Chapter 36
We paused by the lake, hoping to meet up with Daeva.
Pratt was still a ways away, and we were well clear of the city. There wasn’t as much need to hide, so I chopped down large trees and made the mother of all bonfires. It would keep us warm and help Daeva to find us.
The Obsidians had retracted to just the main three that had come with Prime after realizing I was going to carry the trucks the whole way.
“Anything fun you found in the trucks?” I asked.
“No. Just way more gas than we needed,” an Obsidian said. “They were really poorly geared for this trip. Honestly, if we didn’t have you, we’d have probably lost a decent number on the way.”
“Lots of monsters along this path. It’s almost like they’ve been feeding on the last few convoys,” another Obsidian agreed, her eyes shifting to where Prime was pressed up against me. “So, do we need to talk about rewards for this mission?”
I needed names for the Obsidian clones with us. “Sure, but first I need to stop thinking of you as random Obsidians and give you names.”
“No!” one shouted. “That's the thing. Our memories will go out to every Obsidian. We want to just be Obsidian. Our memories are actually pretty well mixed at this point.” They collapsed back to a single Obsidian.
I rubbed my head and looked at Prime for her opinion.
“If they want to just be Obsidian, you can call me Obby or Prime for the journey,” she suggested.
Using Stella’s name for her wasn’t a problem, but I looked at the other Obsidian sitting at the fire in thought. “If she’s Obby, then you are all Sidiana, Sidi, Diana?” I tried to use the back half of her name to form a name, given that Obby was the head.
“Sidi doesn’t sound bad.” She split into three, and they all nodded. “Yes, for this, we’ll split the Obsidian name. Prime can be Obby and we can be Sidi.”
Obby didn't seem to mind as she shrugged her shoulders.
Kim was watching everything with a frown. “Is this all really necessary?”
“Yes,” came the resounding answer from myself, Obby, and the three Sidi.
She held up her hands. “Okay. The way your memories work confuse me.”
“It’s simple. One dies, and they all get that one’s memories. One gets absorbed by another, and the remaining one has both of their memories. After that, it becomes like a shell game. Okay, the more I say it, the more confusing it becomes. All you need to know is that Sidi here is going to have a bunch of clones probably die during this battle, so her memories will go to every Obsidian in the whole network.” I tried to simplify it.
Apparently, I didn’t do a great job, because Kim sat still with a blank smile on her face.
“Let’s get back on topic. What about our reward?” Sidi asked.
“You know exactly what it is.” Obby smirked.
Sidi split back into three and nodded in unison. “Thank you.”
“You are very welcome,” Obby replied.
“I just got pimped out, didn’t I?” I teased Obby.
She patted my cheek with a smirk. “You’ll do great. Is that the roleplay you’d like?”
Kim gave a frustrated grunt and got up.
Sidi waited a moment. “What’s her problem?”
“Pent up,” Obby replied quickly. “Poor woman’s got the body of a twenty- something but the experience of an old woman.”
“Let’s not talk behind her back,” I tried to get us back on topic.
At that moment, Daeva flew down and joined us. “Talk behind whose back?”
“Kim. She just went for a walk,” I clarified.
“Because she couldn’t handle the flirting.” Sidi scooted over to my other side, the three of them firmly claiming the spots next to me.
Daeva came over and put a hand on my chest before kissing me. It was soft, gentle, and far better than last time. “As long as his heart still thumps for me, flirt away.” Daeva smiled softly at me.
“You know it—” Obby started, but then looked between the two of us. “Whatever. However, the two of you want to define things is between you.”
“Thank you.” Daeva patted Obby’s head. “So. What are sleeping arrangements looking like tonight? Any openings?” She wiggled her eyebrows at me.
Kim was acting beyond grumpy as she drove us along, jerking the wheel back and forth. We had all the trucks loaded up with Sidi clones, and Obby, Daeva, Kim, and a Sidi had crammed themselves in a truck with me.
“So. We decided that Daeva was the best one to go forward and talk to Pratt. Remind me again why you can’t just change your face or something?” Kim brought it up for the third time.
I sighed. “Because the creation of this avatar heavily relies on my sense of self. Sorry, but my mind isn’t so fluid that I can snap my fingers and pretend to be someone else. You and Obsidian are too recognizable. Daeva… is just a hot blonde.”
The referenced hot blonde was smirking beside me in her camo uniform. “Out of context, he won’t recognize me at all.”
Obby was going to stick with me. Sidi had agreed to get into the thick of it and make chaos. Given their mercenary background, we had just told them the objective. Both Sidi and Obby were sure of how to accomplish it.
