Click Click Boom (War Wolves Book 2)

by Jonathan Yanez

  “Yes, it is a common practice among the Trilords to sever a hand from the dead once a member has passed. The limb is then dried and pulverized into a paste,” Ketrick explained as if he were talking about the weather. “Is there something wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Vet shrugged, the constant scowl on his face lightening for a moment. “I think it’s kinda cool. I like it. It makes my face tingle. It’s like I’m exfoliating or something. ”

  Rizzo found a cloth smeared with grease used to maintain their weapons and began scrubbing his face.

  Wang went down on all fours and vomited.

  Riot was torn between laughing and gathering her crew to meet Rippa and the rest of her Spartan mech unit.

  Ketrick sidled up next to her, his long staff blaster rested on his right shoulder. He leaned in and whispered, “It’s just paint. Dye from my homeworld mixed with mud.”

  Riot couldn’t help laughing now. “All right, ladies. Let’s get it together. We’re moving out. It’s time to rendezvous with Rippa, and then off to meet the Zenoth. Wang, did you have bananas for breakfast?”

  16

  The Archangel A4 transport ship they walked toward as they exited the Valkyrie looked like a metal squid to Riot. A massive bulkhead gave way to a smaller body, with two fins followed by eight thrusters in the rear that were maneuvered into an octagon shape. The ship itself was twice the size of the Valkyrie. If there were weapons mounted on the craft, Riot didn’t see them.

  Even at this early hour, the hangar hummed with activity. Grovothe engineers ran across the hangar floor, carrying hoses and tools. The sounds of busy hands at work echoed around the massive room.

  As the War Wolves made their way to the transport ship, Riot caught sight of one of Rippa’s men, the Grovothe named Atlas. He was kneeling near the transport doors that opened up on either side of the massive transport. He was re-buckling his boots.

  He wore a skin-tight grey uniform with the marking of his unit across his chest. The symbol for his unit was a black helmet resembling something an ancient warrior would wear before riding into battle.

  “Why do you reek of vomit?” Atlas looked up at Wang as they stopped next to him. He continued in his gruff, no-nonsense voice. “The fear of the Zenoth have you returning your last meal?”

  “No, just the fear of getting diseases from Ketrick’s dead relatives.” Wang grimaced, rubbing his face again. “I can still taste his grandma’s hand in my mouth.”

  “Is he touched in the head?” Atlas stood up, raising a dark eyebrow toward Riot.

  “Jury’s still out on that one,” Riot answered back. If she wasn’t carrying her pulse rifle in her right hand and her helmet in her left, she would have swirled a pointed finger around the side of her head. “We’re all a little broken upstairs, if you know what I mean.”

  Before Atlas could answer, Rippa appeared in the ship’s doorway. The female Grovothe wore the same tight, dark grey suit as Atlas, the only difference being the striped insignia on her collar to designate her rank.

  Rippa wore her hair in braids on the right side of her head. The other side was pulled behind her ear. Her red hair made it look like her head was aflame with fire.

  “I thought I heard you out here.” Rippa nodded toward Riot and her crew. She gave Ketrick a raise of her brow as she continued. “If you’ll step in, we’re ready to go. I have the details of our mission we can go over as we approach the planet.”

  “Let’s get to it, then,” Riot said.

  Rippa motioned for them to enter as she retreated back into the transport ship. Riot stepped aboard the ship, where she was met with a dozen different new sights at once. The ship seemed large from the outside, but the inside made it look even bigger.

  To her right and to her left, the transport ship extended out. To her left, the four armored mech suits Rippa and her unit would pilot into battle stood back to back. Four sentries poised for battle. Ragnar and Brimley were by their units, going over last minute checks.

  To Riot’s right, seats lined either side of the wide ship. In the middle were crates of ammunition, shelves of weapons, and stores of what Riot guessed was some kind of gasoline.

  The inside of the ship was painted the same dull grey as the outside. The seats had a black fabric pulled tight over thin cushioning. Each seat came equipped with a shoulder buckle and lap harness.

