Based on the style and design of the hole, not to mention that it was the front panel of ‘Hero Within’ I was staring at, I knew that he meant the Ancient Ill-gotten Latchkey.
The one I’d given to Bingo and never gotten back…
If it’s not one fucking thing it’s another. ”Bingo,” I demanded, “you better still have that key I gave you, or we’re toast.”
“Ya mean da key ya gave me when ya preyed on my weakness an’ conned me into getting’ obliterated at dat ogre’s establishment ‘stead of lookin’ after a crew member?”
“The very same.”
His voice got louder. “Da one ya didn’t care about ‘til now, since it’d already served its purpose, sort of how ya used ta treat everybody once ya figured dey were done bein’ of use to ya in da future?”
“That’s the one. You have described the key exactly,” I told him. “Now can I have it, please?”
“Sure.”
I reached down through the hatch and grabbed it out of his outstretched hand. As I stood back up, I saw that Patch was watching me closely.
“Yeah,” I said, “I kinda forgot to tell you about that…”
She smiled fondly. “Get us out of this and all’s forgiven. I’m not going to blame new Raze for what old Raze did. Old Raze was a jerk.”
The door wasn’t moving yet, but an incredibly loud SMASH pounded into it anyway, rumbling the entire mountain and bouncing the Mech around. I was on my hands and knees in front of the keyhole, and the impact smacked my face into the front of the console.
Tenacity Roll
Raze: 6
Result: Failure
Damage: 1
Hit Points Remaining: 27
A massive roar erupted outside. The Brawl of the Mountain King was about to begin, and it was time for me to fire this old girl up and hand some people their asses.
Item Equipped: Ancient Ill-gotten Latchkey
I turned the key and nothing happened. Undeterred, I rattled it around and tried again, and then again and again.
Snap! Item’s new durability is now 1/10
If the others heard it degrade, neither one of them was dumb enough to say anything. I held my breath and let my hand stray to the Replica d20 in my pocket.
“Everything’s fine,” I lied into the radio. “Nothing to worry about.”
I tried the key again.
Vehicle Equipped: Five Magic Catalyst Mech
Callsign: ‘Mother’
Cumulative Crew Experience Level: 10
Skill Level with Current Vehicle Type: Woke
Modules in Use: Ragdoll Physics, Snicker-Snack!, Twitch Stream
Experience Modifier: .01
Damage Potential: Limitless
and Mother rose from the ashes to fight once more.
Chapter 36
The Cumulative Crew Experience reading was wrong, but if the only error this thousand-year-old machine made adding 6 + 1 + 1 and coming up with 10 instead of 8, so be it.
Fresh waves of power coursed through every weapon, component, screen and subsystem the Mech possessed.
And the same thing happened to me.
Level Up, Leadfoot!
Welcome to Level 2: Increase the percentages of 2 abilities
I guess Mother’d done the math correctly, after all.
I’d been having so many problems getting the mech back together that I selected Hack, raising my chance to bypass system errors, passwords and electrical failures to 25% and Trouble Shooting, bumping my odds of working out technological faults to 25%, as well as finding stealthed enemies and bringing the pain to them once I did.
New Hit point Total = 29
Current Hit Points = 28
“I levelled!” Patch shouted.
“Me too,” I called back, unable to wipe the stupid grin off my face. “I guess it’s official. We really are Heroes, after all!”
“An’ just in time ta prove it,” Bingo grunted. “‘Fore ya get nosy, I’m still Level 6.”
The Smash was pounding furiously on the door now, and the tempo was increasing. Mother was coming online, her control panels sipping power as they knit together, re-learning the best way to talk to each other after being separate arcade games for so long.
The doors began to open. The sun was almost touching the horizon, and dawn was practically upon us. The Rift filled the sky, making the light that splashed through my cockpit’s tinted glassteel the color of split plums.
It was suddenly way too bright in here, and I turned the extra interior lights off, yanking my Goggles of Google down over my eyes to cut out the glare.
THE BRAWL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING
begins in
3 minutes - 48 seconds
“Why are the doors opening?” I shouted, though I didn’t know at who. “It isn’t time, yet!”
“Relax,” Bingo told us. “Perfectly normal. ‘Appened last time, too. Dey’ve gotta make a speech ‘fore the Raid’s official.”
I locked my boots into the straps wrapped around the foot pedals and eased the joysticks forward, accidentally putting too little pressure on them and then way too much. We lurched forward, but I corrected in time.
“Not the best start,” I said, “but not the worst.” I banged us across the hangar’s plateau, every stride coming smoother than the one before it.
By the time we were even with the doors I had the hang of it. I coaxed Mother out into the flat part of the basin in front of the mountain and let the Heroes see what they had to deal with, this time around.
Bingo’s voice crackled in my ears. “Fingers off da triggers, boyo. Start it early an’ da Smash’ll knock us flat forever. It’s more referee den enemy.”
“So what happens next?” This was hardly the time for him to be springing things on me, what with us advancing into the field of battle for the first time and all.
“Dere Knight Commander’ll read a proclamation. It’s a contract, ‘ssentially.”
