“Aaroo!” the Grovothes added.
“If we die today, then we die together!” Rippa screamed over her comms, caught up in the intensity of Riot’s speech.
“Why does she always have to go so dark?” Wang whispered over the comms. “Why can’t we just all live together?”
“They’re here,” Killa said at the same time as weaponsfire lit up the night sky.
From her vantage point, Riot could look behind her to the right and see a flurry of weaponsfire cascading down over the wall and into the jungle interior below. The mech unit stationed outside the wall lent their firepower to the cause.
The sound was so intense, Riot was sure she would have gone deaf, had it not been for the protection her helmet provided.
Dat-dat-dat-dat-dat
The new Grovothe weapons added their own unique sounds to the noise of war, and the cacophony a large engagement brought with it tore across the night sky. Riot had been in enough battles by now to know what to expect. The sounds dampened by her helmet were like hearing thunder and lightning exploding overhead, as if Zeus himself was hurling his lightning bolts just feet away from her position.
Bright colors from the weaponsfire raced across the sky. Red fire from the Marines and the repurposed weapons from the Syndicate mixed with the yellow blaster fire of the Trilords and the blue laser rounds from the Grovothe mechs.
The Abominations and the Karnayer soldiers answered back with their own green rounds shooting upward and aiming at the defenders on the wall.
Everything in Riot told her she needed to run over and join the fight. Her muscles tightened, only relaxing when she concentrated all of her willpower on the action. The muscles in her shoulders bunched up like rocks.
Riot could feel the tension and energy in the air as her Marines and the Grovothe force around her looked back to the right and the south wall. They all wanted to go help.
“We’re going to have our opportunity in a few minutes,” Riot said, embracing the part of her she needed to be in that moment, the part that welcomed a fight. “Lock and load. When they get here, we hold the gates at all costs.”
“Oorah!”
“Aaroo!”
“There’s thousands of them,” Killa shouted over the comms. Her voice was far from fear; it was loud and excited. “Weaponsfire aren’t having any effect on the Abominations. The mechs using the blue laser beams from their helmets seem like the only thing able to keep them back.”
“Do you need additional support?” Colonel Harlan said over the comms. “Give me the word, and I can route a squad of Trilords over to your position.”
“We’re holding now,” Killa said before static covered her voice over the comms. She came back a moment later, loud and clear. “The Abominations aren’t going down, but neither can they climb the walls. Riot, they’re swinging around to the east gate!”
“Let them come!” Riot roared over the comms. Her heart raced as she scanned the outside of the wall through her heads-up display. “We’re ready for them.”
“There!” Vet shouted over the comms in his helmet. “To the right, just in the jungle.”
Riot allowed her heads-up display to see what her eyes could not. Dozens of outlined enemies showed on her screen as they emerged from the jungle’s depths.
Heat signatures weren’t present amongst the cold steel corpses the Abominations were made of, but her heads-up display was able to track movement. They emerged from the jungle depths like a wave of blood oozing from an open wound.
They walked at first, and then ran.
“Open up, boys and girls!” Riot aimed her new Grovothe weapons over the wall. The bulky Buster300 felt good in her hands. “Let’s give them a warm, bloody welcome.”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Riot aimed at a particularly small Abomination soldier who looked like a grub equipped with mechanical arms and legs. She caught the monster in the face, as well as center body mass. Her target stumbled at first, but just kept moving forward.
All around her, Grovothe and Marines were reveling in the target-rich environment. Despite the level of sheer firepower being directed at the Abomination horde, the results were minimal at best. A few enemy soldiers were having a hard time moving forward under the hose of weaponsfire but none of their number remained down for the count.
The two mechs in front of the gate piloted by Rippa and Atlas stood with their arms pointing forward. Gauss rounds pumped from the twin cannons on the tops of their forearms.
“Concentrate all your firepower on those closest to the wall, on the right,” Riot screamed into her comm to be heard over the weaponsfire. “Make them swing wider left and into the road where our mines are set up!”
