Once upon a time, humanity would say "It's raining cats and dogs." This was to represent the hardships brought on by heavier-than-normal rainstorms, but it was used humorously, a fun idiom.
And yet when Pa-5 heard the panicked calls of "It's raining Auds!", nothing was funny about it. With a start, she kicked the blankets free, tumbled off her bunk, and collided with Ec-5. She muttered an apology racing to her bunk locker. She was dressed with boots on in twenty seconds, heart pounding as the noises from outside escalated. There was the occasional call, then thuds all around. She muffled a scream as one such thud happened right over her head, denting the roof paneling.
The shouts were obscured by gunfire, heavy machinery powering up, and blood-curdling screams she knew better than her own. She snapped on her helmet, switched on the HUD, and experimentally discharged her barrel. There wouldn't be a better time. She grunted, shoving open the door and feeling the mass of bodies pouring out behind her, Ec-5 by her shoulder. She hadn't made it four steps before a mass of fur slammed into her like a WAV, sending her tumbling. She lost her pistol somewhere, and her hand felt like a thousand needles poked through. Her scream mixed in with the others, yet she rose. This was no place to die.
Her eyes locked with Ec-5 just as he was ripped open from neck to hip. The others scattered away as his body, still in the Aud's maw, detonated. The clever man rigged his suit's shielding core to overload. Hers was the reason she was still alive. The Aud puffed smoke, eyes bulging. But as a green, it was beyond such a simple emergency explosive. It chased after another group.
Like hailstones, more tumbled down from the black stalactites kilometers above their heads. She nearly lost an arm to another Aud, rolling reflexively. It would've continued into another over her unfortunate fellows, but another mass of metal and hard lines was there to halt the charge. The pilot's vocoder rumbled. "Engineers, report to the nearest WAV--"
Another Aud came to assist its brethren, yellow fur denting the rear of the WAV and sending it tumbling, mirroring her predicament. The pilot never had a chance to stand. A flurry of movement covered the frame, and a spurt of blood escaped a gash in the machine, the only indication of a death otherwise forgotten. Pa-5 was already gone, dashing alongside El-5 to the nearest WAV garage as the pilot had ordered. They snapped off wayward shots at whatever looked larger than a WAV in their peripherals.
They reached what looked like a semi-safe checkpoint, where a line of WAVs supported each other. The gunmen and turrets behind them fired pulse rounds and sonic waves, disorienting and weakening, but rarely killing. They waited for a moment of quiet, then dashed down the temporary no-man's land. One Aud crashed down from a rooftop, its clumsy tumble of legs nicking Pa-5. Her partner wasn't so lucky, crushed under the main bulk. She just ran faster, holding back tears of frustration.
She slipped past the line of armors, past the line of turrets, and past the next line, and the line after that. Any Aud in this tiny fort section were chained to the ground under paralyzing electric nets. She kept a wide berth as WAVs stomped and fired heavy rounds into their hides, slowly drilling past their nigh-invincible exteriors. She couldn't determine if they would make it through before the defensive lines broke.
As ordered, her destination was the closest garage. She flung herself against the scutumsteel barriers, hand pressed into the pad. It whirred, and she was in, slamming the gate behind her. She collapsed on the first bench she saw, clutching her chest. Hard as she tried, a trickle of tears ran free. Ec-5. The pilot. El-5. Whoever else was caught with their pants down, or was ready but died anyway. It wasn't fair. Her foot was nudged by an officer, an orange band around his bicep. "Were you injured?"
All she could manage was a nod. He dragged over a woman who wordlessly kneeled before her and attended to her ribs and hand. The officer was gone as she was injected with liquid sun.
The golden fluid bubbled with volatility as it was forced beneath her skin. She felt like a blanket had wrapped around her heart, and while the bliss was temporary, her hand throbbed less. The medic studied her while setting the bones in her hand. "Rest here a minute, then go down to report."
She was abandoned to count the seconds herself, using the exercise to calm her breath. As it ticked by, she went over the nightmare. Reasoning and rationale provided little to no help to explain what happened: Fort Io was crushed from above. The Auds should've done what they always did, attack the walls until they were rendered unconscious or lost interest in being zapped and soniced. Then the engineers, guarded by WAVs, would repair what damage they could and retreat inside. But this attack was vertical, and the height of the cavern ceiling was nothing to scoff at. The thought that even the smallest Aud, no less than nine hundred kilograms, could haul up the near-vertical walls of the caves, never mind crossing the ceiling to position themselves over the fort, was impossible. Pa-5 refused to believe it.
This wasn't just a rare instance of the Auds learning. They had shown signs in the past of adaptive capabilities. Some of the smarter ones let their brethren rush in as meat shields. Or they would dig under fort walls. That was how Fort Helio had fallen. But not in a hundred years would any of them be smart enough to concoct such a plan, and then communicate it to the rest. This was coordination and foresight that she should've only seen among humans.
