HARM (5 page)

Staying low he crouch walked through the woods, coil-gun ready.  He noted the contour map indicated a bit of a rise ahead and used it to keep a little extra cover between them.  He was getting close.  He finally found a bit of a clearing, something that gave him a slightly longer sighting distance.  Kneeling down, he waited for the enemy mech to appear.

It wasn’t a long wait, his audio pickups at maximum, he could hear the enemy mech coming through the woods before he could see it.  Trees began to shake and then the mech appeared.  He aimed for the junction of the primary weapons blister and the body, knowing a shot against the heavily sloped armour of the spiders front-end would be tough kill.  Joshua fired slightly faster than the Newt and his full power penetrator nearly blew the blister right off the enemy mech.  A laser blast scorched the air right by his shoulder, peeling back the yellow paint from the near miss.

One hundred meters. He began running through the trees towards the now damaged spider-mech, putting his gun into burst mode.   The enemy mech’s secondary laser battery began firing.  He took a hit to his other shoulder, but the lighter laser didn’t penetrate.  Getting a good angle he fired two more penetrators into the mech’s thinner side armour, killing it.  Thick black smoke billowed out of the now dead, but still standing enemy mech. 

A laser blast passed close to his mecha’s head and Joshua ducked down again. 
That was too close.  His adrenaline had been pumping for awhile.  One left, he thought. 
One on one
now
.
 

A good stretch of woods lay in between him and the last spider-mech.
He didn’t have good shot at it unless he exposed himself again and that wasn’t going to happen.  On the other hand, the enemy didn’t have a good shot at him either.  This fight was goin
g to end close-up.  A dog fight. 

He was all for that.
Get in close and get a kill, just like in a fighter.

Running his mech, he closed in with the enemy unit in a zigzag pattern.  He jumped his mech over gullies, crashed through more trees, while utilizing all the cover he could.  Every so often a laser blast would come close, but his dodging was working.  Using the AI’s assistant he snapped off several shots just to keep the alien mech off balance.  Still, the laser blasts came on str
onger as he closed the distance, his cover reducing as he went.

“
Target is within 200 metres.  Kill can be achieved with a single shot through the front armour
,
” the AI announced. 

Several trees blew apart next to him.  Joshua used his mecha’s agility to leap clear to the side and rolled.  For such a heavy machine, the advanced
construction, and artificial muscles made his machine amazingly nimble.  Coming out of his roll, he fired a full power shot at the front quarter of the enemy mech.  The angle was slightly off.  The penetrator created a huge flash as it cut a huge gouge in the frontal armour, not quite penetrating.  The enemy rocked with the hit and seemed almost stunned for a moment.

Joshua was already dodging to the side when the Black Widow fired back.  The laser blast struck the
high and right on the HARM’s chest.  The active molecular armour plating tried to redistribute the
intense
heat and vapourized in a great flash to ablate the blast energy.  A deafening loud bang was muffled by Joshua’s helmet.  This time, red indicators lit up right across the board. 
His visual display blinked on an off rapidly then stabilized. 

The AI blared,
“
Major damage. Stabilizing power systems. Right arm function impaired
.
”  Joshua barely heard the message though.  He was watching the last few seconds of the charging timer count down for the coil gun. 

2… 1…  He raised the right arm to fire, but the
artificial muscles in the
arm
were damaged and
unable to move straight out in front of him.   “Damn!” he yelled.  On instinct, he tipped backwards to get the right angle and fired again.  This time the penetrator struck true
, passing into the power
plant.  The
spider-mech exploded in a great ball of flame
, the weapons blister on top blasted into the air
. 
His visual display dulled momentarily to block the flash then returned to normal.
That probably singed the paint on his mecha
Joshua
figured.

Being out of immediate danger, Joshua took a deep breath and let it out.  “Whoeeh!  That was close.”

“
Command not understood
,
” the AI responded. 

“Disregard. Human expression
of relief
,” he replied.  This AI response normally bothered him, but not this time. Besides, it did learn his expressions and filtered them out from commands.
  “HARM Status,” he asked.

“
Power systems restored.  Right arm
muscles
are part
ially functional.  This unit is requires repair but is
functional
.
”

“Good,” Joshua replied. 

