I whipped my axe back, and slammed it forward. The wood creaked and groaned audibly. A sharp crack rang out, and the last section of the tree gave out. The moment it dropped into the ground, branches surged out of the side, and the tree walked on its own back toward the defensive line. The man with leaves growing out of his skin was to thank. He was a Reaver of the Yggdren variety, if I remembered right. CE-4943.
”Barghest!” A woman in heavy combat armor hollered, and approached me. My hand tightened on the handle of my axe, and I rested the back of the head on my shoulder. My tail curled protectively behind me. “You remember me, girl?”
The way she talked—it was like I was a lowly mutt. It took all I had in me to keep my growl in the back of my throat. “I don’t.”
“Ah, ah, ah! Good girls don’t lie.” She wagged her finger in admonishment, and rested her other hand on the grip of her assault rifle.
“I’m—“ sorry. I bit my lip, and cut off the instinctual reply. My ears tightened, and my stomach twirled itself into a knot. Why could she still make me feel so powerless?
The woman’s expectant expression slowly melted into disappointment, and she frowned. “Your shoulder tensed up as I approached. ‘Sides, how could you forget little ole me? Not when we have such rich history together.”
My eyes flicked to the Yggdren Reaver, who was watching like we were a drama show. His control faltered slightly, and the smoothly moving wood stalled and slowed instead of continuing its jaunt toward where the majority of the expedition set up defenses. ”What do you want, Amanda?”
“To see my favorite lab-dog, ‘course. Where’s that cute tail of yours?” Her expression distorted from the friendly one to one of disgusted jealousy. A smile was put back on the moment her mask slipped. “One of the others cut it off permanently this time?”
A shiver went down the fluffy limb in question. Not for the first time, I was truly, deeply grateful for the enchantment hiding my tail. “If you don’t need something, get out of my way.”
”That’s no way to talk to your favorite trainer.” She looked genuinely sad. “We had such good times together, didn’t we? Oh! Oh! Check this out.”
She acted like we were good friends, and she couldn’t wait to show me something cool. The thing she pulled out made every part of my fur and hair stand on end. She pulled her ballistic vest up to reveal a silver hoodie underneath.
My foot slipped back, and cracked a branch. My breath felt like blades in my lungs, and a sharp whine filled my ears. It took several moments to realize the whine was coming from me. The hoodie looked handwoven.
Bang!
Gunshots went off in the distance. The loud noise made me snap out of my daze. What was I doing? Amanda was just an Enforcer. Right, just an Enforcer. She wasn’t even a Beyonder. I… I wasn’t quite a Lieutenant, but I definitely outranked her. The days where she held the power were long gone.
I straightened up, and held my axe by its head. The metal groaned from how tightly I strangled it. “Take it off.“
Amanda flinched back in and her eyes widened. The surprise mutated into perverted excitement, and her cheeks flushed a rosy red. “Aww~! Puppy found her teeth! Take me to dinner first—“
Lights erupted from behind, and the crashed ship started to hum with power. The lights easily out powered the headlights and shitty floodlights that the syndicate goons had set up. The shadow of the ship instantly became visible through the foggy forest.
”Seems they got the power back on, huh?” Amanda crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her excitement dropped behind a professional sneer. “Gah, it’s like the sun opened up.”
Gunfire erupted in the distance, and the heavy atmosphere shifted to grim vigilance. For all her faults, the moment combat erupted, Amanda snapped to attention and lifted her rifle.
The Yggdren Reaver lifted a radio to the side of his face. “What’s going on back there?”
The radio crackled, and a voice called back heavily punctuated by one of the hummer’s turrets. “A pack of -tzzzz-“
”Shit. Calamities?” Amanda lifted her rifle, and glanced back at me with a look that promised we’d continue this later. And we would. I had another goal for tonight other than sneaking into the crashed freighter.
”They have it handled.” The Reaver spoke up. “We need more wood.”
”Mhmm.” I turned around and slammed my axe down into the trunk of the next tree over. In two swings, a chunk of the wood disappeared, and the tree started to tilt.
I wasn’t sure before, but I was definitely stronger. I figured it out pretty quick. The tree should’ve taken at least one or two more hits before. A little strength boost didn’t sound like a lot, but even a bit was massive for me. I was already quick, so a little more umph went a long way.
Every pull of my muscles made my head throb. This power… I hadn’t earned it. I didn’t lift weights and work to become stronger. Once more, my strength didn’t belong to me.
”Contact!” A shout came from just behind me, and shots slammed into trees just to my side. The trees shotgunned into splinters from glancing blows.
In an instant, I swapped the axe for my vi-rifle. A murky gray shadow flickered between the gaps of two trees. A burst of golden bolts followed it a moment later—“KeeEK!”
I ducked around another tree, and followed it with my fire. It crumpled into a heap a second later. Only once it went still did Amanda finally hit it with several shots. “I got it!”
”…” I stared at the shameless woman for a moment, and shook my head. My ears twitched up and listened to the creaking trees of the forest. The fur along my tail slowly raised. There were more of them out there, whatever they were.
The Reaver moved forward, and I followed just after him. Amanda’s light flashed over us, and settled on the dead creature that’d moved toward us. It looked a bit like a deer-sized centipede with massive mandibles, though it only had six legs. Its hardened carapace was blackened in several sections with smoke trailing up off of it. A shot had scorched a trail through its eye.
