Beware the Black Battlenaut Read Online Free

itchy foot.
    When Grist suddenly stopped shooting at him, cutting the weapons barrage by a third, Raw's itch moved up to first place. Gritting his teeth, he barely resisted the urge to stop fighting, kick off his boot, and scratch like crazy. In the process, he dropped his guard for an instant and took a laser hit that charred the armor plating on his Battlenaut's left shoulder.
    Cursing as a stream of wild shots flared around him, Raw swung around. He charged toward the source of the fire, targeting his own arsenal on what had become the most volatile threat of the moment.
    Freak continued to pound him with lasers and missiles as he hurtled toward her.
     
    *****
     
    Freak unleashed the full fury of her weapons, but the Black Battlenaut kept stomping toward her.
    Gwen's voice chimed over the comm with no more tension than if the two of them were chatting over coffee. "What do you think I'm going to do to you, Sharon? Burn you alive?"
    Freak's heart hammered. That's exactly what you'll do. Make me die the same way you did.
    "Well, it isn't gonna happen," said Gwen. "Why would I try to kill someone whose life I died to save? Besides which..."
    Suddenly, everything changed. Freak was in the cockpit of her old Battlenaut instead of the current one. Looking out the forward viewport, she immediately recognized the steam vents and weird geologic formations of another world.
    Laser fire pulsed past her from the fortified walls of a Rightful garrison. Commander Endymion snapped out orders over the comm in the cockpit.
    She was back on Gallop, during the battle in which Gwen had been killed.
    "Besides which," Gwen said over the comm, "I don't blame you for what happened."
     
    *****
     
    As soon as Freak's weapons shut down and dropped, Raw doubled back and charged the Rightful behind him.
    That was when something unexpected happened. A missile hissed out of his Battlenaut's rack and shot straight toward the enemy. Raw watched as the missile hit the rebel Battlenaut's midsection dead center and detonated, blowing a hole in the heavy armor.
    There was just one problem. Raw didn't remember firing the missile.
    Suddenly, Raw's Battlenaut lunged forward. Lasers ablaze, the Battlenaut raced at top speed for the Rightful.
    As Raw watched through the viewport, his Battlenaut lit up the hole in the enemy's belly, setting off an explosion in its guts. The Rightful danced like a man touching a high voltage power line, then slammed to the ground in a pile of smoking scrap.
    Raw quick-checked every status display in the cockpit, scrambling to ferret out the problem. Never in his career had a Battlenaut taken independent action like that.
    He only stopped hunting the glitch when he heard a tapping sound in the direction of the forward viewport. He looked toward the noise, and his eyes widened with surprise.
    His Battlenaut was pointing one of its own lasers into the cockpit.
    The hypo cuff squeezed Raw's bicep and pumped him full of liquid fire. A voice echoed in his head, and he recognized it immediately.
    It was the voice of a young man, barely out of his teens. "I'm back. Did you miss me?"
    It was the voice of Braeburn Score.
     
    *****
     
    "If you say you're sorry one more time, I'm gonna pop you one," Cray said with a smirk.
    "Okay. Sor..." Grist barely caught himself. He was still in a daze, struggling to deal with the fact that a man he'd killed was apparently sitting in the cockpit with him.
    "Your apologies are meaningless," said Cray. "What's done is done. Get over it."
    "I can't." Grist pulled off his helmet and set it aside. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about it."
    "Big baby." Cray snorted and shook his head. "It was war , man. Chaos . It was nobody's fault."
    "I panicked." Grist's hands were shaking.
    Cray leaned forward. "Okay, look." He rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands between them. "You're really pissing me off here. All this 'poor me' crap." Cray rolled his eyes. "The not sleeping and the volunteering