Redeemed (Bolt Eaters Trilogy Book 3) Page 11
“Before your time, dude,” Mickey said.
“I know, bitches,” Slate said. “I was just playing with your messed up minds.”
Eric’s force field suddenly flashed and that saved him: he instinctively slammed his ballistic shield forward, hitting a spear that had come from nowhere. He struck it in a glancing blow, and it clattered to the ground beside him.
“Thought you said it was clear!” Mickey shouted.
“It was!” Slate said.
“Those spears fired from goddamn slots in the left and right sides of the wall,” Dickson said. “We just lost our energy shields. Gonna take some time to charge up again.
“That’s not all we lost,” Bambi said. “Look.”
Eric turned toward her, and saw Hicks and Tread lying lifeless on the deck behind her.
Frogger went to them. “Their AI cores are fried. Unlucky blows: the spears penetrated at just the right spot.”
“No,” Eric said.
“Just like that, they’re gone,” Brontosaurus said. “One small mistake…”
“Slate, please watch for those damn slots going forward,” Marlborough said.
“I’m sorry, Sarge,” Slate said. “I messed up. I—”
It sounded like he was sobbing.
“This isn’t the time to lose it,” Marlborough said. “We have a ship to take over.”
Slate’s mech straightened. “Understood. There will be no more fuck ups.”
“There better not be,” Marlborough said. “Though if anyone’s to blame, it’s Manticore.”
“Defensive systems aren’t marked on the map,” Manticore said.
“That’s not the point,” Marlborough said. “You and Eagleeye have scouts leading the way. You’re supposed to report anything out of the ordinary.”
“The slots didn’t register,” Eagleeye said. “But I’m sorry, you’re right, we should have noticed. I’ll have my drones fly closer to the walls.”
“Whatever it takes,” Marlborough said.
Eric glanced back at Hicks and Tread one last time before continuing onward, and he felt a sudden trepidation. A worry that all his friends were going to die, like had happened during the last invasion.
I’m not going to let that happen, Eric swore. I’m not going to let my friends die. Not this time. They won’t be restored from backups.
He wasn’t certain he’d be able to keep that promise, but he sure as hell was going to try. Because he didn’t even know whether the backups would still exist when this was over.
The team continued forward.
“Gah!” Slate said.
Flashes came from ahead, and Eric realized Slate and Brontosaurus were under attack. They’d ducked behind their ballistic shields, which were turning red inside. Their energy shields hadn’t recharged enough to defend against any attacks.
“What happened to the scouts?” Dickson asked.
“Offline!” Eagleeye said.
“Mine, too,” Manticore added.
Eric switched to Slate’s point of view, and watched as he fired his energy cannon through the notch in the top of the ballistic shield. The opponent was a tentacled tank that barely fit the corridor. A force field activated around the tango and absorbed the energy bolts. On the floor in front of it the LIDAR wireframes revealed small jagged lumps—the remains of the scouts.
“Gonna have to rush it!” Brontosaurus commented.
“Then let’s do it!” Slate said.
The pair dashed forward, and used their alien blades to slice through the energy field. It dissipated, and the two continued forward; they cut through the tentacles until they reached the tank proper, and promptly stabbed their blades through the hull. The electrical storm that swept over the tank disabled it, judging from the way the humming servomotors went silent.
“Shit, now what?” Slate said. “Damn tank is blocking our way forward.”
“We push.” Brontosaurus folded his shield away and pressed both arms into the tank’s exterior, between where the stumps of two tentacles protruded from the surface.
Slate joined him, and together they pushed the tank forward.
“No, you morons,” Eagleeye said. “Melt the bitch. Step aside.”
Brontosaurus and Slate turned back, and before they could react further, Eagleeye opened fire.
Energy bolts streamed between Brontosaurus and Slate; they quickly jumped against the adjacent bulkheads on either side and flattened themselves.