”Damn, I got this guy good, huh?” Amanda moved up and poked at the corpse with the barrel of her rifle. The bright light narrowed onto the corpse, and my eyes adjusted to the darkness once more.
”You recognize this one?” The Yggdren asked me. A branch laying on the ground lengthened, and pushed against the corpse to flip it over.
”Needlefoot. CE-981.” I frowned, and scanned the gray, blue, and yellow forest with my eyes. “We should regroup.”
”Why? You scared?” Amanda laughed, and kicked the carapace of the creature. “Some things never change, do they?”
“You should be.” My modulated voice called coolly. I turned away without wasting another moment on the figure from my past. I really hoped she’d stay out here.
The Reaver waited a few more seconds, and then jogged to catch up with me. Discarded branches pulled up behind us, and formed a shield on the guy’s back. “Top thousand calamity? That thing didn’t look that dangerous.”
I sighed, and sped up slightly. If he had a question, he should just ask it. “Just one isn’t the issue.”
”Hey! Wait for me!” Amanda’s light flashed over us, and pushed back the darkness. The sudden surge of light made my eyes sting.
By the time I could finally see again, my ears twitched back toward something in the forest. Skittering and clicking broke out from behind us. I flicked around and dropped to my knee. My vi-rifle snapped up a moment later and locked onto Amanda.
Vzzt!
No matter how much I wanted to, I didn’t open fire on Amanda. Instead, vi-bolts lanced right past her into the forest. A rapid clicking noise broke out, and shadows thundered around through the forest. Just one Needlefoot wasn’t that dangerous. A swarm of them, though?
“Fuck! Run!” The Reaver shouted, and didn’t even try to fend them off. Instead, he instantly broke for the defensive line. Twigs and branches launched backward like spears. Most of them slammed uselessly into trees.
”I’m trying!” Amanda ripped a grenade off her vest and tossed it backward. Just as I sprayed down another Needlefoot, it exploded in a fireball of shrapnel. Dozens of writhing shadows illuminated by her grenade danced across the fog.
Why am I even back here trying to save her? Her, of all people? She wasn’t the worst of my trainers, though she was certainly up there. At least Amanda used to stop when she got bored.
Isn’t this stupid? I could… I could just turn around, and nobody would know. Nobody would judge me. Nobody except Cerberus, who’d drain my inhibitor for her death. I couldn’t afford that.
“Thanks, puppy!” She sprinted past me without even a look backward.
My already tense ears flicked back sharply. I crushed the trigger, and mutely continued to fire. The receiver of my vi-rifle glowed golden through the gaps, and the barrel rapidly heated up to a brilliant orange glow.
My radio buzzed with golden light. The speaker was none other than the Yggdren Reaver. “Needlefoot swarm approaching from the north! All guns, look north!”
Dozens of more bolts fired out to keep away the approaching swarm. Each one was guided more by my ears than by my foggy night vision. Just as I neared a hundred shots, a soft alarm chimed and a light on the back of the receiver flashed red. The golden glow pouring up from the energy cell faded.
I shot back to my feet and darted between the trees. The depleted energy cell dropped out of my gun, and I tossed it in a dump pouch at the back of my armor. I pulled another out from a belt, and slapped it up into my gun. The moment it slid into place, the receiver once more glowed with golden light.
I easily outpaced the movement speed of the other two, and hit the edge of the forest just as they reached the defensive line. I slid over the edge of a trench before either one of them even got to safety, and dropped down into the muddy passage.
The moment I entered the defensive line—a mixture of dugout trenches and wooden barricades with turreted hummers filling the gaps—the turrets opened fire. Light flashed repeatedly, and bullets exploded into the forest.
With the light of the ship still shining bright, it was all too easy to see past the clearing and into the forest. A massive wave of Needlefeet charged us with zero regard for their own lives. Even as heavy caliber bullets and flashes of vi-bolts mowed down dozens, more came to fill the gaps.
”Why are there so many of them?!” A syndicate member cried out as his gun jammed.
“They must’ve been drawn by the ships powering back up!” Another popped up onto the top of the barricade and—
Shnk!
A needle slammed in between his eyes, and he dropped dead before he could even pull the trigger. I slid over to him, and dropped my vi-rifle into its sling. I snatched up his assault rifle instead, and popped up to kill a Tier-2 Needlefoot hanging back just in the tree line.
Vi-rifles were good—insanely good. Against reflective armor, though? Not so good. The carapace of the calamities wasn’t quite as good as reflective armor, though they did the job. Traditional gunpowder weapons filled in the gap with their much higher stopping power.
The Tier-2’s head exploded with a spray down of precise bullets. My aim snapped to the side, and caught another just as it finished firing a barrage of sharp quills toward one of the hummers. A quill uselessly bounced off the side of my helmet, and I rapidly downed a third with the last of my shots.
Our defensive line held strong, even with several losses already starting to appear from precision blows by the Tier-2s mixed into the swarm. If things kept up like this, there’d be no issue—
“KREEEK!” Trees shattered, and a massive, lumbering shadow appeared against the fog. A turret turned toward it, and heavy bullets whizzed through the fog, causing it to stir around in sharp trails.
Despite the focus fire, the car-sized Needlefoot shape continued forward. The fog peeled, and its ugly body appeared in the brilliant light. Rounds bounced off its reinforced carapace, and vi-bolts didn’t even make the beast stagger. A Tier-3 had just entered the battlefield.
— — —
AN: Guys, I know Sylvies cool and all, but Amanda best girl? Hear me out now…