Know Your Roll

by Matthew Siege

  The gnomes not consumed by the yellow flames were soon swallowed by a miniature blue mushroom cloud that crackled with electricity and shook the basin, levelling the entire hillside and every Hero that’d been running down it.

  “RNGesus,” I whispered, “what was in those?”

  Patch giggled. “Judging by how many of those little jerks just critically failed their rolls, I’d say you tagged them with the rockets I loaded with the One Leaf Clover Elixir.”

  As impressive as it was, I needed to get back to Zazzer. The Gnoll was panting wetly in my ear, and I was crossing my fingers that it didn’t awaken anything in me. “Sorry, Zazzer. Things are hectic up here.”

  “Down here, too.”

  “Are they breaching the tunnel?”

  “Sure are. We could hear the Heroes on the other side of the rock, but they hadn’t broken through quite yet.”

  Shit. I’d expected it, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t get annoyed when it happened. “Pull back, then. I don’t want you guys to try and fight them.”

  Zazzer cackled crazily. “On account of how we can’t, you mean? Don’t worry about that, we’re already running. I’ll let you know when everybody’s clear. You and me are even, by the way.”

  “Agreed. And thanks.”

  “Don’t put those Pegasus off for too long,” Patch reminded me. “And the giant’s picking up speed, just in case you need another thing to worry about.”

  “It’s always something,” I grumbled, thumbing the jump jet pressure to its highest. I queued up a few of the nearest Pegasus targets and waited as long as I could, one hand on the joystick that swiveled the torso and both of my boots poised above the twin accelerators that’d ram us forward as soon as I put the pedals to the metal.

  Bingo’s voice was the next one in my ear. “Da horsies are divin’ at us. Ya do see dem, right?”

  “Yep. Just waiting for the right moment.” I frowned. “How do you see them, though?” I hadn’t seen a viewscreen in there, when he’d taken out the reactor.

  “Patch gave me a little monitor. Said it’d help wit’ my fear of small places, but it ain’t workin’ much.”

  “You’re claustrophobic?”

  “Yep. Alas.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and the looming combatants didn’t give me a chance to respond anyway.

  The Pegasus were about to attack when he surprised me and circled off again, whirling off until they were farther away than the giant. “They’re trying to time it to attack together,” I said to myself.

  I didn’t want to trade punches with the giant, particularly since the Heroes had supposedly used them effectively during the first Smash.

  I wanted to get double-teamed even less, though…

  Even though they were well out of range of the Flame Spewer, a quick spurt of fire in the direction of the Pegasus made them back off even farther and bought me a little time. I wanted to drill the giant, and I didn’t want to catch a stray lance to the face while I was doing it to use the weapon I had in mind.

  “Patch, other than the fact that I’ve got one shot, is there anything special I need to know about the Head Canon?”

  “Don’t miss.”

  I took one last look at the Paladins in the air. They were shifting formation, assembling into a flying wedge worthy of the name. The rest of the Heroes wouldn’t make it to me for a few seconds, which meant that this might be my best and only chance.

  I lined up, zooming in and-

  “Rogues at our back!” Patch shouted.

  I whirled, swiping twice with the Voidsaw,

  Mech Weapon (Melee)

  Roll: 13

  Effectiveness: 65%

  Mech Weapon (Melee)

  Roll: 18

  Effectiveness: 90%

  buzzing through leather armor and bone like it wasn’t even there. The sneaky little bastards were instantly beside themselves as I summarily doubled their number and halved their length.

  Patch had saved us from the backstabs, but now the scenario in front of me had shifted to the point where I couldn’t guarantee my shot.

  Frustrated, I shut the Head Canon down again. I still wanted to take the giant out before he was ready for us, so I pointed Mother’s snout at him and stomped my feet down on the accelerators as hard as I could.

  The g-forces gave all three of us a free facelift as they pressed us deep into our seats.

  “Um, Raze?” Patch croaked. “Whatya doin’?”

  “Have a little faith.”

  I could see why she was concerned, though. We’d come up off the deck, and the giant had lifted his tree trunk like a bat. He used it to point to the fences and took a practice swing before readying himself to Babe Ruth us into the bleachers once and for all.

  I gave him what he wanted. At least, I made it look like I did, slowing down and boosting our altitude. His eyes got wide as I drifted us right across the strike zone. If he timed it right, we were goners.

  At the last second, I cut the jets completely. We weren’t exactly aerodynamic, and as we dropped like a stone he whiffed hard and squared his hips to us, trying not to fall. The wind of the bat screaming over us buffeted the cockpit.

  I was ready for us to hit the ground, making triple sure that we were going to land on our feet before dipping Mother into a power slide and crouching, putting us into the same sort of stance that we’d found the Mech in initially.

  He couldn’t react fast enough. The giant wasn’t worried, assuming that our intention was to dart between his legs and carry on fighting.

  He was partially correct. Too bad for him, that’s the worst form of correct.

  Just before we passed below him, I gave our jump jets full power and hurled us off the ground.

  I was worried about damaging the Voidsaw with the impact, so I kept it at our side as I undertook what was most likely the first Mech-administered flying headbutt to the groin in the history of the world, though if I had anything to say about the maneuver it wouldn’t be the last time we pulled it off.

