High above him several of the monitors started to record his actions which made him even more furious withthe situation. In a state of killing fury, the Tengu leapt up into the air using the small pulse jet engines attached to his antigravity backpack and, screeching his rage, went looking for the now silent dogs who had slunk back into the undergrowth and were heading towards the tree that Harold and Bing were in.
'Look after the dogs, Bing. I am going to mess up this Tengu a little.'
Bing spun around. 'Wait, Harold, just wait!'
But he ignored the plea and jumped from the branch, extending his wings and climbing hard until he was a few hundred metres above the Tengu. Below him, Bing shook his head and muttered to himself about 'impetuous, impatient youth!' before climbing quickly down the tree to join the dogs and cats moving underground into their toughened shelters.
Harold flew until he was in the perfect position below a swarming cloud of beetles, tucked his wings in so he could still effect good control and, using his tail to steer, dived down towards the much larger dragon. Travelling at high speed, he attached one end of his long diamond garotte to one anchoring finger and extended it out from his other hand. As he flashed past the still unaware Tengu, he reached out, slicing away one of the jet units, parts of the power supply for the lasers and part of the antigravity unit, rendering them mostly uncontrollable. The antigravity's control system instantly went into an emergency default mode, lifting the Tengu clear of ahy ground dangers and taking him straight up until he was 250 metres above the ground, screaming and impotent as the wind blew him towards the storm.
Harold climbed again, taking great care that he was not producing any sound, scent or visual signal that the insects could detect. He watched the Tengu as he turned his upper torso around, quickly swapping modules of what remained viable, not seeing the cloud of rapidly mating beetles hovering ahead of him. He drif ted below them with dozens of beetles, who had now had their spawn fertilised, seeing the prospect of protein almost amongst them. The first few that the Tengu saw were swatted away, but there was an increasing number paying him their closest attention and they were starting to land on him and bite through his armoured skin. He smashed a number of them, unintentionally. The shattered remains then released attack pheromones and exotic acids which started to dissolve their way through his hide.
The Tengu suddenly understood his predicament and hit the release to drop out of his equipment harness, falling towards the ground with Harold silently gliding away to one side of him. The Tengu built up velocity, then extended all four of his limbs, pulling a membrane tightly between them, and gliding down towards the thick undergrowth pursued by thousands of hungry beetles. He soared above the foliage, obviously looking for a suitable place to land, then tightly orbited a deep, clear pool of water, which he dived headfirst into.
Harold could make out his movements by watching the disturbances in the water as the Tengu settled onto the bottom with his head looking up at the beetles hovering above the pool surface. Harold raced through his biological threats data files as everyone knew that swimming in the pools outside of the village was a very stupid thing to do. He landed very quietly and carefully in a tall tree, keeping the pool in view, knowing that the beetles were bad, but the nymphs that made their homes in the pools were much worse.
Back towards the village he could see that the monitors who had taken flight to record the mating of the beetles were now in trouble as literally thousands of beetles had descended on them to try and work their way in through the armoured suits and antigravity units to the protein they scented inside. Harold felt a wave of intense sorrow for the Games Board personnel, knowing that in spite of their director's stupidity they were just doing their jobs. The two defence aircraft were trying to assist their colleagues, but the sheer volume of insects and the reality that they did not have any weapons able to inflict mass damage on the beetles meant they were not effective.
He watched and approved as one of the craf t slowly flew up against one of the monitors and reached through the insects with one of its waldo arms to latch onto it, then towed the unit seaward, grabbing another as well, slowly moving away from the storm. The other fighter tried the same manoeuvre, but was having difficulty with its flight controls due to the huge amount of insects holding onto it. The pilot did the only sensible thing and went straight up as the other monitors did the same, abandoning any effort to record the behaviour of the ravenous beetles.
More and more beetles were crash-landing in the foliage to hunt, then tear apart and eat, anything that they could find, including forcing their way into the flying rats' warrens and the deep burrows of the native birds. They ate any animal, native or introduced, which had not found shelter or buried itself deep. As Harold watched, he sent a signal out to the other ACEs, sharing with them what he was seeing, and asking advice as he was very alone and worried that he would also be caught and eaten by the marauding insects. And to make life slightly worse it was raining hard, with lightning smashing into the tops of the trees around him.
Reg the pug was the first to answer. 'Well, Harold, pleased and amazed you are not stripped down to the non-edible parts of you. Stay right where you are! The beetles that find something to eat will then fly up into the thunderstorm, where they will burst and shower the storm with hatchlings which will then be carried further inland from the sea. They will be gone within the next fifteen minutes as that is all the time they have before the storm moves away from us. Those that can't find something to eat will attack each other. Only a small percentage of those then get to fly a second time. The hail will be with you in a few moments; it normally makes things tougher for the beetles as well.'
Harold acknowledged the advice and slowly pushed himself further into the thick foliage of the tree, making his way up the trunk. He generated a low energy radar pulse, looking for a hollow in which to hide. He saw one lower in the tree half way around the trunk. He slowly opened a compartment on his flank to take out and put in place a small camera unit so he could keep watch on the pool, and its feeder stream, while he hid. He crept down and around the trunk, finding the empty deep hole which, with a serious contortion, he was able to slip into. Feeling a little more secure, he watched the Tengu silently battling with a nymph which had latched onto his belly.
