by Ben Bequer
It was hard to focus while they kept peppering me with quarrels. They were clever and began to spread out in a wide circle around the crown of the beast. In moments, I wouldn’t be able to hide from them all.
This was no time to be saving the firepower. I took three arrows out of my arrow bag, and fired one at a time, timing my shots to maximize the effect of the special arrows.
One by one, the three arrows exploded. These were fragmentation arrows, designed to explode with tiny shards of molten steel within an approximate area of thirty feet. The range wasn’t much, but a few of the mantas dropped from the sky from each explosion, their riders soon to meet their bone-crunching deaths.
When the smoke had cleared, two manta riders remained, one of them the leader. Enraged, he flew right at me, hurling his crossbow at me. I picked it up and opened fire. It was like a machine gun, auto loading from a large reservoir of quarrels. I shot the leader’s manta, peppering it with shot after shot.
He banked the beast back and jumped off his mount, crashing against the top of the beast’s head. I fired the crossbow again, but the quarrels bounced off his magnificent armor as he drew an impressive glowing sword.
“Gor Narhalkas!” I yelled at him, nearing him as he approached me.
Behind him, the army was quickly approaching, the weapons from the beetle-castle things were already firing, and every few seconds a cannonball or huge ballista bolt would soar overhead or rattle around the crystals. Blaster bolts traced around the beast as the army opened fire with all its weapons.
My opponent stiffened, hearing me call out his former companion’s name, and pointed at me.
“Brackshock,” he said.
“That’s me,” I responded. “Blackjack.”
He nodded and corrected himself, “Blackjack. Dethregas,” he said, pointing at himself.
Dethregas had apparently heard what had happened to his buddy, Narhalkas, so he didn’t intend to even the odds by giving me his sword. He attacked with blinding speed, bringing his sword overhead and down at the spot where I had stood, but I stepped aside behind some clusters, that showered me with shards as he swing across and slammed his sword into the crystals.
Using my momentum, I grabbed the farthest crystal and swung on it, bringing my legs into his midsection and sending him sprawling to the ground. He slid towards the edge, losing the grip on his sword, and almost fell over. Dethregas held to the edge for dear life, but with the agility of an Olympic-caliber gymnast, he lifted his body up, tucked his leg under and hurled himself at me.
I stumbled back, losing my footing and falling forward to my hands and knees. He slammed into my side and pinned me on my back, digging into his belt for a jeweled dagger with his right hand, and pressing his left elbow down on my chest and neck. But in a wrestling match, as in a bow to crossbow fight, he was at a disadvantage. I brought my legs around his waist, powered around to his right, spinning him atop me as I used my back and buttocks as a fulcrum. We went from him being atop me, to him on his back, and me on his right flank with his right arm under me. His free left arm now reached for the dagger, but I wasn’t done, I rolled atop him and straddled him chest upwards, so he couldn’t reach the weapon.
Dethregas clawed at my face and chest, but I batted his arms away and threw a full-bodied punch into his face, caving in the metal helmet and crushing his skull. His body shuddered for a moment then was still.
I heard a scream behind me, and turned to see the final manta rider firing his crossbow at me, enraged that his leader was dead. A shower of quarrels washed over me, most bouncing off me.
We were almost to the army, moments away from crashing into them, when I got an idea. I ignored the final rider and picked up Dethregas’ body, using it as cover and inched back towards the crystal controls.
Carrying the alien was difficult, due to the unsteady ground, and how heavy he was, but I stumbled towards the front lip of the behemoth’s head. I pressed the alien over my head, now overlooking a panicked army, as my mount crashed into the farthest edges, churning through the armored vehicles like if they were paper mâché before Godzilla.
I yelled, “Dethregas!” and threw the dead alien down on his army.
Then the behemoth crunched down on the nearest beetle-castle, and the world exploded.
