by Isaac Hooke
Turning invisible used up a lot of power, and would be easy to track, given his size—his footsteps alone would give him away. There were other limitations. While the weapon output was relatively the same as before—he could fire the lightning weapon just as much as Aria could in mech form, for example—the non-weapon skills could be used only three times in total before a half hour rest was required: three teleports in a row, or one teleport, one energy shield activation, and one invisibility cloak engagement. The jumpjet also had a far more limited range, thanks to the weight it had to push around.
All of that passed through Jason’s head in a heartbeat. He was already swinging his sword toward the next opponent, and firing his energy cannon and lightning weapon at another.
Behind him, Cheyanne, Iris, and Maeran, along with the War Forger clones of John and Jerry—who couldn’t combine while their Taras were occupied—remained in mech form, protecting Tara 2 and 5 while they worked.
A worm snuck past the Cataphract to Jason’s right, and he swatted it with his tail, sending it flying into the energy field of the construction site. It convulsed for a moment after it struck, and then flopped to the ground dead.
Jason walked forward, advancing toward the next group of incoming dirt mounds. He felt powerful, yes, but also lumbering: he was definitely slower in this form. He lost his balance when he stepped between blast craters, and ended up stumbling into one of them.
Before he could regain his balance, three worms emerged from the ground beside him and dove into his feet.
Jason plunged backward, falling. He managed to swivel around and set his foot on the ground in front of him, but momentum carried him forward. He ran, but it was the run of someone who was already falling, and knew they were soon going to hit the ground. He veered away from the other Cataphracts and defending clones, and headed straight toward the energy field that surrounded the world killer construction site.
The three worms remained attached to his feet, further unbalancing him.
He finally lost his footing entirely and plunged toward the energy field. He unleashed the plasma beam at his hips as he fell, and it sliced through the creatures; before he hit the force field, he fired his jumpjets to straighten himself.
“Almost forgot I had those,” he commented.
“You would,” Sophie said.
Jason continued to fight, using all the firepower available to him, but holding off on the non-weapon abilities for now, wanting to save them until he needed them.
The worms began to wane.
But then four new enemies appeared ahead, standing tall above the forest, like Jason and the other Cataphracts. Metallic plates covered their segmented body.
“They look like huge robot rhinoceroses,” Julian said.
“More like triceratops, with the way that bony frill surrounds its neck,” Jones said.
The bony plates forming the frill at the back of their heads lit up, glowing a bright green, and Jason knew that incoming fire was imminent.
He upped his time sense and swung his silver ballistic shield toward the enemy; he activated his energy shield at the same time, just in case.
A series of green plasma beams erupted from the edges of the glowing frills and traveled downward to the horns at the tips of their noses; the noses themselves glowed a bright green, and from them shot four thick beams. Two of those beams targeted Jason, the others Julian and Jones.
The two beams struck Jason’s energy shield, and drained it to zero. His ballistic shield snapped into place a moment later.
But Jason wasn’t going to wait for the next strike. He activated his teleport device and appeared next to the lead Triceratops. He swung down with his sword, but the blade deflected off the unit’s energy shield in a shower of sparks.
Flashes of light drew his gaze to the other Triceratops robots beside him. Julian and Jones had dropped from above, having used their limited jumpjets to close with the other two metal behemoths—the pair couldn’t teleport, since the teleporters of their Taras had been taken out. Their swords similarly deflected from the energy shields of their targets.
The Triceratops in front of Jason swiveled its head toward him, and he brought his shield to bear just as it unleashed another plasma shot. The other behemoth behind it released a beam at the same time, and the combined attacks turned the center of his shield a bright red.
He slammed his body forward, letting the ballistic shield hit the force field of his foe; he felt the vibrations from the impact pass into his body, and it rattled his chest assembly. It felt like he’d hit an immovable steel wall. He continued to shove, seeing the outskirts of the force field that protected the Triceratops flashing on either side of his silver shield, and he felt it give slightly. He was draining that field. But the cost was damage to his ballistic shield, which was now completely red, and white hot in the center.
And then the force field collapsed. Jason’s shield struck the side of the Triceratops, and toppled the behemoth. It landed hard, crushing the trees beside it, and Jason plunged his sword into its unprotected belly. A green glow alerted him to an attack from the other Triceratops nearby, and he hurled himself behind the fallen body—he couldn’t activate his own energy field again, not until he let it recharge. He’d used too many of his non-weapon abilities in a row. And he didn’t dare use his shield again, not in its current state.
He glanced over his shoulder, and saw that Jones and Julian had similarly vanquished their own foes by wearing down the force fields with their ballistic shields, then stabbing them with their swords. Jones charged the final behemoth, and unleashed his weapons in rapid succession in an attempt to drain its force field.
Jason and Julian added to the attack by launching energy cannons, lightning weapons, plasma beams, and plasma bolts. In short order the enemy’s shield collapsed, and their weapons dug into the screaming robot’s unprotected form.
“You’d think it couldn’t turn off its pain sense or something,” Julian said as he stood above the pile of debris that the robot had become.
