Outrun - Chapter 161

To be honest, I don’t know quite what they were expecting to happen when they decided to ram what they suspected to be an ambush. Mine laying is pretty basic when it comes to vehicular ambushes. Hell, they were fairly common in general as long as the one laying them didn’t care about blowing up the surroundings. My recent experience with Hope in the Underground comes to mind.

As soon as the mine blew, covering the APC in fire and sand so thick the wolf’s shared vision couldn’t see through it, the Crimson Company moved into action. Red-Six moved, speeding up significantly as it raced toward the safety of the Gold blockade. Not sure why we were using our goods as defenses in the first place, but Captain Roger probably had his own considerations. 

Dunes all around the ambush point shifted on Lia’s magical screen, bringing my attention back to the APC. Heavily modded cars, marked with symbols of… jackals? I’d never heard about a jackal Nomad group. Anyway, about two dozen cars burst from the dunes in a spray of sand, revealing their positions. Another dozen came from over the nearby dunes, having been summoned by the explosion. We were grossly outnumbered by one to three.

The jackals marked vehicles though looked… kinda weak? Nowhere near compared to the Hawks who patrolled around Aythryn City. Their cars looked as if they’d been scavenged from the sunbaked remnants of a nuked city. Every one of them was covered in a fine layer of rust with only the attached guns looking shiny. Even the attached guns looked old though.

Since the APC had run ahead, we were out of the direct ambush, allowing several long moments to pass as every gun in the Crimson Caravan locked onto the jackal group. The air lit up with the sound of a thousand bullets as the heavy guns on each of the Prowlers opened fire under Captain Roger’s orders.

‘Course, they weren’t the only ones shooting. Fire erupted from the ambushes as they returned shots in a frantic array. Bullets flew, pinging off vehicles as both sides vied for the upper hand. The ground erupted into sandy sprays of debris, lowering the visibility the longer the firefight went.

Red-Six breezed into the blockade, the armor only catching a few shots. I could feel my heart rate jumping as we entered direct combat. Especially considering we were outnumbered. I nervously looked around, wondering what the next plan of action would be-

Only to find the rest of the cabin in absolute tranquility. Sergeant Hampton was back to sleep, loudly snoring as if we weren’t in the middle of a combat zone. Our gunner, the one I expected to be the most attentive to our surroundings, was back to drawing on his sketchpad as if nothing happened. He was just finishing up a gorgeous drawing of a bouquet of roses.

Lia was the only one to have any reaction, though her face was tinged with obvious longing as she stared through the wolf’s vision. That longing faded as her eyes shifted around from one side to another. She met my eyes, immediately bringing a finger to her lips to shush me with a giddy expression.

She raised her hand, rubbing one of her rings as she started to-

“Cut it out, Lia. No point in wasting your magic.” Renold called as he lounged back and idly watched one of the jackal’s vehicles explode in a ball of fire under the might of several concentrated HMGs. A dozen secondary explosions quickly followed as the ordinance kept in the vehicle started to go off.

“You guys sure seem laid back.” Maybe coming out here with these wack jobs wasn’t such a good idea.

”Why wouldn’t we be?” Lia laughed gleefully as a bullet caught one of the jackal cars, this one covered in spikes and rusty metal, in the tire. It slowed just enough that the car behind it rammed up into it, launching the driver through the windshield and out into the spikes. His broken body hung from the rusty spikes as the car drove away.

Lia’s giant wolf sprite shifted, giving us a view of our side. We‘d taken no losses. The guns strapped to the jackals’ vehicles were too low caliber to punch through the armor, at least for the most part. Radio chatter indicated there were a few injured from stray rounds but nobody was dead yet.

A thunderous roar erupted from the jackals' side, drawing the wolf to look back towards the approaching ambush. They were just about to hit our defensive line, fully committing to a forward assault.

The roar came again, this time followed by dozens of lights flickering in the localized sandstorm brought about by all the commotion. Almost immediately, three of the jackals crashed as a storm of bullets erupted from behind. The sound was overwhelming as at least hundreds if not thousands of rounds a second came from behind the enemy.

The APC rolled out back into the fight, lacking even a scratch to its paint as if it hadn’t just face-tanked a land mine. The dozens of guns all over the porcupine-looking vehicle erupted in bolts of fire, causing the entire vehicle to look like an avenging angel set aflame with righteous fury. 

The main turret on top of the thing fired a shot, the sound loud enough to cause the layer of sand floating around to clear off entirely from its body for a few moments. The massive round hit one of the better-armored jackals as if a divine smite, immediately causing the thing to explode into a ball of fire that caught one other car.

Heavily armored and armed, the destructive APC rejoined the battle, causing the offensive push from the jackals to shatter as they tried to flee. Not that the Crimson Company would let them. Our side’s guns never stopped firing, smoothly wiping out the entire ambush as if it wasn’t even a problem.

I shifted in my seat, giving another look around the Crimson Company with renewed insight. Really, I don’t know what I was expecting. This was a high payout gig handed over by none other than Athena. I should’ve trusted her judgment more with who she fired. No way she’d hire a bunch of idiots from a weak mercenary corp to go scavenge an ancient stash of loot.

