There was a group of thirty or so birds flying toward us from up above, and I raised my rifle to send a stream of bullets at them. I took out half of them before my magazine was empty, and I ejected it into the floor of the car while I reached for a fresh one from my pouch. I was worried about the birds in front of us as well as the ones in back. But as soon as I pressed a new magazine into my rifle and took out the rest of the birds I heard shots behind me and turned to see Eve and the twins shooting at the group that had been closing in on us from the front.
“This piece of shit isn’t fast enough!” Z screamed over the sound of the wind and our gun fire.
“Faster than walking!” I yelled, but it was only marginally true. We were probably only moving at fifty kilometers an hour. It was enough for the wind to sting my eyes, but I could have sprinted this fast in my tiger-man shifted form.
“Left!” One of the twins yelled, and I turned to see a plume of birds flying from an alley. The blonde woman and I fired, and we tore through the mass in a few seconds, but as we were shooting, Eve and the other twin started shooting. I glanced over to see four more groups of bird-drones closing in on us from that direction.
“In front!” Z cried, and I pivoted around to see a small group come at us from the two o’clock position. They were only thirty meters away, and my bullets found all but one of the streaming machines.
“Shit!” Z ducked her head as the thing streaked by her and slammed into my right shoulder. The hacker’s movement caused the car to sway from side to side, and I felt one of the back wheels lift off the street before she could put it back down.
“Adam!” Eve gasped as I tried to get the bird off me. The thing was larger than I would have thought; probably around fifty centimeters tall with wings and maybe eighty centimeters long. It was trying to drill into my armor with its needle face, and it actually let out a squeak like sound when I attempted to tear it off. I was finally able to hold it away from me, and then one of the twins shoved the barrel of her rifle into the thing’s head and pulled the trigger. Its needle-face turned into a mesh of smoldering wires, and I tossed it on the road before I turned back to the front of the car.
“Are you hurt?” Z yelled as she twisted the wheel to her right. The car swerved, and a plume of silver birds streaked past us.
“No,” I said as I raised my rifle again to shoot at another group of thirty diving toward the front of the car. My magazine ran out halfway through, but I was quicker to reload this time, and I finished off the group before they made it within sixty meters of us.
“Reloading!” Eve called out from behind me.
“I’ll cover!” both of the twins said at once, and I felt a surge of pride punch through the terror infecting my body. I had a great group of women with me. We were all starting to work together as a team, and I was going to do everything I could to make sure they lived through this.
Then a blast of drone-birds hit us from the side, and everything turned to shit.
Z and Paula both screamed, and I felt two of the robots try to punch their needles through the armor on my body. Needles dug into my neck, but I ignored the agony and bent forward to grab one of the birds that was trying to burrow into Z’s side. My fingers closed around the drone’s neck, and my rage crushed the thing instantly. The car swerved to the side, and we got hit, but Z had somehow kept us from flipping. There was another bird trying to get to her face, but the hacker was ignoring it, and I was able to pull it off her before it could punch its needle into her skull.
I spun around and saw Eve trying to remove two birds from herself. The birds were only attempting to drill into the armor of one of the twins, and I realized they were ignoring Kasta. The android was helping her sister, but no one was helping Eve, so I grabbed one of the birds off the vampire, threw it behind us and then yanked the other free. Eve shot this one as I flung it into the air, and then we helped Kasta pull the last drone off Paula.
“Adam!” Eve shouted as the three women grabbed the drone trying to rip my neck apart. They were too slow though, and I pulled the robot from me and crushed its metal head before I threw it out of the car. I felt my blood pour down my neck, but I didn’t have time to try and stanch any of the blood rushing out.
There were hundreds of swooping bird-drones diving toward us from all directions.
“I’ll take front! You three take rear and sides!” I commanded as I turned around to aim my rifle over Z’s head. I emptied my rifle into the nearest group Z was driving toward, and then I switched the magazine in time to take out another group coming from our eleven o’clock. The three women in the rear continued to tell each other when they were reloading, but there was no relief from the swarm of drones. It was as if we were in the center of a bowl and metal water was being poured on us from the rim.
“We are almost out of the city!” Z shouted over the sound of the rifle fire.
I looked down from where we were shooting, saw that the field was about a kilometer away, and then reloaded in time to shoot down four drones that dove within three meters of us. I was running out of ammo, and I knew the women were probably close as well.
I saw Persephone in the far distance, and the last rays of golden-red sunshine were still kissing the edges of her sleek lines. There weren’t any drones attacking her, or any flying above the field, and I guessed they must have all been roosting on the roofs of the buildings and were deciding to attack us before swarming the ship.
“Faster!” I shouted as I burned through another magazine and reached into my ammo pouch.
“I’ve got my foot down all the-- No!” Z screamed as a group of birds darted from the shadows of the building and slammed into the front left corner of the car. I’d been too busy shooting another group, and I hadn’t noticed this swarm until half a moment before they kamikazed into our vehicle.
Then I was floating in the air.
Then I was rolling on the street.
