Chapter 61

  Buddy was operating far above its approved temperature range. This was a point of continuing surprise for the drone, considering it had been designed to operate in close proximity to a star. Most of its armor had melted off and quite a few important internal components had fused or otherwise stopped functioning. Buddy could not fire any energy weapons without momentarily crashing its operating system, requiring a reset. Just as ominous, its physical ammunition stores were running low.

  Despite its rapidly deteriorating condition, Buddy stayed in the fight. It zigzagged across the battlefield, hovering one meter off the ground. Missiles of flame and hardened earth flew all around it, Buddy’s evasive maneuvers just barely dodging the enemy fire. That first surprise attack had disabled the drone’s cloaking ability. But it had found a deep enough crater to conceal its frame and slipped inside, waiting patiently for the enemy to get closer.

  It floated at the center of the crater, just a few centimeters beneath the surface, bleeding exhaust with a constant loud wooooosh. Buddy tried to bring its temperature down, running coolant over every operating surface. It wasn’t enough. The enemy would detect him.

  This new opposing force was tricky. With the Wolf Brigade, it had been as simple as dominating the airspace and laying waste from above, but these new creatures were more durable and didn’t seem to have any trouble spotting Buddy and counterattacking faster than it could put them down.

  A message appeared from one of the drone gunships.

  At the same time, Buddy heard a grunt, originating from approximately 19.4 meters to the drone’s southwest. Another grunt answered in agreement.

  Buddy ran a hasty weapons check and then popped a half-meter out of the crater, exposing just enough of itself to level an autocannon at three approaching creatures.

  They were twice the height of a typical human male, and three times the mass. Each wore heavy armor of an unidentifiable metal and carried axes the same size as Operator Dalex’s Skull Anchor. What little skin was exposed to sunlight was a dull, sweaty green.

  Three pairs of deep black eyes snapped to the drone, the creatures instantly becoming aware of its presence. Buddy opened fire with the autocannon, pumping forty-millimeter osmium shells at three hundred rounds a minute into the closest combatant. The first shell slammed into the creature’s magical force field and deflected, plowing through a thick tree trunk behind it and cutting the tree in half. The next three shells bounced off the creature’s defenses in the same fashion, but the fifth shell punched through the forcefield and then the metal armor, putting a hole in the subject’s bulky chest.

  The time it took to land a single hit was enough for all three combatants to jump into action. The one with the hole in its chest did not seem to mind the wound. He raised his axe and charged Buddy, roaring at the top of his lungs. The two others behind him stayed out as they shouted out words of power, summoning raging pillars of blue fire over their heads that descended toward Buddy’s exposed shell.

  Buddy sprang out of the crater and dodged right, still maintaining fire on the charging creature. The columns of fire from the other two crashed over the crater less than a second later. The heat of the flames melted rock. Buddy kept moving, circling the three combatants and never letting up with the autocannon.

  The charging enemy’s shield was gone. Every new shell from Buddy’s autocannon penetrated the creature’s physical armor and put a new gaping hole in its chest. But the beast kept coming, even picking up speed.

  Taking careful aim, Buddy switched to targeting the creature’s head and put a shell through its brainpan. The creature tripped on its own feet and fell face first in the dirt, dead before it knew what hit it.

  But before Buddy could change targets, one of the other combatants threw a storm of rocks at the drone. The natural projectiles moved just as fast as the autocannon shells. They shredded away what was left of Buddy’s armor and jammed into its firing module.

  Buddy’s targeting went wild. The autocannon lost its lock on the closest creature and began firing into the forest, no longer able to find the enemy. Buddy’s senses lost focus. The drone could no longer tell for sure if the combatants were in the same spot. It retreated from their last known position, trying to repair its damaged critical components.

  And then the head of an axe lodged itself in Buddy’s power supply. The drone couldn’t even see which creature wielded the weapon. Suddenly, Buddy experienced a cascade of system failures, starting at audio receivers and heading toward total battery blackout.

  Before that could happen, two things occurred.

  First, Buddy received another message from Drone Gunship Six.

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  Second, before the cascading failures could reach the drone’s propulsion core, Buddy put all remaining power into thrusters and launched itself as hard as it could away from the area. It arced a hundred meters into the air, escaping just in time to avoid a particle beam that carved through the crust where Buddy had just been fighting, hopefully vaporizing the two remaining enemy combatants.

  Buddy lost control of propulsion midflight and crashed into the ground a few hundred meters away from the danger zone. Only a few systems remained online, but they included visible light cameras and radio communication. Even though Buddy was out of the fight, it could monitor the surroundings and stay tuned in to the larger battle.

  Hopefully, the other drones were faring better. Buddy had entered the fight having already sustained minor damage from the mutts several days before, and the drone gunships were still cloaked, high over the battlefield. They were untouchable.

  But then, another pillar of blue fire pierced up from the ground into the sky. It churned around like a waterspout, seeking something high in the atmosphere, and only dissipated after a full minute.

  At which point Buddy received a new message, broadcast across the entire defense network.

