about. The vibration alone was making me motion sick. I took my mind off the matter, focusing on drawing my attention to other irrelevant things, to distract me for a bit.
“Fire missiles,” Shanna screamed, pressing for the weapon ejector forward.
Our giant mech opened fire, unleashing thousands of missiles into the ceiling above us. The roof collapsed to the ground, the rubble and dust spreading like a wild fire. Two blue creatures fell to the ground, their legs wildly kicking the air in an attempt to stand back up.
“Leave them be,” Shanna warned the pilots—the man and the teenager—before turning on the flight capacitors at maximum power. “We have to save our ammo for more pressing matters.”
Our giant robot whirled, ascending slowly from the ground, heading out of the building through the opening in the cave.
“This is awesome,” the young teenager screamed in delight, hollering his annoying voice through the open channel on our com link. “I can’t wait to see this bad boy in action.”
“Calm down, kid,” Shanna said, stopping him from being too annoying. “You will definitely get your chance, and I doubt you will like it.”
Both of our large Mechs made it out of the building safely, as we flew further up into the sky. Shanna steered the giant war robot west, towards the anarchy and chaos; the other Mech behind us.
“We are almost there,” Shanna added, deploying the surveillance drones into the area. “Get ready to intercept.”
My heart skipped a bit, my eyes widening, a feeling of anxiety starting to overwhelm me.
Shanna landed the giant Mech onto the ground, firing a barrage of bullets into a horde of unsuspecting alien creatures. There were about sixty of them, west of our position, terrorizing fleeing citizens. I looked away, closing my eyes from the carnage and violence. I had never seen anything like it before, and it was just getting started.
“Charge the ion laser,” Shanna screamed at me, making me to open my eyes, her arms still glued to the controls.
“And how am I supposed to do that, Shanna?” I rattled back at her.
All of the controls looked like small bleeps, on this giant screen—nothing make sense to me. It was clearly advanced technology, and the fact that we were charging directly into battle, was not helping me focus at all.
“It’s the blue one,” she yelled back, her voice ringing of frustration and fear.
To my left, I saw the blue hologram button and I punched with everything I had, hoping that would be the end of it. But I was wrong, sadly to say. More complicated and mind boggling instructions and commands popped up on the com screen, blocking my vision for a second.
“What now?” I yelled to her, my heart pacing heavily with each step the giant robot took towards the alien beasts.
“Just forget it,” Shanna whispered, retracting all commands to her pilot system; she tilted her body forwards as we came into range of the first beast.
The large monster bashed into our legs, forcing us to retreat back. The giant robot extended its right metallic hand, grabbing the monster in the middle.
“Now, Hank,” Shanna screamed, most likely talking to the pilot of the other giant Mech. “Fire the ion cannon, now.”
“What? Are you insane?” I screamed at her, when I realized that her plan put the both of us in danger.
The ion cannon was compromised of highly dangerous toxic atoms that damaged cells upon contact. Very lethal at close range, even for the pilots operating the weapon. Shanna was getting desperate; she clearly wasn’t thinking straight. Her intentions and actions were noble, but at this rate, she was going get the both of us killed.
“Oh no,” I turned my head left, realizing that the left arm of the Mech had been ripped right off the by the creatures. Exposed wirings and circuits were flickering on and off from the side as the machine begun to lose power. The creatures had stopped chasing the screaming citizens and begun congregating around us—not good.
“I don’t want to say anything negative, but we might not come out of this alive,” I whimpered, my cowardice taking over. “We need to leave now. Please, Shanna, listen to me.”
“You can eject out, if you want,” she replied in one swift glance, her facial expression tense and raw. We were hit again, on the left side, the damage further decreasing our Mech’s speed. The scrunching gears irritated me profusely, forcing me to shut my ears with my both hands. I took one large breath of air, leaning to the right, in order to balance myself from falling.
The giant Mech grabbed one of the terror beasts and threw it in the air, finishing off the attack with a javelin launcher. The wind picked up speed, the dark night signifying an ominous sign. Shanna never took her eyes off the monitor; she kept typing in encrypted commands, relaying them through the main com monitor. She was just incredible, but that alone, was not going to help us in this situation.
