Atlas’s mech wasn’t any better. He was down on one knee. A small fire had broken out on the right leg of his mech near the ankle.
Both of the Grovothe pilots fought on despite their injuries. As one, they zeroed in on the same Zenoth queen flying toward the gate. In seconds, they had cut through its wings. They were now finishing off the freak of science-magic with a series of long laser blasts to the monster’s head region.
Brimley’s fire hammered a second giant Zenoth creature in the torso and skull as it stumbled and fell from the sky. That left five, closing in fast.
“Oohrah, Marines!” Riot yelled into the comms. “If I don’t see you in this life again, I’ll welcome you in the next!”
Riot heard their responses, but she was already moving toward her target. She was able to take two steps before her third landed her with her foot on the wall. She launched herself off the partition and sailed through the air at the same time she brought her warhammer in a wide swing.
Her timing had to be perfect for this to work. For a moment, she thought she had jumped too soon. The lead Zenoth queen she had chosen as her target still seemed too far away. Riot hung in the air as time slowed. Blue blaster fire erupted behind her as green return fire came at her from below.
Riot could see the Zenoth queen, up close and personal. It was the same kind of massive insect she had encountered before on the planet of Raydon. It looked like a giant praying mantis with multiple arms, huge eyes, pincers, and a row of sharp teeth.
Unlike before, this creature now had unnatural metal wings. A green glow came from its enormous eyes, and the arms on the right section of its body, along with a portion of its torso, were also metal.
Riot’s last thoughts were on Ketrick as a roar built deep in her chest.
I wonder what life we could have had together, Riot thought as time began to speed up. I’ll see you again one day.
As if time were trying to make up for its temporary lapse, the next second sped by.
“Rawww!” Riot screamed as her warhammer strapped with grenades came down on the Zenoth queen’s head.
It was a perfect blow. Riot hit the queen with every ounce of strength she could muster. At the same time she pressed the trigger on her weapon.
BAM!
The last thing Riot remembered was a bright light as she was hurled back into the air like a rock thrown from a catapult.
100
Riot didn’t drink anymore, but the events that occurred now reminded her of times before when she would black in and out of unconsciousness. It was like she was getting snapshots of what was happening to her instead of the full movie.
No pain, only a numb sensation raced across her body. She was flying through the air in an upward arc.
Things faded to black.
Riot slammed into the ground, where an explosion of pain erupted in her head. The wind was not just knocked out of her, it was sucked out of her lungs as if from a vacuum hose.
She couldn’t move.
Riot opened her eyes, trying in vain to make sense of what had happened. Half of her helmet was gone, along with parts of her armor. Although her armor had absorbed a portion of the explosion, it had not been able to keep her safe. The impact of the grenades detonating at that close a range meant her armor had been torn open at the chest.
Riot was lying on her left side. She managed to look down. Her chest was a mess of blood and open flesh. Breathing came hard. There was something wrong with her left eye.
“Well, well, well,” Alveric’s voice said from somewhere above her. “What do we have here?”
Riot still couldn’t move. At the moment, breathing was hard enough. She was able to look up at Alveric, who was surrounded by a contingent of Karnayer soldiers.
As much as she wanted to tell him he looked like she felt, her lips wouldn’t move.
“I would kill you now. I could kill you now.” Alveric lifted a curved sword from a sheath at his side. He pressed the tip against the bottom of Riot’s chin where her helmet had been blown away. “But I’d rather have you watch the city burn as you die.”
Alveric laughed as the sword’s razor sharp edge broke into Riot’s skin and brought her head up to look at the city. The sword dug a bright red trench into her cheek.
Riot knew she should be feeling the pain of the cut, but it seemed her system was still in some kind of deep-seated shock. Instead of the pain, she focused on what she was seeing. Her trajectory after the explosion had sent her up and back down the long road that led to the Trilord city. She was now looking up the dirt road to the city, about fifty yards from the gates.
Smoking corpses of all of the Zenoth queens lay along the road to the gates. All but one had been killed by either her Marines or the Grovothe mechs. There was no sign of her War Wolves. Rippa’s and Atlas’s mechs were both down. The only mech still operating was the fortress class Brimley occupied. Its Gatling gun-like arms still firing at the single remaining Zenoth queen who battered at the gates.
Alveric laughed again, then continued on to the city.
Behind the Zenoth queen striking the gates was an army of Abomination and Karnayer soldiers.
Riot coughed blood as the nanites in her body struggled to keep her alive long past the time she should have already died. The comms in Riot’s helmet were beyond repair. At the moment, she didn’t even know if she had it in her to try to contact anyone else with the nanites that connected her to the rest of the crew.
Get up. You have to get up, Riot thought. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for them. Do it for him.
With a loud crack, the gates to the Trilord city finally broke. A cheer went up from the Karnayer soldiers as they allowed the Abomination force to stream inside.
Riot could hear the fire of Trilord weapons as Queen Revna and her dragon-tattooed warriors tried to hold the gate.
They can’t hold the gate by themselves, not for long, Riot thought. Get up! Get up! You have to get up!
