Lying in wait beneath the piles of debris, Anissa recited simple nursery rhymes to calm her nerves. She and her pack had taken up positions in the ruins of the government buildings surrounding the sprawling terraforming complex. Immediately after the shield collapsed, the Horde’s missiles reached every corner of the city, while their infiltration teams were busy setting fire to everything they could, exploding entire neighborhoods and collapsing towering buildings. At one point, magnificent parks were set ablaze, and there was no one to put them out, resulting in the destruction of the collective efforts of dozens of scientists. Oaks, birches, cacti, firs, roses, and countless other Old World plants, too delicate to survive in the post-Extinction world, had their domes shattered and now slowly withered beneath the sun of the New World.
Commercial districts have been reduced to rubble. Bridges over waterways had fallen, staining the waters with bronze and stone. Houstad shouted in the voice of crackling fires and falling buildings. But the terraforming facility had its own separate shield, strong enough to withstand a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. Missiles splashed harmlessly against the shimmering bubble, the bastions of its towering buildings giving the place an almost alien appearance by their sheer featureless. Smooth, solid walls of the toughest alloys known to the Reclamation Army. Even now, hundreds of engineers, technicians and scientists worked in its basements, calmly making adjustments to ensure the safety of the terraforming process. The police’s special force was responsible for their protection.
If anyone wanted to deal a grievous blow to the state, they would have no better target. Anissa turned her head and looked at the distant airport. Another volley of missiles had just left. Energy beams followed, spearing a Horde fighter flying over the city. Two holes the size of barns appeared in the Sky Striker, spewing overheated interiors and dead bodies. Wreathed in flames, the aircraft crashed into an apartment building, sending tremors all the way to the streets below.
At least Ignacy is safe. Anissa thought. She saw Elzada’s retreat herself, compelling herself to apologize for the blackmail that happened after the Tecno-Queen’s defeat. Come to think about it, it all happened so recently. How come she felt like ages had passed in the span of those months? Bogdan was alive then; Marco was healthy... Why didn’t she spend more time with them? Anissa repeated the words of the Spirit of Loss, trying to come to terms with the fact that she will never see Bogdan again. Death is a part of life. We come to life, screaming and kicking, fighting over food with rage guiding our bodies. But all too often, our loved ones are being whisked away from us, one by one, and no matter how hard we rage, death is the sole truth in this world. Remember them, but do not grieve. Everything ends. Warlords will die. The Blessed Mother will one day pass away. Even the Spirits will be forgotten. God, mortal, strong, and weak; none is eternal. But death is not the end. It is merely the beginning of another journey. Such is the truth. It is how you live that matters. It is what you have fought for that matters.
Impatient One shifted, cracking her knuckles, and drawing Anissa’s attention. Most of her pack had joined the police forces in the complex, leaving the wolf hag with only six soldiers, two males, a scout, and three warriors. All paw-picked by her for their expendability and age. Technically, Impatient One and Anissa weren’t supposed to be here, but what leader would let her soldiers risk their lives alone?
“You are worried about them,” Anissa accused Yennifer. Impatient One, she corrected herself.
“I should have been at the warlord’s side,” Impatient One replied on the secure channel. Being splattered under several tons of stone rubble hardly hindered the shaman. “Too many of our kin are being sent off into the Great Beyond unblessed and unremembered. It is my duty to fight and die by Warlord Janine’s side.”
“You are worried about them,” Anissa repeated in a softer voice, returning her gaze to the airport. After the battle, she and her sister will repay the sin through self-torture, but right now she has admitted the truth to herself. Marco is over there. And she’ll be damned if she lets the Horde take another brother from her. “I am worried too.”
“Act your rank, Wolf Hag,” the shaman growled out a soft reprimand.
Anissa smiled and looked down at the street. She missed her sister. Yennifer could be a bit bitchy sometimes, but she always read to her at bedtime. Sometimes she would even bring a whole tasty Insectoid for the brothers after they failed to reach the milk in the pits. Oh, she always acted stoic and snapped at any attempts to thank her, but deep down she cared. And she still cares, failing in her duties as a shaman but living up to her duties as a person.
