Coronel had watched the patrol fly overhead. The problem was, it was going to fly over the rally point soon.
So, he called for the packbot, took off the H-gun, hopped up to a nearby roof, and took the shot. He hopped off to a different roof right after he did, and soon enough, his original firing position turned to rubble just a few seconds later.
Then he took another shot. The patrol vehicle almost spiralled, but the driver was just too skillful. Parachutes soon deployed, and Coronel was given yet another problem.
That place was close to the 122 Mercury safehouse.
Rather, it was strange that the patrol hadn’t found the place. That entire block was in the middle of turning into a silicon hamlet covered in blue solar leaves. At least that much was necessary to begin producing a decent automata force.
Still, if that patrol rolled through there, they would likely destroy much of the block before being overwhelmed. Coronel’s greater concern, however, was whether James and Aurelia would get out of there unscathed.
He threw up a relay drone and sent an emergency message for the safehouse. Hopefully, the two survivors would find a way to leave and hide.
Also included in the message were combat policy instructions for the automata forces stationed there. They would prioritize preserving the lives of James and Aurelia, managing stealth as much as they otherwise could. Even if the hamlet’s infrastructure were destroyed, it could all be replaced by a few handy Tenprints.
Another message was sent Eliso’s and Saito’s way, telling them to act on their own.
Coronel headed out. He would confront the Lanan alone.
***
The patrol rolled along at a steady pace, optical, RF, and IR sensors pointed every which way, looking for enemies. Even the microphones were put to the task. If they had a Controller with them, they could set the nearby Alphas to do the searching for them, but the nearest Controller was currently in the middle of a concentration of survivors.
They could swoop in and “kidnap” the guy, but they had to leave this area in the first place. Of course, they’d sent out ripples through the Ocean to inform nearby forces of their situation, but it was currently at a manageable level. It’s only when they incurred casualties where their ripples would turn into splashes. None of them wanted to be that casualty.
The right gunner’s eyes widened. “Movement, one-o’clock!”
A shot rang out, hitting the left gunner in the shoulder. His power armor deflected most of the blow, but the sheer momentum knocked him away from his controls.
The right gunner fired a short salvo into the commercial building’s window, which pierced right through and cut through nearly the entire row of buildings behind it.
“Shitty efficiency,” the right gunner remarked. “Wish we had flechette shot. Hey, Left Gunner, you okay over there?”
The left gunner groaned. “I think that shot took out some of my suit’s motor functions.”
“Seriously? They have that kind of firepower?”
“Keep your eyes on the sensors, the two of you,” the driver said. His earlier perpetual annoyance was gone. They could all easily die here.
The next attack came from the top. A Wolfbot dropped onto the head of the right gunner, and its tentacular blades lashed out, prodding his armor for a nick or a gap it could stab into. He panicked, grappling with the sudden weight on his head and trying to pry it off.
The left gunner pointed his wristgun and fired a single shot at the Wolfbot, putting a 10cm diameter hole straight through the center of its body, where the greatest amount of heat was coming from. The right gunner threw the dead Wolfbot overboard.
“That’s a fucking surprise,” the right gunner said. He looked to the left gunner. “Thanks, man. I owe ya.”
“Yeah. 200 points.”
The right gunner groaned and transferred the appropriate amount.
For the next three blocks, the vehicle was variously sniped and machine-gunned by isolated elements, growing in intensity as they advanced.
“You’d think they’d just attack us all at once,” the left gunner said.
“Don’t jinx it,” right gunner said.
That was when the left railgun mount got blown off, followed by the report of a cannon. The left gunner’s peacock shield pre-emptively deployed from his arm, taking the brunt of the shrapnel that used to be his turret. The ceramic shield popped off his arm, dropping to floor in pieces.
“I’m flooring it! No more of this shit!” the driver shouted.
The tires screeched, and a cacophony of gunfire replied. They swerved left and right, avoiding grenades being shot at them. The road behind and in front of them erupted in showers of concrete dust. A small laser turret over the driver’s seat automatically dispatched the most dangerous projectiles, but still, there were so many, and all that the driver could do was swerve as unpredictably as he could.
Gray buildings suddenly turned into a shimmering blues. The three realized where they were, and why the opposition started to dump all their ammo at them. “Right gunner, open fire!” the driver shouted.
The right railgun indiscriminately tore through the silicon vines, taking out as many important-looking things as the gunner saw them: power nodes, battery banks, and spidery-looking things hanging from the sides of the buildings.
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Overall, however, he couldn’t deal significant damage. His hypervelocity munitions simply passed through the surrounding structures, only managing to shatter a few leaves and disable a Tenprint’s leg.
When they’d drifted into an intersection, a car-pendulum swung across and narrowly missed them. The tires regained traction, and they sped towards the nearest patch of non-blue gray ahead.
But before they could escape the area, the road itself collapsed right under them.
Just that wouldn’t kill them, their power armor capable of protecting even against an Earther tank shell. The right gunner tore open the window into the driver’s seat and dragged out the old man.
“You alright?”
“I can walk,” the driver said. “Ready weapons.”
Thin, articulated arms popped out from back compartments, offering them their carbines. They were older models, only capable of fifteen seconds of sustained fire, shooting wire filaments 20 times a second, and only capable of taking out an Earther MBT with a single shot from its underbarrel grenade launcher, which had its own magazine of ten.
These were all the bare minimum for Kartesian infantry, which shouldn’t be surprising, considering the propensity of the Alliance’s humans to field massive automata armies whose rank-and-file were mostly army bots with armor like an Earther MBT, or even thicker.
