Dan clenched his jaw and weaved side to side as he tried to avoid the sudden influx of shots directed his way. Only a handful of seconds had passed since he began charging Best’s powered armor, but his regret was immediate. Unsurprisingly, most of the defenders focused on him as soon as he charged past the battle line.
He was moving fast enough that most of the shots missed him entirely, the fifty-caliber repeaters leaving a wake of torn and destroyed asphalt behind. Still, there were just too many rounds being fired for him to walk away completely unscathed. He jerked and grunted as his spellshield shimmered, blocking round after round that would have otherwise almost immediately taken his life.
Behind him, the battle line roared into motion, inspired by Dan’s reckless charge. Dan barely even noticed their movement as he reached the enemy position, and three suits loomed before him. Two of them extended their left arms, unleashing a torrent of flames at Dan while the third snapped off a chunk of rebar from a nearby damaged building.
Dan simply let the fire wash over him, counting on the thermal rune to protect him. The heat dried out his eyes and throat in a second, and despite the rune, Dan’s skin blistered. He might not instantly die from the two flamethrowers trained on him, but he sure as hell was going to end up with one hell of a sunburn.
Ignoring the burns accumulating on his exposed skin, Dan threw a Forcebolt into the side of the side of the third armor’s knee, twisting the metal of the joint and bending unnaturally. Before the soldier could turn on him and use the rebar as a cudgel, Dan slipped in under their guard and slammed his glowing sword down on the twisted knee joint.
Purple sparks exploded from the contact, and the blade slowed almost to a stop. Grunting, Dan shifted his strength rune into high-performance mode and forced it further. The suit of armor dropped the rebar and reached for Dan directly, trying to pull him from its leg.
Then the sword swung free, scoring the blacktop behind the suit as it collapsed, its severed leg flopping to the ground. He darted forward, letting the flames bathe their injured companion. With the seals on the suit broken, it was only a matter of seconds before the soldier was flash-fried inside his own armor.
Dan whirled around and fired another Forcebolt at both of the remaining armors, denting their chest plates and knocking them off-balance but not doing any lasting harm. Before they could redirect their flamethrowers at him, he launched himself into the air, assisted by a flash of Gravitational Easing, and landed behind one of the two suits.
With his target’s back to him, and the bulk of its body used as cover to protect himself from the other armor, Dan squared his feet and thrust with the enchanted blade. His sword glowed a deep purple as it punched through the thinner armor around the suit’s shoulder, sinking almost eight inches into his opponent before Dan pulled it back out.
His opponent swung wildly with its left arm, flamethrower still spewing a cone of annihilation as it tried to backhand him. He ducked, not even needing the temporal rune to dodge the soldier’s clumsy movements.
From his crouch, Dan leapt forward, grasping the armor around the leg and slipping the thin edge of his weapon into the unarmored slit between his opponent’s thigh and pelvis. The blade sank in once again, but this time, he triggered another burst from his strength rune. Resistance gave way, and the sword’s hilt clattered against the metal of his opponent’s armor.
He slammed his shoulder into the soldier’s leg, bruising himself slightly, but pushing his enemy off-balance. As it fell, Dan grabbed his sword in a double-handed grip and ripped upwards, using gravity to pull his weapon up through his opponent’s thigh and leg.
With a bone-jarring thud, it hit the ground. Blood gushed like water from a cracked faucet out of the almost fist-sized hole he’d torn into the armor. Almost certainly, he’d severed their femoral artery along with a good portion of their leg. Without something like the System, his opponent was almost certainly dead.
His spellshield shimmered, and Dan was hammered back a step as a .50 slug slammed into it right in front of his face. With a wave of his free hand, a Lightning Stroke took the last remaining set of powered armor in the chest. It fired again. Dan frowned as he staggered back another foot from the force of the blow.
He triggered another Lightning Stroke into his opponent, beginning to feel the first hints of a mana-deprivation headache as he began weaving his way toward the suit of armor. The electricity might not have crippled it like it would an unarmored opponent, but the suit’s movements were notably stiff and jerky as it tried to track Dan, instead sending two rounds from its repeater into the blacktop.
Dan’s sword met its left hand as the suit tried to bring its flamer to bear, cutting deep into some tubing and the armored housing that surrounded it. A second later, an explosion flung him into the air as the final suit tried to trigger its flamethrower, igniting the leaking fuel line.
He glanced at the carnage and winced. Even if his target had survived the explosion, which didn’t seem terribly likely, given that its left arm was missing entirely and that side of its body was shredded, the leaking fuel turned the former human being into a bonfire.
Pulling himself to his feet, Dan brushed the dust and shrapnel off of himself and surveyed the scene. Best’s measured retreat had turned into a rout. Powered armor belonging to his forces thundered past him, their repeaters punching through the thinner back armor of their enemies and bringing them down as they ran.
One street over, a mech fired its main cannon at point blank range into a concrete building, weakening its structure enough that the vehicle could push its way down the relatively narrow streets. Dan walked over to a nearby building and jumped onto its roof, using a combination of the strength rune and Gravitational Easing.
