Death Drop (11 page)

Killikbar wailed with contempt at Gyumak, who was using the suction rings on four of his tentacles to pull himself upright again. The dark general roared and the rows of Berzerkers in front of Gyumak parted to clear the line of fire between the big cannons and the scattered Dissenters stirring on the floor to the north. The wrath of Killikbar alone would have been enough to send them scurrying, but they jumped and bounded out of the way with almost unnatural speed as his phantoms lashed them with whips and brandished their blades and spears menacingly. Gyumak fixed his target in his sights and shrieked, hoping his offering of rage would appease his disgusted master as he prepared to fire at the two helpless figures coughing and crawling on the open foreground.

Wuuuuuuuuurrrrr—KABOOM! KABOOM!

Gyumak’s rockets whistled through the air at the Dissenters. They were unprotected and the force of the cannon blasts would disintegrate them. His huge eyes had narrowed as he’d squeezed his triggers, focusing on the spot where he had commanded death to appear, but something unexpected reflected in his giant orbs instead. A streak of gunmetal gray materialized from the miasma an instant before Gyumak’s shots erupted in great balls of fire. The flames flashed out and Gyumak screeched with frustration as he saw the Dissension machine sliding backward, clawing at the ground, presumably with the soldiers he intended to kill behind it. Gyumak aimed his barrels again, hoping to eradicate the contraption and the Dissension troops it was shielding before Killikbar could punish him for failing yet again.

CLOP-CLOP-CLOP-CLOP-CLOP!

Two spikes of curled bone pronged from the gloom, followed quickly by a brown grimacing snout attached to a big, muscled torso. The weapon in the newcomer’s hand snapped viciously and bullets pelted Gyumak’s body. The Dissension machine had come to a stop and the streaking soldier dove behind the cover of its hardened metal side, barely escaping the storm of gunfire sent to destroy him from the Berzerker ranks as the machine added a shower of bullets to the fray. Gyumak wailed, dropping his cannons to the ground and crying out in pain as his wicked compatriots scattered for cover behind him.

The Berzerkers’ thirst for blood had cooled enough for Killikbar to begrudgingly resort to some crude form of strategy to kill the remaining handful of Dissension scum, instead of the frenzied slaughter he was hoping for. He considered sending forth his entire legion of twisted war dogs in a blitzing rush of bullets and corpses, then thought better of it. He assumed that the Dissension machine would not yield to even the great cannons of his giant and there was no telling how much ammunition the device could carry. He had to shield Gyumak from enemy fire long enough to destroy the Dissenters. He howled an order and Gyumak slid steadily, in large heaving jerks, toward a massive chunk of debris.

Each one of Gyumak’s free tentacles took turns unfurling itself outward in front of his massive form and clinging to the floor before wrenching his body forward. Gyumak moved too slowly for his master’s liking, and Killikbar and his phantoms screamed for him to quicken his pace as they jeered and whipped him crazily. The rest of the Berzerkers concentrated their small arms fire on the side of the contrivance that shielded the Dissenters, pinning them down to ensure their monster could complete his task. The flesh and blood soldiers cowering behind the mechanization were held at bay but the contraption continued to fire. Gyumak wailed and screamed as fresh bullet holes sprayed the inky, black ichor that was his blood into the air. The beast raged and his blood flowed, but he moved steadily forward and slithered his huge tentacles around a chunk of decimated hull. The Dissension machine’s guns were still roaring furiously; then, suddenly, they choked with a hollow click-click-click! The line of beasts covering Gyumak continued to fire at the Dissenters as they laughed cruelly. There was nothing that could stop their Berzerker giant now—the Dissension machine had run out of ammo.

Gyumak turned so his back was toward the Dissenters and pulled. As he dragged the wreck behind him, it gouged the hard Banzium swirled floor and screeched in protest at being torn from its grave. Gyumak lurched backward, inching to within striking distance of the Dissension soldiers, then he hefted the rubble over his head and turned, shrieking a piercing battle cry.

