Rougneck

I shared some behind the scenes stories from The Bloom Chronicles. Now here's a novella that takes place down the road a bit and between books in the series. Very science fiction and also a slow burn. But for those interested in cyborgs and what can happen where flesh and metal meet, this might be up your alley!

"Hey Syn, did you fix the pulse laser on my walker's arm?"

Synthia tried not to grind her teeth. She tried not to let the tendons in her neck stand out. She tried to take three full seconds before she looked up at Rob, the walker pilot, who was just trying to make conversation on his way to a deployment. Mostly, she succeeded. The creases at the corner of her eyes deepened a little before she willed her face back to a neutral mask.

She looked up at him, eventually, and smiled. It wasn't that Rob was any more or less of a dick than the others... it was the nickname he used. Hell, most of them used it. She hated it. Her name was Synthia, not Sin. She wasn't built for sin either... at least not with some clumsy-handed walker-jock that couldn't park his machine on flat ground, let alone in the walker bay of the Roughneck. "You sure you just don't know how to shoot straight?"

He staggered and clutched his chest like he'd been shot. "Ow!"

Synthia rolled her eyes. "Shoot some rocks outside, you'll see."

He grinned. "You're the best, Sin! My favorite weapon tech, hands down!"

She winced before she could stop herself. "Best out of two ain't bad."

"Hey, I know more than two weapon techs! This isn't my first tour with the company, you know," he said.

Synthia nodded. "Yeah, I know. Forget it."

"No... I'm serious. I really do appreciate the work you do. I mean that."

Synthia allowed him a small smile. "It's good, Rob. You better get to your walker or you're going to get demerits on your pay chart."

"Shit! You're right. You're saving my ass left and right, I owe you, Sin! I'll buy you a beer later?"

Synthia sighed. "Another time, maybe. I've got plans."

He pretended to get shot in the chest again and staggered away towards his twelve meter tall humanoid war machine. Synthia ducked back behind the mag-launcher she was recalibrating and blew out a sigh. Of all the things she didn't need, a lonely man with blue balls was definitely near the top of her list.

The heavy metal clanging of the company's other elite fighting force: the mechanized operators. There were four of them assigned to the Roughneck, just like there were four walkers. Unlike the walkers the mech-ops team were deployed either to support the metal juggernauts or independently, when a smaller footprint was favored. The walkers took up a lot more room and were the ultimate war machines. Tanks on legs. No, not tanks, weapon platforms. Synthia admired, respected, and loved what they could do. The mech-ops people, on the other hand, flat out scared her.

"Hey Synthia," the commander of the mech-ops team said as he stomped past her.

Synthia looked up at him, faked a smile, and said, "Hope it's another boring hike, Lieutenant Alders."

The lieutenant nodded his head toward the walkers that towered over them all in the Roughneck's bay and said, "With those beasts stomping around anything local will be long gone by the time we get there."

Synthia nodded at another one of the mech-ops as she caught her eye. Corporal Murphy, she thought her name was. The cyborgs stomped past her on their way to the staging area just outside the bay doors. She failed to suppress a shiver.

Walkers were one thing. Tall, armed to the teeth and armored to shrug off enemy fire. They were pure machine. Death machine, maybe, but still, just a machine. Synthia could understand them and, more importantly, she could understand the beauty in their simple purpose and how they moved. She failed the aptitude test to pilot them though, so instead she became a weapon tech. It was the closest she could get and, it turned out, she was pretty damn good at it. Best on the ship. Maybe even the best in the company. Some of her designs had been floated up through the company's channels and were fast tracked through R&D. Her ideas had been patented for the next gen missions to new systems humans were exploring and trying to colonize. Her contract stated the patents belonged to the company, not her, but it also allowed her a bonus whenever she came up with one.

Not to mention almost every vehicle or starship weapon on the Roughneck she'd already tweaked and improved... or at least maintained flawlessly. Those were unofficial upgrades, as far as the company was concerned, but Captain Miriskova had given her his blessing.

The only weapons she didn't touch unless she couldn't avoid it were the built in weapon systems for the mech-ops team. They creeped her out. How anyone could willing sacrifice so much of themselves was beyond her. They were massive, compared to normal humans, and mostly machine. Other than their heads, which were mostly protected by metal anyhow, she wasn't sure how much of their original bodies were left.

