Chapter 48

Urban Warfare Take Three

  Rayquel and I are now in a fully modified attack craft. Modified in that it is only meant to fire beams of light, instead of true lasers that could slice a mechanoid unit into pieces, slowly. Also, this time Rayquel and I are expressly forbidden from using Mind Rend. Apparently, it makes for bad ratings if you can just walk into the start area and eliminate all ten enemy minds all at once.

  Remember when I said, the weakest part of the mechanoid armor suits was the user? Well, I meant it, Dwenvarian minds are particularly susceptible to Mind Rend like effects.

  Looking back at my past lives, I realized this, but I never took it the next step. In all my lifetimes the Dwenvarians were always the ones least likely to team up with the other space faring races to fight off the scourge. Now that we know there are Prolaxian Infiltrators, or PI for short, I almost wonder if the Dwenvarians were a lot more intelligent than we gave them credit for.

  Clearly, they have command structures that can infiltrate our ranks and posing as key members of our societies. Then there is also the fact that I saw one of the PIs in the stands. At least I thought I did. That was another reason for the general letting the Dwenvarians have their first redo, so we had more time to scan the crowds.

  At this point we learned a few things. First either I was completely crazy and imagining things, which is what I was going for now. Or second, my Revelation Sight does not work on replays. This meant that the only way we could use monitors to screen for people was when the image was being projected live.

  This second theory came about when I saw the video feeds of what as being played in the tunnel before I made my way out to the field. The general had them pulled down during our ten second match. She is truly efficient; I will give her that. Anyways, she feverishly had all displays pulled and showed the videos from that tunnel. I didn’t see the monster the second time. This was when I wanted to apologize to everyone citing that, I was likely seeing things.

  Unfortunately, the General was adamant that I in fact saw something, and that she wanted to root out the pest while she could. Thus, the reset of the match, and our having to go defeat the mechanoid units a second time. Once again that match went just like the first. Rayquel and I walk in, I find the ten minds, I target the ten sensors with Mind Rend. All ten sensors crack, and we win.

  The Dwenvarians were livid that I had somehow cheated not once, but twice. They demanded a third try, which is how we ended up here. The ship is simplistic, and fortunately it is a planetary fighter. The big difference between a spaceship and a planetary fighter is the ability to hover. In space, remaining stationary is simple, you just exert an equal number of opposing forces to get your craft to remain stationary.

  On a planet such actions are never so simple. Well, I guess technically they are the exact same, but the level of power being exerted on a ship from a planet’s atmosphere is far more constant than one would experience in space. With that in mind, the number of forces needed to hover in place to deliver an attack are far greater than one would need to stop movement in space.

  The tradeoff come from the fact that planetary ships generally only need to be made to move in two directions, forward and up. Again, this is a long-complicated way of saying that most planetary ships are different than the ones you would use to fight with in space. The concepts are roughly the same, but the executions are different.

  “Are you ready?” Rayquel’s voice cuts in over the speakers. For this exercise we decided I would clearly be the pilot, while Rayquel would focus on Psychic attacks.

  “Yeah.” I say.

  “Any sign of it?” The General cuts in, on our conversation to make sure I am still looking at the live feed of the audience. I am so bored from looking at footage, that I just pretend to look now. Oh, sure watching video for the first hour long intermission was fine. No wait, that sucked.

  Then I didn’t say a word of protest during the second hour.

  Hmph.

  “Stop grunting again.” The General cuts in, apparently reading my sour mood at having to do this.

  “Look, can’t we say that I messed up? I apologize for crying wolf?” I ask.

  “These are not wolves, these are…” The General is about to say something over an open channel. Since we are hosting the games we control the security protocols, but we still must keep vigilant. The General just cut herself off before she could say something.

  I am about to dismiss the feed so I can focus on the third iteration. One where we must fight a platoon of mechanoids from a single fighter. Don’t worry though, I’ve got a plan.

  “You seem overly confident. Want to share the plan?” Rayquel asks.

  Hearing her question, I smile.

  “Yeah, simple. I am going to cheat.”

  “You cannot say that over the system.” General Tigran said. Hearing her words, I smile. Seeing my reaction, she continues. “This is payback, isn’t it?”

  “Whatever do you mean General?” I ask.

  Then I look down to cut the feed for the live video feeds as we are about to take off. That’s when I notice something in the top left corner of the feed. “Wait, right there. Top left corner.”

  “What?”

  “The PI.” I say.

  “Three, two, one, GO!” The announcer states.

  With that we are off.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Vroom.

