An old-school glowing green line swept the glass display at the radar console, its motion mirroring the rotating dish in a Mana-transparent armored cowl atop the hood. A shifting cluster of red dots, each labeled with a tiny number giving its level, showed the mess of monsters chasing Bertha. But more important was what it didn’t show: an ambush waiting ahead of them. With its eyes opened, Bertha could run free without fear.
Jill pushed her foot down on the accelerator and the truck surged forward, not that anyone inside could feel it. The Explorer upgrade Jill had taken for the Armor Module had Inertial Resistance at over 100% strength, so without breaches in the armor or some other magical effect to counter it accelerations and impacts from outside of the truck did nothing to the inside. The view out the front window danced up and down as the truck slammed its way over small rises in the plains; even the smallest hill made for sudden jumps when going hundreds of miles an hour.
“We’re pulling away from them!” Jake said. “Weren’t we, uh, going to fight?
“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it,” Jill said. “I didn’t think they’d be so slow. What’s chasing us, a bunch of flying slugs?” She checked the speedometer. It was in metric, like everything System-made, but an instantaneous mental conversion put their speed at just over 300 miles per hour, still 100 below the truck’s maximum. “Alright, people!” she projected to the gunners in the turrets, the fighters stationed in the Cargo Nexus, and just for good measure the rest of the crew in the cab behind her. “We could just outrun this swarm, but I say that we harvest it. Anyone have a reason not to?”
“Fuck ‘em up!” “Woooo!” came a dozen semi-coherent shouted responses, none objecting. After they had died down one smart-ass belted out “For the honor of Bertha, our immortal queen!”. Jill rolled her eyes but couldn’t help laughing along, then cut the communication power.
“Battlestations, battlestations!” Karen announced, taking control of Captain Speaking from her own console. “C.K.’s to the Cargo Nexus! Non-combatants to the gymnasium!”
“Here we go!” Jill yelled. She hauled the wheel over, hard, and engaged the Torque Converter on its forward axis, stopping Bertha from flipping from the sudden turn. Bertha’s massive tires churned up a wave of torn dirt and brown grass as the truck pulled through 120 degrees more like a rally car than an 18-wheeler.
“Jake,” Aman said as Jill centered the wheel, “report the range to contacts.”
“22 clicks!” Jake shouted, a bit louder than was necessary, then “21!” a few seconds later. Despite approaching the flying swarm at an angle rather than head-on, their closing speed was in the hundreds of miles per hour.
Jill leaned forward to peer over the wheel; she couldn’t see the monsters, not yet, but there was an unnaturally isolated wall of storm clouds in the direction where the creatures should be. It could be something the monsters were making around themselves; it could be the actual monsters were the cloud. They’d fought monsterized grass and stone before after all, so it might be time for water vapor to have its turn.
She held their course, a grin forming on her face in anticipation of the coming kills. Jill’s smile froze, then cracked. “Tits,” she swore under her breath, shaking her head. “Bobby,” she said, “take the wheel.”
“You tuckered out already?” he asked with a teasing grin from behind his beard, but he stepped up beside the left-hand driver’s seat, ready to do as she’d said.
“More like I’m tired of worrying that your low-level ass will choke to death on a stick of butter,” Jill said, ”so sit down and get some XP.” The System awarded Experience for kills based on an unexplained ‘Contribution’. No one, not even Babu, had figured out exactly how the mechanic worked, but being the one who drove Bertha into combat counted. So did being the owner of Bertha whenever someone inside used something of the truck to earn Experience of their own. Every time one of the gunners got a kill, every time a crafter used the workshop, every time someone even cooked a particularly good meal in the kitchen, Jill took her cut.
She stood to clear the driver’s seat for him, a tiny bit of her attention sinking into her connection to Bertha to keep the truck going straight. “Try to circle them at a mile,” she said once he’d settled into the cushioned leather and his hands were on the wheel.
“Our accuracy will be poor at that range,” Aman said. Unsaid was that the truck’s biggest weakness in combat was its Mana capacity. The guns were hungry for magic and couldn’t fire forever. Too many missed shots and something otherwise weak could outlast them.
