A t that moment, Evonne looked over to Riot from her position bracing the gates. The AI still hadn’t been repaired from the previous fight. Her skin fell off her body and a portion of her face. The steel underneath grinned back at her like something from a nightmare .
“What are you doing?” Riot asked as her feet fought for traction in the dirt floor. “Why are you looking at me like that ?”
“I understand you are feeling a tremendous amount of stress in this wartime environment,” Evonne said as calm as if she were giving someone directions. “I thought a smile would be in order .”
“No, stop it. You’re just making things worse and freaking me out,” Riot said, shaking her head. She opened up the comms channel in her helmet. “Colonel Harlan we could use those reinforcements at the front gate, and Ketrick, it’s time to bring the pain .”
“Roger that, Riot,” Colonel Harlan’s steady voice said over the comms. “They’re en route to you now .”
“What do you mean by ‘bring the pain’?” Ketrick’s voice came over the comms, faint and distant as if a tremendous amount of wind was being rushed past .
“The dragons, Muscles.” Riot couldn’t tell if he was kidding with her or serious, but she suspected the former. “Get your Trilord Prince rear end over here and light up some of these suckers !”
“On our way!” Ketrick responded .
“Vet, Wang, Rizzo, Sunshine,” Riot said into her comms as the wooden grates swayed and groaned with the pressure coming from the other side. “Get down here and help brace the gate .”
A series of “Rogers” came over the comms .
That was it. Riot had played all her cards now. If they couldn’t hold the position with the reinforcements coming, then the Trilord capital city would be overrun and the end would be near .
Thunk!
A curved steel blade penetrated the wooden gate, its tip suddenly appearing an inch away from Riot’s face like some macabre magic trick. The gate creaked and bent again as if it were going to snap in half at any second .
Maybe you waited too long to ask for help, Riot thought. Maybe this is how it was always supposed to be. Dying on the ground, alone. Well, not exactly alone. You have the smiling Terminator holding the gate by your side .
A rush of wings filled the night air as Ketrick’s dragons flew overhead. Riot looked up in time to see the underbelly of a handful of different colored dragons soar by, led by Vikta and Ketrick. The sight was like some kind of weird rainbow as white, green, blue, yellow, red, purple, and orange serpentine bodies soared over the wall .
“I heard you need a hand, Little One,” Ketrick said, laughing at his newly coined name for Rippa. “I must have killed two hundred of the Abominations by now. What’s your meager count ?”
“You’re lucky you’re on Vikta or I’d shoot you out of the sky and call it an accident,” Rippa growled with a hint of merriment in her voice. “It’s good to see you, you giant idiot .”
“Clear the wall,” Ketrick said to Rippa. “We’ll begin our attack runs and try to buy you a brief rest .”
Riot could hear the dragons begin their attack runs on the opposite side of the wall. At the same time, her crew arrived at the gates with the now-empty crates the Grovothe shock troops on the wall had used. Although they had once carried ammunition, they were sturdy enough to use as support .
“Good thinking.” Riot moved out of the way to allow her Marines to stack the extra crates against the gates for an added barricade .
“I bet that’s the first time anyone has said that to you, Vet,” Wang said over his comms .
“Your mom said it last time she was in town,” Vet said back without missing a beat .
“Really, you two?” Doctor Miller hefted her crate against the gate to the left of Evonne. “Even now ?”
Always , Rizzo wrote over their heads-up display .
“Look!” Doctor Miller shouted .
Riot followed her gaze to the path that sloped up the hill toward the capitol building, where Queen Revna led a contingent of ten Trilord soldiers wearing the black dragon tattoos of her personal guard .
The queen wore battle gear of what looked like tough leather and iron. Strapped to her shoulder and forearms were a series of iron armor pieces. Over her ample chest she wore a black leather piece that came down to her wide hips and ended in a skirt .
The weapon she carried in her hands was unlike anything Riot had ever seen, and that was saying a lot, since Riot had seen machine corpses being brought back from the dead by green Karnayer magic .
In her right hand, Queen Revna carried a massive sword that was nearly as large as her body. The double-handled sword had teeth on one side of the blade as large as Riot’s own hand .
The Trilords behind the queen each carried a thick, wooden pole .
“We heard you could use a hand,” Queen Revna said, brushing her long, white dreadlocks to the side. “Where do you want us ?”
While the queen asked Riot where to be positioned, her warriors stationed the poles they carried against the wooden doors. One end rested on the thick wood, the other end was wedged into the dirt ground .
“We could use you here,” Riot said, relieved. For the moment, it seemed the gate was safe. “I don’t know how long Muscles—I mean, Prince Ketrick, will be able to hold them back with the dragon fire .”
