Chapter 91: Chapter 86

Yarsps thundered toward me, and the gate at my back swung open. The gate beyond that swung open too, and the nearby roar of engines filled my helmet's sensors. I took a few deep breaths, racked a laser slug into my shotgun, and turned to face the incoming bugs.

A brilliant beam of crimson erupted from my barrel, sweeping across a row of yarsps and searing off their limbs in a series of tiny flame bursts. Homogeneous grunts filled the air, and I racked another slug in.

The ground began to vibrate beneath my feet. I dealt with the rest of the incoming yarsps at a distance, raking them with another concentrated beam of weaponized light. They lay grunting and burning after the laser hit them.

I hurriedly fished two replacement shells from my bag, slipping them into the weapon’s magazine as I turned back to clear the road. Dozens of dead yarsps were piled in various places on the road, blocking the way in.

With a grunt, I heaved against the nearest pile, and got it moving. The yarsps had all tangled together as they died, and chitin scraped against blacktop as the primary bulk of dead carnivorous bugs slid out of the way. I hurriedly grabbed and flung the last few as the first vehicle from Sundew Valley tore up the road behind me.

I cleared the road with seconds to spare, and the pickup truck roared past, chirping their brakes and de-accelerating inside the first gate. Another large truck from the farm roared past, and the first of the yarsps in pursuit came into sight.

A cloud of dust grew in the north, directly over the road. Thousands of yarsps thundered across the desert toward us, trailing behind the end of our convoy. I took another deep breath and turned back to deal with our own rogue groups in the desert above the wall.

Handfuls of them had wandered over to investigate different portions of the wall, and hobbs chased them along the edges, firing down with suppressed weapons. The grunt of yarsps on either side of me filled the air, and I grit my teeth as they thundered closer.

More vehicles swept past, and the horde of insects in the distance loomed. I watched the line of headlights on the road closely, burning another group of aggressive alien wasps that had come too close.

I saw a line of other interested yarsps behind them, and fired another beam of roaring weaponized light. The flames grew, the grunts became louder, and the dull roar of incoming monsters roared in my ears.

My heart thundering in my ears, I calmly reloaded my weapon. The laser slugs were gone part way through, so I pocketed a handful of MIRV shells from the bag. It was about to get loud anyway. The growing crowd to the side of the road had noticed the oncoming rush chasing the convoy, and decided to join in. They were all charging toward me, and the campground.

The final vehicle, an old early 1900’s flatbed containing wildly jiggling fruit trees rushed past me and I sprinted for the gate. As it swung shut behind me, I turned and blasted into the oncoming rush with my remaining laser slugs. I couldn’t see it make any difference, but I took a few seconds to reload my empty weapon before I began jogging down the long hallway.

Yarsps grunted as they slammed into the gate behind me, in a series of metal bangs. The gate dented, bowed in, and screamed as its hinges began to tear. The yarsps flooded up and over the metal gate, as a great press of them from the back arrived. The gate popped and sprang open, flattening instantly as it spun off its hinges.

I turned and fired into the oncoming horde of insects. A MIRV shell sparkled in the dawn's newborn colors, erupting over the sea of chitin and claws. I pumped and fired, blindly stepping backward, and shooting a carpet bomb attack at the incoming threat.

It worked, for a brief moment. The initial rush was stopped, but as the smoke cleared, I saw the primary, seemingly endless bulk of them still rushing forward. I had a few shells left in my pocket, and hurriedly reloaded the shotgun, as the stampede of snapping yarsps flooded over their dead.

I was engulfed. A yarsp hit me, followed by dozens more. I was lifted off my feet, even as sharp mandibles and claws began segmenting me. They crawled over me, around me, and even beneath me as I was carried back to the secondary gate on the sheer tide of their movement.

The yarsps had an almost uncanny ability to use one another’s bodies for mobility, shoving off from thoraxes and hooking limbs together to push forward. Through the flood of painkillers and pure shock of the attack, I felt the metal gate at my back and realized where we were.

My legs were useless, cut to ribbons. I couldn’t even feel them below the hips anymore, there was so much damage. I worried for my crystalline colonies, and the progress they had made enhancing my strength.

Thankfully my suit repaired the limbs back to full strength, replacing my old muscle tissue with synthetic tissue that matched what it repaired at an atomic level. I lost crystalline creatures with each attack, but they existed in the majority of my muscle system and would quickly repopulate.

Before my arms could be cut apart as well, I reached for a weapon.

Falcor hung up on the scabbard on the way out again, and I yanked it free. The blade immediately got tangled in my tendrils, and a bizarre thing happened.