  The ship takes off and we are up and flying almost instantly. Being in a fighter we can come in from any height and angle. With that I came in from the top north-eastern route at a direct intercepting angle.

  We are about a kilometer out when I find the first perimeter mechanoid. Remember what I said about cheating? Well, this isn’t quite cheating. At least I don’t think of it as such, this is just me noting a serious design flaw of a craft and exploiting it to its fullest potential. See all mechanoid units have an emergency release bar. This is the same thing that Rayquel used to project the two of us into space, during our combat mission against the hive mind queen.

  During that time, she pulled a lever that shot our cockpit into space so we could use our ship as a final bludgeoning weapon. All mechanoid suits have the same safety feature, a little bar by the left-hand side that can be pulled in case of emergency to save the pilot. Meaning that if you can get your mind into the cockpit, Telekinetically feel around for the lever and pull, then you have an easy to vanquish target.

  Pull.

  Then like skeet shooting, the safety pod is ejected, along with the pilot. Then you have a flying target that you must acquire, shoot, and move away from quickly.

  The crowd who had been rumbling just moments ago went silent at the display. I like to think they were impressed by my skeet shooting abilities, but I didn’t really have time to stop. Instead, I just went onto the next target.

  Pull.

  Shoot.

  Move out.

  I quickly and methodically whittled down the lines. A sub commander came towards me, carrying a cannon that was the size of a four-story office building. Still before it could even get close, I mentally reached out and pulled the safety bar.

  Now that I was close enough, I noted that the suit’s color was how they differentiated ranks. Silver for the perimeter guards, blue for the sub-lieutenants, and gold for the commander.

  As for why I didn’t care too much about the colors is that during war the colors change to throw off the enemy. The only real distinction is the silhouette. The perimeter guards are more squarish. The sub-lieutenants are leaner and more graceful. While the commanders are basically a square pillar of shielding. In all they seem to have their purposes, but I think they are all stupid. Though their effectiveness on urban terrain is unquestionable.

  Pull.

  Sub-lieutenant down.

  With the fact that they have the cannons ready, I decide to go low, below the skyline. This keeps me from getting hit by shrapnel or a random barrage attack. While the mechanoids would be well within their rights to do such attacks, I want to keep as much of the city up and pristine as possible. With that I am going low.

  “We have a tracer.” Rayquel states.

  “I know.” I admit.

  I was counting on that. That was how I got the free kill on the sub-lieutenant. The sub-lieutenant sacrificed themselves in order hit me with a tracer rather than the cannon they were carrying.

  Seeing as I wanted the tracer round, I let it hit.

  “Wait, you want them to know where we are?” Rayquel asked. Her voice somewhat incredulous.

  “Of course. This way they come to me, versus my having to go to them.” I admit.

  Hearing that I felt a form of nervous apprehension. Seeing as we were in a flying vehicle the chances of us getting injured went up significantly, even with precautionary measures in place.

  Such concerns were beyond me, as I just wanted to finally be declared a victor and be allowed to leave.

  “Two of them are preparing to ambush us at the next intersection.” Rayquel calls out. While we didn’t have tracking devices on the enemies, we did have the next best thing. Namely we were able to track the minds of the Dwenvarians. Something about their minds just called out to psychics as target me I’m open.

  With the knowledge of the two minds, it was simple enough to feel around with my groping Telekinetic-X fingers in their cockpit. Then I did it, the rare double pull.

  Two crisscrossing targets launched themselves in front of us across a four-lane city street.

  Pop, pop.

  The two targets were taken down with two quick bursts from our lasers. I made sure to line up the shots in the area where I knew the two bodies would cross each other. Technically the mechanoids were dead once the pilot was ejected. I wasn’t quite certain if it was a war crime to hit said ejected pilots, but this was all a training exercise anyways.

  The Dwenvarians wanted proof that we were better, so here it was. The fact that Rayquel didn’t seem to mind our actions went a long way towards helping me think this was an acceptable course of action.

  “To the right up ahead is another unit moving in. Also, don’t worry. It is not a war crime to hit a discharged Dwenvarian, until they hit the ground and take up a submissive posture.” Rayquel said, as if reading my mind.

  I am about to wonder how she read my mind with my Mind Shield still active. Fortunately, she also answers that. “No, I can’t read your mind.” Exactly what someone says, when they are in fact reading your mind. “I can just tell from our bond that you were having slight questions about the way you were dealing with these pilots. Special rules had to be put into place…”

  She began prattling on about how Dwenvarian generals made names for themselves by ejecting from their cockpits and landing on an enemy vessel. Then once they landed on the enemy vessel, they proceeded to take over the opposing vessel. As such rules have been put in place stating that all Dwenvarians are full combatants until they are out of their vessel and assuming a submissive posture. Of course, she took the next ten minutes to state that.

