Guardian (War Angel Book 1) by David Hallquist (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

to lock onto a civilian ship. One button on my handle paints the target, and the second button fires a plasma missile.

The missile appears only as a streak of blue light, which flares into a screen-blanking blaze of plasma, breaking the spacecraft apart. When I can see again, I see tumbling, glowing fragments and an expanding gas cloud.

Then something in the cloud of debris moves.

* * *

Zooming in, I make out the shape floating in the dense cloud of gas and debris. A spider-limbed insectile form with writhing weapon-tentacles and glaring red eye cameras, enclosed in an armored carapace as black as space. An actual Saturnian.

Face-to-face with the enemy at last.

A set of deep violet flames jet from it as it begins to boost away, into deep space.

Oh, no you don’t!

I boost after it on manual, pushing the lever as far as it will go, and will it to somehow go farther. I’ve got to get this thing. It’s not just that it might find a way to vanish again. There’s also a very real concern about the damage it could still do. Mainly, though, I want payback for everything that’s happened, and the real culprit is finally in sight.

I open up with my railgun as soon as it clears the port and our people. Targeting on manual is hard; the gun wants to spin me around, and I’ve got to compensate with thrusters as I fire. Still, the target should be hot enough for the darts to home in on. Flashes of ultraviolet indicate its point-defense lasers are working just fine, though, and most of my darts blow up before getting to it. Some hit, and flashes of blue light blow off limbs, weapon tentacles, and fragments of armor.

My gun finally clicks empty, and I switch to lasers as I boost after it. My beam slashes and strikes clumsily, shearing off a limb here and there. It’s pouring all its point-defense beams into me, dazzling my sensors and sight to the point where I’m flying blind and aiming more on instinct than anything else. I return the favor and open up with my own point defense, hopefully blinding it as well, and maybe doing some damage to that tough armored carapace. Temperature and damage alarms are going off all over my frame, and I barely have time to read the indicators to tell what’s wrong.

I have to get closer. I’ll never get to launch any of my few remaining SPGs while under all this fire; they’d get destroyed right away. Still, my engines seem to be working fine for now, and I have at least 30 seconds until catastrophic overheating. I saw engines burn off the enemy, so I should be closing. Most of my cameras and sensors are burned out, and the remaining ones are trying to peer through lasers and jamming. I’ve only really got my sense of spatial awareness and years of training to fall back on now.

I should hit right…about…now!

I brace as I slam into the Saturnine monstrosity. The impact throws me against my restraints, cracks my reinforced ribs, and stuns me for an instant. I shake my head to clear it and spit out a gob of blood, which floats in front of my face before the systems in my suit suck it away.

Working only through the feel of resistance in the frame and partially functioning cameras, I grapple with my opponent. I grab hold of a limb of some sort in each hand and pull, feeling something give in the alien structure of my writhing opponent.

I finally pull one limb off, and then the thing is loose, clambering around the outside of my frame. I can hear the high-pitched scream of its carapace and diamond claws trying to slice through my armor and sever various wires and conduits. I may be stronger than it is, but it’s faster, and I’m mostly blind. Occasionally a camera shows a flash of light or a hooked, serrated claw before another of my sensor systems goes down, blinded by lasers and diamond claws. I can’t seem to get a proper grip on the thing, and it’s too close for me to use my lasers effectively.

Alarm systems are lighting up everywhere. My flight pack is about to go super-critical, and the attached fusion reactor is about to lose containment. This Angel is about to lose his wings. I jettison the whole thing, and feel it hit something.

There it is!

I manage to grapple the thing as we’re spinning away from the ejection, get it in a hug, and squeeze with every last dying watt in my frame. A spike in radiation tells my blind frame that my flight pack just blew. Fortunately, the Saturnine cyborg helped shield me from the worst of it.

A shower of sparks fills the cabin as the monstrosity cuts through. Air shrieks out the hole, and for a moment I can see a glaring red eye staring in. I duck aside just as a laser blasts the inside of my frame. Dazzling light and smoke fills the cabin, drowning out the alarms that must be flashing everywhere.

I pull the enemy in close and do the only thing I have left before power totally fails.

I fuse all my SPGs for immediate detonation and launch them.

Terrible burning blue light sears in through the breach in my armor. Burn, you bastard. I can feel it coming apart in my grasp at long last.

Outside, past the smoke and fumes escaping from my frame, a constellation of cooling stars of molten metal swirl and dance around my Angel as I tumble through space. Power is failing in my frame, section by section. I unstrap and look outside through the gash in the cockpit.

Bits and pieces of Saturnine cyborg are tumbling away in every direction. The head floats away, diamond sharp mandibles agape, segmented camera eyes dark