Mistrunner 3 - Chapter 11 - The Dragon Roars (Patreon)

I don’t think what happened in Nova really hit Mira until she discovered that her favorite band had been one of the casualties of the city’s destruction. Obviously, from a rational perspective, she knew. She had to have known. But it didn’t hit home until someone told her Leviathan’s fate. After that, our ship got a new name, and Mira truly started down a dark road.

Patrick Ward

I gripped the strap, the wind whipping through my hair as the Leviathan sped along. Through the open cargo doors, I could see the long, snaking form of the train stretching toward the horizon, and I knew that if I could see in the other direction, it would look much the same. The train itself was around nine miles long, and it sped along at a velocity the Leviathan struggled to match, especially so low to the ground. If we’d climbed higher into the atmosphere, it wouldn’t have been difficult, but doing so would have negated the plan. So, Patrick maintained our altitude, skimming along only fifty feet above the train’s sinuous form.

“Deploying signal blockers now,” said Isaac through the communication device I wore in my ear. I could’ve established a Secure Connection with the rest of the team, but I didn’t want to reveal that particular back channel to them. Besides, I still wasn’t entirely sure of their capabilities, and giving them a potential back door into my system would have been sheer idiocy.

Isaac stepped up to the open cargo doors, his long coat snapping back with the wind. He wore a harness around his chest, which was connected to a nearby hook on the bulkhead, but he still looked a little nervous. Not surprising, given that if he fell, he probably didn’t have the Constitution to survive. I was reasonably certain that stood for the entire team, save for Askar, whose abilities were still something of a question mark.

He raised a curious weapon to his shoulder – it looked a little like my BMAP, though with a longer, thicker barrel – and fired. It discharged with a thump, sending a cylinder flying from the Levaithan’s open cargo doors. For a moment, it sailed in a long, slow arc, but then a tiny jet of flame erupted from its rear, guiding it to the train below. It landed a moment later, embedding itself in the roof of the train car.

Then, it unfolded, releasing dozens of tiny, spider-like robots that skittered in opposite directions. They moved so quickly that I needed Observation to track their progress, and only fifteen seconds later, Isaac announced, “Signal blockers in place. Communication is jammed. Remember, it’ll only last about twenty minutes, so we need to get this done in a hurry.”

Askar’s voice came over the communication channel, asking, “Everyone ready? We all know our jobs?”

Everyone said that they did, which was my signal to move. I released my grip on the handle, flared Balance to keep from falling over, and sprinted forward. Only a moment later, I leaped from the cargo bay, fell for a brief second, then hit the train’s roof. Rolling to disperse my momentum, I found my feet a second later, my R-14 already in hand.

“The Eagle has landed,” I said via the Secure Connection I shared with Patrick.

“That’s not what we agreed on,” he said. “You were supposed to be –”

“If you call me what I think you’re going to call me, I’m going to be very angry with you, Patrick,” I said. He’d wanted me to use a different code name, but I’d objected because I found it mildly offensive.

“But you don’t even fly! If anybody’s the Eagle in this scenario, it’s me,” he complained. “There’s nothing wrong with being called Cupcake. A lot of girls would find it endearing.”

As I stalked across the roof of the train, leaping from one car to the next, I asked, “And what about me suggests I’m like other girls? If I can’t be the Eagle, at least give me something cool. Like Cobra. Or Lioness.” I thought about that one for a second, then said, “Ugh. Scratch that one. I don’t like it.”

“How about Sparrow? You can still be a bird, and –”

“If you call me Sparrow, I’m going to shoot you down,” I said as calmly as I could.

“Alright, alright. Uh…what about Rhino? It fits because you’re tough and strong –”

“You’re terrible at this. You realize that, don’t you?” I muttered.

“Yeah, well, I don’t hear you suggesting anything.”

He had me there. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything appropriate. Not that it really mattered. Nobody except Patrick and me would ever hear it. Still, I couldn’t stomach the idea of my partner calling me Rhino.

“How about Baby Wraith?” he blurted.

