NOVEL NEXT Chapter 11
I took off into the sky, flying over Nozzle’s head. The army formed against us was small, but formidable. With a sigh, I realized it had been my work on the broken baffle that drew them to our location. It was only a single tunnel over, and I must have missed their scouts coming to investigate.
The front wave of raider vehicles were technicals, equipped with oversized netguns in the back of some, and coilguns in the backs of others. They raced ahead while the other vehicles grouped together and protected the mass of their force. Based on the weapons they had bought, they were ready for Nozzle, and ready for me.
It was still just raiders, so I had to assume they didn’t know who I was exactly. Just a starfish suit user. They had brought several transdimensional pulse ion cannons, in their miniaturized form. Men, hobbs, and orcs carried them like heavy machine guns, braced against their belts.
By my count, and my fairy fire readout, just over a hundred raiders portalled in to assault the gobb village.
Nozzle turned Babyeater around once he saw his tribe mobilized, and he charged at the incoming raiders without fear. I flew in behind him, rising above the spider before plunging down into the hood of an incoming technical. It crumpled and drove down into the loam, stopping instantly and throwing the gunner free. He crumpled against an oversized fern’s trunk and stayed still.
They intended to kill me, and to kill my only friend in the multiverse. I wasn’t going to bother trying to play it non-lethal with them.
Nozzle’s spider launched acid across the windshield of another technical, and the driver swerved in an attempt to avoid it. He bashed into his neighbor technical and splashed the acid from his windshield directly into the other truck’s cabin. High pitched screaming followed, from both of the passengers inside.
I slammed into the side of their trucks, sending both pinwheeling into the wall of the tunnel, where they crushed like aluminum cans. Nozzle cheered at me and then sniped the final technical’s gunner. The gobb never took more than a half second to aim, and he planted every shot regardless of the spider’s lurching movement.
His grip on the saddle never wavered either. The incoming raiders opened fire, and Babyeater crouched low. The spider then scuttled rapidly sideways through the foliage, and they were firing on empty space where he had been a moment prior.
My own armor pinged a few times as bullets hit me, but the high intensity gatling laser that fired up next caused me some concern. It shredded the jungle, burning through any plant life in its way. It also pulsed against my armor, heating me inside it while it shattered the metal through rapid heating and cooling.
I dodged low and increased my speed, aiming at the vehicle's treads. With a roar of anger amplified by my helmet, I blasted through the raider’s front line and slammed into the offending vehicle, knocking it onto its side.
A pulsed ion shot hit me and my suit gave out, sending me skidding along the ground as I landed. I was up and running, my advanced strength moving my armor, and I slammed a fist into the downed vehicle’s weapon, smashing the gatling laser and recharging my suit. It came back online immediately, and I flew up out of the way of the next pulsed ion shot.
Nozzle sniped the gunner, appearing momentarily above the plant life on the rounded wall of the tunnel. Then he and the spider were gone again, as the near-constant weapons fire turned their way again.
With a growl, I flew into the crowd of raiders. I tore one apart with my armored gloves, then reached for another. A pulsed ion shot hit me from the front, near point-blank range. I ignored it and crushed the next man’s skull, immediately recharging the suit a small amount. Babyeater scuttled up the wall, using my rampage as a distraction.
Nozzle continued shooting, taking down a raider with each shot, even as the spider went onto the ceiling of the tunnel. He hung upside down from his saddle, holding the rifle at an awkward angle. From his spider’s abdomen, I noticed sudden movement. The hairs on the beast’s back end all stiffened suddenly, and instant before they fired into the crowd of us below.
What I had mistaken for hairs were thin razors of steel, lodged in small electromagnetic ports in the beast’s abdomen. They rained down on us, embedding themselves in flesh and bone alike. I was spared thanks to my armor, but the raiders were not so well protected. Many of them died immediately, as razors sunk into the tops of their skulls.
Then the beast twitched again, and the razors all dove upward, out of the wounds they had caused and back into the spider’s ass. I focused and saw the tiny, nearly invisible wires connecting them. A brutally efficient weapon which left only a handful of raiders still capable of a fight.
Nozzle and I quickly dispatched them. He with a couple of well-placed shots from his rifle, and me by flying through them with both armored fists extended. I looked around the area, taking in crushed vehicles and bodies alike, ringed by flames.
Babyeater dropped from above on a thin line of webbing, legs wiggling in anticipation of solid ground again, and once the spider was down, Nozzle leapt from his saddle.
“How are you so good with that rifle?” I asked him, dripping gore.
“Implants. Expensive ones,” he replied. “Tribe buys them for me, so I can help defend them.”
The gobb began picking through the bodies, taking a food bar from one of them and biting through its wrapper to eat it. BuyMort pods began arriving from the elevator shaft behind him, warping away vehicles and sapient remains alike.
“Bah!” he exclaimed after reading his results. “Never enough.”
“What do you need? I have some morties I can help with,” I told him.
“Food for tonight. Bedding too; we probably sleep cold. Away from the grasslands, up higher again,” he explained. “Keep your morties, my people are strong after three days of feasting. We will be okay.”
I shook my head and retracted my armor. “I’m sorry Nozzle, I think I lead them to your tribe,” I said, head hung low.
The gobb scowled. “How?” he asked.
“I was patrolling and opened a baffle below. I sold the rubble blocking it, thoughtless to the consequences. My suspicion is that they tracked the electricity surge, then sent scouts that I missed while you were away,” I explained. “I didn’t mean to bring this down on your people, but I think I should leave your tribe. I’m not smart the way you are.”
Nozzle laughed and shrugged. “You’re not dumb though, that much I have seen. And you fight the way your legend tells. My people are saved today because of you. None dead or captured, all enemies of the tribe dead.”
“Thank you, but I feel like a liability,” I replied.
“Tonight my people stay in the ruins tunnel you found. Scavenge bodies, hunt roaches. We’ll move on soon though. You’re welcome if you want to stay. But I understand the shame you say you feel. Leave as a friend, if you feel you have to leave,” the gobb said.
I smiled from one corner of my mouth. “I’ve recently been told that I’m a danger to those I love,” I said. “I think I’ll take that criticism seriously. My affiliate really didn’t turn out the way I thought it would.”
Nozzle shrugged again and turned to mount his spider. Once he was up and the beast raised itself up on its legs, he looked down at me and said “big difference between being dangerous, and being dangerous to those you love.”
I nodded up at him, and the spider started walking. Nozzle went after his tribe, who would no doubt be hunted their entire lives. Unless I could do something about it. Before Nozzle had sold all of the vehicles, I had noticed a Silken Sands graphic on one of them.
It could just mean that my former affiliate was careless in who they sold vehicles to, but I had a feeling there was a darker explanation for it. Axle had seemed surprisingly void of empathy when I had spoken to him. Something told me that void extended to his operation of the affiliate.
Besides, he’d never expressed a problem with gobb slave labor when we had started out. Several of the contracts we got in reputational hot water over had come directly from his suggestion.
I watched the gobbs leave, with only Nozzle turning to wave at me. My time in Storage didn’t have to end, but with my cognitive function returning, I knew what I had to do next. I had to make allies, and I knew exactly where to start.
Terna’s World.