This was the funniest thing about duties. There were so many of them in the world that if you tried even a little bit, you will succeed in some and fail at others. The Spirits watched and judged the intent. Someone truly wicked, like the late Terrific, would have to endure pain in the Abyss so that their soul could learn humility before trying again. Unbelievers within the Tribe who lived good lives would simply be sent on to another life, for even gods have duties. If the Spirits had failed to reach the soul of a good woman, the fault was theirs. The same was true for the shamans. None of them was truly infallible, not even Lacerated One. But all had a duty to try to be better.
Her mechanical eye gave out a whizz, focusing on the flames on the street below. A heretical piece of machinery, it still had its uses. Right now, Anissa’s biological eye had failed to pick up a movement, and her nose was struggling to pick up the correct scent from all the smog in the air. But the crimson ocular did its job, discerning an armored hand through the wall of smoke. The wolf hag’s lips parted in a broad grin, and the pack prepared.
Retribution is nigh.
Schalk and his men came like thieves, traversing the distances between the ruined buildings with a short burst of speed. The bastards still wore the state’s power armor, but in place of the regular machineguns, they had brought incendiary launchers and even several shardguns. Clearly, the logisticians had failed to keep track of every piece of equipment during the war, but Anissa didn’t hold it against Chak’s people. The war was a nightmare, and the Third Army had been undermanned for a tad too long. The influx of new people just made the situation even more chaotic.
She flexed her muscles, reawakening the armor. The traitors’ IDs would allow them to bypass the shield, and Schalk’s high rank had given the man a general idea of the inner workings of this facility. Once inside, all they had to do was find one of the large plasma generators and damage it enough to start a chain reaction that would shut down the entire facility for the time being. Wearing heavy power armor, the soldiers would have been immune to their own fiery rounds.
Anissa roared, cannoning herself out of the rubble with a mighty leap. Impatient One followed soon after, crossing the vast distance with her mighty bounds. The lenses of Anissa’s armor picked up fifty enemies’ marks, and her pack added another ten to this number, but it hardly mattered. Schalk and his ilk were Normies. Anissa was not.
She landed before the first traitor, the weight of her armor and the impact of her legs bulging the stone pavement inward. The woman barely had time to register the attack; Anissa’s kick disemboweled the traitor. The helmet shuddered, followed by a faint cry of pain, but Anissa wasn’t done with the bitch. She grabbed the traitor by the shoulders, spinning her around just in time to block the incoming grenade with her body. The blast engulfed the woman, pouring in through the open wound and cooking the traitor alive.
Impatient One landed amidst the attackers, her claws reaching out. Their tips got plunged into the armor joints, and Impatient One yanked the arms of two people like straws from a broom The shaman whirled around, flinging the limbs into the traitors’ faces, and moved on, leaving armless people to bleed to death. Anissa jumped straight through the wall of flame, evading the shardguns’ shots. Her paws grabbed the head of a screaming soldier, and with a violent twist, she broke his neck.
“No mercy for the betrayers!” Anissa yelled, frothing with rage. The flames died among her fur; the steel casing of the prayer book had protected it from harm, but the wolf hag intoned the curses at the betrayers just from memory alone, allowing the Spirit of Pride to guide her paw.
A soldier aimed a shardgun at her, only to have his head exploded by a scout. On Anissa’s command, the pack attacked, skulking along the edge of the battlefield. The Wolfkins would show up from behind a ruined building, make a shot, and immediately disappear again. The wolf hag felt the annoyance amidst her troops; they too wanted to charge right into the enemy ranks, drinking blood and tearing off limbs. But she had made her decision and declined this indulgence for them. Her pack would go home alive.
The sisters walked through the enemy ranks. Their speed allowed the two Wolfkins to outpace the enemies’ aiming, the rage fueling their movements left behind gutted-out corpses and maimed traitors. One soldier tried to raise her hands in a gesture of surrender, and Anissa bit her head, feeling the metal crack beneath her fangs. There would be no mercy for the traitors, not after so many civilians had died. She closed her jaws, cracking the skull inside the helmet and releasing the sweet blood through the cracks. A single palm strike sent the dead body crashing into another traitor. Impatient One’s claws opened two people’s heads and moved all the way down to their waists. Before the bodies could fall, the shaman’s claws had already pierced the lenses of another traitor, lifting the screaming man in the air. The shaman dangled him like a toy in front of his comrades, letting the shrieks of pain fill the battlefield.