The bolts hit the tank and began to melt a path through the alien metal. Eagleeye continued firing for the next minute, until all that was left of the tank was a molten mess.
“Good way to overheat your cannons,” Slate commented.
Eagleeye’s weapons were indeed glowing red hot on the thermal band, and he probably would only be able to get out a few more shots over the next ten minutes until the devices cooled down. At least with those weapons; he still had plasma and laser cannons in reserve, like the rest of the mechs. Not to mention a black hole device.
“Should I send a scout forward again?” Manticore asked.
“Negative,” Marlborough said. “We saw how well that worked last time. I don’t want to risk losing any more of your alien spheres. We need those to interface with the ship, correct?”
“That’s right,” Manticore said.
“And you don’t have any more modified repair drones, Eagleeye?” Marlborough asked.
“Those were the only ones,” Eagleeye replied. “But I could prepare more. It will take an hour.”
“Go ahead,” Marlborough said. “But we’re not going to sit around waiting here… sitting ducks while the Essential makes plans to surround and kill us. Until you get them done, we’re going to have to act as our own scouts.”
The platoon rounded a bend in the triangular passageway, and a defense platform dropped from the ceiling. Slate and Brontosaurus launched their alien spears immediately, and the blades penetrated the shielding, and disabled the platform. The pair ejected in their Cicadas to retrieve and re-slot the spears, and then returned to the mechs.
They continued following the path Manticore had laid out before them, and by the time the platoon reached a cavernous chamber, their force fields had recharged enough to offer limited protection once again. According to the energy levels, those shields were at twenty-five percent.
Eric and the others entered that chamber, and the door irised shut behind them.
“Hm,” Brontosaurus said.
Eric heard a clanging sound.
“Spears!” Frogger said over the comm. His transmission included a timebase that switched Eric to Bullet Time. “Overhead!”
13
Eric glanced up, and saw the spears bearing down from slots in the ceiling. Because of the range, he had time to dodge before those spears struck.
Two doors opened in the far wall, on either side of the room, and Black Tails rushed inside. They were creatures the platoon had encountered in the first invasion: essentially giant centipedes with six jointed legs, whose frontal areas were capped by a torso containing four arms and an elongated white head with razor-sharp teeth, and whose rear harbored a tail that drooped over their bodies, ending in a black, glandular sac. They carried spears in every one of the hands that tipped those four arms, and a double-barreled cannon resided on the carapaces behind their torsos.
“I remember these suckers!” Slate said.
“Shoot the glandular sacs!” Marlborough ordered.
Eric and the others unleashed their weapons, but the bolts were absorbed by the energy shields that protected the bioweapons.
“Figures!” Dunnigan said.
The bioweapons rushed them. Those in the forefront threw their spears, and Eric and the others were forced to dodge, or smash them away with their ballistic shields—disabling their own energy fields first so as not to drain them upon impact.
The Bolt Eaters in turn unleashed a barrage of spears, breaking down the first wave. But the second wave of attackers merely lea
ped over the first, and continued forward. They threw spears again, waiting until they were closer this time: Eric dove to the ground to avoid this next round. Some of the other Bolt Eaters did the same, while most merely dodged.
Eric scrambled upright as the first of the Black Tails reached him. He met the spears of his current foe with his own in a melee that vaguely resembled a sword fight. He was faster than the Black Tail and readily parried those blows, weaving between them to stab the bioweapon through the torso. It screeched, crumbling as he removed the blade.
Another Black Tail simply moved forward to intercept him. It threw a spear, and he dodged it. He parried the next two blows, and had to leap to the side as the Black Tail swiped downward with its tail. The glandular sac struck the ground, and the sticky fluid spilled out, killing the beast. Eric quickly cleared the area, because touching that fluid would pin him fast. He grabbed the carapace and tugged, the tail was stuck to the ground because of the fluid, but he pulled harder, ripping it free.
