12 Miles Below

Book 7. Chapter 10: This tower defense game is broken

“I think they want me dead.”

Cathida scoffed, “Just another on the long list of entities you’ve pissed off now deary, nothing to worry about. On the positive side, a direct hit from them would be survivable, but the shields would take a good chunk. Don’t get hit by all three. Journey’s not appreciating the numbers it’s crunching about that.”

Three other drones each banked and flew off in a wide recovery circle, each trying to fly back into my face. I aimed my pistol, fired a shot to take out the lead drone before its circle was complete, letting it crash further off where it crashed harmlessly without an explosion.

The other two were within occult range. Wraiths flew out of my chest, the armguard swinging into the expected direction. The drones seemed to register the possible threat, and tried to fly off, but that armguard did have some good size to it, turning the weapon into a glorified drone swatter that diced up the targets.

Both fell into the ground in tiny cube pieces when the occult edges sliced them up, all bouncing off the ash. No idea why it didn’t explode like the first had.

The Odin above didn’t fire any flares here, but they were clearly keeping visual contact on me, slowly circling as a group further ahead of me.

Now that the rules of engagement had changed, a power efficient jog was no longer in the works.

I started a full on combat sprint.

They didn’t appreciate that one bit. Seeing a relic knight in full sprint was… dramatic. Journey moved with precision, each heavy footfall propelling me further forward.

My time to arrival at the other end of the ashlands ahead went from about an hour and a few extra minutes down to ten and a half minutes.

The Odin reacted. The flight above me all tried to fly ahead of me at full speed. When they realized they were steadily going to be passed in a matter of seconds and then left behind, they all unleashed an entire barrage of black spheres, likely the last surprise card they’d been holding onto.

Journey identified it as a danger. No idea what it was, but ninety percent chance the Odin weren’t playing around anymore.

I turned on my heels, ducking and weaving into a scattered running pattern that easily avoided the hastily dropped weapons.

And they were weapons. Each time the black orbs hit the ground, an explosion came out. And left behind burning patches of black tar that continued a flame even on the completely dead ashes.

I wasn’t hit with any of it, nor any of the splash damage they’d been designed for, and within a minute the flight of Odin were left behind me. Although they were straining to keep up.

A flare came up from the other end of the deadlands, and the Odin flight behind me quickly panned out of the way, halting their chase. As if something big was coming down my direction.

It wasn’t big. Instead it was sheer numbers. More of the flying explosive drones. About twenty of them all in all. I saw them activate from larger metal boxes, likely setup long ago for emergency use. They zipped out and flew right at me.

Midsprint, my sidearm aimed down their direction and I began to open fire. Journey’s targeting reticle showed me exactly where to aim. Seven were taken out in quick succession, and the rest instantly started to move around erratically to avoid fire. Interestingly enough, there weren’t any explosions on my takedowns, even when they slammed into the ground, breaking apart into wildly spinning parts.

The erratic flying didn’t save them much either, and another three were taken out before all the drones decided to just zero in on me with a mad sprint forward.

“They’re manually controlled.” Cathida noted, while sprinting at my side. There were no ash footprints behind her, which somewhat broke the illusion of her projection.

“Can you dodge them still?”

She nodded. “It’s just a different set of skills to dodge a manual operator instead of an auto-pilot. Quick reactions rather than running a counter-prediction program. The birds aren’t the best pilots, ironically, so it’s far better for us they’re manually controlling these.”

My sidearm shot down another three drones on their way to smash themselves against me, and once more there weren’t any explosions on any hits. If there had been, I think the explosion would have wiped out the entire group, so they likely had a manner of priming the explosives last second.

Cathida took command a moment later, drawing an occult blade in my right hand while my left kept my sidearm ready. With her moving armor, she easily jumped over three that zipped past me, slid under two that flew too high, and dashed to the right with a heavy step to avoid the only one that managed to stay directly centermass on us.

