Godclads

Chapter 2-9 Angles of Attack

There are four main tenets to any tactical engagement: force, mobility, survivability, and asymmetry.

All four concepts must be studied and mastered by the agent and applied to the variables of circumstance. Understanding how to wield and alter these concepts is the art of miracle-making.

The agent must be overwhelming where their foe is soft.

The agent must maneuver to deprive their foe of sustained force vectors.

The agent must survive to adapt and learn from their mistakes.

And the agent must always strive to claim--and reclaim--the angles of asymmetrical initiative, to be the sole possessor of applied force; strike far when the enemy is close; strike mind when the flesh is hard; strike unseen when their foes have dominion.

-Osjon Thousand, Death Pruning, Page 1

2-9

Angles of Attack

Between the shot and Draus' subdermals came a roar of thunder; a tungsten needle cast against alloy-infused flesh that knew nothing of fragility. She rose, a single leg sparking against the screaming matter beneath her feet, torn from her stand as if by the backhand of a giant. She struck the wall, and in her place, the metal groaned, curving to accommodate her launched mass.

+Yes!+ Little Vicious’ voice returned. A shrill, mocking chorus of laughter followed. The spectators were alive with excitement. Bloodshed was back on the menu and they wanted it now. +Thought I was just going to let you all walk out of here? Thought the game was over! It’s not! It’s never over! Not till I say it is!+

Draus pushed off her imprint and cracked her neck, grinning viciously as if she had just taken a punch instead of a gauss-projected projectile to the chest. Her holocoat glitched for a microsecond and reset, concealing her form beneath its wave-like veil anew. She spat a fresh globule of blood onto the ground and slipped back next to Avo.

“Sniper,” Draus said, sounding more annoyed than worried, but he could hear the spills of wind whistling through the tear in her left lung. On her tongue, he smelled her blood and sensed the clotting already beginning to set in. She was mending faster than he was. But still wounded. Still close enough to human. “Think they’re reloading. Four shots. Tungsten piercers. Heard the gun charging just now; old railgun I reckon. Probably a Valquist G-7.” She laughed. “Piece of shit’s been out of date since the Second Guild Wars.”

The blood dripping from her chin made him chitter involuntarily. She was hurt. Maybe he could tear into her now. Maybe. But the way she held that blade warned him otherwise. A hurt Reg was still a fighting Reg, and a fighting Reg could still snuff him easy.

Avo considered peeking through the exit wounds left in the walls and thought better. His cog-feed was still destabilized; loose debris of thoughtstuff mended slowly in his mind as if broken strands poured back into the shape of a chain. He was getting his phantasmics back, but he couldn't rely on them for now.

The remaining Specters of his foes were frozen in place, their hosts too terrified to push forward after the casualty he inflicted. This lull would not last. Panic was impermanent, and the minds of men were ever so skilled at forgetting.

Soon, one side had to push. Claim the momentum and claim the initiative. In this, Avo found his inner beast and his mind in alignment: four Specters did not mean four hunters. Those could have just been the scouts. He imagined himself and the Regular trying to hold the halls, but the memory of Slaughterman's shot punching through his skull worked at his patience like a saw. To a mag-thrown slug, he was as much glass as the father and his boy.

Survival came from killing rather than being killed right now.

The boy whimpered. The father choked out hushed words of compromised calm to him. They struck Avo as two crumbling bridges holding each other steady. With a thought, he directed his woundhound to shield them. The bulk of the dog's length curved, wrapping them in a protective wall. No shots followed. He kept the dog there anyway.

Through the public lobby, Little Vicious was ranting about her vengeance again. Details about her hunters were the best that imps could buy, of the people they've killed and other details regarding guns, orifices, and corpses. Street-squire talk. Avo heard it all before.

“Ghoul,” Draus said. She didn't bother looking at him, choosing to wipe another smear of blood from her lips. A click rattled from beneath her cloak. It sounded like the chambering of a round. "I'm thinkin' I got an idea of how to go about snuffing these half-strands. Going to do some delayed hammer-and-anvil. We're gonna push through--get close and bloody with them. You hungry?"

