Escalation
an excerpt

Twenty kilometers distant, no response. There was a boom as I broke the soundbarrier, then absolute silence followed, safe for my own breathing. Fifteen, nothing. The plateau steadily grew in size and I could now begin to make out details, like the ragged canyon. Still nothing. They were taking their time, weren’t they? The thought never crossed my mind. It was irrelevant and I never think irrelevant thoughts, not while operating an HGM. Ten, a response. A dozen red dots rose up from the plateau. They were in a clumped double pentagram, with a pair of dots spiraling in the center. Turrets or decoys? No way to tell till they began to fire.

I aimed the railgun at the spiraling ones. Five kilometers. A minute shudder on six dots. I zipped straight up, at seven gees. Six flashes passed beneath my feet. Six turrets identified, now with a blue ring around the dot.

At nine kilometers distant again, I leveled out. It was time to retaliate and I had a perfect angle. Reticule on one turret, squeezing the trigger. The weapon cast out a flash of its own as the bullet sped off in its plasma sheath. The bullet went one way, I went the other as the recoil sent all two tones of me reeling back, forcing me to fight it in order to maintain my position. Three g upward spiral before straightening out. At this distance, the mach 45 projectile reached its target in just over half a second, far too short to both react and dodge far enough to make it miss. The fact that it was small didn’t matter either. It was fast enough to cause a terrific shockwave in both the air and the more solid turret, powerful enough to rip the latter to pieces. One dot winked out. Eleven left to go.

I checked the late turret’s motion. Not even a single meter. Low mobility, slow response, both? Did the same thing go for its siblings? I didn’t ponder the question. Their actions would tell me what their capabilities were.

Five flashes sped to meet me, four to block all directions I could dodge in, one heading straight for the Zephyr’s head and the primary sensor-cluster. Full stop, jerked head to the right, near miss. No response yet from the unmarked dots. All decoys, or turrets pretending to be decoys?

One more dot winked out as my railgun struck. At only nine kilometers, they were too close to evade, but I was having a hard time doing it as well. Backflip, aborted prematurely. One of the Zeph’s antenna got hit and shut down to simulate damage. The kiddiewalk was keeping me from using all of the machine’s mobility. I couldn’t even go upside-down for a moment, let stand doing the upside-down hover while shooting. I had to do something before I got shot down, which would happen if I stuck here. I was taking them down, but I was still outnumbered and there was only one of me to aim for. They were using bullets as well, so ECM wasn’t very effective. I had to make a choice, fast.

Retreat? The greater distance would make dodging easier, but they would gain the same advantage, turning it into a stand-off. Close in? Their formation was dense, too dense to put up an effective field of fire within point-blank. Close in it was, without the kiddiefunction.
“Full manual” Showtime.

Maximum acceleration, nine gees. I’d never before pushed the ARC-LIGHTS that far, but I wasn’t going to hold back now that they could take it. I couldn’t hear if they were whining like hell because the sound couldn’t catch up, but my HUD didn’t blink any warnings, so I assumed they were doing just fine. Zig-zag, three flashes missed me. Counter, the right arm swung back with the recoil but I kept the Zeph steady this time. Half of the known turrets were now gone, leaving three and the six unknowns.

Three kilometers, I ejected the railgun, freeing the right hand for melee. The rods on the Zephyr’s knees launched from their holsters and I grabbed both before slamming their ends together. The ends of the now combined rod extended to form a staff nearly thirty meters long. I checked my velocity. Mach 3.6.

One kilometer, deceleration, but I would still go real fast when crashing through that formation. Blue rings appeared on the unmarked dots. So all were turrets. Smart. I swung a figure eight, smacking one into another and cracking a third on the backswing. Not smart enough. Six left. Somersault, kicked one into another, swung the staff against a third turret’s ARC-LIGHT cluster, separated the rods and threw one of them at a fourth. Ten down, two left.

I gripped my now fifteen meter-staff and pounced one of the remaining pair, the spiraling ones. The one I ignored finally got off a solution and tried to shoot me, but I countered by sweeping my victim into the path of the bullet. The turret shut down and tumbled out of the sky while I leapt ahead at the last one. I blocked a second flash with the rod before poking the barrel, crumpling it inward till it touched the magazine and squashed it as well. The magazine exploded violently, taking the turret with it. All down. Banzai and stuff.

I continued to decelerate for another fourteen kilometers before coming to a halt. Finally I allowed myself to catch a good breath. I checked the stopwatch that had begun to run the moment the first dot had been detected and stopped once the last one had been destroyed. Total time: just under twenty seconds.
“Wew, a new record. Wonder how I did that. No static cardboard targets though, too bad.” I wheezed and finally allowed any coherent thoughts to enter my mind that weren’t directly focused on fighting. Then I remembered something else I’d observed during the practice.
“What the hell?! Mach 3.6?! Since when did…..Holy tapdancing snakes, I can outrun a lightningbolt with this!” I gasped. The Zephyr suddenly lurched, catching me off-guard and putting me into a spin for half a second. That must have been my shockwave, the one that couldn’t catch up all the time I was zooming along.