Riot moved her right hand first, and then her left. The pain came from her ripped-open chest more than from anywhere else. Other areas of her body screamed to be heard, but they paled in comparison to the fire she felt in her lungs.
Clawing her way through the dirt road, Riot made use of her hands first, then began trying to move her feet. She made it to her knees. She sat back on them, trying to gather herself. The only good news at the moment was that the Trilords and the forces gathered in the city were still holding the enemy in the entrance to the gate. The fighting had turned from blasters to hand-to-hand combat.
Riot’s left hand slid down from her lap to the compartment on her leg where her two last epinephrine shots still rested.
I wonder what will happen if I take two, Riot thought. There’s only one way to find out.
Riot opened the compartment in her armor, grateful it had been an area that had escaped the initial blast. She ignored the multiple open wounds on her body still oozing dark red blood. She opened up the lids on both pens and, without giving her actions a second thought, plunged them into the side of her neck. In one move, she pressed down both plungers.
“Ugh, this was a mistake,” Riot managed to finally groan as lightning raced through her veins. “Ahh!”
Riot’s body was alive with energy unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Her hands shook, her body quivered with so much force she thought she was going to have a seizure. Then, immediately, her mind cleared and her vision came back as if the epinephrine shots had given the nanites in her body the boost they needed to speed up repairs.
Riot got to her feet and began to walk up the dirt road.
“Alveric,” Riot said, at first unable to bring her voice much over a whisper. There must have been extensive damage to her mouth and throat that the nanites would have to repair before she could say anything. “Alveric.”
The enemy forces had their backs toward her. The battle still raged just inside the city gate. The giant Zenoth queen’s head barely touched the top of the arc
hed gateway. Someone on the other side was managing to keep her at bay. On all sides of the archway, the enemy tried to enter, like an ocean of enemies waiting for the dam to break, and flow through the open gates.
“Alveric!” Riot said, louder this time. She wasn’t able to run yet, but she was feeling stronger. “Alveric!”
She saw him standing at the edge of his army, staying at the rear of his men like a true leader.
“Alveric!” Riot screamed, the energy coursing through her body reaching a point where she felt as though she might be able to run. “Hey, you blue-skinned, elf-looking mother gunner. I’m talking to you!”
Alveric finally turned. The look on his face was priceless—one part wonder, one part fear.
Riot started to run the last few yards to Alveric and his group of personal guards. She reached down, grabbing one of the Karnayer rifles fallen from some dead soldier already forgotten.
Still running, Riot aimed down the barrel.
Four shots and four hits took out Alveric’s guards. He reached for his blade. Riot zeroed in on a head shot and pressed the trigger. A click told her she was empty.
Riot slammed into Alveric instead, using the rifle like a club.
The two combatants went down hard. Riot abandoned the hold on her own weapon for the hilt on Alveric’s sword. She remembered her battle with Remus and how the Karnayer blades worked. Their edges covered in a bright sheen of green magic were capable of cutting through any other material like a laser through ice.
Riot and Alveric rolled on the dirt ground, each trying to rip the grip of the sword hilt from one another’s hands. If the Marines had taught Riot anything, it was how to ignore pain and that little voice in your head that insisted you couldn’t. Instead of giving into self doubt, Riot fought on, ignoring all the reasons why she was too weak to win this fight.
The two combatants finally rolled to a standstill on the dirt road. Alveric was on top of her. He leveraged his entire body to bear down, trying to drive the long blade into her neck.
The sword had been wrestled in a parallel position. The edge of the blade was mere inches from Riot’s throat. Riot’s broken helmet had come off completely as the two combatants rolled on the ground. She could see her own reflection in the mirror of the green blade.
Her face was still a ruin of blood and torn skin that was already repairing itself, thanks to the nanites coursing through her veins.
“Why won’t you just die?” Alveric spat through gritted teeth. His blue skin and white hair were stained with dirt, a gleam of sweat gathered on his brow. “Give in. Give in to the death waiting for you.”
Riot’s hands were shaking. Where Alveric had the entire weight of his body to use to push the blade down, Riot only had her arms as if she were using a bench press machine. She understood she had moments left before her strength gave out.
Anger burned inside of Riot. Anger, not only for her, but also for all the other alien species Alveric and the Karnayers like him had enslaved. With one last effort, Riot managed to roll to her left and fling the blade to the side.
Alveric countered by releasing his hold on the blade, allowing it to fall. Instead of losing his top position, he began to rain down blows across Riot’s head and face.
Stars exploded across Riot’s vision for the second time that day. The pain, Riot could deal with. What she was really worried about was being knocked unconscious before she could finally kill the alien bully on top of her.
Riot threw a few punches of her own, landing them across Alveric’s jaw and nose. Blood poured from both of his own nostrils and a split lip.
“Enough!” Alveric screamed, reaching for a long blade hidden in his belt. “Now you die!”
A thought so insane crossed Riot’s mind that it made her smile.
“Why are you smiling?” Alveric demanded. He lifted the blade above his head in both of his hands to drive down into Riot.
“You’ll see,” Riot said.
Alveric screamed as he pushed the blade down.