I sprung to my feet half a second before a drone tried to spear me through the stomach. My armor didn’t let the needle pierce, but the impact still knocked me backward, and I had to twist around on my toes to keep from falling on my ass.
Another bird slammed into my shoulder, and I heard the sound of tires squealing to a stop.
“Go!” I screamed at them as loud as I could, but I couldn’t see if the women actually followed my orders. There were too many drones on me now, and their wings, needle faces, and clawed talons were swarming against me.
The beast inside of me screamed as a needle tore into my cheek. Another needle tried to pierce my skull, but I reached up and knocked the thing away before it could do more than pierce my skin. I had completely lost my sense of direction now, and I didn’t want to accidentally tag my friends with a bullet, so I dove to the street, rolled over my shoulders, and then tried to run in whatever direction I ended up.
The plan was only mildly successful. The metal the birds were crafted with wasn’t very sturdy, and my roll crushed at least three of them, but those were quickly replaced by three more as soon as I started running. Fortunately, I was moving in the direction of the open field, and my friends were speeding away from me in the car. Unfortunately, there were more drones than I could count diving for me, and probably more behind me. I couldn’t even see if the drones were still chasing after my friends, there were too many swarming.
The beast took control.
I hadn’t even thought about changing, so maybe that was how the animal wrested itself free of the bars I kept him locked behind. Maybe I had been so terrified that all of my control slipped away and my raw instincts were taking over. Maybe the reason didn’t matter. I was in the middle of a blender, and if I didn’t change now and try to punch through my shifted form, I wasn’t going to live for more than another handful of seconds.
I didn’t even feel any agony from the change or stumble as I ran. The transition was uncharacteristically smooth, and even though I felt my legs thicken, my feet spread, my spine grow, and my bones re-form, it wa
s as if I was witnessing the changes instead of feeling them actually happening to my body.
I was a fast runner in my human form, but as soon as my legs became shifted, my speed more than tripled, and some of the drones that were trying to drill through my armor plates were tossed free of my body. My shoulders expanded as I ran, and the change in size actually gave me more running power. My vision started changing when I first started to transform, but it normally didn’t finish until I lost my human teeth and grew my tiger-fangs. I spit them on the ground as I ran and let out a roar of freedom as the last bird-drone fell away from my shoulders.
I raised my rifle as I sprinted and throttled the trigger. Bullets tore through a spear of birds trying to dive at me, and their metal chunks scattered to the air like mercury rain. I was only a few hundred meters from the edge of the city, and it looked like only two groups of birds were flapping toward me.
My next pour of automatic fire dismantled one of the groups, but then my magazine was empty. I didn’t want to slow down my running speed with a reload attempt, so I just bent low, raised my rifle over my head like a pathetic shield, and tried to plow through the swarm of birds. They made a few squawking sounds when I hit them with my rifle, and two of them tried to bore into my armor, but then I was free of the mob, and I was running beyond the city line.
I knocked the two birds free of my chest and told my legs to pump faster. I could hear a thousand wings flapping behind me. I could feel the hunger of the robots, and I could almost sense their frustration that I was escaping. Persephone was up ahead, maybe another six hundred meters, and I saw the women drive the beat to hell car up to the ramp. The door to the hatch was closed and Z was waving her hand over the hull so it would open.
A drone hit me in the back, and the impact lifted me off my feet. My legs pumped through the air twice before I landed, and I grunted as I squeezed an extra burst of speed out of them. I stayed on my feet instead of tripping, and I gave thanks to whatever lucky star was watching over me.
Then another bird hit me in the back of my left leg as I ran, and the impact forced my foot to smack into the back of my right calf. There was no recovering from that, and I tumbled to the ground like a thrown bowling ball.
Get up! Run! Run!
Eve’s words were loud enough to make my brain cry, but she didn’t need to tell me what to do, I was already rolling forward and trying to spring back to my feet. The fall cost me too much speed through, and it felt like twenty birds were on me.
They couldn’t stop me from getting my boots on the ground, and I did my best to run toward Persephone while I raked my rifle across my head to wipe off the drones. I’d been lucky, and none of them had been able to drive one of their needles into my skull. I did have half a dozen needles in my neck through, and one dangerously close to my spine. I knocked that drone away first as I ran, but another bird hit me, and I stumbled forward again.
Terror and rage were keeping the pain of a dozen needles away. None of the injuries burned or seemed to be numbed by poison, but the needles probably didn’t need to be poisoned to be effective against the wasps. The wasps these things were supposed to destroy were immune to pesticides, the simple needle was more than an effective enough weapon, especially if there were two or three of the drones attacking a single one of the bugs. My body armor was the only reason I was still alive, and I made a promise to buy helmets for all of us if I got back to Persephone alive.
I heard burst fire from guns, and I flung my rifle around to knock a few more birds free so I could see better. Eve and the twins were at the hatch door, and they were shooting toward me. I was only two hundred meters away now, and I begged my heavy legs to just give me another ten seconds of power so that I could make it there.
Once more, I reached down deep into my soul for as much power as I could gather, and I pushed it all into my legs with the knowledge that I would die if I didn’t give it everything I had.