Movement drew Jason’s gaze to the north, where another Triceratops had appeared.
“Not again!” Jones said.
Jason narrowed his eyes as he gazed at the Triceratops, and saw the faint, telltale signs of a rift: the sky and forest beyond appeared slightly pinched, as if he viewed them through the lens of a funhouse mirror. “That has to be a rift.”
He dropped to the ground as the behemoth fired its plasma beam. The air singed above him.
“Where’s the usual fringe of purple mist that’s supposed to surround it?” Jones asked. He had also dropped nearby.
“Must be cloaked!” Julian said, also from the ground.
“We have to get to the other side,” Jason said. “And stop them from sending more of these things.”
“We might get trapped on the other side…” Jones said.
“That’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Jason told him. “Anyone have a teleportation charge left?”
“Our Taras can’t teleport anymore, remember?” Jones replied.
“Oh yeah.” Jason said. “Concentrate fire.” He pushed himself off the ground slightly and engaged all his weapons. All three of them pelted the enemy with their weapons, and continued firing after the shield went down, until the creature lay in a pile of melted metal.
The three of them rushed the rift, knowing that more Triceratopses, and perhaps other robots or bioweapons, waited on the other side, no doubt preparing to pass through right at that moment.
“Where are you going?” Cheyanne transmitted.
“Only be gone a few minutes,” Jason said.
“Famous last words,” Iris sent.
“I hope not.” Jason stepped through.
18
Jason had entered darkness. He couldn’t see a thing, so he activated his LIDAR as he moved forward to make room for Jones and Julian.
The outline of a Triceratops appeared directly in front of him. There were more behemoth outlines behi
nd it.
A bright green glow illuminated a plain of black shale. The glow was sourced from the bony frill of the Triceratops.
Jason dove to the ground.
Julian entered behind him, and his energy shield activated as the plasma beam struck him. It penetrated his shield and ripped into his right arm.
Jones emerged after him, stepping into Julian and knocking him off balance. Julian crashed to the shale.
Other glows appeared in the background as the other five Triceratopses engaged their plasma beams. Jason was already rolling on the ground—he couldn’t rely on his ballistic shield, nor his energy shield. Motion was the only thing that could save him. He rolled behind a structure whose wireframe representation on the LIDAR reminded him of a huge Quonset.
There were sheds nearby, lining the plains that were partly illuminated by the fading glows from the behemoths. When the glows subsided entirely, only their LIDAR representations remained.
Jason leaned past his cover and unleashed hell on the closet Triceratops. Jones and Julian had dug themselves into the loose shale in front of the rift, their ballistic shields held in front of their bodies. They fired past the edges of those shields and into the same opponent.
Meanwhile the other big robots returned fire, concentrating on Julian. The LIDAR-illuminated darkness was lit up by the glows of weaponry on both sides.
The combined attacks from the Cataphracts caused the shield of the targeted Triceratops to fail. The team kept up the relentless assault until the behemoth fell.
The edges of Julian’s ballistic shield were beginning to whittle away by then, and he was taking hits on his exposed extremities now. Julian crouched lower into the shale, trying to avoid the attacks.
Jason didn’t have a good view of the other targets from his current position, so he clambered up the round edges of the Quonset—the magnetic mounts in his feet helped him. The structure supported his weight. Good.
When he reached the top, he dropped and aimed down at the targets.
“Take cover behind the Quonset!” Jason offered suppressive fire while Julian and Jones ducked behind the structure.
The behemoths directed their attacks at him, and Jason was forced to retreat past the curved top of the Quonset. He deactivated his magnetic mounts and slid down the edge, landing on the ground beside Julian and Jones.
“More are coming from the other sheds,” Jones said.
“More Triceratopses?” Julian asked.
“Uh huh,” Jones replied.
Jason nodded. “This has to be some kind of staging area. Any of them coming from the Quonset beside us?”
“Nope,” Julian said. “At least not yet. I’m guessing, the ones we already fought came from here.”
Another rift opened—it showed up on Jason’s LIDAR as two interlocking lines sourced in midair; he only saw its outskirts from where he was hiding, and that was because it was broad, reaching beyond the upper edges of the Quonset.
“You see that?” Julian said.
“Yup,” Jason told him.
Julian was the closest to the edge of the Quonset, so Jason accessed his LIDAR feed. The new rift was positioned midway between the original rift and the attacking robots.
More bioweapons flooded through the rift on the LIDAR imagery. Four-legged creatures with heads covered in trailing tentacles. Ugly things. They were tall, too: just as big as the Cataphracts. When those tentacles touched, they unleashed sparks of electricity that lit up the darkness, accompanied by appropriately intimidating cracks. The creatures raced across the shale and poured through the original rift to Earth.
“We have to stop them,” Jones said. “I don’t think these new bioweapons will be all that easy for the others to defend against.”
“Probably not,” Jason agreed. “Especially if their numbers don’t let up.”
He dismissed Julian’s feed and hurried to the far side of the Quonset to peer past. The Triceratopses were closing with his position, attempting to outflank them. A green glow lit up the dark—he’d been spotted. He ducked immediately and a plasma beam cut through the murk beside him.