The Tengu rolled and seized the nymph, ripping it apart as another latched onto his neck. He tore that one to pieces as more of the 600-millimetre-long denizens of the pool slipped out of their hiding places around the pool or rose out of the rocky bottom to attack this intruder smelling of anxiety and meat. The fight became more and more ferocious with smashed and bloody parts of nymph being thrown from the pool to be snatched and eaten by the beetles who were gathering in steadily greater numbers. Over the next five minutes the frantic activity in the pool, which Harold could no longer see due to the muddying of the water and the thick cover of beetles above, died down. He surmised that the Tengu had either succumbed, which he thought unlikely, or all the nymphs had been killed.
'Harold, this is Bing. Don't reply or broadcast any type of signal. We can't get to you for a while longer so stay calm and safe. Our sensors show the Tengu is alive and still in the water, and he will be listening for you and us. If he is sensible, he will just slink away back to his Games Board masters, but he is a stupid, very angry dragon, so we expect to have to teach him manners!'
Harold groaned silently to himself, knowing that the Tengu would indeed be listening and that the other ACEs were goading him to come out and fight. He silently shook his head at his own stupidity, realising that the Tengu probably knew exactly where he was hiding because of his earlier plea for help. He checked through his weapon systems and brought them online, deploying his nastiest biovenoms and neural poisons; the brutally sharp molecular chain-link diamond claws pushed out through the ends of his fingers and toes. He also charged the linear rifle that ran the full length of his spine, loaded the magazines for the rifle with flechettes of brittle high-carbon steel
- which were coated with toxins and tailored hormones - and settled down to wait for the inevitable while watching the pool, stream and surrounding area as if he was still sitting out on the branch.
The beetles were furiously killing and eating each other with fewer and fewer launching themselves into the overhead storm. The hail had started smashing down, shredding the softer foliage and turning the open areas white with pebble sized pieces of ice. Harold saw movement in the small stream, through the hail, and wondered what it could be. His processors gleaned as many parts of the images he was seeing as they could and cross-referenced it with his biological data banks and found one of the giant native aquatic centipede creatures was slowly advancing towards the pool. He also saw fragments of beetles falling with the hail and heavy rain. The beetles that had made it high into the storm were blowing themselves apart, scattering the next generation. He could also see that the storm itself was only minutes away from passing overhead as it moved further inland, and sensed the steady gathering of scavengers of all types moving into the area to feed on the beetles.
The four-metre-long centipede climbed out of the stream to snatch and eat the carcasses and injured beetles as the sun slowly came out and the whole area started to steam. Harold anxiously watched the dirty pool for any sign of the Tengu, wondering if he should continue hiding as he probably held a better advantage if he was in the air. He gingerly uncoiled himself from the deep hole and slowly pushed his head outside, trying to look everywhere at once. The wind was slowly dying down although the tree still moved in the occasional gusts. Looking down, Harold saw the centipede being joined by another moving quickly against the side of the furthest bank.
Suddenly the water exploded as the wet shape of the Tengu vaulted out of the pool to land metres away from the first centipede which turned and bit the Tengu on his tail in a blinding blur of motion. The Tengu slashed its head open as the creature coiled itself around the dragon seemingly uncaring about the mortal damage which had been inflicted upon it. The other centipede struck the Tengu in his flank knocking them all back into the pool which boiled in a frenzy of motion. Harold gave up trying to extricate himself from the hole slowly and hastened his struggles to exit. The Tengu ripped up out of the pool again leaving the smashed remains of the centipedes floating in the pool. The Tengu saw Harold trying to get out of his hiding place and raced across to the tree and flashed up its side.
Harold swore as he finally twisted his hips out of the hole just in time to see the Tengu leaping at him. On Harold's head, a nostril-like aperture popped open as his head also widened. In his mind he sped himself up to the maximum, fixed his sight on a damaged area on the Tengu's neck and fired a burst of the needle-thin seven-millimetre-long flechettes into him. As the Tengu closed to within metres of Harold, he suddenly stopped, frozen, clinging to the side of the tree. His head dropped, then he breathed deeply of the oxygen-enriched air and slowly lifted his head to look into Harold's eyes with hatred. The Tengu opened his mouth, threw back his head and screamed in great pain. Choking it off, he looked at Harold hovering in the air above him.
'You fucking bastard slime,' he croaked. 'Come closer, so I can kill you quickly. You evil little prick. So I am now not able to control the pain from whatever you fired into me; that is nasty, very nasty. You will pay for this, creation of Marko.'
Harold took the seconds he needed and pounced, clinging to his enemy's neck, knowing the Tengu's systems would soon counter the neural toxins he had fired into him. He stabbed a specially adapted finger into the Tengu's neck, drew off a blood and tissue sample, and leapt off again as the larger dragon slowly regained control.