* * *
I didn’t see much after the initial impact
The mechanical beast basically slammed its chest and forelegs into the enemy creature, killing it and leaving only a gurgling smear of cracked chitin and bloody innards. The blow was like a thunderclap, like a mini-Nuke, an explosion that threw up millions of tons of dirt and dust in a mushroom cloud that obscured half the island. I lost what grip I had and slammed my back against a crystal and spun into yet another, slamming laterally against the gem and grabbing for dear life. The monster churned over the huge beetle, with its massive feet pounding interminably. The angle grew sharply inclined and the rear of it bounced several times as it plowed through and over the shattered insect. On the second, more brutal bounce, I lost my tenuous grip and launched high in the air.
I don’t know how long I soared, but I came down face first, slamming on something hard, something that moved. Could I have landed back on the thing? I slipped and slid, scrambling to find any hand hold, but the only things I could grab were slick seaweeds and wet shrubs that ripped from their roots, leaving me with useless handfuls of plant life.
Then my desperately grasping right hand caught a hold of something solid, slowing my momentum and I swung about, like a clock hand on a pendulum. I pitched around towards a jagged edge and my body fell over but my grip held. Beneath me were the mechanical creature’s rear legs churning and moving, pulverizing tons of rock and stone underneath, leaving a mangled trail of black dirt, peppered with bits and pieces of alien bodies.
We were through the main host of the Mist army, and ahead loomed the alien battleship, my ultimate target.
“Time to skedaddle,” I said to no one and climbed back up to the creature’s back, a task made hard by the bouncing and pounding as it pulverized everything under it. We were moments away from impact with the battleship, a blow that would make the previous one with the oversized beetle look like a minor fender bender, but I ran forward towards the beast’s head and the crystal forest. My job wasn’t done yet.
The alien’s sword had hacked through a chunk of crystal, but hadn’t gone clean through. So I went to the damaged piece and tried ripping it off. I grabbed it and twisted with all my might, but instead of coming off, the crystal commanded the behemoth to turn away from the battleship, towards an empty patch of land and a drop off to the abyss a few hundred yards beyond.
“Oh, Hell...” I muttered remembering that this crystal was the ‘left-turn’ one. I ran over to the one beside it and I twisted back, this time harder, and the beast over-corrected its path, heading now in the other direction.
The behemoth bounced over something large and its hind region rocked up violently, hurling me back, scrambling for a handhold. But I couldn’t help but laugh, when I looked down and saw what the construct was doing. We were doing 360’s over the Mist army, leaving behind a ruined field covered with shattered bodies and equipment. Each successive turn was a bit wider, slowly widening its arc and soon to hit the enemy battleship itself.
I forced myself back at the crystal forest making sure not to slip off. I was running out of ideas. Strength alone couldn’t shatter the thing. The alien’s sword was long gone and I didn’t have an arrow or gadget that could help. Then I realized I had something I hadn’t thought of. The alien bow was still attached to my left hand and arm and the spike that jutted from it made from the same blue crystalline material as Shivver’s dagger, as Dethregas’ sword.
I got a good grip of the crystal with my right hand, and swung my left as hard as I could, aiming at the crack.
The crystal shattered, exploding into thousands of tiny shards. The force of my blow was so much that I stumbled back to the ground and a large piece
of the glowing crystal landed on my lap.
I stuffed it into my hip expandable webbing pouch and came to my feet, bumbling down the back of the beast. It was moving fast, in circular fashion, crushing everything underfoot.
Passing the rear legs, I hurled myself sideways to clear the tail, crashing into the ground which was more like a ground beef of dead creatures, armor and churned up black dirt. The tail cleared overhead and as I came to my feet, all was strangely quiet. All around me was death and destruction, the ground torn asunder and bodies littered everywhere. The Mist Army was in tatters, with a few remaining groups either running in fear, or chasing after the behemoth and firing at it with their weapons.
The monster was badly damaged, on fire, and hobbling from a partially destroyed front leg, but it continued onward and slammed chest first into the battleship with a thunderous crash, and an eruption of flame that knocked me off my feet and covered me with debris.
