We also had another hundred, including several Heavies approaching from the north and the east. The group on the east side was traipsing through the old orchard, treading all over the graves we’d dug earlier today, though we’d anticipated this and hadn’t left any markers.
But the largest group was here on the west, a direction they hadn’t come from at all the previous night. And now they were emerging. The first group was a style of mech we hadn’t yet seen. They looked like and were the size of Attenuators but with the center torsos lower to the ground.
“Look, there’s another one. That one is a panda!” Sam called.
He clicked a button on the side of his helmet, and his voice echoed out over the newly connected PA system. “Go back to the zoo, you woolly perverts!”
“Woolly perverts?” I asked.
“Hey, I’m doing improv here,” Sam said.
“If your insults are gonna suck, I’m taking control of the PA,” Lulu said over the band.
I examined the incoming enemy mechs. I could barely tell they were on the same chassis as the Attenuators. The center torsos were lower and armored, giving them a squatter and therefore smaller appearance. Instead of arms, they had long, straight guns on either side.
But most strange of all were that these mechs were painted with rainbow colors and each had a gigantic furry animal head on it. One was a fuzzy cat with a princess tiara on the head. Another was a panda bear. A third appeared to be a wolf but with a bright blue nose. These were giant, comically big heads, like the head of a mascot one would have seen at the cricket games on the net. The heads were bigger than the bouncy signs that Team Cannon Fodder used.
More appeared one by one. A rat. A skunk wearing a hat with a little propeller on it. More. All were that strange new type of mech.
“You know that foxtail butt plug that your sister always has lying around your house?” Sam asked as he rapidly consulted tonight’s dossier on the incoming mechs.
“She doesn’t leave it lying around,” I said. “But yes.”
“I used to think that was taking things a little too far. I suddenly feel very naïve.”
He reached up and clicked the PA back on.
“Hey, skunk boy! Yeah, you, Peter Inglewood from Free Texas! Do your freak friends know about your public-indecency charge? And why’d you pick a skunk? Is it so you can get away with raping a cat?”
Sam looked at me. “I don’t actually get that one. It was just on Roger’s list. Have you noticed Roger is obsessed with insults that involve people having sex with animals? Is that a little weird to you?”
The skunk with the propeller on his head didn’t seem to make a reaction.
“That’s it,” Lulu said. “I’m taking it over.”
“It’s wearing a mask!” Axel shouted over the band. “The squirrel is wearing a mask!”
“That’s not a squirrel,” Sam said. “That’s a hamster, I think.”
“Please maintain proper voice channel hygiene,” Roger said through the band. “These are a rare configuration of the Regular-style mech. They are called Flattops. They are much rarer because their arm configuration is more limited than that of the Attenuator, but they are the only Regular-sized mech that can carry Devastators, a type of mortar. Until today, the Devastators were not popular because they are difficult to aim and have a long reloading delay. The ones you see now are all from a team called BYE. It stands for Big Yiff Energy. Yiff is an archaic term that has something to do with their shared hobby of pretending to be stuffed animals.”
I zoomed in on the lead mech, the princess cat. It was stopped outside the outer fence, waiting for the others. All around, all the mechs were waiting. They were going to all attack at once.
To my right, the newly installed Battering Ram gun turned slightly as it aimed. It hummed with energy.
This feeling was much different from yesterday. We were all waiting, tense. The very air felt electric.
“Where are the mortars? And what’s their range?” Sam asked. His voice had turned to a whisper, like he was afraid they could hear him.
A scout walked up and paused between me and Sam. This was unit number 413. Melissa. The dinged and dirty exterior of the scout didn’t look any different from the way it normally did. It retracted its legs and buzzed up into the air. It continued talking with Roger’s voice, as if it had been the one speaking the whole time.
“Under normal circumstances, mortars that size are extremelylong-range. Up to nine kilometers,” Roger said via Melissa. “But as with the missiles, I believe the propellant they are given limits their range. It limits their range but not the effectiveness of the payload. The mortars are atop the mechs. They are hidden by the animal heads. They are a priority target.”
“How many drones do we have waiting in the west woods?” I asked.
“We have sixty-five units hidden with more on the way. They are currently outnumbered, and we will wait until the battle is joined, and we will then attack.”
“Good,” I said. “How many Heavies and Snipers are out there?”
