by T.L. Beeding
“Can’t you see I’m working on it?”
Phylissa threw herself against the side of the ARC-52, pressing herself flat. Bullets whizzed by, thudding into the foul-smelling mud pile their terrain rover had gotten trapped in. She gave him a nasty look. “Well, if you haven’t noticed, they’ve got us pinned. And they have Suckers with them.” She paused to swing herself around the snub-nosed vehicle’s side, pistol barking as she returned fire. Responding pings against the ARC-52’s armored hull brought her back to his side. “Sitting there staring at wires isn’t getting us anywhere, Alec.”
Alec ignored the biting retort, continuing to examine the wires that spilled from the vehicle’s open maintenance hatch. A response would have fallen on deaf ears anyway. Phylissa was a good soldier, a leader among her platoon in combat, but the inner workings of a sophisticated vehicle run entirely on wired neuro-synapse connection was beyond her understanding – and her paygrade.
“Yes, dear,” he grumbled instead, finally finding the wire he was looking for. It spat bluish-white sparks, in pulse-like intervals. Tenderly grasping the end of the misfiring fiber-optic cable, Alec began to search for the connecting component that would re-wire the vehicle back to manual driver control.
“Why couldn’t they have made these damn things the way they used to,” Phylissa growled, sinking to her haunches. She snapped the clip out of her pistol, quickly refilling it with a new magazine from her utility belt. “Combustion-powered. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to make them brain powered? What if the driver got shot?”
“I’d imagine that’s why they give us co-pilots.” Alec pushed his tongue out, concentrating on digging through the spaghetti-like tangle. “Someone to take over in case we get shot.” More bullets ricocheted off the opposite side of the ARC-52’s hull. Phylissa rose to her feet, leaning around the corner and returning fire. Somewhere nearby, an inhuman squeal pierced the swampy air. The Suckers were getting closer.
“If they expect me to hook my brain up to one of these things—“ another round of gunfire, another dying squeal – “then they chose the wrong person for this line of work.”
Alec adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose, giving her a pout. “Aww, c’mon, Lissa. Isn’t working with your newlywed husband every wife’s dream job?”
Phylissa snorted, rolling her eyes. A smirk touched the corners of her lips. “Hardly. At least, not in situations like this.”
A snarl caught them both by surprise. Slimy, suckered tentacles slapped around the side of the ARC-52’s rear, dripping with the foul-smelling swamp mud. Phylissa leapt to her feet, taking aim. She squeezed off two surgical shots, hitting both appendages directly in the center. Steaming black blood stained the metallic hull; with a gargling squeal, the tentacles retreated. Alec glanced up; his wife’s violet eyes burned with fear.
“Hurry, Alec.”
Alec peeled apart the mess of wires, gritting his teeth. Once he found the connecting cable, he could get the vehicle up and running again. Get them out of this death trap. As long as he’d been an ARC-52 pilot, he’d never known the neuro-synapse cables to snap apart. Then again, he’d never hit a solid embankment before, either. If they hadn’t been ambushed by surprise on their way in to scout…and if he could just find that damned cable….
Guttural shouting came from somewhere beyond the tree line. “Ki, ki, ki! Ach’rhe mog tappa!” Heavy footsteps squelched through the mud, approaching the ARC-52 from the opposite side. Alec glanced at Phylissa; her lips were pressed together, listening intently to the gravelly, alien commands.
“What’d they say, soldier?”
Her eyes met his; focused and uneasy. “Just hurry, Alec. We’re out of time.”
Frustrated, Alec tore deeper through the wires. He squinted into the dim interior, praying for a miracle. If he couldn’t make get the ARC-52 back online, they would be dead. Within minutes, most likely. He pushed his hand in to the wrist, feeling for the end of the missing fiber-optic cable. Finally, he found what he was looking for; the thin, silvery filament-ended cable brushed the tips of his fingers like a cat’s whiskers. He snatched it in his fist, pushing it through the bulbous, open end of the wire it had disconnected from. Sparks hissed and flew. With a heavy, whirring hum, the ARC-52 came back online. It rose from the mud on silent, rippling waves of propulsion.
“Got it – let’s go!”
Just as Alec slammed the maintenance hatch shut, a loud bang emanated from the vehicle’s roof, sinking it once again. Above them, a face appeared; twisted and scarred, dripping acid from its chin-length fangs. Totally inhuman – beady eyes fixing on Alec.
“Ach’rhe mog tappa!”
