By David C. Daoust
The cavernous cargo hold of the Dirty Damsel had never seen the level of chaos that now rocked its innards. Dozens of battle drones tore through– blasting anything with a pulse. Infiltrating further still into the surrounding corridors– weapons’ fire blazing! Clearly in the hopes of clearing out any that lived therein.
Only a small, hodgepodge crew of drone pilots stood in their way.
Ratchet thought he was getting much more in tune with the devices he currently gripped within his hands, each one with a series of switches and buttons that allowed him to guide his particular spider-drone, through the vast hold– all to fend off the enemy battle drone’s assault.
The newb pilot felt like he was doing good, though it was pointed out several times by now, that the drones were not actually trying to defend themselves from the small crews’ actions. He toyed with the idea that it was probably because the enemy could not tell one Drone from the other. This was considering they were all the exact same model. The only difference being who controlled the drone itself.
He held on to that reasoning up until Harper got spliced.
Silly girl.
Being spliced meant that the enemy now controlled the drone she had lost. So now Ratchet was toying with the idea, maybe… they just didn’t want to destroy potential recruits… though, he quickly realized that made no sense, considering the losses they were taking.
The very first time he had taken a drone out into the real world, he and Dicey were ambushed by a pair of Drones. Thus, had faced such a splice attack before. The attackers were part of a swarm, they had assumed, were just bored gamers- out for a random flight. Turned out the entire swarm was anything but. Soon after he had witnessed the Great Dragon of Twin Crown soaring through the desert skies. Dicey and Ratchet had fended off the splice attack, easy enough.
Apparently, Harper could not handle it! Lost one of their spiders; Ratchet was not surprised.
His drone flipped and spun about through the air as he found a new target. The reticles were endless, and the series of arrows, pointing to targets behind him, seemed to dance on the edge of his vision.
It was such a chaotic environment that the young girls chatter over the comms, while they mowed through enemy drones, was actually grounding. Although trying to make sense of their conversation, while they all still destroyed drone after drone, was a trick in and of itself.
“No, it’s the dragon leading them…” Margo insisted, despite the other two little girl’s disbelief.
“There really is a dragon?” Grace asked, first and foremost.
Ratchet knew Grace had never believed Dicey or Ratchet’s claims that they had witnessed the dragon. They had been at odds ever since Ratchet took Grace’s Drone out without permission. Harper and Ratchet friendship already tense, (thanks to Harper’s clear selfishness) Grace, pretty much, started taking sides with Harper thereafter.
“Yep!” Margo confirmed that it was indeed the dragon leading the attack. “I saw it with my own eyes. It led that entire swarm of Drones, straight here.”
“But what for?” Dicey pressed. “Why are they shooting everything up… and now you say it’s not even the same bad guys?”
“Um, because,” Margo was clearly at a loss for words. “I don’t know– you tell me!”
Quite a bit of chatter was lost as Ratchet managed to destroy an enemy drone with a barrage of missiles. The explosions rocked his drone back and filled his ears. He decided maybe not to fire so close next time. Ultimately, it was fun; his heart was pumping, and his blood was flowing. He selected the next reticle on his display…
“Yes, that was because Ferguson was that guy,” he heard Margo explain. “I mean, we were doing that… for the game. So that we could all level up!”
“It was you guys attacking us in all those waves again and again?” Dicey voiced the very thought Ratchet had with the added information.
“Well, I mean… Okay, it was Ferguson,” Margo corrected herself. “I just joined up this time to play capture the flag… but then the dragon brought in all these drones…”
Ratchet could only wonder why Ferguson was not weighing in on these accusations… he knew Ferguson could hear them. The mysterious device was just talking a few minutes ago when he fixed it so they could not fire at each other.
“That actually makes a lot more sense…” Grace weighed in on the fact that it was Ferguson behind the previous drone waves. “Especially when it got close to bedtime and the waves suddenly ended. A little too convenient to think a bad guy was trying to defeat us…”
“Whatever, that was a lot of fun either way,” Dicey piped in. “But not this… this is scary. Especially with all the flower petals bursting out of the humans the drones murder… and then they fall, and the bodies turn into flower beds? What’s with that? It is like someone put a filter up to hide all the gore!”
‘Geeze, how come mine doesn’t look that way?’ Ratchet thought to himself as he soared over carnage on a level far more horrific than displaced flower beds…
According to Margo’s random ass comments throughout the fray, Ratchet pieced together the idea that these drones were actually minions of the dragon itself. Begged the question: when exactly did they need to face off against this greater threat? She also suggested that the spherical device, Ferguson, aka the ‘Brain Stealer’, was behind all the drone waves up until this current raid. Seemed like there was a lot more going on here… created a lot more questions than answers.
Questions that were being ignored.
Ratchet’s spider touched down, then and there, in the middle of the battle zone. He stripped the visor from his head– turning to said spherical device, Ratchet planned to demand some sort of explanation…
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