I ran, and I didn’t feel the pain of the needles digging into my neck and through my armor. I only felt my massive heart slam in my chest.
I ran, and I didn’t hear the sound of my friends’ rifles, or the wings of the drones behind me. I just heard my breath leaving my body with violent gasps.
I ran, and the wind and grass parted around me like I was a bullet tearing through a piece of paper.
I ran, and the sensation of setting my boot on Persephone's ramp was almost as wonderful as when I threw myself past the door and into her hold. I still had three of the bird-drones clinging to me, but the twins quickly beat them into scrap metal with the butts of their rifle while Eve closed the hatch door.
“He’s in!” three voices screamed at once, and I felt Persephone spring forward; almost as if she was a hopping bird taking flight. None of us were strapped down, so we were all flung across the hold and slammed against the bay doors. I managed to get my arms around each of the twins as we slid across the floor, but Eve was already by the hatch, so I didn’t think the impact hurt her that much.
“Ooof!” one of the twins said when she smacked into my chest and sandwiched me against the door.
“You okay?” I asked her, and she nodded.
“How about you?” she asked, and I was getting familiar enough with them to know it was Kasta.
“Fine,” I replied.
“Yeah, but you’ve got three needles sticking out of your neck, and two out of your armor.” She pointed at my shoulders, but I didn’t feel any pain there.
“I will pull out the neck ones,” Eve said from the other side of the hold door, but then Persephone twisted through the air, and the g-forces pushed us all back against the metal again.
The ship was shuddering slightly, and I hoped that meant Z was taking us out of the atmosphere, and not that the birds were tearing Persephone apart.
The four of us couldn’t move for an agonizing minute, and then the g-forces relaxed, and we all let out sighs of relief.
“Hey all,” Z’s voice came into the hold. “I put us in orbit. I don’t think Persephone took any damage, but I want to run a diagnostic. Paula and Kasta, can you help me?”
“Yes,” they both answered.
“Good job getting us out of there, Z,” I said.
“Ahh, yeah. Good job at saving our ass a million and a half times,” the hacker said. “Do you need to rest after your change into sexy tiger-man?”
“Yeah,” I said. I was surprised that Z actually called me ‘sexy tiger-man’ across the speaker system, but I figured it was no secret she had feelings for me.
“He is a sexy tiger-man,” Kasta whispered, and I didn’t think that Z heard her.
“Oh yes. Very sexy,” Paula whispered, and both of the beautiful blonde women gave me hungry looks.
“I’m going to go rest,” I said loud enough for Z to hear. “Eve, can you take these needles out and--”
“Captain!” Z shouted through the speakers. “You need to get up here!” I felt Persephone start to move to the side, and her engines began to crank up.
“What?”
“Six Lith Dae Navy ships have just popped out of hyperdrive. They are about ten thousand kilometers away, but they are sending us a communication request.”
“Shit,” I groaned. “Be right there.”
Chapter 5
Eve, Kasta, and Paula inspected my body for needles during the brief elevator ride. They found seven total; three in my neck, two broken off in the armor of my right shoulder, and two more stuck in the armor of my back. The needles in my neck hurt when they removed them, but I healed almost instantly.
“Have they made offensive movements?” I asked as soon as we made it to the bridge.
“No, Captain, they are just sitting there. They have a light cruiser class, two destroyers, two battleships, and a patrol boat.” Z pointed at the detail on the screen, and I read through the information that Persephone's scanners displayed there. I didn’t want to run from this planet, but I knew there was no way we could take them all out. Even with a ful
l crew, it would be risky for one ship to go against six, and we were terribly shorthanded. These ships also looked to be in better repair than the three other Lith Dae Navy vessels we had fought. The zoomed images showed clean hulls, with no sloppy rivets or mismatched repair plates on the hulls.
“Go ahead and open communications,” I said.
“The request is asking for video and audio,” Eve said as she slid into the copilot’s chair.
“Just audio,” I said as I sat. I expected Paula and Kasta to take their own seats, but the twins stood on either side of my captain’s chair and leaned into my shoulders. I was about to tell them to get to their gunner stations, but the voice came across the bridge speakers.
“Persephone, this is Captain Renalta of the Lith Dae Navy. I request that you open your video communications with us.” It was a man’s voice, and the timbre convinced me he’d spent most of his life drinking whiskey and barking orders.
“Apologies, Captain Renalta, our video system is down,” I replied. I tried to keep my voice less tiger-man sounding and more human, but it still retained most of its sinister growl.
“With whom do I speak?”
“My name is Adam. I’m the captain of Persephone.”
“Your ship isn’t tagged, are you part of a military fleet?”
“No, we are a passenger and trading vessel,” I answered.
Captain Renalta didn’t reply immediately, and I gestured for the twins to go to their gunner and drone stations. Both of them gave me matching pouts, and then they left my side to take their positions.
“You just left the atmosphere of Uraniel. How long were you on the planet’s surface?” the man asked.
Binary Pair Page 6