Immediately, everyone obeyed. Blue and red rounds slammed into the Abominations closest to the wall on the right corner. Brimley focused her Fortress mech’s fire on those Abominations as well, and let loose with her twin Gatling-type guns.
Dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat!
The sound was music to Riot’s ears as the Fortress class mech opened fire behind her. Brimley’s aim took her rounds high over the heads of Riot and the rest of the team and up over the wall.
Abominations fell, got back up and fell again, only to be pinned on the ground by more weaponsfire. But Riot recognized a fatal flaw in their plan. For the time being, they were managing to hold at bay a few hundred Abominations, but what about when the rest of the Karnayers’ resurrected force spilled from around the southern corner?
“Ketrick, can you do a few passes along the southern wall?” Killa shouted into her comms. “The Abominations have reached the wall. They can’t climb over, but the mechs in front of us are in danger of being overrun.”
“On our way,” Ketrick responded.
Riot’s right shoulder shook as she pumped round after round of blue blaster fire from her Grovothe-made Buster300 into the oncoming Abomination horde. High above her in the night sky, Ketrick led a wing of dragons swooping down alongside the southern wall and painting the jungle forests in flames.
A cheer erupted from the Trilords and Marines on that side of the wall.
Riot felt a swell of hope as she hammered another dozen rounds into a large Abomination that had at one time been something close to humanoid. She focused her fire on its right fleshy knee, obliterating the appendage. The half-machine, half-corpse fell to the ground, only to begin crawling forward over the hard-packed dirt. Metal fingers clawed into the earth as it continued its journey forward.
Riot’s weapon soon made a loud clicking sound, signaling it was dry. All around her, Grovothes were exchanging thick mags at the base of their weapon for mags that were full; they threw the empty magazines on the floor atop the wall and reached into crates for new ones.
Some of the Grovothe shock troops carried the same weapon she did. The trio of thick blasters on the end of their weapon rotated, taking turns to hurl blue bolts at the enemy. Other Grovothe-manned massive cannons sat on tripods, and still others, what looked like RPGs, rested on their shoulders.
“Riot, we’re about to have a problem,” Rippa said from the safety of her mech on the outside of the wall.
“Of course we are,” Riot said, looking to Rippa’s mech and following its line of sight into the jungle to pick up whatever it was she had caught sight of. “We’re being attacked by the living dead on an alien planet where fast food doesn’t exist. I would call that a huge problem. I don’t think it can get much worse.”
“No, I mean, look.” Rippa pointed into the jungle depths.
Thousands more of the Abominations created by the strange magic the Karnayers possessed had just emerged, and were now sprinting toward them from the jungle depths.
Thus far, the Abominations spilling over from the south wall had not been equipped with range weapons. A fact Riot should have picked up on, and in turn, expected there to be a reason why.
The force emerging from the jungle was not only ten times as large as the one coming from the south, but they were also
all equipped with various blasters attached to their arms.
“Riot, I think it’s worse. And what’s ‘fast food’?” Rippa asked as she pivoted to meet this new threat.
Riot ducked as a salvo of green enemy fire erupted from the new force.
“Ask me again when we get through this,” Riot said over the comms as her mind struggled to compose a new plan.
BOOM!
97
The first anti-personnel mine in the dirt road leading to the main gate erupted in a shower of dust and broken metal body parts. Abominations were tossed into the air like rag dolls. In turn, they fell to the ground, only to detonate more of the mines.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
More and more of the explosions discharged, bringing a cheer to the throats of the defenders on the wall.
Riot, on the other hand, understood that the temporary victory would still not hold back the thousands of Abominations for long. She looked to her right where her crew had taken up positions on the wall. Vet, Wang, Rizzo, and even Evonne, were firing their own weapons into the crowd of gathered enemies, while Doctor Miller ran ammo supply packs to the Grovothe troops.
“We’re not going to be able to hold them back once the mines are depleted,” Evonne said in her matter-of-fact Australian accent. “I’m not trying to be pessimistic, only factual.”
