Infinity Legends

Chapter 36: The Escape

The peaceful village from hours ago no longer existed.

Covered in smoke and colorful crossfires, the islan had been overtaken by battle as Solar League troopers and robots clashed with the Red Star pirate crews. Few civilian NPCs and fishermen ran across the streets covering their heads with their arms while others picked sides either with the local criminals or with the galactic authorities.

Takol himself took advantage of the high ground provide by the elevated bungalow to blast down some of the Solar League numbers as they came. Kramen was right behind him shooting every now and them with a small pistol.

“Let’s go!” Takol called while changing the power cartridges on his rifle.

“Chill, man!” Ybor called from inside the ruined wooden building. Him and his drones were hard at work cutting the remains of the hunter-mech.

“Now’s not the time for scavenging!” Takol yelled as he fired.

“I prefer the term selective counter-engineering, thank you very much!” Ybor yanked a large sphere buzzing with blue energy bolts from within the destroyed robot. “There we go! Will you carry this for me, Alpha?” he handed the sphere to a drone, then casually paced to a cabinet,  bent over and started rummaging through piles of boxes and containers.

“Oh, what now?!” Takol cursed. “Need help packing?”

“Dude, you should try Anoxilorian Tea sometime. Will do wonders for…”

“Freeze!” a Solar League soldier rolled through the window, weapon trained at Takol.

A shot echoed, and the side of Ybor’s cabinet exploded, a bolt of blue plasma coming out to hit the soldier in the head. Takol looked at the inventor, who just shrugged and winked.

“There!” Ybor pulled a small box with intricate patterns on the lid forming a rustic and slightly abstract four-eyed face. “Now we good! Shall we?”

***

The trio had charged down the village faster than any of them could have hoped for. With a full battle raging on around them, Takol had taken the lead, gunning down anyone in their path. Kramen came right behind, arms busy carrying the mysterious box Ybor had rescued from the messy cabinet, and Ybor himself was last, controlling his drones through a pad on his forearm.

Alpha, the drone carrying the strange orb, flew close to Kramen. The other five had been ordered to grab hold of metal plates from the destroyed hunter-mech and were now positioned as shields for the group’s flanks and rear.

Kramen had to admit, that was quite ingenious.

Once the group arrived at the docks, Takol and Kramen rushed for the boat they had rented, but Ybor went the other way and hopped into a boat marked with a red star.

“Are you crazy?” Takol asked, half turning to repel a wave of soldiers coming from the beach. “You wanna steal a pirate ship?”

“Call it borrowing!” Ybor said. “Besides, this one has a motor, yours has sails! We need speed!”

“Do we, really?” Kramen asked, siding with Takol.

At the point where the pier met the sand, a human man dropped from the sky, jets roaring from his back, shoulders, elbows and the sole of his feet. Behind him, four blurs raised trails of sand behind them, coming to a halt around the jetpack guy. Each of the dashes took the form of slender humanoid robots whose arms ended in sharp blades, their entire black hulls designed for aerodynamism. Kramen recognized them, and probably so did the others.

Blinker-bots, the fastest units in the game.

And then the guy with the jets looked at them, followed by all his metal lackeys.

“Yeah, there may be need for speed,” Kramen admitted, then hurried to join Ybor in the pirate boat.

Takol was still crawling onto the deck when the ship took off, engine reeving as the water parted into white foam around them. One of the robots ran from one extreme of the dock to the other in less than a second, its sword arms leaving a deep scratch on the hull just beneath Takol’s tail as the ship left the island behind.

Kramen hurried to help his friend onboard.

Back on the beach, the man with the jets shot into the air, crossing the crashing waves and flying low enough to taste the salty sprinkles from the surf.

“Takol, keep’im back!” Kramen said.

Takol obeyed, running to the ship’s stern to open a volley of green fire against the approaching hunter. The man, in turn, did a series of barrel rolls and zigzags, narrowly missing every shot that ended dispersing on the water.

“Who is this guy?” Takol asked himself while reloading.

“Zack Ionjet,” Ybor replied, poking his head out of a trapdoor on the floor a step to Takol’s right. “Mind passing me the antimatter core?”

“The what now?” Takol was as confused by the request as he was by Ybor’s sudden appearance.

“The blue energy ball!”

Takol glanced to the side, finding the item Ybor had recovered from the hunter-mech. With a swipe of his tail, Takol rolled the object to the trapdoor. Ybor hurried to grab it and vanished under the deck again.

Three second later, as Zack Ionjet drew closer to the boat, the engines changed roars completely and the ship shot ahead. Takol had to brace against the railing to stop himself from going overboard. Back in the main deck, Kramen had been taken unprepared and entirely collapsed, but as he pulled himself up on the portside railing, he could not help but curse.

“Uh… guys!” he called. “You’ve gotta see this!”

To either side of the boat, two figures cruised the surface of the sea as black rays of lightning, nearly catching up to them.

“Are those…” Ybor squinted.

“Blinker-bots?” Kramen nodded. “I think so.”

“Aaaaaargh!” Takol opened a long volley of fire against the robots running on the water, but it had even less effect than his attack on Zack. Even with the smart-rifle’s aim assistance, every shot seemed to go clean through the speeding machines.

