Charlotte watched the trio of threats move forward. While the larger suit was an unknown quantity to a limited extent, She'd already fought and bested four of the smaller suits. Though to be fair, one of those had been mostly Lacy. Still, while their enhanced strength and armor platings were problems, the primary issue was the wearer's mobility. Take that away, and the threat they posed was nonexistent.
Until now, Charlotte had used her predecessor's creations or variations on human ones. Ultimately, their technology seemed to be based upon what they referred to as physics, which was simply an overly detailed examination of reality. There was no reason Charlotte couldn't do the same. Rather than create a new biological "tool," She could use external natural phenomena to her advantage. To that end, She had prepared the creation room. Now, it was only a question of how effective her strategy would be...
-
As Cooper walked into the large room, he couldn't help but think this felt like a trap. Were bugs even capable of such things? It was pretty dark, but that wasn't a problem. He reached up and activated his night vision. Hugo and Johnson followed suit, revealing something right out of someone's nightmares. If the spiders he'd seen in Eric's recording had been giant, this could only be described as colossal. It looked similar to the spider mantis things from Eric's recording but much larger and surrounded by eggs.
Between them and it were dozens of smaller creatures that looked kinda like flying scorpions. Cooper doubted they'd be able to do much to the suits they were wearing, but they still looked freaky as hell. The walls were covered in giant spiders with pincers, though nowhere near the size of the queen.
Cooper took one look, laughed, and pumped his grenade launcher, loading another round into place. "Watch this, boys! You'll probably never see anything like this again!"
With that, Cooper took aim, only to be suddenly blinded by an impossibly bright light filling the room.
-
The humans screamed out and covered their visors, similar to how Scott had reacted his first time in Charlotte's home when She turned up the light in the room too high. The large one, Cooper, still managed to fire that explosive device of his, but due to his sudden blindness, his aim went wide, and the projectile exploded relatively harmlessly against the floor.
At the same time, Charlotte began making her move. She formed large groups of stingers into formations and shifted and moved them around to confuse the already limited vision of the humans while pushing forward with her massive creation appendage. It was somewhat slow and lumbering but possessed more than enough power to cleave through the smaller suits and likely damage the larger one as well. Moreover, She'd noticed the human repeated propensity to focus on her most prominent appendage in the room, meaning it would likely distract from the other threat they didn't seem to realize they faced.
Just as the humans seemed to acclimate to the room's brightness, Charlotte signaled the luminous cells and plunged the room back into darkness. It was about time to start the next strategy She and Lacy had discussed.
-
Alice was nearly inconsolable now that the fighting was so close. She hugged the leg of one of Charlott's hands with one arm and Scott with the other.
The gunfire and explosions were nearly deafening in their room, but during a brief lull, Charlotte spoke quickly. "Please cover Alice's ears. I don't want her to hear what's coming next."
Scott wasn't sure he wanted to hear either, but Charlotte was right. Whatever it was, he could probably deal with it better than Alice, so he did as instructed.
-
Blinking at the sudden return of darkness, Cooper growled. He was quickly getting tired of this game. "Switch to infrared!" Following his own command, he reached up and switched modes. Of course, the problem now was that all the other bugs moving around in the room made it hard to make out anything clearly, but it was still better than being blinded by the bugs playing games with the lights in the room.
Both Johnson and Hugo opened fire. Hugo opted for a large rifle, as was customary for a battle suit because they could effectively neutralize similar threats, but Johnson was wielding a minigun and could mow down waves of bugs as he weaved the gun back and forth.
Cooper chambered another round and took aim, shouting as he did so. "Focus on the big one! The rest aren't a threat so long as we take it down!"
He fired the grenade but had trouble seeing what kind of damage it did. Was it just him, or was the explosion closer than he'd anticipated? Hugo and Johnson apparently heard him and started aiming toward the monstrosity. That was when the voices started. They sounded twisted and distorted, almost human but not quite, with words coming out of multiple mouths at slightly different paces and tones. "You've come too deep! You can't escape!" "Humans are food! Food!" "You're all going to die down here!" "She's going to eat you!" "Human flesh is so tender! So delicious!"
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
What the hell was happening? Cooper told himself he didn't care. He loaded another grenade and fired, but his aim was just a little more shaky than before.
-
Even from the hallway behind the room, Lucy could hear the creepy words Charlotte was using. When she'd asked Lucy for some frightening things to say, the ex-pirate queen had no idea it would be this disturbing. Even knowing it was coming, hearing these things coming out of the room, Lucy started questioning whether she might be hearing the real Charlotte for the first time.
