“Rule number four, Oliver friend number three,” Roger said over the band. “I am afraid you’ll be getting a frowny sticker on your after-action report.”
“Well, I still think you shouldn’t have done it,” Lulu said, ignoring Roger. “You’re just bringing attention to us.”
“I think us destroying five mechs is what’s going to bring attention to us,” Sam muttered.
“That and you showing your dick on their live feed,” Rosita added.
Sam reached up and rubbed his bare head forlornly. He’d lost his trucker hat somewhere along the way.
“I hope my hat is still there,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “It was the only thing I had left from Earth.”
We’d been driving for about twenty minutes and we were almost halfway back to the ranch. Trixie 2 had stayed behind along with several of the newly unpacked drones. We’d managed to load only a little more than half of the supplies we wanted to get before the Moderator had blasted the whole area to hell, shaking the ground. Roger said it was unclear if the bunker with the remaining supplies was still intact or not.
Because we’d had to leave early, we still had two hours before the countdown ended and the game officially started. I scrolled through the list of items we had managed to extract. We’d activated almost four hundred additional honeybees, mostly drones, only some of which were actually in the hoppers. The rest were moving toward us on foot or off on some mission for Roger. We’d failed on our secondarymission to grab more construction supplies, so I knew several were off picking up things around town. They wouldn’t arrive at the ranch until several hours from now, assuming they made it at all.
The activated honeybees included a total of ten rhino units and another thirty scouts. We had multiple recharge stations and various supplies, including five Roger-sized repair drones, which were new to both me and Lulu. In addition, we had multiple weapons and upgrades for the honeybees, all of which were in crates.
Most important, we’d grabbed two truck-sized fabricators and several spools of poly filament. We could make all sorts of things with the printers. The skin wouldn’t be as strong as that of the printed mechs and we couldn’t print complex machinery like with the newer machines, but it was something.
We’d also managed to unbox about three hundred fist-sized UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Each one looked like a blue-painted baseball. These were miniature solar-powered scout drones. They weren’t that smart, but they were originally used to help map the surface of the planet when the scans from above weren’t sufficient. They could fly in multiple environments and gravities. They were currently being used to watch for enemy positions.
We had also grabbed enough weapons, food, and building supplies to completely fill one of the hoppers.
While we’d managed to loot a ton of weapons, I was worried. The pulse rifles weren’t very effective against the enemy mechs, and as Roger ominously pointed out, the light-armor Drop Dragoon units were the only kind available during the preview. Bigger, more powerful, and better-armored mechs would be coming next.
We had only a limited number of the same type of canister explosives that Lulu had used, though we could print certain types of munitions with the fabricators using the literal soil and some of the plant material around the farm. I didn’t know how exactly any of that worked—I always kinda glazed over during chemistry lessons—but it sounded dangerous as shit.
Roger had also directed the drones to take a few parts off of the fallen mechs before they’d been destroyed by the Moderator. These were the communication modules, he said, and he would look for a weakness in them or a way to easily disable them.
It isn’t enough,I thought miserably as we bounced over the road, mostly in silence since my sister’s tirade against Sam. Axel and Tito had both been uninjured in the attack, but they’d clearly been shaken.
Five days. We just needed to hold out for five days.
I could feel that ship watching us from above. The only reason we hadn’t been squished yet was because they were making more money keeping us alive. For the moment. I thought of Mr.Gonzales, and his question:What’s the point?
And of that second question none of us dared to answer: What would happen when the five days were up? What then?
“I am detecting multiple items falling from orbit,” Roger suddenly said. “I only have a limited view, but they appear to be spreading across the planet. These are different than the typical MDUs used by the players. These are longer, oblong-shaped objects. There are dozens of them. They do not appear to be carrying mechs. These are more reminiscent of non-biological troop transports.”
“Oh, crap,” Sam said. “Peacekeepers? They’re sending Peacekeepers?”
Peacekeepers were the standard AI-controlled ground troops. They were armored, bipedal, two-point-five-meter-tall robots used for riot control and security around the colonies. I’d only seen them on video. As far as I was aware, only two had ever set foot on the planet as bodyguards for the Earth ambassador when she first visited after the gate opened.
“It’s possible,” Roger said, “but the markings on the transports are unlike anything I have seen before. In addition, it appears the transports are too small for the standard Peacekeeper unit.”
“Are any headed toward us?” I asked.
“Negative,” Roger said. “But it appears six or seven of the transportswill be landing in the ruins of Burnt Ends. More are landing north of there and out of my range. One appears to be landing on the Yanez farm on the west side of the Pantano. That is the closest to our current position.”
“Roger,” Lulu asked, her voice crackling in my ear, “are our defenses at the ranch suited to deal with Peacekeepers?”
“Peacekeepers, yes, more so than the mech threat. However, what these are is unclear. I am moving assets into place to get a better view and will report when I have more information.”
“That’s just great,” I muttered.
“Like my grandmother used to say,” Sam said, turning to look at me. He had dried blood all down his face. It was strange seeing him without his hat. “When the outhouse is occupied, that’s when the bucket’s in the yard.”
Chapter 15
