Chapter 37:
The aircraft came swooping out of the sky at low altitude over the milling goo-bros. The mutants stared stupidly up at the strange object in mass confusion. Nominally, they were supposed to attack anything that moved. The strange thing was far too fast and just too high to reach. At the controls, Nadia, the Grid-Face Princess, adjusted the flaps and trimmed the control surfaces. She'd never done this before. She imagined no-one had done this in more than a thousand years. It was utterly mad, but it was just the kind of thing her champion would propose.
In the back of the aircraft, Finn sat in the cab of the truck, hands poised at the controls. Beside him, an antsy Huntress sat strapped in and staring straight ahead in a state of abject terror. The wizard muttered, "you sure this will work, donk?" Sounding more confident than he felt, Finn replied, "ch'yeah, man! Did this before!" He'd done it with Nadia, and he was still trying to reassure the prickly wizard that he hadn't done anything else. E was still angry at him, but there were signs she was softening. He was always going to love her. That was just how he was. He just hoped she could accept 'friends'.
"Attention in the bay," announced Nadia! "We're approaching the target. Stand by." The massive ramp began to descend, revealing a crystal-blue sky. "That's my cue," announced Flint. "Good luck, man," Finn shouted, as the elemental strode for the door. Jumping out before going into full flaming mode, the burning man waved goodbye as the slipstream took him.
The blast of air felt deliciously painful. It was icy cold, and felt like the rush of ice-shards past his skin. The elemental took a moment to collect himself, fixing the target with his eyes. Then he dove on the creatures below, cutting a blazing swath through them. The goo creatures made his skin crawl. They were off-putting. Forcing himself to continue, Flint made three passes in rapid succession, clearing a broad swath of space on the ground. Soaring skyward once more, he drew his phone and reported his success. Now it was Finn's turn.
Taking a breath, Emeraude closed her eyes and said, "do it before I back out." As the aircraft swooped low over the scorched ground, Finn floored the accelerator. The truck tore out of the back of the plane. As they cleared the ramp, Finn triggered the bubble generator attached to the underside of the truck. The truck plummeted. With Rattleballs in back balancing the engine, the truck at least was falling upright. E clutched Finn's hand in a white-knuckle grip as the ground got closer and closer–rushing up to meet them.
And they bounced.
The truck bounced four times, reaching up to thirty feet in the air before coming to a stop. A large puff of smoke announced the death of the bubble-generator. Finn floored the pedal, and the truck lurched into motion. Grinning over at E, he gave her hand a squeeze. Blushing, the wizard laughed like a lunatic. And then it was time to get down to business. The goo-bros were recovering.
Just like Princess Nadia had said, there were tens of thousands of them out here in this wasteland. There were quite literally mutants everywhere. They moved as though they were all part of one living whole and that whole focused on eliminating the interlopers. The creatures moved to cut the truck off, and Finn did his best to avoid them, sawing the wheel back and forth. They lost if they got bogged down here. The goo-bros could pig-pile on the truck like they had Bonnie's ship, and eventually they'd get through. More to the point, even if they could escape, this was their best chance of getting close to the aliens and the radio tower.
"Starting the jammer," announced Emeraude. Grimly, Finn nodded. Nadia had analyzed the signal she picked up during the attack on the town, and she'd come up with a counter for it. That came in the form of a small device bolted to the dashboard and plugged into the truck's power supply. Now the wizard scrambled the signal, causing the goo-bros to go stupid a moment, just as it looked like they were going to close the gap. Finn roared through the gap, shouting and pumping his fist in excitement.
Of course they weren't quite out of the woods. As the truck roared along in the track Flint had made, more goo-bros were trying to fill in the hole. Nadia's jamming device had a pretty short range, after all. Standing in the bed of the truck and strapped down against the wild swerving and the shock of the fall from a thousand feet up, Rattleballs cut loose with volleys of blaster-fire, shredding any mutants that looked like they'd be in the way of the truck. They were getting closer. Finn's plan seemed to be working.
Up on the massive tower, the little engineer was fuming. The sight of these damned primitives defeating his carefully constructed defenses had made him angry enough to punch the control terminal. Gorg chuckled. The little shit always thought he had everything under control. He'd been sure that these local yokels could never get out here to challenge him. They were deep in a radioactive hotspot, and there shouldn't have been any way these primitives could survive long enough to reach this place. Even if they did, they would never get past the army of mutants he'd amassed. Honestly, even Gorg hadn't believed they could get past those things. He'd lost three men corralling a specimen.
"They're comin' fast," announced one of the crew. Which was to say Gorsh better start thinking quickly. If this was the same little bastard that had taken down Martin and caused their ship to crash, he was trouble with a capital T, and even Gorg wasn't happy to see another of those flame-creatures circling their transmitter array. "We're not ready," muttered Gorsh. He wasn't ready to move yet. He needed more time for the calculations. If Ket had been able to bring him more of those brain-computers, he would have been able to finish the work by now. Instead, the idiot had managed to get himself killed and take three of their defense-droids with him. Turning back to the terminal, the genius began dialing up the power on his control terminal. Over his shoulder, he commanded, "dispatch the flying squad!"
Trouble came to Flint's world in the form of four streaks of light. The arrogant elemental wasn't sure what he was seeing at first. He had never seen anything flying other than one of his people and very few of his folk were strong enough for that. He could count them on his fingers and toes. So long did he watch and ponder, he almost failed to realize he was in danger. Fortunately, just before the aliens unleashed their null-energy rays on him, his instinct for self-preservation kicked in, and the burning man began weaving and ducking, just in case.
