Chapter Fifty-Eight - Crackshot Cowboy

Chapter Fifty-Eight - Crackshot Cowboy

Chapter Fifty-Eight - Crackshot Cowboy

A silent movement began over the turn of the century. It fought back against the increasingly extreme nature of religious belief.

The movement suffered from one glaring flaw though. It assumed that the religious cared about the tenets of their own religion when acting.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

--Atheists Anonymous, 2029

***

You guys had better be ready, I shouted. Shits about to hit the fan!

Shit wasnt so much about to hit the fan as it was about to grab the fan, drag it into an alley, then beat it black and blue.

Or something like that. I wasnt an expert on analogies and honestly, my mind was on other things.

I moved up to the front of the line and looked out across the no-aliens-land between us and the incoming wave. It was a decently sized field, but it wasnt nearly as big as I would have wished. A model three could really scramble when they wanted to. It would take one... maybe ten seconds to cross the space at a dead sprint. Plenty of time for a single one to be gunned down, but what if there were hundreds of them.

My grip tightened on my Bullcat. Behind me, the mortars clunked as shells were loaded into them. The militiamen and PMCs were breathing harder, as if theyd already started running around even though nothing had happened yet. I heard leather creaking around handles and the clinking of loose ammo in boxes as they were repositioned for easier access. A few soldiers pulled their mags out and checked them before resetting.

Safeties off! someone called from behind me.

The not-yet-a-battlefield became surprisingly silent.

A ping from my augs almost made me jump out of my skin. Fuck, I muttered as I checked who was calling. Gomorrah. Hey?

Cat. I was thinking we should keep in contact. This might not be easy, she said.

Alright, makes sense. Want to bring our local farm boy in on the call? He seems a nice enough sort. New though. Might be good to keep an eye out on him.

Thats not a bad idea, Gomorrah agreed.

I nodded. Myalis, think you can find his aug number? Or can you ping right off of his AI?

I think I can manage that much. One moment... and adding him to the call.

Um, hello? Jimothys voice asked over the line.

I froze. Not for a long time, but for a moment I was almost entirely overwhelmed.

There were so many of them. They came pouring over the edge like an angry tsunami of plant flesh and teeth and claws. Stones and cement were rammed aside as bigger aliens shoved their way over, the smaller aliens slipping around their legs and over their backs. The air filled with more and more flyers, darting ahead of the wave on a straight path to our barricades.

And then some poor alien fuck stepped on one of my mines.

Aliens were flung into the air in shredded hunks of meat. Mortars thumped, and a half-second later detonated over the barricade sending clouds of zipping shrapnel down onto the hoard.

Fire! someone ordered.

The air filled with the roaring scream of a thousand guns. Muzzleflashes lit up the gap ahead of us with a constant yellow-white strobe, each flash marking the death of another alien.

The wave turned into a deadly tumble, bodies flopping over each other on the down-slope of the debris barrier. Still, they kept coming.

I brought my gun up and started to fire too. I wasnt even aiming. It didnt matter. Sure, there was a few dozen metres between us and the aliens, but there was so many of the fucks that it was impossible to miss.

Acid rained down on their ranks. Bigger artillery pieces boomed behind us. Tanks fired salvos of high-explosive shells into the aliens ranks.

I flinched as somethings leg splattered against the side of my head, blown clean across the area.

Gomorrah joined the carnage with a wave of fire to counter the wave of flesh rushing at her. Even with my armour I could feel the warmth as a long blue line of liquid fire screamed over to the aliens and started to melt them.

It wasnt enough.

They kept coming. Teeth and claws and angry eyes but never, never any sounds. Lasers lanced out from somewhere behind the line, swatting model ones out of the air so that they crashed around us as smoking corpses.

I saw the first casualty on our side of the wall.

Some PMC woman ran to one of the machine gun nests with a big box of ammo. A piece of some alien flipped through the air. A forelimb. Its clawed arm brained her in the side of the head and she went down, just like that.

Fuck this, I said. Myalis, I need something to kill lots of shit, really fast.

Before Myalis could reply I flinched down and half-hid behind one of the cement walls as debris was tossed into the air ahead. A big lumbering fuck stumbled through the new gap, then it started to run across the empty space, faster than anything that had come before.

Everyone in the area turned their focus to the monster. No matter how tough it might have been, there was only so much it could do against the amount of armour-penetrating rounds being flung at it.

That moment of distraction though was all the wave needed to get over the barrier in droves. Now they were spreading out, slipping behind cover and rushing out, we couldnt just focus on those on the very top of the wall anymore.

Oh shit, I muttered.