He responded with a low growl of pleasure. Truth be told, it was getting hard keeping his impulses in check while she bled that premium blood of hers. A distraction would be good. "Always. Plan?"

"I storm up first. Force some shock action on them. Draw their fire. You come in after with the hound and break their cohesion. Got enough cog-cap to pull that trick again?"

"No," Avo said. "Two minutes reconstruction. At least."

"Shame. Could've made it easier."

He shrugged. "Could make it quicker. Cast your ghosts over. I'll use your ward."

She stared at him in disbelief. “No.”

"You're not using it much," Avo said. "Better with me. Got the skill."

She looked at him, incredulous. "What are we? Consangs? No."

Avo growled. Pointless argument. "Fine. Wasting time. Need to push before they do. You ready?"

Draus grinned. "Never not." Her Metamind rippled. This close, he studied its design and realized it was closer to a bunker than a fortress, her mind layered under thick wards, parting her from intrusion.

Across its accretion, a phantasmal chain lashed out from her and began interlacing with his surface thoughts.

It was his turn to stare incredulously. He never guessed there would be a day when he had to sync minds with a Reg to survive. New Vultun was endless in its surprises.

GHOSTLINK REQUEST INCOMING - ACCEPT?

Avo accepted.

LINK CONFIRMED

SYNCING…

SYNCED

He felt his awareness widen. Multiple new windows opened up inside his mind. He could see through Draus’ eyes now, see her combat-tuned cog-feed highlighting things through the walls, predicting firing trajectories for her. Phys-Sim; Medi-Scan; a couple of wind and temperature recording icons. Not the best sequence he'd seen. Definitely not the quality he expected from a Reg, but still, more than workable against their current competition.

In the upper left corner of her perception, her DeepNav was a chaotic mess much like his. Syndicate Nether-jammers probably; interrupted long-distance mapping for all thoughtstuff not on its wavelength.

"Sure you can find the way out?" Avo asked.

"Yep," she said, rising to her feet. "It's through them now. Thought about making a climb up the stairs, but now we got ourselves an elevator. How nice." She shot a final look at him and loosened her shoulders. "I'll move in first. Give me five good seconds of engagement before you follow. Don't need you catching a stray shot and dyin' before making yourself useful."

He barred his fangs at her. He wasn’t military. His understanding of warfare amounted to doing what the Low Masters and his instincts told him. However, years of diving in the Nether and his tutelage under Walton had taught him that going into a situation unprepared and ignorant of the parameters was a great way of getting snuffed. He certainly wasn't stupid enough to run headfirst into a slaughterhouse. That was her job. He was just here for the main course after.

"Try not getting snuffed yourself," he said.

Draus grinned. “Know their heaviest don’t got enough kick to penetrate my subdermals. Know that they ain’t all that fast.”

“For you,” Avo muttered. Distantly, he heard the whine of a mag-charge building up. Time was almost up. Father and son were going to catch a shot soon. "Now or never Draus. Get going."

"Yeah," she said. "Was waiting for the half-strand to cycle up the shot. Make him waste it. Remember. I go in. Suppress. Draw fire. Five seconds. You follow. Hit them from behind. Run them down. They're street trash. We can snuff 'em."

Avo looked at the pistol she gave him earlier. He doubted its stopping power. Better than just his claws though. "Wish I had the sword."

“Depends on where you shoot ‘em,” Draus said, a vicious grin spreading across her face. “Cheer up, ghoulie. If we manage to snuff and not be snuffed, I’ll even let you eat a couple of them.” A spill of bitterness filled the link between them. “Hells. Your kind managed to do it to a few of mine. What’s a bunch of rusts?" She shot the father and his son a final look as well.

Draus lashed out with the blade. A series of cuts flashed as she cut a cube-shaped entry into the already-savaged wall. Looking past Avo, she addressed the father and his son. “Stay low. Hide in the corner. We'll be back."

