Vagrants (Vagrants Series Book 1)

by Jake Lingwall

The only buildings standing were five or six massive leech factories that appeared to be working overtime and an odd rounded tower at the center of the factories. They glided across the calm morning plains where Dallas had once stood. They passed thousands of humans who were peacefully going about their morning business, seemingly unaware of any impending crisis. Their oblivious faces soothed Jeff’s nerves.

  “Would it be cliché to say that it’s too quiet?” Lionel asked.

  The twins dominated the chatter on their audio channel as they swooped close to Petra’s base, hoping to cruise past it peacefully. No one tried to silence their banter, but Jeff knew it was a sign of their nerves. He’d seen men like them before when things got rough. Most of them had abandoned their duties at the first sign of a raiding party.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Paul responded. “Not a single leech in sight. Doesn’t seem right.”

  “There’s no way we haven’t been seen by now,” a female voice with a thick Latin accent said.

  “Reyna’s right,” Carlee said. “Petra either doesn’t care or it’s too busy elsewhere to be bothered by some vagrants buzzing through.”

  “Either answer works for me,” Lionel said.

  “Course correction,” Talon said, his deep voice cutting through the others. “Veer hard to the south.”

  “Closer to the factories?”

  “I see it . . . incoming . . . lots of them.”

  Jeff’s bike turned with the rest of the caravan, adjusting its course to take them right by the leech factories. He looked to the north, and indicators and smoke overwhelmed his vision. There were thousands of leeches coming in hot.

  “Are we going to make it?” Lionel’s voice quivered.

  “We can outrun them,” Carlee said.

  “Stay on course.” Talon’s voice was steel, as always.

  The factory buildings filled his view now. In the distance, the huge square buildings had been impressive, but up close, they were jaw-droppers. A single one of the buildings was large enough to cover the entirety of Fifth Spring’s territory.

  “Looks like it’s raining,” a male vagrant said. Jeff could hear the worry in the man’s voice. He looked up to see the sky above him blossom with thousands of explosions, crashing against a bubble force field a few hundred feet above them.

  Lionel’s curse over the communication line summed up exactly how Jeff felt.

  “We’re just in time for the party,” a female vagrant howled across the line, sounding completely crazed.

  “Circle back,” Talon said. “Circle back!” Hearing Talon shout was a confidence-shattering moment. If the stoic man was worried, they were in a lot of trouble.

  “Stay with me.” Carlee’s voice was peace amid the chaos.

  The caravan turned sharply, circling around the corner of one of the massive factories and cutting back through the center of the buildings, heading toward the tower in the middle of the complex. Jeff felt his vision dim to compensate for the overwhelming light emitted from the countless explosions hitting the force field above. The indicators provided by his uniform burst to life, drowning out nearly everything he could see.

  “Oh, my God . . .”

  Jeff blinked to turn off his enhanced vision because it was blocking his eyesight, and he immediately regretted his ability to see the world in front of him. The factory building they were flying past melted before his eyes as countless leeches fought their way through the building’s outer walls. Thousands of metallic killing machines erupted from the factory, bursting into the air and rolling over the ground. A quick glance showed that the other buildings had equally shared in the duty of hiding Petra’s army.

  “Push it!”

  They shot past the rounded tower in the center of the factory and raced through the rapidly closing gap between two of the leech armies emerging from the factories. It didn’t take long for the leeches to target the caravan of vagrants trying to slip through their grasp.

  “Aaahhh!” Jeff screamed as the opening in front of them began to close as leeches crawled and rolled into place to block their escape path. He squeezed his triggers to fire his bike’s weapons as fast and as hard as he could. His attacks hit the growing wall of leeches at the same time as the rest of the vagrants’ reactions, blowing menacing leeches to bits.

  Jeff’s bike punched through the dust and fire and into the open plains they had approached from just a few minutes earlier. Except now the plains were abandoned no more. In the distance, waves of leeches approached them, unloading their arsenal on Petra’s force fields. He searched everywhere for relief, for somewhere they could escape, but all he found was thousands of leeches. Behind him, he saw several transports explode, taking their vagrants with them, those that were a hair too slow in escaping the trap.