Jill grunted in response. “Maybe, but I don’t want to get too close, not until we see what kind of monsters these are and what they can do.”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows against the headrest of the center forward seat, and stared out the armored windshield. Scarlet lightning flashed between the clouds, revealing for an instant a herd of four-legged silhouettes, one larger than all the rest put together. That must be the Level 92.
“Sugar shack!” Aman shouted, almost jumping out of his seat. Jill flicked her eyes to him and blinked at what she saw. Tammy had swooped down to fly right next to Bertha, her iridescent belly feathers almost touching the ground and her tooth-filled grin just feet from the passenger window. The wyvern cocked her head to the side, the crest of feathers on her head somehow tall and proud despite hundreds of miles an hour of wind.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jill said and rolled her eyes, “you’re more startling than a slap to the cooch.” She gestured with her chin to the cloud of monsters, then pointed at Tammy. “You going to help?”
“FRIEND PLAY,” Tammy bellowed, her roar loud even through thick armor.
“Amazing!” Babu said, staring at Tammy with a wide grin on his face. “Her evolution made her even smarter!”
Jill wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
“2 clicks!” Jake said, his voice higher in pitch.
“I/We opening fire,” reported the hivemind an instant before the cab was filled by the bursting, ripsaw roar of the turrets, their rate of fire boosted by magic far beyond what single-barreled 50 caliber guns were mundanely capable of. Screaming higher and louder than all the rest of the guns was Blossom, Mia’s Soulbound and barely person-portable rotary canon. It was the most Mana-hungry of all the weapons, but also by far the most powerful.
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Tracer fire burst ahead of Bertha, brilliant bullets fired so rapidly as to appear like continuous lines connecting cloud to truck. The opening riff to Hell’s Bells began to play through Captain Speaking as the band of Bards in the turret ready room went to work. Wisps of magic blasted along with the rock music, curling around everyone who could hear. A hungry alertness filled Jill’s veins as her own heart synched up with the beat.
Bobby threw the wheel over and Bertha swerved to the side. “I’m holding the range, boss!” he shouted.
A flash of lightning exploded from the cloud, crossing the mile between them to strike just above the forward window in a flash of light and a clap of sound. Pain pricked at Jill through her Soulbond with Bertha as a fist-sized divot of armor exploded into glowing plasma. Jill willed Bertha’s key stats to appear and a blue box popped into her vision.
Soulbound Modular Vehicle ‘Bertha’
Armor: 42,708/43,260 Durability: 308,621/309,000 Mana: 198,722/309,000
“Well that was nasty,” Babu said. “I don’t think I would want to be outside for that, don’tcha know!”
Jill nodded and grimaced as the mental image of a person being unceremoniously vaporized into a boiling cloud of red mist flashed through her mind. Forget about a person, no non-magical vehicle, even a heavily armored tank, could have taken the hit, even if to Bertha it was just an inconvenience. The truck had 112% Elemental Resistance to blunt the effect of the lightning strike on top of 50,000 kg of armor, all from the Class Points Jill had invested in the Armor Module. She’d have to ask Babu exactly what it meant to have over 100% resistance, as over 500 armor damage done said that it wasn’t complete protection.
She doubted there were more than a half dozen people in the truck that would have lived through the lightning, even if their powers were dedicated solely to combat. Ras and Mia probably could, and Babu too before he’d been forced to give up all his own magic and start over. If Jill was wearing one of the Bertha-made Armored Suits she’d have been rattled, but fine. Without it, her own 2070 Hitpoints might have been able to weather the strike, but she wouldn’t have wanted to chance it.
“10 seconds ‘till fixed,” Katie called out, unworried and unhurried. A cool surge of magic washed over Jill’s phantom pains as the younger woman activated one of her repair powers.
The relief wasn’t to last. The next bolt hit the trailer, and then just a few seconds later a third blasted a crater in Mia’s turret armor. They hadn’t scored any kills of their own in response. Katie kept up with the incoming damage, but Jill knew that the young punk woman’s Mana wouldn’t last forever. Bertha’s mana gauge in the dash too ticked lower, bit by bit, as bullets flew into the sky to no effect.
“This isn’t working,” Jill said.
“Gunner support team,” Aman said, his voice echoing with a communication ability of his own, “switch from damage boost to accuracy.”