And then, she was gone, a bolt of violence tearing out the makeshift entrance she made. Avo gave the father and the son a shrug. Through the opening, the sounds of gunfire and screaming began nigh-instantly. Slowly, he counted to five, holding back the beast inside as he studied the father and son. He started at them like a nu-cat resisting the urge to kill and eat two newborn aratnids.

“If I die–” Avo began.

“You want me to take my son and flee–”

"Find a nice, high place. Throw yourself off with your son. Both of you are worse than dead without the Reg. Or me.”

The father sagged. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Through the link, he caught glimpses and flickers of chaos unfolding at a pace his mind couldn't keep up with. He didn’t have her reflex boosters. All he got was a blur of violence and combat. Violence and combat he was missing out on.

He gave them a final nod and dove in. Flashing gunfire and a series of explosions flashed through two more hewn walls and past the toppled tube of a ventilation scrubber. Through the path Draus left, he found himself charging into a grand chamber that reeked of rot and rust. Leashed to him by an invisible cord, the woundhound followed, its eldritch matter occupying the gulfs of his wounds. He could sense its excitement, its desire to dive into another vessel and ferry the hurt.

Who was he to deny it?

Dashing into a spire-sized silo, he found himself gripped in the frenzy of active combat. Blurred figures battled and traded fire from different positions. The chamber was built around a massive pillar that seemed to serve as some kind of spine for the platform. Four broad-edged ebony gears shone in different corners, built to move the grand elevator up and down through the Underways. In a way, it was like he was standing at the midriff of an inverted tower.

Smoke and dust filled the air. Someone had detonated a smoke grenade earlier for cover. Pulsing gunfire trailed through the haze. A brief lull spilled over into his mind from Draus’ perspective. She ran something through with her blade. A vague blur exploded right in front of her.

To his right, a blastwave tore out from the fog. Avo headed toward the fight, his inhibitions loosening. Time to play his part.

+Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!+ Little Vicious howled. The pureness of her rage boiled the silo through the Nether. She was so focused on Draus that she didn’t notice Avo enter. Neither did the rest of the hunters for that matter. They were in the thick of the fight, their guns flashing from all corners of the room, firing up and about blindly, tearing chunks out of the pillar and the walls more than they were landing on Draus.

A series of damage reports pulsed through her cog-feed and into his mind. Minimal damage. Subdermals withstood the impact. She was surviving--even thriving--for now. But not fully fighting back yet. He needed to turn the momentum back in their favor.

Trusting scent and sound more than his sight, Avo went after his quarry, keeping low. A slashing net of monofilament cleaved overhead. If it was any lower he'd only get to have half a scalp.

Multiple targeting reticles flashed into existence around him before breaking apart. Draus was trying to mem-lock and mark out his prey. Trying.

Failing.

Through her eyes, he found himself staring at the battlefield at a high angle. He realized then that she was running along the walls, sparks spraying beneath her as she strode. Extending her left wrist out from her coat, he watched as a spinning cluster of three micro-missiles snapped out with a series of whistles. Through the smoke, they struck two and bounced off another. Flashing blasts mixed with spattering flesh confirmed the kills.

A rocket then punched into the space where Draus was running, causing her to stumble and skid back down onto the platform, taking fire all the way. A series of impact reports flashed through her mind and into his. Yellow markings. Not penetration but growing concussions. Her half-healed lung flashed orange, and her wound reopened.

She barely coughed.

She'd live. Avo saw the flashing bursts of fragmentation light up to his left. He had them now.

The surviving hunters fired their ghost-guided guns wildly, their projectile-simulating phantasmics struggling to right their unpracticed marksmanship. They were far slower than Draus, but ghosts moved at the speed of thought. A few rounds impacted against her shell. More damage reports. That was the tyranny of harm. It was always easier to hurt and break than it was to maintain and protect.

