Roger, Rizzo replied.
For as fast as the armored units were moving, it was a smooth trip atop Brimley’s left shoulder. Riot almost felt like she was riding a horse as the mech crossed the distance in long, heavy strides. With each step, the Zenoth transport ship became larger and larger.
“That’s one big mother,” Wang said over the comms. “I don’t know if I brought enough throwing knives.”
As they got closer, the loud roar of the engines pushing the ship through to the surface hummed in their helmets. The sound of sand giving way as it pushed upward added to the cacophony of noise.
Fifty yards from the ship, Brimley and the rest of the Spartans came to a halt. Brimley maneuvered her mech down to one knee to allow Riot to jump off.
“Good luck,” Ragnar yelled over the comms. “We’ll keep them off you while you take care of business.”
As soon as Riot’s boots hit the ground, she was bolting toward the side of the ship that stuck up through the sand. The Zenoth craft was about a third of the way through Raydon’s surface.
Riot felt the fatigue of battle creeping over her muscles. It told her she couldn’t really take down the ship. Doubt whispered in her ear—promises of failure and defeat.
Riot understood exactly what to do with those voices; she had been hearing them her entire life. Instead of giving them room to grow, she snuffed them out and went to work.
“Rizzo, light ’em up with everything that Destroyer T9 has in it. Wang, get that molten blade lit, and let’s hack this bad boy to pieces,” Riot said as she pumped weary legs over the hard sand of Raydon.
Before Riot could let herself doubt anymore, she was in front of the craft. Right in front of her, the blimp-shaped ship was emerging from its underground hive hangar like a submarine from the ocean floor.
Riot gathered herself. She had to make sure her footing was just right. The ground was giving way just in front of her as the ship berthed.
“Rawww!” Riot yelled, rearing back with her hammer and sinking the tooth end of her weapon into the ship.
Wang was right beside her. He lit his molten blade. The Syndicate technology allowed for liquid metal to grow and rise from the hilt of his weapon until it was the length of a katana blade. Wang sunk the heated metal sword into the ship’s hull, up to its hilt.
The ship’s exterior was unlike anything Riot had ever encountered. It was something like a cross between hard foam sandwiched by two sheets of thick, metal plating.
Again and again, Riot sent her hammer into the ship. She tore her weapon free as fast as she could before sending the war hammer back once more.
Rizzo lit up the ship’s hull with his weapon. The best thing about the repurposed weapons the Syndicate left was that they didn’t overheat or need to be reloaded. This meant Rizzo was able to keep up a steady barrage of laser-like slugs into the ship’s bulk.
Despite the cooling system in her uniform, sweat poured into Riot’s eyes. It was like the most intense workout she had ever had, but in a full armored suit on a planet that felt like a sauna.
Gears moving in the ship’s interior signaled something was happening. Apparently, they were doing enough to get the attention of the Zenoth inside.
Riot caught movement out of the corner of her left eye. Two hundred yards down the ship’s body, Rippa and her Spartans were tearing away at the hull with their sword-like claws.
“The doors in front of the ship are opening,” Brimley reported over the comms. “Here they come.”
“We’ll handle the Zenoth this time,” Rippa reminded Riot, Wang, and Rizzo. “Don’t let up. What we’re doing is working. They might be able to fly with these punctures in their ship, but there’s no way they’re making orbit with rends like this in their hull.”
“Make ’em pay! Everything you’ve got left in the tank, right here, right now!” Riot responded as she drew her exhausted arms back once more. The most frustrating part about pounding at the ship was that the craft was in constant movement. As it continued to inch its way up, a new spot on the ship’s hull was exposed to Riot. She could never get more than a few strikes in one spot before another flat panel of the ship’s surface was exposed to her.
The idea of bringing her weapon’s blaster to bear on the ship was becoming more and more of a temptation. She had withheld thus far due to the fear of her weapon overheating and being unusable, when and if she would need that function. Unlike the repurposed Syndicate weapons, the Trilord weapons were susceptible to overheating.
Screams ripped over Riot’s comms, telling her she would need her blaster sooner than later.