  Unfortunately for our record-setting victim, we’d sustained so much damage by now that every surface of our war machine was jagged. We tore through the giant’s ample ball sack and cartwheeled out the other side, rupturing his fleshy water balloon in a move that really needed to be filmed by those slow-motion YouTube channels to fully appreciate.

  We landed on our feet as I discovered that the Mech had automatic windshield wipers.

  Our shielding saved us, but the giant’s anguished howl burst everybody else’s eardrums for 300 yards. As he teetered I

  Mech Weapon (Direct Fire) [Aimed]

  Roll: 14

  Effectiveness: 70%

  ripped the back of his ankles out in a surgical spray of Goblin lead.

  He crashed forward so hard, still clutching his bits, that landslides slipped down the mountain to the left and right of the doors.

  The Paladins and their Pegasus, as incessant as Ghoulie Gonorrhea, had been hot on our tail the whole time. They were too close to react to the changing battlefield, and every single one of them got plastered flat to the ground, crushed beneath the giant’s chest.

  “You know what they say?” I asked. “The bigger they are, the harder th-”

  “Play ball!” Patch shouted.

  “No… Is he dead?”

  Bingo chuckled. “If he ain’t, he’s gonna spend a while wishin’ he was.”

  “Zazzer here.” This time his voice was frantic. “We see them. They’re fast. They’re bringing a brightness with them. I can’t give you numbers or troop estimates or whatever it was you wanted. I got to go. We’re going to try and make the doors, but if you don’t blow this tunnel now, don’t bother because they’ll already be inside.”

  I heard the radio hit the ground, and Bingo didn’t need me to tell him what that meant. Now that it was time to unleash hell in the lower strata, I couldn’t help but peer through the cylindrical hatch at the old Gearblin, curious as to how the deed would be do
ne.

  My heart sank when I saw him reach for his flask. “Really?” I chastised. “I thought you were out? Besides, can’t that wait?”

  He flipped me the bird with one hand and held the flask high with the other. It was still capped with the stopper Patch had won in the Claw Game, and Bingo jammed his thumb down on top of it as hard as he could.

  The paroxysm of detonations that erupted far below the battlefield didn’t throw us in the air so much as they made the ground give us a sucker punch of an uppercut.

  Tenacity Roll

  Raze: 8

  Result: Failure

  Damage: 7

  Hit Points Remaining: 17

  “Raze!”

  I had no idea what I was looking at. Some of it was red, and I was pretty sure that was blood, but what the hell was the blue stuff?

  “Can you see him, Bingo? Is he okay?”

  “Dunno.”

  I sat up and put my hand to my chest. It came away bloody, but at least I was able to work out that the blue glow was coming from the vial. It’d shattered when I’d been thrown against the console.

  The buttons and levers were smeared with my blood, and my three point harness had become a two point noose.

  I pawed for the radio. Where was it? Why couldn’t I find it. It took me far too long to remember that it was set into my Bomber Cap, and even then I had to spit a wad of something vital out of the way to talk. “Somebody go check on Zazzer and his guys,” I ordered.

  Illgott was the one that responded. “They’re coming up in the elevator now. I think they’re okay.”

  “What about the fucking good guys?” I asked.

  “I think you’ve got other issues, at the moment.”

  “Huh?

  We were on our right side, and the Goblin chain gun’s lights were blinking orange and read on the console.

  Even with the concussion I’d just earned I was good enough to get us upright again quickly, though I had to grab a rag to wipe down some of the glassteel so that I could see out of them.

  A few of them were dead though, cracked or completely shattered. ‘Hero Within’ had come off the worst, since it’d been the one to go toe to toe with my face.

  Illgott sounded like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. “Raze, are you looking at this?” In the background of the transmission, I could hear a cheer erupt from the nearby Dregs.

  “Damn it ogre, I’m sitting in a Mech, getting shot to shit in the middle of a crossfire hurricane. If you’ve got something you want me to see, can you at least tell me what direction to look?”

  There was a dust cloud near the doors, and right when I grasped that it was coming toward us the ground in front of the Mech cracked, crumbled and then fell away. A blast of debris and smoke shot up, and the next thing I knew I was staring at a deep, wide river of magma.

  The soil kept splitting in the direction of Hallow, snaking into the middle of the city and terminating at Sanguine’s headquarters and the dungeon beneath it

  “Actually,” I told Illgott sheepishly. “I think I might see it now. Nobody’s coming through that tunnel, at least.”

  He laughed. “No, I think not.”

  I leaned over and gave Bingo a thumbs up.

  “Always wanted ta do dat,” he said, licking the inside of the stopper before replacing it atop the flask. “We’re still *shhhtuck*ed, by da way…”

  Chapter 38

  He was probably right.

  “Patch?”

  “19%”

  “I’d have preferred you said a much bigger number.”

  “That’s easy. How about this? ‘69%’. Better?”

  “Much.” She was just trying to cheer me up, and I let her think it’d worked.

