The fight at the Yanez farm had been particularly brutal. Only six of their twelve team members remained operable.
I still wasn’t clear what happened when a mech was blown up. Did the drivers have to pay for a whole new one? How much did all of this cost anyway?
“Roger, where are…” I started to say as flames filled the sky.
Three smaller mechs flew through the air and landed heavily in the fields, facing where the two RMI soldiers had been before the explosion. All three of these were also painted purple.
They landed in the middle of the fields that were swarming with honeybees. Nothing had yet happened.
“Those little shits,” one of the Cheetah mechs said, the voice distant and barely discernible. A woman. “We should never have let them tag along.”
There was a response from another mech, but I couldn’t hear it.
An Attenuator clanked up. This was the Regular-style mech, and it was half again as tall as the smaller scout-class Cheetahs and Drop Dragoons, and it looked more like a massive humanoid robot. This one didn’t have any special paint at all. It was in the base silver from the printing gel. It was armed with a grasping hand on the right side and with a quad-barreled shotgun for the left. What appeared to be a massive sword was sheathed over the humanoid robot’s back. The pommel of the sword was a large silver skull. The skull looked like it was that of a lion.
“Who’s that?” Sam asked.
“That is the lone unaffiliated participant,” Roger said through my earpiece. “I do not know who it is. If they are a streamer, I have been unable to find their feed. They have the base-model Attenuator, but the sword is an upgrade. I have been unable to get a proper shot of the nameplate.”
Two more of the scouts appeared from the woods, clanking up to the Cheetahs. These scouts were the same as the ones we’d seen during the preview phase. Drop Dragoons. Side by side, the two models of scouts looked almost identical, but the Cheetahs had wider legs and only one weapon. None of the Cheetahs had missile launchers,either. The two Drop Dragoons were from that same team we had fought with earlier, Team Cannon Fodder. They had the same round signs on a spring as before, though one of them was half blown off. The one I could see was Steamer. He’d been one of the two that had gotten hit by a train during the fight atop the Sombrero.
“Roger, is that other scout that Skeet-Skeet guy?” I whispered.
“That asshole driving the Heavy blew them up before we got here,” one of the Cheetahs said, her voice echoing over the fields. “Wasting shells on just three insurgents makes you look like a scrub.”
The three Cheetahs and the two Drop Dragoons all stood in a circle and started to argue. It was clear they had no idea they were currently surrounded by honeybee drones. Nor did they know there was an RMI soldier still alive in the house.
Over by the fire, a group of the taller Attenuators was sifting through the wreckage.
Roger crackled in my ear. “The second Drop Dragoon next to Steamer in front of you is named Wankette. She was part of the earlier skirmish, but we destroyed her mech with a truck. Skeet-Skeet from Cannon Fodder is piloting the Heavy that is parked north of here. The fourth member of Cannon Fodder, Queef, was destroyed by the RMI soldiers. The three Cheetahs from Thunder Thighs are piloted by streamers by the names of the Julie Experience, Empress Alexis, and Hannah-Pie. The one that is particularly upset is the Julie Experience.”
“The Julie Experience,” Sam muttered next to me. “What a stupid fucking name.”
“Rule number four, Oliver friend number three,” Roger said. “I am keeping track of all infractions.” Roger started to say something else, but he was interrupted by a missile launch coming from the house and barreling directly into the group of five scouts.
“Oh, shit,” I cried as we all hit the deck. Two of the Cheetahs jumped away, one of them landing directly atop the barn we were hiding behind. It crashed heavily through the roof and landed loudly just a few meters in front of us. It was the one with the cape.
Several things happened at once. Across the way, the Attenuators all turned and started firing at the house. But at the same moment, the drones all appeared, coming up from the grain field like they were emerging from the underground.
“What the fuck? What the fuck?” the mech in the barn was saying. This was the same voice as before, the Julie Experience.
The honeybees swarmed, moving rapidly in multiple directions. There was a massive explosion in the center of the field, presumably another shot from the Heavy, though he didn’t hit anything. This was followed by a distant secondary explosion. Screaming filled the distance as several of the drones moved into the woods. The sound of a power saw meeting metal shrieked through the night.
The Cheetah with the cape stumbled from the front of the barn, pushing the wooden doors off their frames. We all had to jump out of the way to keep from getting hit. The unit came out right between me and Miguel Mustache. The large war machine stank of burning oil. On her lower leg, one of the remaining neon tubes blinked on and off, humming loudly. The driver—the Julie Experience—was shouting something, but her words were distorted over the speaker. She hadn’t seen or noticed us just yet.
All of us—me, Sam, the Miguels, Tito, and Axel—we all did the same thing at the same time. We screamed in surprise. We lifted our guns. We started unloading into the side and legs of the machine.
The mech swiveled in surprise, clearly still suffering from latency issues. Her sole weapon was a long gun attached to an arm on her right side, which was terrible for close-up fighting. When she swiveled, I ducked as the arm swished over my head. We all fired upward, our shots denting and scratching the metal. There was a hiss followed by a pained scream from Miguel Mustache. Stinking, burning liquid spewed from the machine, coating us as we continued to fire and scream. The mech let out a strange noise.
There was more hissing but a different kind. The Julie Experiencewas saying something, but her speakers were wrecked. The machine didn’t fall over, but it was no longer able to move.
Still, we fired, and we fired.
A honeybee came out of nowhere, leapt, and landed atop the mech. A saw whirred, and it made a cut on the back of the machine.
For a moment, the speakers worked again, and to my surprise, Julie was laughing.
“You’re real? Holy fucking shit. I see you. I see you. We’ll find you soon.”