Then he swung the bioweapon at the incoming units, smacking them like they deserved. His favorite strategy. The dead Black Tail still clutched one of the alien spears, which added extra damage. It was like he was swinging a barbed glove.
Bambi came to his left side, and Crusher his right, and they fought together. Bambi swung her own tail like a weapon, using the three spears that pronged the tip to deadly effect. Crusher meanwhile alternated between firing her energy cannons—it distracted them, she claimed—and cutting with her alien spear.
As Eric swung the dead Black Tail at the next foe, a bioweapon behind it tilted its torso downward and unleashed the cannon on its back. Two energy bolts emerged, streaming directly toward him.
He lifted the corpse just in time, and the body tore apart in a stream of blood and gore in front of him.
“Bastard, take away my weapon, will you?” Eric unleashed his energy cannon in turn; he guessed that the tango had disabled its force field to fire like that, and sure enough, Eric’s bolts reached the Black Tail unhindered, and tore into its body, killing it. The alien weapon was so powerful he didn’t even have to worry about targeting the glandular sac, like he had to do to take down these creatures in the past.
As Eric fought the next tango, Manticore’s scouts weaved between the different Black Tails beyond it, and launched sticky webs that pinned the bioweapons. Meanwhile, Manticore followed up by stabbing those creatures with his spear.
The battle continued for the next minute, with the Bolt Eaters making little progress save for a growing wall of dead bioweapons that was forming in front of them. The creatures kept coming.
“Fuck this!” Slate said. He raised his black hole weapon and fired.
A bolt traveled over the heads of the Black Tails, but quickly shrunk in size before vanishing completely. It never took hold.
“Wormhole dispersion tech,” Frogger said. “Prevents black holes from forming anywhere aboard.”
“Oh yeah,” Slate said. “Doh.”
“You’re sounding more and more like Homer Simpson all the time,” Mickey said.
“Thanks!” Slate said. “Homer who?”
“If you look at the path marked on the overhead map,” Crusher said as she stabbed her spear through the head of another Black Tail. “You can see that the doorway we want lies just ahead, between the two open doors. If we can reach it, we can leave this room behind!”
“How do we know more Black Tails won’t block our path from the corridor beyond when we reach it?” Mickey asked.
“No, she’s right!” Manticore replied. “The two doorways that are open on either side ahead lead to barracks. The main corridor, the one we want, isn’t connected to the barracks. If we can make it there, we won’t face opposition. We’ll still have to fend off the Black Tails on our rear, but a few well placed charges might be able to stem the flow.”
“It’s settled then,” Marlborough said. “We need to make a concerted effort to punch through! Bolt Eaters, line up, side by side! Use the dead as your shields!”
The Bolt Eaters lifted carcasses from the pile of dead in front of them, and then they assumed a line formation and began to shove their way forward. The Black Tails were packed too close together to throw their spears at that point, and so had to stab at Eric and the others. They succeeded only in stabbing the dead bodies of their comrades, which the Bolt Eaters held in front of them. While electricity sparked up and down those corpses, the bodies didn’t conduct the electricity into the Bolt Eaters themselves, a fact the platoon readily took advantage of to force their way forward.
Eric and the others occasionally stabbed their spears past the dead bodies to take out a shielded bioweapon. They made good progress, with the line of Black Tails folding and buckling in front of them.
Another panel opened overhead, and milk robots spilled down. Eric and the others were forced to scatter, and they cut through the crystalline creatures with their spears, shattering them. Some of the milk robots touched the Black Tails, and the bioweapons began to crystallize, forming bigger milky entities. Whenever any of those latter units got in their paths, the Bolt Eaters hewed their way past, breaking apart the bigger crystalline forms into smaller fragments.
“Reform!” Marlborough ordered.
They formed a line once more, and began to press forward. Those on the edges of the line had to fold inward as the Black Tails enveloped them, until soon the platoon had formed a moving square whose members fought back to back.
