Secretary General updated the rules.
“You’ll be done and ready to disembark in five minutes.”
“Confirmed,” I replied. “Any footage I need to see?”
“Oh yeah,” Zint replied, suddenly all business. “You’ve got a real dogfight on your hands, son.”
“Show me.”
My monitor flashed once. A tiny holo-camera to my left shined out a larger image of aerial combat footage, taken about six minutes ago. Two sleek fighters were engaging each other with the standard missiles and minigun rounds. Based on the House emblems on their wings, the planes were from India and Brazil. Ghanendra, the House India pilot, had the upper hand at first. He slipped in behind Lenore’s Rio’s Light and cut loose with the minigun. Just as he was about to take her out, a plasma surge erupted from the Brazilian fighter like an expanding bubble.
It hit the Shiva’s Hammer like, well … a hammer. The fighter’s armor was shredded as it fell from the sky. The Rio’s Light broke off to engage another fighter. I couldn’t blame Lenore for making the mistake. The Shiva’s Hammer was on fire and heading for the drink. That should’ve been the end of it.
Then, all of a sudden, it disappeared!
“Where’d it go?” I asked, kind of mystified.
“Satellites spotted it a few seconds later,” Zint replied as he hit a few buttons on his end. “Check this out.”
The Shiva’s Hammer reappeared miles above his previous position then continued to fall like a wounded animal. From the angle, it looked like Ghanendra teleported upwards to buy himself some time. House India should not have teleportation tech that fucking small!
“The sneaky little bastard popped up in sub-orbital range,” Zint continued, “allowing himself more time to work his engines. But that’s not all. Look at the zoom-in.”
The satellite image fast-forwarded as it zoomed in on Shiva’s Hammer. Its armor was regenerating.
“How long did it take?”
“About a minute,” Zint replied with evident astonishment. “The fires were doused and the damned fighter’s hull looks nearly good-as-new. But this was the slick part.”
I watched the fighter teleport again. A few seconds later, an adjusted satellite feed showed the Shiva’s Hammer as it reappeared behind the Rio’s Light and just cut loose with its forward wing turrets.
“Guess Ghanendra lost his cool,” I muttered.
“Fine by me,” Zint replied. “It spooked Lenore enough to make her tip her hand.”
The Rio’s Light, reeling under minigun fire, suddenly sprouted an extra layer of nose-to-tail armor.
“Nanite-based?” I asked.
“Probably,” Zint replied. “It shrugged off his rounds like nothing.”
The footage ceased.
“How many times can he teleport?”
Zint sighed.
“We’re still trying to figure out how they managed to rig a teleporter without a fusion generator to power it.”
“Fusion generators count as a third modification,” I hinted. “Think they’re cheating?”
“The Secretary-General’s one savvy AI, with spies in every House,” the colonel replied with dead-certainty. “If they were cheating, he’d know about it. Besides, the satellites didn’t pull a fusion reading off his plane.”
I didn’t buy it.
“Colonel, how could he run a teleporter – multiple times – off a regular jet engine?” I asked. “That smells to me.”
“I’ll bug the Judges about it,” Zint assured me. “Just assume that Ghanendra can teleport all day and expect him to pop out on your six at any time.”
“Understood. What about the Aussies and Italians?”
“Pull up their combat footage,” Zint ordered to someone off-screen.
The image shifted to their respective fighters. At first, they made three high-speed passes at each other. The Wings of Venice dumped a mad volley of ammo from at least eight different mounted guns, one of the House Italy mods. But the Australian’s Jigsaw Saber nimbly dodged the hyper-velocity barrage without a scratch, which should’ve been impossible.
“Sat scans indicate that Vincenzo’s guns were firing four different types of ammo – plasma rounds, heat-seeking slugs, high-explosive rounds, and viral slugs.”
I hate viral slugs! Upon impact, the ammo could literally allow Vincenzo to hack into my fighter’s CPU. On a whim, he could turn off my engines, auto-eject me, or even autopilot me straight into the ocean. Mixed in with four other hard-hitting types of ammunition, I might get tagged and then hacked … or just blown to pieces.
“What’s the second mod?”
Before Zint could answer, I spotted it. Miles cut loose with a volley of mini-missiles from the Jigsaw Saber at close-range. At least one of the beer-can-sized warheads should’ve hit the Wings of Venice. Instead, they all veered off and flew back at the Jigsaw Saber, which barely had time to dump chaff and get clear before they exploded in his wake.
“Some kind of countermeasure,” Zint replied. “Vincenzo’s bird can actually con the missiles into chasing a different target.”
“Neat tech,” I admitted. “If he can paint my bird, he could actually steer someone else’s missiles towards me.”
“That evil thought crossed our minds, too. But you haven’t seen the best of ‘em all.”
“What? The Australians managed to come up with something worse?”
Zint nodded and gestured toward the holo-image. Miles took the Jigsaw Saber away from Vincenzo’s Wings of Venice. Then, at ridiculously high speeds, the Saber broke apart into fragments. I could actually see the crazy bastard hurtling amidst the debris, still in his pilot’s chair!
Then, within two seconds, the pieces reformed themselves into the shape of a humanoid robot with a very large rifle in its hands. Thrusters in its feet and back held it aloft as Miles aimed his robot’s blocky gun at Vincenzo and fired away at full-auto. Vincenzo veered away after taking a bunch of minor hits to his armor, which looked to be the standard fighter stock.
“A flying combat mech?!” I winced. That crap was supposed to only be possible on the cartoons I watched as a kid!
“They’ve been toying with technomorphic weaponry for years,” Zint shrugged. “We always thought it was a dead-end.”
“But why?” I frowned. “He can’t outmaneuver anybody like that.”
“Keep watching,” Zint replied.
I