There was a message ping from Dr. Chan.  It was just a simple text.  “
ON WAY TO RENDEZVOUS.  EXCELLENT WORK!  NO MORE SCRATCHES ON X-14 OR I TAKE AWAY THE KEYS.  MEET YOU THERE.
” 
He took a
nother look at the message.  No more scratches?  He’d hit her up for extra insurance coverage next time.  If he knew the doctor, she would probably be studying the damage right away to see how they could improve things.
  Joshua then turned his attention to
the tactical display and saw the survivors of Bravo Company pulling themselves together.  
He started walking in their direction to see if he could help.

As he emerged from the woods, he could see the medics treating a few wounded tankers, and a half dozen wounded infantry.  
No
t
many tankers had survived their tanks exploding.  All the soldiers, even the medics, stopped what they were doing for at least a few seconds to stare that the big robot.

“Anyone ever tell you your camouflage sucks,” a male voice cut in on his com-net.  He looked to find the source, and the head of the HARM mimicked his motion.  “
I’m on the tank t
o your left,” the voice spoke again.  Looking down, he saw Captain Ericson looking up at him from on top of the
surviving tank where he was using the radio. 
He had been conferring with Lieutenant Nguyen about their next moves.

“Good save back there,” Ericson spoke again. “Could have used you earlier.  Lost a lot of good men
and women
today.”

“Sorry about that,” Joshua replied,
some
tension showing in his voice. 

“I know.  Not you
r fault.”  Ericson replied
sympathetically
, “didn’t mean for it to come out that way. 
General’s orders.  I probably would have done the same thing to save those people.  I’m sick of them butchering civilians too.”

“Thanks,” Joshua replied.

“Looks like you took some damage too.”  Ericson then joked, “that nice yellow paint job of yours is a little scratched up.”  He then turned to a couple of his men nearby.  “You guys think this guy thin
ks he’s a bulldozer or dump truck
?”

The men laughed, despite the situation they had just come out of.

“Yeah, the paint job could’ve been better,” Joshua replied.

“Anyhow, thanks for drawing those spiders off. 
We owe you one.”

“Wish I could’ve done more.” Joshua sincerely wished he could have arrived even a few minutes earlier.

“That’s war,” Ericson replied.  “We kicked their ass and that’s what counts right now.”  Pausing for a moment he then continued. “I’m Captain Will Ericson, by the way.”

“Lieutenant Joshua Scott,” Joshua replied. “You guys did great.  Anything I can do right now for you?”

“No.  Medivacs are on the way and we’re pulling out back to the second defensive line. I just got off the horn from General Garcia and I think you’ll be getting a call
pretty quick
.  They’re
impressed with what you did.
  That big robot of yours packs quite a wallop.
  It’ll be a different war once we get more of them.
”

“
Yeah, these HARMs will even the playing field,” Joshua concurred.  “
Okay then. 
X-
14
is heading out.”

“Take care.” Ericson saluted him and turned back to
Lieutenant Nguyen
.

Joshua selected the waypoint for the rendezvous and began
heading
to it
.
 
He had heard rumours that
the
move to Site B
was going to be big.  They would be flying clear across the country and then north to
Canada.
  The Newt presence was supposed to be under control there.

END

This short story was written to introduce the world of Exocrisis Blue. 
In HARM, m
ankind is fighting a desperate action to keep the invading aliens at bay, to keep from being exterminated, and to keep our homes. 
Giant, h
umanoid robot
,
fighting machines called HARMs turn the tide against the invaders.
The HARMs are piloted by humans who can
neu
rally
synchronize with the robot
control systems to gain the maximum potential of the machines.

The full story for Exocrisis Blue begins tens years after the setting in HARM, when the world has reached a new balance.  There are new political factions on the planet, as the old order collapsed during the brutal Alien War.  We are now uneasily sharing our world with the Blue Newts.

In this new world, new characters, and old ones, will figure centrally in the struggle to save the planet or plunge it into a terrible new war.
  An entire series is planned for this storyline.

To keep posted on
exciting
developments in the world of Exocrisis Blue, visit my author’s blog at peterlok.blogspot.com or visit exocrisisblue.blogspot.com for more information about this new world.
  Links to my sites can be found on my Amazon author’s page.