Chapter 162: Chapter 156

Two hours, and several missed calls from my partners in the affiliate later, a security hobb knocked hesitantly on the bedroom door. Molls sighed and slid her coils off from me.

“I know, you have to go. Save your city,” she said.

I nodded, running my hands along her tail. “Our city, but yeah. I’m already overdue. Rayna’s probably gonna gut me, I better report in.”

She gently nodded as I stood, covering her nudity with our Florida king-sized blanket. I grabbed my bug gut-stained pants, held them in front of myself, and cracked the door.

The hobb attempted to avoid looking into the room, or down at my groin, but it was well known what Molls and I got up to when neither of us could be reached, so he was embarrassed simply to be in proximity.

“Rayna need you boss. Dream storm coming,” he grunted. As soon as I nodded in acknowledgement, he turned on a heel to report back.

I shut the door with a chuckle, turned back to Molls, and dropped the stained pants. Normally she smiled and gawked, happy to objectify me. That day, however, I saw a quick flush of royal blue pass across her scales, and she blinked, looking away.

“Are you okay, Molls?” I asked.

She smiled then, for my benefit. “I was just thinking of the first time this dream storm happened,” she said.

I returned to the bed and sat back down beside her, reaching a hand out for hers. She grasped it lightly, her claws trailing against my wrist and tickling.

“There were a lot less of us back then,” I said.

She nodded. “I knew then that I would fall in love with you.” Molls’ voice was barely more than a whisper, and the yellow creeping into her scales betrayed her growing fear. “I saw a moment of who you are. Your kindness, your gentle heart.”

I shook my head and raised a hand to stop her. “It’s the word, Molls. That’s all it is, I struggle with that word.”

The rising yellow was joined by a flush of green, and she blinked in confusion at me.

I sighed and continued, “it doesn’t mean to me what it’s meant to those I’ve said it to before. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that, I just get scared and shut down when you say it to me. I don’t know what it means to you, or if I’m giving that feeling back the way you expect or need. If I say it, and then fail to live up to it, what happens to us?”

Her hand squeezed mine, and she smiled. Purple began to push into her scales, and she told me, “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it back, not until you’re ready. I just wanted to know your mind. Thank you for sharing that with me. It proves my feelings for you right.”

“I’m sorry, Molls. You’ve said it like half a dozen times, I should have just explained right away,” I replied, the words falling out in a rush.

She raised a finger to my lips. “I know better than to expect that from you, my darling. You’re not that easy,” Molls said, smile widening. “But worth the effort.”

I grinned back and leaned in to kiss her. “Thank you.”

Molls happily returned the kiss but pulled her face back early and scowled in confusion. “For what?”

“For being you,” I said, staring into her giant, green eyes.

She smiled gently and pressed herself into my arms. “Your oasis?”

I nodded and squeezed her close. The big word itself I struggled with, but I knew how I felt about her, even then, when it was all still so young. “My oasis.”

Molls pulled back and looked me in the eyes. “Are you going to be okay without me?” she asked.

I instantly shook my head with a grin. “Nope, and I’m gonna make it everyone else’s problem.”

She scoffed a laugh and narrowed her beautiful eyes at me. “I’m sure you will.”

The elevator in our lobby dinged again and I sighed in exasperation as I turned to yell at a hobb.

Molls stopped me with a hand on my wrist and a soft smile. “I’ll be gone when you get done, mother is expecting me soon, and I don’t want her to hire any more mercenaries because I was late.” She rolled her eyes. “Be safe, and kick some ass.”

I kissed her, felt the smile against my lips, and kissed her harder before breaking it off. “I’ll probably own Nu-Earth by the time you get back,” I said, before becoming serious for a moment. “You be safe, Molls. I don’t like you being so far away.”

She nodded and pushed at my chest. “I will. Now go, get dressed before they break down our bedroom door.”