“Rippa, Atlas,” Riot said as even more mines detonated. “You’ll need to use your laser beams soon. Brimley, those rockets you’re carrying, make them count.”
“Roger,” Rippa, Atlas, and Brimley all said at once.
“The beams our mechs are equipped with will run hot and powerful, but not for long,” Rippa reminded Riot.
Riot thought back to the time she witnessed the powerful blue laser beams shoot from the eyes of the mech’s helmet. While Riot had been on Raydon fighting the Zenoth with the Grovothe, she had come to respect the weapons.
“I understand,” Riot said over the comms as she stood up to aim her weapon at the road once more. “Do what you can.”
An eerie silence settled across the front of the gates. Those Abominations that had been spilling around the south corner had stopped. A thick cloud of smoke and dirt from the detonated land mines made visibility impossible for more than a few hundred yards in front of the gates.
Riot breathed steadily. The constant hum of the Abominations was the only thing to tell her they were still out there.
In front of Riot stood Rippa’s mech on the right and Atlas’s on the left. Each of the hulking armor tanks practically vibrated with energy.
Riot thought about requesting a fly-by from Ketrick, Vikta, and his dragons, but she knew she needed to save the call. She also still had the option of asking for reinforcements from Colonel Harlan. Again, she decided to wait for a moment when there was no other option.
Inside her helmet, Riot could hear her pulse pounding in her head. Seconds ticked by slower and slower as all eyes on the wall tried penetrating the haze of smoke and dirt. A blue round fired from somewhere to her left. Riot looked over to see a fidgety Grovothe Shock trooper looking around sheepishly.
“We’ll hold,” Riot said to everyone. “Don’t fire until you can see them. When they come, send everything we’ve got that goes ‘boom.’”
“There!” Wang shouted over his comms. “Twelve o’clock and—limping toward us?”
A single Abomination came out of the haze. Wang was right. Instead of running, it was walking toward them with a hitch in its step. Then hundreds more Abominations materialized from the smoke, sprinting forward.
“Now!” Riot ordered as she opened fire into the throng. All around her, weapons were unloaded.
The Grovothe abandoned smaller firearms for mortars. The rounds sailed from stationary tubes up and over the wall, into the Abomination ranks.
Green fire from the enemy splattered against the wall, taking out an unsuspecting Grovothe standing next to Riot with a round to his head. The soldier fell backwards off the wall, never to rise again.
Rippa and Atlas opened up with the blue laser beams from their mech’s helmets.
VRRRROOOOOOOOM!
Thus far, the laser beams were the most effective weapons Riot had seen used on the enemy. The cobalt blue streams of energy were able to cut through both the organic and metal sections of the Abomination soldiers.
Rippa focused her laser on a rather large creature with a massive torso and tiny metal legs. Her laser ate through the alien’s midsection. She lowered her aim first, then raised it, cutting the Abomination completely in two.
Beside her, Atlas was having similar luck. Although their weapons were effective in taking an Abomination soldier out of the fight for good, the time in which they needed to focus and kill a single enemy was not going to win them the day. In the duration, the two Juggernaut class mechs had dispatched a handful of the Abominations. Running across the open road to the gates, the enemy was nearly on top of them.
“Brimley,” Riot grunted as she lifted one of the Grovothe’s RPG-type weapons onto her right shoulder and took aim. “Now would be a good time to let those rockets loose.”
“Roger that,” Brimley said. “Locking onto multiple targets now, in three … two … one … kill time.”
Rockets zipped down onto the wave of enemy Abominations. The enemy horde had nearly reached Rippa and Atlas, who stood right in front of the gates. Trails of smoke wafted from the afterburn of the small rockets as they all found a target.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
Each rocket struck its intended target, sending up a shower of dead matter and scrap metal. More cheers from the defenders on the wall rose up in an echo of shouts and yells.