  Farther to her right, Riot could see where the doors to the pilot’s section closed off the rest of the ship. A circular pane was set in the center of the door leading to the pilot’s section, with a panel of see-through glass.

  “Hey, guys!” Ragnar dropped what he was doing and welcomed them with a warm smile. “Take a seat and make yourselves at home. I’m just super excited to be going on this mission with everyone. I mean, the War Wolves and the Spartans, fighting side by side? Seriously? Oh, man—epic!”

  “Ragnar,” Rippa said, giving the member of her team a stern look. “We talked about this.”

  “Right, right, sorry, sorry.” Ragnar waved to Riot and her unit again before moving to a seat alongside the far wall.

  It was then that Riot noticed the constant booming of the Dreadnaught’s guns had come to a halt. She had ignored the weaponsfire until now. Now that it was gone, it was strange to have a moment of quiet.

  “Hello, ladies and gentlemen, Trilords, humans, and of course, our resident Grovothe. I’m your pilot Troy, and we’ll be lifting off in five,” Troy’s voice cracked over the ship’s comms. “We’re just waiting on our escorts now.”

  “Understood.” Rippa touched her right ear. “Strapping in.”

  Rippa moved to the far wall where Ragnar was already strapping himself in. She pressed a blue button on a control panel. Another line of seats rose slowly from a hollow space in the floor, facing the seats on the far wall.

  “We can’t be sitting on opposite sides of the ship, now can we?” Rippa asked. “Please take a seat and settle in. We have a lot to go over.”

  Riot followed the Grovothe’s instructions. She chose a seat in the middle of the row, facing Rippa and her unit. She made sure the safety on her weapon was engaged before crossing it over her lap. Her helmet went under her seat.

  Humans, Grovothe, and the Trilord all buckled in. To Riot’s surprise, the buckles that came over her shoulders actually unraveled themselves and locked into place with the belt across her lap. The technology was something like one of the wristbands that was straight when you slapped it onto your wrist then conformed to your arm once it made contact.

  “The objective today is pretty simple.” Rippa sat across from Riot. Her expression was hard as she took the time to look each of them in the eyes. “We’re one of three teams hitting the three Zenoth hives on Raydon today. We have the privilege of taking down the largest target. We can expect heavy resistance. We get in, destroy the ship the Zenoth are building, and hightail it back to the rendezvous. Any questions?”

  “Do the Zenoth have these new weapons and armor of theirs operational?” Riot asked. “If they don’t, how durable is their exoskeleton?”

  “Good question.” Rippa looked over to Brimley. “Brimley is our resident genius on the Zenoth. Brim, care to take this one?”

  The dark-haired Grovothe nodded, pursing her full lips. “We don’t know if the weapons they have been developing thanks to the Karnayers are operational yet. The last time we went down into one of their hives, they did not have the weapons ready yet. If they charge us as usual, their greatest assets are their sheer numbers and the pincers that extend from their mouths. Don’t get caught in one of their holds, and whatever you do, don’t get surrounded.”

  “Since we have the mechs, we can take the front assault and clear the way,” Rippa said. “Your team can—”

  “I’m not trying to piss in your cereal here,” Riot said, raising a hand, “but the War Wolves aren’t going to play second fiddle. We’ll be up there on the front with you. Our armor is stronger than it looks, and we have nanites injected into our blood
stream that will heal us instantaneously.”

  Rippa opened her mouth as if she were about to argue, then thought better of it when she saw the intensity in Riot’s eyes.

  Atlas slammed the transport ship’s door closed before coming over and taking a seat with the rest of his unit.

  “Firing engines,” Troy said over the ship’s comms. “Hold on to your butts.”

  The thrusters roared to life, filling the transport ship with a heavy thrum. The transport ship shuddered as it lifted from the hangar bay floor and maneuvered into space.

  Riot was rattled in her seat for a brief moment as the ship exited the force field bay screen that separated them from space. She stared past Rippa’s head at the windows behind her that showed a black background with hundreds of bright lights in the galaxy.

  “If you put these in your ears, we’ll all be connected.” Ragnar reached for a case under his seat. Inside were a dozen small earpieces with a short wire coming from the top. “Just put it in your ear, and I’ll do the rest.”

