One of them was on fire, and I hoped more than anything that it was the one that got to kill us.
I liked fire…
“Raze!” Patch shouted. “We need to move! You need to snap out of it.”
I heard her, but only a little.
“Wake up!”
“Soon…” I mumbled.
It sounded like Patch was climbing up here, and an instant later she rose up in front of me, lifting her crop top and crushing the most impressive pair of airbags I’d ever seen to my face.
“Snap out of it!” she yelled mid-motorboat. “Come on, babe!”
Patch has used Galvanize!
It’s Super Effective!
Contested Poise Roll
New Roll: 20
Result: Raze Success
I tugged the joysticks back as hard as I could, not bothered at all when the motion bumped Patch’s ass against the console behind her and then threw her against me once more.
The stone missile bounced harmlessly passed us, skipping off the plateau and toppling into the lava below.
The flaming projectile hit the ground just in front of us and spilled fuel in every direction. Burning pitch and flaming oil crawled across the corpses faster than I could back away on the uneven terrain. The substance was sticky, and it was already beginning to climb our legs.
We were in a tough spot, and now the ground was slippery and on fire.
I hadn’t really expected that there’d be anything Patch could do, but she hauled her shirt down and scrambled back into her seat. A second later the hiss of wet waves of foam erupted along the bottom half of our torso as she put out the flames.
“The foam’s a metaphor!” I called after her.
“Ew,” she said into my earpiece. “Annnnnd, now I can’t unsee it.”
“Thanks for the help. Any chance you can come back and do that to me again?”
“Later, gator.”
“Incoming,” Bingo called.
He was right. Another boulder was already arcing up through the sky, though he’d seen this one in time for me to zoom in on it and get Source to predict where it’d land.
Only it wasn’t a boulder at all. It was a net tightly packed with Mine Mites, an armored invasive species from the exotic reaches of the south that ate metal with a ferocious appetite. Each of them were about three feet long, and they could hop fast enough that tracking them was going to be an issue when they landed and scattered.
“Damn it,” I said, wracking my brain as to what to do. “Some of them just had to come prepared.”
Bingo laughed. “Dey tried dis last time an’ failed. Da Mechronite of the doors is laced with poison.”
“Great. Did you guys think to treat the Mech with the same stuff?”
“*Shhh*it. Now dat woulda been a good idea…”
“Fuck this, then.” I fired up the jump jets along our back and shoved both joysticks as far forward as they’d go. Normally I’d have used the ones under my feet as well to get us some elevation, but any altitude would put us further into the path of the descending Mites.
I scraped across the ground, leaving the Mech bay further behind as I churned through the charnel. Occasionally I’d throw sparks and cuss words as I struck a rock concealed below the bodies, and the trail I left looked an awful lot like beef stew.
Once we got going, I stopped worrying about the big, slow projectiles slamming into us.
The Mites in the net hit the ground by the doors, chomping on them hungrily. Bingo must have been right about the poison. Their mandibles weren’t causing the metal any damage, and a couple seconds after they tried to take a bite they were rolling around in agony.
Now that I didn’t have to worry about them sneaking up on us, I scanned the surroundings as fast as I could. I had a long moment to appreciate just how much carnage we’d created so far, though the Heroes still hadn’t had their fill.
From every direction, waves of protagonists were screaming their heads off, throwing lightning and firing enchanted arrows, raging in barbarian splendor down the hills or sneaking through eldritch shadows that shouldn’t have been there in an attempt to backstab us.
“How are we doing down there, guys?” I asked the other two as I zoomed to the right, forcing the Heroes to change direction if they didn’t want to get outflanked. If they’d continued to press for the doors I’d have re-engaged, but word had obviously gone out that we needed to be taken down ASAP.
Patch went first. “No lie, we’ve been taking a beating. I’ve had to reroute some things, but we’re holding together. Hull integrity hasn’t been breached yet. Some of the lovely armor I just applied is already ruined, though. It’s not a big deal yet, but it may be soon.”
“Okay. Let me know if we fall below 80%.”
She giggled. “Raze, we were lower than that before the doors even opened. Mother’s sitting pretty at 47% right now, and I’d say that’s good considering you let them take batting practice against us for a while.”
I sighed. Every depleted percentage of armor represented a chunk of plating shot, scraped, torn, or melted off, and they weren’t done yet.
Eventually, there wouldn’t be enough to turn a blade or deflect a bullet. Once that happened, the fusion-powered killer we were operating would be nothing more than a convenient casket.
“Okay. Well, I guess just let me know when they start shoving their swords through the armor and stabbing you. Bingo, you’re up. What’s our power status?”
“Reactor’s good. Everyt’ing’s askin’ for da right sort of juice, an’ so far I can give it to ya da whole *shtuck*ing day. Yer ammo’s sittin’ as pretty as it’s ever gonna be.”
“I vote we take the fight to them,” I told my crew.
“Seconded,” Patch said.
“Make it so,” Bingo agreed.
“For the last time, just stick to Star Wars, okay?”
