“Come on, boss, let’s go before the energy shield fails,” Tom says, his voice breaking at the prospect.
Damnit, I know he’s right. But it’s not my instinct to run towards a gunfight and I feel no shame for it. But I nod despite my misgivings, clutching my alien MP5, and we hurry back to our position. We have a great view of the barricaded entrance - not so much of the exterior. I wish I could see what was happening better, but I wish more not to be shot, so I stay put.
There are ten defenders on the barricade, including their commander — Diego. The lights outside were broken by the artillery barrage, so our people have to depend upon their overlays (and exo-gears) to highlight enemies and their movement. Spent casings and discharged wands already fill the ground, and the strong smell of ozone produced by the laser weapons easily overpowers Tom’s sour smell in his panic.
For all that our noble defenders pour out their lead and thunder, the enemy’s answer is significantly larger. The tent’s barrier starts thrumming, warning of its imminent breakdown. The Caipora goes through the crate of grenades rapidly until Diego pulls him closer and shouts something in his ear to be heard. The Caipora nods, and reaching for his backpack, in less than a minute he has repurposed a bottle of cachaça. He lets fly his flaming Molotov and the projectile elicits rage-full howling shrieks of Barkers as they are set on fire. I wince in sympathy, but when I look back the Caipora is already gone.
Tom and I trade apprehensive looks, but that’s when the air barrier goes down. The remnants of our precious cold air, severely abated by the overheating rhythm of fire, is vacuumed out the tent in a burst, fazing some of our shooters.
“Fire! Keep firing, sons-o’-bitches!” exhorts Diego as shots start passing dangerously close to our people on the barricade, either falling short on the barricade or impacting the inside of our tent. This time the cackle is his as he abandons his AK for the new shotgun, surprising and slowing the speed of the enemy’s advance nearly by his lonesome.
I want to run after the Caipora, but the sheer amount of spells, lasers and projectiles coming our way makes me hesitate; the xeno’s fire starts taking ist toll. One of the soldiers take a xeno scattergun’s shot to his arm and weapon, losing both to the magnetic-acellerated pellets in a shower of blood and sparks. His screams before his implant fill him with cavalier doses of sedatives are horrifying; the soldier next to him rushes to tourniquet the wound. Another grunt takes an arcane bolt to the gut as the Barker’s concentrated fire melt through her precarious cover. Ducking low, the Caipora completely forgotten, me and Tom rush to drag them out of the fight.
**Corporal Diego Laroche wants to begin a voice chat**
**Chat Accepted**
**Your relationship with Diego has gone from Friendly (4) to Trusting (6)! If you want to-
FUCK OFF, VI! FOCUS! DEACTIVATE FUNCTION!
I guess I know what was taking power out of the computer and the Chip. As I have Tom help me drag all the heavy stuff to ready our last line of defense while wondering who was the stupid git that thought creating a DatingSim app was a good idea on a military implant. Someone must be pranking me, but this is awful timing. I bear some of the blame as well, I haven’t checked or optimized the combat mode in a long, long time. If I had reviewed it and stopped auto-updates this annoying shit wouldn’t keep popping up.
“Hey, boss!” Tom calls me as he pats one particular crate, “Isn’t this the runed mortar we were looking for the other day?”
“Yes! Good job, Tom! Let’s set it up towards the entrance — don’t load it just yet.”
I’m deeply satisfied by Tom’s find, the little artillery piece is mean piece of work. But the Caipora rushes past me, erasing my nascent smile. I force myself not to turn and look at what was he dragging behind him — I’ll hesitantly trust Diego on this one. This time though, I won’t be caught unprepared for the explosion I think as I put on heavy earmuffs, shoving another on Tom’s hands. As I’m considering trying to take the mortar to the barricade I hear more explosions and screams, but this time too close, even through the earmuffs.
I turn to look at our barricade to see the melted remains of our machine-gun still smoldering — it suffered a direct hit and was blown to smithereens. Two bodies lay deadly still behind it, a private and the Trasgo engineer, both victims of the shrapnel that torn them apart. To make matters worse, a few of the others have also been sprayed with the sizzling metal fragments. The situation has deteriorated drastically and I don’t think they’ll hold for long; no use taking the mortar there.