Synthia shivered again and shook her head and refocused on her work. The mag-launcher wasn't going to maintain itself. She tuned out the sounds of the walkers coming to life and stomping out of the bay and onto the new planet they were exploring. The air was breathable, if a little oxygen heavy, and the Roughnecks scanners had found some sort of organized structure that might have meant an intelligent indigenous species... but they hadn't been able to find said species.

On paper, that meant Danis IV might make for a habitable world and an easy claim for New Horizons Expeditions and humanity in general. That would mean a nice bonus for the crew of the Roughneck.

Synthia smiled at the thought. What would she do with a bonus like that? There were so many things she wanted... new toys to tinker with, amenities at her tiny apartment back on Alpha Centauri -- or maybe a new apartment with more than one room? Depends on the bonus.

"Or maybe I keep my head back in the workshop and worry about what might happen if it actually does," she muttered to herself. She looked at the weapon in front of her and smirked. It still hadn't made any progress on the preventative maintenance she was supposed to be doing. Maybe that's what she needed to work on next, self-maintaining weapon systems?

* * * *

Rob guided his thirty ton walker up onto the ridge and straddled it so he could get a good view. He dug the massive machine's feet into the dirt and rock and noticed the path he and his squad mates had left behind in the alien forest. He grinned and shook his head, causing his walker's head to move back and forth mimicking his movements.

"Sitrep, Ensign?"

Rob twisted, bringing his walker's upper body around to look over the valley their scanners had spotted the point of interest in. "Waypoint reached, all clear, Commander," Rob said. Then he added, "Awful pretty place, if you're into that sort of thing. I can't figure why nobody else has been here yet, that's all. And no indigenous?"

"You're not paid to think, Walden," Commander Honaka said.

"Yes, sir," Rob replied. He didn't hear his squadmates laughing over the comms but he knew they were.

"Are you still reading minor seismic activity that far out?" Honaka asked.

Rob flipped through his displays and frowned. He didn't have anything that would tell him that. "Unknown, sir, the walker's don't have sensors calibrated for that."

"It seems to be fading, Commander," Lieutenant Alder, the leader of the mech-ops squad, said. "I only read it as a distant event coming from the Roughneck's direction."

"Wonderful, we landed on a fault," Honaka said. "So much for scanning for tectonics from orbit. Oscar Mike, walkers. We need to determine if this rock is worth having the Roughneck relocate to a safer place or not. That and you don't want Alder's mech-ops beating you to the prize again, do you?"

Rob grimaced and twisted his walker to face the valley. "Moving to final waypoint."

"Confirmed."

Rob was an ensign, the same as the other walker pilots, but he usually took the lead and they deferred to him, even if he they'd give him hell for his slip up on the comms earlier. He controlled his walker's descent down the hill side and took pride in the sound of trees and rocks breaking under his heavy feet. The raw power of the walker alone made him smile. If he were to unleash the weapons too... well, sometimes he almost felt sorry for the targets when they did practice drills.

When he reached the floor of the valley he looked up and saw the strange hexagonal design up ahead. The earth had been built up in concentric rings that had become interconnected. It was clearly a design and not a natural geographic occurrence. The question is, what-- or who-- had made it?

"Watch for friendlies!"

Rob jerked his attention to his 2d map on the console in front of him and then looked to his right when he saw the signal from one of the mech-ops team near his squadmate.

"You watch for friendlies, these things aren't built for ballet," Ensign Darius Star retorted. He was the one that put a foot down a few meters from one of the cyborgs.

"What is that thing?" Ensign Olive breathed.

Rob smirked at the woman's uncharacteristically soft voice. Usually she roughed it up to sound meaner... especially when she was in her walker. "Let's go find out, Billy."

"Copy that," Billy responded, followed by the others.

"You got point, Walden?" Cato, the fourth walker pilot, asked.

"I'm Oscar Mike," Rob said and walked his war machine up the valley until he was standing right in front of the three meter tall outer ring of raised earth.

Nothing grew on the berm. No grass or weeds or anything. Beyond the outer ring the other rings and ridges that connected them lifted higher with each layer inward. At the very center there was a mound that measured eight meters tall. It was roughly hexagonal shaped too and fourteen meters across. Surrounding it we're several columns or spires of mounded earth that climbed up eighteen meters above the ground.