Oh how they wished they could’ve gotten carbines with integrated aiming systems. They were just bottom-rung infantry, however, barely scraping by on points just to afford ammunition.
They didn’t have the time to formulate a battleplan, however, as a canful of grenades fell into the crater they were in. Explosions rocked their vision, but they were unharmed.
“Into the building to the east! Let’s go!” Driver commanded.
As soon as they popped their heads out, gunfire filled the air. Targets lit up on their helmets, and they did their best to return fire as they ran to the cover of a nearby building.
It wasn’t this low-caliber fire that they were taking cover from, of course. There was something out there that took out their engines, after all, and if it could do that, it could take them out, as well.
Driver crashed through the hotel’s steel shutters, tearing right through it like a juggernaut. Right Gunner followed closely by—then they heard that cannon again.
They turned around. Left Gunner was down.
The armor around his arm was torn up, and the flesh underneath was exposed and bleeding. The man himself managed to stand up. Right Gunner tried to run and reach the man, but Driver held him back.
Left Gunner stood up, and a huge spark covered up the way the side of his hardened helmet exploded into shrapnel. For a second, there was nothing but a shower of glowing metal, hot enough to react with the very air around it, falling down and becoming cool, invisible, and still.
“He’s dead! Leave him!” Driver shouted. The words made Right Gunner freeze, but another yank by Driver managed to get him moving again.
Just as well, because large, quadrupedal bots flooded in through the hole Driver made. Not only that, but they ripped new ones through the shutters.
They weren’t Wolfbots, but Sabers. These were larger, meant to go toe-to-toe against Betas. Unlike their smaller cousins, these ones had jaws that would explosively snap shut, and if that didn’t work, hydraulics would take over and sink its serrated fangs into the target with surety.
The two Lanan opened fire, easily ripping through the first three Sabers. More joined in from behind and swerved, jumping left and right, causing the Lanan to resort to hosing down the whole room.
Some Saberbots, however, came with grenade launchers.
A grenade met Right Gunner head-on. It only managed to knock him down, but finally, for a moment, Driver was left to fend off the wave on his own. His carbine ran out of ammunition for a split second before his suit’s helping hands switched it out with absurd precision and speed. In the time it took for him to reacquire a new target, he was topped up and firing again.
Right Gunner got up just in time to watch the wall beside them explode in a shower of dust and debris. Neither of them had the time to react.
The Saber’s jaws snapped shut around Driver. Right Gunner had the mind to shoot at it, and he succeeded in destroying the torso, practically sawing it in half with two seconds of ammunition.
Unfortunately, Saberbots were made with tenacity in mind. Once the jaw was put to work, it would execute a full cycle of its function even without any connection from the main processing unit.
Driver struggled to pry the jaws open, but that was all he could do. They slowly squeezed around him, until something crumpled—something cracked, and he started screaming.
“Leave me!” he shouted. More Sabers were flooding in, and Driver had a sub-nuclear yield grenade in his hand.
So that’s where the fucking 10,000 points went. Those were Right Gunner’s last thoughts before he made a break for it. He crashed through the buiding’s walls, entered a back alley, and crashed through the next building, as well.
He didn’t dare look back. The only thing on his mind now was survival, because that grenade was gonna fuck up this whole block.
He could still hear Driver’s cursing over the radio—then he couldn’t.
Then there was a flash.
The shockwave punted him across the street he’d just emerged to, crashing through the wall of the building on the other side. It took him a moment to reorient himself.
Even with the scene in front of him—what used to be a block of commercial buildings ranging from two to five stories, now reduced to a shallow depression in the ground—there were still bound to be enemies around.
He made sure to make splashes in the Ocean. There was a seed of an Alliance divisional task force here, and it couldn’t be allowed to proliferate.
He was sure. He was going to die here.
He saw the flash of the H-gun from the other side of the crater. All the glass around him exploded, and then the report of the H-gun reached him. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.
Even so, his suit kept him alive. His wounds were being slowly sealed, and his blood, replaced by a digusting, slimy substitute. All the oxygen he could ever need was being filtered through the suit.
Still, he couldn’t breathe.
He stumbled out of the building, stepping onto the edge of the crater, leaving his carbine behind. What was the point of resistance, anyway?
He was standing in the middle of the crater, now, which he decided was Driver’s grave. The Saberbots cautiously approached him. There were less of them, he noticed, likely to cut losses in case he had a bomb like Driver’s.
A metallic man rode upon a metallic horse, approaching him, all the while pointing a comically-long gun at his head at all times.
Finally, they were just ten meters apart. It felt like he could touch the muzzle from here.
“Why’d you come out here?” Coronel asked.
“Why do we even fight?” Right Gunner said.
Coronel spat. “All in a day’s work for you, isn’t it? Turning whole worlds into barren wastelands.”
It made no sense to Right Gunner. It’s not like they were living any differently from the humans of the Alliance.
The difference between Human and Lanan: what was it, really? People on both sides have always thought about it, but anyone who’s found the answer has had their brains blown out before they could tell anyone else, apparently.
Right Gunner stared into Coronel’s eyes. They were burning with the intensity of a dying world. This man carried the very same torch that killed his people, and he was on a quest to deliver it to the Kartesh, himself.
“I don’t get it,” Right Gunner said. All of life was meant to die—which was also why, all of life struggled against death, the eternal end. The Kartesh had surpassed that end, and the Lanan were constructs with the same privilege—it was Humanity that was the mutant! They, who could choose not to suffer, chose the other path, to walk on glass shards and call it freedom.
Right Gunner looked at him with pleading eyes. “Why would you turn down Eternity?”
Coronel pulled the trigger, and the Lanan made a little splash in the Ocean.