  To be fair, she did get interrupted by highlighting minds that she found along the way. I could feel the minds too, but her finesse for finding minds was a little better than mine. My general way of finding a mind was the drunken pervert method, you know reach out gropingly until you find something soft, then squeeze.

  Her method was a much more elegant way, and one that often meant you got to second base the correct way. Her way was also the way most likely to get a second date, mainly because the mind you were looking for would still exist. Live and learn.

  Finally with the sub-lieutenants and the perimeter guards taken care of, we were down to just one adversary, the leader.

  We were zipping about the city scape. We went around a turn that should take us on a straight collision course with the leader, only to see that there was a giant field of lightning arcing through the sky. Apparently, the leader had tapped into the power grid to pull off this protective measure. This was good in a way, as it meant the leader was effectively pinned in place by their own protective measures. As it looked like they were at the center of a Tesla coil, albeit one that was made up of wires that were hundreds of meters tall.

  It was clear from one quick glance that the lightning storm created would mean we would be zapped enough on our way down to be disqualified.

  It was also clear that the leader had done something to disable their emergency escape level as that was completely bent and twisted out of proportions. That or the commands to auto eject had been altered and were no longer able to be manually overridden. This meant our method that we had been employing up until now, of skeet shooting space dwarfs was a no-go. We had to come up with an alternate plan of attack.

  Seeing as we had no other option, I did what I thought would be a good final attack.

  “Take the wheel”

  “Wheel?” Rayquel asked.

  Right, it wasn’t in a circle. “Idiom from my culture. Take the controls. Just fly us around in long circles.” I answered.

  “Circles?” She asked, as her hands shakily grabbed hold of the rods.

  With that, I was able to focus on the next task.

  Since I was unable to use Mind Rend the easy victory option was over. I decided to make this a grand adventure. Mentally reaching out, I grabbed the lead mech in my Telekinetic-X grip. Then I lifted it off the ground.

  “Ohh!” The crowd cried out.

  Then with a matter of will, I began crumpling the armored suit like it was nothing.

  Crack, crumple.

  “What?” Rayquel asked, as she turned to look over her shoulder at the floating mechanoid that was being crunched to death. Unfortunately, this was something that required all my attention. As such I was unable to notice Rayquel’s distracted driving, nor the fact that we were now sliding to the side.

  Instead, I focused on crushing the metal suit as quickly and efficiently as possible. It was in the shape of a ball when the whole world went white.

  Thud!

  “STOP!” The announcer called out.

  I looked forward, only to realize that Rayquel had driven us right into the side of a building. Apparently, we were dead from the impact.

  ***

  “Sorry again.” Rayquel said, wringing her hands together.

  “It’s okay. They would have likely made us continue until they won anyways. This ways they can claim their draw.”

  “You are satisfied with that?” Rayquel asked.

  “With a draw? Are you kidding? That is the lamest thing possible. While I would argue that we disabled their final vessel, and that we effectively saved the city like we were supposed to. The fact was we were dead. And that was one of the victory conditions for the invading force. Ties go to attackers and all that.” I mention.

  We left the facility. The humans went on to fight the Dwenvarians again. This time the humans did even worse than previously as all the sub-lieutenants looked for Wizard me first. Then with him out most of the humans who were all barely first and second year students got slaughtered by the better trained and better equipped Dwenvarian forces.

  “We never did find that PI you saw.” Rayquel noted. Apparently, there were a few hundred people in the corner of the image I pointed out. I thought I remembered the general area, where the monster stood, but couldn’t verify it from the still image. Again, this was the oddest powers. I almost wondered why the gods would create such a power in the first place, but then realized the truth. Simply put, the gods are assholes.

  “Come on, let’s go eat.” I said.

  As we made our way out, we saw a few Dwenvarians, but we paid them no mind. I was in no mood to be a diplomat, ever.

  “Good match earlier” One female? Dwenvarian asked. At least I think they were a female. They had the form of a female and lacked the beard, but then again none of the males were allowed to grow beards until they were fully trained. All Dwenvarian males could possibly look feminine from what I could tell.

  I was about to ignore them entirely when Rayquel decided to be the diplomat for our little team.

  “Thank you.” She replied in Endarian.

  Suddenly I realized something that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. Rayquel was clearly on guard about these two, but why?