She stood, rolling aching shoulders, and proceeded to the back of the garage, stepping around the holes carved through the flooring. There lay a flight of stairs, and at the bottom was a catwalk. Below her was a familiar sight: a stacked hanger. Like books on bookshelves, WAVs were lined neatly in single-file, the heavier ones toward the bottom and requiring anti-grav modules to be moved to the lifting elevators. At the center of it all was a central platform, men and women in gray skinsuits rushing around to strap in whatever spare pilot had made it down. Once the pilots were secured, they skipped nearly all pre-deployment checks and directed them back to the elevators. Profound shame dotted her brow. No matter how much she admired the men and women who stepped into those suits, she was still grateful for staying behind the makeshift defense.
The mad frenzy of it all provided a faint comfort. If she ignored the situation outside, it merely looked like the engineers were preparing for a routine horde attack. The illusion broke when another officer grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along. "No time for rest. Engineer, right? You were to report to the sitesman."
Pa-5 twisted free. The sitesman was the operator of the entire fort, the ultimate authority on-site unless a general was visiting. What did he want with her? "I'm better off helping out down there, sir."
"You're better off where you're told. Your betters have operations handled." He scowled, the darkness of the hanger contorting the skin lines into deeper parodies of themselves. Because it had originally been a subsystem cave belly, the hangar was a hollowed-out cavern. Poor lighting, among other things, was a frequently complained-about result of not constructing the whole space from scratch. He directed her back in the right direction and walked back up the catwalk. "We need to ration how many pilots are sent up. It's not full capacity, so they'll make do without you."
Rationing. He made it sound like the soldiers thrown back out into the fighting, no, slaughter, were nothing more than a number to be toyed with. She could never stand that kind of language, even after years of using it herself. Pa-5 shimmied down the welded ladders to save time, each lower catwalk she landed on emitting thuds of wounded scutumsteel. The final one she rolled, ignoring how her chest cried out in agony.
She stumbled on the rebound and was caught by warm arms. Her eyes looked up to see Ra-3's, mournful and destitute, yet burning as bright as ever. He didn't ask her if she was alright, or who she saw die. She didn't question the new patch covering the side of his head or ask who he saw die. They just hugged, frayed emotions shared through a simple gesture. They would've stayed there longer, but Er-2 was there as well, calling them to hurry along.
The bottom floor was a free plaza of space, surrounded by four walls of heavy-clad WAVs. Every half a minute, one would be summoned to the fitting platform above, leaving another empty spot. Each new suit deployed wasn't a celebratory cause; just a replacement, serving as a grim reminder of the bloodshed still above their heads, and a continual counter of time squandered.
Altogether there were eight of them, assembled into a line and given additional injections of a stronger concentration. The liquid sun was so potent this time their irises turned gold, and their veins bulged. The euphoria bordered on uncomfortable, but no one voiced any complaints. The officer who had completed the injections nodded to herself, then deployed a communications rig. The medical staff supervising stepped back, an indication of privacy. It whirred, unfolding as lights blazed to life along the cylindrical exterior. The shell separated, and an emitter within blasted a projection of Ul-5 into being. He fizzled, reminiscent of electricity and water.
The sitesman of Fort Io possessed a completely shaven head like the rest of the fort's inhabitants, but his eyebrows made up for it, two thick bushes that scrunched into beady eyes. He wet his lips and cleared his throat. As he spoke, he fingered his yellow band. "I'm not one for beating around the bush, and we don't have time to break things gently, so I'm just going to come out and say it. Fort Io is finished. Wherever the Auds pulled this stunt from, it's what they needed to tilt this battle in their favor. We've lost too much manpower and too much architecture has been damaged for us to continue operating even if we pull through. The chances of it are so low that you shouldn't hope for it."
An engineer I was unfamiliar with spoke up. "Sitesman, what does that have to do with us? We could hold out longer if we got back to our posts to provide some extra hands."
"Yes, you could," he acknowledged, "but that would be pointless. There's no tip-toeing around our imminent deaths. But we need to warn The Last Beacon about our fall. With us gone, it'll just be them. No more outpost locations providing buffers against Aud hordes. They'll need to prepare for a horde that's going to come from all directions the next time the Auds attack."
"Haven't you already sent them--" The question was forcing its way past Pa-5's lips when she was pinned by a petulant stare.
"I've attempted to. Multiple times. But something happened to our transmitting towers. The common hypothesis is that they were knocked over during the first waves of falling Auds. It's odd, given that even if ours are damaged, the capital should be able to compensate, but since we can't access them to send signals back to the Last Beacon, we've assumed the worst." He walked up the line. halting in front of Ra-3 with a sharp turn. "That's where you all come in. While the rest of us hold back and distract the Auds--maybe even take a chunk with us, you eight are to take a light WAV and split up, making your way to the Last Beacon on your paths. They've been pre-recorded and uploaded to the HUDs, so don't worry about getting lost."
His hands moved behind his back. "You have two minutes for questions, then we're deploying you."
