The last of Mai Lee’s simians were making a good accounting of themselves, but the aliens were too many, too fast and too vicious. Killbeast and culus squadrons charged the men in their body-shells, forming a wall with their dying bodies as explosive bullets shredded them. Almost too late, Mai Lee realized that they were all dying at a particular distance, in a line that crossed the bridge area diagonally.
“PULL BACK! PULL BACK NOW!” she boomed. Startled, intent on killing their attackers, only half of her men responded in time. Without warning, a hundred killbeasts vaulted the wall of quivering dead and rushed their lines in unison. The attack was lightning fast, there wasn’t enough time to mow them down before they reached close range. Half of her remaining company were pulled down screaming and hacked to death.
“STEINBACH!” she grated at the cowering figure that crouched over the control boards. “HAVE YOU RELEASED THE RADIATION?”
“The controls are damaged, Empress,” Ari said, wincing as she strode up and prodded his spine with her chest guns.
“YOU DARE TO DISSEMBLE NOW?” she demanded, incredulous. Her lust to see his lifeblood sprayed over the controls grew to an almost irresistible level.
Ari waved pathetically at the control boards. Numerous gouges and burn marks did indeed scar the surface. “The gunfire has damaged the master terminals. I am trying to access the engineering controls through the weapons section, but the codes don’t seem to match. Besides, isn’t it dangerous to release the radiation now, while the aliens are on us? They could pin us down for sometime yet.”
Inside her battlesuit, Mai Lee’s jaw sagged. Could this cretin truly be stalling to save his own skin? Did he not fear her more than a few thousand rads of gamma radiation?
She wasn’t given any more time to threaten Ari, however, as at that point, new combatants entered the fray. Taking advantage of the turmoil, larger, more ominous shapes entered the room. Vast humping shadows towered over the wall of dead. Inside her dented and scored battlesuit, Mai Lee felt a thrill of fear. She had not yet encountered the enemy’s juggers. She reformed her remaining troops on the main dais that surrounded the operators’ chairs. She mounted the Captain’s chair, which afforded her a clear line of fire. Dead crewmen, still strapped into their crash-seats where she had had them executed at their posts, surrounded her. She gave no commands to her troops; there was no need. She leveled her chest cannons and awaited the inevitable charge.
One of the juggers rose up to her full height. Astoundingly tall and massive, the others rose up after her and with a great reverberating cry of doom they charged the humans. The last survivors of the previous wave, a struggling knot of men and killbeasts, vanished beneath hundreds of tons of clawed feet. Carapaces and body-shell armor caved in, the victims squirming like crushed crabs beneath the treads of armored vehicles. The clangor of their charge across the short spanse of metal decking was enough to set everyone’s teeth to aching.
In unison the humans squeezed their triggers and held them there, emptying their magazines into the onrushing hordes. The monsters were too big and full of vigor to die easily. Ripped apart and dead on their feet, many took another dozen steps before falling among the humans, too stubborn to realize their own deaths.
Once among the humans, the juggers set to their work with deadly efficiency, resembling a pack of tyrannosaurs slaughtering a herd of lesser creatures. Huge claws crushed the humans down, massive heads dipped, jaws ripped loose limbs, heads, entire torsos. The top of the operator’s dais became a sea of flesh, a scene of wild confusion. Mai Lee fired her chest guns and gushed out her deadly blue breath, melting men, armor and aliens alike indiscriminately.
For a time, she lost herself to the slaughter. There was no thought of retreat or coordinated action of any kind. She and her battlesuit worked as a single entity, a deadly creature of living metal. Although the juggers were twice her size, she attacked them savagely, leaping onto their backs, clinging with steel teeth and titanium claws, firing her chest guns point-blank until the magazines were empty and still letting them rattle dryly long after. She tried to open the reserve magazines, but could not. There was a fault of some kind. The pink, blinking service- required light made her curse fluidly in Chinese.
