Chapter 226: (Hesstla)

Dambree wiped her eyes and glanced down at the baby. She was laying on Dambree's shirt, sucking her thumb, glaring at Dambree with her wide amber eyes. Her ears were held tightly against her head in response to the loud yelling that sounded out inside one's head more than it reached the ears. Dambree swerved around blackened and smoking debris in the road, slowing down. Her eyes and face were beginning to hurt from squinting to see through the darkness.

The glittering curtain had moved away, the firing from guns coming to a stop. There had been the rumble of great engines and it had moved away.

That had made Dambree almost start crying.

It wasn't fair. She was almost there when it had driven away, leaving her on a debris filled dirt road driving a car that was barely held together.

The GPS was out, the navigation system was out, and when Dambree had checked, even the headlights were out. She had no idea where she was going, how fast she was going.

She only knew she needed to keep moving.

Which is why she was weaving between massive chunks of burnt and blackened metal. Some of it was sparking deep inside, a few times she saw dead and dismembered bodies, bipeds, all of them, some of them half-clad in armor.

"Keep your heads down, don't look outside," she ordered her brother and sister.

For once they didn't argue, just shifted so they were laying on the floorboards. They were still whimpering, still frightened from when the Terran had been slorped by the stilter then had somehow taken over part of it and fought itself.

HEAVY METAL INCOMING! roared out and she flinched.

HEAVY METAL IS HERE! roared out right after.

She reached out with one hand, slapping at the radio, and it came on with the high pitched tones of the Civil Defense Authority Emergency Alert System. She flinched but then went back to staring out the broken windshield, weaving between the wreckage.

"...forces are making groundfall and engaging Precursor machines at this time. Terran Defense Forces encourage everyone to seek shelter. Do not approach military units outside of military bases unless you have no other choice. Seek shelter in basement and underground structures. Do not attempt to reach friends of family. Do not attempt to reach any of the Rescue Stations broadcast earlier as they may not be in operation. Clear all roadways. Turn off all lights and electrical devices in the homes by breaker box if possible. Shut down all building reactors. Repeating: Terran forces are making groundfall..."

She slapped it and turned it off in the short distance she had that she could go straight before having to weave around more wreckage. She could see there was parts of fliers littering the road now, the crops on other side were smoking, and she could see at least two of the fliers had shattered glass globes and a tentacle with a half-crushed brain held in the graspers.

I'm not in here with you, you're in here with me! rang out in her memories, along with the hideous laughter the Terran had done as he had begun smashing at the stilter that had sucked out his brain.

Her long ears trembled with fear as she saw that there was a road ahead. So far she had had bad luck on roads. She slowed the car down, the engine whining, and came to a stop. She looked both way, saw nothing but darkness, and tried to figure out which way to go. The dirt road had been windy and twisty and she had no idea which way anything was now.

Left? Right? Just go straight? Ahead the road was narrow, like the one she was on, and vanished into the whufflegrain field. She squinted right. There was light on the horizon. She started to crank the wheel and stopped.

Light didn't mean anything good. Light could be the Terrans fighting the Slorpys or it could be a field on fire, or it could be a town being bombed.

She cranked the wheel left and slowly rolled out onto the larger dirt road. She wished she could see where she was going, where the road led, or where she was going. All she could do was keep driving and hope for the best.

Dambree had rarely left the little suburb she had lived in, going to city with her father once or twice a week didn't count, since he drove and she usually just paid attention to her dataslate. Now he life, and the life of her three younger siblings, literally depended on her figuring out where she was and getting them to a safe place and she had no clue where she was.

The car was starting to beep, steady tones, and a red light was flashing on the shattered display panel. Whatever it was, it was important, but with the display cracked and warped she couldn't tell what the problem actually was.

She turned a corner, going slow, and slammed on the brakes.

Bright streaks were coming from the sky. She could hear the rumbling and threw the car in reverse, backing up, as the streaks got brighter.

The first one hit behind her and her little sister screamed. Dambree threw it in forward and stomped the pedal, spraying dirt from beneath the tires as more impacts slammed against the road behind her, started hitting the fields around her.

She knew she couldn't go backwards, the only way was forward.

An impact hit the road directly behind her, lifting the back end of the electric car up slightly.

Her siblings screamed. Her little sister popped up from behind the seat, wrapping her arms around her neck as more impacts the road in front of her, exploding plumes of fire, smoke, and dirt into the air.