I maneuvered us to as good a spot as I could find. It wasn’t easy to do, since our starting area sucked. We were in a flattened valley, surrounded by a semi-circle of seven hills that guaranteed we were going to get caught in a crossfire once this kicked off.
“What if they fire before the raid begins?”
“Same t’ing. Smash’ll take ‘em out fer breakin’ da rules.”
That was good enough for me to pop the hatch and let the cockpit’s top swing up, exposing me to the sights and sounds of the army arrayed before us. If we were lucky one of them would be dumb enough to take a shot and disqualify their side.
Even if they didn’t, I’d never seen this many people in one place before and I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to survey the field of battle with my own eyes.
There were long wedges of mounted warriors on either wing. Foot soldiers filled the middle in far greater numbers, hundreds wide and half that number deep. Phalanxes of spearmen alternated with lighter shock troops, some of them wild and ragtag whilst others were showing more militarily disciplined columns.
There was artillery on every hilltop, and I could hear the strain of the trebuchet’s ropes and the clang of the antique cannon being loaded. There were detachments of archers on every slope, ready to fill the air with flying death.
And behind it all, just out of sight, the blackrobes’ chants rose in power as a figure in gleaming armor rode a majestic white steed through the center of the army. Every rank parted, closing immediately behind it.
“‘Member, don’t get trigger-happy,” Bingo called up at me.
Now that it didn’t seem like they were going to jump the gun and start the festivities early, I hopped back into my seat and whacked the button that brought the cockpit’s top back into place.
“I know, I know,” I told him, reaching out to the main screen in front of me and pinch-zooming the optics so that I could get a better look at the Knight Commander’s face. All I could see was the gleam of his eyes through the bars on his helmet until he paused, dismounted, and raise
d the visor.
Even though I was sure it’d be Warwick, it wasn’t.
If the poor sod they’d trotted out to fulfill this part of the Raid was surprised to be facing a war machine, he was doing a decent job of not showing it. Of course, he was also being very careful not to look at us at all, focusing instead on the mountain itself.
He unrolled a scroll and began to read, his voice magically-amplified. “As is our rightful place, we have gathered to-”
I ignored him, fine-tuning my optics and scanning the crowd for Warwick. I was sure I’d seen his body move on the dais, which meant that he had to be here somewhere.
“Source?”
“Yes, boss?”
“How many Heroes am I looking at, here?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Try me.”
“Upwards of fifteen thousand.”
“Have you seen this part, before?”
“The formal address? Yes. It’ll be over in approximately thirty seconds.”
THE BRAWL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING
begins in
29 seconds
Perfect. “Thanks, Source.”
“I have taken the liberty of signing you up for three months of Spotify Premium for free and assembling some applicable playlists for the coming battle.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Am I going to like it?”
The first chords of Danzig’s ‘Mother’ tore through the cockpit, and I bobbed my head in approval and got to work. “Good call. Sure beats the snot out of Skynyrd.”
I refocused on the Knight Commander, bringing the Mech’s weapons under my command one by one.
I had to admit, the guy out there had grit. He was still going, despite me finding it hard to imagine that he’d been expecting to face a twelve-foot-tall, sixteen-ton Mechanical bristling with armaments that most of these bastards could never fathom.
He sure did have a long list of complaints, though. “Your investments floundered and your financial advice was unsound. We sought recourse, which was granted when we-”
Thirteen seconds.
“-and as such we fell upon the mount-”
Ten seconds.
“and though we plundered, many myster”-
Eight seconds. I gave the Voidsaw a splash of juice, just enough to spin the blades and make the Knight Commander lose his place.
“I… I mean we shall-”
Five seconds. I popped the rocket hatch, letting them see the warheads drenched in alchemy.
“Glorious combat! Heretofore-”
Source brought the Banshee Flux Radar up to speed and began to quietly designate targets in the background, ranking them in order of distance and preferred termination.
Four seconds. I cut the external mics so that we didn’t have to listen to the finale.
Three. I swiveled Mother 360° on her torso, spitting a circle of fire from the Flame Spewer attached beneath the Voidsaw.
Two. “Buckle up, buttercups,” I told my crew.
One. I lined up my shot and
THE BRAWL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING HAS BEGUN!
flicked on the Ouroboros Caustic Laser Sight attached to the Triple-barreled ‘Venomous Goblin’ Chain Gun and let it rest on the Knight Commander’s armored sternum.
Mech Weapon (Beam Weapon)
Roll: 15
Effectiveness: 75%
The metal began to glow in a green triangle almost immediately, but before he could react
Mech Weapon (Direct Fire) [Aimed]
Roll: 20
Effectiveness: 100%
I tapped the trigger and sent three hypersonic rounds in a tight cluster straight through him.
It happened so fast that his horse didn’t even flinch.
One moment he was there and the next he simply wasn’t. “Our apologies,” I announced over the external speakers. “Due to a sudden and terminal case of lead poisoning, from now on the part of the Knight Commander will be played by a sticky red mist.”