She quickly gave up on her guns and attacked the enemy directly. Although they loomed over her battlesuit, Mai Lee tackled and pulled down alien after alien, ripping out throats, searing their bodies with radiation, and opening their bellies with long strokes of her claws.
Finally, she realized that the attack was over. She raised the bloodied, dented muzzle of her suit, swiveled the head. Carnage surrounded her. Dozens of aliens lay thrashing upon a bed of body-shell-enclosed humans. There was no one else standing, neither human nor alien.
She looked down. In the grips of her great claws was the carcass of a jugger. The throat was tore open, the head tossed back. In her bloodlusting state, she had used her suit to claw and chew a great deal of the flesh from the creature’s soft throat area. A hint of exposed brain glinted up at her in the florescent lights of the bridge.
Breathing hard, she tried to regain her composure, tried to think. Could she truly be alone?
She strode among the squirming bodies, casually delivering deathblows to mortally wounded humans and aliens alike. Mentally, she thanked the wisdom she had had to have this suit built and maintained for so many years. The suit’s right foreclaw seemed damaged, it hung limply at her side, and the reserve magazines were decidedly jammed, but still in all, the suit had performed superbly.
Using the suit’s sensory apparatus, she attempted to find a useful survivor. The suit’s computer beeped, and a yellow indicator directed her to the door of the captain’s ready room. Inside, she discovered General Ari Steinbach, just as he was cautiously crawling out from beneath the conference table.
He jumped and backpedaled involuntarily at the sight of her grotesque, gore-drenched battlesuit.
“Ah, General,” she said. She was in a good mood now. Even his obvious cowardice in battle didn’t offend her in the slightest. A warm glow of contentment had settled in her guts. She hadn’t felt so relaxed, so sated in a very long time indeed, if ever. “You have again demonstrated your cat-like powers of survival.”
“I am pleased to see that you have done the same, Empress,” replied Steinbach with all the sincerity he could muster.
She chuckled. “I’m quite sure you had hoped I would perish even as I killed the last of the aliens, but you have not been quite so lucky.”
“What of your troops?”
She shook the battlesuit’s head. Ari took another step back, the human gesture, effected by the gross apparition of the battlesuit, clearly unnerved him.
“They are all dead. I am the last champion to exit the field.”
She twisted the suit, gazing back at the carnage that was the bridge. Within a few days, she thought idly, the stink would be amazing. She snapped her head back. Steinbach tensed and she enjoyed his animal fear.
“I need your help,” she told him. She explained about the jammed reserve magazines, and instructed him on how to open the external loading hatch. He followed her instructions with delicate precision, doing his best to avoid contact with the coating of slimy gore that encased the suit. While he worked, Mai Lee rested, closing her eyes and reclining somewhat in the cramped quarters. She wished now she could meditate peacefully in her castle, free of the loathsome discomfort of the suit, but the very idea of getting out of it was inconceivable now.
Suddenly, she was awakened from her reverie by a surprised squawk from Steinbach. There was a wild, scrabbling sound, which carried up through the body of the suit. With a snap and a clang, Steinbach closed the hatch. He stood before her, staring at the hatch and panting. Mai Lee regarded him with instant suspicion.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Steinbach, blinking and swallowing. “I just. I just about screwed up.”
“What do you mean?”
“The magazine started moving, but some of the rounds were loose. I could have blown my hands off.”
Mai Lee snorted in disgust. “Your cowardice is boundless. Did you fix the problem?”
“I’m not sure.”
Mai Lee brought up the diagnostic screen. She clucked her tongue. The magazine was still listed as jammed. Experimentally, she aimed at one of the juggers and depressed the firing studs. There was a brief whirring sound and the clattering of dry firing.
“You have failed,” she said sourly. The chest guns leveled on his face.
“Perhaps if you try the inside hatch. I wasn’t able to reach all the way inside. The jam appeared quite easy
