He flexed his hands and feet, moving the seventy-ton war machine into a distance-eating stride. The cockpit swung only slightly, helping create the illusion that he actually was the big battlesuit.
“Open comm,” Andy said.
The comm opened with a crackle of static, and voices immediately filled the void. “Blue Niner, this is Blue Leader, do you copy?” a young male voice demanded.
“Blue Niner copies,” another voice answered. “Have you identified the new guy?”
“Affirmative. Blue Leader reads you. Not all of our company made the jump from Space Station Zebra. Evidently we uncovered some anomaly in the targeted space station that transported us here.”
“Understood.” Andy swung the big battlesuit around, falling in behind the four units. “Kind of went through that myself.”
“You weren’t with us at the space station?” Blue Leader asked.
“That’s negative, Blue Leader. Ended up here by accident myself.” Andy easily moved the battlesuit up to a jog.
“Seems you’ve got a lot of experience in the suit.”
“I’ve fought my share of battles,” Andy agreed. Sweeping the terrain around him, he was only slightly surprised to spot the castle under attack ahead.
Space Marines traveled everywhere and fought anyone. As space-bred mercenaries living and dying on huge torus wheels spinning through known and unknown galaxies, they never knew where the next battleground was going to be. One of the Space Marine companies Andy battled with on a regular basis had been in existence for more than two years. He’d encountered futuristic worlds as well as medieval ones.
“Your designation is Blue Thirteen,” Blue Leader said.
“My lucky number,” Andy replied laconically. “What’s the target?”
“Don’t know,” Blue Leader answered. “We were on a pure hit-and-git-shoot-to-kill mission when we ended up here. The way we figure it, everything here is fair game.”
“Magnify vision,” Andy said. His field of view slid forward, zooming in on the castle. One of the Space Marine units stepped through a hole blasted in the side of the castle. The machine gun blazed, driving back a group of men that had stepped forward to challenge the intruder.
Andy took in the banquet area and noted the medieval weapons the guards used. The combat was too one- sided for his taste. “You’re looking at a massacre here, Blue Leader.”
“You say massacre,” Blue Leader responded, “and I say easy points.”
A feeling of wrongness dampened Andy’s mood. It was one thing to play Space Marines when challenging an adequate enemy force, but executions were another matter entirely.
The group Andy gamed with in the Space Marines comprised mercenaries with a conscience. They sold their skills honorably and stood by the contracts they undertook. In fact, Andy and his friends had, on more than one occasion, invaded solar systems in the game where outlaw Space Marines had holed up and killed any new gamers wanting to play in those areas.
The Space Marines walking through the huge hole blown in the side of the castle paused. The machine gun on the battlesuit’s shoulder quivered and spent brass twinkled through the air.
Inside his cockpit, Andy cringed and turned cold inside. It was one thing to jump into a game to blow your friends up for fun, but this wasn’t anything like that. The medieval castle couldn’t even protect itself.
The Space Marine battlesuit in the palace bent down and plucked something up from the ground.
“Magnify,” Andy ordered.
The viewscreen performed immediately, zooming in on the figure trapped in the battlesuit’s three-fingered hand. Andy recognized her at once.
“Hey, Blue Leader, look at the prize I just took.” The guy in the battlesuit swiveled, leaving his lower half locked down as he turned his upper torso.
Andy’s hands flexed inside the cybered gloves. He watched the weapons systems flare to life within the HUD, and he marked the placement of the other three Space Marines. They were all enemies by his personal definition at that point.
He readied the anchor attachment that fit inside the battlesuit’s left arm. Normally the anchor was only used in space battles to link back up with a friendly ship when a battlesuit had been blown free of a transport ship’s hull. He knew he wouldn’t have much time to act before the other three Space Marines turned on him.
“Target,” he ordered. Crosshairs appeared on the viewscreen and glowed when lock was achieved.
“Warning,” a soft, feminine voice said. “The target you have selected has registered on IFF as—”
“Override previous identification,” Andy barked. “IFF is tainted. All controls over to ship’s personnel.”
“Confirmed,” the computer voice said. “Safeguards are down. All systems available.”
Andy closed his left fist and fired the anchor. A full meter of hardened steel flashed from the hollow groove of the battlesuit’s left arm. It caught the battlesuit on the right side of the torso not quite halfway up. The sabot charge fired off on impact and sent the pronged head through the battlesuit, punching out the main servos that operated the suit’s on-board motion computer.
“What the—” the guy in the paralyzed battlesuit shouted.
By then Andy was a blur of movement. He fired a salvo of smoker rounds into the ground immediately around him. A cloud of white smoke roiled up, filled with positively and negatively charged ions as well as burning cinders that would throw off the thermal and radar sensors of the other suits.
He jogged to the right, taking advantage of a copse of trees and the downgrade of the hill there.
He crouched down, taking advantage of the short grade of the hill. Machine-gun rounds whipped through the air above him as the other guys in the battlesuits responded to his attack. None of them had him in their sights yet.
“Release the hatch.” Andy slipped his hands and feet out of the control boots and gloves. Pushing himself from the cockpit console seat, he grabbed the emergency jetpack from the space under the seat and buckled it around his upper body. He slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses from his jacket pocket.
The front of the battlesuit’s head folded open as the hatch released with a hiss of compressed air. He pulled the jetpack’s control glove onto his right hand and pressed the ignition. The resulting explosion from the combustible engine fired him from the open maw of the battlesuit’s head like a rocket.
Andy kept both hands stretched before him, his legs spread to avoid the jetpack’s fiery contrail and to help him control his flight. He maxed out his speed, hurtling toward the paralyzed battlesuit that stood still as a statue. Machine-gun tracer rounds burned the air above and ahead of him, but he was through the area before the shooter ever got the range.
While playing the game with his friends, Andy had also spent time repairing and beefing his battlesuit up. If the game was played correctly without cheats, a battlesuit warrior spent nearly ten hours working on his vehicle to every one he or she spent operating it. As a result, he knew intimately where all the battlesuits’ weak points were.
He also knew the battlesuit’s secondary systems were struggling to come online and restore mobile capability to the stricken suit.
Andy powered down at the last minute, twisting in the air so he almost stalled out when he reached the battlesuit. He grabbed the clenched fist that held Catie captive.
“Traitor!” the guy inside the paralyzed suit screamed. “I’m going to get you!”
“Andy?” Catie stared at him in disbelief.
“Me,” Andy said with a smile as he took in the frilly dress. “Going to a ball somewhere, Princess?”
“You’d think so,” she replied, only sounding a little tense. “I met a real toad.”
Andy drew the laser pistol from the cavalry holster on his right hip. “Step back.” He fired from pointblank range. The laser cut through the thinner plates inside the finger joint where they had to slide over each other. In seconds the tension cables beneath were bared. Another two bursts and the cable parted with high-pitched