“That’s worse!” I exclaimed, leaping across another gap between cars as I sprinted along the length of the train. “Nothing says awesome like evoking the memory of my dead uncle, right?”

“Yeah – didn’t really think that one through. Give me a second,” he said. Then, he rattled off a few more options, each one somehow worse than the last. As he did, I kept Observation active as I raced across the metal roof of the train. Without Balance, I could never have kept my footing, but flaring it every now and again, I had no difficulty adjusting to the rushing wind.

When I finally reached my destination, I dropped into a feet-first slide, saying, “I think we’re just going to have chalk the whole code name thing up as a loss.”

“I’ve almost got it figure out!”

“You really don’t,” I said, my foot finding the lip of an access hatch, which I used to pop back up. Reaching down, I pulled the handle free and twisted. With an outrush of air that I couldn’t hear, the seal was broken, and I threw the hatch open. As I summoned a flashbang from my arsenal implant, I heard a few shouts of alarm that I ignored, and I tossed the grenade into the car. I cut Observationoff just in time to avoid the explosion of sound and light, then reactivated it before leaping into the open hatch.

“I’m in,” I muttered, switching over to the communicator I had in my ear. “Neutralizing hostiles.”

I swept the R-14 around, finding a cluster of men and women wearing a red-and-blue uniform and carrying substandard weaponry. To an amateur, they would probably look impressive enough. But to me? I could see that their rifles were only slightly better than the mundane weaponry I might find in the hands of a run-of-the-mill bandit. Hopefully, whatever armor they possessed – if any – would be just as outdated.

The flashbang had done its job, and the entire crew – fifteen of them, all completely outfitted for battle – was in a state of disarray. A few of the would-be guards clutched their deafened ears, a couple blinked in unseeing confusion, and one even sported terrible scorch marks on her face.

I almost felt sorry for them.

They were just people, after all. Each of them had probably taken the job because they couldn’t find anything better. And as far as I knew, they weren’t terrible humans like the Enforcers back in Nova. But I couldn’t afford pity. Nor could I afford to hesitate.

So, I opened fire.

The R-14 barked, sending concentrated bursts of superheated plasma at my targets. Their armor was completely incapable of stopping the ordnance – especially when augmented by my significant modifiers – and my gunfire tore through them with ease. None had even recovered from the flashbang before I cut them all down. In seconds, they were all dead, and none had even gotten a shot off.

“Hostiles down. Moving to cut distress signal,” I said. Then, I flipped over to my Secure Connection and said, “Well, that was horrible. This better be worth it.”

I’d never shied away from killing, and that had become even more true after Nova City. However, I much preferred targeting invaders over fellow humans. I would do it. Obviously. But that didn’t mean I was happy about it.

“It will be,” he assured me. It didn’t help, but I was committed.

I spotted a security terminal across the car, which was pretty bare bones and lined with benches meant for the soldiers. Likely, they never expected anyone to drop in on them in transit. Instead, they were meant to guard the train in the event that it had to stop for whatever reason. There were six other guard cars throughout the train, but this was the most important because it was the only one equipped with a security terminal that had access to the long-range communications system. There were other short-range communications stations in the train, but the others were taking care of those. Or that was the plan, at least. I was a little skeptical that they could get it done.

“I wonder what they’d have done if I wasn’t here,” I said, retrieving my personal link from the Hand of God and jamming it into the terminal’s port. As I tackled the defenses – which were less than stout – I went on, “I mean, can you imagine them dropping Paulo from the Leviathan? Could he even fit through that hatch?”

“That’s not fair. He told me he has a glandular problem,” Patrick stated.

I didn’t believe that for a second, mostly because that very morning, I’d seen him scarfing down enough food to feed six people. He was fat because he ate too much and didn’t exercise. Which was fine, if that was a choice he wanted to make. Good for him, living his life on his terms, but it clearly had its downsides.

“Sure. Whatever. I’m in. Disabling communications…now,” I said, having torn through the Mistwall with ease. For such an important train – it connected two huge cities – the defenses really were laughably weak.

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than an explosion rattled the car and nearly derailed the train.

