by Isaac Hooke
REFORGED
BOLT EATERS TRILOGY BOOK 2
Isaac Hooke
For my Mother
My greatest, most devoted fan
Contents
Books by Isaac Hooke
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Afterword
About the Author
Acknowledgments
In Closing
Copyright © 2018 by Isaac Hooke
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
www.IsaacHooke.com
Books by Isaac Hooke
Military Science Fiction
Bolt Eaters Trilogy
Reactivated
Reforged
Redeemed
Battle Harem
Battle Harem 1
Battle Harem 2
Battle Harem 3
AI Reborn Trilogy
Refurbished
Reloaded
Rebooted
ATLAS Trilogy
(published by 47North)
ATLAS
ATLAS 2
ATLAS 3
Alien War Trilogy
Hoplite
Zeus
Titan
Argonauts
Bug Hunt
You Are Prey
Alien Empress
Quantum Predation
Robot Dust Bunnies
City of Phants
Rade’s Fury
Mechs vs. Dinosaurs
A Captain's Crucible
Flagship
Test of Mettle
Cradle of War
Planet Killer
Worlds at War
Space Opera
Star Warrior Quadrilogy
Star Warrior
Bender of Worlds
He Who Crosses Death
Doom Wielder
Science Fiction
The Forever Gate Series
The Dream
A Second Chance
The Mirror Breaks
They Have Wakened Death
I Have Seen Forever
Rebirth
Walls of Steel
The Pendulum Swings
The Last Stand
Thrillers
The Ethan Galaal Series
Clandestine
A Cold Day in Mosul
Terminal Phase
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1
Eric was bound to the thick trunk of an alien tree. A silky gunk wrapped his wrists, ankles, and waist, holding him fast. The same substance also stopped up his weapons, preventing him from firing. The other Bolt Eaters were similarly secured around him, glued to the wiry undergrowth, nearby logs and boulders, or the snowy ground itself.
The bioweapons that had sourced the material—flying beasts known as Dragonworms—hovered in the background, their dragonfly-like wings keeping their wormlike bodies aloft. A red vertical line ran down the length of their hooked, white bodies, marking them as fully in the control of the Banthar.
The support units with Eric’s team—the eight M-54 tanks, the twenty Savage S-34 combat robots, the two Ravager mechs, and even the two Raven over-the-hill-recon scouts, had turned against the team. Manticore, a former Bolt Eater, thought lost in the Caucasus Mountains twenty years ago, had surreptitiously installed his AI core into one of those Ravagers before the mission, and had hacked the remaining autonomous units.
Why? Manticore had gone insane and joined the aliens.
Lurking beneath the Dragonworms, the support units stood in a circle around the trapped Bolt Eaters with their weapons trained on them. Manticore was at their head.
Beyond them, alien tanks rolled forward on articulated tracks from all sides. Instead of gun emplacements, these tanks were topped by several metallic tentacles tipped with deadly energy beam generators.
Eric switched to a private band that included only his other Bolt Eaters. He amped up his time sense to max so that reality seemed to freeze around him.
“Well this is quite a pickle we’re in,” Mickey said before he could speak.
“A pickle, huh?” Slate said. “Don’t use your lame twentieth-century slang talk on us. Just say it like it is: we’re in deep shit.”
“Those bioweapons made a mistake,” Eric said, preempting further discussion. And he explained the leeway the Dragonworms had given him.
Brontosaurus, Crusher, and Dunnigan had similar leeway, but the rest of the Bolt Eaters unfortunately did not.
“We’re going to need a distraction,” Dunnigan said.
“I can help with that,” Slate said. “I got some leeway, too. Just not the same as you.”
“All right, I wish the rest of us could join you four,” Marlborough said. “Good luck. Get as far away from here as you can.”
“We’re coming back for you,” Eric said.
“No,” Marlborough said. “If you can, you have to find a way to get home. Bring reinforcements. Then you can come back for us.”
Eric returned his time sense to normal. He watched as the tentacled tanks continued their approach. Some of them had already reached the outskirts of the enclosing support troops, and shoved their way past.
“Hey Manticore, got a present for you, bitch,” Slate said.
The left leg of Slate’s mech opened up—the bioweapons had neglected to wrap it in their silky gunk. Repair drones dove forward, each one of them carrying an explosive charge.
“Mother f—” Manticore dove to the side, firing his energy cannon at the small drones in rapid succession. The smaller Savages also opened fire.
