“Jack.” He turned, something was changing. Of fucking course.
The dome shrank and turned opaque and stopped at the top in the center of a massive crab’s shell.
“Of course, a giant crab.”
It was circular and instead of the typical crab eyes it had four metal towers with an orb at the top of them. Cables ran from holes in 4 sides of its shell and into the ground. Metal disks spiraled open across the bottom and it stood up as legs spiraled out of the circular ports. Each leg looked about the same height as the 7-10 foot Pods. It was hard to get true scale at their distance, at least half a thousand feet away.
A humming started in at the edge of audible.
“Electricity, a lot of it.” For a split second he felt a current of electricity flow up the closest cable, still far away, he lost it as the rest of the room lit up to his affinity.
The crab’s shell spread open and multibarreled weapons popped out slightly, it reminded him of Kala’s cannon if upscaled by an order of magnitude.
Jack lost the signal completely until the crab finished whatever it was doing and opened fire. Cycling streams of reddish white lasers poured out of the guns sandwiched between the shells.
Jack was trying to overlay his Affinity’s sense with the real world’s requirements for navigation. “It's moving a lot of electricity into it, I’m going to find the source.”
Even though the signal was extremely faint now, he’d rather take a long shot than have to approach the giant mecha-crab straight on.
Forced to alternate between opening and closing his eyes he tried to sense the vague flickering at the edge of his Affinity. It was made more difficult in the ‘hot’ environment around them.
He could tell the general direction of it, but that was all. It was muted and distant, but not that far. He sprinted off, keeping the Cryo-Pods between the streams of laser fire.
Jonah started to look around in a panic.
“Don’t worry, just follow me.” Yuma waited for the laser minigun’s rounds to pass.
She took two steps then jumped back behind cover again and crouched. Two of the laser miniguns had tried to catch Jack and met their fire to turn the Cryo-Pod ahead of them to molten hot slag. The lasers found new targets.
“Ok now we should go.”
Jonah goggled but before he could say anything Yuma was off and he hurried to follow.
Jonah caught up to both of them after moving through a relatively safe area; deep, crowded rows of Cryo-Pods lay between them and the crab’s sight. He joined the two behind cover.
“Do you see that?”
“Are you talking about the Cyborg Mega-Crab?” Jack hadn’t meant to make it into a joke, he just figured that one obvious statement could be met with an obvious question.
“Yes of course I mean the Super Techno-Cra-”
“This is bad.”
Yuma cut off the rest of the sentence as she fired a few rounds at the crab. The mega-crab didn’t notice as an orange field flared in several small points at her shots. She studied it a few moments longer then turned back to the both of them.
“My bullets didn’t do anything, it has some sort of shield over it.” The reddish orange shield covered the crab completely as far as she could tell, the blue shield was in a tight ball on top.
Jack thought, “You think it’ll be the same up close?”
Jonah piped in, “If the bullets we made aren’t doing anything then I doubt your… blades, will change that.”
The crab had noticed the bullets and started to melt its way through their Pod shelter.
“Why did you shoot?” Jonah had to know.
“Forgot to earlier.” Yuma seemed unconcerned.
“What else did you see?” Jack needed her Senses. He looked it over, he saw a giant crab, weird cords or cables, and its weapons. He ducked back as something picked him up and a storm of lasers moved to occupy the spot his head had just vacated.
She had predicted this request and was looking around the side of a Pod, “the cables drop into the ground.”
Oh yeah, now he saw it. That was interesting.
Both of the laser cannons facing their side started to coordinate sending gouts of laser fire pouring into their position. Jack stepped out with his shield as a test and immediately came under heavy fire. His shield held for a few seconds but turned from pink to purple and he pulled back behind the Pods. The back of his hand was smoking hot, literally. Now feeling somewhat safe he recharged himself with the Zappa.
He closed his eyes and stretched out his Affinity.
He needed an advantage. It was difficult to distinguish anything, electricity was running in complex cycles in a thousand-thousand different paths. The Cryo-Pods all were running even if in a standby mode. He was getting nowhere. He reached out, yes he could still feel Yuma, he was familiar with the patterns of her unique current. There was something. Under the floor.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Yuma where do the cables lead?”
“I told you. I think into the ground.”
He cut his blade into the grating, when it cut completely through a small triangle he sensed it. It was a wonder how he missed it. Great rivers of electricity flowed through the pipes, into the crab. He could feel all of them to a degree.
“Jack move!” Yuma tackled Jack and he let himself be thrown to the ground. She was too light to force him off his feet that easily.
The back of the Pod where his upper chest and throat had been, a wall of metal, was red hot and dripping. Laser fire poured through the new gap and was looking to expand the advantage.
The three dodged between and circled through the forest of Pods. The lasers followed them but they eventually lost its line of sight and attentions. Beams of laser fire were flaring across the room. Jack could see it pouring out of two cannons closest to them. They could hear it pick up other targets to harass.
Jack waited a few more heartbeats, “Yuma, is it shooting at something on the far side?”
She saw them, across the room she could see faces peeking from behind Cryo-Pods, repositioning, returning fire.
“Yes, there are other besides our 13 here."
Jack stretched his Affinity sense as far as he could. Despite the crab being as big as it was, it was far away, barely a flicker. It's low signature meant that he couldn't really sense it before.
Now? It lit up like a low-yield sun, occasionally depleting itself slightly when all of its repeating cannons were firing at once.
