Corpies (Super Powereds Spinoff Book 1) (54 page)

“We clear enough to do this, or do we need to thin the herd a bit more?” Owen asked. The tide had certainly turned in the Heroes’ favor, but the battle was far from finished. He would be damned if he left people hanging when it could be avoided.

“I think this is as good as we’re likely to get,” Jeremiah replied. “Sooner or later the next wave will show up, better to be ahead of the curve. Gale and Aether, please maintain our perimeter. Deadlift, handle any who get past them. Titan, if you would be so kind as to grab me a subject.”

Owen leapt out of the clearing, grabbing a robot that was already short one bladed arm and snapping off the other. He tore off its legs too, just for good measure, and then carried his prize past Gale, who was already calling a fresh blast of wind to surround them. Setting the torso down on the ground, its head still intact and somehow glaring at them, he motioned for Jeremiah.

“You kept the head on?” he asked, pulling a large knife from another compartment. With a single touch of a button on the side, the blade began to glow a fiery red.

“I don’t know what makes these things register as ‘broken’ but being decapitated seemed like a good bet.” Owen rested one hand on the bot’s metal neck, keeping it pinned just in case it had a trick or two up its sleeve.

“You’d be surprised by how many things that doesn’t work on,” Jeremiah muttered. As he spoke, his hands worked quickly, slicing into the torso with surprising delicacy, easily piercing the metal hide to reveal the robot’s inner workings. He may as well have cracked open a pinball machine for as much as Owen could tell, but Jeremiah seemed to have some idea of what he was looking at. After a few minutes of rooting about, he grabbed a dark box that Owen thought looked identical to four others also in the torso and yanked out his strange pen.

“On the very likely chance that this blows us up, sorry about the costume.” That was all the warning Jeremiah gave before plunging his pen into the device. Owen tensed, not because he expected the explosion would hurt, but because it would still be a damn explosion. None came, however. Instead, a pale blue light near the top of the pen flashed on, and Jeremiah let out a long sigh of relief.

“Did it work?” Owen asked.

“Maybe, it will still take several minut- Hang on, what?” Jeremiah touched his right ear, the universal signal for being on comms, and as he listened his eyes grew steadily wider. Worse, the smug expression always present on his face vanished, and for the first time since they’d met, Jeremiah looked genuinely worried. Finally, he dropped his hand and with a single stroke of his knife carved up the innards of the robot.

“Guessing something went wrong,” Owen said.

“Not with the device, per se. With the plan as a whole. They saw us coming, the bastards. These robots aren’t being controlled by a central signal. There are six signals spread throughout the city, relays to act as redundancies and mask the real source.”

“Well then, let’s go find those.” Owen pushed to his feet, ready to charge back into battle.

“No need,” Jeremiah said, rising more slowly and pulling his cane back out. “According to what my team said, one of those signals should be landing right on top of us in less than two minutes.”

104.

“What in the tap-dancing fuck is that?” Hexcellent reached out and grabbed Galvanize by the cape, pulling him up short as she pointed to the sky five blocks north of their position.

So far, their plan had been going surprisingly well. The robot forces were scattered enough that Zone was able to sneak the team around the bigger clusters. Between his scouting and Impers running messages, they’d made good progress in getting closer to the Mordent building. For a moment, Hexcellent had allowed herself to feel cautious optimism about their chances of surviving the day.

This was when, almost perfectly on cue, a giant mechanical monster rippled into view and fell from the sky. Hexcellent didn’t know how something that big had managed to stay out of sight; then again, the pinnacle of her technical expertise was switching the television’s input feeds between game systems. She could tell it wasn’t the only one, though. She could see another appear to the south and fall, and she thought she caught a sliver of one to the east. The one nearby, however, she had a perfect view of, and what a view it was.