  “I’d have mentioned how bad off we were earlier, but a lot of that damage just happened. Besides, we can’t make much use of the scrap right now, not with the black-robed Mages trying to lure the Smash back down.”

  I peered at the screens I had left. “I don’t see any Mages.”

  “They’re the ones the elven snipers are providing cover for over on the north.”

  Shit. I’d forgotten all about them. I turned the Mech to find them up on the ridge just as the first of the enchanted arrows slid through the air. They looked like slivers of light, but when they hit the Mech they cut right through the armor and came out the other side.

  I hardly even felt the jolt as the weapons slipped through us.

  “Good news,” Patch shouted. “They aren’t blasting our armor to pieces, so we’re still at 19%!”

  That was frightening. We couldn’t shrug off those arrows, and the elves firing them were both accurate and very much aware of where they had to hit in order to disable our weapon systems. The Goblin was already broken, but I was sure that shot would’ve scrapped it if it weren’t.

  Once they took out our means of fighting back, they’d turn their attention to the places where the crew were stationed.

  I could see them on the ridge, and behind them the new, telltale purple vortex of magic users beseeching something they shouldn’t have known about, much less been making promises to.

  Their cover was too good, and my angle didn’t give me any line of sight on them other than the bobbing and weaving tops of their heads. “Does anybody remember what the next few batches of Rockets on this thing do? Illgott loaded them, but he didn’t tell me.”

  “Nah,” said Bingo.

  “You’ll like them, I promise,” Patch told me. “They get better and better.”

  “We’ll see.” Another squall of arrows arced through the Mech, this one striking high up on our left arm, making the shoulder seize and a bunch of red lights and alarms fight for my attention. The Voidsaw was still working, but only because they were trying to take out the Head Canon.

  The jump jets only had enough fuel to hop the lava river. I got us moving and did just that. We came down hard on the other side, and for a moment I worried that our fuel-starved landing was going to cave the ground in beneath us.

  It didn’t.

  “Bingo? Did you stash some scrap in this thing?”

  “Course. Why?”

  “I need your help. The chain gun’s down, and without it we’re in trouble.”

  “Fine… Just don’t stop movin’, no matter ‘ow much I’m screamin’ for ya to put me down.”

  “Got it.”

  Before he could open his compartment, I launched a salvo of Rockets, arcing them high. In theory, they’d drop on to the snipers in a couple of seconds.

  While they descended, I twisted our torso around so his hatch was hidden from them. It probably wouldn’t do much good, but at least they might not know he was as exposed as he was. Once the hatch’s external armor had shifted up and he was staring out at the world, I hauled our arm in and pressed the Goblin as close to him as I could.

  Mech Weapon (Indirect Fire)

  Roll: 15

  Effectiveness: 75%

  The Rockets came down in a blistering row, but instead of fire or brimstone I saw a grey mist shoot out of them. A moment later dozens of elves were launched into the clouds at neck-snapping speed. They went so high and so fast that I didn’t think anybody heard their screams on the way up, though the splatter as the came down at random was a sight to behold.

  “Altitudinal Corrective,” Patch grinned. “Gotta love it.”

  We hadn’t gotten them all, but the fire from up there was a lot less withering. I juked when the next wave of arrows came and they missed.

  “I’m going to press the attack,” I said. “As soon as the chain gun’s ready, we’ll get up there and cut them down before they have a chance to pick us apart.”

  My plan seemed simple enough, and that was the problem. It was exactly what they’d be expecting, and if I turned our situations around baiting the metal beast as far out of its lair as possible was exactly what I’d do if I had the chance.

  Be smart about this, Mister Raid Boss. The Heroes may be newbs, but that just means their ta
ctics are all they have.

  They were trying to trick us away from the mountain, and I was letting them!

  “Done!” Bingo shouted, closing up the hatch. “I jus’ voided da warranty, but da t’ing’ll *shhhtuck*ing fire for ya.”

  I turned away from the battle and just about ran into a sneaky little pack of rogues and assassins that’d been hiding, waiting for the right moment to blindside us. They missed their chance as I let the Voidsaw guzzle fuel and casually carved a path right through the middle of them.

  Mech Weapon (Melee)

  Roll: 8

  Effectiveness: 40%

  They were squishy, and I squished them.

  Mech Weapon (Melee)

  Roll: 14

  Effectiveness: 70%

  Unfortunately for the giant, the tunnel blast that’d knocked the Mech into next week had thrown him over here. He was in our path, still writhing weakly on the ground. I stomped Mother right up and over his spine, shredding what was left of his junk and dragging the sawblade up his back right down to the bone.

  Mech Weapon (Melee)

  Roll: 16

  Effectiveness: 80%

  You can never be too careful, and better him than us.

  “Why are we going in the wrong direction?” Patch asked.

  “They’re trying to kite us out of the mountain, and it almost worked. Now that we’ve taken out the big stuff, if they want the mountain they have to come and get it.” I was already at the doors, and I walked our Mechanical in and tucked her around the corner before turning her around, aiming everything I had out toward daylight. “This place is a choke point, and I’m going to choke them dead.”

  “Not your best,” Patch said, “but I agree with the sentiments.”