Chapter 79: Chapter 75

He nodded and left, and Suzanne approached behind him. She took in my still healing back and shook her head. “Oh you poor thing!” Then she stopped and looked at the room, riddled with debris, and the clear space in front of the door. She pointed at where Lee had gone, then traced her finger back to the doorway and looked up at me, before glancing behind me to the torn out wall and window.

“Thank you, Tyson,” she whispered.

I nodded. She grabbed my arm and hauled me after Lee. We stopped at a hallway closet, and she reached in to grab a jacket for me. I thanked her and shouldered into it as we passed through the greenhouse, its windows all shattered. Several of the mango trees on the north side were partially torn out of their loam, and we ran carefully to avoid the larger shards of glass.

Lee approached from the north side of the compound, waving his arms at us, and shouting, “get back! Get back!”

He ran up to us and grabbed Suzanne by the elbow. Together, they started moving south, down toward the main gate. I headed north, toward the two flaming holes in Sundew Valley’s walls.

I ran toward the closest of the two, which had destroyed an Earthship structure when it blew outward. The house had been two levels, but the upstairs had collapsed and crushed part of the first floor.

Beyond the blasted structure, I could see the hover tank. They were alone, without any of the other vehicles nearby, and I ran toward the hole in the wall. Another shell went off behind me as I exited Lee’s compound, and I stumbled from the brief shockwave. The rest of the house was in rubble, and a massive hole in the wall facing the forest had opened.

I took it in at a glance as I kept running and summoned my new atomic breaker gauntlets. The dimensional gateways embedded in my forearms deployed armor sheets, and my hands were encased in metal up to the elbows. I pumped my legs and sprinted across the desert for the hovering tank. It was impossible to be certain, but I felt like I was running faster than I could have before, and the pace felt easy to keep up. My crystalline colonies must have been spreading.

The boxy vessel was slowly turning away, its turret returning to a neutral, front position. Its job was done. All Dearth had to kill Sundew was deny them their mercs and their priest. This thing had been sent to punch a hole in the wall and make sure the yarsps did their dirty work for them.

The tank was only a few hundred yards out from the compound, and someone on board must have seen me coming. Its sleek metal boxy exterior opened, and a secondary gun barrel appeared. The gunner opened fire immediately, sending blasts of explosive metal at me. A few sunk into my left side and activated the suit’s pain killer response.

My helmet blared a warning and tracked the streaks of incoming fire as the suit deployed dozens of tendrils to work on me. The gunner adjusted the coaxial weapon’s aim, and the flak started to hit me more fully. The rounds exploded directly in front of me, sending chunks of burning shrapnel into my torso. I reflexively covered the area with my gauntlets and kept running.

My helmet rattled and flickered, but held up under the onslaught, and I ran directly toward the red warning lights it showed me. Painkiller filled my body and I grinned as I charged.

The tank started to accelerate away as I finished crossing the distance, but it was far too late. I sprinted directly into the machine gun nest and activated my gauntlet as I slammed my fist into the armor plating.

Blue light erupted from my knuckles and rocked through the tank as my fist plunged into the metal. An entire portion of the metal body’s structure collapsed, and shards of broken metal cascaded around my shoulder.

The burst of light from my knuckles remained in the air. It swirled like dust motes around my gauntlets and was sucked slowly inside of them. The starfish cartoon gasped and gyrated even harder, pleased with the huge amount of charge.

My entire arm had sunk into the vehicle. I pulled it back, and metal fragments rained from the hole. There was a fine powder of metal dust embedded in my knuckles as well. The tank continued its turn, but with a quarter of its front end caved in and dragging on the ground, the vehicle suddenly moved much slower.

The main turret swung toward me, and I heard a hatch pop open on top. I ignored the turret and slammed my other fist into the tank, activating my power blow ability in addition to the gauntlet.

With a scream of twisting metal and a small explosion of blue light, the tank sailed in the air away from me before landing in a nearby embankment with a blast of sand. I ran to it again and slammed my right gauntlet into a patch that wasn’t demolished, activating my power blow ability and atomic breaker gauntlet with a thought. The tank crushed in the center like an aluminum can, slamming further down into the Arizona desert.

The turret started to swing toward me again, with a terribly pained scream of machinery. I ran to stay out of its firing range and leapt up onto the crushed tank. The hatch was still open, but a dead hobb blocked it. He had been attempting to leave when I crushed the central portion and was now lodged permanently in place.

I jumped down to the turret at the front of the tank and slammed both fists into the top of it, where it connected to the tank body, activating my breaker gauntlets again. My right gauntlet used its last charge, and the shockwave of blue light knocked me off my feet. I fell off the tank down the other side of the embankment it was lodged in, and tumbled to a sliding stop in a pile of sand.

The landing knocked the wind out of me, and I didn’t bother trying to get up while I recovered. The tank was crushed. I could hear an engine still trying to engage, but it was buried, and did nothing but throw up a spout of dirt and stones.

I panted in the dirt for a couple of minutes. The suit wrapped up its repairs, I was reminded of how much I wanted that armor plating upgrade, and the cartoon starfish went away after giving me a quick salute. My suit was fully charged.