The two dozen rockets that had found their marks had given everyone on the wall a sense of joy, except for Riot. She understood that ammunition was a dwindling commodity, especially among the Grovothe who did not have access to the unlimited power packs the Syndicate had introduced to Earth.
“How many more rounds like that do you have in your mech?” Riot asked Brimley over a private comm channel. “Tell me you can do that over and over again.”
“Well, do you want me to lie to you, or do you want me to tell you I have one round like that left once I reload,” Brimley replied. “I can have the second round reloaded in the next two minutes.”
“Save them for when I give you the command. In the meantime, let loose with those Gatling guns,” Riot said, switching once again to the main channel. “Evonne, We’re going to need your muscle at the gates soon. Get down there and brace the supports.”
“Understood,” Evonne’s voice said over the blasts of weaponsfire.
Riot hefted the Grovothe rocket launcher onto her shoulder and aimed over the wall. She looked through a circular scope that popped out of the side of the thick barrel and focused on a shifty Abomination alien that had long metallic scythes for arms.
SHHHHHHHHHOOOOOM!
Riot hit the button, sending the rocket forward. The recoil nearly took her off her feet. The rocket left a blue stream of smoke in its wake. Riot’s aim was true as it collided with its target and sent the Abomination up in a cloud of dirt and smoke.
A decision needed to be made soon. The Abomination soldiers were going down under the onslaught of the heavy weapons Riot and her team defended the wall with, but they just weren’t going down fast enough.
The hum the horde of robotic dead made as they crashed against Rippa and Atlas’s mechs were maddening. The green blaster fire many of the Abomination soldiers used as fire against the Grovothe mechs simply splashed against their metal. The bladed hand weapons the Abominations brought to bear against the mechs, on the other hand, were more than capable of cutting through the steel.
“Off, you sick magically dead,” Atlas grunted over the comms as he crushed one soldier under his boot and tried to shake off another from the opposite leg. “Fire and Claw, Major?”
“Fire and Claw,” Rippa agreed over the comm as she opened a flame from the right hand of h
er mech. Three long blades sprouted from her other hand in between the knuckles of her closed fist. “Riot, they’re past us now. We’ll stay out here as long as we can, but the gates need to be braced.”
“Roger that,” Riot said, dropping her empty rocket launcher. She ducked under the edge of the fortification as another wave of green blaster fire peppered the wall around her. “Don’t stay on the other side of the wall until your mech goes down. If you’re going to be overwhelmed, you get to this side of the wall. That’s an order, Major Rippa Gunna.”
Riot felt like a parent scolding her young daughter when she used Rippa’s full name. The fact was, Riot wondered if Rippa would ignore the order anyway and seek what she deemed a glorious death in battle.
These thoughts raced through Riot’s mind as she hurried down the steps to the gates. The first wave of Abominations would reach them soon.
Riot took the steps down, two at a time. Right in the middle of the courtyard rising up like a statue of war, Brimley slowly turned her Fortress class mech from side to side, sending a stream of fire into the horde.
Dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat!
Riot jumped the last few feet to the ground before sprinting over to the gate. Evonne stood bracing the city’s entrance, one hand on each gate door, arms extended, legs staggered.
The Abominations hit the wooden gate so hard, Riot could see the wooden structure shudder. Evonne even took a step back from the violence of the impact. Riot slammed into the wooden door so hard, she thought she might have broken something. She shoved her left shoulder into the door, hoping to absorb some of the impact from the forces on the other side.
Even amongst the rockets and blaster fire going off in the background, Riot could hear the scraping of steel weapons on wood from the other side of the barrier.
This is it. Riot gritted her teeth as thoughts ran through her head a mile a minute. This is where they break through and overrun the city. Time to call in the cavalry.
98
At that moment, Evonne looked over to Riot from her position bracing the gates. The AI still hadn’t been repaired from the previous fight. Her skin fell off her body and a portion of her face. The steel underneath grinned back at her like something from a nightmare.
War Wolves: Boxset 1-3 Page 50