  Riot took the offered earpiece. It looked harmless enough. It was a dull cream color with a tiny antennae poking out of one end. She placed it into her right ear.

  “You’ll be able to hear us talking with you, via the earpiece,” Ranger explained, pointing to his own ear. “When you want to say something back, you’ll have to press your ear to speak.”

  “Gonna be kinda hard to apply pressure on our ears when we’re wearing our helmets,” Wang said, looking over to Riot for agreement. “What do you think, Captain?”

  “Vet, maybe you and Doctor Miller can get with Ragnar on this and figure something out?”

  “Roger that,” Vet said. He unbuckled his harness and switched sides in the row of seats to sit next to Ragnar.

  Doctor Miller did the same thing. The trio began talking in low, excited voices.

  Riot took the opportunity to fill Rippa in on her plan. “Doctor Miller may be staying here on the transport ship. She’s a noncombatant, and well … it doesn’t look like were going to do a whole lot else besides combat, here.”

  “Understood.” Rippa placed a hand on either side of the harness that was keeping her still in her seat. “Why do your people only refer to you as Warrant Officer Riot? Do you not have a first name? Or a last name?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Riot saw Ketrick perk up at the question.

  “Better not to go there with the captain,” Wang warned from his seat.

  Rizzo shook his head and made the motion of slicing his throat with this right pointer finger.

  “She’s a bit sensitive when it comes to her first na—”

  “That’s enough Corporal Wang,” Riot said, leaving no room in her tone for argument. “I prefer to go by my last name.”

  Wang shut his mouth.

  “It’s something that I’ve wondered myself.” Ketrick leaned forward to look past Rizzo, who sat on Riot’s right. “But I’ve never asked.”

  “Maybe she is ashamed of her first name?” For the first time Rippa looked at Ketrick without disdain.

  “Perhaps,” Ketrick answered.

  “You know, maybe you two always going at it isn’t so bad after all,” Riot growled. Her name was one she had inherited from a grandmother on her father’s side. It was a name she had been teased and ridiculed for at an early age. As soon as she’d reached high school, she’d started to go by “Riot.”

  “Are you afraid we will laugh at you?” Brimley asked from her seat between Rippa and Atlas. “I assure you, we will not.”

  “It’s Gertrude, okay!” Riot shouted.

  “There is nothing wrong with that name.” Rippa looked let down, as if she’d been expecting something truly horrific. “I have an aunt back home named Gertrude Widebottom. She is a beautiful woman.”

  Brimley and Atlas nodded along with shrugs as if they, too, saw nothing wrong with the name. Ketrick, on the other hand, wore a wide grin on his face. The two canine teeth that extended out like a predatory animal fell over his bottom lip.

  “Not a word.” Riot set her jaw so hard she could feel her muscles twinge with the pressure. “Not a word, you Trilord son of a gun.”

  “No words, Gertrude.” Ketrick settled back into his harness.

  The only thing keeping Riot in her seat besides the straps was the need for the mission to succeed. Heat touched her face as she thought about a dozen ways to kill Ketrick. “I’m going to make you pay for that, you little ba—”

  “Heads up to enter your mech units as requested,” Troy warned over the ship’s comm. “We’ll be touching down shortly.”

  17

  “It’s a temporary fix,” Vet said, working on Riot’s helmet. “But with Ragnar and Doctor Miller’s help, we’ve been able to splice into our comms. We’ll be able to talk to Rippa and her unit, as well as each other now.”

  “Good,” Riot said.

  As soon as Rippa had heard the announcement over the comms to prepare, she had unstrapped herself along with the rest of her unit. Ragnar had passed last minute instructions to Vet and Doctor Miller before joining his unit by their mechs.

  The four Grovothe warriors that made up the Spartans knelt before their mechs and lowered their heads. Riot could barely make out what they were saying over the hum of the engine. It sounded like some kind of prayer, led by Rippa.

