The Naked Weapon Pt. 09

Which made it awfully weird that Bex Buthor here happened to have mecha sized laser cannons, missile arrays, and...

"Hey, that's just my GAU!" I said, pointing my mecha's finger at the shiny mini-gun mounted on the mecha-sized rifle stock.

"Hello, homo saps!" Braxis called. "Yes, my techs looked it over and, uh..." he coughed. "We couldn't actually make it any better. Not without a total rebuild. And it serves a close in combat functionality that the other lasarms and missile weapons lack."

I pumped my fist. "America! Yeah!"

Ebony got the new missiles mounted in a matter of moments. It was a simple matter of shrugging off what was left of her missile chassie and then holding up the new one to her shoulders. Braxis' people had done a bang-up job in remounting them to fit on shoulders, and then Paragon and Eyebite used their laser-eyes to spot weld the mountings. Opal and Tycho both grabbed up their laser weapons. The huge weapons were supposed to use some kind of fantastically advanced battery tech paired with a kind of radiator that dumped waste heat into some alternate universe, which meant they were going to be throwing around some serious wattage with wild abandon.

My GAU had gotten a single upgrade, despite what Bex Buthor had said. They had added a little auto-loader for my box magazines. Schwing.

Vicky, meanwhile, had gotten several large armor plates that she was sliding over her war-form. Spark designed metal was lighter weight, allowing her to keep her mobility even with extra armoring. And Ali? Ali had been given a bracelet the size of a large school bus, which was now strapped to her mecha's wrist.

"What is this?" Ali asked.

"It's one of my kinetic inversion fields," Omniack said. "It'll project a shield that will rebound any kinetic force placed into it outwards at a fifty percent increase."

"Doesn't that violate a bunch of laws of physics?" Tycho asked.

"Says the girl with the missiles loaded with unstable quantum singularities," Opal said, snickering.

"All right, boys and girls," I said. "If we're lucky, we arrive before the Doyen hit Psi-Com headquarters." I paused. "Then we get to prep the defense. If we're less lucky, well be jumping into more hate than any of us have seen in our lives." I licked my lips. "But we have fucking superheroes on our side. So, you know. There's that."

"How are you so sure that's what's going to happen next?" Paragon asked.

"Well," I said as Tycho walked forward. Omniack stood on the shoulder of her mecha in his plate armor, holding a pair of glowing blue bags attached to IVs that led under the shoulder plating. I was pretty sure those were hooked right up to Tycho's neck and were doing the hard work of keeping her brain from exploding. "It makes sense to disable Earth's most effective defense first. Without Psi-Com, there's no chance of a sudden arrival of Psi-Com to ruin everything. Also...I just got a gut feeling."

"Ah. Goodie." Paragon muttered. "Also...Abby. Pirate Mask. Whatever." She shook her head. "If you get a shot at Doctor Oblivion, take it." She paused. "But if you think I can kill him, then let me."

I looked at her through the forward cameras on my mecha's helmet. She was trembling with rage as she floated there in the air. Without my clothes, I could sense it too. And she was bleeding off memories, sending them flicking into the air, like the tiny jolts and shudders of a Giger counter. I could see a handsome (for a neanderthal) bloke with black hair, smiling and waving. I could see a sphere of pale white light expanding, consuming a massive stretch of forest. I could see Paragon, kneeling in ashes, her laser-eyes shooting into space.

"Got it," I said, my voice soft.

Paragon rubbed her shoulder. Then she shook her head.

"Lets do this."

Tycho lifted her hand and spread her mecha's fingers. I could feel the world straining as Tycho tried to, in a single jump, swing us all the way home. The world seemed to strain and twist and flex. I could hear her groaning and gritting her teeth. I wished I could take hold of her shoulder, to give her my strength.

The portal opened and I heard Tycho cry of victory.

I launched myself forward and flew into five Doyen Paladins in formation. My shoulder smashed home and sent them scattering and twisting away from the Psi-Com mothership. The whole vessel was lit up like it was the eight level of Call of Duty 4. I'd never gotten a good look at it from the outside before going off on this mission, and it was a sight. Painstakingly built using humanity's garbage space tech and the leftover money from dozens of country's military budgets. It essentially looked like a two kilometer long metal cigar, bristling with guns and turrets mounted in crude rectangular housings. The far end was spindly and long, and it contained the nuclear reactors and the immense radiators that dumped waste heat into the vastness of space.