  ***

  Dalex saw the messages coming in. He watched on one of the {scrying tablets} as the three orcs tried to bring down the {attack golem}. They brutalized the poor {golem}, nearly killing it. Dalex wanted to {teleport} back to the city right now and clean this all up, but he knew he couldn’t. The second he left contact with the mutts, they would roll over everything to the east of Batulan-bar, and within an hour they would crush the city. Whatever this new enemy was, the mutts were worse.

  Dalex speared a vulture mutt through its head midair and then bisected the writhing monster all the way to its gray tail feather.

  “What can we send them?” he asked. “What’s left?”

  “All purpose-built combat drones are involved in action,” Seventh answered. “The [stealth frigate] could be tasked for targets around Batulan-bar, but I cannot perform that function.”

  Right, she couldn’t shoot at anything that wasn’t a mutt.

  “Can you display—" He paused mid-sentence so he could concentrate and shoot a {creation’s split} into a mutt hydra that was getting too close to Deldloo’s village. The human who had refused to evacuate was still there. The spell detonated far enough away that the buildings of the village only trembled a little.

  With a bit more space to breathe, Dalex finished his question. “Can you display a map of the Batulan-bar battle inside the {chariot}?”

  One of the {scrying tablets} changed to show a synthetic representation of the battlefield around the city, with markings for {golem} positions and sighted enemy forces. Dalex started scanning across it for a good place to send a {Newton’s hammer} strike, but he was interrupted again. A pocket of hound mutts surged out of the ground and charged Deldloo on the surface.

  Deldloo managed to burn two of the mutts to a crisp with his publicized fireballs, but several more were about to pounce on him when Dalex descended and cleanly sliced them all in two.

  Dalex projected his voice outside the {celestial chariot}. “You need to run. This is too much for you.”

  “I’m not leaving,” the man said. He didn’t seem to be sweating or out of breath. He ran forward toward more oncoming mutts, ready for the next wave.

  Dalex growled, but there wasn’t anything he could do. For some reason, {teleport} couldn’t touch Deldloo, and if Dalex took the time to force him off the battlefield, the mutts would make major progress.

  He cast another twenty {Newton’s hammers} on the front line of mutts and blasted more of the flyers out of the air with every weapon in his arsenal. That gave him just a few seconds of breathing room to study the Batulan-bar battlefield again.

  Still, he didn’t know where to send the {voidstalker} spells. Even if he could see enemy positions on the map, he didn’t know for sure what was there. He might be dropping a {hammer} on a populated suburb where the people were still alive and fighting back. The map didn’t give him enough information.

  Dalex let out a frustrated snarl and dismissed the map. He was going about this the wrong way.

  “What about this, Seventh,” he began. “You said all of our combat {golems} are in use, but you used the words ‘purpose-built.’ What about the other golems? The scouts and the supporters. Could they be given weapons?”

  “They have that functionality, but their combat efficiency is low.”

  Dalex snapped his fingers. “That’s good enough. If they can carry a weapon, then they can help, even if all they do is buy some time. Send everything we have to Batulan-bar.”

  “I am outfitting the full [drone] complement now. However, we will likely lose a large number of resources in this battle.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We can start building back up tomorrow.”

  Seventh made a grumbling noise, but she did as he asked. Soon, a swarm of {golems} began to descend from the {voidstalker}, heading toward Batulan-bar. It would take some time for the reinforcements to reach the city, but hopefully it would give the combat drones and humanoid defenders some relief.

  “Just hold on, Buddy. Hold on, Hitasa. Help is coming.”

  In fact, watching through the {scrying tablets} as the {golems’} deployed gave Dalex an idea. “I think we should bring our air-support a little closer.”

  He returned his full attention to repelling the mutts, zooming around the battlefield, popping mutt hydras like fission balloons and bombarding the surface with wave after wave of {Newton’s hammers}. He doused the land with lakes of liquid fire. The terrain below him was a nightmare of flame, gray blood, and churning masses of voracious predators. The skies above were overcast with dark clouds of vicious birds.

  Dalex killed and killed and killed, casting world-shaking spell after world-shaking spell.

  And his spells were coming more rapidly. Normally, it took about thirty seconds from when Dalex cast a {Newton’s hammer} to when the spell actually struck the ground. Now it took twenty seconds. Then ten seconds. His {prismatic strikes} became faster as well, the beams more accurately tracking the beasts on the ground and even sometimes those in the air.

  And then something broke through the clouds above. A large flat mass of metal parted the heavens, the belly of the {voidstalker} coming down from orbit to take a position directly over the battlefield. Floodlights on the vessel’s undercarriage snapped on, blasting the ground with harsh white light. Dalex heard the thrust of the vessel’s {astral engines} through the hull of the {celestial chariot}, a great and continuous howl of wind and power.

  “What in the bloody hall of hell is that?” Balgoth asked.

  “That,” Dalex said, “is my ride.”

  “Oh, I see,” Seventh said. It sounded like she was talking to herself. “Yes, the targeting at this altitude is much easier. The distortion doesn’t cause as much interference.”

  And then the {voidstalker} launched a rain of fire that swept over the horizon.

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