by Isaac Hooke
He reached the grav shaft, and the termites opened up in front of him. He fired his energy cannon in rapid succession, but the alien material on the far wall was taking its time about disintegrating.
“It’s going to take more than a few hits!” Eric said.
He leaped across, hitting the far side. He used his magnets to scramble upward and out of the way, and then resumed firing.
The other mechs entered the termite-free shaft, and attached themselves to the wall next to the blast crater he was forming. They joined in, adding their fire to his.
“Maybe we should stab our alien spears through,” Brontosaurus suggested.
“Good idea.” Slate slammed his Wolverine blades into the surface, and while the weapons penetrated, he was unable to slide the spears in any other direction. He pulled them free, and stabbed again, repeatedly, forming several holes.
“That’s good, Slate,” Eric said. “Get back so we can finish this.”
Slate removed his blade and stepped away from the crater. Then he and the other mechs unleashed hell, firing everything they had.
“Eagleeye, Slate, hold your fire,” Eric said. “Conserve energy.”
Even without them, the remaining four mechs did enough damage to carve a mech-sized hole clean through the wall. Eric could see the thermal signature of the courtyard, and the adjacent building beyond.
A plasma bolt fired from the hallway next to the shaft, and struck the edge of the blast hole.
“Looks like our Banthar friends are trying to help us enlarge the hole!” Slate said.
“No, they’re trying to kill us,” Eric said. “Pull yourself out, and shove off!”
Eric hauled himself through the hole in the building exterior, and latched on outside. He glanced up, and saw the many airships that had gathered above the rooftop. Looking down, he saw the troops on alert. They began to fire energy weapons at him.
He amped up his servomotor output and pushed off, arcing outward. He didn’t have enough momentum to reach the adjacent building, but he would more than clear the troops at the base of the silo below. He held his shield underneath him, almost like a bodyboarder, and swiveled it out of the way before he landed.
He hit the ground running, and swung his shield behind him to protect him from the continued fire. On his HUD, red highlights appeared on the silhouette of his mech that was located in the lower right of his vision, highlighting the damage the hard landing had caused to the actuators in his feet. Most of them had had their power output permanently reduced by fifty percent, but he still had more than enough capacity to run. And fast.
Behind him, the other mechs landed one by one. Like him, they held their shields behind them, and opened fire sporadically at the troops there.
Eric ran toward the closest building in a zig-zag pattern, and the others adopted similar motions behind him.
Up ahead, Sloths and other mechs came into view as they rounded the upcoming silo. Eric swung his shield forward and opened fire as he rushed them. He reached the Sloths, and ripped into them with his alien blades. The spears drained their energy shields, and penetrated through to the metal bodies inside. Crusher and Bambi were at his side, and they carved a path through the enemy units. Milk robots exploded under their onslaught, and Sloths fell surrounded by electrical sparks.
Eric and the others quickly rounded the silo, dashing out of view of the courtyard and the enemy troops it contained.
Overhead, airships hovered into view. They began to drop more troops. Walkers. Sloths. And milk robots.
Just then, the first set of charges Eric and the others had placed on the nearby buildings detonated. One of the silos a block away toppled over.
Several of the airships swerved away to investigate.
Eric and the others smashed their way through these latest attackers. Another set of charges went off, and more of the airships diverted.
Eric broke through the latest line of attackers, and raced down the street. Crusher, Bambi, and Brontosaurus followed, with both Eagleeye and Slate bringing up the rear, firing over shields that they held behind them.
Plasma fire came down from above, and Eric aimed at one of the airships and released a shot; a big energy field flashed into place around the vessel.
Eric and the others could have launched their spears in a coordinated attack to take down the airship, but that would leave them defenseless against any other attackers that came at them on the ground, considering how useless their non-spear weapons were against the enemy.
Two of the airships swooped into the street, descending below the height of the silos on either side, and activated tractor beams. Most of the team managed to avoid the beams, but Eric was partially caught by one of them, and began to rise.
“Uh,” Eric said.
Bambi leaped at him and grabbed his ankle, yanking him out. He landed on his side and scrambled to his feet, dodging as the airship veered toward him and attempted to snatch him in the tractor beam again. Eric released a few energy shots upward as he ran, and as expected the bolts smashed into the underside of the craft—in order to use the tractor beam, the airships had to deactivate their energy shields.
More of the previously planted charges went off, these located on buildings to either side. Two of the silos began to topple into the street. The airships deactivated their tractor beams to engage their energy shields, and the falling buildings clipped the fields of both airships. The vessels attempted to maneuver out of the way, so as to reduce the drain on their shields, and promptly collided. The shields deactivated entirely, and the craft smashed into one another. They fell with the collapsing towers.
Eric and the others meanwhile dove underneath, and weaved between the falling debris. Eric steered them into a nearby hexagonal courtyard, and ducked behind the intact buildings there.
“Lucky,” Eagleeye said.
“Not luck,” Slate said. “But exceptional foresight. I was the one that planted these particular charges, bitch.”
“What are you saying, you’re psychic?” Eagleeye asked.
