Chapter 4: First Patrol
The Iron Maiden's cockpit hummed with the low, familiar thrum of the Goliath Mark II's reactor, a sound Stacy had come to know intimately in the hours since her diagnostic flight. Rain hammered against the viewport in sheets, distorting the neon glow of Sector Seven into smears of magenta and sickly green. Her hands rested on the control yokes, loose but ready, her thumb tracing the small patch where the paint had worn away near the throttle.
"Chen, you're drifting two degrees port. Mind your lane markers."
Marcus's voice came through the comms with that particular drawl, half lazy, half sharp as a razor. Stacy rolled her eyes even as she corrected course, the Iron Maiden's massive feet splashing through a puddle the size of a swimming pool.
"Copy that," she said. "Just testing the lateral thrusters."
"Uh huh. And how are they?"
"Smooth as silk."
"Smooth as silk," he repeated, and she could hear the grin in his voice. "That's good, because silk smoothness is exactly what we need on a patrol run through the ass end of the industrial district. You see anything, you call it in. You don't get creative."
Stacy grimaced. The night air was cold and wet, a miserable dampness that seeped even into the cockpit climate control. Sector Seven sprawled beneath her in a grid of rusted warehouses, abandoned factories, and the skeletal remains of transportation systems that had fallen into disuse decades ago. The APC had designated it a high-priority patrol zone after a series of smuggling operations had been traced back to the area, but so far, the only thing Stacy had encountered was an unfortunately positioned dumpster and a flock of what she strongly suspected were mutant pigeons.
"Roger that, Thorne," she said. "No creativity. Just standard patrol procedure."
"That's the spirit. You're about four hundred meters from the old Marchetti foundry. There's a delivery depot on the east side that's had some suspicious activity. We're going to do a sweep, then we're going to turn around and head back. If something looks wrong, you're going to report it. You are not going to engage without my authorization. Understood?"
Stacy's jaw tightened. The promise of action, of actually earning her place, hummed in her veins like something electric. Beside her on a secondary screen, a message from Jamal flashed across the display: "Remember what I said about Rostova. Marcus too. Don't do anything too flashy."
She dismissed the message with a flick of her thumb.
More than a month of simulations had drilled her on every variant of combat protocol. She was good at this, dangerously good, the kind of good that earned top honors and surprised instructors who expected another eager cadet with a hero complex. Since the moment she'd slid into the Iron Maiden's cockpit, something had clicked. The mech was ancient, scarred, with one gyroscopic compensator that tended to hiccup under stress, but it had a weight and a presence that the sleek internal training sims could never replicate. She felt alive in a way she hadn't for years.
The foundry emerged through the rain, a dark hulk of crumbling brick and twisted steel girders. The Iron Maiden's floodlights stabbed through the murk, illuminating graffiti-covered walls and empty loading docks. Everything looked still, abandoned, dead.
"Looks clear from here," Stacy said.
"My readouts agree. Do a low hover sweep around the perimeter, port side first. Keep your distance from the main building. There's probably ammunition storage in the basements and I don't want you to trigger any surprises."
Stacy adjusted the throttle and nudged the control yoke forward. The Iron Maiden responded with a groan of ancient hydraulics that, had it been a person, would have been accompanied by cracking bones. The mech lifted and glided forward, skimming above the cracked asphalt with a mobility that contradicted its size. She banked left, following the curve of the foundry wall, scanning every shadow and doorway with her optical sensors. Nothing moved.
"Like a graveyard," she said.
The comms crackled. "Yeah, well, you'd be surprised what crawls out of graves, Chen."
A flicker of movement caught her eye. Not on any screen or in a building, but in a long, low structure at the far end of the depot, a loading annex with heavy reinforced doors that hung slightly ajar. Her HUD highlighted it, and she slowed the Iron Maiden to a crawl.
"Marcus, I've got something. East corner of the depot complex, looks like a maintenance hangar. Doors are open about two meters."
"I see it. Hang tight. I'm adjusting my position to cover you."
Stacy's gloved fingers tightened on the controls, ready for action. "I could go take a closer look. It's just an open door. Probably left like that by whoever's supposed to be maintaining the place."
"Could be a trap."
"Could be a raccoon."
"Could be a raccoon with a stolen anti-armor rifle and a grudge against the APC. Stay where you are until I give you the all clear."
Stacy suppressed a sound of pure frustration. The impulse to push forward was overwhelming, to prove herself as more than just someone who could handle a gyroscopic hiccup. But Marcus's tone left little room for negotiation, and she remembered Rostova's warning, the security camera footage, and her promise to be more careful.
"Fine. Holding position."
The quiet stretched. Rain hammered against her hull and the floodlights cast long shadows across the yard.
"Alright," Marcus said at last. "No activity that I can track. No heat signatures, no communications traffic. I'm going to proceed on foot to that hangar. You provide overwatch. If anything moves that isn't a rat, you have my authorization to engage."
Stacy straightened in her seat, a thrill racing up her spine. "You're going in alone?"
"Someone has to check if it's really a raccoon. Keep your optics sharp. I'll be on the port-side maintenance ladder in about thirty seconds."
She watched the remote feed flicker as Marcus's own compact exosuit detached from its mounting on the Iron Maiden's shoulder, a two-meter frame of reinforced composite and hydraulic muscles shaped to human proportions. It landed in the shadows between two abandoned forklifts, concealed from any potential watchers. His voice on the tactical frequency was calm and unhurried as he moved through the gaps between the buildings.
Stacy felt her pulse quicken. This was real, unscripted, dangerous. Every sensor in the Iron Maiden was active, feeding her a looping stream of visual and thermal data. She could see Marcus's silhouette, a compact black shape against the rain-slicked concrete, moving with the practiced economy of a soldier who'd done this a hundred times. He approached the hangar doors and paused, checking something at the edge of the frame.