69
What is that?” Ragnar screamed.
“Watch out!” Atlas shouted.
Riot turned in time to see the front entrance of the craft open and a dozen Zenoth drop to the ground. The front of the ship slanted slightly skyward, obscuring Riot’s vision of what the Grovothe were yelling about.
“Hold your ground!” Rippa ordered over her comms. “Brimley, you’re the resident expert on the Zenoth. What is that thing?”
“It’s … it’s…” Brimley’s voice was distant, like she had been dunked in an ice bath and ordered to repeat some kind of complex code. “I … I don’t believe it.”
“I need answers—now!” Rippa screamed.
“It’s the Zenoth Queen,” Brimley managed.
“Fire whatever you have left of your gauss cannons,” Rippa ordered. “Take her down before she can get off the ship!”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The Spartans opened up with the ammunition they held in reserve.
“Everything okay over there?” Ketrick’s voice broke into the confusion from the Spartans’ comms. “Vikta and I have done enough damage to the hull on this ship. They’re not going to enter space any time soon. They’re headed in your direction, though. We’re trying to turn their ship now. Should I break off? Do you need assistance?”
“Negative. Keep that ship off us,” Rippa growled. “We’ll take the queen!”
Fear raced down Riot’s spine. There was something she heard in Rippa’s voice, something only a leader would be able to pick out from another person in command. Rippa’s voice was resolved, but in a way that was grim and did not hold hope for survival.
“I’m out!” Atlas shouted.
“Me, too,” Brimley added.
“Get those laser cannons running,” Rippa said. “I know they’re not fully charged, but they’ll have to do.”
Riot paused on her assault on the ship. She glanced to her left where two hundred yards away she was able to catch a portion of the fight. The Zenoth were already dropping like flies, piled high on the ground in front of the Spartans. From her vantage point, she could see Brimley’s armored unit, but none of the others standing in front of the ship.
A terrifying insect-like scream joined the much lighter noise of screeching Zenoth. The sound the queen made was like a clicking of pincers with an inhale through an insect-like throat.
“Do you need support?” Riot asked over her comms, already knowing what Rippa would say.
“No, stay the course,” Rippa grunted. “We can’t allow this ship to leave the planet.”
“Ragnar, watch out!” Brimley screamed.
The ship in front of Riot lifted as though a massive weight had been suddenly removed from it.
The sounds of more yells, and then rending metal filled the air.
The Zenoth chatter heightened as if they were cheering.
“Let’s go.” Riot looked over to Rizzo and Wang. “On me!”
“She said to stay here,” Wang said quietly. “Are you sure?”
Riot was already running to the front of the ship. “Positive.”
“Ragnar!?” Rippa yelled. “Ragnar, report!”
“He’s down,” Atlas deep voice shouted in a panic that had not seemed possible earlier that morning. “The Queen killed him!”
“Die, you piece of filth!” Brimley screamed.
From her
place next to the ship, Riot could see Brimley’s mech’s helmet come alive with the blue glow from its eyes once more. A beam shot forward. Just as quickly, a long, green, insect-like arm shot out from around the ship and struck her mech in the helmet.
Brimley’s unit crashed backwards in the sand. The helmet on the mech was crushed. The blue lights blinked once, then off, then died altogether.
Riot pushed the pace, rounding the ship’s corner a moment later.
Holy mother of… Riot thought. How does something like this even exist?
In front of Riot and bearing down on Atlas and Rippa was an insect-like monstrosity Riot couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The gigantic queen was at least as tall as the twenty-foot armored mechs. Her slender, greenish gold body started in a thick stump of a tail. A pair of long, spindly legs supported its lower half. Four more elongated arms shot out from its sides. The queen’s head was similar to a Zenoth’s except for one massive detail: a bush of thorns erupted from her upper back and neck to form a kind of high collar of death behind its head.
The closest thing Riot’s mind could relate to what she was seeing was some kind of giant mutated praying mantis. As she wasted precious seconds to take in the scene around her, Atlas’s and Rippa’s mechs shot out the blue laser beams from their eyes.