He returned to the others. “The robots are coming in from the other side. We don’t have much time.”
Jason peered past Julian and Jones, toward the rift, and spotted the outlines of five smaller structures next to it.
“One of those has to be the rift generator,” Jason said.
“The question is, which one?” Jones told him.
“One of them, or all of them…” Jason said. “Doesn’t matter. We destroy them all.”
Julian aimed past the edge of the Quonset toward one of the generators.
“Wait!” Jason said, shooting out his hand to lift Julian’s arm. “You don’t want to trap us here, do you?”
“Oh, yeah…” Julian said. He lowered his arm sheepishly.
“We’re going to have to place energy grenades on a timer.” Jason opened up the storage compartment of his original mech, and scooped out one of his grenades. He essentially shoved what he considered his “finger” inside the compartment, and then utilized a small hand built into the tip of that finger—which in reality was Tara’s arm—to grab a grenade. He magnetically mounted it to his shoulder for easy access, and then removed similar grenades from the compartments of the other mechs that composed his body.
“Is one grenade enough for each of them?” Jones asked.
“Depends on if they’re shielded,” Julian said. “We should probably plant three per generator. And program them to detonate in rapid succession.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Jason said.
The other two opened up their own storage compartments.
“Give them all to me,” Jason said.
“Are you sure?” Jones said.
“Uh huh,” Jason told them. “You’ll cover me while I plant them.”
He accepted the grenades in turn until he had ten more mounted to his shoulders, for a total of fifteen. They were relatively tiny compared to the current breadth of his shoulders—they would have been about the size of thumbnails, if he were human.
He positioned himself next to Julian and peered past the edge of the Quonset. He could see the bioweapons moving into the rift with his own LIDAR feed: the creatures were concentrating on entering the rift in front of them and seemed oblivious to everything else.
There was a small aisle of shale between the huge Quonset where the Cataphracts hid and the rift to Earth. The first Triceratops the trio had taken down after arriving lay on the shale in that aisle. Beyond them, he could see the other behemoth robots. The head plates of the lead glowed a bright green, and he ducked from view as the plasma beam shot past.
“Notice how they’re not trying to shoot at the Quonset?” Jones said.
“Could be multiple reasons for that,” Jason said. “Probably none of them good.”
“You’re worried there might be more Triceratops things inside?” Julian asked.
“Could be,” Jason said. “They probably build them in these. So they’d be in various stages of construction. If I were these aliens, I wouldn’t want to damage my inventory of robots, either.”
“Got company!” Jones lit up the dark as he fired lightning and energy bolts toward the opposite side of the Quonset: the flanking group of Triceratopses had reached the far end.
That, or fresh robots were emerging from the very Quonset they were using for cover.
Jason wished his teleportation device had recharged, but it hadn’t.
Have to do this the hard way.
“Cover me,” Jason told Julian.
Julian laid down suppressive fire, aiming down the aisle between the Quonset and the bioweapons to fire at the Triceratopses approaching from that vector.
Jason retracted his sword and shield to free up his hands, then leaped from cover; he fired his jumpjets for added speed and scooped up the body of the fallen robot, grabbing it by its four legs and scrunching them together like a cowboy hog-tying a calf at
a rodeo.
Then he lifted, and dragged the body away from the Triceratopses, and the bioweapons. Some of them fired at him, but the behemoth’s body shielded him, as planned. He circled away from the Quonset, and the tears in spacetime, intending to approach the original rift from behind. The robots wouldn’t be able to fire at him there, as their attacks would pass through the rift to Earth.
But his movements attracted the attention of some of the nearby bioweapons, and he was forced to fire at them as they veered away from the stream of bodies to attack him. They clapped their tentacles together, forming bolts of lightning. He ducked behind the metal body, continuing to drag it and use it as a shield, until he moved behind the rift to Earth.
Then he swung the body of the dead Triceratops at the closest Lightning Spitter, still gripping it by both legs like a roped pig, and bashed in its tentacled face with the hard metal. As that one fell, he threw the robot body at the next bioweapon, and followed up with an energy attack from his shoulder, a lightning attack from his arm, a plasma beam attack from his hip, and a plasma bolt from his tail. The four attacks took down the next two bioweapons in rapid succession.
The final one that had pursued him stood there, as if stunned by the ferocity of the attack, and Jason used that fatal pause to rush the bioweapon. He extended his sword and shield into his hands once more, and slammed his blade home, embedding it to the hilt in the Lightning Spitter’s chest. The creature slammed its tentacles together, but Jason had already veered to the side, sliding the weapon across as he did so, widening the tear in its chest, and the lightning struck the shale around him harmlessly.
The creature slid from his sword, dead.
Jason stood next to the first three generators. He tried to touch one: sure enough, it was shielded. He retrieved three energy grenades from his shoulder and placed them at the base of the generator, just outside the perimeter of the shield. He set the timers so that they’d detonate in rapid succession. Hopefully it would be enough to penetrate the shield and take down the generator.
