Free Beware the Black Battlenaut by Robert T. Jeschonek Page B

Battlenaut forward on pure momentum. He slammed it hard against the rebel, which seemed to be undergoing some kind of systems malfunction. As soon as he made contact, Grist wrenched back on the stick, keeping his Battlenaut on its feet while the rebel crashed to the ground.
    When Grist had crippled the rebel Battlenaut and disabled its guns, he traced the music signal to a source outside the battle zone. He rotated his Battlenaut's upper body to give him a clear line of sight to the location blinking on his visor display.
    Grist saw nothing until another surge of lightning washed over the landscape. In the split-second flare, he spotted exactly what he'd expected to see. What he'd dreaded.
    It was at least three times the size of any Battlenaut he'd ever seen. Its gleaming black skin was festooned with weapons but not a single mark of identification. Writhing trails of electrical energy chased over it, as if the lightning had struck it and left a charge.
    The Black Battlenaut. And it was playing his song.
    Grist's best friend, Mallet Cray, had been singing that same song on the planet Yolanda a year ago, during an earlier battle in the civil war against Rightful forces. He'd always sung it in battle "for protection," and it had worked.
    Until the Battle of Enoch on Yolanda, that is.
    The song's magic hadn't done him much good when the friendly fire hit...the friendly fire from his best friend Grist . Grist's guns had hit a spot already softened up by rebel arms and had blown Cray's power plant. The explosion had caught Cray before he could eject and had not left enough of him behind to fill a shot glass.
    All because Grist had lost his head and fired wild during an ambush.
    Now, in the midst of another battle, Grist heard the same song his friend had been singing just before his death. Was it a coincidence that it seemed to be coming from the Black Battlenaut?
    "It's your turn to die-yi-yi," said the gleaming silver fish wriggling past Grist's visor. "Cray's come b-b-back for the one who killed him-im."
    Grist punched the comm button. The music stopped as he switched from "Receive" to "Send." "Freak? Raw? Either of you see the giant black Battlenaut?"
    Freak's wild laughter rippled over the comm. "No way, man! Where is it?"
    Grist's fingers fluttered over a keypad on the armrest. "I just fired you the coordinates."
    "Nothing there," Raw said after a moment. "You have video of this thing?"
    Grist spun through recent vid logs from the onboard cameras, cursing as he came up empty. "Missed it," he said, "but I eyeballed it twice. Black armor, heavy ordnance, bigger than our three Battlenauts put together."
    Freak stopped laughing. "Whoa! You saw the Black Battlenaut !"
    "That thought did cross my mind." Grist threw his helmet's optics to maximum magnification and gave the area a hard scan. The only Battlenauts he saw were the four downed rebels and the other two Redeyes.
    "Wait a minute," said Raw. "Do you have any telemetry on this thing at all?"
    "No." Grist took advantage of a lightning flash to make another scan but still saw nothing.
    "Then what if it wasn't there?" said Raw. "What if you're seeing things because of the sleep dep?"
    "Not a chance," said the silver fish as it switched past Grist's helmet. Without being told, Grist knew the fish's name was Lacuna .
    "But what if I'm not seeing things?" said Grist. "You know what the Black Battlenaut means, don't you?"
    "The end of the universe!" Freak whooped so loud, the comm filters cut her signal for an instant. "Everyone and everything!"
    "It's a legend." Raw's voice was calm. "A bedtime story for children."
    "I know I saw something." An orange and black butterfly with the face of a grinning human baby landed on the back of Grist's hand. "Why not look into it?"
    "Because we have a job to do," said Raw. "We have to push the Rightfuls off this moon."
    Suddenly, the lush green jungle that had sprung up in the cockpit parted over one corner of Grist's forward viewport. In that