The ground was rushing up at her fast, but the Stoss was slow to respond, and she couldn’t change the spear’s mode back in time to engage the retrofire. The hard landing sent her tumbling across the ground. Diamond Weapon’s arm was overhead before she could get back up. So this was the end.
“Almost had it,” she muttered.
Granted, it had been pretty rash to take on a colossal superweapon while armed with a single spear. Still, she’d done her best. And her best hadn’t been too bad, she thought, shutting her eyes against her impending doom.
But the blow never arrived. She heard a sound like machine-gun fire, and her eyes flew open. The arm should have been right on top of her, but it was nowhere to be found.
Voices crackled over her comm. “Heads up, Lady A!”
“Sorry for the wait.”
Two magitek armors slammed down in front of her, machine guns rattling. She saw Diamond Weapon beyond them, its ass planted squarely on the ground.
“Biggs! Wedge! What are you doing back here?!”
What had happened with the train? Were the people all right?
The answers came before she could ask. “Don’t worry! All the passengers were safely evacuated!”
Wedge was the one speaking. He must have still been feeling the buzz of his earlier drinks. She could tell, even over the comm. She chuckled and stood.
“All of them,” Wedge added, “except for one lout who wanted to come along and play hero, that is.”
Aranea let out a snort. Biggs couldn’t even muster a comeback, so he changed the subject. “You two ready to put an end to this?”
She lifted her spear in lieu of a spoken answer. Diamond Weapon was already struggling to its feet. No more time for banter. They had to get serious.
“It’s almost down! We just need to give it one more push!”
Biggs and Wedge laid into the monster’s plating with their guns, and she went after the parts left exposed once the armor was stripped away. If they could knock it back down on the ground, it’d be just a short jump with the Stoss. She’d be right between the eyes, perfectly positioned for a direct hit at the core.
“Legs! Focus on the legs!” she shouted.
She saw the muzzle flash of the two MAs’ guns, now pointed low. The plates on Diamond Weapon’s left shin came loose, and the monster’s hulking form began to limp. It roared and flailed, kicking up huge clouds of dust. Visibility went to nil. The monster’s temper tantrum had created a smokescreen that lay across the entire battlefield. Fat chance of finding the core down on the ground like that.
“Biggs,” she shouted into the comm. “Got a favor to ask. How’s your throwing arm?”
If the free-climbing part of the competition was over, maybe it was time for the javelin.
Biggs caught on quick. “Good to go! Hop on!”
Flung with the force of the MA, she was a missile on its way through the cloud of dust. When she could see again, Diamond Weapon’s face was right in front of her. She’d reached the apex of her trajectory level with the monster’s head. She opened the Stoss’s throttle to max, hoping to maintain enough velocity for the strike.
“Just remember who started this,” she yelled as the spearpoint drove in. About a third of the core had been destroyed by her previous attack. Time to put the rest of the damn orb into the blender.
She tended to avoid using the Stoss’s overdrive function, since it was rough on the machine, but if there was ever a time of need, this was it.
“Open wide!”
One more thrust. The spearpoint was wrapped in a red light that burned like flame. It spun at high speed, drilling deep into the partially destroyed core. She pushed hard, driving it deeper still. With the engine limiter off, the body of the Stoss was getting very hot, very fast. Her hands felt like they were being held above scalding water. Then came the acrid stench of her gloves melting. But she wasn’t going to stop. Not now.
The body of the spear began to vibrate and grew hotter yet. Suddenly, the material at her spearpoint swelled into a white-hot bubble and . . . boom. The explosion ignited Diamond Weapon’s core and sent fragments arcing six ways to hell. Aranea didn’t even have time to rejoice. She’d been caught in the wave of the explosion, too, and now she was hurtling toward the earth, with no Stoss to stop her fall.
“Lady A!” someone shouted.
Biggs. The arm of his suit stretched toward her. A touching gesture, but it was going to fall more than a bit short if he’d meant to actually catch her.
“We’ve got you!” Wedge yelled.
Then the second MA was leaping onto the arm of the first, and Biggs sent Wedge’s machine flying toward her trajectory. Aranea stretched her own arm out, reaching desperately.
“Wedge!” she screamed back.
The moment the cybersuit’s appendage closed on her singed glove, the shock wave hit. Diamond Weapon’s explosion dwarfed that of her tiny magitek spear. She clung to the MA’s arm as they were slammed into the ground. The smell of burning daemon and scorched earth flooded her nostrils.
A great big goodbye from Tiny, and all three of us going with it, she thought bitterly.
And then she blacked out.
When she awoke to darkness, her first thought was, There’s no way that didn’t kill me. But she tasted grit in her mouth, and her face was pressed into stinking mud. She tested her arms and legs. They moved, but she couldn’t get up. She didn’t even know which way up was. There was little other choice than to flail her limbs and see where that took her.
It was a bit like swimming in place. The weight on her back shifted, cueing her that she was facedown. She pushed down with her palms and knees. Her body inched forward. Again. She was crawling her way free, one laborious push at a time. The area before her eyes grew lighter.
And then she was out of the mound of mud under which she’d been buried. She coughed repeatedly, hacking up the dirt lining the inside of her mouth with each convulsion.
She turned in a slow circle, still coughing. The wreckage of the two MAs lay nearby. They were well beyond repair. Not too far off, she saw the remains of a big billboard.
The Most Relaxing Stay of Your Life
Tenebrae Highland Resort