"Watch out!" her sister screamed.

"I KNOW!" Dambree screamed back.

Her little brother jumped over the back seat and into the front bench seat, his eyes wide. He grabbed the baby off the floor, who was screaming in anger at being woken up.

More impacts hit around them and Dambree was almost thrown out the door when a large piece of debris smashed into the ground and whirled off into the grain just a split second before she hit the smoking crater. The car whirred angrily as it cleared the far side of the crater and got airborne, then the springs squealed as the car hit the ground.

"Look out!" her brother yelled, pointing with one hand at the burning holes in the ground.

"I KNOW!" Dambree yelled back, yanking the wheel and narrowly avoiding a chunk of burning metal the size of the car. A tentacle writhed, segmented black metal, the graspers clacking on air even as she ran it over.

"Look!" her sister yelled, pointing into the field.

Dozens of streaks of light were whipping through the air, red and green and amber and purple, from dozens of points in the field. She could faintly hear tearing sounds coming from the field. Above the field were dozens of fliers that were rolling, trying to avoid the streaks of light and failing, trying to block them all with their tentacles and failing.

Do not approach Terran forces engaged in combat, she remembered.

The fliers were exploding. Every time they shined lights down in the field shafts of light reached back up from the field, causing explosions on the fliers surface that quickly tore it apart.

Dambree whined low in her throat and pressed the pedal harder, as if trying to push it through the floorboard would make the car go faster.

She managed to hit the brakes, warned by some sense that seemed to be getting more sensitive, just in time as shapes burst out of the grain. She screamed, throwing the car into reverse, as the shapes bounded out of the grain, across the road, and into the grain on the other side.

They were all black, quadruped robots with bucket-shaped heads. They had guns on their backs and were firing missiles from above their rear legs.

Dambree got that feeling again and slammed the car back into forward, speeding toward where the quadruped robots had crossed and vanished.

More quadruped robots, these ones less blocky, thinner and longer than the first group, more guns on the back, streaming across the road in a fluid group rather than just bounding across.

"Look out for the robots!" her little sister, Truba'an, called out.

"I know!" Dambree yelled back.

One of the fliers spun into the road, two of the sleek looking robots holding tentacles in their robotic jaws and firing the weapons on their backs into the underside of the flier. One braced its feet and Dambree saw, as she whipped the car around them, the ground dent inwards and blue energy flare at the robot's feet. The flier slammed into the ground again and the other sleek robot jumped on it, tearing with huge claws and tearing with heavy jaws full of fangs and sharp conical teeth.

Then they were past and Dambree held on the pedal.

"Why are they doing this?" Truba'an cried out, still holding tight around Dambree's neck.

"I don't know," Dambree coughed, pulling her sister's arms free. "Get in the front seat with your brother and stay down."

Her brother, Elurta, nodded, sliding down with the baby and hiding in the foot well. Her sister moved next to him, hugging him. All three of their faces were tight with fear, their triangular noses and whiskers twitching with fear, their ears pressed to the back of their heads, their mouths closed as they gritted their flat teeth.

She went around a corner, the edge of the car slipping into the grain, which lashed at her through the missing door, and saw steady lights in front of her.

CHARGE AND CARRY the sign said, blinking slowly. The price was blinking as Dambree pressed on the pedal as hard as she could, the little car thumping and bumping over the potholes and the bumps in the road.

It was in a gap in the grain, two other roads connecting to it that vanished into the grain, only one of the paved and glimmering with the induction fields for electric cars. The sign was still on, the interior of the shop lit up, and the charging stations sitting bright and shiny.

She pulled in slowly, coming to a slow stop next to the pump. She reached out and picked up the heavy Terran pistol, feeling the grip shift slightly in her hand as if to mold itself to her fingers.

"Can I have some nibbles?" Truba'an asked.

"Not yet. Let me look inside," Dambree said.

"There might be bad machines inside," her brother Elurta warned.

"I know," she said softly. She got out and moved to the back of the car, grabbing one of the quikcharge plugs as she passed it. She looked around and saw nothing but waving grain, although off in the distance several of the areas of lights from fliers sweeping the grain and streaks of light coming up from the ground in return.

The pump checked the cars onboard chip, not noticing it was cloned, and began pushing power through the cable an into the cars depleted batteries as Dambree ran up and ducked down next to one of the big cryplas windows. She peeked up and saw nothing, not even a shop-bot, then ducked down again. She counted to five, looking down at the pistol in her hand.

