Iron Veins: Snip
Replayed AC6 recently and remembered why I loved that game. Enjoy this little snippet set in a universe inspired by the genre! It's not very long, but I had fun writing it.
If someone had asked Skylar Cazda a few years ago how she thought her life would end, she would have told them the same thing she told herself every time she climbed into the cockpit.
She’d go down fighting. Fighting against the world, against an army or some private security force on a job, against her own dying body. She’d go out in a blaze of glory and screaming metal death; nothing else would suit her.
And today, it looked like she was going to get her wish.
Last Call’s reactor hummed under her seat, a life all its own contained in a box the size of her torso. Power thrummed through the unit’s limbs, through its wires and circuits and everything that brought the blueprints to life. And then, it moved through Skylar as well.
They were one once again, flesh and wires linked inextricably through science. The disease slowly claiming her life faded into the background, replaced with the oh-so deadly hum of Bylene running through metal veins.
“One last time,” Skylar gasped through the blood and phlegm in her lungs. Her fingers gripped the controls, pulling back just slightly to prime the engines for the fight ahead of them. The entire world stretched out in front of the cockpit, but she only had eyes for the Aegis Unit in front of her.
It was a sturdy thing, all red and gunmetal grey, patterned in the familiar camo of the PDC. An energy halberd was clutched in metal fingers, its tip crackling, heat roiling despite the lower atmosphere on this rock. One swing of that thing would cleave her in two; she knew it for certain.
Her chapped lips spread in a bloody grin as war drums beat a familiar tune in her chest, knowing with certainty that it was going to be their last performance. “Let’s give ‘em hell.”
Aegis Unit C082
Official Designation: Last Call
Status: Operating at 57% Functionality
Systems Green
Godspeed, Pilot
Skylar's blood sang as she urged her unit forward. Last Call responded as beautifully as ever. Despite all the damage it had taken and the parts it had lost, her baby moved as if it was clued into her intentions before they ever crossed the link between their minds.
Bulletproof Lie moved to meet them. The crimson mech was almost twice as big as Last Call yet just as fast. The design was based off of a JRC0X Jericho, but Lt. Kurdis never liked how bulky and slow the Jericho was and spent half of their deployment making modifications to the damn thing. Everyone always told him he should just build a new one from the ground up, but he always preferred the ionized plating on the Jericho and refused.
A good call. If he hadn’t, Last Call’s plasma sword would be cooking his insides right now instead of just carving a gash in his unit’s chestplate.
Skylar grit her teeth as Last Call jerked away a mere second before Bulletproof Lie’s halberd slashed through the air above them. The pilot system beeped a loud warning as exposed wires were cooked beyond repair, but she ignored them as she pulled back, bringing up her rifle to cover her retreat.
Yellow bolts of plasma filled the distance between them as Skylar backed off to reposition. Bulletproof Lie hunkered down behind a deployable shield and pushed forward through the storm. The unit’s beak-like head tracked her unerringly through the dust her thrusters were kicking up. She clicked her tongue.
“Fucker upgraded his ensuite scanners.” Letting the autopilot take over for just a second, Skylar reached up in the cockpit and turned a dial. The warnings blaring from the pilot system died down as it went into low-power mode. She would have to monitor things manually from now on, but Last Call would be harder to detect now that the generator wasn’t running full throttle.
She reached toward the control panel, preparing to retake control, but her body betrayed her in that moment and she doubled over instead. Blood seeped through her lips as the poison in her flesh and veins reminded her of just how little time she had left. Red splashed on the inside of the cockpit and all over her pilot suit as she tried not to seize mid-battle.
“Come on!” Skylar grunted, wiping her lips with a shaking hand. The glove came back crimson, and she tossed it to the side, deactivating the autopilot and regaining control. She didn’t have much time left, but she had to buy them every minute she could. They had to get away, or else this was all for nothing.
Skylar had spent her entire life fighting for nothing. It was selfish of her, but just once, she wanted her struggle to mean something.
Tangible vision poured through the link just in time to watch as Bulletproof Lie burst through the dust cover, tanking plasma fire on the bulk of its shield. Its head turned to her, and Last Call’s plasma rifle folded back into the arm cover. It was replaced by a shield generator that hummed loudly, projecting a plasma shield across the back of the unit’s arm.
“You’re not getting them!” Skylar cried, urging Last Call forward with everything she had in her. Bulletproof Lie met it with enthusiasm, and as their weapons locked and sent sparks spraying all over their cockpits, a message came through the open channel.
“Things don’t have to be this way, Cazda,” Lt. Kurdis’s voice was as jarringly soft as she remembered it. For a man with so much blood on his hands, he held himself so small. “Give us the reactor plans, and you can all go free. I don’t want to kill my former bunkmate.”
Last Call couldn’t leverage against the larger unit so Skylar played to its strengths, bracing its sword against its stockier body as she snarled. “If you cared, you wouldn’t be doing this right now!”
“The PDC—”
“Are in the pocket of the corps like everyone else in the damned galaxy! Those plans are the one thing that could change that!” Skylar's voice was hoarse and she felt another fit coming on. She held it back by focusing on the feelings through the link—the creaking of metal joints and scream of radioactive energy in her copper veins. The fit subsided, but the sick feeling remained and she pushed past it, saying, “If you want to spend your entire life as an attack dog to the corporations, that’s fine! But I won’t let you get in the way of their better future!”
“...You really have changed, haven’t you?” He seemed mystified, unable to accept the person he was seeing before him. “What happened to the girl who invited death to her doorstep every mission?”
Bulletproof Lie’s arms pressed down harder, and Last Call’s began to buckle. Kurdis must have made improvements to the Aegis Unit’s exoskeleton sometime in the last six years. Skylar needed to break the hold or he was going to cleave her in two.
She reached down below her seat, fingers fumbling for a switch. Skylar flipped it, disengaging the safeties that kept her generator in check. The pilot system flickered to life immediately, blaring warnings as more and more energy poured through Last Call’s chassis. Her skin prickled and itched as hives broke out underneath her suit. It was a familiar feeling.
“That's still me, prick. I just found a better reason to die,” Skylar said as blood dripped down her chin. Her fingers hovered above the controls, waiting for the energy to reach a critical mass before she issued the command.
Kurdis’s voice came through panicked as his sensors screamed a warning. “Wait, what are you—”
“I’m not letting you have them, Kurdis,” Skylar said. And then, with her heartbeat ringing in her ears and her blood boiling in her veins, she pressed the button, and the world became light.