"Woo!" I yelled. The experience was amazing. Hovering in the air was one thing. I'd almost gotten used to that with the drop shaft in the Habitat complex. I was flying. This is superhero shit, right here.
My drones kept pace with me easily enough, although I suspected I could outrun them if I really wanted to.
The city approached quickly, the Spike and the dots circling it filling more and more of my vision. A handful of those dots broke off and were tagged with threat markers as they rapidly flew to attack me. They seemed to dart through the air toward me, like a school of deadly fish.
My vision Augment zoomed in and I got a good look at the horrors coming at me in the distance. Each of them was swimming through the air, a tetrahedral head of shining silver metal in front of dozens of thin black tentacles moving in waves to drive the things forward. It looked like a chrome, four-sided die had sprouted tentacles and was flying at me. The Interface labeled it for me.
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Tetrahedric Darter, Threat Level: 6
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My beam drone engaged on my mental order, the particle beam flashing out and digging deep into the metal of the lead horror. It immediately splayed its tentacles behind it in a fan and stopped dead in the air, causing more than half of the beam's pulse to miss. Thick arcs of electricity popped between the tentacles.
I pulled the Gazer free from my chest and activated the targeting link with a thought. Flying like a superhero and firing a rifle was a lot harder than I thought it would be. For a split second I got the orange dot on target and fired. The particle beam lashed out and clipped a few black tentacles off the back of one before the Squid moved out of the way.
I realized too late that I was going to fly right into the middle of them. I used the grav plates to adjust my pitch but it was too late, my momentum too great. Two of them angled to intercept me, three sides of their four-sided heads yawning open, exposing rows of shining metal teeth all the way around.
The first hit me hard, the impact sending us both tumbling through the air. I tried to push it away with my left arm and it clamped down, the teeth scraping on the solid armor there and making a horrible noise.
"Goddamn it!" I yelled, bringing the Gazer up at point-blank range to burn the thing off me. Then the second one latched on.
Tentacles partially blocked my vision as the second one enveloped me. I had been just about to push the trigger stud on the Gazer when every joint in my armor locked up. The HUD flashed at me.
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Warning: Electrical Attack, power assist malfunctioning.
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I snarled, mentally ordering the drones to clear this trash off me. I got an acknowledgment from them, but knew it wouldn't be that simple. The rest of the school, or flock, or whatever you call a group of flying squid horror things, was making things difficult for them.
"Screw it," I said, and with a grunt forced my finger down.
I knew that I had been just about on target, if not fully. I strained against my armor and moved my left arm out of the way, waving around the Gazer with my right. The grinding noise of teeth on my left arm stopped. Tentacles fell away and my vision returned. Both squids were gone, and I was tumbling wildly through the air.
The electrical warning had disappeared and with a quick mental effort I stabilized, standing upright and looking around. Two pieces of flying squid-monster were falling to the ground below me, while another one was coming back toward me, seeming to be missing a lot of tentacles and moving slowly. The other three squids were chasing my drones around fruitlessly a few hundred meters away.
I raised the Gazer and drilled the attacking squid monster right in the center of its pyramid head. The bright white beam slashed through the metal and with a flick of my wrist I cut the thing into two pieces. As it fell, I turned my attention to the other three.
The drones were doing well, running circles around the squids and firing when they could. They were working together, the needler drone would use a burst of needles to amputate some tentacles while the beam drone tried to get a kill shot. I had just turned to face them when a particle beam speared through a slowed squid and killed it.
Seconds later the other two were dead as well, the Gazer making short work of them. I checked its status.
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Cyklopean Systems GZR-LE "Gazer" Particle Beam Rifle
16% Charge
Ready
Control(s) Available: Engage safety
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I reattached it to my chest. There were spare magazines in one of the armor's pouches, but the weapon would be fully recharged in two minutes, so there was no need to swap magazines. My armor was intact as well, the squids not able to do much to it.
Twisting in the air, I continued to fly toward the Spike in the distance.
"Brick, what is this thing anyway? I don't know what a Spike is. Or a Shard. Clue me in."
"A Shard is a weapon used by the AIs in the war. They were dropped from orbit onto inhabited planets in great numbers, mostly onto cities. The destruction on impact was immense. Worse than the impact itself was that each Shard was an autonomous, self-reproducing factory. They were capable of flooding a city with combat units and turning the materials of the city that it had landed in against the inhabitants. They were very effective."
"Right, so that's what made the crater. What's the Spike, then?"
"Once a Shard had secured its local area, it would begin to build upward and outward.