“Well, there goes the left leg,” I sighed, hiding my frustration and apprehension. “Can we leave, now?”
“I told you already,” she yelled back. “Just go, Den, don’t worry about me.”
Clenching my left fist, my stomach tightening, I unstrapped my seat quickly, racing towards her. I had no idea what I was thinking, or what I was even doing. I knew I had to help her; I knew I had to do something—anything.
“Shanna, we can’t win this,” I whispered right behind her, my hands holding onto her sit.
We were hit again by one of the creatures, and in that moment, Shanna hit her head against the control panel. She gasped for air, her hands falling by her side, as she fell unconscious. I caught her before her forehead hit the controls, only to fall to the ground myself. Shanna fell into my lap, her hair scattered on my lower abdomen.
The giant Mech lost its balance and collapsed into the grimy earth, completely covered in a thick smoke. I covered my nose and coughed out loud, looking for an exit. Metallic coverings were falling all over the place, the whole infrastructure turning to rubble and scrapes. As I got even more desperate, I edged over and pulled the emergency panel, on the left side, planning to make a hasty retreat.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I hissed out, when it didn’t eject. The lever was stuck; we weren’t going anywhere any time soon, so crap! Closing my eyes, I cleared all of my thoughts. There had to be another way, but what?
Suddenly, I felt a brush of heat around my face, the hot air blowing from the blown turbine engine. I think the nuclear coupler had been damaged or something. This was not good news for anyone within a ten mile radius of us. Under normal circumstances, Uranium 34X was stable and extremely powerful, but right now, it was just another big threat to us.
“On second thought,” I paused, a brilliant and yet insane idea popping into my head.
If I could re-energize the neutrons, crank up the turbines to maximum power, then it was possible to create a category eight explosion, powerful enough to wipe half of these beasts. I took my com pad quickly, my heart still racing, and placed it into the Mech’s main monitor. The com link blipped green, allowing me access into its main systems. The noise coming from the rampaging alien beast was distracting, but luckily for me, recalibrating the system down was an easy part. The hard part was the initial process time; it took seconds to half an hour for the reaction to happen, it all depended on several crucial factors and variables.
I held Shanna even closer, letting her head rest on my chest, as I stood up and tried the lever one more time. The stupid metal wasn’t budging, not ever a little. I felt frustrated and angry, my nerves riled up completely. The creatures had torn off through the outer covering of the robot’s abdomen; it was just a matter of time before they reaped it to shreds.
“Come on,” I panicked, hitting the metal control with my knee.
The control switch finally gave out, releasing pressurized air into the small compartment. It detached from the Mech, as it shot us out a few hundred meters into the air. I held Shanna tightly, my left arm coiled around one of the seat’s straps. To be honest, I was scared; I really had
no idea if we were going to make it, or….. I thought about it and decided to pry my mind away from it.
A massive tremor went through me as a powerful acceleration jerked us even further up. The emergency foam deployed into the small compartment, when the thrusters lost power, engulfing us in this thick, hardening substance before we hit the ground. I felt a powerful thump, however it wasn’t painful, thanks to the foam’s protective layer. The rumbling finally stopped leaving only gushing winds and utter silence. It was quiet, a little too quiet for my likings. The feeling of not knowing what lay outside this emergency capsule was just too much for me to bear. Hours slugged by, the foam still as hard and powerful as before, as I waited for help, but to my disappointment, none came. I tried to calm my mind by thinking of unrelated things, recalling past events, however, none of those coping mechanisms I developed were helping me pass time. I was really freaking out, since I hated being trapped in a confined space, and even more so, unable to move my body.
Shanna remained unconscious, her limb body rested close to my left arm; I was rather surprised that she hadn’t awakened yet.
Right as I accepted the silence, I heard a loud bang, the shrill sound coming from the upper portion of the capsule. Was it the alien beasts? No, the noise sounded too subtle and controlled to belong to any primal creature.
“Den, are you still alive? Can you hear