Chapter 12: A Plan of Attack

B
ertie’s cogs hummed as his power core spun them as fast as the debris-strewn shipyard floor would allow. Malo was directly behind him in a dead sprint, having abandoned any effort to crouch as they tried desperately to reach the only ship not smoldering in a heap of twisted alloy. Otto was still pinning Dr. Blink down in Bertie’s center channel, holding his gun at the ready. One hundred yards went streaking past as Bertie twisted and turned around bodies and piles of rubble. They had not drawn a single shot since Abalias and Graale began their assault on the Berzerkers. The path cleared in front of Bertie’s treads as Otto peeked around the table. Another hundred yards of open space and then the Hellion—then they could turn the ship’s firepower on the remaining Berzerkers and rescue the colonel and Graale.

It looked like Bertie, Malo, Otto, and Blink would overtake the Hellion with no more challenges; but then a small guerrilla contingent of moaning Berzerkers emerged from beyond the flames of a burning hull and opened fire. Otto pulled Blink flat onto the channel floor, then popped to his feet and blazed away over the rumble of the spinning treads just as Bertie let loose a torrent of bullets. Three sets of gnarling mouths twisted in pain and shrieked out to the void—three bodies convulsed and twitched, carried backward by the impact of projectiles that ripped through their flesh—three corpses lay on the cold floor and now earned the look of the dead they had worn since falling to the Durax.

Bertie broke into the open with Malo close behind. The Hellion lay twenty yards dead ahead and beckoned to them through the melee. Within its red armored hull were all the items necessary to rescue their comrades, tend to their wounded, and lay waste to their enemies. Ten yards now until the safety of the open cargo hold. Otto felt Bertie slow down to mount the ship and he breathed a sigh of relief as he let Dr. Blink lift his head for the first time since they had emerged from the infirmary corridor and into the shipyard.

Wuuuuuuuuurrrrr—KABOOM! KABOOM!

The explosion of the Hellion hurled Bertie almost forty feet. Luckily his table took the brunt of the blast. The only injuries Dr. Blink and Otto suffered were sizable bruises they received after they were thrown from the medical machine as he flipped through the air. Malo was far enough behind that he wasn’t hit by anything but the force of the blast, which sent him soaring backward and landed him inches from a smoking pile of scrap with sharp spines of metal jutting from its center.

Bertie landed table-side down on the hard cavern floor. His treads moved horizontally out from his top, momentarily doubling his length. Once cleared of the end of his table, his treads dropped slightly until they touched the ground and his table top moved in a smooth one hundred and eighty degree arc until it once again rested on top of his treads for an instant before elevating back to full, vertical height. His four arms, now seemingly backward on his elevated expanse, each pivoted at the elbow joint until they were facing the correct direction. A quick diagnostic scan told Bertie that all systems were normal and the only setback the explosion had dealt him was the loss of two of his guns. Bertie scanned the area for the others and immediate danger. Malo was slowly getting to his feet and Otto and Dr. Blink lay just a few yards in front of his position, both coughing and struggling to get up.

Otto gasped for air and opened his eyes. He rolled onto his stomach, pushed himself to his hands and knees and took inventory of his physical state as quickly as his pounding head would let him. He could hear the crackling of fire and smell the nasty fumes of death and destruction. He could hear shrieks and growls and the sounds of whips snapping somewhere to his left. Then he heard something else—something much friendlier. A dazed, high-timbred moan came from his right. Dr. Artemus Blink was just a few feet from where Otto had landed and was coming around. “Doctor? Are you okay?” Otto said between sputtering coughs.

“I think so, Major.”

“C’mon, we have to get up and take cov…”

Otto’s ears filled with a dreadful sound and he cringed from the coming detonation that would erase both himself and Dr. Blink from existence.

Two large booms filled the yard, their terrible report heralding the arrival of death come to take two more souls for its macabre collection. But the appointment was interrupted.

Bertie flew in front of Otto and Dr. Blink, rotating his table out and down over his right-hand treads just in time to take the full brunt of the two shells launched from the Berzerker ranks. The impact crumpled Bertie’s table, curling it slightly inwards at both ends, and swept him perpendicular to his previous course. He slammed into Otto first and then Dr. Blink with stunning force and clawed frantically at the floor with both of his free hands in a desperate attempt to keep from flipping over and crushing them.