A half dozen other surges of Mana twisted around Jill as the cab crew activated their powers, each carrying with it the signature of the caster; scents of earth, metal, and hairspray; blues, greens, and browns aplenty, with one vibrant pink that seemed to linger around Jill. The rock music cut off, replaced a moment later by Flight of the Bumblebee on electric guitar and bass, the frenetic wings of that song tickling Jill’s eyes and ears.
“Routing radar data to the gunners!” Jim shouted, his voice muffled from his hands and head being shoved under and up into the radar console, the glow of his actinic blue magic sparking around him.
“Why in the badger balls don’t we always do that?” Jill asked.
“Cause I’m going to have to fix the dish after this,” Jim shouted, “again!”
Jill bit off her reply as a powerful surge of magic washed over them, seven different flavors and feels of Mana all blended together into a harmonious buzzing symphony. The smooth parabolas of tracer fire bent into corkscrews as the Hive’s power took hold of the bullets, homing them in on their targets. First one, then another and another four-legged monster fell out of the storm cloud, each trailing its own dissipating trickles of black fog. A kill notification appeared in Jill’s vision, the numbers ticking up as more monsters fell:
Storm Steed (x5) defeated!
Your contribution: 17%
5355 Experience Gained!
Jill nodded and narrowed her eyes. “Now what are you going to do,” she asked under her breath. The balance had tipped in Bertha’s favor. If the hidden boss monster was going to reveal a special ability, it would have to be soon if it wanted to live. It was either that or flee, and Bertha had proved itself faster.
“Thought so,” Jill said as the storm began to change. It whirled faster and contracted, growing somehow darker as if it were sucking the light of day in rather than just blocking it. A dozen bolts of violet lighting exploded out at once, leaving behind rising orbs of crackling electricity in their wake as they danced through the sky. They were slower than the previous, more natural, bolts, but they too swerved to follow their target. Bobby’s sudden dodging pull of the wheel threw one off, but the rest struck home.
Jill bared her teeth at the welts of pain that erupted over her body, each a weeping wound in Bertha’s armor that sent out crackling arcs to score further scratches. Over 9000 armor damage hurt, and it would take Katie several minutes to fix, so Jill pushed 10 of her own Mana into Hold Together. The repair ability was one of the first powers she’d taken, and while it was so Mana-cheap that Jill could use it all day, its rate of repairs was low.
Another kill box popped up into Jill’s vision and the cloud shrunk just that bit further. Scorched or not, Bertha was winning. “That’s not going to be good enough, you cross-dicked horse fucker,” she growled.
“Wait, but it’s a horse, right? So it would want to-” a man in the repair team asked.
“Shh,” Karen hissed at him, cutting him off, “it’s a Jillism, it doesn’t have to make sense!”
A muted scream akin to the combined wails of a horse being eaten by an irate toddler rent the air, still audible despite the cab’s thick armor and the mile of distance. Another dozen of the smaller Storm Steeds fell from the sky, Jill’s XP contribution a paltry 5%. The cloud went from black laced to an eye-searing purple, pulsing with power.
Bobby threw the wheel over hard before Jill could say anything, attempting to dodge Bertha’s massive bulk out of the way of the telegraphed attack. Threads of magic shot from Bertha into the ground as he activated Diffused Traction; a flash of motor oil and wood smoke hit Jill’s nose as his own magic poured into the truck at the same time. Bertha danced sideways, the usual wave of churned dirt nowhere to be seen as the two pieces of magic combined to whip Bertha into an erratic sideways slide.
It didn’t matter. One instant the attack was still charging; the next, eye-searing violet light blasted through the windows, obscuring everything. Jill threw a hand in front of her eyes as her skin erupted in pain, the light boiling away Bertha’s exterior. Her Ablative Armor power activated a second later and the pain dulled to a dull blistering.
Shouts of surprise and pain filled the cab. Aman was the least affected other than Jill, just giving a gasp and a grunt before throwing his arms over his head. Babu was the most. He screamed and collapsed, convulsing and clawing at his eyes before unconsciousness took him. “I/We burn!” the Hivemind’s seven voices yelled together in a discordant shriek.
“Jiminy Cricket!” Bobby gasped out, his eyes pure white and dripping blood, “I- I’m blind!”