling.

  “Try not to get torn in half again, and we will,” Gas Tank replied.

  “Eat a bag of dicks, Tank,” Sparks flipped him off.

  “Order people,” Cheape sighed. Sparks wasn’t wrong. They had trained for this situation.

  The challenge with training her people had been finding realistic simulations to train in. They didn’t exactly have the computing power to dedicate to coming up with things from scratch.

  Tee had, as always, come to her rescue.

  He had used their scans of the ruins and the research Haven’s people had done on what they had taken to calling the ‘Originators’ to recreate his best guess at a fully functional Outpost. Cheape had used that to train her people in attacking hostile structures.

  Although she never intended ever to tell anyone, she had used scans of Imperium ships for the boarding party training. It wasn’t like she was planning on attacking Imperium ships or anything—she was neither suicidal nor stupid—they were just the best scans she had to work with.

  When it came to the Outposts, Tee had worked up several versions. Most of those were likely above the level of tech they had in this segment, but it was still good training for what they were facing right now. In a way, it was almost soothing to find themselves inside an Outpost of all things.

  “So, are we going to talk about how Haven was clearly a Builder planet or what?” Sparks asked as they scanned the area around them for telltale threat markers.

  “Well, we didn’t talk about how similar Havenites look to the Builders in Queen Lucy’s presentation, so I’m guessing not.” Gas Tank chuckled.

  “It seems like the Builders were everywhere, so it would make sense,” Cheape offered diplomatically.

  There was complete silence.

  “What?”

  “We just didn’t think you would agree with us,” Sparks said carefully.

  “You match the average height, build, and musculature of Builders,” Cheape said with a shrug. “Given the Outposts, which Lucy didn’t find mentioned on other planets, the First Interstellar Empire being the Originators for your people is a logical assumption at this point.”

  “So we are, like, inheritors of all this stuff?” Andy asked hopefully.

  “You might be,” Cheape nodded. “Just remember to ask the big question before you collect it.”

  “What’s the big question?” Sparks asked.

  “What the fuck happened to them,” Cheape said with a sigh. “Because if they controlled the whole damn universe… where did they all go?”

  Another moment of silence.

  “I should have stayed a fucking farmer,” Andy grumbled to general laughter.