Meanwhile a second quartet came streaking in low over the truck, laying down fire as they came. "Shields," growled Finn. "On it," Huntress shouted back! Twisting the handle on cow-tits's little box, she caused a glowing disc to appear before the windshield. It couldn't cover very much of the truck–not and still allow the truck to move–but it was better than the glass. Deftly the wizard guided that disc back and forth, deflecting the aliens' wrath while Rattleballs returned fire. The aliens blazed past, twisting and turning through the sky to come around from behind. At the same time goo-bros began to gather once more in front of the truck.
The wizard was trying to steer the forcefield disc to the rear when Finn said, "leave it front! Goo-bros! Dozens!" Huntress found herself juggling offense and defense at the same time as she hurled lightning and spell-arrows and blast-orbs into the packed ranks of goo-bros. At the same time, she tried to shield the truck's engine and tires from them as the truck slammed through bodies, hurling them this way and that. And then there were the aliens. As Finn wove back and forth through the ranks of mutants, the aliens tried to blast them to smithereens. "Didn't I say we should stop doing this," shouted the wizard?! "Ch'yeah, man," retorted Finn! "Like ten times now!"
The mass of goo-bros was getting thicker and thicker, and Finn was afraid the truck would bog down. The aliens were still making passes, and their gunfire was getting closer and closer, even as Huntress was forced to spend more and more time on offense. That was when Nadia's aircraft came swooping in to save the day.
The cyborg hottie had plugged into the airplane's command chair, enabling her to multi-task far more effectively. She'd been afraid of doing that in front of a man she'd hoped–still hoped–to win. Now with Finn off the plane, she could do what was needed. Deploying the aircraft's primary navigation antenna, Nadia began feeding the communications system a signal of her own design. Far more than a simple jamming signal, this one contained layers of instructions for the aliens' army. As Finn cheered, the goo-bros turned and charged the radio station.
Aboard the radio station, a horrified Gorsh gobbled in shock as his army turned their attention on him! "They've hijacked the signal," howled the little genius! Gorg decided that it was time he took charge of things. He'd played flunky for a while now, letting Gorsh think he was in charge of things. That was important for the little egomaniac, and that made it important for the other survivors. They needed that fucking transmitter! Now, though, with everything in jeopardy, it was time he stepped in.
Striding to the intercom, the massive alien keyed the mike and announced, "a sack of diamonds for the gunner who brings down that damned ship!" Moving towards the main console, he told the operators, "fire up the reactor. We're leaving." Gorsh howled, "we're not done with the calculations! We won't be able to aim the dish!" "We won't be able to aim it if it's destroyed, either," retorted Gorg!
Nadia was in the middle of her third pass when her ship's radio-sensors detected tightly focused radio-beams striking from several directions at once. She immediately swerved, turning hard right and then hard left as the aliens lit up the sky with bursts of focused microwaves that lit up the sky like artificial lightning. She was so close to the ground that maneuvering was difficult. Of course there was an upside. The blasts of focused energy tore through the ranks of goo-guys like a hot knife through butter, slaughtering the mutants by the hundred.
Finn howled laughter. They were actually clearing a path for him! Swerving around blasts of energy himself, he floored the pedal, accelerating through the gaping holes in the goo-bros lines. At the same time, Rattleballs downed one of the flying aliens. Moments later, Huntress blasted a second out of the sky.
Up on the radio-tower, Gorg tapped on the railing before him as he stared out at the trouble coming their way. "How long," he demanded? "Two minutes," replied the tech. "We're having to reconfigure the network. The organics aren't cooperating." "Shock them," growled Gorg! With a frown, the tech replied, "we could lose some of them." Without their bodies to absorb some of the strain, the brains were very delicate. "Shock them," repeated the massive alien.
Flint zipped by, darting directly through the superstructure. The last remaining alien pursuer misjudged the turn and slammed head-first into a steel support, dieing on impact. The elemental streaked out the far side, hurling fireballs at the guns as he did so. Seeing two aliens still harassing the truck, the young prince dove on them, hurling massive bolts of blue flame as he approached. Dodging around the flaming ruin that had been two living beings, Finn finally drew up on the tower.
Rattleballs was almost about to cut the cable securing him in the bed of the truck, and Huntress had already ditched her seatbelts when the giant tower gave out a tremendous groan. With a shriek of protesting metal, the huge thing began to move. Finn roared after it, but one of the heavy guns put a bolt of energy through the truck's hood, neutralizing its defenses and power plant all at once. In moments, the tower was moving at high speed, gathering momentum as it swayed and tottered across the landscape. "Fuck," howled Finn, as he jumped out of the cab of Bonnie's truck. Slamming the door, he gave vent to a stream of profanity.
"Hold that thought, donk," chuckled Emeraude. Drawing her phone, she dialed up cow-tits. "Hey, cow-girl," said the flippant wizard! "We need a pickup!" "Be there in a bit," said Nadia. "I'm busy dodging at the moment." Leaning back against the truck, the wizard said, "that wasn't half fucking bad, donk. Not bad at all." It was an opening. Staring at her, Finn found himself wanting to talk to her. At the same time, he knew that this wasn't the time. They still had to take down the tower, and they couldn't afford emotional entanglement right now.
Minutes later, the towering construct the aliens had built was out of range to fire at them, and Nadia was finally able to land. The trio from the truck grabbed their weapons and gear and raced for the rear ramp. As they ran aboard, Finn was on the phone with Flint, getting the scoop on what the aliens were doing. "Headed south, Finn," said the elemental! A burst of static interrupted the transmission. "You ok, buddy," asked Finn? "Shooting at me," replied Flint. He chuckled. They were getting rather wild. That said they were desperate–on the ropes. "Hang in there," said Finn, as he pressed the switch to close the ramp.