The thing had a base built like an insect’s. It hosted a half-dozen ultra-thick legs which supported the towering torso, which in turn sported four arms, each ending in what looked like various gun clusters or cannons. The torso itself was heavily fortified, with smaller weapons mounted at regular intervals. A head was perched on the very top, eight glowing eyes spaced out to give what Hexcellent had to imagine was a 360-degree view of its surroundings at all times. Worst of all, which was saying a lot when one watched a giant mechanical monster shatter the concrete as it landed, compartments just above its legs were sliding open to release more of the regular-sized deadly robots.

“What I wouldn’t give to have been born a tech-controller,” Bubble Bubble muttered, stunned as they watched the river of robots pouring out from the massive mother ship.

“Something tells me if that solved the problem, the Heroes would have brought one in ages ago,” Galvanize said. “Hexcellent, can you have Impers bring back Zone? I’ve got a hunch we need to rethink our strategy. I can’t imagine anything that big would have the capability of focusing just on Supers.”

“Yeah, not an issue. As soon as I saw the building-sized mech falling from the sky, I figured we’d need to change plays.” Zone hopped out from a nearby alley, Impers riding on his shoulder, leaving a small trail of blood where his tiny claws had sank into Zone’s shirtless flesh.

“So, that thing probably came to clean house,” Hexcellent said. “Which means we need to get the hell away from it, and the troops it has, as quickly as possible. Smart money says this whole block will be gone soon if the Heroes don’t intercept it, and even if they do, that’s not a fight I want to be near.”

“She’s right, we need to focus on speed now,” Bubble Bubble agreed. “Whoever is doing this clearly plans to level all of Brewster.”

Again, Hexcellent felt a tickle in the back of her mind. Why? Unless this was the world’s most patient sociopath at work, it didn’t make any sense. Criminals acted for a reason: revenge, profit, pride, feeding an addiction, there was almost always purpose behind their motives. This, all of this, it didn’t really fit. Maybe if there were a ransom demand or banks being targeted, but it just seemed like random chaos.

Except. . . somehow, it was familiar. She couldn’t put a finger on it, yet Hexcellent was certain she’d seen something like this before. Maybe in her darker days, the ones hidden behind a cloud of foggy, drug-coated memories. It was there, darting about in her brain, always just a few inches out of reach.

“Hexcellent,” Galvanize repeated, snapping her attention back to the moment. “I asked if you’ll have Impers scout for us? It’s too dangerous to send Zone, but your demon might slip by undetected.”

“Yeah, yeah, no problem.” She tried to follow the itch in her brain again, but it was gone, scared off by the rational issues she should be handling. Giving a few quick orders to Impers, she took the demon and tossed it into the sky where it pumped its tiny wings and began to rise.

“Okay, he’s going to do a wide sweep of the block, then come back when- FUCK!” Hexcellent grabbed the side of her head, her knees buckling from the burst of pain. If not for Zone reflexively catching her in mid-fall, she’d have been splayed out on the concrete. As it was, her breath came in heavy, ragged gasps, and there were spots in her vision.

“Impers?” Galvanize asked.

Hexcellent could only manage a weak nod. Her brain felt like it had blades running across it. She’d never lost two of her summons in such rapid succession before; it was a whole new level of pain. Dismissing them didn’t hurt in the slightest, but when they were killed, their suffering channeled through the shared link. Each was a part of her, and she felt their destruction on a visceral level. That was why summoners could only have so many creatures, and why the creation of each one took untold effort. One only had so many pieces of their mind to spread around.

“Damn,” Bubble Bubble said. “No more eyes in the sky.”

“At least Zone got back before he was stuck out there,” Galvanize said. “If they saw and shot down Impers, we can assume everything non-metallic is probably a target. At this point, we’ll just have to move fast and hope for the best.”

“Not yet.” Hexcellent pushed herself off Zone’s shoulder, using him as a prop. “We need protection.”

“Forget it, you’re clearly in no shape to summon anymore,” Galvanize told her.

“And will I be in better shape when the robots carve me to pieces?” Hexcellent shot back. “None of us are good in a fight, so we need protection. Something to sacrifice if we need a buffer between us and them. Huggles can be summoned again after I rest. That’s not true for anyone else.”