“What the hell…”

“Back of the train. The one where they sent the cowboy. Some kind of explosion, but…no communication from our guy,” he said. “You want to check it out?”

“Not sure. Give me a sec,” I said, switching back over to the communicator. “What’s going on, guys?”

“Fucking Rex…”

“Goddamn it. Every time!”

Askar cut through the traffic, saying, “Rex blew something up. Before communication cut off, he was in trouble.”

“Disconnect the cars,” said Isaac.

“What?” I asked. I didn’t like Rex very much, but he was part of the team. And I wasn’t in the habit of abandoning my allies.

“You should have access from that terminal. Just cut everything from car six-thirty-eight back. It’s the simplest solution,” Isaac said.

“You can’t do that!” screamed Paulo. “He’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole!”

“Unless somebody wants to physically go back there and deal with the problem, I don’t see a choice.”

I sighed. “Fine. But if I save this idiot, you all owe me,” I said, already moving. I leaped to the hatch and yanked myself back onto the roof. The wind hit me like a brick wall, but I managed to maintain my footing. Then, I started sprinting, switching back to the Secure Connection. “I’m about to do something stupid. Wish me luck.”

Patrick sighed. I have no idea how he did that considering we weren’t really communicating audibly, but that’s definitely what it was. Then, he said, “Isaac’s freaking out up here, by the way. Just so you know.”

“Whatever. He’s not the boss of me.”

“Askar isn’t happy, either.”

“He’s not my boss either.”

“Isn’t he, though? Like, he’s kind of in charge of this whole thing.”

“Yeah. Sure. Doesn’t matter. None of them can stop me from doing what I want, so…yeah. Not the boss of me. Anyway, keep an eye out for me, okay? Rex might be a bit of an idiot, but he struck me as pretty capable. Something’s a bit off with this whole thing.”

Indeed, my own part of the mission had been a little too easy. Sure, maybe I was lucky and the people in charge of the train were stupid, complacent, and overconfident, but I didn’t really want to put my faith in that – especially now that things had started going wrong. The thought had just crossed my mind when two things happened concurrently.

One was Patrick’s shout, “Look out!”

The other was Observation picking up the sound of heavy footsteps behind me. I whipped around just in time to see a huge combat bot sailing through the air, propelled by rockets in its feet. At the apex of the bot’s jump, the rockets cut off, and it plummeted from the sky.

And its trajectory was aimed directly at me.

I took a quick instant to catalogue its characteristics. Two legs. Four arms. Shiny, yellow paint job. And a sword bigger than my whole body. More, that weapon glowed with blue energy, announcing its status as a nano-blade.

I dove forward in a roll, but I knew I wasn’t going to make it. So, I used Teleport to speed me another dozen feet away. It was just enough to take me out of the combat bots range, and its sword crashed down behind me, cleaving the roof of the car in two.

I twisted, coming up with my R-14 at my shoulder, and I fired. The first three-round burst took it in the chest, and I was dismayed to see the superheated plasma splash harmlessly across the heavy armor. So, I used Explosive Shot, augmenting the remainder of the magazine. I felt my Mist drain at a precipitous rate, but I could tell that holding back was a bad idea.

I fired, aiming at the combat bot’s comparatively vulnerable leg. Its programming had clearly dismissed my weapon as too weak to threaten it, so it made no attempt at avoiding the resulting burst of fire. That was a mistake.

The superheated plasma rounds erupted from the R-14’s barrel, huge and angry, and this time, instead of splashing ineffectually against the metallic armor, they exploded upon contact. Three rounds. Three hits, each tearing into the joint that, on a human, would have been its knee. By the third, the limb was hanging on by a couple of cords. I fired again, and to similar effect.

As the bot’s leg was torn out from under it, it teetered in place for a long second before tipping over the edge. It fired its remaining rocket booster, but without the second, it was off-balance. It wouldn’t take it long to adjust, but it was still too long. The thing hit the desert ground, tumbling with the inertia of the train’s momentous speed. It would recover, but on one leg, it stood little chance of making it back on the train.