She wished she knew how to shoot beyond what she had seen on TV.

Push it against the temple, came up unbidden in her mind. She nodded and looked up again scanning. The rows looked clear, she could kind of see the coolers, and the counter looked empty. She stood up and rushed the door, her bare feet slapping on the plascrete. She busted through, her shoulder flaring with pain and making her cry out, but she was through and into the interior.

The little sensor went 'bing-bong' as she stumbled through the door.

She hurried, looking around the Carry-Out Shop, finding nothing and nobody inside. She checked the aisles twice, wondering where the teller or the shop-bot had gone to. Finally she moved back out and waved to her siblings to come in.

"Can I have some nibbles?" her little sister asked again.

"Yes, Tru, you can," Dambree said. "Both of you can pick up nibbles and sippers. Give me Pulngee."

Her little brother handed her the baby, who squirmed and tried to bite. Dambree pinched her nose to help her learn to curb her biting instinct as she headed over to the rack she had seen.

There. Disposable infant swaddling, artificial milk, a sucky, some stuffies, and a shirt that said "I

She quickly changed her sister's diaper, throwing the dirty one in the garbage.

"Tru, you watch Punee," Dambree said.

"You don't have a shirt on. Momma's gonna be mad," Tru said, a candy-bar in each hand.

"I know," Dambree said. She began moving stuff over to the back seat and the trunk of the car, hurrying as fast as she could. The car hadn't finished quikcharging and Dambree wondered if Alkree ever kept it fully charged.

The reminder of her boyfriend made her start to snuffle as she kept moving boxes of milky, nibbles, sippers, diapers, and anything else that caught her eyes. She packed the trunk then started putting it in the back seat.

She was behind the counter when she heard it.

The horrible sound of a floater.

"Here! Come here!" she snapped. She was glad that her siblings didn't argue, just ran around the counter and joined her. She slapped a sucky in Punee's mouth.

"Stay quiet," she hissed.

The floater was circling the store slowly. She could hear it making a weird fluttering, spluttering noise as it moved. She looked down at the pistol, seeing the light was red. She pushed it and it went green. The grip seemed suddenly more alive somehow and the pistol felt warmer even it did suddenly feel heavier.

The flitter moved around past the car. She peeked at it and saw it was damaged. Two of the tentacles were hanging down, sparking and trembling, the grasping ends missing. Two of the crysteel globes were damaged, shattered, the thick armor was divoted and cratered, missing in two spots and showing complex machinery and tubes inside. Several of the glass tubes were broken, sparks jumping from the base. It kept tipping on one side and having to fire its rockets to level out again.

It turned, the searchlight sweeping the inside and she ducked back down.

It moved in, Dambree could hear it, and there was a sudden crackling noise. Lightning played around the roof, arcs of electricity flowing to outside, and there was a high pitched squealing noise. She could hear the rockets sputter as it pushed its way into the suddenly dark convience store, the lights exploding in showers of sparks.

Her sister whimpered.

Grids of red light suddenly appeared on the walls, sweeping slowly across, and she knew that it was searching for her. The grid just like the cost-stamp detector in the stores.

There was a quiet hiss of liquid as her little brother wet himself when the grid passed over the counter, shining on the wall.

The sputtering got louder as the flitter roared forward, grabbing the counter with its tentacles and throwing it to the side.

All three screamed, turning around and throwing themselves against the wall. The flitter reared back, as if it was startled, bringing its tentacles up in a defensive movement, knocking the shelves behind it down.

Then it started moving forward, several tentacles with graspers on the end sliding out of the body. It moved forward slowly, clicking the graspers.

YOU BELONG TO ME it whispered.

"EAT A DICK!" Dambree screamed.

It flinched back slightly, holding its tentacles up, then rocked back level, orienting to stare at her with wide lenses. There was a sense of glee as it started moving forward.

Dambree curled over her little sister, looking at her other two siblings. "Close your eyes," she whispered.

They both did.

Glass shattered at the front of the store and Dambree looked up in time to see something crash through the window. Its back was as high as Dambree's armpit, it had four legs ending in huge razor sharp claws, it had a tail, a long narrow head with huge heavy jaws full of spiked teeth, including tusks.

"SIMBA IS HERE!" the newcomer roared.