Feeling sluggish, Avo finally brought his auto-laser to bear. The ghosts possessing the gun synced with his Metamind. Even through the haze, it began calculating the best angles of fire, locking onto the nearest thoughts it could detect. A swirl of phantasms guided his aim, coiling around a target through the haze. Avo jerked his finger back. A burst of three lancing beams slashed out. A warning flashed through his cog-feed telling of a forty-seven percent reduction in lethality due to the refraction caused by the smoke.

Didn't stop the gun from being lethal.

The shadow of a four-armed, four-gunned figure firing blindly into the sky came alight for an instant. A beam struck him right behind the ear. Fire spilled out from their skull. Their optics burst. Their head popped. With a hissing rasp, they slumped over, dead before hitting the ground. Even through the smog, Avo felt the dead hunter's echo and ghost tear free from their corpse, drawn into him by a metaphysical bridge forged by murder.

His wards flickered around his skull momentarily, reminding him how vulnerable he was, and how fortunate the hunters didn't have a proper Necro among their number. His cog-feed began flooding his mind with a flicker of something. New interfaces flashed and faded in the back of his mind. He ignored that for now.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 9 thaum/c

GHOSTS - [23]

+Fuckin’ rotlick!+ Little Vicious’ voice rose to a howling octave, throat tearing in disbelief. +Are you kidding me! Are you godsdamned kidding me! She probably killed thousands of your brothers and you’re helping her?+

Beneath his breath, Avo laughed. He had eaten hundreds of his own brothers in the months after his hatching. Dying wasn’t special for a ghoul; more feature than bug.

His laughter trailed off when a flash of something shone in his periphery. Someone was coming at him from the right, their gun glinting through the smoke. Avo dove. Hyper-accelerated needles filled the air where he was. Rolling on his back, Avo let the auto-aimer ghosts guide him as he fired more, jerking the trigger back.

A spike of anger speared down into Avo’s consciousness. Little Vicious' mind was practically hoarse with fury. +Holy fucking shit! How the hells did you miss him? He was right in front of you!+

Through the smoke, a crystalline-plated figure charged him. The beams of the auto-laser splashed uselessly against the translucent sparks of a hexagonal shield. The crystalline hunter’s third arm came up to shuck another cartridge into his shotgun. The spikes attached to the cartridge were the size of cleavers.

The hunter chambered a shot. Avo yanked back on his trigger until the ghosts inside his gun screamed that they were empty through his feed. Thirty seconds to recharge if he got out of the smoke. Pulling the shield aside, the hunter aimed at Avo, their twin-barreled shotgun the size of an old-style fire hydrant.

They grinned at him, metal teeth gleaming.

He grinned back, watching them unaware of his woundhound approaching from behind.

The eldritch dog splashed into the hunter as if they were a pond. They shuddered, and suddenly their back snapped at an angle. Their head snapped back, ringing loud as they inherited each of the blows he took from Slaughterman. Avo felt the leash between him and the woundhound dissolve. His wound debt had been transferred. The hunter bore his burdens now.

Scrambling over to the crippled, screaming hunter, Avo snatched the twin-barreled shotgun from the ground. “My back!” the hunter wailed. “I can’t feel–” Avo studied the shotgun. Anvil Mechanics: Multi-Alloy Reflex Weapon. The gun felt cold to his mind. No ghosts to interface with. He was going to have to fire this manually. He wondered what that would feel like.

He pressed the shotgun against the hunter’s head. They held up a hand. “Wait–”

Avo squeezed the trigger. The gun roared, the recoil nearly tearing it from Avo’s grasp and sending painful spasms through his shoulders. It wasn’t nearly as smooth as firing the auto-laser, but he liked the kick. Beneath him, the skull of the hunter was spread out in a fine spray. The platform itself was shredded clean through, internal machinery churning. One of Avo’s ears popped momentarily before healing.

Loud. Heavy. Powerful.

A shotgun was a beautiful thing.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 10 thaum/c

GHOSTS - [24]

+Worthless shit!+ Little Vicious roared. A sob mixed in with her shout. +Worthless! Worthless! Why won’t you both just die? Why are you ruining my show?+

Distractedly, Avo sensed the countless spectators turn their attention to Little Vicious embarrassing display. From them, rising emotions of mockery and scorn rippled out and fed her loathing. She screamed, like a child whose tantrum was reaching a point of eruption.