That did not stop Takol from recharging and trying again.

“Can’t you make the ship go faster?” Kramen asked Ybor.

“Already did what I could, not much else to do.”

“Where are your drones?” Kramen looked around.

“Piloting the boat. Someone has to, ya know?” Ybor replied.

“I’ll pilot,” Kramen ran up to the helm cabin. “Get your drones to stall the blinkers to Starboard.”

Ybor wasn’t sure what side was Starboard, but he figure it would be the one Takol wasn’t shooting at. With a brief order, the drones left the helm and zoomed to the sea, trying to block the path of the robots running over the water. If they could slow down the targets even a little bit, that could be enough for the blinkers to sink.

The issue was that the blinkers did not slow down. Whether it was plasma, lasers or drones, the blinkers simply changed course with enough agility to avoid contact, then resumed their advance towards the boat.

If anything, the inconvenience of the shots and drones forced the bots to take longer paths, which allowed Kramen to put some ground—or rather, water—between them. Soon, the four robots were all positioned behind the boat, quickly covering the ship’s trail as Takol kept the heat on them without ever landing a hit.

“Move over!” Ybor pushed Takol out of the way. The engineer held an empty wooden barrel over his head, then launched it at the water behind the boat, precisely in front of one of the pursuers.

As one would expect, the blinker simply sidestepped and continued on its chase.

Takol stopped firing to stare at Ybor, deadpan. “They’re dodging bullets and you throw a barrel?”

Ybor shrugged.

“That’s smart!” Kramen yelled from the cockpit. “Is there much cargo on the hold?”

“Tons!” Ybor replied.

“Good! Throw it all out. We get lighter, we get faster.”

Ybor and Takol mutually nodded, then rushed under the deck. When they return, aided by four of Ybor’s drones, they had a pile of gun cases, parts and general pirate loot in their arms. They stumbled to the back of the boat and launched all the trinkets overboard.

As the water was littered by junk, the blinkers engaged in desperate evasive maneuvers as they attempted to avoid every floating bit of garbage on their way. When one steered right to avoid a footlocker and another went left to dodge an old rifle, the two robots collided and exploded, adding their parts to the trash heap.

“It worked!” Takol’s jaw dropped as a third robot slowed down to zigzag between spare armor parts and, given its reduced speed, sunk unto the sea. Only one left.

“We need to crowd this party up!” Ybor concluded, already returning to the hold. “Come on, let’s…”

Ybor was cut short by a rain of plasma bolts. Takol dove onto the engineer, taking a few hits to his armor but ultimately saving Ybor. As they looked up, Zack Ionjet descended from the sky. The bounty hunter grinned as he swiftly touched down on the deck behind them, shutting down his thrusters.

Zack had two guns at hand, and he fired them both, though not at either of the fugitives. He shot them into the wooden deck just above the engine. The wood exploded and two columns of smoke rose from the twin holes on the ground as the engine coughed and died.

It didn’t take long for the boat to come to a halt, and in the blink of an eye the one remaining blinker had climbed onboard.

The robot stood still behind the flying mercenary, who ditched the pistols and pulled twin daggers.

“Ybor…” Zack grinned and leaned against the railing. “You’ve done well for yourself. Now why don’t you give me what I want and we can all get out of here.”

“I don’t have it, sorry,” Ybor said with Takol still on top of him.

“Bullshit,” Zack scratched his shaded beard. “How long do you think it’d take the blinker to find it?”

“Uh, what the hell is going on?” Takol asked.

“Nothing. I’ll meet you guys later,” Ybor said, pushing Takol off of him and dusting himself off. He turned to Zack. “It’s next to the engine. You wait here, I’ll grab it.”

“Ha, nice try, clever pants,” Zack pointed a blade at the other man. “I’ll come with you, make sure you don’t do anything funny. And the blinker will keep an eye on your friends.”

Kramen had stepped out of the cabin and watched the scene in utter confusion.

Held at knifepoint, Ybor marched down the trapdoor leading to the engine, Zack close behind.

***

“There it is,” Ybor pointed at the thoroughly carved box he had taken from his now destroyed bungalow. A ray of sunlight came through the whole on the ceiling created by Zack’s shots and illuminated exactly the spot upon which the box was located.

Zack’s eyes glimmered as he approached the small container.

“Did you know the most dangerous things in this planet are in the water?” Ybor asked.

“So?”

“These things respond to sounds,” Ybor said. “This ship has a sonar, and my drone Alpha just activated it at a very specific Leviathan mating frequency.”

Zack turned on his heels, suddenly concerned. “You’re bluffing. You wouldn’t sacrifice the box just so I don’t get it.”

“No,” Ybor grinned. “That’s where Bravo comes in.”

From the gunshot hole in the ceiling, a small drone floated in and snatched the box from behind Zack. The bounty hunter hurried to pull his daggers, but by then Charlie and Delta had already snatched them from their sheaths. When Zack tried running back to the deck, Echo had safely shut the trapdoor.

Zack ordered the blinker to chase the drones, who were just floating overhead holding the box, Kramen and Takol. However fast the blinker was, it could not fly.

In a second, a massive jaw erupted from the water and swallowed the boat whole, dragging the ship, the blinker, Zack and Ybor to a watery death.