  And Horus.

  The Apostle of his nightmares was running over the plains despite its wings, headed for Petra’s forces. Amid the absolute chaos and destruction, Horus still stood out. Its body towered above everything else Jeff could see; the leeches racing around its gigantic feet seemed like toys beneath the monstrous Apostle.

  Petra’s human pets tried to run, but there was nowhere for them to go as their god’s army trampled them. Jeff watched as a family realized they were doomed a moment before an arterially gun landed on them and locked itself into place, ready to attack when the shield failed.

  “We’re going to have to go through them!” Talon shouted.

  A young man lying on his back stared at Jeff as he shot by him. His face was Jeff’s own not long ago, when he had been the victim of an Apostle attack. He had dragged himself over the concrete, cursing the braves, the men with the ability to fight back who had done nothing while innocent people had died. He looked at the guns on his bike and over at his brother’s killer.

  “How?” Lionel asked. His question caused the first pause in the audio channel since the fighting had started. And the silence, mixed with the sudden hopeless battlefield they found themselves in the middle of, told Jeff all he needed to know.

  With a shift of his eyes, he changed his audio channel to a private one with Carlee and took over control of his bike. He twisted his arms, directing his bike to turn toward Horus.

  “What are you doing?” Carlee demanded. “Get back here.”

  “I can’t do this. I can’t just watch them die and not fight back. Besides, I have some business to take care of.”

  As he diverged from the vagrants, he saw Horus pull back its wings, composed of thousands of individual arched-up leeches, and glow red, then fire a blinding red laser into Petra’s force field.

  “We can’t help them,” Carlee said.

  “I won’t die a coward.”

  “The leeches are too busy with one another. We can make it out of here. I know it.”

  Jeff spared a glance over his shoulder to where the vagrants were racing toward Horus’s forces that waited just beyond Petra’s force field. Hundreds of leeches followed behind them, heading out to meet the attackers. The leeches didn’t deviate or make any effort to avoid humans, who were being crushed and slaughtered beneath the armies. The sight made Jeff want to heave. He held steady on his course.

  The force field collapsed under the weight of Horus’s attacks, allowing the barrage of attacks to rain down on Petra’s forces, which returned fire. The caravan passed out of sight as the furious exchange of firepower blotted out his view.

  “I’m sorry, Carlee,” Jeff said. “I have to try.”

  “Damn it, Jeff! We don’t attack Apostles! You’re throwing your—”

  Jeff winced as he cut the audio channel with Carlee. He wanted to say more, to tell her more, but the time for that was over. His bike weaved through explosions and craters as it approached Horus, flying toward the Apostle as it stalked toward the center of Petra’s forces, sweeping enemies aside with its two lowest arms.

  Jeff squeezed his triggers again, firing at Horus, but his blasts never made it far. Either a leech intercepted the attack, a counterat
tack exploded his in midair, or it just collided helplessly with a personal force field the Apostle employed.

  A young man was pulling his dying father across the ground, desperately trying to escape from Horus and the battle. Jeff wanted to scream at the young man, to tell him to extend his hand so Jeff could pull him up on his bike, but he was too late. Horus’s giant foot smashed the men without hesitation. Jeff looked away, unable to force himself to view what was left of them as Horus took another step forward.

  Jeff’s bike zipped between Horus’s legs, every shot from its energy cannons failing to connect. Petra’s forces focused their efforts directly on Horus. Their concentrated efforts would have been enough to level a mountain, but they did little except destroy a few of Horus’s wing pieces. The leeches that had severed his limbs were still locked in position above Horus’s shoulders, forming giant wings. Each leech used its red lasers to destroy missiles and explode energy blasts before they could even reach their master’s shields.