I grabbed a pair of jeans from our shared closet and struggled into them as Molls slithered nude into the oversized closet. With a pair of socks and standard BlueCleave issue boots in hand, I slipped out of the bedroom and faced Rayna in my foyer.

She looked pissed.

“Tyson, we need you!” my chief of security grunted.

I raised a finger and shushed her, nodding toward the elevator.

“You guys are freaking out over nothing,” I said, once we were ensconced in the small room. “This dream storm is easy, just empty the streets for a few hours and it’ll go away on its own.”

Rayna shook her head with a low growl. “No, it not that easy. Axle sent you video. You need to answer phone.”

I sighed and nodded. “I know, and I’m sorry. Molls is leaving,” I said. “Our trip was cut short, and now she’s going home. I wanted to spend time with her.”

I summoned my shining helmet, pulling up the phone app to watch Axles' video message.

It showed a remote Dearth facility up north, on the Idaho Utah border, as the dream storm roiled down on it. A rolling black cloud formed the primary body of the dream storm, with flashes of lightning sparking through at random intervals. The facility appeared to have been farmland at one point but had been abandoned as Dearth began scaling back their operation.

Squatters had settled there, I know because I kept trying to get them to relocate to Prescott. Some of them had, but there was very little trust left in a lot of my species’ hearts. Most had stayed, and told my squads ‘no’ at gunpoint, so we stopped asking.

They had a ten-mile area, walled in with black plasticrete blocks, and worked some of the land themselves. As I watched, the dream storm crashed into their wall and stopped.

You are reading story BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit at novel35.com

It wouldn’t spread out beyond its five mile range. This particular dream storm had rules, and it appeared to be a recurring nightmare for the person who had summoned it. No matter what else it did, the rolling bank of fog was unable to divert from its four-point-five mile wide path.

It was composed of thousands of individual tentacle balls, all made at the bizarre and highly customizable CloneMort facilities, part of BuyMort’s dream service. It could produce clay clones of just about anything anyone could dream up.

These were writhing balls of hardened ceramic tentacles. Each could puff black smoke into the air to keep them enshrouded, and each was lethal with its whip-armed tentacles. I myself had briefly lost a forearm to them, the first time around.

Thankfully my suit put me back together.

As I watched the video, the tentacle balls all lined up and began whacking at the wall with their arms, sending snaps of electrical current flashing, as if tiny lightning strikes. Some broke, but simply used other arms. If a ball became unable to continue attacking the wall, it rolled back and allowed another to take its place.

Within seconds the wall crumbled, and the dream storm poured in through the breach. A similar scene occurred on the other side of the facility, and the storm kept moving, straight for Prescott.

I shrugged and turned to Rayna. “So? We’re not behind a wall.”

The elevator stopped and Rayna started walking me to the armory.

“No, we just behind expensive space elevator,” she grunted.

My heart dropped.

The elevator at that level was composed of a thick carbon ring that had been sunk into the ground. Behind that wall sat delicate and varied mechanical systems, necessary for elevator operation. Those I wasn’t worried about, the carbon ring had been engineered to survive entry in multiple planetary atmospheres.

Our giant donut cargo vessel, on the other hand, was not hardened against attack, and was staffed by several necessary workers. That thing did the heaviest lifting in terms of cargo movement and was directly in the path of the oncoming dream storm. It was more than wide enough to block passage, and without any ability to climb, the ceramic tentacle monsters would bash at my multi-trillion mortie elevator car until it was destroyed.

“Shit, I see your point. Why hasn’t the donut been raised?” I asked. The armory attendant brought over a set of clothing for me, replete with heavy armored plating. I passed over the jacket but changed my pants and boots in front of the hobbs.

Both of my swords went on my hips, and I slung a brand new Highwater blaster on my back, loaded with twelve-gauge laser slugs. I grinned at it stupidly. It was like seeing an old friend once again after such a long time of absence.

Its ad popped up and I stared at it, remembering back when things were desperate and these items made all the difference between whether I’d be sleeping in bed that night - or strung out dead on the ground under a pile of vicious Sleem.