And right now, every single gun was firing at full tilt. Timed conventional shells exploded in space with bright flashes of white, hitting Doyen formations and sending paladins scattering left, right and center. Machine guns silently filled space with streaming tracers, trying to herd Paladins towards the Psi-Com mechas that flew through space. Space sounded like it was full of hornets - the buzzing psychic malice of what had to be...shit...I couldn't even count how many Doyen Paladins were out there. But they were all pissed. And I could see multiple larger psionic constructs that I recognized as their "Death Stars." Basically, chunks of crystal shaped so that multiple Paladins could channel their wrath into planet killing beams of psychic energy.

Those were trying to form up and cut HQ to pieces.

"Hey guuuuuuuys!" I called over the com-link. "Beta Squad is baaaaaaaaack!"

"Pirate Mask!?" Barry's voice boomed in my ear. "What the fuck are you-"

Paragon shot past me so fast that she was nothing more than a blur in space that I almost immediately lost sight of. But I saw the effect. One of the Death Stars shattered into a billion pieces of glittering crystal, the Doyen Paladins going spinning away in clear shock and alarm. I grinned, then hefted my GAU and blew a Paladin away as he flew at me, sword at the ready. As his warform exploded into chunks of glowing psychic energy and sprays of liquified Doyen, Opal and Ebony shot past me, their mecha glittering in the sunlight of the star-system Psi-Com had been jumped in.

Lasers were invisible in space, but I started to see Doyen immolating.

Omniack, Blazon, Eyebite and the last of the League - a taciturn fellow called Polymorph for increasingly obvious reasons - flew through the portal next. Blazon was usnig a jetpack, while Omniack was basically in his own personalized Iron Man suit. Missiles rippled out of his body in proper Macross style. Explosions ripped through Doyen formations while Ali and Vicky flew to flank me.

"We need to take out their leaders," Ali said, pointing. "They're the ones directing them. And..." She stopped.

"Isn't that the symbl of House ought 921?" Vicky asked.

"921?" I asked. Then I whispered. "Oh."

Ali growled. "Father."

Sitting about a half a thousand kilometers away on a glittering castle of glowing crystal and focused psychic shields, was Princess Tzali's father. The nominal head of the Doyen Empire. And, if I didn't miss my guess...Doctor Oblivion. And between him and us was an entire legion of Paladins. They were flying forward in an intricate formation that let them lock shields and level lances, forming a nearly perfect wall of death that spanned through space. I hefted my GAU and triggered a burst, but even the depleted uranium was reflected by that focused telekinetic might.

"All right, League. Keep the Death Stars off the Psi-Com Headquarters. Alpha Squad, Gamma Squad, Zeta Squad, you're on our asses. We'll punch a hole. You shove a nuke in it," I said, forgetting for the moment the chain of command in my certainty. Then I started forward. I picked up speed as Tycho and Opal and Midnight came in at my apex and zenith. Tycho triggered her missiles first.

Dozens of quantum singularity warheads roared out of her shoulder-mountings. Chaff and distracting flares fired from the missiles, filling space with flashes and gleaming, glowing arcs of light that seemed to make most of the Doyen psychic weapon fire go wild. Then the missiles hit the formation. They struck shields and exploded with flashes of searing blue-white light. When the light faded, ragged gaps had been torn between Doyen Paladins. The formation buckled and then Tycho called out: "Girls, do your thing!"

The enemy were at least a kilometer away.

Opal and Midnight, acting like two dancers who knew each other perfectly, went forward and started to corkscrew and twist and arc. I saw the effect of their lasers not by searing beams - remember, space! - but by the immolation of dozens of Doyen. Realizing that staying in their close locked formation was suicide, the Doyen split. And as paladins radiated outwards into cascading swarms of glittering, multicolored forms, each one carrying a different, personalized psi-weapon, I started to realize just how many fucking Paladins there were.

"Oh boy," I whispered. "Everyone, watch our backs. Here comes the drums!"

Five Paladins shot for me.

Ali smashed into them, holding up the shield that she had been given. It flared purple with their impacts, and the Paladins were sent hurtling backwards, twisting and spinning so fast that their warforms fizzled out, no longer sustained by brains that had been literally squished into paste by G-forces. Ali's psi-sword met another Paladin's psi-sword. She locked hilts, then smashed the edge of the kinetic shield into an exposed throat while I flew up behind her and blew another Paladin away at close range.

Three Paladins shot for Vicky. Her biokinetic abilities meant she had to fly by creating and ejecting mass from her body. I had no idea how she kept up - but now I saw the advantages of Newtonian flight. She accelerated away from the three paladins. Then, without missing a beat, she swung herself around with a single spurt of outgassing biological matter and then started to fling chiten daggers she extruded from between her long, black fingers at the Doyen. A paladin parried one, but then was caught by the other. His war-form winked out as Vicky let the other two draw close, then hit both with a blast of biokinetic lightning.