Chapter 37
Source was quiet, even though I knew he was hard at work. Now that I was plowing toward the hills, carving through Heroes as I went, there were way more targets flooding toward us than even he could track. To his credit, he was doing his best to feed me a constantly updated click-baity list of what he’d assessed as the Top Five Current Threats (Number 3 Will Shock You!).
#1 Metal-Mite-launching Siege Engine on South East hill nearest the road to Hallow, reloaded and currently swinging to target us
#2 A flying-wedge of charging Paladins mounted on celestially-summoned flying horses currently diving at us from above, the sun at their back
#3 Team of gnomish artillerists currently manning a hyper-cannon with a timed charge
#4 A six-strong squad of elven snipers chanting over mithril-piercing arrows
#5 Giant Mercenary stepping off the Platform, clearly sent by the Powers That Be as Reinforcement
That last one had me worried. It was still a long way off, which must have been the only reason that Source hadn’t bumped the twenty-five foot colossus higher on the list. It was dragging a tree behind it as a club, and I didn’t envy the poor slobs that’d been in charge of stitching together the enormous amount of random pelts that made up his surcoat.
I was trying to save the Head Canon for an engagement that would drag our butts out of the fire, but the problem I was quickly having to come to terms with was that every single thing on that list could end us with ease.
Even if they didn’t, their sum total would. I was strapped into the pilot seat of a sixteen-ton act of God, powered by twisted imagination and the best dead minds bent toward the most nefarious of purposes, but that didn’t make me invincible.
I’d jumped at the chance to murder the lot of them, but now that I was waist-high in their bodies it was quickly becoming clear that they were as much a force of nature as we were.
The siege engine that’d fire the Metal Mites was almost ready to fire. Source had rightly flagged it as Gearblin Enemy Number One, and I leveled the chain gun at it and ripped a long burst of hot pain in its direction.
<
br /> Mech Weapon (Direct Fire) [Indiscriminate]
Roll: 4
Effectiveness: 20%
I’d smacked a lot of rounds into the weapon’s wooden frame and thrown a bunch of dirt into the air, but the bulwarks they’d piled up around it were proving effective. Even though I’d made a lot of splinters and added a few more bodies to the tally, the weapon itself wasn’t out of the fight yet.
Their payload squirmed in the tightly packed net. The mites they’d already fired weren’t an issue, but this next batch would be soon.
I shoved more power into the Ouroboros Caustic Laser Sight and dialed up the chain gun’s magnification again, zooming in on the trebuchet’s vitals. I gave the green beam of bad intentions a moment to settle on a pulley, and then a joint, and then a set of particularly important knots along the top of the net.
Mech Weapon (Beam Weapon)
Roll: 18
Effectiveness: 90%
That did it. The counterweight lurched to one side and the engine toppled. The whole thing collapsed, dropping timber and angry insects straight on to the heads of the hapless operators.
Now that the Metal Mites were hopping free, I circled that hill on the map. Better stay away from there.
The Heroes hadn’t realized that yet, though. The pests they’d imported were dangerous, and fortunately for us there was a lot more food for them in the immediate area than down here where Mother was. I chuckled evilly as I watched them work their way through crowds of armored warriors, snacking at will, chomping down swords and wrenching shields out of stunned hands as panic finally set in over there.
“The Paladins are divebombing us,” Source said.
“The ones on the Pegasus? Pegasuses? Pegasi…? Hey, what’s the plural?”
Source didn’t have a tongue, but he clicked it at me anyway. “There is no such thing. The actual Pegasus was the result of a rather awkward union between Poseidon and Medusa. Did you know he was born when she was decapitated? Talk about the circle of life. Anyway, there’s only one Pegasus. Those are just flying hor-”
Wham, wham, wham! His longwinded explanation didn’t get a chance to wrap up before a line of them whizzed down from the sky on a strafing run. The Paladin atop them braced themselves in their saddle and rammed lances into the joins and components our damage had exposed.
“Idiots!” I shouted, laughing. “What the hell do they think that sharpened metal sticks are doing to do to us?”
Wham, wham.
“A lot!” Patch told me. “Some of them are bouncing off, but a few of those lance tips are wedged in our vitals.”
Wham.
“So?”
“So maybe nothing, but if they were smart enough to give those Paladins something that could expl-”
BOOM!
Tenacity Roll
Raze: 8
Result: Partial Success
Damage: 3
Hit Points Remaining: 24
The detonation that cut her off was so intense that I could feel the heat of it even through our Mechronite. Alarms blared and we reeled to our side, arms flailing as we fell over.
The prizes behind me in the claw game were thrown around, and I guess a couple of their batteries were still good because they started quacking and barking.
A few of the ones in discrete brown boxes even began to vibrate…
“Patch?”
“Shut up, Raze.”
At least Fibble, stalwart as ever, was still where she’d wedged him on the dashboard. He didn’t have any answers, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still hanging on tight.
Hang in there.
Even though we were sideways, Patch was working furiously at her viewscreens. They were full of the flying horses’ brown eyes as they circled off, at least until she focused the external camera she was using on the Paladin, and then on their lances.
“They do indeed have explosive tips on their weapons,” she reported.
“You think?”