Patch cheered. “Now do that fourteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine more times!”
I knew it was too much to hope for a rout so soon, but when they charged us in full-throated abandon I shivered. They were fanatics, so certain of their victory that they couldn’t resist the chance to race across the basin at us.
There were so many targets that I couldn’t miss.
I held down the Goblin’s trigger,
Mech Weapon (Direct Fire) [Indiscriminate]
Roll: 15
Effectiveness: 75%
spitting a swathe of destruction right down the middle of the assembly. The height of the gun and the flatness of the plain meant that the rounds splattered through multiple Heroes, killing and maiming indiscriminately.
The fastest of them earned my attention, and I raked
Mech Weapon (Direct Fire) [Indiscriminate]
Roll: 11
Effectiveness: 55%
enough raw firepower in their direction to render them into hamburger meat five ranks deep.
I knew I was already burning through my ammunition way too fast, but what choice did I have?
“Careful,” Patch said in my ear.
I dragged a line across the screen of ‘Hero Within’, selecting a row of impact points and flipping the covers off the joystick’s thumb triggers. The Missiles and Rockets I was loaded with had been packed with some of the potions I’d swiped from the Less is Mortar, and it was time to see how effective they’d be in combat.
Better to find out early as opposed to not at all, I told myself, firing off a salvo. Mother shivered as white smoke erupted from my right, obscuring my vision for a second as ten rockets packed with Bone-Shatter Juice arced away.
Mech Weapon (Indirect Fire)
Roll: 14
Effectiveness: 70%
They were coiling, haphazard things, but they did the job I needed them to do when they exploded in a line across a dense square of frenzied skirmishers. Shrapnel soaked in alchemy tore through the lightly-armored troops, detonating the poor SOBs whenever a jagged edge so much as nicked part of their skeleton.
I was still hosing down the Heroes with the chain gun,
Mech Weapon (Direct Fire) [Indiscriminate]
Roll: 6
Effectiveness: 30%
until suddenly I wasn’t.
“Shall I begin the reload of the Venomous Goblin,” Source asked, the instant the weapon ran dry.
“Do it,” I said, as Don’t Fear the Reaper took pride of place in my ears. “And no need to ask for reloads. If there’s still ammo, I want it in the weapons as soon as what I’m using is empty.”
‘Mother’ Personal Settings Updated: Reload set to Automatic
“Understood,” he said.
I saw a countdown timer appear over the readout for the Goblin, which wouldn’t be ready to fire for another twenty-four seconds. The Alchemical Storm had another three volleys left, but I was loathe to use more of my rockets so soon.
“Dey’re pretty damn eager,” Bingo said. “Dat’s gonna be an issue…”
He was right. If they were all this intent on tossing their lives away, I’d run out of ammunition long before Sanguine ran short of cannon fodder.
“I’m going for the Commandant,” I announced. “She’s the head of this beast. If we take her out, the rest of them’ll break.” I sounded more sure of that than I was, but turning this into an assassination mission was better than standing here and letting the tide of Heroes drag us down.
We were only twenty feet away from the doors, which meant that we had to cross the entirety of the basin and breach the hills before we’d be able to spot her.
A bolt of purple energy lanced out of the dawn and hit us so hard that Mother was thrown back into the hangar. If I hadn’t been strapped in I’d have taken more damage, but as it was the Mech was sprawled flailing on her back and I was staring up at the hangar’s ceiling.
“What the fuck?” I asked, stunned. The Smash was playing hardball already, and I was hav
ing trouble making my brains and my hands work in tandem. I grabbed at the joysticks and missed the first few times. Even when I got ahold of them, I could feel us slip and slide on the metal surface as I struggled to work out how to right us.
Jump jets, idiot! Most of the exhaust nozzles were on her feet and along her caboose, and I carefully lifted us off the plateau and got the Mech’s feet beneath her.
The Smash wasn’t done, but this time when it came for us it was much slower, more deliberate. The purple fingers it stretched out slid along our surface before I had a chance to dodge. Right away I smelled burnt wiring and melting solder.
Worse, I could plainly see rogue lines of code and stray snippets of malicious commands crawl across my screens. I wasn’t an expert, but it sure looked to me like the Smash was shoving a virus down our throats.
I was frantic, and it almost made me forget my skills. The passive ones had tried to help before with limited success, but I needed to learn to use what I had more proactively. Being a Hero was hard work, particularly if you wanted to make something of yourself.
No wonder so few of them bothered.
If anything was going to save us, it was Off and On Again. If we let the Smash climb through our components, Mother would burn out. I quickly turned off all of the subsystems I could except for the gun, feeling like a Jedi as their glow died away and I was left manually aiming the Goblin as the reload completed.
It was a dance. If I powered the Mech all the way down before I wrecked the nearest aggressors, they’d tear us apart before we could be back online. If I fired for too long though, I wouldn’t be able to shut everything down and restart before the Smash had its way with us.
The Ouroboros Caustic Laser Sight cut a green beam of agony through everything
Mech Weapon (Beam Weapon)
Know Your Roll Page 33