Tycho clearly still had a bit of Omniack's brain juice, because she was just...fucking cheating. Paladins tried to flank her from every direction. Rather than shooting or fighting, she simply snapped her fingers at them, opening warps right infront of them. From the blazing light that shone from each warp, I was pretty sure that the local primary star was getting a whole heaping help of Doyen fertilizer. Good for it.

But then all I could focus on was a pair of Doyen who were working together almost as well as Ebony and Opal. One would dart to the left, then zip to the right, twisting and spinning as I tried to pin them down with bursts from my Avenger. The other was able to then poke at my armor with the tip of an elongated psi-spear. Yes, he didn't have the leverage or the time to actually drive it in deep, but he was able to scorch off chunks of armor, one hissing flash at a time. I snarled then heard the warning chirrup from my suit's primitive computers.

Outta ammo.

Bye awesome tank-eating mini-gun. I swung it up and caught the psi-spear on its bulk. As the Doyen tried to get his weapon free, I manifested my psi-sword, opened a tiny warp to appear behind the dodgy fucker and impaled him through the back. "Ali!" I shouted. The spear Doyen whipped his tip around, and I could see the flames of rage rippling across her armor. But before their psi-spear could smash into my chest-armor, Ali shot past them and cut them in half with her psi-sword.

I panted, heavily, then turned.

Bravo Squad had been hemmed into an increasingly narrow sphere of space. Paladins swarmed around us, their psi-weapons lengthening into spears, angling forward to keep us from moving too far. Tycho panted heavily and hissed over the radio: "Okay, sunning them was fun, but I think I now see a downside."

"Balls," I hissed, looking around.

We had inflicted insane casualties. But...holy shit...

There were so fucking many of them. And I could see them girding to head in, to start stabbing and thrusting and risking us hitting back to get killing blows. They just needed to overcome the natural fear of approaching some stone cold motherfuckers who had just done the damage we had done.

"Heyyyy, Doyen!"

Barry's voice boomed through our radios. The Doyen didn't look back towards him - they communicated through psychic powers, not radio waves. Their buzzing fury jammed any non-Doyen psychic communications on the battlefield. But Barry's mocking voice wasn't for the Doyen. It was for us.

"Close your eyes, everyone!" I shouted.

I closed my eyes. But fortunately, the helmet cam on my mecha recorded every moment as Alpha and Gamma Squad flew up behind the reduced and concentrated Doyen formation.

Each mecha was carrying what looked like a German stick grenade from World War 2, save that the caps were thermonuclear weapons. Not big ones, mind! But tiny ones. I heard a booming, psychic voice screaming in Doyenese, which my helpful psychic talent translated to...

"Get out of there! Now!"

Ten mecha.

Ten nukes.

They were dispersed and set to blow after a few seconds. They had been given enough momentum and spin to spread them out through the entire Doyen formation. The brilliant flashes of hard radiation fuzzed our cameras and I felt the armor of my mecha actually start to groan as several layers got a lot hotter and started to strain against one another. Doyen warforms flickered out in a staggered pattern. Some managed to survive the spray, either because they were missed by the hard radiation, or because they had enough distance, or because they were just fucking lucky.

Lots didn't. Their bodies flared and then dimmed and soon, we were surrounded by thankfully tiny corpses, floating nearly invisibly in space.

I opened my eyes.

And I could see that the Doyen command castle was starting to float into a huge swirly wormhole. Doctor Oblivion's wormhole. But I could also see a streak of movement from the sprawling battle below us. There was so much debris that the passage of that body through it let me track their motion. Time seemed to slow as I heard Paragon's roar of purest fury. She was flying right at the castle. I looked up. There, on the parapets, his gauntlet lifted up as if to wave goodbye to someone...was Doctor Oblivion.

I couldn't see his face from here.

But somehow, I knew he was laughing an evil laugh.

I shot forward as hard and as fast as I could.

"Abby!" Ali cried out.

Paragon shot forward, going faster and faster, her cape flapping in the vacuum of space. Fuck physics.

I focused.

Time slowed to a crawl as Doctor Oblivion's glove flared with a killing light. The same light that had snuffed out Magnum.

A warp snapped open before me and I dove in, then emerged a few kilometers forward, right in the way of Paragon. She practically skidded as she tried to come to a stop, smashing into my back hard enough that my biological body's spine felt as if it had crunched. Paragon rebounded, twisting away from me like a ball bouncing off a wall and skidding away.

The beam flared.

Time slowed even more.

The beam struck my chest piece. The sudden temperature differential between the contact point and the rest of the armor caused hardened steel to shred apart like it was tissue paper in a hurricane force wind. Psychic energy ripped apart under that ravening blast.

The beam struck my chest.

Ow.

TO BE CONTINUED