Amongst the wounded, I notice that the already battered Kurupira has taken a ricochet to her eyes and is writhing on the floor, in great pain. “We need to move them back, Tom!” I scream. Ducking, I rush clumsily to the Kurapira’s aid, trusting Tom to act on his own.
“Shit, Diggers!” someone screams with panic clear on the voice. No wonder, for the Barker’s special units troops start suddenly popping out of the ground right behind the barricade. Oh, we’re screwed. We were too worried about the slumbering giant one coming and forgot to set up the ground activity detectors.
“Melee!” Diego shouts, but the xenos are already upon them - worse, upon us. His shotgun finally gives up the ghost when he tries to shoot one of the Diggers exiting a burrow, and then it’s really down to hand-to hand. There are four of them, but only five of ours in fighting to shape to oppose them around the barricades - two of them mages that usually suffer at melee. That is, poor old me and four soldiers against four diggers. Not the best of odds.
One of the Diggers zeroes in on me, lifting his Energy Spear. Shit, where’s the damned Caipora? I don’t wait for my adversary - I *can’t* wait for him to get closer or I’ll be damned, so I take a step away from the Kurupira, raising my own weapon, the faux MP5. I aim center mass and let loose, firing a short burst at center mass like I was trained to do; it surprises me that the training came back to me in my hour of panic.
A damn shame that the training was against soft targets - the Diggers are anything but. My shots barely dent its thick barkskin, who proves to be a lot more resistant than the Barkers’ regulars. I stumble backward in panic as it advances *fast* and my clumsy stumble saves me from its first thrust. I try to scramble out of the way like a crab, letting the ineffective MP5 go in my desperation, but it doesn’t work. The Digger’s second thrust finds my shoulder.
“Gah!” I scream, but that’s just the beginning. Remember it was an Energy Spear? Yeah. The thing starts frying me from the inside and I can’t even scream. At the corner of my eye I see one of the diggers blasting Coporal Cariri away with a violent burst of air from his palm, a biomech implant most likely; Diego and the others are sorely pressed.
Tom steps up while the Digger is worried about ending me and swings the Sonic Hammer Diego told him to use before - Gold bless his lupine soul. The Mapinguari’s swing is brutal, aided by the heavy weapon’s thrusters; he punts my would-be vanquisher over the barricade and out of the tent with a sickening crunch. The spear mercifully is taken out of my body, the Digger’s strong grip carrying it as he goes flying away.
**Status Ailment: Paralyzed**
**Medical Condition: Puncture (Left Shoulder)**
**Medical Condition: Moderate Internal Damage**
**Diagnosis: Treatable (All nanites required**
**Activating Medical Nanites (0 Boosters left)**
The blue screens go away on their own as Tom drags me and the Kurupira away from the fight, but I can’t take the pain and the nanites working and faint. My last thought then was that I’m not paid enough for this shit — and I stand by it.
As I come to, we’ve been all pushed back from the entrance. Diego was the only other that made it back to the second line on his power, retreating with an unconscious grunt on his shoulder under the covering fire of the blind Kurupira and our earlier wounded. The nanites are great in getting people back to fight, but they are far from healing magic. And neither is a true substitute for resting and time.
Still dazed, I tried to look over the crates protecting us only to be met by a smattering of gunfire sent my way. Tom saves my ass, pulling me down. We’ve lost Corporal Cariri and another private, so that leaves us with six people in the fallback position - more than half of them injured, plus Tom and I. The enemy now uses our overrun barricade as cover while they keep watch over us. Why haven’t they attacked, I wonder? There’s clearly some kind of lull in the fighting.
“Don’t stick your head out, boss. They’ve got us pinned,” Tom explains while I try to regain my focus. I discretely check to see if I sullied my pants or just felt like it. It was the latter, thankfully.
“He’s up?” I heard Diego asking. “That’s a pretty fucking good tent we have here, Barro. Good job getting it,” he compliments me, unaware we only had it by sheer luck.
“Wasn’t a giant one coming? Why are we still alive?” I ask, ignoring the undue praise and moving to a hunched sitting position.