Still…

I fired again, my shots tearing through its remaining leg. It clattered to the ground, disappearing behind a sand dune as the train’s path left it behind.

“Abort mission!” screamed Isaac. Idly, I realized that he’d been shouting that same sentence over and over again.

“Cool your jets,” I grumbled. “The threat’s down.”

“Uh…Mira,” cut in Patrick’s voice, the first time he’d spoken over the shared connection with the rest of the group. “You got one. That’s great. Awesome job. But…what about the others?”

I turned, seeing a half-dozen more combat bots alternating between running and hopping, courtesy of their rocket boosters, from the front of the train.

“Crap.”

“I’m going to swing by,” Patrick said. “Just be ready to jump!”

“Negative.”

“What?”

“Not going to happen,” I said with a determined sigh. “I guess it’s time to bring out the big guns.”

“Do you mean…”

“No – the other big gun,” I said.

“Oh. Are you sure?” he asked.

I nodded, though I knew he couldn’t see me. He knew as well as I did that I wanted to keep some of my arsenal hidden. I didn’t trust our companions further than I could throw them – which, given my Constitution, was probably an inaccurate saying – and I wanted to keep a few cards in reserve, just in case.

But I also wanted to win.

Badly.

And I suppose I wanted to get those circuits for Patrick, too, and without the train, the plan would be completely spoiled. Yeah – that was definitely the reason I didn’t want to retreat. Not because of my fundamental incapability to admit defeat. Never that.

Whatever my reasons, I stowed my R-14 back in my arsenal implant. As I did, the Mist required to augment the rest of the magazine with Explosive Shot flowed back into me. I wasn’t running low, but given what I had planned, it was a welcome addition. Then, I summoned my newest weapon from my recently unlocked fifth weapon slot.

The Dragon was a visually impressive weapon, and ever since I’d seen it, I’d wanted one. Sure, the BMAP had suited me better back when I’d first been offered the choice between the two, but I’d never forgotten Gala’s description of the powerful weapon. So, a couple of years after the fall of Nova City, I’d returned to the Bazaar and persuaded the minotaur woman to accept far less than the thing was really worth.

Ever since, it had become my favorite weapon.

Narrowly, sure – the BMAP was still up there – but there was just something about the Dragon that made it a joy to use.

Probably the carnage that always followed in its wake.

The weapon itself – dubbed the DR-4 EMG – was a little more than four feet long, with a casing as thick as my waist and a corrugated barrel that gave it an incredibly aggressive look. Designed to be held by the handles atop the casing and fired from the hip, the Dragon was far from a precision weapon. But given the size of the enemies bearing down on me, that was a perfect fit for the situation.

I squeezed the handle – the thing didn’t even have a trigger, instead using a lever embedded in the back grip – and the Dragon roared. A ten-foot flame erupted from the barrel, reddening my cheeks with the sheer heat, propelling its ordnance at a two-thousand-rounds-a-minute rate of fire. In fact, without the built-in spatial storage for its ammunition, it would have been largely useless. Thankfully, that space held about ten-thousand bleedingly expensive rounds.

And I couldn’t keep the grin from spreading across my face as I sent as many as I could down the length of the train.

Some of the shots went wide. Others tore through the train. But I managed to keep the grouping fairly tight as I swept the weapon through my enemies’ paths. The R-14 might not have been capable of doing much damage to the combat bots, but the Dragon was a very different beast.

The destruction was glorious.

The rounds, even unenhanced by Explosive Shot, tore through them like they were paper. I only held down the weapon’s lever for a couple of seconds, but in that time, the rounds had torn them to pieces. Whole limbs were destroyed, thick armor was obliterated, and the machines’ progress was stopped cold.

I released the lever, and the Dragon went quiet.

I panted from the excitement of it, but I still heard Isaac’s voice echo through the communicator, “What the fuck was that?”

I ignored him. Instead, I switched back to the Secure Connection and said aloud, “I’ve decided what code name I want. From now on, I want to be the Dragon.”

Once again, Patrick sighed, saying, “Of course you do…”