It bounced from each thin whip-arm of metal with an explosion of sparks, until it was torn from my hand and sent spinning out into the crowd of gathered yarsps. The blade cut a swath through the yarsps at my front, vanishing into the growing horde.

The crowd of hostile insects surged forward again, and I was slammed into by several mandibles and grasping claws at the same time. Stingers plunged into the scraps of my legs over and over.

My suit deployed a swarm of tendrils from each limb, but the charge was dropping fast, and I couldn’t move. The yarsps cut, bit, slashed, and stung my body faster than the suit could repair it. Within seconds my torso was in ribbons, and my useless arms and legs merely flopped, critical tendons severed repeatedly, in several places.

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My parts all clung to the suit, and functionality was returned anytime a new flesh-foam connection was made, but instantly another mandible or claw would tear into it. Only my head was protected, shielded from the onslaught by my helmet.

I couldn’t even breathe, I just watched as they washed over the top of me, covering my sight. Covering everything.

Then the ground shook, as something heavy landed nearby. Above the scuttling, biting, and clawing sounds, another began to rise. Grunting. The yarsps were being killed by something, and dozens of them were grunting as they fell.

The yarsps directly on top of me crunched, died, and were pulled away. Grey dawn poured in, and I saw Phyllis in her mech, standing over my ruined body, holding three crushed yarsps in one oversized metal hand. 

Her other arm spun into the fusion cannon and she pointed it at the oncoming horde of yarsps. “Good morning, dearie,” she said. Her voice was metallic, mechanically enhanced and emanating from inside the faceplate on her mech.

It still felt good to hear. My body began to repair as Phyllis cleared an area around me. The fusion cannon was in a different formation than I was used to, and it roared a stiff jet of hot blue flame instead of the bright orange fireballs it had launched before.

Upgrades, I guessed, as my right leg finally got put back together. I wiggled my toes, a dazed smile on my lips. Phyllis continued fighting the yarsps, who were helpless against her.

Their stingers broke on her armor, their mandibles slid off, and their claws left nothing but faint scratches in the metal. The insects crawled all over her, but she calmly ignored them, or crushed them one at a time with her free hand, while focusing on what her plasma torch was doing.

It crisped any yarsps that got too close, turning them into blackened husks, legs curled in on themselves. The weapon cut through the aggressive insects without slowing, and Phyllis swung it around with abandon.

I summoned my atomic breaker gauntlets and lashed out, moving to engage the areas near the gate not already covered by Phyllis and her mech. A small group of yarsps that broke through her assault blasted away in an explosion of blue light when I struck the lead wasp. They were charging so closely together that the kinetic energy waves hit entire groups instead of individuals.

I couldn’t activate my power blow ability at all, too much damage had occurred to my crystal colonies. Still, I was confident some of them had survived, and the gloves did fine work anyway.

With the gauntlet’s breaker ability, the bugs were blown apart. Their bodies shattered against the mud-crete walls but were instantly replaced by more. They scuttled over each other’s bodies, single mindedly chasing the vehicles and trying to consume any meat in their path.

They parted around Phyllis’ legs like a river to get to me. In spite of how much damage she was handing out to the horde, there were just too many. I took a deep breath and prepared to be consumed again.

Rayna opened up with the flame-thrower in the near distance, and reinforcements on the walls above me shouted as they moved into position. Suppressed rifle fire was everywhere, and the yarsps fell en masse, each grunting in similar voices.

Even Doofus was happily barking from the wall, wagging his tail at the activity as he smashed yarsps against the ground and walls with his weaponised voice.

I stood in front of the gate, repair tendrils swirling around my body as I used my metal encased hands to smash the land wasps. Endless claws, mandibles, and stingers found my flesh, ripping my new silks to rags and keeping the suit working endlessly to repair me enough to stay standing.

Phyllis shot an arm out to stabilize her mech against the mud-crete walls, and I started slipping on the carapaces at my feet. There was so much ichor, so many dead yarsps. When I fell backwards and slammed into the gate, I altered my fall into a sitting position and just leaned there, breathing heavily and looking around.

The walls above me were covered in people.

Not just hobbs, I saw countless human faces up there, weapons tucked into shoulders or held in white-knuckled hands. Lee, Suzanne, and the rest of their people joined in, grim faces looking down from above.

Weapons fire roared into the hallway, and the charge of the yarsp horde was finally broken. The gate to the compound had been held.

I sank to my backside, ichor covered arms resting on my knees. When the gate behind me cracked open, I fell backwards. Rough hands grabbed me under the arms, and I felt my pain and drug addled mind sinking inward as I was dragged away.

The last thing I heard before passing out was Phyllis’ mech-enhanced voice saying, “oh the big baby. He’ll be fine.”

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