Walking over to the edge of the roof, he took in the progress of the battle. His forces were pushing back Best on all fronts, but one three-story building stood firm. Almost every window seemed to sprout a machine gun or recoilless rifle, and the roof had at least two surface-to-air missile launchers, as well as an old-fashioned 88 mm anti-aircraft gun.
Troops, armored and unarmored, streamed from all directions toward it. Dan frowned for a second before pulling out his binoculars.
He paused, smiling briefly. Against all odds, they’d avoided damage beyond some cosmetic melting from the flamethrowers. Apparently, his body had protected them from the worst of it.
Putting the binoculars to his eyes, he took in Bakersfield itself. Best’s forces were streaming back from the city. A large number of squat forms pursued them closely.
Dan squinted and tried to bring them into better focus. A moment later, he was chuckling. Dogbots. Admittedly, there were thousands of them, but between their jerky movements and sporadic and inaccurate fire, he’d recognize them anywhere.
Even if they were fairly bullet-resistant, the robots weren’t terribly useful. A skilled handler could direct them with some efficiency, but their internal computers weren’t nearly as advanced as Drummond liked to brag about. In short, without someone more or less manning their remote controls, they were slow, inaccurate, and prone to wandering aimlessly. Only slightly more dangerous than a roomba trapped in a corner.
They worked well enough as guards; Dan had already made plans for bases where the halls would be filled with toxic gases patrolled by them, but as aggressors? He watched as the retreating powered armor picked off dogbot after dogbot. The small robots tried to move evasively, clattering as they ineffectually zigzagged, and shot after shot of return fire plinked off of Best’s troops.
Still, their numbers made up for a lot that the bots lacked in individual quality. Dan moved the binoculars slightly and nodded. Behind them, three-person squads darted from building to building with what appeared to be recoilless rifles. Even if the dogbots themselves couldn’t bring down powered armor, they could provide enough of a distraction for a heavy-weapons team to do the job.
Ironically, Drummond’s soldiers were a worse matchup for Dan than Best’s. Large numbers of low-caliber bullets might not do much to powered armor, but it’d tear apart spellshields with more efficiency than isolated larger guns. Unlike Best, he just didn’t have enough armor for all of his soldiers, so the conventional infantry on the flanks were in for a beating if he didn’t do something.
He smiled. At least that “something” was fairly easy to figure out. He checked his mana reserves and nodded slightly. This would tap him out for the remainder of the battle, but it would also end the battle a lot quicker, something he was sure that everyone would appreciate.
Taking a deep breath, he focused on Peter Best’s command compound and began casting Railgun. Almost immediately, his head began pounding. Dan gritted his teeth and continued to form the rails of magnetic energy.
Best had made the mistake of putting all of his eggs in one basket. Admittedly, with his forces being pushed back on all fronts, it made sense to fortify one location and try to hold out. The oligarch was probably hoping that Dan and Drummond’s troops would exhaust each other fighting outside of his fallback position.
If both sides had been restricted to the conventional forces they’d brought to the field, it might have worked. Dan’s mechs and Drummond’s hunter-killer teams could tear even reinforced concrete apart if given enough time, but Best had mounted enough guns on the fortress to make anyone who tried pay their toll in blood.
The Railgun slug slammed into the side of the building as Dan frantically patted out the patches of his clothing that were smoldering from the spell’s backblast. As for the fortress? The slug went straight through the outside wall before venting its energy against something in the building’s interior. The pressure wave from the explosion knocked Dan from his feet, and pressed the air from his lungs.
He stood up and smiled grimly at the wreckage. The top story of the building was gone entirely, replaced by flames and thick, black smoke. A good portion of the soldiers surrounding the building were down, either outright killed by the pressure wave from the explosion, or crippled by the falling rubble and shrapnel.
Dan returned the binoculars to his hip and brought the hardened webcam/speaker that connected him with Tatiana to his mouth.
“You catch all of that, Tatiana?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, a bit unsteadily. “That was actually a fair bit of fun. Honestly, a girl could get used to this sort of excitement.”
Dan smiled evilly. “Well, we aren’t done yet. Your old boss is attacking, and it sure looks like he doesn’t have air cover. Would you mind letting Jennifer know about his mistake?”
Tatiana didn’t respond, but Dan was more or less beyond caring. The Railgun round had ended the immediate battle, and his head hurt like hell. Tatiana would do what she could from here, but he’d earned himself a water break.
Dan sat down, but before he could finish completely uncorking his water, he cocked his head to the side. A tinny strain of music came from Tatiana’s speaker. He picked it up and held it closer to his ear, only for it to burst into the iconic notes of “Ride of the Valkyries.”
The Viceroy’s Pride crested over the horizon, rapidly gaining height over Bakersfield. Just as the song began to hit its crescendo, a spear of light, so bright that even Dan had to blink and avert his gaze, shot forth from its bow and slammed into the town’s outskirts.
“Really, Tatiana?” he asked, shaking his head before drinking a gulp of his water. “Don’t you think that Wagner is a bit cliche?”
