Jollies’ voice came back instantly, a little garbled. “We got A LOT of bogies. That’s what you call ‘em, right? Or tangos? I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ve been getting all the targeting slang. Whatever. Wargs and orcs. Same ol’, same ol’. Tons of ‘em.”
“What’s the game plan?”
“Uh, Gill, what are you thinking? Short and sweet?”
Gill spoke over the comm. “I believe I could sneak around to the front and draw most of their attention as you split them down the middle.”
“Oh, like that two-point pattern you were showing me?”
“Exactly.”
Alex was impressed by the obvious teamwork between the two. She was a little jealous but wasn’t sure of who. Either way, it was good they knew what they were going to be doing. “All right, sounds great. Let me know if anything changes, okay?”
“No probs. Jollies out.”
Jim was already in position to get the boulders going. Alex got behind him. Once the first two went down, they were going to have to rush over to the next couple and keep going. The only way this was going to work was if they got the jump on the giants. Taking too long between rolling the boulders would let the giants catch their breath and maybe mount an attack.
After they depleted the hills of boulders, the only other option was to get up close and personal with their targets. These didn’t seem to be yhomir. They were much larger. Alex reminded herself that close didn’t mean too close.
Alex looked at Jim and gave him the high sign. Chine reared up on his hind legs and slammed his chest into the boulder as Jim fired a concussive blast at the boulder in front of him.
Both Jim’s and Alex’s boulders started to roll down the ridge. Neither of the riders wasted any time jumping over to the next boulder and pushing it. Then on to the next. And the next after that.
Alex worked as fast as she could, and it wasn’t long until they had cleared the first hill of all the boulders. She pulled up on her dragon anchor, sending Chine bolting for the ridge across from her as Jim’s mech rose. She landed and started the process again with the boulders on the other side.
The boulders Alex and Jim had already gotten moving were picking up speed as they careened down the slopes into the mostly flat valley.
Alex took off and held out her anchor, pulling her scythe out of the ether. “Let’s get this done,” she said before taking off toward the giants.
Chine dipped into the valley as the boulders Alex and Jim had set loose slammed into the mammoth’s body, knocking the creature to its knees and tossing the giant from its back.
As Chine got closer, Alex could see just how massive the creatures were. These giants were nearly twenty feet tall. They were large enough to swat at Alex and Chine if they got too close. That put an end to one of Alex’s plans. She had originally planned on raining fire from above. Now that she could see how large the giants were, it became obvious that to do any real damage, she was going to have to be close enough that she would be in range of the giants.
Jim seemed to realize the same thing because he pulled up to give himself time to figure out what to do.
The boulders were still crashing into the giants. Luckily, the boulders were large enough to do damage. They were knocking over the giants and mammoths left and right. It was difficult to see if the giants were going to stay down, but some of the boulders were roughly the size of a giant and a mammoth together.
Alex was glad they had put time into coming up with a plan. If they had just walked blindly into this fight, they would not have survived.
As Alex and Jim continued to gauge what was going on below them, one of the giants who had been knocked over got to his feet. He grabbed bits of the boulder that had exploded against his mammoth’s legs and began throwing them at the riders.
Chine dodged the rock, but Jim took a direct hit to his shoulder-mounted machine gun. He threw on his thrusters, putting more distance between him and the giants. If that was how fast they could throw shrapnel, Jim was going to need more space to maneuver. The mech wasn’t as fast as Chine.
Alex worried for a second that all they had managed to do was provide ammo for the giants, but it seemed like most of the ones who had been knocked over were also knocked out. There were only half as many as there had been before.
One of the giants, the one who had thrown the boulder shards, had a gnarled face, its nose looking like it had been carved from a tree, its eyes deep and heavy, with sadness buried within them. He reached down to his side and pulled out a long, curved horn made from a mammoth tusk. He blew into it, releasing a mournful call that echoed through the valley.
Alex sighed loudly as she shouted to Jim, “Whatever the hell that is, it’s not going to be good!”
As Alex shouted, the giant beneath her blew his horn again. “Not going to have any more of that,” Alex said as she drew her plasma pistol. She took aim and fired, and the horn shattered.
The giant below her smiled, its teeth dark and stained. Then it pulled a black rod from his side and aimed it at Alex. The giant shouted something and Alex felt a wave of energy wash over her, pushing her back. The force of the energy got stronger, shoving Chine back as well.
As Chine tilted backward, Alex felt her feet lifting off Chine’s back. They were no longer anchored. She frantically grabbed her