"This is fucking weird," Darius said.

"Cover us," Lieutenant Alder requested.

Rob looked down and saw the squad leader was a couple meters to his right. Rob twisted his walker to bring his weapons to bear and flicked the master switch to arm them. "Copy that, Lieutenant. You going over?"

"In," Alder said.

"In?"

"These are hollow," Alder said. "Check your sensors, Ensign."

Rob scowled and flipped screens, displacing his map and running scans. The walker's sensors weren't designed for looking underground, they were designed to detect heat sources, metals, and movement. That and to target and shoot them.

"I've got nothing. Looks like the company needs to upgrade our intelligence systems," Rob said and regretted it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

"You said it, not me," Lieutenant Alder chuckled.

Rob turned off his microphone before muttering, "Fucking robo-jocks!"

Commander Honaka's voice chimed in Rob's cockpit. "Ensign, why are your weapons armed? You have friendlies in your firing lane."

Rob's heart jumped in his chest. He reached for the master switch and disarmed his weapons out of instinct before saying, "The Lieutenant requested cover, sir."

"You're danger close to him, the rules of engagement state you do not go weapons hot in a danger close situation unless there is a clear and present danger," Honaka reminded him.

Rob noticed that the comm was a private channel just to him, not the entire recon group. His heart dropped a little and he said, "You're right, Sir. Sorry, Sir, I forgot."

"You're willingness to protect your fellow co-worker is noted and appreciated... but remember, we have procedures for a reason, Ensign. Honaka out."

Rob let out a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to the mech-ops leader. It didn't sound like he was going to be demerited for his mistake... in fact, in a way Honaka had almost sounded impressed with his actions.

Lieutenant Alder reached out and touched one metal fingered hand to the side of the berm. He tested it and then pushed harder, only to pull his hand back a moment later. Rob resisted the urge to heckle him and ask if he needed help. Rightly so, the mech-ops officer punched his hand into the berm and buried his arm to the metal jointed elbow. He pulled it back slowly and tore out a chunk of earth with it. The dirt crumbled and fell to the floor, leaving behind some dust that quickly cleared. The hole he left behind glowed with a sickly yellow light.

"What the fuck is--?" Rob started to ask. Alder cut him off before he could finish... and also before Rob realized he hadn't flipped his microphone back on.

"Smells... weird," Alder reported over the open comms. "Musky, but not like wet dirt. Kind of sweet too. Too sweet though. There's a yellow glow inside. Not too bright, but it is five degrees warmer inside than out."

"Proceed with caution, Lieutenant," Commander Honaka authorized from his office safely back on the Roughneck.

"Copy that, proceeding," Alder said. He motioned for one of the other mech-ops squad to assist and then turned and proceeded to jammed both arms into the mounded earth and start pulling out chunks of it.

By the time Corporal Castro joined him, Lieutenant Alder's feet were buried in dirt. There was a hole big enough in the side to let Rob zoom in on it and note the smooth ground-- or was it a floor? Whatever it was, it was so hard packed and smooth it was glossy. Whatever was causing the yellow light wasn't coming from the floor either. The walls or roof of the tunnel, maybe?

Castro reached in and, after misjudging how tough the dirt was at first, began to help tear the hole bigger. Soon it was large enough for Alder to activate his short range weapon systems, opening up a panel on his left arm and extending the barrel of his twenty six millimeter launcher. He selected the 4 gauge ammunition and watched the targeting reticule light up in the HUD built into his helmet.

Lieutenant Castro stuck his arm and head in and searched left and then right. He stepped in and turned to the right, towards the closest junction of another tunnel on the left wall some six meters up. "Roughneck, I'm transmitting, are you receiving?"

"Copy that, Alders, I am receiving. The ceiling is glowing?"

Rob scowled. He couldn't receive the video feed in his walker. The walkers were amazing at being the kings of a battlefield, but they sucked when it came to anything more complicated than blowing shit up. Yet another upgrade they needed.

Maybe he could sweet talk Synthia into it. The other pilots thought she was uptight and bitchy, but they didn't have his charm. Or his determination to break through her armor. She was a good looking woman. Big, but he liked strong women. She wasn't fat or soft, she was tall and broad shouldered. Not quite as intimidating as the mech-ops freaks, but everyone else gave her a wide-berth unless they needed something from her. Pity, really. A body like hers, she could really take a pounding... or give one.

