Eve Berg

Location: North American Eastern Seaboard, Smokey Mountains, United Commonwealth of Colonies

What had been an orderly retreat was becoming a rout, and there was shit-all Eve could do about it. She stopped her bounding, along with what was left of a company of grunts, and turned to face the enemy.

“Set!” she relayed to the next group, as she aimed and fired.

Her graviton cannon splashed into a BAMF’s shield. The things were less than a hundred meters behind them. That was bad. They had to sit and hold here for at least a few minutes so the other companies in their formation could haul ass to another position and then cover them. That was how it was supposed to work, but it was rapidly breaking down into chaos.

“Hold your ground,” she opened a private channel to a fire team of grunts who decided they were going to take off. They had the dignity to stop for a few seconds before resuming their retreat.

It was their funeral. Their movement out from behind cover caught a BAMF’s eye. Its beamer cut a diagonal line through their position. Two of the four grunts’ medical data went black, one was red, and the last green. Whoever the coward was, he wasn’t moving anymore. He’d thrown himself into an impact crater and was hugging dirt.

Eve didn’t have time to chew them a new asshole. She put two more shots from her cannon into the advancing BAMF. The combined fire of fifty guns around her weakened it enough so her final round blasted chunks of armor and flesh. The three-meter monster went down, but she didn’t wait to see if it was dead. It was a target rich environment, and she couldn’t get tunnel vision . . . or think about anything else.

Even thinking about Coop made her heart hurt. She held out hope that he might still be alive, after all, he was a crafty fucker, but it was hard to survive the destruction of a MOUNT. They had a lot of ordinance and a big power supply. When they went down, they went boom. She gave herself a mental shrug and kept fighting. A BAMF beamer cut across her shield, making it spark, and dropping its power-level several percentage points.

This kind of fighting wasn’t sustainable; for her systems, or the grunts around her. That beamer that shaved power off her shield raked across the area forcefield, finally penetrating near the end of the line, and taking off a grunt’s arm. Their armor was doing its best to treat the wound, but being immobile was as good as being dead. The PFC who’d lost her arm and was on the verge of shock was as good as dead.

Eve half paid attention to the PFC collecting grenades from her squad-mates. She’d use them up close and personal with a BAMF, where there was a better chance of scoring a kill; and a certainty she’d die in the process.

“Set!” came over the net from an LT in charge of the other unit in their game of reverse leapfrog. It used to be the panic-prone LCDR, but he’d bought it in one of the retreats.

She knew she should feel bad, but she didn’t. A lot of people had died today, and it hadn’t even gotten interesting yet. The new LT was much calmer in the face of impending death. It was easier to work with him.

“Moving!” she sent back. “Let’s go people,” she sent a waypoint to the next bit of cover and concealment.

Unlike her, the rest of the grunts were fairly camouflaged by the terrain around the mountain. Trees, shrubs, and even large rocks would hide them from the enemy. As a six-meter hulking MOUNT, she was the target of opportunity for the enemy. She’d barely turned her back to start her rush when multiple beamers tagged her. Her shield dropped precipitously, but she returned the favor. Her chest plate popped opened and several missiles fired out, angled up, and raced back toward the source of those beamers. She was down to precious few of the micromissiles, but there were only a few rushes left, and with her big ass legs, even a quick distraction allowed her to nearly get where she needed to go.

She ate up space with each lumbering step, and made a mental note to ask the engineers of the next iteration of MOUNTs to put jet packs on the damn things. They’d have to make the war machines smaller, but in her opinion, six meters was a hair too much. Maneuverability was a key in battle just as much as strength.

She was nearly to the next chunk of cover when the beamers hit again. It felt like less, so maybe she’d hit something. She spun and fired her cannon, her AI highlighting likely enemy positions. The turn also took pressure off her rear shields. Spreading the load saved her ass . . . literally, the rear shields were down to ten percent power. She laid down fire for the rest of the grunts as she scooted behind a pack of boulders and a jut-out from the mountainside.

she told herself. Despite offering whatever cover fire she could, grunts’ medical data was blinking out left and right. At least a dozen were picked off on this iteration of the retreat alone.

