“Come on! Move move move! Defensive formations!”
The alarm sirens blared out their warning dragging me from a fitful sleep, a glance at the clock telling me that it was still the middle of the night. A shudder shook the chamber of the trench that I called home these days, the trench forming part of the defenses around the encampment, a twelve acre patch of what used to be Dallas back when place names had any meaning. To me it had only ever been camp 2156 in the Southern Sector, but that’s another story. For now the sirens meant only one thing. The camp, my home, was under attack and the shuddering ground told me all I needed to know. The attack was a part of the recent spate of attacks across similar camps to this moving up from the Blightlands further South.
As a part of the camps defensive team it was my job to front up and face this threat, as we faced any threat to our little community, but unlike the inter camp squabbles over precious resources this was going to be something else entirely. We had all heard the stories. The ground starts shaking, cracks appear then blinding panic and terror as the beast emerges from the earth. This was nothing that had any place on Earth, nothing that could have developed on our little planet. This beast was big and nasty and lethally dangerous and no-one seemed to know where it had come from or what it wanted other than to destroy us. We found out later but for now all I could do was grab my weapons and head out to my post.
I’m part of the team that has been working on setting up the camp defenses and my post was in the Command Centre bastion organizing the robotic defences that could be the only thing that would save us. It had taken us a long time to recreate the technology for our robotic units and they were still pretty basic compared with what we had developed before the Big Blast, a handful of gun spiders, a few exterminators and a bunch of the older dreadnaught units that we had managed to rebuild. The biggest challenge had been finding alternative power sources. The Big Blast had taken out everything electronic and we just didn’t have a way of generating power that was reliable even when we could repair stuff. I guess that was where I came into my own originally and what made me valuable to the camp.
My background is in ecological sciences and I was able to piece together algae tanks that produced methane gas as a by-product. Working with Natasha we had managed to use the methane to power gas turbines and generate just enough power to get our modest force up and running but it was pretty much Jerry rigged from the outset. Our robotic units were up to managing a basic defense perimeter but we hadn’t managed to get to anywhere the levels of AI that we had before and all of the control of the units had to be done remotely over fibre optic links. Not ideal since it only took a damaged cable to render a unit inoperable.
I got to the Control Centre and punched in the access code, breaching the security doors just as a tremendous blast ripped through the square outside. Just as the doors clanged shut I got my first glimpse of the beast, the Tremor Wyrm as it tore its way free of the earth and crashed down in the middle of the camp. I sprinted to my post and grabbed the control panel for my units, furiously typing instructions to bring what firepower I had to bear on the monstrous bulk of the Wyrm trying at least to draw its attention from creating carnage all around it. I opened up with all I had, the gattling cannons of the dreadnaughts and exterminators rattling like crazy each cannon pumping out thousands of rounds a minute into the body of the beast as the gun spiders rushed forward, their flame cannons spitting fury.
The Wyrm roared defiance into the night sky and crashed down crushing several of the units utterly, the explosions seeming to have no effect of the monster, but as I watched my monitors and saw screen after screen blank out I heard something, a rushing, screaming sound out of the sky, and looked through my porthole to see something that made my heart leap….maybe we did have a chance! Out of the West, coming in at incredible speed was a flight of combat drones and at their head was a machine I had only ever heard in tall tales around the fire….the Cerberus! It could only mean one thing, there was only one group that could possibly have the power to come to our aid with that force, Lord Alexander! We had all shared the stories of this great warlord, powerful beyond anything we could compare to, well organised, disciplined with the resources to mount a serious challenge to pretty much anyone and as his flight passed over the camp and the missles started to rain down on the Wyrm I heard the rallying cry of our troop commanders and saw a figure at the head of a platoon of bazooka marines – Anastasia! Leading from the front as always, her very presence lending strength to the assault as the Wyrm tried to retreat but it was just too late…..
At once, the Wyrm roars in defeat, opening its massive maw in one final cry of anguish. As it comes crashing down, the brief silence is drowned out by the rallying victory song of your comrades. The mile-long husk of a battered Tremor Wyrm is trophy enough - we are victorious!
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