“Such is the fate of all traitors.” Impatient One disappeared, leaving footprints on the stone ground and allowing bullets to finish off the soldier.
“Betrayer!” Anissa’s eyes found Schalk. Even now, the man tried to reach the shield.
Dragena had ordered them to take him alive. The Investigation Bureau wanted to know the names of everyone who helped the traitor prior to burning him alive. It took every ounce of restraint she had to come at the man without a killing blow. The former lieutenant has turned toward her, firing an oversized plasma cannon. She danced to his left, dodged the shot, and sliced the bastard across the elbow. Schalk thrashed, surprised by both the shock of pain and the fact that his left arm fell to the ground. The man tried to wield the two-handed weapon with only his right hand, and Anissa sliced through his armor on the left side. A follow-up kick broke his knee, downing the man, and Anissa grabbed the plasma cannon, wielding it with only one arm. She aimed it at his bleeding arm and fired, cauterizing the wound and finally drawing the scream out of him.
“Why?” the wolf hag demanded to know, firing at the fleeing traitor. The plasma ball melted through the solid armor, leaving a gaping hole in the man’s chest. “Why did you allow the invaders to ravage the people under your protection?”
“Invaders?” Schalk tore the helmet off his head and spat, looking up with burning eyes. Sweat poured down his darkened skin, and the metal of his ruined armor sleeve fused with his severed arm. “Oh, that’s rich. Invaders. The fuckers of the Reclamation Army had invaded my hometown, slaughtered my father in front of my very eyes, broke my mother’s spine beneath their armored boot, and killed the rest of our families!” He placed his right hand over the bleeding wound in his hand. “Who invaded whom to begin with, Anissa?!”
“And for this, my brother had to be boiled alive?” She kicked Schalk in the side, knocking the man onto his back. “He never harmed any of you, bastard! Your family died, so you fucking know how painful it is! How dare you inflict the same fate on innocent people!”
“No one is innocent…” He screamed when she kicked him in the groin, crumbling the armor like paper and his balls along with it.
“Don’t give me this crap, traitor!” Anissa hissed, feeling Impatient One’s look at herself. The shamans ignored some of the warlords’ and wolf hags’ cruelty, for such is the soldiers’ due. But the shamans, present or future, were supposed to be better than this. “Any cub trampled by the Horde’s war machines is innocent. Every infant suffocated by the smoke is innocent! All children who lost their parents are innocent; you son of a whore!”
“Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? Your people didn’t care how many they had to slaughter to make us bow, so why should we? Innocent or guilty, you fuckers killed them all!” Schalk grimaced. “At first, I and the others tried to forgive and move on, like Jacomie did. But every time I closed my eyes, I heard my mother’s spine crack. I remember my grandmother’s pleas as that bastard doused her in flame. Flame!” He tried to stand. “Flame is what your nation has brought to my home, tearing my life asunder and obliterating everything. Our culture, our language, even our home—everything burned to cinders. How do you expect us to move on after this? Did you expect us to become buddy-buddy with the murders of our people? The Reclamation Army and Devourer had taken everything from us, so we tried to return the favor and forever scar them! Invaders. Tell me, what is the difference between the Reclamation Army and the Horde, Anissa? You both gobble up everyone weak enough! I just guided one monster at another and let them bleed each other for once!”
The anger washed out of her like water from a broken bucket. There were always two sides in a war. Defeated and victorious. And the pain of both lingered. She still wanted to trample on the traitors, to see them broken beneath her feet, but wouldn’t it only prove her hypocrisy? If she would slaughter others without mercy just because they took Bogdan from her, how is she any different from the traitor? Merely stronger, not better. And if so, what does that make her? Just another raider fighting for supremacy.