Her blade slapped down with the flat surface directly on that last one that was flying level with us, and the hit caused it to tumble directly into the ground. Where it promptly exploded, with a good amount of it’s explosive power still propelled backwards, striking the rest of the fleet of drones that had narrowly missed.

Explosions happened as the rest detonated. Any that hadn’t been blown up from the initial explosions easily blew up from these ones.

“Wonder how much that ended up costing them.” I muttered, my head going back to the old days of causing property damage.

“We’ll have to ask them politely once we arrive.” Cathida shrugged, appearing next to me again as I took over the armor once more.

For a nice two minutes of time, nothing came at me and I was allowed to sprint in peace. Then at the seven minute mark till arrival, I caught sight of the next wave of attacks the Odin had prepared.

A pair of drones flying directly at me.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“That’s a power cell.” I hissed as Journey zoomed in on the target.

“Wish granted. They did bring you a power cell in the end.” Cathida chuckled, but there was a dark undertone there.

We both knew exactly what that power cell was going to be used for. I had no doubts at all it had been primed for unsafe detonation. Those things could absolutely level an entire airspeeder if they exploded from inside, and leave a giant crater behind.

One of the few things knights had to be careful around. They weren’t used often as power cells were limited resources that couldn’t be easily replenished, but they were still far cheaper than a knight’s armor. Someone holding a cell at supercritical while hiding behind cover was a good way to deny territory until they got shot or otherwise dealt with at range.

I, of course, was not going to fuck around with a weapon of mass destruction like that. My hands unhooked my rifle from my chest buckle, and prepared it for fire. The sidearm was good for quick shots within target, but this would require precision.

My feet ducked under me, turning my speed into a slide and ending a few dozen feet forward where my armor stabilized the rifle. Flashbacks zipped through my head from the last time I’d seen someone take this pose. Aiming at a goat deep underground.

Father only had one hand to work with back then, I had two. But the goat didn’t have any idea it was being targeted while the two drones flying in the air clearly did and they weren’t going to make themselves easy to hit.

Accuracy at this range showed thirty four percent. I opened fire with a few probing shots.

Missed.

“Cathida…” I hissed. “Do you have better aim than me?”

“I’d be aiming exactly the same. At this range it’s luck on how the bullet flies and air turbulence. Once they’re closer, it’ll be far more certain.”

“Once they’re closer, I might be in range too.”

The direction of the drones changed, the one flying without the power cell under its stomach dove down and raced right for me. Journey superimposed an orange line on the expected path, showing it flying over my head.

The other drone I was more worried about was flying much further upwards, staying out of firing range, the line showing nowhere near me.

What were they up to? I aimed my rifle right at the approaching drone, waited until it was in range for a certain hit, then opened fire.

The bullets shredded through one of the arms, possibly both, tossing the drone into a death spiral spin. But the Odin’s planning made itself clear at that moment.

The loss of power to the propellers made the entire thing start falling, the expected direction going from further above my head, to right by my feet. They planned for the drone to get shot or lose power and aimed for it.

I got back up from my knees, and swiftly turned to leap out of there before the drone could land anywhere near me.

It exploded midair. Journey’s HUD turned fuzzy for a moment, but otherwise no damage. “Armor’s detecting an electromagnetic pulse from the detonation.” Cathida said. “They tried to shut you down. Assholes.”

The pulse didn’t work on armor, too insulated and protected from something like that. But it certainly affected the drone flying with the power cell far above us. That started falling straight out of the sky, and again I saw the little plans these flying feathered weasels had planned.

They’d flown their drone high up so I couldn’t shoot it down reliably. But they’d kept just enough of a direction so that when it depowered, it would fall right around my general area. It wasn’t perfect, but a power cell going supercritical didn’t need to be perfect.

Journey’s warnings lit to life as the armor calculated the potential destruction and decided there was a possible chance we’d take serious damage. “Seven seconds until impact on the ground.” Cathida called out, “Run faster.”