Riot searched the battlefield covered by the much smaller Zenoth for Ragnar’s mech. It didn’t take her long to see that the queen was standing on top of the metal husk, with no movement from the mech or word from Ragnar to dispel their worst fears.
The Zenoth queen’s scream came again, this time so loud, it made Riot’s ears ring. Atlas’s laser beam hit the queen in the chest, opening a deep hole. The wound gushed green blood a moment later. Rippa’s beams seared off one of the four arms sprouting from the queen’s torso.
The queen retaliated with one of her impossibly long remaining arms. The lengthy appendage that at first glance looked like nothing more than two green limb sections supported by a joint, distended to reveal an arm twice as long. With a snap, it slammed into Atlas, striking his mech so hard, it dented the armor around the pilot’s cockpit in the center of the armored unit’s torso and sent it reeling into Rippa’s unit.
The two giant mech units crashed into the sandy floor of the planet. The Zenoth crowding around the queen’s legs surged forward. Seeing their enemy on the ground sent them in a frenzy, their strange cicada-like way of speaking reaching a new height.
Riot looked from the queen to the army of Zenoth.
Don’t do it. Rizzo’s red words raced across Riot’s heads-up display in her helmet. I know you. Don’t do it.
“No time for politics,” Riot said. “We’re soldiers. We do what needs to be done. Wang, Rizzo, get those Zenoth off the mechs. I’m taking the queen.”
Wang’s voice was thick with disbelief. “Riot, there has to be another way, we—”
“Corporal Wang,” Riot said cutting him off, “that’s a direct order. Corporal Rizzo, get moving. It’s our time to make good on all the sacrifices from our brothers and sisters we’ve lost along the way. This is our moment to make sense of it all. It’s time to sacrifice.”
“Oohrah!” Wang shouted.
Oohrah! Rizzo wrote.
Riot steeled herself and began her run. Thus far, the Zenoth had not noticed them. Even as Riot ran to help the fallen Spartans, she surveyed the battlefield for options. Ragnar’s mech was down, his cockpit torn open. Brimley was struggling to her feet, her mech’s helmet crushed in on itself and non-operational.
Atlas and Rippa were fighting their way to their feet, but the Zenoth were climbing all over them. Insect pincers the size of sickles found their arms, legs, and necks as they tried to pull the two mechs down to the ground by sheer numbers.
Don’t go gently. Riot channeled the anger and aggression inside of her that served as fuel for so many years in the past. Past the fear, she held on to that intensity. Don’t make it easy for them. Never make it easy for them.
There was no plan in her mind as she rushed the queen, the war hammer in her right hand as she sprinted forward.
Wang and Rizzo reached the mound of Zenoth holding down Rippa and Atlas first. Rizzo opened up with a shower of fire.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
To Riot’s disbelief and temporary amusement, Wang actually made use of his throwing knives before opening up his molten blade and hacking away at the Zenoth.
The Zenoth queen’s massive head zeroed in on Riot’s Marines. She moved toward them, readying for another strike.
“Oh, no you don’t, Butter Face!” Riot screamed at the queen, understanding the queen wasn’t able to hear her, and not caring. “We have a date!”
Riot opened up with the blaster the war hammer was built around. The war hammer spat yellow fires that struck the queen in the torso where Atlas’s laser cannon had already scorched a hole. Riot held the weapon like a mini-gun, her right hand lower on the weapon’s shaft, her left hand close to the weapon’s heavy end. She held the war hammer low by her waist.
Riot was beyond tired, her muscles past the point of fatigue. Still, nothing crossed her mind besides the will to fight on, a sensation that had been stamped on her soul by the Marines. Giving up was unthinkable, an impossibility. It was do or die trying, and if dying was the answer, Riot was prepared to take as many of the Zenoth with her as possible.
The queen reared back on her legs, trying to block the yellow blaster fire as it struck the wound Atlas had already given her. The Zenoth queen landed hard, sending a shower of sand all around her.
Riot hit the queen in quick bursts of fire. Unlike the repurposed alien weapon she used, the Trilord war hammer had two options: quick bursts of fire that wouldn’t overheat the weapon, or a salvo of concentrated fire good for a few seconds that would cause the weapon to overheat.