“Set,” she sent. “LT, make for the entrance. We’ll cover you, sir,” she sent the waypoint to the other element leader. It was two hundred meters for them to haul ass, and more would die, but they didn’t have any time left.

The earth reverberated from the continuous fire of the big guns, but she could hear the difference. One by one, they were being silenced by the enemies’ moving mountain. She didn’t know how they did it, but the ET’s put one hell of a power supply in their armor, and still got it to move. It had wreaked havoc on the Commonwealth troops the few times it had fired into them, but thankfully, it realized the real threat was the mountain’s artillery. That time was coming to an end, and this time they felt it.

A pressure wave blasted them from behind, throwing the grunts around her on their faces, and nearly toppling her as well. Her servos kept her standing, and she trained her electronic eyes up. She didn’t have a word for what she saw. Mudslides usually involved some sort of rain-induced lessening of rocks that made them fall. Rock slides didn’t do what she saw justice.

“Avalanche!” was the best she could come up with. It just wasn’t snow and ice cascading down toward them.

The alien’s latest energy attack on the mountain had done some serious damage. It had silenced at least two Commonwealth guns, and finally broke something holding this portion of the mountain up. Rocks the size of her MOUNT were falling toward their position, the LT’s retreating force, and the entrance to the bunker.

she knew what she had to do, but she didn’t like it.

It was a leader’s job to prioritize resources. What was needed during the coming fight against the BAMFs? Sadly, it wasn’t a hundred grunts. What the fight needed was her MOUNT. It was true, but she still felt selfish that she had to save herself and leave the men and women she’d been protecting. They’d see it as her turning tail and running, and maybe that was true. All she knew was she was rushing toward the bunker entrance.

Chunks of mountain rained down behind her, and she saw icons go black. Even the enemy’s beamers stopped firing. Why waste power when the planet could do the dirty work for you? She envisioned them laughing, and the anger fueled her. Something big and heavy hit her shoulder. She kept her feet, but stumbled, and lost the swatter attached there. It was a just another hunk of useless metal now.

She kept moving, because stopping meant death. The LT was yelling something at her, but she missed it, and the line soon went dead. Dozens of troops were getting crushed to death, but all she could think about was getting to the entrance. Now was the time for tunnel vision, and her vision literally narrowed to the opening. It was just barely able to fit her MOUNT under ideal circumstances, and these were far from ideal.

She dodged a boulder falling in her path, and leapt over another one. She barely cleared it, despite her own size, which made her feel like the whole mountain was coming down. a hunk of rock fell directly in front of the entrance. She did the only thing she could think of: she blasted it.

Three rounds from her graviton cannon, enough to severely injured or kill a BAMF did the trick on the boulder, but more were heading her way. She would have used the swatter to help turn them to pebbles, but that option was gone. Everything today was just turning to shit.

All she could do was pray, and hope her aim was good enough. She ended up diving into the entrance, just as the meat of the avalanche hit the ground. There was a grating of metal being ground against, and her forward momentum immediately ceased. It was sudden enough, she bounced off the side of her womb and lost a bit of her synch. Everything went fuzzy until her AI reestablished the connection.

Not the it did much good. She was alive, but from the waist down, she was part of a wall of rock blocking the entrance to the bunker. On one hand, that was good. It would make it harder for the enemy to enter the next phase of the battle. However, she was currently face down on the ground, her way of exiting the MOUNT blocked by the earth. As it stood, she wasn’t going to be much help in the coming fight.

“AI, give me full power to shields. Every ounce of juice you have I want pushing against those rocks,” she ordered, and the machine complied.

Even at full power, the pressure of the mountain baring down on her only gave her a half-meter to work with, but it was enough. She torqued her body around, so her chest was facing up. She almost got her legs around before the shield failed, and tons upon tons of rock smashed back into her.

“Good enough,” she told herself as she hit the button to start unassing herself from the MOUNT. She figured she had time. Plus, she wanted a minute or two to compose herself before she was out of her home of the last month.

She wasn’t sure if her face was covered in sweat or tears.