  His bike flew past dozens of leeches, dodging streams of energy and exploding casualties. Horus and his army were unfettered by Petra’s defenses as they approached the center of old Dallas where the leech factories had been. Jeff searched for a path to turn around, which would allow him another pass at Horus. If he was ever going to kill Horus or end the fight while some humans survived, he knew now was his best chance, while it was engaged in a battle with Petra’s army.

  Something twitched in his mind, and he let his reflexes guide him. He yanked on the controls to his bike, pulling as hard to his right as possible. At the speed he was moving through the ranks of leeches, the force pulled his body away from his bike, and only his metal arm held him to the vehicle. Jeff righted his vision just in time to see a giant, crawling leech open fire on him. Hundreds of pin-size energy blasts erupted from the massive, faceless centipede. He screamed as he pulled the triggers to his guns in response.

  The energy shields on the bike absorbed the attacks to the best of their ability, but the sheer number of projectiles overwhelmed its systems, allowing dozens of deadly needles of energy to fly past him, inches from burning a permanent hole in his body. His bike pushed forward toward the mechanical centipede as he fired blast after blast.

  The leech’s shields gave way, and Jeff’s attacks split the twenty-foot-long leech in half, burning through its metal frame just in time for him to pass through the middle.

  “That’s right!” Jeff yelled in victory. The smoke from the slain leech cleared, and dozens of leeches came into view, each of them equally grotesque despite their various designs. They fired continuously into the sky above him as volleys from Petra’s forces rained down on them, draining energy from shields or killing the leeches that were no longer able to defend themselves.

  The scale of the battle was beyond his comprehension, but his boxing instincts had kicked in anyway. He knew when a fight was hopeless; he wasn’t capable of even bothering Horus, no matter what he did. The Apostle was on an entirely different plane of existence. Worse than that, there was no one left for him to save. Already, the thousands of people who had lived here in harmony with nature had perished, without a single shot being meant for them. He directed his bike away from Horus and punched the acceleration, forcing the bike out of the path of the next wave of leeches.

  He swerved around mechanical beasts locked in physical combat, as the two sides had finally collided. Force-field weapons, saws, suicide detonations, and more all flew past him, clouding his view, but he let his reflexes guide him through the labyrinth of warring machines.

  He shouldn’t have left Carlee. It was the only thought to drift across his mind as he cruised through the devastation. He’d never imagined anything like this; the battle he had witnessed in the skies years ago paled in comparison to the scale of what he was a part of now. Occasionally, he’d catch a glimpse of fallen humans or other animals, at least what was left of them. This was no place for organic life-forms. Carlee had been right, again. There was no way to save them from his brother’s murderer or the leech armies.

  He emerged from the crowded battleground into a relatively clear section and breathed in what felt like the first time in minutes. His bike curved widely around the conflict, which was fiercest where Horus was closing in on the center of Petra’s forces, which were no match for the Apostle. Petra’s army would have been powerful enough to kill every human on the planet a hundred times over, but it was on the brink of collapse. Looking back at Horus, Jeff couldn’t believe that he had made it through the gauntlet alive.

  His vision swirled as a projectile hit his bike, sending him spiraling through the air. By the time he landed, he was only marginally confident that he was still alive. He pushed on the throttle again, knowing that he if he lingered in a single spot, something would finish him off. The bike notified him through his hood that its shield systems were offline.

  It took him a few minutes to regain his bearings, but luckily, the leeches in the area didn’t bother to put him out of his misery, not with the more deadly targets nearby. He was on the opposite side of the field of battle as the other vagrants now, but it looked thinned out enough that he might have a chance to slide through the rest of the warring leeches and make it out alive.

  Jeff pulled back on the handles of his bike again, turning it around slowly until he had a path to the far side of the battle. If the vagrants had made it out alive, they would be in that direction. He looked to Horus once more and sighed. It was too powerful. He set his course to take him around the Apostle that had served as motivation to drag himself with one arm through the night—and every moment since.