I assumed it would include lots of gasoline and fire, given their reaction to saving the tanker’s gas on the way to the camp.
“Just remember to block as much vision as you can with your truck. Lead with the right side. That way Daeva gets the attention,” Obby explained the plan once again.
“Yeah, yeah.” Kim waved her away. “Just try not to fuck him in the middle of this.”
Obby just gave her a wicked smile as she nudged Daeva. Sidi was a little put out that she hadn’t gotten her reward yet, but she was putting up with it.
I turned, my adrenaline pumping as Pratt’s people came into view in the distance. The truck bumped along the road, drawing closer. I’d stopped using my power to move it ever since we’d come into range.
“Sidi, come here.” I grabbed her face and pushed her black lips to mine, drawing them in and savoring one before switching to the other.
Her tongue pushed in and we enjoyed the kiss for far longer than necessary before Kim jerked the truck hard to the side, pulling up perpendicular to the people that had stopped us.
Kim was fuming, and Sidi was as happy as could be.
“I’m going to have to make lots of clones that get broken,” Sidi said. “Each time, we’ll all remember that kiss again.”
“Good for you,” Kim grumbled, and I kept my head low with my hat pulled down to hide my face.
“Hello, are you girls the reinforcements?” a woman outside with a group of others that held railguns asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” Daeva leaned out the window. “They got me out of solitary to come out here and crack some skulls, I mean, monster skulls.” She was actually pretty good at pretending to be from prison.
The woman outside snorted. “Pull up everyone on the right flank and stay separate. The general is pretty twitchy with communications down.”
Daeva grinned and turned back to Kim. “Okay, let’s lead everyone up on the right side.” She did her job of repeating the order, even though we all heard it.
Kim pressed a little too hard on the gas, and we jerked back as she went up onto the right side.
Obby pulled down a mic from the ceiling of the truck. “Right side. Pull up even with them. She said the general is jumpy, so best behavior.”
I let my power expand out to get a good read on the situation around us.
Nearly a hundred large military vehicles were out in a loose circle. Some had tarps strung up between them, but almost nothing was nailed down. The whole thing spoke of mobility.
Ladies were atop most trucks with railguns at the ready, and those without them had a stature about them that told me that their powers were about to fly. Further in front of the trucks, women were tearing down the line of trees to make room for the vehicles.
Not finding everything I’d expected, I scanned out even further.
We were actually a bit early. They hadn’t quite gotten to their location yet. We saw several large dragon crane nests on the way to the site, but I could see a cliff face that had hundreds of them a little further north.
A dragon crane came into view, flying far overhead.
The ladies on the trucks spun with their railguns and unloaded on the crane. It cried out and careened down into the wilds. A squad of women broke off from the circle of trucks in the direction of the downed crane, I assumed to finish it off.
“Going to be a slaughter when they finally get close enough to that cliff to disturb the cranes en masse.” Kim watched them deal with the single dragon crane. “That one might have been easy pickings, but dozens, or hundreds? They are fucked.”
“Looked like about twenty rounds to bring that one down.” Obby leaned over me to look out the window. “Given what they have here, a dozen aren’t a problem. With a little coordination, they’d be fine. But a hundred? You’re right, they are doomed with just those guns. Here’s hoping they got some strong supers among them.”
Kim rolled her eyes. “You know what I meant.”
We pulled up alongside the right of the current group, and I noticed some reorganizing in the middle of the camp.
With my power, I found General Pratt among them. The urge to just paste him right there was tempting, but I wanted to catch Roach in the same net. Otherwise, he’d go to ground.
And that meant I couldn’t paste him yet. But I could get us started with something less suspicious.
Reaching across the span between our truck and the dragon cranes on the cliff, I crushed one against the rocks. At least, I tried to. The giant, spiny bird was sturdier than I expected.
It squawked loudly and beat its wings, disturbing the rest of the birds on the cliff. They started to take up the agitated squawk, escalating to something that sounded more akin to screaming.
Pratt’s entire camp froze and shifted, everyone focusing on the treeline in that direction before leaders started barking orders, and the women clearing the path were pulled off their tasks. But one tree cracked, and the wood groaned before it tipped. Women rushed to get out of its path as it slammed to the ground with a thunderous boom.
The dragon cranes were already going wild on the cliff, and the noise was enough for several of them to lift off the cliff and take flight in the direction of the camp.
There were some hushed reprimands as the first dragon crane flew over. Rail guns thumped and ripped it out of the sky, but another quickly followed it. That dragon crane was brought down as well.
But I knew what was coming, given my power.
