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Chapter 1

The house was a small one. Though it had two floors, it was nothing spectacular. It was clearly old and a touch on the rundown side. The bright yellow paint of its exterior walls was flaking, and its roof had seen better days. The house sat just inside the borders of the Nevada desert. Its yard was a dry, cooked ground devoid of life, other than a few shrub-like wild plants that grew around it. Night was falling, and the stars already burned in the sky above it as the last rays of the day’s sun died away. One of the stars burned much brighter than the others…only it wasn’t a star at all. It was an approaching TX-1 transport.

The TX-1 flew over the house, circling around in the air, and turn back toward it. The sleek transport plane slowed as it came in for a landing at the edge of the house’s front yard. Its heavily-armored hull was a smooth, dark black. The TX-1’s landing gear deployed, one in the front and two at the plane’s rear. Thudding down onto them, the quiet hum of its engine went silent. The rear door opened as a ramp extended from the plane’s interior onto the hard desert soil. Heavy metal feet clanged their way down the ramp as Scott led Mac and Susan out of the TX-1. All three of them wore the upgraded Mark VIII Psi-mech armor Hank had developed in the wake of what everyone was now calling the Battle of New York. While the Mark VIIIs were lighter and faster than the older generation Psi-mech suits, they still looked like robots ready for war. Each of the Psi-mechs stood between eight and nine feet tall. The armor of their silver forms gleamed in the starlight. The shoulder-mounted cannon on Susan’s mech jerked about where it sat, as if searching for a target. Mac’s Psi-mech carried a wicked-looking tri-barrel weapon in its hands twice the size of an M249 SAW. The weapon was belt-fed from an ammo pack on his mech’s back. Scott’s mech appeared to be unarmed, but that was only because Scott believed in a more up close and personal style of combat. Encased inside its arms were blades powerful enough to rip through the depleted uranium alloy of an M1 in a single slash. All three of the Psi-mechs were equipped with arm blades, but the ones in Scott’s were special. Their level of power came not only from their sharpness and the enhanced strength his suit gave him, but also from the nanotech Hank had used to make them almost supernaturally sharp.

The three Psi-mechs spread out in front of the rundown little house, staring it down like old west gunfighters. Hank had stayed in the TX-1 and was monitoring the area with the transport’s sensors.

“Are you sure taking this place at night is a good idea?” Scott asked over the unit’s shared comm link.

Hank’s laughter answered him. “Don’t tell me the great and fearless Scott is worried about a few vampires all of a sudden?”

“That thing in New York tore through us like tissue paper, Hank,” Scott answered. “You can’t live through something like that and just forget it.”

Scott heard Hank sigh. “That thing in New York isn’t here,” Hank promised. “The Psi-folk back at headquarters say there isn’t even a master here. At worst, you’ll be facing mid-grade vamps. Most of them will likely be newbies, not even fifty years old.”

He would never admit it to Hank, but Scott wished Ringer was with them. Ringer was Psi-Mechs, Inc.’s greatest weapon in their ongoing war against the darkness that threatened to end all life on Earth. Once a street-level homicide detective, Ringer was now one of Psi-Mechs, Inc.’s leaders. He was a telekinetic of the highest order; the sort of power that was only born every few generations. As tough and heavily-armed as Scott and his fellow Psi-mech pilots were inside their suits, Scott knew Ringer could tear them apart easily. He had helped train Ringer when the man first joined up, and he had seen Ringer’s power continue to grow with each battle he fought. Scott didn’t know if there was a limit to Ringer’s ability, but even if there was, he highly doubted the man had reached it yet.

Before the Battle of New York, Scott had been fearless in his approach to monster slaying. Nothing had scared him. His confidence in himself and the tech Hank provided had made him feel invincible. He had fought rampaging Sasquatch hordes, snakes larger than F-16s, blood-crazed packs of werewolves, and even vampires. That thing leading the vampires in New York though…it had been something else. Scott could still sometimes feel the chill of the presence he’d felt that night. The thing that called itself Mavet was more than just a master vampire; it was the father of all vampires, and somehow more than that. The word “god” leaped into his mind as he thought of Mavet. And it sure seemed to fit. Scott shuddered inside his Psi-mech, forcing himself to focus on the job ahead of him. He had to admit, the encounter with Mavet had left him a much more cautious warrior than he had been before.

According to the intel Sharpton had provided them, there could be anywhere from three to over a dozen vamps in this nest. Three of the older versions of the Psi-mech suits could have never handled that many. While the new Mark VIIIs still contained many of the general weapon systems of the older models, though, they were also equipped with a good deal more vampire-slaying-specific armaments. They were stronger and faster, too.

Scott looked out through his Psi-mech’s reinforced face plating at Mac’s mech, then at Susan’s. “You guys ready?”

“You know it, Boss Man,” Susan answered in a heartbeat.

“I’m ready…” Mac said, “but what’s the plan? Are we going in or making them come to us?”

“I’m a big fan of the latter,” Scott quipped. “Susan, if you would, please?”

“With pleasure,” Susan answered.

