Reforged (Bolt Eaters Trilogy Book 2)

by Isaac Hooke

  “Not a chance,” Bambi replied. “What do you think I am, an imbecile?” She pronounced the i’s as e’s, emphasizing her French accent.

  “Maybe the electrical sparks are entering her body?” Eric suggested.

  “No,” Bambi said. “The crystals act as a conductor, drawing the voltage away from the hull. I know, because you experimented on me only moments before, remember?”

  “Okay okay, just get her out,” Eric said.

  Bambi abruptly slid her tail downward, raking the alien blades through the chest area, and leaving behind two gashes in the translucent material.

  A clump of crystal fell away from the chest, revealing the metal polycarbonate composite underneath.

  “See?” Bambi said. “Not even a dent.”

  Eric couldn’t disagree there.

  Bambi stabbed her tail prongs repeatedly into the arms, legs, and head areas, and the sparks continued to pass up and down the crystals. Finally the whole mass crumbled away; the spear fell out of Crusher’s hand at the same time—she was gripping the alien blade with the crystals after all, and not touching it with her own fingers. Dropping that spear was a good thing, because if she touched it without collection gloves, the alien blade would have damaged her.

  “Crusher, are you all right?” Eric said.

  She didn’t reply.

  He touched her shoulders. “Crusher!”

  Still no answer. He noticed that the blue dots that were normally active in the eye region of her Cicada were currently dim. Had the EM emitters been too weak to protect her AI core from invasion by the crystals after all?

  Was she forever lost to him?

  5

  Eric was about to shake her, but then, to his relief, her head tilted back.

  “Oh, hey,” Crusher said. “I momentarily shut down to conserve power. I’m still running on reserves. It would be really good if you could free my mech soon.”

  “We’ll get there,” Eric said. “Hang tight, and conserve power until then.”

  She nodded, and her eyes went dim once more.

  A panel opened in one of Bambi’s legs. “Would you be a dear?”

  Eric grabbed the collection gloves from Bambi’s storage compartment and promptly retrieved the alien spear from the deck. The blade had melted away some of the nearby metal on impact, sending out sparks that had faded away.

  Bambi lowered her barbed tail, and Eric slotted the spear into the vacant hole, restoring her to her tri-pronged state. With the alien barbs in that tail, she picked at the Dragonworm threads encasing her weapons, and tore them all free in short order.

  Then she made a beeline to the sergeant.

  “What about Crusher’s mech?” Eric said.

  “She doesn’t need it right away,” Bambi said. “Look at her, she already turned herself offline.”

  “That’s because I told her too,” Eric insisted.

  Bambi’s avatar shrugged.

  She stabbed her tail repeatedly into the sergeant, working on freeing his mech from its crystalline encasing.

  When she was half done, another group of milk robots appeared at the entrance to the compartment. Eric, Brontosaurus, and Dunnigan did their best to distract them.

  When Bambi broke Marlborough free of the crystals, she took out those milk robots, racing across the deck and stabbing the four of them in rapid succession: their crystalline clumps dropped to the deck, joining the pile of jagged blocks that formed the remnants of the previous robots.

  She returned to Marlborough, using the prongs in her tail to slash through the Dragonworm binds, freeing his limbs, and weapons.

  “Well that feels a whole lot better.” Marlborough rubbed his arms for a moment, as if they were stiff—which was impossible of course. Then he squeezed his right fist, deploying his Wolverine blades, and then began carving the crystals away from Slate beside him.

  Meanwhile, Bambi went to work on Traps.

  They were able to free themselves exponentially from that point, and only had to pause one more time to defend against milk robots. Ten had appeared this time, armed with weapons that were capable of firing crystals. Slate was struck, and recrystallized, but the other mechs jettisoned their spears in rapid succession, dropping the milk robots.

  After retrieving those spears in their Cicadas, via the collection gloves obtained from their storage compartments, they freed Slate again, and the remaining mechs.