A pair of rough hands helped me to my feet. Two figures huddled over me, concealed from me by the dust cloud from the explosion. But I knew it could only be Cool and Apogee.
“B!”
I tried to steady myself on my wavering feet, but caught her shaking her head in bewilderment.
“Holy fucking shit,” Cool said. “That was the coolest thing I have ever seen. Oh, my God!”
“You alright?” Apogee asked, kneeling and looking closely at the bleeding quarrels sticking out of my leg.
“I’ll live,” I said noticing dark figures through the field beginning to mill our way.
“We’d better get out of here,” Apogee said, seeing the same thing I was.
“I’m geeking out here! Can I have a moment to say; WHOA!”
I started away, but I couldn’t move at more than a stagger due to the quarrels sticking out of my thigh and leg.
“Sonofabitch!” I yelled.
“Now’s not the time to take those out,” Apogee said, grabbing me and picking me up in a fireman’s carry so I was straddling her back. “Ready?” she asked Cool.
“I wish I had a camcorder,” he said, still in the moment. “Man, that would’ve been badass!”
“Cool!” I yelled at him.
“Yeah, let’s haul ass,” Cool said and we all tore off at super speed.
* * *
The destruction of the army was so haphazard in its design and vast in profoundness that it was no longer a functioning cohesive unit, but more of a scattered few, with varying commanders vying for power, and random bands of aliens fighting each other.
Some chased us on mounts, but not enough to challenge us, nor fast enough to catch us. Apogee’s pace was steady, taking us farther and farther away from the village to our new rendezvous, near where we had originally landed on this shard.
The village was safe, untouched by the battle, and the survivors of the Mist Army that weren’t concerned with fighting each other, were chasing us. I felt some relief that at least one part of the plan had worked. Now we had to cross back to the first shard we had teleported to, and hope my wormhole theory was sound.
Ahead were Dr. Zundergrub and Mr. Haha, though the rabbit robot looked quite different with the Tesla/Retcon machine strapped to his back. Big and heavy as it was, it seemed not to affect his movement or agility.
We stopped at their location and Haha helped me off Apogee.
“Good work, man!” he said, slapping my back.
I looked at Zundergrub, who was silent.
“Piece of cake,” I said, taunting the doctor. “I even found this,” I tossed the crystal at Haha. “Got something that can cut that to the right size?”
Haha studied the crystal a moment then realized what it was.
“We were missing this,” he said, understanding my deception.
Apogee had a faint smile on her face, whether of approval or not, I couldn’t tell.
“They are approaching,” Zundergrub said, looking past us, either oblivious or uncaring to the whole crystal issue.
I shot a glance backwards and indeed, some worm riders were closing fast as was a large contingent of horsemen, though you could barely call those creature’s horses. They had too many legs, including some small vestigial ones, and were far larger than the tallest horse. In addition, they were a burning orange color, trailing a mist that belied their smoky hot temperature.
“So?” I asked Haha.
The robot looked at me, noticing the half a dozen quarrels stuck into my side and thigh.
“I could cut five gems from this crystal without much difficulty,” he said.
“Come on, Apogee,” Cool Hand said and charged the nearest riders. She sped away and together they brought down one, then a second rider, in a flurry of fists and softball bat blows. The other near riders retreated, waiting for their oncoming companions to overwhelm us with numbers.
“Let’s move, gentlemen,” Zundergrub said, lifting up his filthy lab coat as a woman would a long skirt over a small puddle, and ran off.
“It’s going to take us forever to get across Haha,” I said, noticing that it wouldn’t take those horsemen that long to reach us. Behind them, down a long sloping hill, many groups of foot soldiers were rallying, probably a few thousand in all.
“I have a new system,” Haha said, sounding absolutely confident. “Inspired by you,in fact.” He slapped my shoulder again, and ran off after Zundergrub. I followed, shambling along as best my damaged legs could carry me.