The Berzerker cannoneer took aim again as Bertie’s momentum decreased and the three targets slid to a stop. Malo sprinted into the open, running all out toward Bertie and the others, mashing his finger to the trigger on his gun and spraying the enemy with hot metal. From the corner of his eye, Malo saw several Berzerkers crumple to the floor, and the monster holding the cannons flailed two large tentacles in the air and let out an ear-piercing screech as bullets stabbed into his slick, pulpy flesh.

Malo dove in an uncharacteristic display of battle-charged agility, landing safely behind Bertie as enemy fire arced across the floor and peppered the wall behind where he had been standing just seconds before. He flipped up to a sitting positing between Otto and Dr. Blink, and Bertie raised his damaged table above his treads to cover Malo’s towering height. Malo rested his lower back against Bertie’s left track as he reloaded his smoking gun. “Okay?” he grunted, looking over at Otto and the doctor.

“I think we’re both all right, considering,” Otto said as Dr. Blink squared his spectacles on his snout once again.

“I’m a little worried about Bertie,” Blink said with a trembling voice. “He’s taken two direct hits from those big guns.”

“How many more do you think he can take?” Otto asked while checking the ammunition left in his revolver.

“Frankly, I’m surprised he took the first two,” Blink said as Bertie opened fire again with his last two guns. “If he does manage to withstand another direct hit, we’ll be pushed up against the north wall and another hit after that will either blow us to bits or crush us to death.”

“I’d rather be blown to bits, honestly,” Otto said with a look of surprise at his own morbid response.

Otto heard a loud scraping sound coming from the direction of the enemy and a distinct lack of suppression fire from Bertie. The medical machine slid the two arms which were holding guns along the edge of the table so they were directly over Otto’s head and dramatically squeezed the triggers so they clicked repeatedly. “OH, SHIT!” Otto cried as he edged his eye around the corner of Bertie’s side, pulling it back just before Berzerker gunfire ripped off half of his face. “So much for being blown to bits!” he said disappointedly, and Dr. Blink gave him a look that quickly turned from utter confusion to horror.

Otto was about to order Malo to give Bertie his gun as he reloaded and prepared to do the same when he heard booming in the distance on his left and whipped his pistol in the direction of the noise. The sound grew louder and his gambling mind took over in the face of fear as he wondered which would be a better bet to kill them first: the line of dreadful ghouls now advancing from the west, which would break through the murk at any moment and tear them limb from limb, or the Berzerker monster intent on smashing them with a piece of broken star freighter. The booming noise grew louder, and Otto shuddered as he thought of the few remaining shots he had left in his revolver.

Berzerkers liked to toy with the last of their prey, shooting or slicing to incapacitate rather than kill so they could devour them. Otto considered saving a bullet for each of them instead of enduring the pure horror of being eaten alive. The rumble of marching feet grew louder, and Otto couldn’t tell if it was the vibrations from the advancing army of Berzerkers or his nerves that made the barrel of his revolver begin to tremble slightly. He cocked the hammer and hardened his resolve. “C’mon, you beasts. Come and meet your maker!”

Graale’s rocky form appeared through the dirty fog with Abalias, decked out in full ice armor from head to foot, running beside him with a noticeable limp. Abalias had not seen Bertie and the others yet, as the top half of his torso was twisted around, and his dual eight-shot revolvers were singing their loud, crackling lullaby into the smoke behind them. Graale’s hard cheeks raised in the widest smile Otto had ever seen from him as he motioned frantically with his revolver toward the monster on the other side of Bertie and their imminent destruction.

Graale saw the frantic look in Otto’s eyes and immediately knew the score. At that very moment, the Berzerker monster hurled the conflagrated heap, held high above his head, with all his wrath and Graale unleashed The Guardian.

Boom—flash—boom—flash—boom—flash!
The Guardian’s
barrels ignited and spun in a cartwheel of destruction. The three mortars exploded one after the other in mushrooms of fire and billows of smoke that streamed in every direction like the legs of a black star. The force of the explosions blew the wreckage back into the Berzerker giant, who clutched wildly at the rubble that had rolled onto several of his tentacles and was pinning him to the ground.

“You’re alive!” Graale rumbled with joy as he stopped just short of Bertie and the others. “I thought you were gone—I thought I missed
—
”