The walking tank, or “mech” as everyone was so found of calling it, was a dome-shaped armored chassis sporting two gatling guns and a 105 mm cannon, set on top of six-legged base. It was docile, now, but only a few hours earlier it had royally terrified all of them, blowing up a truck with that cannon and shooting down several troopers with those guns.
After what happened to the first recon team, the second recon team, which I led, decided it would be safer to blow it up and study the pieces than it would be to somehow “capture” it. The Level 4 plusses, predictably, nixed that plan.
Epsilon-2-06 ‘Sven’ had been the one to figure out how to disable it. Using a magnetically accelerated anti-tank rifle, Sven had figured he could just shoot the pilot and that would disable the machine. Thankfully, he turned out to be right, and so team Epsilon-2 brought in a new toy with only a few scratches and two large holes in the dome.
And the people rejoiced, for we only had moderate civilian casualties while waiting for Sven to set up his shot, and they cried out “Alleluia, Amen!” Mission accomplished.
Afterwards, they had put the thing on a truck and carried it here. It rested now on the floor of the hangar/garage of site 43, and team Epsilon-2 as well as a few researchers and miscellaneous personnel were standing around, gawking at it.
“Would you look at this machine? It’s a thing of beauty, Pegasus!” Sven in particular was finding it hard to contain his enthusiasm. “Can you imagine the kind of power a mech could give you on the battlefield! Completely, totally, and unequivocally kickass!”
“I can imagine it,” said Pegasus, meaning something significantly different from what Sven probably meant. Specifically, Epsilon-2-01 meant that he could still remember the destruction this thing had caused a very short time before.
Sven gave his commander a sideways glance. “I know that face. That’s the ‘you’re forgetting that our job is supposed to suck’ face. With all due, respect, sir, you gotta lighten up.”
In spite of himself, Pegasus found himself smirking. “With all due respect, rookie, I outrank you and part of my job is killing your buzz.”
Even so, I had to concede he was right about the mech, in theory. Then, as now, I believed that anything which could conceivably give us MTFs a better fighting chance against the SCPs was automatically a good thing.
Sven raised his arms and shrugged. “Yes, sir. With your permission, sir, may I have a look in the cockpit? I’d like to see the inside once before the techies take it away.”
Pegasus nodded an affirmation and Sven practically skipped around to the back of the machine, where a ladder had been set up. Some level 1’s had just finished cleaned the body out from the inside, and Sven was able to get up and inside the dome without any trouble. Pegasus himself walked around to the back to watch him crawl in.
“It’s a little cramped in here… but it’s amazing! It’s just what I’d imagined it would be like!” said Sven. The machine shifted forwards a little, and the ladder slid away.
“Sven, don’t press any buttons in there!” shouted Pegasus. “Leave that to the techs!”
“Huh? I didn’t push anything. Did I jostle something? What’s-“ The outer hatch on the back of the dome swung shut, cutting off whatever Sven had been about to say. The entire machine shuddered, and the sound of moving hydraulics merged with the noise of alarmed shouts from the observers as the mech moved into an upright position.
“What the hell!? I’m not doing anything!” Sven’s voice came through a buzzing speaker from somewhere on the mech. “My hands aren’t on the controls!” The mech turned, slightly, raised its gatling guns, and mowed down several bystanders with rapid bursts of fire. “Oh my god! Oh shit! I didn’t do that! I didn’t want to do that!”
The big thing I wonder about, looking back on this, was… Was it my fault? All I had to do was say “No, Sven, you can’t play in the death machine.” But nothing happened to the people who pulled the body out or cleaned out the inside… No… it can’t have been my fault. How could I have known?
Pegasus sprinted for cover and ducked behind an MTF armored van while the mech went on shooting the people who were somewhat slower than he was. The mech’s guns made a noise somewhere between a roar and a buzz in the echoing chamber, punctuated with the screams of the injured and dying and Sven’s panicked shouting. After a few seconds, two other Epsilon team members were hiding behind the same van.
A few seconds after that, there was no more shooting. Pegasus and the survivors with him crouched and tried to focus on breathing quietly.
“Hello?” said Sven, into the quiet. “Is anyone out there?”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” hissed the MTFT to Pegasus’ right. He vaguely recalled her name was ‘Shriek.’