  When Crusher’s mech was free, Eric shook her by the shoulders and she reactivated. She folded inside the Devastator and when the cockpit closed behind her, she let out a long sigh.

  “Well, that’s better,” Crusher said.

  Eric returned to his own mech, as did the other Cicadas, and was glad to see his power level jump back up. It went down as he watched, as some of the power was diverted to recharge the Cicada’s battery. He limited that recharge to fifty percent for the moment, with instructions to continue the charge when he returned to the sunlight.

  Slate and Brontosaurus stood next to the entrance, guarding. They had their laser arms bent around the doorframe.

  Marlborough approached them.

  “Still clear out there,” Slate said.

  “Good,” Marlborough said. “We’re going to retreat along the same route we took to get here. We won’t fit the corridors of Scorpion’s path, not in our mechs.”

  “If we go that way, we’ll have to destroy the tractor beam generator at the top of the hangar bay,” Traps said.

  Marlborough glanced at his dual spears. “That’s what we have these for.”

  “You know, while this airship might have inertialess drives that protect it from black hole attacks on the outside, I bet it can’t disperse a gravity well that forms on the inside,” Tread said.

  Marlborough glanced at Tread, gazing upon the dual cannons carried on the back of his Rhino. Sarge’s avatar momentarily appeared on Eric’s HUD, and he wore a thoughtful expression.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Slate said. “If it’s anything like the mothership we boarded twenty years ago, then it won’t work worth shit, at least until we take down the main power source…”

  “That’s exactly my point,” Tread said. “This is an airship, not a mothership. They’re not really alike, at least in terms of power generation abilities. So it will work. Anywhere aboard.”

  “It’s certainly worth a try,” Marlborough said. “But if does work, we’ll need some headroom to escape. Hold your fire until my order.”

  “You got it,” Tread said.

  Slate led the way into the corridor, while the others followed in single file. Tread brought up the rear, since he would be firing the black hole.

  More milk robots and armed spheres appeared up ahead, but Slate made short work of them in his Devastator mech, firing his energy, plasma and laser weapons at the same time against any spheres, and slicing the milk robots with his Wolverine blades. They all seemed so small now that Eric was operating inside his mech once more.

  The Bolt Eaters approached a bend ahead, and Slate held the weapon on his arm around the edge.

  “Clear,” Slate announced.

  “Go!” Marlborough ordered.

  Slate stepped past.

  Traps came next, followed by Eric.

  A defense turret dropped from the ceiling in front of the group. Slate folded his ballistic shield into place and rushed the turret. Eric could see the red heat smears appearing on the inside as the shield took several shots.

  Slate reached the turret and stabbed his alien blades through the energy shield and into the weapon, disabling it.

  Having a mech again certainly changed the tactics that were in play.

  Eric moved forward so that the rest of the units could follow around the bend. When Tread, on drag, rounded it, Marlborough turned toward him.

  “All right, Tread, it’s time,” Marlborough said. “Fire the black hole. Target the far side of the corridor, around the bend. The rest of you, hustle!”

  Tread turned around and
aimed his two cannons down the corridor the Bolt Eaters had taken previously.

  Meanwhile, Eric and the others increased their pace.

  A tentacled tank appeared ahead, barely fitting the confines of the corridor.

  Eric felt the pull then, attempting to drag him diagonally through the bulkhead beside him; all air in the corridor was sucked past, whipped into a gale.

  “Looks like it works after all!” Tread announced.

  Slate still had his shield in place, and he fired over the rim at the tank, with his energy weapon. A tentacle slammed into his shield, and unleashed its energy weapon point blank. The entire inside of the shield turned white hot.

  Slate sliced his alien blades past the shield, and into the metal tentacles, breaking it off. He made his way forward, and kicked aside the tentacle, which was glued to the bulkhead from the gravity.

  Eric leaned a hand against the bulkhead for balance, and fired his energy weapon past Traps, and Slate’s shield. He struck the tank—it hadn’t raised its energy shield. Eric suspected the close confines of the passageway had something to do with that.

