Chapter 17
On one knee, Led contemplated the situation, while adjusting his pants properly, and checking the status of his new fancy gun. Across the way, through roiling smoke and rubble-strewn street, the LoL center waited for him to open its door and swap bodies. Or not.
Two auto-defense turrets had risen from the roof of the one-story business. They’d popped up like well-cooked tarts. Barrels bristled from them, and each turret roamed in an arc. One discovered the recently downed bot – a mech-ninja from his markings, or mekinja was the recent slang. He squinted. It was an old version, prone to glitches. The turret whirred then clattered and bullets screamed from the twin barrels at, Led approximated, three thousand rounds a minute.
It ceased firing.
The mekinja had turned into so much shredded metal. It folded and died with a squeak. Small pieces of silvery metal bounced down the street, tinkling.
Patches of the street sizzled.
As if that’d been a signal to attack, green balls of energy flew from above and behind Led’s left shoulder, whommed across the street, spilling energy that crackled where it drizzled on the ground. The balls hit and wrapped around the turrets, melting them into steaming red-hot piles of slag that dripped down the front wall.
The windows of the shop cracked from the heat and fell outward.
Thorn was on all fours on the dusty pavement, palms flat and with her head bowed.
She’d pulled up the pinkish pants to cover her butt and the thin top still wrapped around her at breast-level, but where her back was bared veins showed – branching and wriggling in an unnatural vibrant red.
Led cursed quietly.
Spittle dripped from her mouth. If the agruth he’d shoved in her mouth was working it was yet to do anything good.
Two gun-carrying mekinjas leaped over the top of them, having bounced off the coach roof, their focus on the LoL building. They landed and sprinted forward. Down the street to the left, two molloks also broke cover, regulation long coats flaring as they ran. Their tentacles were on alert above their heads. From their gaze direction and the rise of their weapons, they’d seen the mekinjas and weren’t happy.
A small war was in progress and it was definitely harshing his sexual proclivities.
A third mekinja appeared overhead, legs in mid-leap.
Led snagged his metal foot, whipped him forward and down then pulled the trigger on his gun – slamming the creature with projectiles at the same time as its head slammed the pavement. The weapon was nicely quiet as it clicked out the rounds, but the others heard. They spun. Led climbed his aim past the now-dead one, aiming the bullet stream onto a second mekinja.
It collapsed in a sprawled, well-punctured heap. Its servomotors died with a few pitiful bleeps. He’d say last rites for it later.
Two down.
The third had scrambled into a pile of rubble created by a partly collapsed building. Their little war was recent, and they’d used heavy weapons. A gray pog staggered from the LoL shopfront clutching its head...well the top of its roundness.
Led waved it back and it sat down with a bump.
The molloks had dived for cover also – behind a low wall. They were firing down the street, peppering the rubble around the remaining mekinja. The noise of pulverized rock, plascrete, and dented metal rose to a roar, again.
His ears still echoed with whatever had ripped apart the coach.
It took all of a few seconds to assess this. Killing the molloks could wait. Besides, who was in the right? Maybe them? The law was often an ass when you murdered sentient things.
He sighed, aimed through an aperture between pieces of collapsed building and blew away the last mekinja. More metal tinkled and flew.
Having found his commlink, his weapon whined in his head as it ran out of ammo – *Empty empty empty*
Led tsked. “Shush, gun, you’ll get more.”
He turned to Thorn...and found she was standing in the middle of the street, looking toward the molloks – as you did in the middle of a battle. Luckily they’d ceased firing, for now...
“Thorn! Down!”
Danger. Danger. Every alert in his mind screamed at full bore. He’d kill the whole lot if she’d simply get out of the way!
“Thorn!”
She ignored him and raised her arms.
The shockwave as something radiated out from her, rocked his neurons, then his balls.