“None of these buttons are doing anything! The levers don’t work either!”
“Stay put,” said Pegasus. “We’ve got cover here, and help will come as soon as someone checks the security cameras.”
“The help will get shot up too! Do you want to wait until that thing is out of bullets before we move!?”
“I can’t get out! I can’t open the hatch from this side!”
“Fuck it! I’m not staying here!” Shriek got up and sprinted for the door before Pegasus could grab her. The mech turned around on its six legs and gunned her down before she had gone ten meters.
“Oh god! I can’t stop this thing!”
Pegasus swore and leaned back against the cruiser, banging his head against the reinforced metal siding. Abruptly he got up, turned around, and looked at the serial number on the van. Sure enough, it was the same vehicle that he had ridden away in from the mech attack earlier.
“Commander, what do we do now?”
Pegasus turned his head to look at the one surviving trooper. It wasn’t anyone he recognized. “Take off your shirt. Throw it up and that way.” He pointed towards the front of the truck.
“What?”
“I think the mech tracks by movement. I need you to distract it. Now take off your shirt and throw it when I say go!”
It wasn’t moving and trying to attack people behind cover, but it fired on people who ran. That was the only proof I had for a theory upon which I was staking my life. Sometimes crazy improvised plans work, but I will always hate them, and I hate myself for depending on them. Looking back, I could have at least tested my idea by throwing something else first, but I didn’t. Stupid. Fucking stupid.
To his credit, the MTFT asked no more questions and started unbuttoning his shirt. Pegasus edged to rear end of the van and slowly slid a hand around to the rear doors. The mech apparently did not see anything to shoot at. His hand reached a handle; still no firing. He yanked on the handle as hard as he could and the door popped open; almost at once he heard the mech moving and jerked back as the sound of gunfire and bullets ringing off of metal echoed from the door.
“Go!”
The trooper threw his shirt up. About a second later there was a buzzing noise and the shirt was perforated. Pegasus ran around the back door and leaped into the van, pulling the door shut behind him.
It was very dim inside the van. Pegasus stumbled and fumbled around until he found the ceiling light and turned it on. The inside of the van was just as the team had left it, with weapons and equipment left lying around to wait until they could be more properly stowed away. A large, long rifle-like instrument with knobby protrusions all along the barrel rested on the floor among other, more conventional-looking weapons. Pegasus picked up this instrument and thought about what to do next.
A few moments later, the back door on the van popped open, and the mech fired on it. Then the top hatch on the van opened, and the mech fired on that as well. A few helmets and other things were thrown out the back or through the roof to be shot up, and so Pegasus kept the machine busy while he opened a small hatch in the side of the van and set up the anti-tank to point through the hole in small increments of movement.
Sven kept whimpering through his speaker phone. Pegasus was just lining up a shot on the dome when he heard the words “Please… help me…” come through clearly enough to make out.
Of course, he had to say just those words, right at that time. I really wish he hadn’t done that.
There was a crackle, a popping noise, the rifle jumped back, and the garage was filled with the sound of Sven’s screaming. As if in response, the mech turned and started firing in the direction of the shot. Pegasus jerked away from the opening, dropped onto the floor of the van, and laid there listening to the sound of bullets ricocheting.
The shooting stopped after a few seconds. Sven continued whimpering and groaning for several more minutes until he stopped, apparently passed out from blood loss. Pegasus stayed down on the floor until he heard the mech clanking and settling to the floor, shutting down.
He came out of the back of the van slowly and with caution, but there was no buzzing or blasting this time. Several other survivors came out from their hiding places as well, congregating around mech once more with a much more somber attitude. Pegasus noted a new entry and exit point in the dome.
“Commander?”
Pegasus turned to face the unfamiliar MTFT, clutching the shredded remains of his shirt and looking for all the world like a lost child. “Sir, are you-“
“Shut up and get a medical team.”
I doubted there would be any point to calling doctors by then, for Sven or anyone that he’d shot up, but I didn’t want to admit that. As it turns out, I was right; there were no survivors among those wounded. And yet, I survived, as a hero of sorts, at the expense of people who were no less worthy than I. It’s enough to make a man turn to drink and/or nihilism. I don’t remember it all, but I think I did both for a while after that.