The sound came without warning.
A massive roar, something between a rending of metal and a scream of tortured machinery, split the night. The ground shook, and the small maintenance depot building crumpled inward as if a fist had closed around it. A shape, colossal and armored, burst through the collapsing structure in a spray of twisted steel and shattered pulverized concrete.
It was a mech, but nothing like the Iron Maiden. It was a hodgepodge of salvaged parts, junkyard plates bolted onto a heavy industrial frame, with a single enormous vulcan cannon grafted onto the right arm where a hand should have been. Its optical sensors glowed a dull, angry red, and it moved with a ragged, hulking stride that screamed purpose.
"Stacy! Break visual contact! Move now!"
Marcus's voice snapped over the comms, urgent and sharp, all laziness gone. Stacy's instincts took over, her hands flying across the controls, and the Iron Maiden's entire frame surged backward as she activated the dorsal thrusters at full burn. The mech's cannon swung toward her, and she threw the Iron Maiden into a lateral roll just as a stream of high-caliber rounds shredded the ground where she'd been standing.
"What the hell is that thing?" she yelled.
"Salvage rig, stolen, souped-up for combat. Look at the markings on the shoulder, if you can get a clear look. I'm going to guess this is our smuggler's backup plan."
Her HUD flashed with a targeting solution, and she took a breath. "I can engage. I have a clear firing arc."
"Negative. That thing has armor that'll shrug off your light cannon if you're not careful. You need to make your shots count. Hit the joints, the exposed hydraulics, the sensor cluster at the base of the neck. And don't get close. It'll tear you apart in close range."
As if to prove his point, the rogue mech swiveled, raising its cannon toward her, and Stacy slammed her controls to the side. The Iron Maiden dodged, and the volley caught the corner of an abandoned warehouse, sending chunks of concrete flying through the air.
She needed a better angle. The depot was a maze of loading docks and stacks of corroded shipping crates, perfect for ambush but a deathtrap if the rogue mech cornered her. She reversed thrusters and pulled the Iron Maiden into the cover of a collapsed factory annex, her systems reporting hull integrity nominal.
"He's still locked on your position," Marcus said. "Don't stay put. Move now."
Stacy shoved the throttle forward and the Iron Maiden burst from cover, swinging around the far side of the annex, trying to buy distance. The rogue mech tracked her, its vulcan cannon spitting a stream of fire that chewed through a row of steel barrels. A few of them detonated in brilliant orange blooms, and heat washed over her sensors with an urgency that made her heart slam against her ribs.
She fired, a concentrated burst from the Iron Maiden's primary cannon, aiming for the mechanical cluster at the base of the rogue mech's neck. The shots landed, sparks cascading in bright cascades across the weapon mount, but it wasn't enough. The rogue mech staggered, its right arm smoking, but it raised its cannon again and let loose another volley.
Her canopy crackled with warning indicators as rounds ricocheted off her hull and one slammed into her right shoulder joint with enough force to set off an alarm tone she hadn't heard since the sims. The Iron Maiden staggered, and Stacy felt the familiar hiccup in the gyroscopic compensator as she fought to correct her balance.
"Stacy! You're hit!"
"I know I'm hit! I'm handling it." She wrenched the controls, forcing the mech to pivot and bringing her weapons to bear. The rogue mech was closing the distance, its heavy frame moving with surprising speed for what looked like a junkyard creation.
A new warning blared across her HUD, and she saw it at the same moment a fresh salvo tore into the ground beside her: the rogue mech had launched a secondary volley from a hidden shoulder-mounted rack. She reversed course, but a shower of high-explosive rounds hammered into the Iron Maiden's left leg, and she felt the mech's stance give way. The impact threw her sideways, and she crashed into a rusted gantry, her teeth rattling in her skull.
"Systems failing on the lower frame. I've lost half my propulsion on the left side." Stacy's voice came out strained, but steady. "I can still return fire, but movement is limited."
"Get your weapons up. Keep them focused on that neck mount. I'm coming to support."
Her HUD showed Marcus moving through the shadows on foot, his compact exosuit sprinting across open ground between the structures. The rogue mech turned toward him, and its optics caught the movement. The cannon swung down.
"No!" Stacy screamed.
She didn't think. She acted, wrenching the throttles to full burn with her right hand while her left slapped the emergency override that vented all remaining reactor power into her primary weapon capacitor. The Iron Maiden answered, a snarling animal unleashed, and she raised its arm and fired a continuous stream at the exposed neck joint, pouring every ounce of energy into the unarmored seam.
The rogue mech's head snapped back as the rounds punched through the thin plates and shredded whatever delicate machinery sat behind them. Its body shook, its remaining arm flailing wildly, and its cannon went silent as the weapon system lost power. The hulking frame swayed, stumbled, and then crashed to the ground with a sound like a collapsing building.
For a long moment, the only sound was the hiss of rain on hot metal and the ragged rasp of Stacy's own breathing. Her hands were shaking, her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her teeth.
"Stacy! Status report!"
She blinked, forcing herself to focus. "It's down. Target is down. Repeat, I have engaged and eliminated the hostile mech."
A beat of silence, then Marcus's voice came through, low and warm. "Fuck me, Chen. That was some shooting."
Stacy let out a shaky laugh, reaching up to wipe sweat from her forehead. "Lucky shot."
"Bullshit. That was textbook. You might be the best pilot I've seen in five years." She heard him pause, then the sound of his exosuit moving across the debris field. "Stay put. I'm getting to your position now. And Stacy?"
"Yeah?"
"Remind me to buy you a drink after this. Maybe a whole bottle."