“Enough!” Anissa looked around. Her voice stopped Impatient One’s killing blow. “Change in orders. Spare whoever is willing to surrender,” she commanded, looking at the man. “Schalk. What had happened to your home was wrong. I won’t lie by claiming we would’ve never attacked you. No, the Third would’ve brought your people into the state by force. You will die for your crimes and die horribly, Schalk. But as a human, I pity you and all the innocents who died in the invasion. I will beg the Spirits to guide you and them toward a happier life. Because I am a human. And I am also not without sin. Maybe if the roles were reversed, I would’ve tried the same. I pray to never find out, but I hope I would’ve chosen to be better, though.”
“Thanks for the honesty, wolf hag.” Schalk smiled and leaned on the ground, his whole body shaking. “For what it is worth, I am sorry about your brother and your people. I tried. I tried so hard to care for the people here. Yet justice must be done, lest the cries of the dead never be silenced. Weak, scared, helpless. Their killers deserve to experience the same. Save your sympathies. We are no longer Schalk Morrow, a child of the forgotten land. We are now revenge incarnate, a sum of all trampled by the Reclaimers, and you are the victims of our wrath! And the only prayers we wish to hear are pleas for mercy!” His last words came out as a mangled mess, and a syringe rolled from his good hand.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Anissa frowned, at first thinking that the man had poisoned himself to escape the punishment. The man’s body arched, and she heard a loud snap when the spine broke. Schalk only laughed, his voice a mixture of animal growl and mindless chuckle. The back of his head and his ankles touched before he straightened up like a spring, and the wolf hag jumped back, reading the cannon.
Something was wrong. Schalk wasn’t a new breed, nor did he have any power. But before her very eyes, the man’s dark skin turned gray, his eye sockets ruptured. The bridge of the nose moved inward, allowing the eyes to merge, forming a single huge pupil that stared hungrily at her. Schalk moved; his body became a blur. A single palm strike had left a dent in the chest plate, cartwheeling the wolf hag back with a force of explosion.
Turning around, the man caught Impatient One by the wrist, stopping the thrust aimed at his shifting face. His teeth protruded, sharpening themselves and becoming square-shaped fangs. With a sweep, Schalk knocked Impatient One off balance, and a bone sprouted from his severed arm, quickly growing with muscles and veins. Three-fingered claws prepared to close on the shaman’s head.
Anissa fired the plasma cannon, and with some infernal agility, Schalk heard this through the wail of his giggling. He jumped away from the shaman, ending up next to Anissa. The metal of his armor broke beneath the bulging muscles, the fingers of his humanoid hands all fused together to form another three-fingered hand. With a first swipe, the man shattered the cannon. The second one brought the wolf hag to her knees, exploding the ground beneath her legs.
A new breed. The realization hit her as she took his swipe on the forearm, feeling the claws reaching into the flesh despite the armor. Not a Malformed, no. Schalk’s distorted features were matched in symmetry; his mutations didn’t damage the skin or leave muscles exposed. The man was changing into a new breed right before her eyes. Such a thing has never happened before! Where is he taking all the mass for such an exponential growth of muscle and bone mass?
She blocked Schalk’s kick with both arms, hearing her armored greaves give a whine beneath the incoming force. Schalk’s speed and strength kept increasing, but as the kick moved her backward, she saw that the cuts she left on his leg didn’t heal. This was a narrow, skin-scratching wound, but at least it was something. The traitor did not regenerate. Orange blood seeped out of the wound. Good. If he can bleed, he can be withered down. Schalk approached Anissa, and the wolf hag found herself hard-pressed.
His movements reeked of amateurism; the swings were too wide, and rather than using his claws as he grabbed her arms, Schalk retracted his hands, going for a long thrust. Whatever change had happened in him, it didn’t give him the innate knowledge of fighting. But his speed and might were astonishing! When his blows touched Anissa’s armor, they tore the metal away, cutting the skin. When he kicked, she had to dodge, hearing the howl of the air as it passed her by. One such blast hit a ruined building, cracking a sturdy wall. Worst of all, her pack could not help her, not at the risk of hitting the wolf hag with the shot.
Schalk’s head started experiencing another change; his jaws dislodged, going all the way down to the collarbone. His sole eye rolled in the socket, tracking her every move. With a casual flick of the wrist, Schalk simply swatted away her arm and aimed a thrust at Anissa’s head. A paw met his attack head-on, halting the attack long enough for a kick to hit the new breed in the elbow, leaving a deep wound. Schalk growled and tore the arm free from the shaman’s grip, getting himself a new wound in the side from Anissa.