“In part because of the mortar you boys set up. But, really? Because of the Caipora… cavalry? It is harassing and distracting them, buying us time.”
I looked at him is disbelief. “You mean the… pig cavalry?”
You’ve got to understand that the whole army had been giving a lot of shit to the Caiporas for their insistence to bring their pig-like mounts to this campaign. The Queixadas aren’t really pigs, but peccaries; they are completely unrelated species, convergent evolution and all. The creatures are noisy and very aggressive against anyone but the Caiporas. I’m not sure if they bred these ones to grow so big naturally or if there was magic involved.
“I’ll never complain about having to get them fresh fruit,” I promise.
“And I’ll never joke about roasting them again,” says Diego, earning a horrified look from the vegetarian Tom.
“So where’s our… cavalry?” I ask, meaning both literal and figuratively, though it goes over Diego’s head in the tense moment.
“Oh, the cavalry is only slowing them, but neither stopping nor coming to help us anytime soon. I think the Barkers are trying to cut a new opening against in the tent to flank our mortar, but these things are marvelous. That was why I was complimenting you,” the werewolf explains. “Mage, ward this position if you can,” he commands to our last remaining, injured mage, before turning back to me.
“How about the rest of the base? Reinforcements coming?” I ask again. I could check the channels by myself, but I’m not familiar with the system and its protocol. I’m hesitant to screw the communication lines up.
“We’re winning pretty much everywhere, but everyone is too bogged down to help us for a while still.”
“Odds of them giving up and letting us go after they can’t cut the tent?” I ask, hopeful.
“None, they’ll definitely charge us when they give up on cutting it open,” he replies.
“A shame they slagged the machine-gun, it would have been useful,” comments one of the injured soldiers, missing his left ear.
“But we’ve got this cute beast at least,” I hear the Caipora answer, patting the mortar he’s now operating. I wonder what he was — nah, best not to know.
“And the Diggers?” Tom asks, fear tinging his voice even after smashing one way. I do a double take and realize he has a nasty cut in one of his arms.
“We’ve got the sensors set up, and they’ll probably go do something more important than ferret us out. We’re pretty well contained here,” says Diego, patting his shoulder. “You did good with that hammer, boy.”
The sorry excuses for Ents are still content to fire sporadically to keep our heads down — fine by me. The armory is in shambles, my pristine organization completely undone by our efforts at fortification and the weight of the enemy fire. We’re really lucky that the Barkers didn’t simply throw an explosive seed to clear us away. But as I’ve said before, anything like that would have likely caused a gigantic explosion - there are all kinds of shells and ammunitions stored here.
I hear barking and yipping coming from the other side and curse, “Hell, I don’t think I’ll ever manage to be okay with dogs after this.”
Diego takes a hand to his ear to signal he is receiving communications, an otherwise unnecessary gesture but important to let people know.
“Oh, boy. They’re doing a last push, get ready!”
What the bastard doesn’t tells us, but what we can hear are the footsteps that seem to shake the ground beneath our feet. The giant Barker is running towards us. I’m happy I can’t see it approaching, I hope my death is painless and abrupt. Everyone readies their weapons, spider-senses tingling for what’s coming.
A foot nearly the size of the Caipora besides me kicks alway the barricade at the tent’s entrance; the giant barges in with a howl of fury and everyone opens fire desperately. If the Diggers were tough, the Giant is something else — he shrugs off the close-range mortar’s shell, barely stumbling. Four meters tall hunching over, he scrapes the top of our large tent as he sets his sights on the little ants peppering him with what could be paper balls for what he cares. I see when he stomps my poor dropped MP5, but I’m too busy firing a borrowed AK to swear. And at least he didn’t step on the bodies — there would be no way of saving them.
The bastard must weigh a few tons, a living version of our tanks. But this one carries no cannon; he carries the upper part of one of our small tanks as a hammer, holding it by the barrel and readying it to hit us with the turret.
The last thought that passes through my minds is that our scouts must be blind, deaf and severely mentally-challenged if they let this fucking thing pass by them.
When I have already accepted my death, that’s when the Caipora screams, “DUCK!”
It seems “Goddamned Caiporas” will be my true last words.