A shaky Po-1 went first. "Sir, we're not pilots. How d-do you expect us to make it to the Last Beacon in WAVs? Never mind that, how are w-we to make it to the city before the hordes?"
"You're not pilots, but you've all completed basic piloting training. It's better than nothing. As for the time concerns, that's why we've allocated lighter and faster suits for you to wear. You're not going to be pretty piloting them, and you won't be able to fight for squat. I don't expect most of you to survive the trip, which is why there's more than one of you. Next."
"How much of a head start can we expect before they begin pursuit?"
"That depends on how long the Fort can keep limping along. I wouldn't bet anything past forty minutes, but it'd be better still to stay economic with those estimates. We'll send out one last transmission when we're about to be toppled, but it's debatable if your WAV's communication modules will catch it."
"Will there only be eight of us deployed on this…suicide run?"
"Not a bad name. No, you're just the first wave. If any further engineers make it to this zone, we'll send half of them after you and keep the rest here to do their duty. I hardly expect you to make it with a head start, so I'm holding out less hope for them. Any last-minute ones?"
When no one stepped forward, he sighed. "I know you're all terrified. Believe me, I know. The situation isn't better here, so look at things this way: you'd have no chance of survival if you stayed. By being one of the few to leave, you might make it back to the Last Beacon. If anyone makes it, be sure to drink something in our memory. Dismissed!"
Additional engineers appeared as the sitesman saluted, dematerializing as the shell collapsed on itself. They were guided to a line of waiting suits, already powered and on standby. She took a moment to run her fingers over the interlocking plating of the shoulders, wondering if she would've had a longer lifespan as a pilot. She might've gotten transferred back to the Last Beacon if she proved herself to be worthy of BHS recruitment. The briefness of it was banished by a supportive hand on the shoulder.
Mounting the gurney, she let herself be strapped in. WAVs couldn't be taken on and off like a traditional suit of knight's armor. Even the smallest class of suits were easily twice Pa-5's size. The internals had been arranged in a way to make room for a single occupant, inserted via the gurney. In addition to delivering the pilot, the gurney also acted as the spine of the suit, a modular piece that could be pulled in and out when the pilot entered or exited their suit.
The gurney was lifted, and she crossed eyes with one of the engineers manipulating the controls. The other had tight lips and something between a glare and pitying eyes. The view was cut off as the gurney was turned on an axis and dropped into the waiting WAV, hitting the bottom like a plunged harpoon. The tinniness of freshly-polished scutumsteel embraced her as her brow pressed against the padded helmet.
They began the first round of checks, ensuring each major component and external module were properly attached. Bolts were tightened, free space was vacuum-sealed, and the paneling was minimally adjusted to better fit the WAV to its inhabitant. Then onto the electric and weapons systems. The battery alone was checked three times.
The motors were the last thing to be examined, but time was scarce. All the engineers overseeing the fitting process could get was feet stomping and crude attempts to grab objects before they were ushered away. Movement was difficult; recalling the pilot who saved El-5, Pa-5 tried to copy his posture and stance. Things did get easier, but near-falls were still common
To save on the precious minutes being traded for lives above, the fitting assistants brought out anti-grav modules. The nodes were slotted into spare module openings, making everything instantly lighter. The sudden weight shift was another distraction but ultimately served well.
"Don't get used to this kind of ease of movement," one of the engineers explained. She had overseen the insertion process. "The nodes act on independent battery packs; they won't last longer than an hour."
The trip brought them even lower than the bottom storage plaza. She suspected they were now out of the fort proper and entering a semi-converted minor tunnel system. Five separate pathways branched out, and they were split into groups. She cast a feeble wave to the others, wishing she hadn't been the only one-man group. Then her only companions were her guide and the tunnel.
"Have you reviewed your path yet?" As a matter of fact, she had, but not too closely. Summoning her HUD again was as easy as tapping the thumb interface. An awkward out-of-body experience took place, where it felt like she was pulled from the suit and propelled outside into the major cave system above. Behind her was Fort Io, a green model of the defensive complex from afar, something she had never seen. It was situated east of the Greater Western Tunnel System, identified as a long, complex line of spirals that drifted away and off the grid.
Her path was marked by a line of dots, beginning at a cliff base lower than them. She guessed that was her initial destination. Then, the line curved upward, taking her right back up. She frowned. That couldn't be right. She continued to trace the line, discovering with more incredulity that her path brought her in a wide arc around the fort, then further back still. Into the Greater Western Tunnel System.
"Hey. Did the sitesman make a mistake?"
Her guide gave a tense shrug. "I don't know. If it looks suicidal, just keep in mind that all the others' are just as bad, or even worse." He concentrated on his task, bringing them before a thick slab of scutumsteel. He tapped two points in the blockage. "Hit these locations with half of your WAV's strength."
She lifted the arms, positioned them, then activated the pistons. Like point-blank cannons, the scutumsteel covering her knuckles crashed against the wall. It parted neatly down the middle with a minimal amount of chipping, revealing another world, expansive and alien, yet just as familiar.