Eric and Slate, in the forefront, forced their way through the far side of the horde, and reached the destination doorway. They promptly fired their energy weapons, tearing a hole through the door, and they kicked through the remaining fragments.
“We’re through!” Eric said.
Beyond, the LIDAR reported the passageway as empty.
For now.
Eric and the others quickly moved inside, readjusting to fit the tighter confines that allowed only two Devastators to walk abreast.
When everyone was inside, those on drag, Dunnigan and Mickey, had to defend the rear, using their spears, and the riddled bodies of the dead they still held.
“Crusher, Frogger, place charges on the overhead as we advance!” Marlborough ordered.
Frogger and Crusher promptly ejected in their Cicadas, and swung down to the storage compartments of their mechs to retrieve sacks of demolition blocks. They clambered to the tops of their mechs and began affixing the bricks to the overhead as the Devastators, under the control of their associated Accomps, continued forward.
Slate and Eric continued forward, moving away from that compartment of carnage as fast as they were able, making room for the others behind them who were likewise fleeing.
“Charges placed!” Frogger announced.
“Get back inside your mechs, and prepare to detonate!” Marlborough said.
Frogger and Crusher returned their Cicadas to the cockpits of their Devastators. The platoon continued forward through the corridor, with the rear units harried the whole way, until the Bolt Eaters were well away from the charges.
“Detonate!” Marlborough ordered.
Frogger and Crusher were still within range of the remote interfaces, and activated them. All of the charges were above the Black Tails that had rushed into the corridor after them, and the explosion caused hot gas and shrapnel to rip into the lot of them. Debris filled the corridor, blotting out the LIDAR feed.
Everything was quiet for several moments afterward.
“You hear that?” Brontosaurus said.
Though Eric still couldn’t see anything, the muted moaning of collapsing metal came from somewhere behind him.
“They’re already trying to shoot their way through,” Brontosaurus continued.
“Then let’s get going!” Marlborough said.
The team moved onward, using the blueprints to guide them since they couldn’t see anything on LIDAR at the moment. Behind them it was still relatively quiet, at least in terms of incoming attacks.
It was true. A thin LIDAR outline appeared, marking the ceiling, bulkhead and overhead behind Dunnigan, offering one meter of visibility towards the destroyed section of the passageway. As the platoon continued their advance, that visibility increased to five meters, and then ten.
“Looks like the overhead caved in behind us,” Dunnigan said.
“I see it,” Bambi said. “That should hold them for a little while.”
Eric switched to Dunnigan’s feed and realized the corridor ended in a pile of ragged debris behind him; it effectively blocked off all access, at least until the pursuers managed to drill through.
“Increase pace!” Marlborough said.
The team hurried forward. They encountered a few more defense platforms, some more milk robots, and several more tentacled tanks, but thankfully nothing like the resistance they had encountered in the cavernous chamber. It helped that they remained mostly within smaller passageways, scuttles and compartments the rest of the way.
Slate spotted slots in the bulkheads on a couple of occasions, in time for the team to drop to a low crawl. As they passed underneath, spears fired from those narrow apertures and passed overhead to clatter harmlessly against the opposite walls.
Once they cleared the first such trap, Marlborough had Dunnigan and Mickey eject in their Cicadas to collect the spears and replace the missing blades they’d lost in the previous fights.
Finally, the Bolt Eaters reached the door that led to the control room.
“Well that was easy!” Slate said. “Relatively.” He aimed his energy weapon at the door and was about to fire.
“Wait, there’s a guardian,” Manticore said. “The Essential calls it the Curator.”
“The Curator?” Dickson asked.
“That’s all I know,” Manticore said. “Something guards this room. Something terrible.”
“We come all this way, and only now you tell us there’s a friggin’ Curator?” Slate said. “Ah, you joy-killing little bitch.”
“I assumed it was obvious,” Manticore said. “This is the control room. Of course there’s going to be something guarding it. The Essential isn’t going to let us take control of the mothership so easily.”