“I could be, bitch,” Slate said. “So you better keep that in mind next time you mess with me, because I’ve already foreseen my metal fist pulverizing your flimsy head. Several times.”
Eric watched as support troops flooded the street, searching for the Bolt Eaters among the ruins. He and the others kept their bodies pressed against the current building as more airships swept past overhead.
Some of those troops were fanning out toward Eric’s current location, so he ducked from view. He was ready to fire when they reappeared.
“We still appear as Sloths, so what’s the problem?” Brontosaurus said.
“We’ve been flagged, no doubt,” Eric said. “Plus Bambi and Crusher are with us, and they definitely give us away.”
“We could stay behind…” Bambi said.
“No,” Eric said. “We didn’t rescue you only to abandon you in the end.”
Another explosion rocked the area, and the airships overhead instantly pulled away. Eric peered past the edge of the building, but the troops had retreated as well.
“Let’s go!” Eric raced across the courtyard, in the opposite direction, and emerged from the hexagonal group of buildings on the far side.
Eric kept close to the edge of the street, next to the line of silos, not wanting to venture too far into the open. As he ran, another explosion went off somewhere in the distance.
“How many charges did you guys place?” Bambi asked.
“That would be the last of them,” Eric replied.
“Too bad,” Crusher said. “I was beginning to think that the other Bolt Eaters were responsible.”
“No,” Eric said. “They’re waiting for us on the outskirts of the city. At least, they’re supposed to be.”
The streets here were empty.
For now.
Eric turned toward the south, toward the aforementioned outskirts. Behind him, he spotted alien tanks and mechs ambling into view, so he immediat
ely took a side street.
“Well. lookee here,” Slate said. “We gots ourselves a snail audience. Check out the balconies.”
Eric glanced upward, toward the tops of the silos. Sure enough, on most of the rooftops, snail-like Banthar watched the proceedings from those floating platforms of theirs.
Slate aimed his laser toward one of the rooftops, and fired. The stricken Banthar fell off its platform, and plunged the entire distance to the street below. It landed with a splatter.
“Fricasseed snail!” Slate commented. He laughed raucously.
The other Banthar quickly vanished from the rooftops.
“Aww, you scared them off,” Eagleeye said.
Slate turned toward the street where the dead Banthar had fallen.
“Slate, what are you doing?” Eric said.
“Getting a souvenir!” Slate said.
“Leave it!” Eric said.
He glanced at his rearview camera feed. The tanks and mechs had come into view once more.
Slate continued into the side street.
“Slate!” Eric commanded.
Slate hesitated, then finally turned around. “Fine. Geez. All I wanted was a little piece of alien escargot for my mantelpiece.”
“There will be no mantelpiece for you to return to if you get shot!” Eric said.
Eric took another street, racing out of view of the pursuers, but then airships appeared overhead.
He immediately swiveled his ballistic shield skyward as energy bolts came in. Tractor beams activated, and he weaved between the cylindrical light fields. Sloths dropped into his path, and he hewed them down. Termites also launched, but the enemy kept them back, mostly using them for scouting purposes, Eric thought.
The outskirts were just ahead. Eric amped up his comm signal, since there was no point in keeping it reduced at the moment. On his overhead map, the other Bolt Eaters showed up once more, crouched on the periphery of an estate just outside the city.
“We see you,” Marlborough said. “Get ready for a little dance.”
Apparently some of those Bolt Eaters had entered the city and placed demolition charges, because around Eric, explosives began to detonate, covering his escape. Some of the buildings toppled, blocking the path of pursuing units. One of the lower flying airships was struck by one, and brought down. The termite swarm split up to investigate, and several other pursuers broke away as well.
As the team emerged from the silos that bordered the city limits, suppressive fire erupted from the Bolt Eaters deployed at the opposite estate. The remaining termites were cut down in big swathes as energy weapons ate through them. Sloths and walkers were also hit, with less effectiveness.
Eric reached the unpaved aisle between two of the estates, and the other Bolt Eaters from the estate fell in behind the team.
“Welcome back, Kotter,” Mickey said.
“I never watched that show,” Eric said.
“Neither did I,” Mickey said. “But it has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
Explosions rocked the area as the two estates behind them erupted in huge fireballs.
“Nice!” Slate commented. “Who’s handiwork?”
“That’d be mine,” Tread replied.
“I always said you were a pyromaniac,” Slate said. “I’m going to call you Pyro from now on.”
“Better than being a nymphomaniac like me,” Bambi said.
“Ooo!” Slate said. “Did you know I have satyriasis?”
“Satyr what?” Eagleeye said.
“The male equivalent!” Slate said.
“You would know that,” Hicks said.
“Hey, I’m a machine with a dictionary of all known words embedded in his database,” Slate said. “You might want to try accessing yours sometime.”
“Too lazy,” Hicks commented.
Airships swooped past overhead, and began to drop Sloths. Some of them also activated tractor beams. The Bolt Eaters targeted the latter ships with their weapons, causing the craft to disengage the tractor beams to reactivate their energy shields.