The queen swatted at Riot with the three arms that remained. Riot ducked and weaved around the blows. She adjusted her aim up to the queen’s face and battered it with even more rounds.
The queen screamed in pain. Green blood spurted from one of the queen’s mangled eyes.
Riot jumped over one of the queen’s whip-like appendages. She rolled to her right as another bore straight down on her. It sunk deep into the sand where Riot had just been a moment before.
An idea exploded in Riot’s weary mind, a plan so idiotic that in some kind of twisted way it made sense. Releasing her hold on the trigger, Riot assumed a wide stance next to the queen’s arms still stuck in the sand beside her. Raising the war hammer over her head, she swung down onto the queen’s arm with every ounce of strength she had left.
A loud crack rewarded her efforts as the green appendage was driven deeper into the sandy terrain.
A scream of blind rage erupted from the queen as she swiped down with her last two remaining arms. Riot felt hot searing pain rip through her right calf and her left shoulder as the queen punctured her armor.
“Ahhhhh!” Riot snarled in pain as the fingers of unconsciousness caressed the edges of her vision.
70
There was chatter over the comms, but nothing that was said made any sense at the moment. The agony of white hot pain was making everything else too difficult to comprehend. Riot’s plan was working. She just had to hope and hold on a bit longer.
The queen lifted Riot into the air, bringing her toward her massive mouth. The queen’s one good eye examined Riot, the black orb unfeeling, unforgiving.
The war hammer in Riot’s right hand threatened to fall.
The queen opened a mouth the size of a manhole on a city street. Razor sharp teeth covered the top and bottom. A dark green, thin tongue swished back and forth.
Come on, Riot coaxed the queen in her mind as she went limp in hope of faking the queen into thinking she had actually died. A little bit closer, you overgrown grasshopper.
Two feet from entering the queen’s mouth, Riot reared back. With her right hand she shoved the war hammer into the queen’s open maw. The top of the
war hammer pinned to the underside of the queen’s upper pallet. The bottom of the war hammer was pressed inside the lower half of the queen’s mouth.
The Zenoth queen shook her head, trying to dislodge the war hammer. When that didn’t work, she tried bearing down on the weapon in hopes of snapping it in two. The Trilord weapon held fast.
“I hope you don’t have any last words.” Riot pressed the trigger on the war hammer. “Because this Marine doesn’t speak Zenoth.”
Yellow blaster fire ripped through the underside of the queen’s jaw, obliterating bone and flesh as it made its way through her brain. After a handful of blasts, the blaster fire succeeded in cracking a hole in the top of the queen’s skull.
Riot held on to the weapon with both hands. Her left hand gripped the shaft for support. Her right hand was on the lower half of the weapon, holding down the trigger button.
The queen’s two arms still piercing Riot quivered and tore deeper into Riot’s wounds as the queen fell in her death throes.
Her appendages ripped out of Riot, taking chunks of flesh with them. Whether it was the nanites or through Riot’s will to survive, she managed to stay conscious and hold on. The queen toppled forward in stages, collapsing to the ground like a green avalanche.
Riot hit the ground hard in a heap next to the queen. Her head bounced off the sandy soil. The air was sucked from her lungs as she dealt with both the pain from the blow and lack of oxygen.
A dull buzz in her ear told her just how hard she had hit the ground. There was only so much even a high tech helmet could do.
She was on her back, but she knew she had to move. Wang and Rizzo could be in trouble.
With a flurry of pain coursing through her body, Riot managed to free herself from the queen’s grip and roll onto her stomach. The dead Zenoth queen still shook beside her. Riot lifted her head in the direction of her comrades. Rizzo, Wang, and the Spartans were giving as much as they got. It was hand-to-hand warfare. Rizzo and Wang bled across their armor where Zenoth pincers had found openings.
The Spartans’ mechs were rent in a dozen different places. With their sword-length claws, they swung and battered back like heavyweight champions in a fifteen round fight. Their laser cannons were useless as they tried to regain their feet.
War Wolves: Boxset 1-3 Page 33