The Black Gate: A Mecha Scifi Epic (The Messenger Book 11) by J.N. Chaney & Terry Maggert

Author:J.N. Chaney & Terry Maggert [Chaney, J.N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2020-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

Dash swung and rolled the Archetype, bypassing the shattered hulk of a Realm heavy cruiser—he just caught her name, the Savage—while using her as cover. He emerged from under her battered keel, right in the teeth of a big, midnight-black Deeper ship. X-ray lasers immediately converged on the mech, dousing its shield with energy. Dash returned the favor, firing the dark-lance and nova-gun at a blistering rate, then following up with a barrage of rail gun shots from the Archetype’s wrist mount at point-blank range. He knew better than to assume the gaping holes he punched into the enemy ship would permanently cripple it. He zoomed away, spun the Archetype around, and deployed its most powerful weapon, the blast-cannon.

Energy accumulators spread from the mech’s back like mighty wings as the weapon charged. Until recently, he’d only used the weapon as a last resort because it had a tendency to knock most of the Archetype’s systems offline when it fired. It had been improved and fine-tuned, though, making it less of a nail-biting system to use. It still had a glacially slow rate of fire, but when it did shoot, it delivered enormous damage.

Like now.

Dash discharged the weapon, a colossal blast of energy mostly in the gamma spectrum. It blasted the midships section of the Deeper ship into a cloud of debris, snapping it in two.

But Dash didn’t stick around to gloat. He spun the Archetype back around, seeking a new target. Leira, who’d just finished off a smaller Deeper ship with the Swift, fell into her accustomed wing position.

The momentary lull gave Dash a chance to survey the battlespace. The Deepers had been waiting for them, engaging first Benzel’s fleet, and then the Forge as they passed through the Gate. Two of the first ships through had been almost immediately lost, both destroyed. Four more were quickly battered to the point of having to break off and take shelter close to the Forge.

The massive station, in the meantime, had also taken a rapid series of hits, the Deepers doing more damage to it in a single engagement than the Golden had managed throughout the Life War. The Forge, though, wasn’t just a habitation and factory. It was, at its heart, a weapon. Custodian had quickly brought the metallic shielding online, changing parts of the Forge’s hull into almost perfectly reflective surfaces across the whole EM spectrum, letting it shrug off the blasts of coherent x-rays fired by the Deeper ships. Now, the Forge poured out a colossal amount of fire, fully engaging in the thick of battle in a way it never had before.

Still, the Realm forces struggled to make headway. Dash finally tagged all the mech pilots—himself and Leira, but also Amy, Jexin, and even Conover, who’d given up his command post for the time being—to try and split the Deeper fleet apart. Now the five of them tore through the Deeper lines, all five mechs working together.

The Archetype and Pulsar were the heavy hitters, the nimbler Swift, Talon,

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