Shiner

By J. L. Ender

“Tell us how y’all got that shiner, Cap?” Private Cordone’s voice crackled over the comms. I couldn’t remember his full name, Something Something Cordone IV.

I shook my head and closed my thermos, suppressing a sigh. Ever since I’d reported for duty with a black eye, the squad hadn’t been able to leave me alone about it.

And we couldn’t afford distractions.

The twelve of us stood at the South Pole, arranged in a rough semicircle around the Devil Pit. A dozen men and women piloting powerful megabot mechs. When monsters impervious to guns start rising from the Earth’s core, you get creative.

“Can you even see around that wonky eye, sir?” another private asked.

“I can see just fine,” I groused. “Now simmer down, ladies and gents. We’re here for a purpose.”

The comms went silent, and I felt a pang of guilt. Though camaraderie was important, the mission was serious, and I needed everyone paying attention. Radar had detected a monster almost two hundred feet tall, bigger than anything we’d fought before.

And I’ve killed some big dadgum monsters.

I piloted the latest in megabot tech, an eighty-foot behemoth fresh off the factory floor, rushed into service specifically for this battle. The cockpit even had that new car smell.

‘Course, give me a few weeks and it would smell like stale coffee and ten kinds of sheer pants-wetting terror.

I felt the ground shake beneath the megabot’s feet. I cautiously stepped back, as did the rest of my squad.

A chunk of rock the size of a suburban house cracked and fell away. A tentacle like the bloated finger of an eldritch demon reached upward.

“Steady,” I called. “Let me make the first move.”

“Hey, sir?” Cordone called from his battered, early model megabot. “If I kill this thing, will you tell me how you got that shiner?”

I grunted. “Sure, kid. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

More tentacles reached up. The beast fumbled around. Trying to find purchase?

No. Grasping for prey.

“Holy happy meals,” Cordone said. “Is that beastie flying?”

The titanic monster rose, up and up. Good Lord, it’s floating. Its massive, bloated body was bruise-purple and mostly round, with a large protrusion on top housing a fat eye. A lavender iris glared down at us. Hundreds of tentacles thrashed in all directions.

“Swords out,” I ordered. “Cut off as many tentacles as you can.”

We charged the edge of the Pit until the steep drop was mere yards away, a descent into madness and death—into hell itself.

The sounds of battle filled the air. I extended blades from two of my megabot’s six arms. She had two hooks, two swords, and two sledgehammer fists for punching.

The monster didn’t take kindly to being chopped up like Sunday’s pork roast special. Seven mouths opened and let out a roar like an earthquake.

A tentacle wrapped around a blue megabot and flung it across the ice. Another got hurled into the Pit. He vanished into the dark below with a terrified scream. God have mercy on him.

But I had no time to mourn. A tentacle thwacked the leg of my own bot. I struck out, but the blade bounced off. The beast was extending new tentacles, ones that couldn’t be cut!

I gaped in shock. Two kinds of tentacles? I’d never seen anything like it. My mind reeled. It felt like the monster was enacting a plan…

Or setting a trap.

“Retreat!” I bellowed into my mic.

The remaining mechs withdrew, but not before another one hurtled across the ice. I quickly counted heads. There were seven running, two picking themselves up. One gone.

Where’s Private Cordone?

“Yeehaw!”

Aw, hell no.

Cordone’s battered old megabot raced across the body of the enormous beast.

“Private Cordone, I gave you an order—”

“Sorry sir, I was already halfway up ‘is butt. Gal-dang, ain’t he ugly.”

“Private—”

He charged right for the beast’s eye. Dozens of tentacles ascended after him like twists of purple smoke. One wrapped around the ankle of his mech—

Just as the rattletrap megabot plunged a blade into the monster’s eye.

The appendages flailed, several of them thumping off the head of Cordone’s mech. The monster bellowed again, but at a higher and sharper pitch. A crack edged up the corner of my viewport.

The monster exploded in a burst of purple gas, wreathing the ice in violet flames. My rearview cam showed the shockwave knocking down the megabots behind me.

The remains of the beast plummeted back into the Pit.

And Cordone plunged after it.

Leaving me the last man standing.

I can’t believe I’m about to do this.

I extended a hook and drove it through the ice until it bit rock, then I leapt into the Devil Pit after my soldier.

A hellscape revealed itself. Far below, I saw the baleful glares of distant monsters. Channels of magma cut glowing rivers through the gloom.

I grabbed Cordone’s megabot by the arm. The chain caught, slipped for one heart-stopping second, then held. We dangled over the abyss. Tentacles scraped at us as the monster fell into darkness with one last, muted groan.

I took a deep breath and hauled us both up. The metal in my bot’s arms groaned, but we reached the lip of the Pit.

Our mechs crawled onto solid, snowy ground. I raised my megabot to its feet, taking stock. We’d killed the beast, and most of my crew had survived. I’d  had worse days.

“Well, that was exciting.” Cordone sounded breathless. “Thank you. Now… about that shiner, sir.”

I rolled my eyes. “I walked into the corner of a door.”

“What? That’s it?” He scoffed. “I risked my life for that?”

“You think I’d hide a cool story?”

He sighed. “Fair point.”

I glanced down and sighed myself. My thermos had come open, and a puddle sloshed at my feet. I told you, stale coffee and pants-wetting terror. All in a day’s work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. L. Ender is the author of the superhero series Steel Fox Investigations, as well as a number of novels and short stories across several genres. Ender has worked as a dishwasher, a beef jerky labeler, a warehouse worker, a shelf stocker, a greeter, a traveling technician, a laser engraver, a package handler, a copywriter, a graphic designer, a librarian, an editor, destroyer of worlds (in an unofficial capacity), a dispatcher, and a phone operator.

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