So you do the only smart thing: You double down. Fight harder, not smarter. And it still bitch-slaps you until the only thing you can do is run. And then you’re scrambling for your life, trying to get away, only it won’t let you. Then, on the last sliver of your strength, you see an opening and you rush it, slipping through the tiniest of cracks and surviving by the thinnest margins. And you are through, out safe and into free air. The adrenaline pounds through your veins in that addictive way, encouraged by enough endorphins to make an elephant dance. That’s the best feeling.
Oh, by the way, you should run now.
--Tamor to several bystanders after emerging from a hive.
***
I ground my teeth on the yell, trying to break free as searing pain shot through my limbs. The little missiles had been coated and left something painful in the wounds. Foolishly, perhaps, I grasped the quill and yanked, ripping out more thigh muscle in the process. My other hand clamped down on the wound, holding back the bleeding, while the bionites stitched me closed. The increased pain crawled up my throat, forcing out a hiss as the least compromise between expression and giving my position away.
An injector pen appeared and nearly rolled off the roof before I could catch it. I stabbed it right beside the wound, and a blessed soothing washed over me.
--Sure thing.
My list app appeared, a note was added, and then it vanished.
By some miracle, I’d kept hold of my rifle, and I checked it over.
Since the storm of quills had subsided, I belly-crawled up to the roof peak. A Model 15e’s tracker filled the aiming reticle, and I readied to move right after firing. Two bursts of fire, roll, push up again, fire more, and then lift my feet to slide down. It was slower, but safer since the M-5 had an idea of my location now.
After a couple more cycles of prairie dog shooting, I stopped at the bottom, and I counted four of the M-15e trackers sitting still and presumably dead, but the others had shifted, and I didn’t have an angle on them, probably. It was hard to tell with just the tracker signals, but when they lined up one behind the other, that was my best guess.
I slipped down the protected slope of the garage and lowered myself to the ground. From the direction the quills came from, a lot of M-5s remained to my left, but the supply of M-3s had been worn down.
My shirt and pants were riddled with holes, but a display in my visor showed my armor’s status in a small visual; all green so far. Despite a dozen hits, the armor had held without even a scratch. I’d only been hurt in the gaps on my arms and legs, which was still enough to bleed out if I was careless. I took a second to add a toss probe to the list of upgrades.
Working around the side of the building and angled for the nearest unmoving tracker, both to confirm the kill and to get at the moving one behind it. On the way, I drew both laser pistols. The Fives had been firing blindly at my rifle’s noise, blanketing the area of the rooftop and above it, and the quills hitting the metal sounded like rain.
While not as loud as a gunpowder weapon, the Deuce’s upper barrel still produced a distinct crack as the supersonic rounds created their own miniature sonic boom. By comparison, the laser pistol’s shots whispered their retorts. And with the smoke blocking my vision, my effective range was about the same with both weapons unless I had a tracker signal to aim at.
Since it read air movements, my auric sense had a hard time discerning much more than the size, distance, and velocity of anything it registered. But the behavior also spoke volumes, and when a row of antithesis lined up at the edge of my senses, I decided not to let a string of M-5s launch at any noise I made free of charge.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I fired twice, three times at the center of each mass, dropping a couple at the center of the line, and then I started running sideways. Ten steps later I juked into a turn, running straight at the line, and soon was amid the confused antithesis. A quick, confused melee followed in which their numbers were thinned and pushed to the side.
I pulled back into the gap I’d made and on towards the large body that had been at the edge of my sensing. It was indeed dead, with legs crumpled, half of them underneath, and a body growing cooler in the IR. I used the legs for a ramp and headed over the body.
“Corie, I can’t go up that slope; it’ll tip me over. I have to go around.” The combine’s engine revved and dropped as it shifted gears again. A few seconds later she added. “Ouch! Well, there goes the auger. Good thing I’m not using it.”
“What happened?” I subvocalized to keep from giving myself away.
“I think a flacking Four tried to catch a ride. It pulled the flacking auger out, and it sheared on some flacking building. Nothing important.”
“Wasn’t the smoke generator using that?”
“Uh…yes? Is that why the smoke’s getting thinner?”
“Your generator ran out of smoke some time ago; you’re being covered by the bombs we sent.” Corie reassured her.
“I’m starting my charge on the last few Fifteens,” I said.
“Not far behind you. This is flacking fun! Don’t know ‘bout you, but this is better than flacking at the flacking flack club. Oh, here’s more Threes! You can’t bite those treads honey; they’ll flack you up. Just like that...”
I stood on top of the corpse and looked about. The smoke seemed thinner here too.
--Probably the smoke is dissipating. The smoke bombs only put out so much. And this light breeze will disperse it even faster.
Down the slope I heard another rolling series of thumps.
--Yes, it reacts with the smoke, clearing the area in a few minutes. One aerosol can will do it and costs five points.
I’d paused on the top of this body long enough. The next large alien lay just out of my sense range, but its breathing disturbed the air, forming a pulsing I could follow.
I jumped out and down and landed hard. My legs slipped out from under me, sending me ass over teakettle, which I turned into a log roll. I scrambled to my feet close to the side of the living alien. A wall of flesh and stubby elephantine legs towered over me to the front, and corpse body behind penned me in.
To my right, the head curled around as the plates along its back started to glow in order from the tail towards the largest at the head. I ran towards the head, deciding that if it decided to bite me, I could shoot down its throat. It lowered its head further, and the last crest plates on the head arced electricity back down the body while an eerie whine ground into my bones.
On instinct, I threw myself to the side and down, landing in a slick mud patch and sliding further towards it. A head-sized ball flashed down the channel between the plates and hurtled past, missing me by a hair’s breadth. The projectile splatted into the side of the corpse. I clambered to my feet and jumped at the head, switching from pistols to swords.
My blade tips scraped along its chin and throat as I ducked under the broad head, then stood, turned, and swiped at the second pair of dorsal plates. The blades parted the unarmored flesh, and the plates tumbled into the mud. The remaining plates started glowing again, brighter closer to the tail but cascading my way. The Fifteen jerked its neck away from me, then back, trying to club me with its own head. I dropped down and let it pass over me and left a paper cut on the underside again.
As it started to swing the head back towards me, I leapt up onto the neck and cut off another pair of plates to make space. To my surprise they offered little resistance, leaving pointed stubs. My cuts didn’t seem to make a difference, so I stabbed one blade deep, just behind the stubs. The glow was close, at the next spine, when a small monkey-like alien tackled me, sending us over the side.
The Fifteen’s stubs sparked, arcing to my embedded blade, and it froze while spasms ran down its body. I rolled away with the child-sized alien clinging to me and trying to tear into me with an unhealthy number of limbs. The claws scraped my armor until three monkey limbs on one side fell away after a slice with a reversed sword, letting me shove it away. I followed and split the little form, and M-10 I now realized. Behind it, the Fifteen’s legs collapsed, and it dropped to the ground.
I stared at it, in confusion, for a second.
--This variant gets its long range by using a biological railgun. Your sword diverted the launch charge straight into its brain. The Model Ten you killed was the one directing attendant models for loading.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a writhing motion where a mass of arm-length worms crawled over the corpse of the first M-15e. A few dug into the flesh of their corpsen wall, but others had spread out along it.
“Sevens!” I called out while drawing my pistols. Habits from training hundreds of PMCs in the procedure kicked in. Even as I started shooting, I continued the warning: “We have Sevens. Corie, can you report them to the Army and clean up crews?”