Instead of doing what he thought she would by lifting her hands to stop the blade, Riot moved to the side, allowing the green knife-edge to enter her left shoulder as opposed to the area over her heart. Doing this meant two things happened.
First, pain. So much pain, Riot thought for sure she would pass out. A fiery sensation started at her shoulder and spread outward as if heat were actually spreading across her body.
Second, by Alveric committing his entire strength to the stabbing motion, his head had bowed down close enough for Riot to grab. Riot reached up, clutched Alveric around the throat with both hands and, with everything she had, she squeezed.
A look of utter panic took hold of Alveric as all sense lost him. Instead of trying to take the blade out of Riot and stab her again, his hands immediately traveled to his throat to try to pry off her merciless fingers.
“You messed with the wrong species this time,” Riot said as she found Alveric’s windpipe below his folds of skin and tore this section of his throat from his neck.
Alveric gasped as blue blood pooled down his neck and onto his black clothes. Both of his hands struggled to hold the wound closed as more and more lifeblood pooled out. He fell to his side, choking on his own plasma.
Riot struggled to her feet. The blade still in her shoulder sent a stab of pain through her fatigued body. She reached for the fallen sword by Alveric and lifted it over the alien.
“You—all of you—will die,” Alveric managed to choke out.
“Maybe.” Riot lifted the sword over her head. “But not today.”
Riot drove the sword down, splitting Alveric’s head like an overripe watermelon. As soon as she had performed the action, she knew it was the last thing she was able to do before her body gave in to her wounds. Nanites or not, she had taken on too much damage.
Riot sank to her knees.
Everything went dark.
101
Riot wasn’t sure if she was dreaming, or if she had died and this is what the afterlife had waiting for her. She was lying in a white bed with clean, fluffy sheets and pillows surrounding her.
There was no pain in her body, but an exhaustion she had never experienced before lay across her frame.
It was only when she sat up to study the room she realized she wasn’t alone. Queen Revna was dressed in a white gown. Her dark skin was free of any scars or wounds. Her white hair seemed to glow all on its own.
“Calm down, Riot.” Queen Revna smiled. “You’re not the one who’s dead.”
Riot had a hard time processing the queen’s words. When she did, a ball of angst grew in the pit of her stomach.
“The battle … I killed Alveric, I—” Riot tried to make sense of what was happening. “You were at the gate.”
“I was.” The queen traveled to the side of Riot’s bed and took a seat. “I fought alongside humans and Grovothe alike, and we held the gate. After the sacrifice you and your Marines made against the giant insect creatures, everyone rallied to hold the city. I died there, taking down the last insect beast, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I died in service for my people and our alliance.”
“I’m sorry … I’m really sorry. I’ve been blown up, stabbed, and hit in the head too many times today,” Riot said, blinking and shaking her head. “Did you say you died?”
“Yes,” the queen said with a smile that was devoid of any sadness. “I don’t have much time left. They’re strict about the rules here. I just wanted to come to you and tell you that when you wake up, he’ll need you. He acts like a stone, but inside, his heart beats like our own.”
Riot didn’t even have to ask who the queen was talking about. She understood now the queen had come back from the dead to give her a final message about her son.
“He’ll be king now, and he’ll need a queen to rule at his side.” Queen Revna eyed Riot with a sly smile. “I’ve seen how you two are together.”
“Hey, I don’t have any desire to be queen of anything,” Riot said,
again shaking her head.
“The best queens never do.” Revna took Riot’s hand into her own. “Just promise me you’ll look after him. That will be enough.”
“I will. Of course I will,” Riot said, holding the queen’s hands tightly in her own. “I promise.”
“And give me a lot of human-Trilord grandbabies,” the queen added in a rush of words as she stood from the bed and made for the door.
“What?!” Riot cried, half-getting out of the bed. “I didn’t agree to that. That wasn’t part of our deal!”
Everything faded to a bright white. The last thing Riot remembered was the same genuine smile on the queen’s lips as she walked out of the room.
Riot blinked multiple times, trying to make sense of what she had just seen and where she was now. Gone were all the white sheets and the fluffy, clean bed. Riot lay in the middle of the road where she had killed Alveric. In fact, his corpse was still lying beside her. From her view on her back, Riot looked into the clear morning sky.
“Riot! Riot!” Someone was yelling in the distance. “Riot, where are you!?”
“She would be the one to find me,” Riot said out loud as she remained lying down, but titled her head up to see Doctor Miller racing toward her. “Just my luck.”
“Riot!” Doctor Miller sprinted to her side. She came to one knee beside Riot, looking down at her. She took off her helmet to reveal a face full of concern. “What did you say? Did you say something? Riot! Riot, talk to me. I’m here for you. You’re not alone.”
“I said I’m happy to see you,” Riot lied.
“Oh, you’re alive!” Doctor Miller wrapped Riot into a hug and squeezed so hard, Riot thought the doctor was going to finish the job Alveric had started.
“Easy,” Riot said in a high-pitched voice. “I can’t breathe.”
War Wolves: Boxset 1-3 Page 52