A small rocket launcher rose on the mech’s shoulder, and the launcher emptied itself in a series of whooshing sounds as six rockets streaked out toward the small house. They punched through its walls to detonate inside the house, filling it with white phosphorous. The house exploded into flames. Thick tendrils of black smoke poured out of the holes the rockets had made in its walls and its now shattered windows.

“That’ll bring them running,” Susan’s voice chuckled over Scott’s comm.

“Don’t get cocky,” Scott warned her as the first burning vampire came bursting through the house’s door. The vampire was a male who looked like he’d been in his late twenties when he’d been turned. His clothes were on fire, and WP clung to several areas of his exposed flesh, burning it away. Scott couldn’t even imagine the level of pain the vampire had to be in, but it still came at them, with a pain-contorted snarl on its face, and its fangs bared.

“This one is mine,” Scott told Mac and Susan, popping his Psi-mech’s arm blades. “Cover me.”

Scott’s Psi-mech sprang forward to meet the charging vampire. With a single swipe of his right-hand blade, Scott decapitated the vampire and sent its head bouncing back toward the burning house. The rest of its body toppled forward as an even hotter supernatural fire engulfed it, leaving nothing but ash blowing away on the gentle breeze that swept through the desert night.

A stream of vampires followed it out, and Susan’s shoulder-mounted cannon thundered in rapid succession, hosing the charging vamps with high-powered, fully-automatic fire. One vampire was cut completely in half as the rounds tore through the middle of its body. Another lost an arm in an explosion of stale, black blood. The head of a young-looking female vampire burst apart like an overripe melon being struck by a sledgehammer as Susan’s stream of fire raked over her.

Mac joined the fight, his belt-fed weapon matching Susan’s devastating rate of fire round for round. One of the heavy slugs caught a male vampire in the center of its chest, striking with enough force to pulp the man’s upper body. Normally such a hit wouldn’t have slain a vampire, despite the amount of damage it inflicted, but the slugs Mac was firing were explosive rounds filled with wooden flechettes. The vampire wouldn’t be regenerating. The fragger was finally and truly dead.

A screeching vampire with most of her face burnt away and the fatty tissue of her body popping and crackling made it through Mac and Susan’s barrage. She came howling straight at Scott. He grinned inside his Psi-mech as he moved the suit into a defensive stance. The vampire leaped from the ground, soaring through the air, her clawed hands poised to strike at him. The right arm blade of his suit slid into her heart, catching her mid leap. It plunged upward, impaling her. The left blade took her head, even as she struggled to rip her body free from the blade buried in her chest. She blazed away into ash, experiencing the true death.

The battle was over almost as quickly as it had begun. Scott, Mac, and Susan found themselves standing alone again in the front yard of the house as it burned. The house’s roof gave, crashing inward to send a blast of glowing embers dancing into the darkness of the night.

“That was too easy,” Scott said over the comm.

“I think you’re right, Boss Man,” Susan agreed. “Something’s not right here.”

“Everybody, stand ready,” Scott cautioned.

“I’ve got movement from below the house,” Hank told them. The tele-mechanic was safe inside the TX-1, continuing to monitor the situation through the transport’s sensors.

The ground beneath the feet of the three Psi-mechs shook violently. Large cracks formed and ran across the hard soil of the house’s front yard as something moved beneath it.

“Oh, frag me,” Mac muttered under his breath. “It better not be a fragging death worm.”

The giant lizard exploded from the earth in front of the three Psi-mechs. It was easily twice the size of a tank. Razor sharp claws extended from the finger-like toes of its feet. Matching teeth gleamed in the starlight as the lizard opened its mouth in a thunderous roar of fury. Thick scales coated its body like armor. The thing’s tail whipped about in the air behind it, tipped with a scorpion-style stinger. Its eruption from the ground caused Susan and Scott’s mechs to stumble and knocked Mac’s completely over. His Mark VIII toppled onto its back with a loud thud. The giant lizard moved with impossible speed for something its size, its claws lashing out at Susan, who was closest to it. Sparks flew as they met the armor. Susan had jerked her mech’s arms up to block the blow and keep it from hitting her suit in its chest. She screamed as the claws cut through the armor and her flesh and bone inside it. Both of her arms left her body in a spray of coolant fluids, frayed wiring, and blood.

“Susan!” Scott yelled at the top of his lungs as her mech staggered backward.

As much as Susan was hurting, she wasn’t out of the fight yet, despite the loss of her arms. The cannon mounted on her mech’s right shoulder opened up on the giant lizard, spitting a stream of high-powered rounds that ripped a bloody trail, punching through the beast’s scales along its body. The giant lizard squealed and threw itself away from her line of fire. Its move put it nearly on top of Scott. Instead of trying to get away from the monster, he ran toward it, leaping onto it. His Psi-mech’s arm blades sank into its scales, piercing them time and time again as Scott used them to climb the beast’s body. He reached the top of its neck near its head and hurled himself onto its back as the monster tried in vain to chomp him. The giant lizard couldn’t turn its head enough to get at him with its teeth.