  More tentacles pounded Slate and his shield broke away as the tanks weapons obviously opened fire.

  “Someone take point!” Slate dropped to the deck.

  Eric fired his two blades, doing his best to adjust his aim to compensate for the gravity. One blade hit a tentacle, the other traveled past the metal appendages and struck the tank’s main body. Electrical sparks ran up and down the surface, and then the tentacles collapsed, falling into the bulkhead: where the gravity drew them.

  The wind subsided—obviously the interior was pressurized, and the internal atmosphere had been exhausted, at least from this section. Eric could still feel the inexorable pull from the black hole. It was like the bulkhead beside him had become the new deck; it felt strong enough to support his weight, and he thought he could walk on it.

  Sure enough, Slate had already repositioned himself so that he was standing on the bulkhead; Eric did the same, as did the other Bolt Eaters. That new deck wouldn’t hold up for long, he knew, as the compartments in between his current position and the black hole were devoured. In fact, he was surprised it was lasting as long as it was.

  “Did you create a miniature black hole, or a wormhole?” Eric asked, by way of confirmation.

  “Black hole,” Tread said.

  “Oh.”

  The alien ship was obviously made of very strong materials.

  Eric moved forward. He paused beside the tentacle that held one of his spears, and ejected in his Cicada, retrieving his collection gloves from the storage panel, and then slotting the blade back into his forearm. He advanced in his Cicada—he had to amp up his servomotors to the max to counter the gravity—until he reached the tank ahead of Slate. He grabbed the spear, returned to his Devastator, and inserted it, then he swung back into the cockpit.

  Slate shoved the damaged tank forward, since there was no way to squeeze past it. Traps pressed against Slate’s Devastator with his Rambler, adding whatever robotic muscle he could.

  “We’re moving too slowly, Bolt Eaters!” Marlborough said. “Pick up the pace!”

  But the deck collapsed underneath them and they fell into the empty space. Below, Eric could see the tear in spacetime waiting to devour them.

  “Tread!” Marlborough said.

  Tread fired several rapid dispersion bolts at the rip in reality, and it winked out. Eric’s motion shifted, and he was dragged to the right—the direction of the original gravity vector. He and the rest of the team landed on the real deck below. Or rather, the compartments located a few decks underneath it: all that remained of the original deck was a crater.

  “You know, based on the map we’ve created so far, and the images we took of the exterior,” Crusher said. “It looks like we’re close enough to the hull here to blast our way out.”

  Eric glanced at the map. They were on the same level as the hangar bay they were originally headed for.

  “Slate, Mickey, cover the approaches!” Marlborough said. “The rest of you, concentrate fire on the deck!”

  The team members unleashed everything they had at the deck below: energy cannons, plasma bolts, laser beams. The surface became riddle with holes. They concentrated fire on a few of those gaps, enlarging them until light began to pour in—they’d broken through to the exterior.

  Eric could see barren, rolling gray plains below. There was no sign of the blue trees of the forest they had left behind. He used his laser finder to momentarily estimate the distance: the ground was about five hundred meters below.

  The team kept firing until they had enlarged those holes into a single big one capable of fitting all their mechs, including Bambi’s Crab.

  “Leap, Bolt Eaters!” Marlborough said. He dispatched a randomized jump sequence. Eric viewed it on his HUD: he was third. “Tread, you go last. Fire your black hole as a parting gift before you leave!”

  “I’d love to!” Tread said.

  Hicks went first. Then Mickey. Followed by Eric.

  “This is going to hurt!” Mickey said.

  Eric surveyed the sky around the airship. He spotted the other four vessels that were providing escort on the points of the compass. The Dragonworms were nowhere in sight—either they’d been left behind, or had loaded into one of the craft, most likely because they couldn’t fly as fast as these airships could.

  Below him, Hicks hit the ground. Mickey landed twenty meters in front of him, a testament to how fast the airship was moving. Eric in turn hit the ground twenty meters in front of Mickey.