Avo laughed. He'd add more fuel to the fire in a moment, for now, he looked down at his new gun and clutched it tight. See the Reg take this one from him–

Something hooked through his shoulder, a tug of agony dragging him up in an arc. The world around him blurred. He spun, slamming hard against the platform, denting metal as he folded its shape with his right shoulder. He winced but clenched his guns tight, refusing to let go. The hook pulled on him again, whipping him up out of the smoke and dashing him against the walls. Across jutting plates of metal and hissing vents, he was dragged. Took less than a second for his chest to peel open into bouncing flaps. The hook yanked on him again, bringing him high into the air.

For a moment he saw everything: the tether impaling him, a flash of Draus running up the walls next to him, firing another missile from her wrist, and blood trailing from her ribs. Distantly, the head of a hunter kneeling atop one of the gears exploded in a bloom of meat and metal. The tether drew taut, snapping Avo back down.

He heard the reeving before even saw the flash of revolving teeth. He got to learn it was a chainsaw after it punched through his abdomen, already spinning. Avo screamed. The pig-masked hunter laughed, his fat lips opening wide, his spinal-mounted tether retracting from Avo's shoulder with a squelch.

+Yes!+ Little Vicious cheered.

Pig-Masked leaned in, cackling, mouth round. Just wide enough for Avo to shove his new shotgun through, breaking teeth and peeling gums. Tears suddenly filled Pig-Face’s eyes. The chainsaw stopped. The hunter blinked and reached for the gun. "Mhphfhh!"

Avo pulled the trigger and painted a new exit through the back of the man’s skull.

+No! No!+ Little Vicious screamed.

A deafening roar went up in the Nether, the bloodlust and thrill of the audience rising to a fever pitch as Little Vicious descended into a wailing tantrum. They cared not for who lived or who died. They cared only that there were people surviving and dying. Worked for Avo just fine.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 11 thaum/c

GHOSTS - [25]

Tearing himself loose from the chainsaw, Avo held his leaking midsection as best he could before he bled out. Pig-Mask was twitching still, his fat tongue and lower jaw mostly intact. Avo knelt down and tore into the tongue, taking a mid-battle spongy treat. He worked in another few mouthfuls of food to encourage his stomach to start healing and tried to get back into the fight. He considered taking the chainsaw with him but it looked too heavy. Especially since his insides were spilling everywhere.

Another flashing gun pulsed through the smoke. Avo aimed, hand shaking as he pulled the trigger on his shotgun again. It clicked. Empty. Avo sighed. The auto-laser hadn’t recharged yet either. The beast inside him told him to cast the guns aside and charge. Avo ignored it and stayed low. He didn't want to find out how many resurrections he still had left in him before he was off to the Big Empty for good.

A whistling sound tore through something. Avo heard a body drop. Stray staccatos of gunfire came from a corner of the room, ringing and bouncing against something. It managed half a dozen rounds before Draus got to him.

What she did to the last hunter happened too fast for Avo to perceive. From his side, he listened as metal wailed, bones broke, and flesh tore.

Silence became the room, its vigil was broken only by the humming drifting down from the silo.

"You still kickin’, Avo?"Draus asked. Was that the first time she called him by his name? He couldn’t remember.

"Called me by my name," Avo said. "What are we? Consangs?"

A beat. She snorted. "Not even close. You hurt?"

“Fine,” Avo said, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “Just need to eat.”

He didn’t wait for her to respond, choosing instead to crawl back over to Pig-Mask, the plumpest among the hunters. Biting into the mangled stump where Pig-Head’s skull used to be, Avo was delighted to find remnants of eye tissue. He purred, delighting in its sweet flavor. Draus stumbled up beside him.

After a few minutes of sating himself, he turned to look up at her.