Jack followed his own earlier advice to Eilien, “It’s storing energy, even firing like that. I don’t know why it is though.”
Jonah looked pensive, “well these are just standard lasers, if higher-capacity. It wouldn’t cost that much energy, relatively, even firing at this rate.”
“What about-” Jack calculated, “16 of those cannons? Plus the shield.”
Yuma asked, “how do you know there are 16?”
“Well the crab looks pretty round so I imagine it has 4 of those on each of the four sections.” Jack wasn’t sure why he was even explaining it. The laser stream stitched by.
“Well yes then that would use quite a bit of electricity.”
Jack was already cutting a hole into the metal grating “Oh wow, I can sense the cables way more clearly."
Below them was a whole other level, Jack could fit if hunched over a bit.
“Seems like a likely spot to run into crabs.”
Yuma and Jack stared at Jonah as the Cryo-Pod’s metal next to them started to glow red. Yuma beat Jack to a sigh; she hopped down, weapon raised.
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Kala’s Crew
Their group stopped before crossing an opening between Cryo-Pods, a stream of laser fire blanketed the area ahead of them.
It moved on but it took too long, “Shit I lost them.”
Mikey was the one with the best Senses, “Yeah sorry, I lost them too.”
Kala just had two of her boys with her, Kensey and Mikey. Shit, they could really use Uller right now. There was also the new guy, Devin. She disliked him less and less as time went on.
“Uller made a few of these.” Mikey handed out Nano-Cloud bombs to Kala and Kensey.
“Don’t use them until you have to.” Kala had tried shooting at the crab, even its own laser cannons but all she got was HeLbert’s now feeling inadequate and a quick separation from the other group.
“We’ll just wait.” The Cryo-Tube metal behind them glowed red as it started to visibly peel.
Devin dove in front of the group and raised the Gauntlet’s buckler. It held but the circle of fire expanded with the hole in the Pod’s base.
“Pretty sweet thing you got there,” Kensey had noticed as well.
They repositioned themselves at solid grouping, it was tough, if you had eye contact with the crab, odds were that it would try and make contact with you.
“We’ll stay here, keep your heads down.”
Devin looked like he wanted to say something but he bit back his words.
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They were in, Yuma fit fine, Jonah too. Jack did not. There were large odd shaped rounded-metal pylons that ran through the space. Each matched up directly with a Cryo-Pod above.
Jack looked around, he didn’t like having to bend his head forward and he didn’t like the random nature of the Pod pylons. The only light came through poorly, as it was at an angle coming from a single source, the crab. Occasionally the laser would flash close by and dim flashes of indirect red light would light up the surroundings for a half of a second.
He closed his eyes. There wasn’t a lot of power running in the pylons but the electrical patterns were thick. Some distance away he could see a river of electricity flowing across his Affinity’s sense.
“That way.” He started to wander off, mostly avoiding the columns. They turned a corner and ran into a dead end. The haphazard and scattered rows the columns were in made navigating difficult, nothing as easy as it was above ground.
Yuma zapped him.
“What Yuma?”
“We need a plan.”
They should have a plan, “You’re right, I can sense the cables, its amazing actually-” eyes still closed he easily felt her start to stare, “It’s far thought and I can’t sense it with my eyes open.”
“I can cover the rear.”
Jack and Yuma turned and looked, they both had completely forgotten about Jonah.
“Yeah, sure.” He had started to tune out his physical senses again and was attempting to map out a route.
Yuma stepped in front of him, “put away your bladeclaws,” he looped them, “put your hands on my shoulder.”
He did so then started giving instructions, “forward, then I’ll tell you when to take a right.”
Jonah added, “I just hope there aren’t any crabs.”
“Jonah, shut the fuck up.”
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They were making good progress. Jonah jumped to the side, he’d made skin contact with one of the metal pillars. He tried to brush his hair down again. It was useless.
Ahead Jack’s hands were resting on Yuma shoulders. They were communicating with electricity in the most basic sense. Jack couldn’t send electricity into her, its not something he tried before but the electricity didn't want to leave his body. So he settled on squeezing whichever shoulder to guide her direction, and she would send a zapp back into that same hand when she saw the path and how to go or squeeze through it. Zapps in both hands meant find another route.
The sounds came through poorly, heavily muted by the thick steel grate above them. It was another world down here with its muted sounds and sparkling electricity.
“Oh damn.”
Yuma froze, a foot still raised, “What is it?”
“The crab, it’s taking all of this electricity, how many cables were there? Four?” A stream of laser flew overhead a harsh orange red briefly lit them up. Yuma moved to answer but he had perceived her nod and was already continuing.
“Those lasers, just then, they barely used any energy, there’s no way it is using all of that energy even if it had 10 of those firing, I think it would be barely draining to fire everything it has. Whow, I can see the entire crab from here. It's holding a ton of electricity.”
His face was turned towards the right. Yuma’s usually unassailable sense of direction had failed at some point. Jack indicating the middle of the room was enough to reset it.
“Come on,” they continued.
They found the first cable.
Jonah protested, “There’s nothing here.”
“Look closer.” Jonah did and moved his head back in surprise.
“It’s huge.”
That was an understatement, the cable that fed into the crab filled the entirety of the space in front of them.
Jack wandered off, following the current, and giant cable, upstream. Yuma rejoined her spot in front of him.
Jonah followed, eyes wide and searching behind them, “I don’t like this.”
“So you keep saying.”