  His Damage Report indicator lit up, and he enlarged it to discover he’d weakened his left and right ankle, knee, and hip servomotors in the fall. They were still functional, but had reduced maneuverability, and their power outputs were limited to one tenth of their previous maximums. He also had several dents and scrapes on his external armor.

  Above him, all five airships abruptly halted, making good use of those inertialess drives of theirs.

  The next mechs that leaped from the hull breach in the central airship had to roll out of the way when they hit the ground, so that the subsequent mechs wouldn’t land on top of them.

  Finally they were all out, and when Tread dropped, he unleashed a bright flash from his black hole weapon; it passed into the ship, and Eric knew the black hole had formed when Tread’s descent slowed slightly.

  The structural integrity of the airship was already weakened from the previous black hole so that as Eric watched, the ship began to implode. In about ten seconds it had completely collapsed, and was engulfed by the black hole inside of it.

  The other four airships were unaffected by the external pull, and hovered toward the Bolt Eaters on the barren ground.

  Tread had landed, and he had his cannon aimed at the black hole above. “Sarge?” he asked.

  “Get rid of it!” Marlborough ordered.

  Tread fired a couple of dispersion bolts, and when they hit, the rip in spacetime winked out.

  Dragonworms emerged from one of the airships. Tentacled tanks dropped to the ground from another.

  “The fight has only just begun, Bolt Eaters!” Marlborough said. “Open fire!”

  6

  Eric folded his ballistic shield into place and dashed forward to join the others. He opened fire, targeting the Dragonworms, since they didn’t have energy shields and were the easiest to take down. He released a triple punch against each one: a plasma bolt, an energy bolt, and a laser attack. Sometimes the bioweapons dodged the first two, but they could never dodge the final, which was instantaneous. He could usually terminate them with one hit if he aimed the laser directly between the mandibles.

  He glanced at his power levels on his HUD; they had gone down, of course, but the levels actually ticked up a bar while he was looking at it. That was a nice feeling, knowing that the sun would recharge his internal battery as he fought.

  He returned his attention to the bioweapons, but was forced to di
ve behind his ballistic shield as the nearby enemy tanks shot energy beams from their tentacles.

  “Two teams, T1, T2,” Marlborough said. “Sending battle formations now!”

  Eric was assigned to T1, whose members formed a line of shields to protect T2 from the tank attacks. Meanwhile, T2 concentrated their fire on the Dragonworms. The bioweapons occasionally launched their webs, in addition to plasma and laser beams, and the members of T2 used their bladed attacks to slice through the nets.

  “The airships are bombarding us with gamma ray beams,” Dee, his Accomp, announced. “So far, radiation armor is holding.”

  Tread fired his black hole weapon again, sending a bolt into the middle of the Dragonworm cluster, and another toward the alien tanks. The black holes formed: the bioweapons couldn’t escape the pull, no matter how frantically they waved their dragonfly wings. Those closest were almost instantly spaghettified and engulfed, while the farther struggled to slow the rate of their demise.

  Meanwhile, the alien tanks slammed their tentacles into the terrain and gripped the surface as they were sucked backward. One tank was lost immediately as a crater formed in the land beneath the black hole, while the remainder held their ground.

  Eric and the rest of the two teams also had to dig in to counter the pull from the two rips in spacetime. Eric plunged his metal feet, toes first, into the alien soil, and secured himself in that manner so that he could still hold his ballistic shield and laser weapon. The wind whipped past from behind, adding to the pull.

  One of the alien tanks was evidently equipped with a black hole weapon, because it fired two dispersion bolts in rapid succession. The miniature gravity wells disappeared, and before the Bolt Eaters could react, that particular tank fired a black hole of its own at them.

  The bright bolt was headed directly at Eric, in fact.

  “Incoming!” he shouted.

  The shield line scattered. Eric threw himself to the ground, and landed only a few meters away from where the black hole formed. He retracted his shield and swiveled his weapon out of the way so that he could slam his fists into the surface for purchase. His legs were immediately flung upward, toward the black hole.