“Beth, drop whatever you’re doing and take a look at this!” he said, urgently. “Take in as much of it as you can, just in case I lose this drone.”
There was a moment’s silence and Graves could hear Beth’s breathing quicken over the radio.
“Oh. My. God!”
“Patch this through to the others, and make sure Crazy Bill and the Singhs acknowledge…if anyone knows what this is about, it’ll be one of them.”
“Will do, honey!”
“And Beth?”
“Yes, dear?”
“It might be a good time to start powering up the Bunker.”
Carnigore had taken some scratches dealing with the first two gate clusters, but nothing significant. Jake was sure he’d been knocked around more than his exomech, and could feel bruises already forming where his skin had come into contact with hard metal. Not for the first time, he made a promise to himself to get a better combat suit and to put some padding around the cockpit.
He was approaching his third gate cluster, Carnigore set on autopilot as he transferred chain-gun ammunition from the bins on the suit’s lower back to the internal hoppers.
“Jake?”
“What do you want, Helen?” he asked, annoyed at the interruption. “I’m kinda busy here.”
“You’ll be busy dodging deebees if you don’t pay attention,” Helen replied. “I have some video feed from the Graves’.”
“Are Hank and Beth in trouble?”
Jake punched the autopilot’s ‘Off’ button, bringing Carnigore to a lurching halt. Jake had a lot of time for the Graves family, despite Graves setting some impossibly high standards for Jake to live up to. If the two of them needed his help, things were very bad.
“I think we all might be,” Helen replied, some real concern in her voice now. “Patching some video through to you now.”
Jake watched the video feed, recognising the ridgeline that marked the southernmost boundary of the colony area. Deebees often had gates up there, giving them time to spread out and consolidate their numbers, but this was looking weird.
There were only three gates now, each enormous and slowly growing. The middle and left gates touched and merged, and then there were only two. Minutes later, the remaining gate was absorbed, leaving one giant gate that covered the entire ridgeline.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Jake,” Helen replied, “but I’m sure it’s not good.”
“Any word from the others?”
“Jenkins says he’s got gates of his own to worry about, but he’ll help out when he deals with those. The Singhs are finishing up their final cluster and are sending some drones to keep an eye on things until they can get over here, and Crazy Bill is on his way to the Graves’ farmstead right now.”
“He’s cleared his clusters already?”
“No, but he thinks this is more important. He’s sending his kids over to the Graves’ place now, Beth has their bunker powered up and plenty of room.”
“You might want to join them.”
“I’ll be fine,” Helen said. “Besides, you need me here to keep an eye on things while you wander around in your giant clown suit.”
Jake bit back a curse; his wife always knew how to needle him.
“Suit yourself,” he said, after a moment’s pause to regain some control. “But if things get out of hand I want you to out of there and on your way to somewhere safe.”
“Why Jake Wright, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me in years!”
Beth ran quickly from the farmhouse control room to the metal and concrete monstrosity standing in the yard behind the house. Affectionately known as ‘The Bunker’, it was built to military specifications as a fortified command and control facility, a legacy of Graves’ grandparents who had the foresight to see that the war with the deebees would last generations.
With its own internal fission pile, water tanks and food supplies, it could easily house a headquarter staff for three months. Add the communication links and self-defence turrets, it was looking like a good place to be right now.
The screens inside had already powered up, showing clearly the video feed from the last remaining drone, plus Brutiful’s cameras, satellite imagery and live feeds from the various security cameras around the farmstead. She hit the safety switch as she ran inside, dropping the armoured concrete slab that passed for a door into position, and slipped into her own combat suit and command helmet.
“Hank? You reading me, honey?”
“Loud and clear, Beth, loud and clear,” Graves replied. “How’s it looking?”
“Not good at all. That one giant gate is giving off some ferocious readings, completely off the charts for even the Bunker’s sensors.”
“I don’t have much fine detail on the drone camera,” Graves said. “Anything I need to know?”
“I’m getting plenty of flicker, all along the gate, looks like it’s ready to open.”
“I’m not feeling too particularly happy about this one, Beth—”
The gate opened, and deebees poured out. The overhead satellite tracked their heat sources, counting them automatically, and Beth watched open-mouthed as the counter climbed rapidly. 100. 200. 400. 700. 1000… she tore her eyes from it when it reached four figures.
“Beth?”
“Hank, honey? Get the hell out of there!”
She could see from Brutiful’s video feed that it was now moving, walking backwards on autopilot. Graves was too good a pilot to just turn and run, he’d want to keep his guns between him and the enemy.
“Moving now,” Graves said, quite calmly. “Where do you need me?”
“Anywhere but there, honey,” Beth said. “The sensors are showing 3000 deebees and counting.”
There was a moment of silence as that figure registered on Graves…the biggest raid in a generation had been less than 500, and that had stretched the colony to the limit. Many families died that day, and the colony still hadn’t recovered.
“Beth, I need you to patch this through to the others, right now…we’re going to need all of the exomechs together.”
“All right, honey, I’m on it.”
Keith Jenkins was having a bad day. He hated deebees with a passion…or rather, he hated that they made him have to do things he didn’t want to do. He didn’t want to be out of the farmhouse today, and certainly didn’t want to be in his exomech having to fight.
The only saving grace was that Shepherd, once a medium-sized agricultural exomech, was refitted over the years to be big on comfort and big on speed, so he could wander around his farmstead and avoid fighting if he could. Any fool can fight, why be uncomfortable about it?
Shepherd’s main armament was a long-ranged, three-barrelled autocannon, firing high-velocity 35mm slugs in three-round bursts. The long barrels severely affected the exomech’s centre of gravity, so he had to stand still to fire, but the long range meant that he could deal with deebees from ranges well beyond anything his fellow farmsteaders could match.
Right now he was in a standing in a clump of trees on a hill, taking pot shots at a group of deebees milling around his second cluster of gates a mile and a half away. At this range accuracy wasn’t great, but he was getting hits every third burst or so, and the deebees still hadn’t worked out where the shots were coming from.
The crackling of his suit’s video-comm interrupted as his wife, Jessie, came on-screen.