HELL IS HERE - AND SO IS HIGHWATER BLAST SHOCK! 

CERAMIC-HELIUM ALLOY, RAD-POLYMER GRIPS, THIS COMBAT SHOTGUN TAKES THE BEST OF TERRAN DESIGN AND BUYMORT MATERIALS, MAKING A WEAPON SO DAMN POWERFUL CHARLTON HESTON JUST DROPPED HIS GUN FROM HIS COLD DEAD HANDS. 

CAN FIRE ALL SORTS OF EXOTIC AMMUNITION INCLUDING PLASMA AND LASER BURSTS. 1,300,000 morties, 4.9 stars.

It was a bit old fashioned, compared to most of our arsenal, but I liked it for the versatility. My standard loadout combined laser slugs with high-explosive MIRV shells. The armory attendant handed me a bandoleer of extra shells, which I slipped into as Rayna started walking again.

“Can’t. Top-side relay not responding,” Rayna grunted. She picked up her pace, and we were jogging.

“Starfish troopers all ready. Pulled in fifteen hovercraft. Ground vehicles useless, they just get swarmed,” she barked. I hurried to keep up.

“Need you on front line. Especially now you can fly,” she said, turning to fix me with a glare. “When you get ability to fly?”

I shook my head and sighed. “Very recently, Rayna. It’s been kind of a bad morning. Dearth is fucking us on the donut, I assume?”

Our donut ship only operated if both bottom and top of the elevator allowed it to, and Dearth still had control over that portion. Normally it worked like any other business day, they saw the paycheck and pressed the required button.

That day, it looked like hurting their enemy was more important than preserving an economic asset.

“Well, we knew they’d be pissed about Los Angeles,” I said, running behind Rayna.

We exited the tower and entered a city in retreat. BlueCleave hobbs were helping those without transport, and hundreds of people on foot and in vehicles were all heading in one direction, away from the elevator.

Rayna and I boarded a hovercraft, and the vessel took off. It banked sharply as it rose, and we got our first view of the incoming dream storm. Just like I had remembered it, the cloud of sparking black fog roiled as it encroached, a four-and-a-half-mile wide strip of death and dismemberment.

The greatest loss of life on that day had been in Prescott, when it ripped through the city and killed any in its path. I steeled myself to prevent that from happening to our prized donut.

Our hovercraft was quickly joined by several others, and we banked as a group out around the towering space elevator. The craft set down in the desert directly north and operation ‘no touch the donut’ began in earnest.

Axle and Jada were present, which improved my mood dramatically until I saw the disapproving look on my friend's snout. He licked his nose at my approach and turned away with a grimace. I’d forgotten to shower and was suddenly embarrassed more for Molls than myself. I didn’t like it when I failed to protect her privacy.

Jada was better about hiding her reactions and seemed to genuinely care less when I smelled like sex. She approached to brief me as Axle kept working on his own handheld device.

“Tyson. Good, they found you,” she said. Her own starfish suit poked out from her vest, lengths of metal running down her muscled arms. The heavy club she preferred in combat dangled from her waist.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, shrugging. “Molls is leaving for a while, and I thought this was an easy fix.”

“It will be,” Jada replied. “This is our first wide-scale deployment, but our troopers are ready. They’ve been training, we’ve got a heavily shielded rear line, and our hovercraft will provide cover from above.”

“They’d better be ready,” Axle shouted. “Los Angeles is proving to be a drain on our morties, we don’t have a flex account if things go bad.”

I waved. “We’re good Axle, don’t worry,” I yelled back. Tollya’s craft hovered in low nearby and she hopped out, before jogging over to us.

“Are we good, Tollya?” I asked as she ran up.

Her lips split in a wide, toothy grin. “Course, boss! You couldn’t pay any trooper to sit this out,” she replied, cracking her knuckles.

“Glad to hear it,” I said.

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