* * *
Apogee and Cool Hand lingered far behind us, keeping any enterprising rider at bay, allowing Mr. Haha, Zundergrub and I to run the mile or so it took to get to our launch point at the edge of the floating island. Between us and the portal home hovering lazily in the distance, lay the deep chasm into the wide abyss.
Once we arrived, Zundergrub helped Haha unload the Tesla/Retcon (and now Blackjack) device which now had some newer modifications. The robot had changed it, because it now had a pair of rockets strapped to each side with fuel reservoirs.
I rested on a large boulder, rubbing my aching, bloody leg. Jutting from it were a half-dozen crossbow quarrels, that I didn’t have the courage to rip out in fear they might have barbed heads. The actual wounds were small, but the combined amount of lost blood was considerable. I would have asked the doctor to help my wound if he wasn’t a complete lunatic.
“I built the fucking thing and now you’re going to blow it up?” I asked Haha, worried that the new attachments were some sort of explosive device. As an answer, the device shot up into the air, powered by the rockets. It was tethered back to Haha himself via a loose tendril of metallic rope.
The device, now self-propelled, streaked away from us as fast as a rocket ship.
“Modifications,” Haha said, breaking into a maniacal laugh.
“Should’ve strapped one of those rockets to each one of us, while you were at it,” I said.
“I gave that some consideration, but I figured the thrust flames would burn your legs and decided on this instead.”
Then Apogee and Cool Hand ran up to us.
“We’re running out of time,” he said, breathing somewhat heavily.
The device was more than halfway across the chasm dividing the two islands in the mist. I shot a glance at the approaching horde and I didn’t figure we’d be able to make it across.
Haha was multi-tasking, controlling the rocket device through the attached tether, and using his free hands to cut the gem to the perfect size. His plasma cannon made short work of the crystal, and his perfect memory would soon have it to the exact dimensions we needed.
I stood and shambled away from the group a bit watching our approaching enemy. The forward worm and horse cavalry were mustering around us, keeping us pinned to the edge of the shard. They were led by a pig-grilla commander, who wisely waited for his numerous foot soldiers to arrive.
Then they would overwhelm us.
“How long, Haha?” I asked.
“It’s almost there,” he replied, still at work with his plasma
gun.
“And how long to get each person across?”
“A minute at most. I’ve devised a magnetic system, much like a speed train, except utilizing the Tesla coil as a conduit, and the tether as the magnetic train track.”
That made perfect sense. Like a European or Japanese High-speed railway, only the person would be the train, and the tether was the rail. It would be a hell of a ride, and yes, at that speed, it wouldn’t take but a minute or two to get each person across.
“Ok, I have landed,” Haha announced. “I’m grounding the device, but the first person can begin to put on the harness.”
I looked at Zundergrub, scowling as he automatically assumed that he should go first. I guess it was best, since he was totally useless to us without his imps. In fact, he had done nothing at all in Shard World, yet he retained the entirety of his arrogance.
“Here we go,” Haha said, and Zundergrub was off at high-speed across.
“How long until the next person can go?” I asked.
“I’m afraid one at a time,” he said, but I looked across the plain and saw the enemy army amassing. The leader was good, moving his cavalry to the wings, ranged skirmishers to the fore, and massing his main host in the middle. The already numbered about two or three hundred soldiers, with tens and dozens adding to the force by the minute. They hurried, knowing we were moments away from escaping.
“We don’t have time,” I said, looking over at Apogee.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
Beyond the onrushing warriors, a small group of remaining manta riders flew towards us. They also sensed a quick kill.
“We’re not going to make it.”
I strode to Cool Hand, “You get her on the next harness over, understand me?”
He nodded, “What’s going on?”
“Just do it,” I said and looked over at Haha, who gave me a nod in approval.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she asked, grabbing my shoulder.
“I’m going to buy you some time,” I said and shrugged her off.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said, grabbing me again. “We can make it.”