“Attack this!” Phylissa growled, aiming her pistol upward. A bullet tore clean through the alien’s thin, angular skull, knocking it backward and out of sight. Not wasting any time to see if it was alone, Alec grabbed his tool satchel and slapped a hand down on the vehicle’s lock release. It scanned the lines of his palm in blue, filtered light.
“Identification complete. Primed and ready for take-off, Captain Jansen.”
“About time,” Alec grumbled, throwing himself inside the ARC-52 before the door had completely slid open. Phylissa followed on his heels, firing two more shots toward another tentacled beast coming around the side of the vehicle. Once inside, she slammed a fist against the emergency door seal. It slammed shut with a hydraulic hiss.
“Let’s see if she’s fixed.” Alec dropped his tool satchel, dashing to the cockpit and slipping into the control pod. He strapped himself in, removing his glasses and setting them to the side. His vision immediately went fuzzy; he blindly groped above his head for the HUD.
Its rounded, ceramic ends pressed into his hands. “Maybe you should wait to take your glasses off until you grab this thing,” Phylissa teased him. She fell into the seat beside his, likewise strapping herself into the crash webbing. Something huge and heavy hit the side of the vehicle, tossing them both against their harnesses.
“Yes, dear.” Alec pulled the HUD down over his head, plunging his vision into blackness. As Phylissa busied herself with powering on the ARC-52’s weapons systems, the neuro-synapse connection re-established itself. Electrified tingling spread slowly across the top of Alec’s scalp, raising the hair on the back of his neck. A spray of gold splashed across his vision as the vehicle’s network came up, resolving into gridlines that overlayed the alien swamp outside. Temperature readouts, hull integrity, and systems indicators flared to life at the top right of his vision. Then landscape came through perfectly clear – marred by several ugly, red blotches. Enemy indicators.
“Enemy Angeloc sighted,” the ARC-52’s AI whispered pleasantly into his ear. “Outer bay doors: sealed. Inner bay doors: sealed. Upper hatch: seal—“
“Yeah, yeah, just bring up the guns,” Phylissa snapped angrily.
“Processing. Weapons systems 50% online, Lieutenant Jansen.”
“God damn it!”
“Patience, love,” Alec soothed, flipping dials to bring the navigation system. “You’ll be able to blow them away in a minute. I’m sure they don’t have enough reinforcements to overpower an ARC-52.”
Another impact – harder this time – hit the hull, swerving the vehicle to the left. They swung around, pulling out of the mud and directly into the line of an oncoming wave of Angeloc soldiers and their attack beasts. Alec’s visual display blazed entirely red.
“You were saying, honey?” Phylissa retorted.
“Navidrive is now online,” the AI interrupted softly.
Alec grasped the drive throttle, shoving it forward as far as he could. He glanced to the upper left corner; the space on his display with the least amount of red. The ARC-52 responded, following his line of sight. Mud splattered in every direction as the vehicle took off across the swamp, mowing down every Angeloc soldier and Sucker in its path. Bullets pinged harmlessly off the hull, slowing as they sped away from the attacking alien mob.
A Sucker descended from the leafless canopy just as they reached the gnarled tree line. A mass of slobbering tentacles filled Alec’s field of vision; a breech alarm began to wail as the disgusting creature’s razor-sharp beak cracked the windshield’s glass.
“I need guns, now!” Phylissa roared.
“Weapons systems 98% online, Lieutenant Jansen. 99%…”
Phylissa gripped the trigger console, squeezing with all her might as the AI rattled off 100%. The turrets mounted on top of the ARC-52’s thundered to life, nailing the creature with a rain of bullets. It squealed, black blood spraying against the glass. It went limp; tentacles making a slurping noise as it rolled harmlessly off the ARC-52’s snub nose and rolled away across the goopy swamp. Alec breathed a sigh of relief, blinking three times in quick succession.
“Initiating repair protocol.”
As the steaming, sticky blood was scraped off the windshield to prep it for repair, Alec grinned.
“How’s this for a honeymoon, then?”
Though he couldn’t see Phylissa’s face, he could hear the smile through her sarcasm. “So romantic.”
T.L. Beeding is a single mother from Kansas City. She is co-editor of Crow’s Feet Journal and Paramour Ink, and is a featured author for Black Ink Fiction. She has also written for Ghost Orchid Press, Tales from the Moonlit Path, and The Black Fork Review. When she is not writing, T.L. works at a busy orthopedic hospital, mending broken bones. She can be found on Twitter at @tlbeeding.