I swore. A few times. But I wasn’t about to let a few birds be my death. Occult pulsed out of me as I launched a wraith up into the air. The spectral image flew past the drone, then flickered as I summoned another wraith within itself. That one had a single task: Lash the drone and pull it up.

An occult lash flew straight down, and narrowly missed my target.

“Gods damn it, that thing is tiny!” I hissed.

“Five seconds!” Cathida called out.

That’s fine, everything is okay. The drone is too close to me to slice through or damage without causing myself damage. So I’ll just try again with the lash. Another image pulsed from the failed attempt, and fired another lash at the tiny target still in freefall.

It flew down at the tiny target, and scythed just a little above it, missing the target.

“Three seconds! Dive! Dive!”

Wait, why was I trying to catch this thing with a single lash? That’s like trying to weave a thread through a needle. My body exploded in as many occult images that I could think through. Each wraith flew up. With the drone already falling out of the sky and racing right to the ground, it took not even a second for all the images to pass by it.

Then they all turned and launched occult lashes down at the threat.

“DIVE NOW!” Cathida screamed into the helmet, the timer going down past a second.

Most lashes missed. And then two actually swiped through one of the propellers, and a third hit center mass. They both yanked the terrifying thing upwards into the air like a bungee cable pulling a doomed man, not even a few feet from impact on the ground.

“Thank the goddess.” Cathida sighed, watching as the pest was being reeled upwards into the air, where the rest of my wraiths were now busy daisy chaining it opposite of where I was going. With the little shit under my full control now, I didn’t miss my lashes and flung it further and further away, until it was far out of my range in one last occult leash dissolving mid-toss.

It landed somewhere far far off my position and detonated in one giant ball of blue that eradicated everything around it, and harmlessly didn’t get anywhere near my position. The shockwave caused a wall of ash to fog over everything, rushing over my position.

Leaving the entire world into a half-illuminated dark night.

That didn’t stop my helmet from filtering through and giving me full sight once more.

Back to the sprint, and this time I was going to pluck a few feathers and wings once I arrived. I get they’re paranoid about Bob, but Bob’s been thoroughly burned clean off my armor a long while back. Now they were just straight up trying to murder me from a distance. At least the wall of ash obscured me from sight.

It didn’t last long, and soon I was sprinting out of the fading dust cloud, back onto the open ground.

I didn’t have long to wait before I found what their last plan had been. Up on their distant tower a metal rod turned and aimed my direction.

Then it opened fire.

The hail of bullets were clearly larger caliber, but at this range most of the destructive damage was mitigated enough that Journey didn’t trigger shields. Still staggered me back a bit with each impact and slowed my full sprint.

But the damned thing didn’t stop firing down at me. I kept my sprint forward, feeling the pinpricks start growing in power as I continued. It felt like I was running against a water hose of some kind, a steady stream of pressure trying to force me backwards.

Past a certain point, Journey calculated it now needed to use shields, so those flashed up around me and started draining. Not fast enough to stop me. Knight armors were famous for being able to tank quite a lot of damage.

I loaded my occult bullets into my rifle, and aimed while mid-sprint. Journey highlighted the construction. The turret was clearly old but well maintained, and it moved using electronics rather than manual levers. Made sense, I had no idea how the little birds could have the physical strength to move human-sized levers around. I could even see the Odin themselves scrambling around the central control computer. They weren’t having a good time.

My occult bullets hit mid-center onto the turret, right where I’d expect the movement gears to be working. The little blue traces of occult flew true, slicing through the machinery, and exited out the other end without any fanfare.

The turret instantly froze in its tracks, unable to continue targeting me and firing uselessly at where I’d been a moment ago.

And now there was nothing between me and the little scrapshits on the other side of their metal wall.

That was a fun little romp, but it’s time I reminded these crows who were on the top of the food chain.