The drones zig-zagged in a blur. One impacted a Savage, and the charge detonated, leaving behind a mangled mess.
Eric switched to Bullet Time and ejected. That was the mistake the bioweapons had made: they’d bound up most of his body, but had failed to wrap their organic nets around his cockpit hatch.
His smaller Cicada unit emerged, and he grabbed one of the rungs next to the hatch as he unfolded, and swung his body toward the tree. He slammed the fingers of the combat robot into the bark, forming his own handholds, and began climbing. He moved quickly, adapting easily to the Cicada body; some of the Savages targeted him, but only a few, because the drones were continuing their distraction.
Eric unfolded the L-52 laser from his forearm and fired at one of those Savages, and then continued his climb, moving in a zig-zag pattern.
Brontosaurus, Crusher, and Dunnigan had similarly jettisoned, and were scaling other trees nearby.
Some of the Dragonworms reacted now as well, and fired the organic lasers from their mouths at the trees. Though Eric couldn’t see the actual beams, he knew the lasers were impacting because of the burn holes that appeared in the wood around him.
He continued climbing, as rapidly as he was able. Below, more explosions went off as the last of the repair drones were taken down.
As he neared the canopy, one of the bigger Drag
onworms, this one equipped with a metal helmet and mandibles made of plasma, clashed those mandibles together and released a beam of energy at him; Eric was forced to climb around to the far side of the tree. But the tree trunk was relatively thin at his current height, and the beam cut right through the trunk. The loose segment tilted sideways, however the branches above him snagged in the boughs of the adjacent trees, and halted his descent.
Eric clambered into those grid-like branches as fast as he was able and pulled himself into the boughs of the tree beside him just as the severed top broke free and plunged to the forest floor below. He continued upward until he was past the screen of hexagonal blue leaves, and above the canopy proper. He could see the blue sea formed by those boughs spreading out on all sides around him.
In the distance, to the north, he spotted five stadium-shaped airships en route to the site.
He immediately crouched down, wanting to stay slightly below the treetops to avoid being targeted by any long-range lasers those airships might have.
“We can’t stay here!” Eric said.
“No shit,” Crusher said, popping up through the boughs nearby.
Staying low, Eric turned to the south, and leaped between the protruding branches in Bullet Time. Sometimes he overestimated how much weight his target branch could take, and broke it, momentarily plunging through until he grabbed onto another branch. In such situations, he promptly swung himself upward onto the next, feeling for all the world like some robot monkey.
The Dragonworm bioweapons broke through the treetops behind him. They pursued in the air, firing their webs and lasers. Eric dodged to the left and right as he ran, gingerly stepping upon the branches in Bullet Time, and relying on his rear view camera feed to keep an eye on the enemy units.
He held his L-52 behind him and fired as he ran; the weapon was set to smart targeting mode, and the muzzle rotated to unleash powerful beams against different Dragonworms.
Energy beams from below ripped trough the leaves and branches, no doubt sourced from the alien tanks. The occasional plasma and energy bolt also tore past, obviously fired by the support units lost to Manticore.
He glanced at his overhead map, and saw that Brontosaurus, Crusher, and Dunnigan were following his lead, and staying close.
He was also still receiving signals from the support units, and the other mechs. He quickly changed the friendly status of the support units to enemy, so that he’d stop transmitting his position to them.
“Don’t forget to mark Manticore and the other units as enemies!” Eric transmitted.
“Already done!” Crusher said.
One of the bigger Dragonworms emerged behind him, and fired its deadly plasma beam his way. Eric was forced to leap from tree to tree to avoid it. The beam cut a black swathe through the boughs, leaving behind gaping trenches that allowed the units mirroring his flight below to better target him.
He swerved to the west, wanting to mess up that targeting, but then a big Dragonworm burst through the trees in front of him. It was about to cross its plasma beam mandibles to fire its deadly beam…
Brontosaurus appeared beside Eric and rapid-fired a pair of H-97 heavy lasers that completely engulfed both hands. He struck the Dragonworm in the mouth several times, and the wailing creature was forced back beneath the treetops.
“Thanks, I owe you one,” Eric said, continuing forward, away from the fallen worm.
“No you don’t,” Brontosaurus said. “Consider it a down payment on my part, for all the times you’ve saved my life!”
“How’d you find time to retrieve your 97s anyway?” Eric asked.
His avatar shrugged on the HUD. “My storage compartment wasn’t glued shut. I found time.”
Crusher joined Eric on the left side, and beyond her, Dunnigan. They all crouched low, trying to stay beneath the treetops as they leaped between the boughs, because the airships were still incoming.