Her holocoat was glitching a bit now from the damage. He could see her left arm had a projectile launcher built into the wrist. A hovering needle sank back into its chamber. Micro-missiles. He wondered how many more of those she had. He tried taking another peek at her overall kit but she cut their connection too quickly.

LINK LOST

Still didn’t trust him. She studied him blankly, probably wondering if he felt bold enough to go after her. He couldn’t deny it. At that moment, if she showed him any weakness, he very well might’ve. Between glitches of her coat, her exposed torso was welling with rapidly scabbing blood, filling the cracks of her ceramo-plated power vest with a waterfall of hardening red. Not invincible. Not nearly. He sniffled. Her wounds smelled sterile. She likely had a nanosuite working in her blood.

She spat out a piece of shrapnel. It found its way into her mouth somehow. “One of the bastards pulled a Vezumo Farewell. Blew themselves up all dramatic-like when I ran ‘em through.” She frowned. “Lost the cutter.”

Avo glared at her, disappointed. “Got hurt pretty bad for it. Lost it quick.”

“Served its need,” Draus said dryly.

Avo went back to nursing on Pig-Mask's neck stump. He didn’t really want to think right now. He just wanted to eat. Dimly, he found himself aware of the echoes and ghosts slowly washing toward him, as if he was an island of magnetism pulling at the tides.

THAUMIC CYCLER: 18 thaum/c

GHOSTS - [32]

Again, all the metaphysical spoils of the slaughter went to him. Inside, a weight was growing, swelling, expanding like a living chasm. The feeling was ineffable. It felt bright there. His cog-feed glitched as well, flickering as it began to take on an increased cog-cap. He had killed--what was it? Three?

Draus killed seven. Her efficiency was admirable. He wondered if the one he nulled earlier was among that number.

A splashing footstep came from behind. The boy was looking at Avo, face pale at the gore around them. The father had a faint taste of bile on his lips as well. Like son, like father. Both of them were pukers, it seemed.

Draus groaned at the sight of them. "Hey, genius." She gestured at the father to come over. The man barely reached her chin. He looked like a malnourished child standing before a copper giantess.

"Yes?" he asked.

She cuffed him lightly across the head. The force made him stumble regardless.

"What part of 'stay low, we'll be back' was hard to get?" Draus asked. She flicked her gaze across the other bodies, taking inventory of what to loot perhaps. "Bodies ain't secure. Shit. Ain't even sure they're all snuffed yet. Come walking up with the boy like that and you could've made this all pointless."

The boy shouted something at Draus. She rolled her eyes.

He shrugged.

“Suppose we should head up next,” Draus said. “March out this place before we get anyone else thrown at us."

Avo grunted, and stilled. In the corner of his eye, he noticed the boy, shivering, staring at him. The father’s lips were pursed tight, face swollen and pleading. Avo narrowed his eyes at the two. What did they want? Why were they looking at him like that? He looked down at the corpse he was eating and understood.

"Ah," he said. He plucked a loose piece of gristle he had been working on out from between his teeth. The beast still wanted to eat. And it would. Avo just decided that he would wait. Do it in the corner. No sense in hurting the boy, good as the cruelty might make him feel. Walton would have smiled on that little bit of control, at least. "Bad etiquette. For the boy to learn."

The father shot him a thankful nod.

A more concerning thought came when he realized he couldn’t hear Little Vicious’ yells or feel her rage anymore. She was gone. Missing in the Nether. He wanted to believe that she was done and finished. That her tantrum was thrown and this was the best she had. But New Vultun wasn't a city of wants. New Vultun was a city of takes. He needed to get his Metamind stable again and restore his phantasmics.

He needed to stay prepared for whatever was to come next.

Beneath the pillar, Draus reached out with her Metamind, interfacing with a blood-splattered console. "Goin' up. Close now. Real close." Her words were for the father and the son. For Avo, she offered but a look, her eyes still focused, still serious.

Yeah. She didn't believe this was done either. Not by a long shot.

With a groaning rumble, the gears spun to life and began to rise, taking the platform on its slow climb upward.