The two went down, but hundreds took flight from the cliff, their angry noises gaining purpose. I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. Hundreds of dragon cranes soared over the woods, and Pratt’s people started firing.
The rail guns took out the first few dragon cranes that broke over the tree line.
But the women started seeing their problem and panicked. Their gunfire wasn’t concentrated enough to kill the dragon cranes, which were currently tearing over the tree line and diving into the camp.
The smarter women jumped between two trucks and continued to fire their rail guns as the dragon cranes tried to claw them out of the trucks.
Others found their time to flourish. Powers started erupting everywhere, creating shelters, hitting the dragon cranes, and some even used their powers to slip away.
The radio crackled, and Sidi came over the line. “Please advise.”
“Collapse and stick to the edges,” Obby gave the order.
I quirked a brow at her.
“If dozens of me rush in, it will be too obvious. But just one? That’s just another soldier in the mix. We should get out now. We’ll also become obvious if we wait in the truck.”
As if to emphasize that, one of the dragon cranes landed on the truck and a powerful clawed foot shredded the top of the truck before its sharp beak shot in.
Daeva grabbed its beak with her hand and twisted hard.
There was a snap, and the bird pulled back with a section of its beak missing, blood from the wound splattering over the truck. The crane wobbled off a few steps before I snapped my fingers and broke its neck.
“Out.” I glanced at Kim.
She was already bailing out and pulling at her hat, trying to keep her face hidden.
“Focus more on just being relaxed,” Obby advised us. “Miles, can you pretend to just have some basic bitch power?”
I snorted. “I’ll do my best.” Flicking my wrist, I created and froze water in the air before launching a shard of ice.
I managed to hit a dragon crane that had landed on a soldier and was ripping her apart. But my shard did little more than make the monster squawk angrily at its interrupted meal and glare at us.
A cloud of smoke shot from one of the tents and wrapped itself around the crane’s head before shoving itself into the monster's throat. It made angry noises that devolved into dry coughs as the big lizard and bird hybrid lost the strength in its legs and fell, struggling to breathe.
I spotted General Pratt. He was smoking at the edges of his form, with smoke coming out of his mouth like he was constantly puffing a cigar. His arm was gone, and it was connected to the trail of smoke that was currently suffocating the monster.
“Get back to your stations. Protect the perimeter,” he ordered.
I glared at the man from under the edge of my hat, once again really wanting to just paste him.
Obby put an arm across my back and turned me, hustling me away. “Careful. We need to wait for Roach.”
“And when will he show?” Kim asked.
“Hopefully either when this group is in trouble, or dead,” I grumbled, moving to the outside of the line of trucks. I managed to find where a group of rail guns were tethered to a generator, but I also noticed they were covered in blood.
Girls were starting to drop what they were doing, and some of the group were trying to escape. They were abandoning the camp, seeing the trajectory of the battle.
“Daeva, know how to use this?” I picked one of the guns up, propping up the previously smashed tripod and offering it to her.
She took it from me and checked the chamber before grabbing another shell and loading it. “Pretty easy. Point and shoot and miss until I get the hang of it.”
The dragon cranes were swooping down and soaring back up. They had been at the top of the food chain for long enough that they were taking their time.
Daeva’s rail gun thumped a few times while Sidi came jogging over and split. Then the clones started setting up and checking the other rail guns on their tripods before merging back.
“Want to play with this, Miles?”
I grunted, levitating a shell over to me. I held it in my hand and then mimicked a rail gun to launch it up into an injured crane. “Easier this way.”
“Are we helping them?” Daeva asked, firing her railgun again and missing all the dragon cranes, even when she shot into a group of them.
“Sort of,” I admitted and glanced at Obby for her opinion.
“If the dust settles, we’ll be found out.” Obby squinted into the air.
I followed her gaze, realizing what she was looking at.
Three masked figures in heavy cloaks had appeared in the air and dove straight into the dragon cranes. Each of them took down one of the large birds, and Pratt’s people were able to finish them off.
Pratt’s voice came over a megaphone. “Push forward another hundred yards and then we’ll start digging.”
“Oh, goodie.” Kim rolled her eyes. “Let’s go pretend to kill ourselves for Pratt and three people in cloaks. Anybody want to place odds on one of the three being Roach?”
I looked at the three figures’ powers, hoping to see that one of them only had one power. But I saw something I hadn’t been expecting. Over a dozen powers twisted and twirled across the three.
“We have a problem.” I frowned and used my kinetic energy to push inside their hoods and try to see which one was Roach. The idea of touching him with my power made my skin crawl, but under the hoods, all three of them looked like a disgusting roach.
“A big problem.”