  “If it’s our time to go, then it’s our time to go,” Rippa said with her eyes closed and her voice as cold as iron. “Our death day has already been decided long ago. Let us fight without compassion for our enemy, fearless in the face of combat. Defeat is not an option. Today, we will teach the Zenoth horde the meaning of fear. We are Spartans, and we are strong. We stand as one!”

  “We stand as one!” the other three members in her party repeated.

  As one the unit said, “Strength in struggle. Victory at all costs. Death to our enemies.”

  The Grovothe opened their eyes. They stood up, preparing to mount their mech units.

  “Wow, I’m glad we’re not going to have to fight them,” Doctor Miller said, blinking her large eyes a few times. She worked on Wang’s helmet, syncing his to the Grovothe comms. “Kinda intense, right? I have goosebumps.”

  “Perhaps the halflings are not as weak as I thought.” Ketrick shrugged.

  Riot looked on as Rippa and her Spartans mounted their mech units. A control panel near the left foot of their suits of armor had a built-in hand scanner. Each pilot placed their hands on the instrument. A loud hiss filled the room as the center of the mech units opened.

  Each armored suit stood twenty feet tall. For the five-foot-nothing Grovothe, it would be a high leap to enter the chest cavity of their mech units. This had been fixed with a narrow stepstool that slid out of the chest fissure, allowing the Grovothe access to their cockpit.

  A moment later, Rippa and the rest of her unit disappeared into their mechs. With a hiss of hydraulics, the steps retreated back, and the openings to the cockpits closed. One by one, the blue lights showing through the armor’s helmets blinked on with a sinister glow that made the flat black mechs even more intimidating.

  “How come we don’t have a prayer when we go into battle?” Vet asked with his ever-present scowl. Ketrick’s war paint still on his face in the shape of his own handprint made it hard for Riot to take him seriously.

  “Touchdown in four minutes, boys and girls,” Troy warned over the ship’s communication speakers. “Get ready.”

  The mech Rippa had entered turned its helmeted head over to Riot and the others. Rippa’s voice came from the armor suit. “My unit will drop a minute before touchdown and secure the landing zone.”

  “Roger that,” Riot said as the ship shuddered. Out of the small, square windows in front of her, Riot could see the ship entering the planet’s atmosphere.

  The transport shipped rocked harder. Riot was pressed against her seat’s restraints as the oxygen around the ship burned. Entering the planet’s orbit was strikingly similar to entering Earth’s orbit.
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br />   The ship rocked and rolled. Riot clenched her rifle in her right hand, her helmet recently updated by Vet in her left.

  Here we go again, Riot thought. It’s on you to get them in and out in one piece. You can do this. You got this.

  The Archangel transport ship finally came to a steady glide. The windows outside showed what looked like a red-and-cream desert stretching out for miles in every direction. Two other transport ships moved in the distance farther to their right. The other two Grovothe teams tasked with taking out the two smaller hive targets moved on.

  “Helmets on,” Riot said, looking around her squad as she donned her own. Everyone besides Ketrick obeyed.

  As soon as Riot had placed the helmet on her head, her visor came to life with readouts and displays of weapons and equipment. Her heads-up display showed her everything in running columns on the right, left, and even on the bottom of her visor.

  When Riot looked over to Ketrick, the display pointed out the weapons he held on the right column, his race on the left.

  “We’re ready for descent, Spartan team,” Troy’s voice came into Riot’s helmet.

  “Roger that,” Rippa barked. “Let’s do it.”

  The Grovothe started a countdown as the Archangel transport ship came to a hovering spot above the planet. “In three, two, one.”

  The four mech units had actually been standing on top of a deployment hatch. As soon as the pilot’s countdown reached one, the hatch snapped open, dropping the four mech units.

  Whoosh!

  In a blink of an eye, the mech units disappeared through the floor. A strong gust of air rocketed through the ship. A moment later, the doors slowly closed.

  “Warrant Officer Riot,” Troy spoke into her helmet, “we’re about a minute until touchdown. You’re clear to unharness.”

  “Understood,” Riot said as she slammed her fist against the harness release button on the center of her chest. At once, the harness and lap belt strapping her in began to coil back into itself. “War Wolves, on me.”