Impatient One and Anissa attacked as one, and the wolf hag smiled through the transforming horror before them. She fought side-by-side, not with Impatient One, but with Yennifer! She could feel it—the two sisters who had struggled against each other for the right to be called the dominant, who ambushed the other girls and made them submit. Where the shaman was often cold and reserved, Yennifer mirrored Anissa. On an instinctive level, the two had blocked hits intended for each other, opening the traitor to the counterattack. The shaman’s jaws closed on Schalk’s wrist, reaching all the way to the bone. Instead of using his own fangs, Schalk tried to shake them off, and Anissa used the moment to bury her own claws into his groin, aiming for the femoral artery.
The shaman made a clean thrust forward, leaving deep holes in her foe’s supposed solar plexus with one paw and attempting to rupture the common iliac. Schalk finally pulled his hand free and retreated, too busy blocking Yennifer’s attacks to see Anissa deliver a kick to his neck, nicking the flesh where the carotid artery should have been.
These wounds should have been a problem, even for a warlord. Schalk should have felt the cold spreading through his body as his hot blood began to leave his body. But the man didn’t bleed out; the bright yellow blood pouring from his wounds barely stained his skin. Schalk roared and stomped, lifting a chunk of a stone the size of a truck two meters upward from the ground. The sisters leaped over the stone, not intent on giving him any breathing room, and his back exploded.
Anissa thought that one of her pack members must’ve shot him at first. But this was not the case. Six long tendrils, each ending with gaping jaws, broke from beneath the surface of his flesh, unfurling about him with the sound of cracking whips. Two of them slammed the Wolfkin into the stone with enough force to utterly break it. Anissa croaked, hearing how the backpack of her power armor got shattered and the armor went dead. In a single blow, Schalk turned the situation around. He lifted his tendrils for another assault.
Two beams of darkness pierced the coming tendrils, slicing them clean and drawing the long scream from Schalk’s mouth. The monster recoiled in pain, evading another beam. With a thunderclap, a figure landed between the monster and his prey.
“Sorry for taking so long, had to grab my rifle!” A somewhat familiar voice said.
“Blessed Mother?” The sisters asked in unison, kneeling before the marvel.
She stood before them, the shattered black helmet falling off her head. She was covered in leather belts holding various weapons, and in her paws was a long energy rifle. Eyes, twin amber moons burning with the intensity of a star, looked at them, and the woman gasped, breaking the illusion. Zero. Anissa had heard the rumors, but to see it in person was another matter entirely. Zero and Ravager were one and the same. Warlord Zero looked indistinguishable from the Blessed Mother; her fur was of the same color, her arms and legs had the same shape. Only her hair was cut shorter and had been combed thoughtfully. That, and the woman was smaller. By a lot.
“Spirits!” The other members of the pack prostrated themselves, forgetting even the bound traitors. “Hail to the Blessed Mother! Hail to Ravager!”
“Oh, stand up already, girls and boys!” Zero chuckled nervously and tore the helmet off Anissa’s head, mounting it on her own after a miniscule struggle. The tip of her nose broke through the breather, but the blessed image had been shrouded. “We have a city to save! Get the prisoners to safety and join the crawler’s defense! Now.” She turned toward Schalk. “Time to work.”
Schalk’s remaining tendrils struck out, and the sisters barely had time to jump back. Obey a warlord. This rule was ingrained into every cub of the Wolf Tribe. It did not matter if you were hurt, scared, or proud. If a warlord gave an order, you obeyed. It saved them; faster than a bullet, the fleshy vines shattered the raised stone and much of the boulevard. chalk roared in fury and leapt after Zero, who gracefully dodged the living whips and fired at his shoulder, leaving his hand limp. Choosing not to stand her ground, Zero retreated, leading the mutant away from the facility and deeper into the city.
Where she had every advantage.