Eric dropped the range of his transmissions now that he’d rejoined the Bolt Eaters—no point in continually broadcasting his position to the enemy, even if they did know where he was already.
In a few minutes they had cut their way through the enemy units and left behind the outlying farms for the forest. However, the thin trees offered little cover from the airships, which continued to assail them with plasma bolts and tractor beam capture attempts. He saw the trees well enough on the thermal and night vision bands, thanks to the lack of an all-enclosing canopy overhead.
Since they were outside the city, apparently the Banthar had the go-ahead to launch bioweapons, because Dragonworms exited the hangar bays of some of the airships now.
“Uh, whose idea was it to go and stir the hornet’s nest again?” Dunnigan asked.
“That would be Scorp,” Traps replied.
“I never asked any of you to come with me,” Eric said.
“We wouldn’t have had it any other way!” Dickson commented.
20
Eric fired at the Dragonworms as they descended through the thin boughs to attack. A silk net from one of the bioweapons came in at him, and he cut through it with his alien blades. He fired his energy cannon at the worm in return and blew off its head.
Spherical scouts also came in, firing netting similar to the Dragonworms. Eric and the others zig-zagged their way forward, bashing and shooting the scouts out of the air, and cutting through the nets before they could strike.
He glanced at his power levels. He was down to thirty percent. Among the rest of the team, Eagleeye and Slate were in the worst shape, at below ten percent. They weren’t firing their weapons very often, Eric noticed. It was all about the alien blades, for them.
“This way!” Marlborough said. Highlights appeared on Eric’s HUD, marking the direction he should take. He realized that it led to a thicker copse among the forest. The place was a solid band of darkness on his night vision, thanks to the canopy that blocked out the sky overhead. When he entered, he had to switch to LIDAR to make out the trunks: he set the range as low as possible so as not to overly broadcast his position.
He weaved between the white wireframes his LIDAR generated, and all at once the trees began to shift. Some of the branches bent down toward him, and Eric narrowly sidestepped, chopping them away.
“Gots ourselves a tree creature!” Dickson said.
“I was hoping as much,” Marlborough said. “Out of the copse, now!”
The team fled the copse as the entire group of trees came alive. Behind them, Sloths and Dragonworms were snatched up in rapid succession by the living branches, and carried into the trunks where they promptly vanished.
Eric deactivated his LIDAR now that he was out in the thinner forest again. Glancing in his rear view mirror, he watched as the copse shifted, and thrust skyward. The giant quadruped those trees were attached to snarled, flashing those white teeth in the dim starlight. It leaped into the air, thrusting toward one of the airships that pursued the Bolt Eaters. An energy shield flashed into existence around that craft, and the tree creature dropped.
“This way!” Marlborough said.
Eric followed the new directional overlay on his HUD, and swerved due south.
Most of the airships swerved to intercept the tree creature, while three continued to shadow the party overhead. Some Dragonworms also followed alongside, but those were quickly shot down by the team.
One of the airships attempted to activate a tractor beam; Slate slid out of the way, and fired his energy weapon into the underside. An explosion came from inside the exposed hangar bay, and the beam shut off.
“Score!” Slate said.
The airship retreated, leaving only two.
The pair pulled back, content to merely shadow the group, for now.
“They’re keeping us in sight,” Dickson said. “So that when their friends are done with the tree creature, they c
an easily pick up the pursuit.”
“We have to shake them,” Mickey said.
“Bolt Eaters, prepare to fire spears,” Marlborough said. “Loop back.”
Eric swung back toward the airships, but the craft seemed to know what the team was planning, because they adjusted their positions, and stayed out of range.
“Damn,” Marlborough said. “Continue toward the mountain range, then. Full speed.”
The Bolt Eaters abandoned the two craft, and continued south.
Eric wondered about their situation, and what could be done.
“We all have Sloth emitters,” Traps said. “Only Bambi and Crusher don’t. But if we remove their AI cores, and stow them in our storage compartments, we’ll all be Sloths again.”
“That’s true,” Frogger said. “But despite our friendly signatures, they’ve marked us enemy units, no doubt.”
“I wonder how accurate that marking is,” Hicks said. “If we were to face a group of Sloths, and intermingle with them, maybe they’d lose track.”
“It’s possible,” Frogger said. “But then again, the enemy will closely investigate any Sloth units it comes across, going forward. Seeing as they know that we can mimic Sloths, now.”
“Our only hope is to reach the mountains,” Eric said. “And hope we lose the aliens in the tunnels.”
“Eight kilometers away,” Slate said. “That’s half an hour at our current speed. A lot can happen in thirty minutes.”
“I hate to do this,” Marlborough said. “But we’re going to have to up our pace. Can you handle maximum speed, Eagleeye, Slate?”
“Yeah,” Slate said. “But by the time we reach the mountains, we’ll be almost empty.”
“Hicks, Traps, link up with them,” Marlborough said. “Share some charge.”
“You got it,” Hicks said. He ejected his Cicada, and while his Devastator was still running, grabbed the charging cable, leaped onto Slate’s unit, and attached it. He returned to his unit and entered the cockpit. Traps similarly connected his Devastator to Eagleeye’s.