Lucy shook her head to dispel the fears. Whatever happened, questioning Charlotte now wouldn't help her or her kids. This was all an act to buy as much time as possible. She just had to be ready to fulfill her part of the plan.
Still, those voices were something else...
-
Charlotte's creation appendage was severely injured. It wouldn't survive much more abuse, but still, she pushed herself forward, intending to do as much damage with it as possible. Besides, it was fulfilling its other objective of keeping the humans focused on it at the expense of everything else.
The large human fired another round from his explosive weapon, and Charlotte intercepted the round again with a handful of stingers. She could only do this a few more times, but that should be more than enough.
With a small portion of her attention, Charlotte continued leaching water from the ground as she moved her other appendage into place.
-
Hugo pumped round after round into the thing that was slowly approaching. He knew he was getting hits in, but the thing just kept coming. Then there were the voices. Those damned voices! They were creeping him the hell out!
A moment later, he felt a slight reverberation on his helmet. Then a large spider leg crawled over his visor, then another, as one of those gigantic spiders crawled in front of his face. He pulled the thing off and tossed it across the room with a curse, only to feel the plop of another, then a third. What was going on?
Looking up, it became clear the ceiling was covered in spiders. Hugo pulled out his backup handgun and started firing up toward the spiders with his offhand, cursing Cooper and this damned place for everything he was worth, even as he kept firing his rifle with his main hand. Sure, maybe his aim was worse for it, but he didn't care at this point. He just wanted everything in this room dead!
-
Johnson was looking around wildly. Sure, the voices were creepy, but what bothered him more was the sheer volume of arachnid-like creatures in the room. Maybe they'd all switch off if the queen died, but he had doubts. It was time to cut and run, but he had no doubt that if Captain Cooper realized that's what he was doing, he'd get a grenade in the back for his trouble.
That was when the rocks started falling from above. Of course, that idiot Hugo had started firing at the things in the ceiling, and now chunks were falling from above.
Johnson dove to the side to avoid one of the bigger chunks, only to realize he'd covered less than half the distance he'd expected, probably because he was now crawling through a solid foot of mud. When had that happened? Looking around, it seemed like Cooper was focused on the big one, so Johnson stood up again and started wading back the way he'd come while firing forward to make it look like he was still intent on fighting. By his estimation, he was about ten paces from the door.
A spider fell on his head, but Johnson grabbed it and tossed it aside as he continued walking back. Nine.
The vast monster lurched forward, though, from the looks of things, many of its legs were no longer functioning as it dragged itself across the ground. Eight.
Johnson focused his fire on the center mass of the big one again. Seven.
Hugo started shouting. "What the hell? Where'd all this mud come from?" Six.
Cooper fired another grenade that exploded mid-air. Five.
The giant creature was pulling itself forward with its claws now. Four.
Cooper started walking forward, easily pushing through the mud due to the heavier servos in his suit. Three.
The queen swung down with one blade, which Cooper batted to the side. Two.
The queen swung forward with its other bladed arm, which Cooper blocked with his grenade launcher. The blade severed the launcher, but when it hit his armor, it could not bite deep due to the loss of momentum. One.
Cooper grabbed a grenade off his belt and shoved it inside the queen's body through one of the many holes in its carapace. Zero.
Jonson dropped his minigun and turned, retreating into the tunnel just as the explosion went off behind him. Only to realize he was now looking down the barrel of a rather large rifle in the hands of a human woman who could only be Lucy. She winked. "Where ya going, big guy? The party is just getting started!"
Then, before he could answer, she fired. The shot hit him square in the chest, rocketing him to the ground. He could tell several ribs were broken, and he probably had some internal bleeding, but the armor had done its job, and so long as he didn't take another point-blank shot, he'd live.
Thankfully, she seemed to have dropped the gun. At a guess, she'd either dislocated her shoulder or broken something. It made sense. That rifle wasn't designed for use without a suit. Johnson had to get up and get to her before she could recover and take advantage of his now-compromised suit.
As he got to his feet, coughing up more blood than he was happy about, Johnson started stalking forward while reaching for his smaller sidearm, only to be stopped and spun around by the shoulder. He was face to face with what looked like a teenage girl growing out of a spider...if all her skin was chitin instead of flesh. A sudden pain in his chest made him look down, and he could see her hand protruding into his suit where it had been compromised. Looking back up, he saw the girl smiling sadly before speaking. "I'm sorry, but you threatened my friends, and I can't let you leave to do so again."
Johnson tried reaching for his gun again, but he realized his arms were going numb as the world faded from view.