****
Lyudochka often missed her fleshy body. To be able to smell a flower, to enjoy a warm loaf of bread, to drink a cool glass of milk in the morning, even to take a simple breath... There are thousands of little things that you never really notice until they are denied to you. But right now, she was utterly happy with her indefatigable metal body as she ran back and forth across the second floor of the embassy, accompanied by the sound of metal clacking as her skeletal legs touched the stone.
The Oathtakers’ embassy wasn’t exactly a small building; it was a rich mansion located in the very center of the city. Lush gardens filled the driveways, and elegant bronze fences marked the Oathtakers’ territory within the Reclamation Army. Upon entering the place, one was greeted by a picture of the Founder himself; the man’s image was forever immortalized in a beautiful window. Thanks to a little trick with light, a halo always surrounded the Blessed Preacher’s head. At the gates of the embassy, the words of the founder, “Every soul in need of refuge is welcome here,” were cast in gold.
Lyudochka herself worked on the first floor, greeting people who planned to immigrate to her homeland or answering questions about the Oath. It wasn’t an overly hard job; her nation had excellently written brochures and easy-to-follow protocols. And the people here were super nice, and no one thought she was a robot. Truth be told, she only ever took the job to finally meet with her moms once more, maybe even meet her brothers and sisters. And if it hadn’t been for the invasion, she would have come and met Martyshkina eventually. But she grew into her role and found genuine fulfillment in this nice job. Working behind a counter back in the capital was cool and all, but she met all sorts of people around here!
Only now has her job jumped in difficulty tenfold! If she’d still had a heart, it would have threatened to jump out of her chest. Lyudochka was bringing documents to the envoy’s office, briefly reading them, and burning some of them. Rich donations—bribes, actually—to one of the companies in exchange for industrial espionage about an augmented arm produced by Ingo Industrials. Definitely into the flames. A list of faithful working as informants. The Reclaimers had very strict rules about spreading the Oath, always keeping the embassy under surveillance. But according to the papers, the ambassador, the true one, had managed to get around the rules a couple of times. Yep, to the hearth you go! Her leg crushed the burnt papers.
Next came a catalog of people who applied for asylum and immigration. Nope, this one is important. She clutched it to her chest. Part of her job was there! And there was nothing incriminating here either! Lyudochka put it on a table, intending to preserve it for later, and read through the next documents. Information that someone by the name of Schalk had contacted Brood Lord of the Horde. Unverified. The metal woman pressed a finger to her skeletal teeth. Uncle improved upon her body, making it bigger as she grew older, but she insisted on keeping the facial features. Her dad made this body.
What to do… she pondered, looking at the secret intelligence report, a sizeable blue folder listing all known Horde operatives in the city. Some even tried to contact the Oathtakers, but they saw little use in emboldening the slavers, as he put it. And now he is dead, one of the citizens who returned with Mama Martyshkina told her how the good man was impaled by a halberd during his journey. The two countries weren’t exactly on friendly terms, but the Horde was an enemy to both people! That and her moms were here. Giving information to the Reclaimers felt like a betrayal of her homeland, but what choice did she really have? The woman nodded and made her decision. Screw the Gilded Horde.
“What. Are. You. Still. Doing. Here?” A voice behind her asked slowly, and Lyudochka turned around, dropping some of the documents.
A machine swayed back and forth on the ambassador’s table made of redwood. Standing on four thick wires, its torso was essentially one large display, a display that was showing the angry face of an attractive man dressed in a black leather jacket who nervously tapped on a table. His keen black eyes almost dug into the woman’s soul, and Lyudochka decided to come clean.
“Greetings, sir, LS, sir.” She bowed to Lord Steward, the de facto ruler of the Oathtakers. “I’ve been contemplating a little treason, sir.”
“Wha…” A black brow rose and Lord Steward shook his head, running a hand over his badly shaved chin. “Irrelevant. Why the hell aren’t you on the plane, Lyudochka? The city is under siege!”
“I noticed, sir; yes, sir, noticed I am.” Her teeth began to chatter, even though she was speaking through a voice modulator. She always started to twitch when she did something bad. “But one of our faithful had chosen to remain! I couldn’t leave anyone behind, so I decided to follow up with a secondary protocol and burn the documents…”
“Screw the documents! Fuck the protocols!” Lord Steward roared, making the ambassador jump up. “Reclaimers know the most of it by now. Go into the underground bunker, close it, and sit tight until we send people to pick…”
A beep distracted Lyudochka, and she raced out of the room with the portable terminal jumping after her. Someone has arrived at the embassy! Someone has pressed the emergency button at the entrance!