“See? Nothing to worry about. Our company is one of the best in Aythryn City, outside of the megacorp-sponsored ones.” Lia chuckled to herself and slapped the red cross patch on her shoulder. 

Renold kicked the Prowler back into gear as damage reports were relayed through the radios. Minor injuries from stray flesh wounds, but nothing the medics couldn’t fix up quite easily. 

A call from Captain Roger came. “Clear the field. You lot know the drill. Red-Six, send up Red-Metal to check the T-1. Something about a leaking fuel line.”

”That’s you.” Renolds informed me as he drove over to the APC. 

Leaking fuel line, eh? Should be an easy enough fix. I had us stop by one of the flipped jackal cars to scavenge some parts. I ignored the foul stench radiating from the vehicle and the blood pouring through the gaps of the crushed driver’s seat. I grabbed what I thought I’d need before heading over to the APC and getting to work.

— — —

Stuarton was in sight as day turned to night.. It had been for the past hour since we were coming down a mountain into it, but now it was truly close. Stuarton had been closer to town than a city, with only one skyscraper in the mix. The town itself was almost entirely dark, though there were lights scattered around.

Flickering lights, run by long-abandoned solar panels, cast distorted ghosts of advertisements that seemed to have a haunting quality to them as they glitched out and swayed around in inhuman movements. Years of disrepair left once majestic holograms and progressive advertising twitching about uncontrollably.

The sun, our constant torturer throughout the long day of travel, finally dropped below a distant mountain, casting long shadows across Stuarton. The convoy came to a stop just before leaving the mountain. 

“Are we not going down?” Not that I was complaining, mind you. I’d rather stay up here than go into the ghost town, especially with all the glitched-out tech down there. And there was no telling what hid in the dark. And we were close to Dune Walker territory, so they’d be showing up sooner or later. I’d rather not get trapped in the city by them like some kind of cheesy horror movie.

Renold shook his head slowly. “Boss is worried about Thermoguants popping up soon.”

”Thermoguant?” What the hell was that? Must be something quite dangerous to make the guy who ordered his APC to face tank an ambush wary.

We came to a complete stop on a rocky outcropping just before a cliff. The entire convoy pulled into a blockade formed by the trucks once more. Guess we were setting up camp right up here?

”They’re like, um, like mosquitos, right? But they’re attracted to heat and are about the size of a dog. Oh! And they use swarm tactics.” Lia shuddered. “I once had one latch onto my face till my sprite pulled it off. Still have nightmares.”

Yonrow tapped me on the shoulder and passed over his notepad. “Here.”

It was a realistic, at least I would assume so based on his skills, sketch of a mosquito hugging the windshield of a prowler. The thing did look like a mosquito, but it looked as though it had a layer of chitin acting like armor for the thing. Its mouth, a needle longer than the entirety of its body, clacked against the windshield.

The drawing was done from inside the passenger seat, so it was rather horrifying as the giant needle of a mouth tried to force its way through the window. Even worse, there were dozens if not hundreds of other Thermoguants back behind the one on the window, actively generating more nightmares the longer I looked at it.

“You said they were attracted to heat?” I asked.

Yonrow took his sketchpad back as Lia replied. “Chek. They’re nocturnal though, so they tend to gather around sunspots for the first few hours a night before going off to feed. They bunch up around old tech that’s still running in old abandoned towns like this.”

That’s a relief. If they were attracted to heat, I could just activate Cold-Blooded and none of them would come for me right? Sure, it’d suck for everyone else, but I’d be safe. 

Renold killed the engine as the squad’s radios crackled to life. Captain Roger called through the line to the entire company. “We’ll be out here for the night. No fires. Dinner in an hour. Red-One is on first watch. Red-Two, you’re second. Red-Five, you have the third.” 

I stepped out of the vehicle, instantly feeling a chill. The shadows were freezing compared to the heat that we just basked in moments ago. The constant wind blowing didn’t help either. I immediately swapped back over to the heated setting as I stretched out, feeling several bones crack.

If I was this sore from just sitting here, I can’t even imagine how Lia must feel. Hmm… I’d never thought about this before, but if I had chrome limbs I wouldn't get sore anymore, right? Could Renold just sit there for several days without feeling anything but mental fatigue?

My gaze caught on the sky. It seemed so boundless out here away from the towering architecture. So free. And the stars! I’d never seen so many of them. So pretty. Course, the atmosphere still blocked quite a bit of them out even if the light pollution didn’t. I can’t even imagine how majestic the night sky used to look a hundred years ago.

It’d really be something to get out into space and travel the cosmos… unfortunately, such a thing just wasn’t meant for me. Unless I got a job with BosSpace, I guess, but the chances of that were… Well, I’d have a higher chance of becoming a corporate executive. Still, it would be so cool to go to one of the colonies on another planet. How different everything must be up there.

I peeked back into the Prowler as everyone except Hampton, who was still passed out as if he’d been drugged, started hustling and bustling to get camp set up. I followed the pack to set up for the night. Hopefully, it’d be uneventful.