  He took a deep breath as he accelerated into the denser parts of the battle once more. The wind, smoke, and debris from the fighting collided with him because his shields were down, limiting the speed at which he could fly, but it also seemed to lower the amount of attention he gathered. He wasn’t like the tens of thousands of naked humans who had died helplessly in the battle, but he wasn’t a leech either, and apparently, that was enough to help him slide through the fight.

  The fighting in front of him took the bulk of his attention, but he spared a glance over to Horus at every opportunity. Seeing the Apostle filled him with so much hate—for everything it had done at Fifth Springs and for what it was doing now. He desperately wanted to attack it again, but he knew when a fight had been lost. It wasn’t a god, but Jeff couldn’t imagine a way to even damage it.

  The ground beneath his bike jumped, and as far as he could see, a giant cloud of dust burst from the earth. The leeches didn’t pause in their battle with one another, and on this side of the fight, Petra’s forces were having much more success. The ground shook again, and now pieces of the plains broke apart, as if a giant earthquake was tearing the world in half.

  Jeff activated his enhanced vision on his hood once again, and what it showed him took his breath away. He almost rammed a leech with his smoking bike until he remembered to steer at the last moment. The piercing shriek of a siren filled the sky as Horus roared in delight.

  The strange tower that had been in the center of the leech factories pulsed with energy now. The earth split as tentacles, which stretched hundreds of meters long, broke through the ground and Petra’s full form began to emerge from where it had been buried, lying in wait. Jeff’s bike dodged under one of the gigantic arms as it came to life, raining dirt and dust down on him.

  With impossible speed, the tentacle above him whipped around and attacked Horus. Jeff couldn’t pull his eyes away as Horus caught the attack with four of its arms while its other two arms activated fifty-foot-tall force-field swords and brought them down on Petra’s black-metal tentacle.

  Petra’s tentacle spewed energy like a fifty-foot-wide blowtorch, which it directed at Horus as the rest of its body emerged from the earth. Horus defied logic, but Petra’s body exceeded even the grandest descriptions of a god. Its body stretched out of sight, blocking Jeff’s view of its fight with Horus, which was probably a good thing.
He needed to focus on not getting killed.

  It took all of his mental fortitude to keep himself from watching the Apostles do battle. Their combined armies were nothing but filler compared with them. A single tentacle from Petra’s body had smashed down in front of him, clearing his path of dozens of leeches as it obliterated their metal bodies, leaving a long trench where it had landed.

  Jeff shook his head at his stupidity for thinking he could help kill an Apostle. Even with this bike and uniform, the idea that he might have been able to tip the scales in one direction was asinine. Carlee had been right; there was no war between humans and Apostles.

  On the far side of Petra’s new trench, Jeff emerged and took a few shots at a leech in his path. At this point, the fight was so chaotic that it was impossible for him to know which side each robot was on. They danced around one another, shooting lasers, or tangled directly with one another, trying to smash their opponents offline. It was brutal and total warfare, with every leech killing as many of the enemy as possible before being destroyed itself.

  The indicators in his vision were still dense, but already the battle had wiped out thousands of leeches, leaving the earth torn and burned beneath them. Jeff would have been happier that they were destroying one another if thousands of human bodies weren’t mixed in with the rest of the devastation as collateral damage.

  Thinking of the helpless, unable to even fight back for themselves no matter how futile, caused him to shoot at every leech he could, knowing full well that the more he appeared to be a threat, the more likely it was that one of the leeches’ algorithms would target him.

  Jeff didn’t care. A blast from his bike caught the back of a leech that was using pairs of massive claws to hold off two smaller leeches while the three of them exchanged projectiles. His attack sent the large leech off-balance, and an enemy leech took advantage of the situation, jumping on top of the bigger leech. It began drilling into the center of the much larger and clawed robot with a hideous metal-on-metal grinding noise.

  Smoke filled his lungs as he passed over the flaming entrails of a few mechanical casualties. He coughed profusely, catching glimpses of the titanic struggle between the Apostles behind him. Petra had forced Horus back, and judging from the reduced number of energy blasts raining down on Petra’s octopus-like body, it had managed to take a fair bit of Horus’s army down as well.