The four of them continued moving away to the west. Brontosaurus’s heavy lasers did a good job deterring any remaining Dragonworms that decided to close. Meanwhile, the plasma and energy attacks from below occurred with far less frequency, until at last none came from that direction at all; the Dragonworm assaults also ceased soon thereafter.
“They’re recalling them,” Crusher said. Eric climbed slightly higher, so that he could overlook the treetops, and saw that all of the Dragonworms were returning. Apparently the Banthar decided it wasn’t worth it to continue sacrificing their bioweapons.
Eric couldn’t help but take a sucker shot then, targeting one of them in the back with his L-52, and when it howled, all the other bioweapons turned around and homed in on his position.
“Shit!” Eric ducked and led the Bolt Eaters away in a random direction. They remained just inside the boughs, and out of view from above.
He caught glimpses of the bioweapons occasionally as he moved from branch to branch, and took cover behind the hexagonal leaves to let them pass. When the Dragonworms couldn’t find them, they once more headed toward the rift site, which was about four hundred meters behind them.
“This time don’t fire on them!” Dunnigan said.
“I won’t,” Eric promised.
Eric paused, and climbed higher to peer above the treetops and watch the bioweapons retreat. The Dragonworms reached the rift site and dove beneath the canopy. The five airships were fast closing with the area.
“So what are we going to do now?” Brontosaurus asked.
“We could hang out here and wait until the rift home reappears,” Crusher said. “And then make a run for it.”
“There’s no way we’ll reach the rift,” Dunnigan said. “The Banthar will have a 24/7 watch in force.”
“But we have to try,” Crusher said.
“No, Dunnigan is right, we won’t reach it,” Eric said. “At least not in Cicadas. These units are essentially useless, especially if the Banthar leave behind any of those alien tanks to guard the rift, which will be shielded. We need our mechs back.”
The five airships reached the rift site, and hovered above the treetops. The Dragonworms reappeared, and took up positions around the craft.
“They’re certainly being cautious,” Brontosaurus said, “by placing those Dragonworms there. Considering that nothing we have at the moment can even penetrate the energy shields of those airships.”
“They’ve learned not to underestimate us,” Eric said. “A smart move, on their part.”
An airship maneuvered directly above the rent in the canopy a Dragonworm had made earlier when it had cut down the tree Eric had been climbing. The other airships assumed a defensive formation around that craft, placing their vessels at the four points of the compass. The Dragonworms remained in between them so that there was a solid defensive circle around it.
A bottom panel opened in the central craft, and some sort of broad, translucent energy beam emerged, vanishing into the forest below.
A moment later an object appeared in the middle of that beam, floating upward.
“Tractor beam,” Eric said.
“What?” Dunnigan asked.
“Never mind,” Eric replied. “A term from an old show I used to watch.”
He recognized the object being lifted by that beam as a Crab mech.
Bambi.
“We can’t let those airships take our friends,” Crusher said as Bambi disappeared inside the ship.
Eric didn’t know what to say to that.
A Devastator appeared, floating upward. It, too, vanished inside a moment later. From the hull damage, Eric thought it was Frogger.
More mechs appeared. Devastators. A Rhino. A Rambler.
“If that ship leaves, we’ll lose them forever,” Crusher said.
Eric closed his eyes by momentarily shutting down his cameras. When he reactivated them, he sighed.
“You’re right, of course,” Eric said. “We can’t let the Banthar take them. We’ll never see them again if we let the airship go. Move forward, Bolt Eaters. It’s t
ime to hitch a ride.”
2
Moving from bough to bough, Eric and the others proceeded toward the airship that was swallowing their friends.
“How do you know we’ll even be able to penetrate the energy shield that surrounds the damn thing?” Brontosaurus transmitted.
“I’m hoping they had to turn it off to load the mechs.” Eric leaped underneath a bough, clipping one of his antennae and bending it backward slightly.
“And what if you’re wrong?” Crusher said.
Eric straightened the antenna and vaulted to the next branch. “Then we’ll be captured.”
“That’s what I liked about you, you never beat around the bush,” Crusher said.
“Beat around the what?” Dunnigan said.
“The bush,” Crusher said. “It’s a saying. Means he always comes straight to the point. I learned it from one of the classical movies Scorpion made me watch.”
“Oh, okay,” Dunnigan said. “I thought it might have something to do with beating off. Never mind! By the way, do you actually call him Scorpion in private?”