“Galvanize, she has a point,” Zone agreed. “We might be able to take
one
of those things if we got lucky and worked together. But there’s a lot more than one out there. We’ve got no eyes and no heavy-hitters. We need help.”

Galvanize looked at his team for a long moment before shaking his head. “I don’t like it. I think it’s too risky. But we all know that nothing I say will stop you, so instead of being a naysayer, I’ll offer encouragement. Hexcellent,
do your best
.”

“Thanks, fearless leader.” Hexcellent straightened her back, held out her hand, and set her jaw. “And one of you assholes better carry me if I pass out.”

Dark smoked swirled in front of them, expanding slowly but steadily. Sweat began to drip down Hexcellent’s face as she ignored the pain in her head, which was now turning to an ache that seemed to echo in her bones. She focused on bringing forth the product of her imagination into the real world. She knew every inch of Huggles, every aspect of the demon’s being, and she pushed that image to the front of her mind, then further into the cloud of smoke before her.

It took almost twenty seconds, the longest summon Hexcellent had ever done, but when the smoke cleared, the familiar bladed arms of Huggles were there to greet them.

“And that’s. . . how you do. . . that.” Hexcellent stumbled as she took a step, but Zone and Bubble Bubble both slid their arms beneath her shoulders. She was still conscious, though clearly not by much.

“Team, we need to get out of here,
now
,” Galvanize ordered. “Run as quick as you can, avoid the robots whenever possible, and no matter what, don’t let anyone fall behind.” Without another word, he turned toward Mordent, made a quick motion for them to follow, and took off in a jog just slow enough for them to keep up with as they helped Hexcellent along.

“He better not try to ditch us,” Hexcellent said. Zone and Bubble Bubble both chuckled, even though there was nothing funny about what Galvanize was doing. He’d taken the front position because it was the most dangerous.

If anyone were going to be spotted, it would be him, and with as strong as the robots were, that might be a deadly choice.

105.

              “Please tell me there’s a backup plan.” Owen watched in wonder as the six-legged metal monster fell from the sky. The beast landed with a thunderous crunch only two blocks away from where he and Jeremiah stood over the carved-up carcass of a smaller robot.

“There is. . . sort of.” Jeremiah yanked his pen-device out of the robot’s chest and slipped it back into a pocket on his costume. “From what my people were able to figure out, the six giant mech-style robots are functioning as relay stations. The universal signal goes to them, and they broadcast it to the lesser robots. It’s a good way to make sure people can’t use one of the pawns to find the king—basically exactly what we were trying to do—but there are two weaknesses to the tactic.”

Jeremiah scanned the area, pointing to two other giant mechs as they fell in their line of sight. “Most importantly, at least for the time being, from the way that the big bots are scattered about, I’d guess there’s a range limit to their relay capacity. That means if we take them down, the smaller ones depending on the signal might be cut off.”

“Won’t be easy, but I think we can swing that,” Owen replied. Already, the Heroes around them were shifting focus, taking note of the new wave of bots that was pouring on to the battlefield from the innards of the giant mech. “What’s the second weakness?”

“Those big ones must be connected to the master signal,” Jeremiah said. “So our original plan is still valid. If I can somehow get access to the receiver inside one of those, we might be able to track down the source.”

Owen sized up the massive opponent that was already firing off rounds of bullets and lasers at every Hero advancing on it. “That is a lot of metal to root through for one little box.”

“Which is why we should focus on knocking out the first five, especially if my theory on the signal range bears out. For the sixth, we take our time and see what we can uncover,” Jeremiah said.

“The presented plan has merit, but current damage potential for Brewster is approaching catastrophic levels.” Dispatch’s voice came to their ears without prompting. It was easy to forget that, while she usually replied only when addressed, Dispatch was technically listening to everything one said while wearing a comm. That was how she knew every detail of a battle without Heroes having to constantly check in.