An explosion from the tank got my attention, and I scrambled to my feet to move further behind cover. I was tired of shrapnel injuries, they hurt a lot. Another, larger, explosion buffeted over me before I peeked out of cover to look up the small hillside.

The tank had blown its top clear off. I guessed a munition had set a fire that got into the fuel, based on how much flaming slick was everywhere. With a shrug, I pointed at the wreck and said, “I’d like to sell that, BuyMort, directly to the Dearth Conglomerate, Arizona board. Set up a sale page. Make the price five million morties.”

An affiliate sale page arose, and the details filled themselves in. The status at the bottom read: pending, and I chuckled as I watched it click over to: confirmed. 

The affiliate distributed the morties, and I got a pittance to work with from it, but the goal had been to insult Dearth. I wonder if the idiots even knew it was their own tank I was selling back to them, or if they thought it was just another piece of salvage to work.

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Either way, they were good at making it profitable to beat up on them.

I passed the incoming pick-up pod as I walked back to Lee’s compound, after dismissing my gauntlets. They slid away into their dimensional gateways, which retracted into place under my skin. Only a thin line of metal remained.

As I approached the compound through the desert, I watched the flames flickering on what was left of Lee’s neighbor. The home had been destroyed entirely, struck by two direct hits when one was more than enough. It was a blasted crater, with flaming debris scattered across the entire compound.

I heard Lee organizing his people as I approached. They were all working, scrambling at the rubble of the house, and as I approached I saw why. Two bodies had been pulled out of the wreckage and covered with thin sheets. One of them had soaked the sheet through already.

“Keep digging, we don’t leave her until we know for sure!” Lee shouted.

I joined in the work, helping heave aside larger pieces of rubble and using my newly enhanced physical strength to quicken the process. After half an hour we found her, buried at the bottom back corner. She had been dead before the third shell hit, crushed by a structural support wall. When I saw the girl's face, I recognized the group from that morning.

The older couple and young girl had eaten breakfast together, as part of the morning work crew. I had wondered at their dynamic, and how a family like theirs had come to live out in the middle of the Arizona desert. Instead of getting to learn the answers to any of my questions, I helped her neighbors and friends lay her body out beside the other two they had already uncovered.

Lee sat on a bench nearby, leaning heavily on his own knees with both hands and staring at nothing as his mustache occasionally twitched. Suzanne stayed nearby, but she took over organizing for him and got the other people moving to put out the small fires that were still burning all over the compound.

I walked over to Lee and sat down beside him, removing my helmet. “It was Dearth’s tank. I’ve seen it at my place a few times now.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry Lee. I took care of the tank at least.”

He nodded. “I saw. Thank you for helping dig out the young one, Tyson. We couldn’t leave here without knowing.”

I shrugged. “I could call out a construction crew, get you a new wall built up before dawn.”

“We don’t have that long, they come out in the wee hours.” Lee shook his head, taking a deep breath and standing up. “We need to get as much of our growing operation mobile as we can and get behind your walls and priest. We don’t have the manpower to fend off the damned wasps when they come.”

He growled and shook his head again. “They did this on purpose. The wasps only eat meat. Dearth wants our growing operation.”

I nodded and stayed seated. “Yeah. They have an entire research and development department. Probably reverse engineer your grow, then do it themselves. I bet they have buy orders for these greenhouses just waiting if you try to sell too.”

Lee’s mustaches drooped, and it took me a minute to realize he was snarling, as his eyebrows peaked in anger. “We take everything we can and burn the rest to spite them.”

He turned back and met my eyes. “You’re going to take this company down, aren’t you?”

I blinked a few times and sighed. “It’s starting to look like that’s my only option if I want to survive, yeah.”

Lee stuck out his hand. “I’m retired CIA, I’ll help. We’re good at destabilizing large organizations.”

That raised my eyebrows, and I stared up at the man before I could think of an answer. “Thanks Lee. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing yet, but I damn sure appreciate the aid.”

“I’ll set you on the right path. You said there’s facilities for my people? Housing?” The older man crossed his arms and met my gaze.

“Yeah. We have an entire wing of our underground area you can use for growing. It comes equipped with pipes and wiring, everything we should need to be able to get you guys up and running fast, with whatever we can haul out from here. Plus, there’s housing galore. Both above ground, and below.” I took a breath and stood up. “There’s just some unwelcome guests to be dealt with first.”

Lee scowled and shrugged. “Right. Well, I’m going to organize my people here. If we work through the night, we should be able to transplant a great deal of crop to your place before the wasps come out.”

I stood, brushing my filthy hands on my pants. “And I should get back, get that part of things rolling. I might be able to round up some volunteers to help.”

He nodded, taking a couple of steps toward his group.

“Hey, Lee,” I started. He stopped and turned back to look at me. “I’m sorry about your people.”

Lee stared at me for a long moment before answering. When he did, he took a deep breath first. “They’re your people now, Tyson. Do your best not to let any more of 'em die, like I did. All I ask.”

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