Even as it fought Scott, the giant lizard kept moving. Its gaze fell on Mac, who had just gotten back to his feet. Mac jerked his belt-fed weapon up at the monster and let loose. The huge cannon was designed to slay vampires, and its heavy slugs hammered the giant lizard, sending its yellow blood splattering over him, but it wasn’t enough to stop the creature. Its tail whipped around the side of its massive body at Mac. At that angle, the monster couldn’t use the tail’s tip, but it didn’t need to. The tail struck Mac with enough force to send his mech flying several yards from where it had been standing. Mac cursed as his mech bounced across the ground and system failure alarms blared and screeched at him within it. When his mech rolled to a stop, his gun was gone, and the belt that fed it was broken. Worse, one of his mech’s legs was offline. All Mac could do was try to crawl away as the giant lizard came at him again.

Scott still held onto the creature, riding on the back of its neck. He had retracted his suit’s arm blades and now clutched the creature’s scales with his mech’s hands. Shoving himself up, Scott dropped back down as he popped both blades. They sank into the sides of the monster’s neck with the both weight of his mech and its full strength coming down on them. The giant lizard shrieked as they cut gashes several feet long along the sides of its throat. Yellow blood exploded from the wounds, and Scott knew he’d been lucky enough to hit a main artery. The giant lizard jerked about, finally managing to toss him from its back in its death throes. Scott’s mech clanged against the side of the TX-1 as the giant lizard ran past it. Slamming forward onto the ground, Scott was jarred about inside his mech, but saw his suit had only taken minor damage.

The giant lizard continued to run as it bled out. The thing had to know it was dying, but its instincts drove the monster to get away from its armored enemies. Scott got his mech back onto its feet as the TX-1 lifted off into the air. What the hell is Hank doing?

The TX-1 hovered and turned, bringing its forward weapons around to the fleeing giant lizard, and they opened up in a demonstration of devastating firepower. The giant lizard’s back disintegrated beneath thousands of high-powered rounds, and yellow blood exploded from its body, flung in every direction. The giant lizard’s legs gave out beneath it as it died, and its body flopped onto the ground. Hank brought the TX-1 back down onto its landing gear.

“I’d say that takes care of that,” the tele-mechanic called to Scott over the comm.

Scott had rushed to Susan as soon as he had recovered from being flung about. To her credit, Susan had been able to open her Psi-mech, likely by verbal override command, and crawl out of it. She lay unconscious only a few feet from it. The hard soil of the yard was drenched in her blood. Scott popped his own Psi-mech open and scrambled out of it. Susan was pale, and he knew she wouldn’t be able to hang on for much longer.

“Susan needs help ASAP!” Scott yelled at Hank. “Get Eddie! Now!”

Hank didn’t bother to answer Scott. He put out the distress call immediately, then turned his attention to the other member of Scott’s squad. “You okay Mac?”

There was a crackle of static in Mac’s reply. “I’m fine. My suit’s pretty messed up, but I’m okay.”

“Copy that,” Hank answered. “On my way.”

Hank unstrapped and leaped up out of the TX-1’s pilot seat. Grabbing his toolkit, Hank lowered the transport’s rear door and headed out to see what he could do for Mac.

Scott was cradling Susan in his arms as a blinding flash of energy lit the night. A glowing dimensional doorway sprang into existence not far from their position. Through it stepped an older man with gray-streaked hair in a flight jacket, carrying an automatic shotgun and a beautiful redheaded woman.

“Mercy! Eddie! Over here!” Scott called to them.

The hot redhead came running over and slid onto her knees next to Susan. Her expression was one of deep concern.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Mercy told Scott, then lifted her head from where she had been examining Susan, “but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Relief coursed through Scott as Mercy reached out and took hold of Susan. The psycho-metabolist closed her eyes and concentrated. Psychic energy pulsed out of her into Susan. Susan’s wounds closed and healed, scarring over before Scott’s eyes. Mercy swooned above Susan and almost fell over, but Scott caught her.

“She’ll be fine now,” Mercy assured him. “I can’t give her back her arms, though.”

“It’s okay, Mercy,” Scott smiled. “You saved her life. That’s what matters.”

Mercy was already regaining her strength and shoved him away from her. “Anyone else hurt?”

Scott shook his head. “Mac might have some bruises, but I think we’re all good now.”

Eddie came sauntering over, his automatic shotgun held over his shoulder with its barrel pointed at the night sky. “Just can’t stay out of trouble, can you kid?”

Unable to stop himself, Scott laughed. “Look who’s talking old man!”

Hank had gotten Mac free of his crippled Psi-mech, and the two of them joined the others. The tele-mechanic took one look at Susan, then turned to Scott with a grin. “Guess I’ve got some work to do when we get back to headquarters, huh?”

Mac looked at Scott and said, “I think I would have preferred it be a worm.”

“It was a trap,” Scott said with a frown, “left for us by Mavet.”

“You don’t know that,” Hank protested.

“We all know it,” Scott said grimly. “It’s just a matter of time until he comes at us again.”



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Framed