The queen nodded with a smile as if she knew what Riot had been about to say. Her eyes roved over the Marines, as well as Evonne with her skin coming off of her face. “Do your soldiers need medical attention ?”
“What?” Riot looked from the queen to Evonne. “Oh no, she’s fine .”
“Does she have leprosy?” the queen asked, peering through the dark .
“No, no, nothing like that,” Riot said, reminding herself it was still dark, and although her heads-up display brightened her vision, the same could not be said for everyone. “She’s a Termina—ugh, Artificial Intelligence .”
The queen looked at her, confused .
“She’s a robot, as in ‘not human’,’” Doctor Miller said, trying to help. “She’s part of our ship, the Valkyrie . She wanted a human-looking body, so Corporal Vetash and I created a frame for her and covered it with synthetic skin .”
Queen Revna blinked a few times at Doctor Miller, then turned to Riot. “I think the doctor has received trauma to her head somewhere in today’s conflict .”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” Riot said, nodding along with the queen’s words. “I wonder the same thing about her myself on a daily basis .”
“I’m right here.” Doctor Miller placed closed fists on either side of her hips. “I can hear everything you’re saying about me .”
Riot, the queen, and everyone else had been complacent with having the playful banter, due to the fact that there was no main threat to the gate. Ketrick had his dragons performing alternate passes right in front of the gate. Every time a dragon swooped down, a thick flame of orange, red, and yellow fire erupted from their throats .
The Abomination horde fired their weapons at the dragons, but most of the shots either missed entirely or glanced off the dragons without inflicting even the tiniest bit of damage .
Dragon scales were impervious to small-weapons fire. Even the enemy fire from the Karnayer Scarabs were mostly ignored by the dragons. Along with the fire coming from the weapons and the hum emitted by the Abominations, a new sound began to fill the air .
Maybe it wasn’t a sound at all. Perhaps it was a feeling. Whatever it was, Riot’s sixth sense picked up on something approaching. She looked into the sky, seeing the twin suns of the planet beginning to rise over the horizon .
Riot switched off her helmet’s heads-up display, allowing her to see what everyone else was looking at. She wasn’t the only one to sense the feeling of trepidation. From far off, a massive shadow covered the sky. Riot squinted to try to see what it was .
“Do you hear something?” Killa asked over the comms. “Something in the jungle ?”
“No, it’s something in the sky,” Colonel Harlan said over the comms. His voice sounded stressed. He was never stressed. “I’m getting word from Admiral Tricon and General Armon. The Karnayer destroyer has lowered back into orbit. The Scarabs are out in force. They’re preparing their attack run .”
“No, that’s not it,” Killa said, insistent, over the comms. “There’s something else, something big coming from deep within the jungle’s southern wall .”
In that moment, something tickled the back of Riot’s mind, some detail her subliminal consciousness had picked up on while she had somehow managed to forget .
“The smoke coming from the Karnayer drop ships,” Riot said in a whisper to herself. Her voice was so low, no one else picked up on it over the nanites that allowed her to communicate even without her helmet .
Images of the smoke coming from the interior of the drop ships flashed across her mind. The sounds of Karnayer smiths working hard at their craft creating … what? Creating more Abominations, or something worse ?
Riot was momentarily taken away from her thoughts as the Grovothe Dreadnaught and the U.S.S. Patton appeared over the Trilord city from their position in orbit and moved in to intercept the Karnayer destroyer .
Witnessing the crafts in the sky sail toward one another was like watching two massive bulls charging at one another. That is, if bulls weighed millions of tons and were equipped to the teeth with rail guns and laser weapons .
Riot ripped her thoughts from the sight of the colossal ships about to engage high in the sky, to an idea she understood was fact. How she knew, she wasn’t sure, but she knew, nevertheless. “Killa, the Karnayers are going to throw everything at us now. They’re engaging our fleet, not so they can win, but so that our ships will be unable to help us on the ground. The Karnayers are about to bring everything, including their own troops and their repurposed monsters .”
“What are you talking about, Riot?” Colonel Harlan asked .
“The Karnayer drop ships in the jungle were hard at work making something and I didn’t know what, until now. They were making wings, maybe armor, for their monsters. They knew Ketrick and the dragons would be able to stand against their ground forces,” Riot said, explaining all of this, despite the fact she had no solid proof of her statements .
“How do you know this?” Killa asked .
“Because it’s what I would do,” Riot said, remembering the hate in Alveric’s eyes. “Because it’s what he would do .”
A scream tore through the air at that moment, solidifying everything Riot had said up to that point. She had heard the sound before, but not on this planet. Riot ran up the stairs to the wall once more, and what she saw turned the blood in her veins to ice .