"Looks like some kind of chemical or substance, it's organic but it's not alive. It didn't grow there," Alders said.

"Understood. Proceed."

"Moving ahead. Castro, follow be-- Roughneck! I've got movement ahead. I... I'm not sure what it is. At the junction, but my sensors can't get a proper reading. Request permission to deploy a grenade?"

"Negative, Alder. This planet would be amazing but if there are indigenous intelligent life forms here we have to break off without starting a war."

"Understood, proceeding. Corporal Castro, you've got my six."

"Yes, Sir," Castro said. "I-- what the fu--"

Rob's heart bounced in his chest for the second time that day as two hundred kilos of man and machine were suddenly jerked in through the hole in the berm. A man's scream started and then stopped. Castro's scream.

The wall of the berm bulged and then split open. A robotic hand emerged. The fingers spread out and then quivered before coming to a sudden and terrible rest.

Honaka's voice shouted over the tragedy that was happening in front of Rob's eyes. "Alder! Behind you! Get out of-- shit--"

Alder had spun around and saw his squadmate thrown against the wall and then watched as some horrific brown and red creature with mandibles almost the size of a forklift squeezed through the man's armpit and neck, cutting the top fifth of him off amidst a spray of blood and mechanical fluids.

Honaka's sputtering snapped him out of his shock. He jerked his arm up and fired, pumping the 4 gauge slug into the shiny exoskeleton of the thing that had killed his teammate. The creature jerked back, its face cracked and a green liquid running down its shell.

Alder pushed forward. "Fuck you!" he shouted and lurched to the side to get a clear shot around the rest of Castro's body. He fired again but his second slug grazed off the side of the alien creature's head and then deflected again off its hard shelled body. The force of the heavy slug kept it retreating though.

"Alders! Watch out!" Rob shouted as he witnessed another red-brown monster lunge past the opening in the berm behind the mechanized operator. He counted legs... a lot of them, at least six. Alders grunted across the comms and then there was nothing more from him.

"Holy shit," Rob breathed.

"Lieutenant!" Sergeant Champion the woman second in command of the mech-ops unit, shouted. "Alders! Respond!"

"Get out of there!" Honaka called, his voice shrill with panic. "Abort! Abort! Get back to the Roughneck!"

Rob checked his display. It was still showing sensor readings and useless charts on elevation and wind speed and ranges for weapon systems. He tapped it to bring up the map again and noted that the other walkers were still frozen in place. Just like he was.

"Fall back, walkers!" Rob called out and took a heavy step back before starting to turn his walker away. He thought better of it halfway through the turn. He had rear cameras and even a few weapons that could fire to the rear, but he would be more vulnerable. He hesitated, his walker staggering an awkward half step and leaning heavily.

"They're giant bugs," Rob said to himself. What could a bug do to a walker? He'd only glimpsed one but he was what, three or four times their size? And he had weapons. Lots of weapons! Not to mention his armor was designed to take a pounding.

"Oh shit, Alders!" Champion sputtered. "I can see him... he's... he's down. Murray, fall back!"

"All of you fall back," Honaka ordered. "That's an order! Get back to the Roughneck! We... what-- what was that?"

Rob turned back to the bug nest-- or was it a hive? He began backing away and armed his weapons again. Nobody was in his line of fire this time. He thought about putting a few shots into the raised earthen mounds and tunnels as a matter of principle. He noticed some movement along the side of one of the spires. A quick zoom on his display showed clumps of dirt falling down. The spire was bulging and swaying a little. "Commander?" Rob asked.

"Full retreat," Honaka said. "We're having some tectonic activity or something. Make your best speed so we can launch."

"We're Oscar Mike," Rob said and began to turn his walker around. "Something happening with those towers."

"Fuck the towers and fuck this planet," Darius said.

Rob completed his turn and started moving. The walker went from a lumbering first few steps into a jarring trot across the valley floor. Rob grunted and reared back. His walker wasn't balanced right, it normally didn't feel like this.

"Rob! They're on you!"

Rob looked to his rear view displays and saw nothing at first. He was going to swing around when one of the displays changed. A dark shape covered it from bottom to top. They were climbing on him!