“I just wanted to confirm that I was right. It looks like they can reload them, and they’ll be coming around the mountain again in a minute or two.”
Great. I fought for control of the Mech, but Mother wasn’t responding. If those damn Paladin got another run in on us, we might be done for.
Flopped over like this, I couldn’t swing any of our weapons around on them.
I finally got our feet underneath Mother again, the metal around me screaming as I forced us up using the arms in ways they almost certainly weren’t designed for. I was worried that I’d damaged them, but I was still getting green lights across the board.
Bingo had a big wrench down in his compartment, and he was beating the devil out of the generator. I ignored his use of Percussive Maintenance for as long as I could, which didn’t last for more than a second or two.
That was how long it took me to put pressure on the foot pedals and try to move us forward, only for the Mech to not respond.
“Bingo?”
“I know,” he grunted, smashing at the dynamo with renewed stamina. “Gimme a sec…”
I watched as he snatched up his finely wrought flask, taking a final long hit from it before using Universal Solve-n’t and dumped the rest of its contents straight over the top of the generator. Sparks flew and electricity zigzagged across his controls.
The dials on my console surged, fell away, and then slowly climbed again.
“Dere ya go!”
“Good job, old man!”
“I’m all outta booze,” he said sadly. “So make it wort’ it.”
I shuffled us to the side as I fought to give the Mech a clear shot at the flying Paladin.
Whatever their mounts were supposed to be called, they were nothing more than pretty packages that held all the arrogance of a unicorn and somehow managed to add wings to it. I’d ignored them for too long the first time, and now they were right on top of us again.
Literally.
“Hang on!” I shouted, and for the first time it was a legitimate warning and not just my way of saying ‘look how cool this badass maneuver I’m about to do is!’ I dug the Mech’s toes into the ground and shoved too much fuel through only the jump jets mounted on the rear of our shoulders.
We overbalanced as desired, falling headfirst into a knoll of the not-so-dearly departed. As the wave of Paladins swept low I heard a few of their horse’s hooves clatter across our back armor.
That was better than it could have been. Especially when I stood us up again and saw that a few of the beasts’ wings were on fire from where they’d gotten too close to our thrusters.
The burning ones were too slow, and I revved up the Voidsaw and took a swipe at the rear of the group as they wheeled away.
Mech Weapon (Melee)
Roll: 6
Effectiveness: 30%
I sliced straight through three of them, and the Paladins on their back, now sans legs from the knees down, tumbled out of the severed stirrups and joined the bottom half of their steeds in a short, messy plummet on to the smeared grass.
They weren’t as hardy as I’d thought they’d be. I guess when you give a horse hollow bones, you’re bound to end up compromising sturdiness for flight time.
The top of the critically wounded animals still beat their smoking wings a couple of times, just enough for them to splash long lines of gore along the path of their retreat until they too hit the dirt.
That should have been enough to prove to just about anyone that attacking me with melee weapons, explosive-tipped or not, was a great way of cashing in your life insurance policy.
Not these headstrong Paladin, though. They were far more concerned with bringing us low than with surviving to fight another day via a tactical retreat.
For the moment I had to settle for sending some wild Venomous Goblin shots in their direction to chase them off for an extra couple of seconds.
Mech Weapon (Direct Fire) [Indiscriminate]
Roll: 3
Effectiveness: 15%
Crap.
At least they were close enough for me to use the Goggles of Google on them.
Name: Pegasus
Archetype: Animal Companion
Level: 3
Hit Points: 29
“Ha!” I shouted. “Source, you don’t know everything! They are called Pegasus!”
“Well, they shouldn’t be. It won’t matter soon, if you don’t stop the rest of them from making another run at us.”
He was right. I glanced over at the blackened ground where we’d been standing when they’d hit us the first time. Chunks of our wrecked armor lay scattered in a starburst from the crater.
“Raze,” Source said, suddenly all business. “The gnome’s cannon trajectory is as close to perfect as I can calculate. If the artillerists fire it, the Mech won’t survive.”
“On it.” I let the Pegasususi go and rotated our torso around to deal with the gnomes and their ordnance. I didn’t have the AI’s ability to compute angles, but it was easy enough to stare down the wide barrel and know that the damn thing was going to throw a hole right through us.
Source hadn’t originally given them top priority because they weren’t ready, but now they were charging the thing up and preparing the thick fuse that would fire it.
On top of all that I had to deal with, my earpiece started crackling differently than when I talked to my crew. “Can you hear me, Raze? Are you there?” It was Zazzer, hopefully contacting me from the tunnels below the mountain.
“I am. One second…”
Once I made sure that the Head Canon wasn’t accidentally getting fed power due to the previous surges, I lined up the gnomish battalion and held my thumbs down on the Rocket buttons.
Whoosh!
Mech Weapon (Indirect Fire)
Roll: 17
Effectiveness: 85%
I’d been hoping for spectacular results, and I got them. Ten Rockets fired so hard that they rocked Mother, and I was glad I’d taken the extra second to pin the gnomes dead center in my view screen as I watched a devastating line of ordinance rip straight down the middle of them, touching off secondary explosions as the heat cooked off their battery packs.
Know Your Roll Page 35