Harold was unsure of what he should do while his systems analysed the Tengu's chemistry in order for him to create a more virulent poison. He knew that he did not have the ability to kill the Tengu outright, so he fired again, directly into the creature's eyes, realising instantly that it was a waste of ammunition as the flechettes shattered against the toughened orbs. As the Tengu reached out to try and grasp him, Harold flew higher and identified dozens of other patches of damaged skin, so he fired bursts into the wounds closest to major joints, trying to jam them.
The Tengu bellowed in pain and rage and launched himself from the tree in an attempt to glide back to the ground. However, one of his rear legs was no longer working properly, so he was not able to pull his gliding membrane out to its fullest extent. He crashed into the ground, rolled and immediately spun his head around; his spine locked into a perfectly straight line as he brought an older generation of linear rifle to bear on Harold, whose up-to-date linear weapon could be fired in a bent or contorted configuration.
Because of his damaged leg joint, the Tengu could not react swiftly to Harold's evasive actions, but still Harold felt the projectiles getting very close. Realising his adversary was a difficult target, the Tengu started to command detonate the rounds as they came close to Harold, spraying stinging, white-hot shards of metal outwards, which punched holes in Harold's wing membranes and then hundreds of smaller holes down his flanks when the Tengu switched ammunition types. Harold, knowing he was in deep trouble, put his head down and tried to get as far away as possible, but the Tengu changed ammunition again and sent tiny homing missiles to explode around him, slowing him down further.
Reg's voice suddenly sounded in his head. 'Harold, we see what is happening. Move towards us!We are coming! Here is the meeting point. Be as quick as you can. The Games Board wants the Tengu to win and are dropping another antigravity unit to him!'
Harold swore to himself again as he heard the booming of the linear rifle, then smiled when it became clear that the rounds were going in the opposite direction, past him and towards the Tengu. His sensors showed him the firing position as he noted the fuzzy outline of a woman, high in the air on a chameleon-camouflaged combat antigravity sled. His software recognised the camouflage codes and he saw that it was the young teacher, Claire. He did not have time to further investigate, because an emerald-green and black antigravity bike flashed out of the heavy undergrowth towards the Tengu, who had donned the antigravity harness and was climbing skywards towards the woman.
From Harold's viewpoint the bike's rider possessed extraordinary skill as the bike raced underneath the Tengu and fired a shining black, two-metre-long spear from the side of the bike which hurtled upwards, piercing the dragon through the harness and right through his body. The Tengu rolled over and plummeted towards the ground, regaining control after smashing off the ends of the spear to head towards a large tree and seek cover, near where Harold was. The black bike came close as its rider tried to force the Tengu to the ground. The dragon reached up, slicing away one of the weapons pods on the bike with his arm blades and trying to grasp the machine with his hands. The rider booted him in the face, then fired an automatic carbine into his jaw. The Tengu responded by grasping the rider's right hand, shredding it and crushing the weapon and ripping off three of his fingers. The rider was screaming when Harold pounced on the Tengu's neck and buried his claws deeply into the dragon's neck, pumping the biotoxins deep into him as the Tengu brushed him off, slashing at his wings. Harold tumbled off, trying to regain control as the black rider seized him by the neck and pulled him up, placing him on the bike close to the controls.
The Tengu kept flying down towards the trees as the black rider chased after him.
A familiar voice was shouting ... Harold suddenly recognised the voice of the mechanic, Jerry. 'Harri, we need to nail that shit to the tree as we don't want him escaping. Jack yourself into the control system. We only have two of the javelins left. Make them count.'
Harold nodded quickly, extending a datalink from one of his wrists into the bike's controls. Quickly searching through the systems, he found the controls and firing mechanism, then aimed and sent a rocket-propelled javelin at the fleeing Tengu, through his spine, which shattered inside him, taking the linear rifle out of action. He waited a few seconds then fired again as the Tengu quickly decelerated as he came close
to the tree. The onyx javelin flashed across the space between them, entering the Tengu's neck and impaling him firmly against the tree trunk.
Jerry landed the bike and looked across at the hanging, twitching dragon. He accessed the first-aid kit, gingerly placing the remains of his hand against it, wincing as it opened up and sprayed the damaged hand with a rapid setting fluid. 'It then deployed a protective sleeve to flow around his hand, sealing off the wounds, allowing his little finger and his thumb to remain usable. Looking across at Harold, Jerry wanly smiled and said, 'Harold, you need a serious amount of work done on you too.'
Harold nodded as his bio-sof tware showed him the extensive damage to most of his digestive tract, lungs, his wings and a lot of his skin. He shrugged and agreed, feeling suddenly tired and sadly looked up at the wreck that had once been a proud ACE hanging from the tree. Minutes later, the rest of the ACEs arrived. Bing quickly climbed the tree to remove the Tengu's Soul Saver from the back of the dragon's skull before the Games Board arrived to claim the body.
Harold looked around at the cats, panthers and dogs, and flying overhead the owl, with a flock of keas. They all nodded at him, called their greetings and congratulations and started to disperse. He looked upwards, trying to locate the teacher who had distracted the Tengu long enough for Jerry to get in close, but could not see her. He looked across at the young man who was climbing back onto his bike.
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