“Lyudochka! You will stop right here, or I will restrain you with… what are these? Tentacles? Tendrils? Wires? Oh, who cares, stop right here…”
Ignoring him, she ran for the doors leading outside. The metal door handle nearly crumbled in her grip, and the woman chastised herself for it, stepping outside to find a group of civilians, including several children, backing away from the raiders who were in the process of dismantling the main gates.
“It’s a robot!” shouted the oldest of the group, a teenager no more than seventeen. Lyudochka was about to say that she was a human being when another member of the group hit the boy in the side, and he stepped forward, clenching his fists. “Listen, we need somewhere to hide. Can you understand…”
“Of course I can!” Lyudochka replied in her warmest tone and stepped aside. “Go inside, kids; no one will dare to harm you here! Anyone wants a cup of tea…”
The gates exploded and flew into the air. Lyudochka rushed forward and pulled one of the children away before the flying piece of metal could turn the girl into a bloody mess. The kids froze in fear, and she almost forcibly made them enter the embassy. The steel woman raised her ambassadorship staff, trying to look imposing and important as the hulking group of fifteen raiders approached.
All blessed. Her legs trembled. She hadn’t had the privilege of being blessed by God herself. But these people stood taller than the most blessed she had seen in the cities, parts of their exposed skin bulging with muscle despite a little pudginess in places. Such gifts had been given to them! And all these lost souls could think of was using them to harm others.
“It’s just sad… A cup of tea?” Lyudochka offered in a trembling voice, spotting oversized machine guns in their arms. One even had a pulse weapon! “Let’s talk it out! Maybe I…”
“You will shut up and give us the slaves, tin can.” The three-meter-tall woman ordered, pointing the pulse rifle at Lyudochka’s head.
Lyudochka made a gulping noise. A shot from this thing would make a hole even through her reinforced alloy. She wasn’t a combat model or anything like that. Through her entire life, she had tried to solve every conflict peacefully. The ambassador tried to overcome her fear, reminding herself that a loss of head was nothing to be bothered about. Her personality had been copied into several computer centers all over her body; her head was just one of them.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve… I’ve already granted them asylum! Yes, that’s it! I am the ambassador; I have this right! And I refuse you entry, so leave; otherwise, you will be made to leave by force!”
“Is that so?” The raider tilted her head. “And who is going to make us, tin can? You? Are you going to fight us, little doll?”
“Oh, I have no idea how to fight at all,” Lyudochka whimpered, clinging the staff to her chest and stepping back. The raiders laughed and started coming closer. “But he can.”
The outer wall of the embassy collapsed, and Ur-Champion stepped out of the living room, the helmet quickly closing around the massive face. With thunderous strides, the towering Malformed closed the distance between the ambassador and the raiders, casting his shadow over them. A flicker of flame danced within the dragon-shaped jaws of his combat helmet, and Lyudochka hurried inside, quickly leading the kids to the underground bunker where they all planned to wait until the end of the battle. She had a thousand and one questions for them, the most important of which was: How in the world did they get here? Lyudochka saw for herself how thoroughly Dragena’s soldiers were sniffing out people who wanted to stay in the besieged city. Every bar was cracked down, every illegal dwelling was broken into. For them to miss the kids? Impossible!
But a good PR for us! Her oculars beamed as she looked at the terminal still translating Lord Steward’s image. The machine was staying on the second floor, avoiding the children, and LS was just making sure she got into the bunker. Yes, that’s it! Lord Steward will surely thank her for this idea of how the Oathtakers saved their rival’s children. And then she will tell him how she handed over the file to the Reclaimers...
Well, Martyshkina and Janine are her moms! They helped her back then. It was time to return the favor. What’s the worst thing LS could do to her—put her in jail?
Before the bunker doors closed, Lyudochka rushed to the second floor and grabbed the documents, ignoring the flash of light, hissing of metal, and screams outside.