Three Square Meals Ch. 090

That was the other big problem when they had to repel a Juggernaut. As well as chewing through their ammo at an alarming rate, the lull in fire on the mass of Kirrix soldiers gave them an opportunity to shoot back. John's shield status was showing red and he knew the other girls had sustained several hits too. They didn't have time to stop and let their shields recharge, but even more alarmingly, he could see at least six more Juggernauts in the teeming, chittering mass ahead of them.

Rachel sprang forward, her Quantum rifle barking its defiance as she sprayed bullets into the Kirrix forces shooting at her lover. Their bodies flew apart like they were made of matchsticks as the force of the railgun slugs blew them to pieces, the hyper-accelerated bullets ploughing on into the ranks behind and cutting down more of their number. The brunette's timely intervention wiped out most of the Kirrix shooting at Dana, alleviating the pressure on her.

"That'll teach them to shoot at you, Babes," Rachel said, blowing the redhead a kiss.

Dana laughed, getting to her feet again and rejoining the action. "My hero!"

"The next Juggernaut's nearly in range," Irillith called out. "He'll charge in ten seconds..."

Tashana darted a worried look at John. "We haven't got the ammo for this!"

"Yeah, I know," he replied, his expression grim. Reaching for his sword, he added quietly, "I'm very low on psychic energy, but I should have just enough to use speed against the next one. After that, it's going to get ugly..."

Her angular eyes started to glow with a bright inner light. "Let me take the next one! I want to try something..."

He clapped her on the shoulder. "Go! It's all yours."

She closed her eyes, twin pistols raised in the air, her hands starting to dance with flames. Two cavorting sprites cartwheeled over her fingertips and seemed to disappear into the grips of her pistols.

"Incoming!" Irillith yelled, her voice carrying over the cacophony of dying Kirrix.

John raised his rifle to keep the pressure on the Kirrix forces, snapping off single shots at any Overseers he could see. The Juggernaut loomed over them all, barging lesser Kirrix out the way impatiently until it was close enough, then it stampeded forward in its haste to get to grips with John and the girls. Tashana wasted no time, levelling her pistols at the rampaging beast. She fired her first pistol at the Juggernaut's right claw, the ten-millimetre round punching a fist-sized hole in the sturdy black chitin.

Nothing seemed to happen at first and John frowned in confusion, wondering what the Maliri girl was planning. A second later, the creature's claw exploded, the internal fireball blowing the limb apart from the inside and leaving a charred ruin below its scorched black elbow. The only person in that underground slaughterhouse who wasn't stunned by that ferocious explosion was Tashana and she calmly snapped off her second shot, hitting the bellowing Juggernaut square in the head.

When flaming chunks of chitinous skull finally stopped raining down on the Kirrix and the Juggernaut toppled over to one side, Tashana turned around and grinned at him. "Want me to handle the big ones from now on?"

He let out a hearty laugh and nodded his head. "They're all yours, honey!"

Dana laughed and shot the Maliri girl a knowing look. "Flame-infused ammo? That was awesome!"

Tashana winked at her. "It came to me in a moment of mad genius..."

The girls marched onwards, carving their way through the enemy lines and littering their path with mounds of dead Kirrix. John paused to glance back at the Trankarans and diplomats. "Is everyone okay?"

Sub-Warden Dhormun nodded in reply, his wide-eyed stare getting wider and more awestruck every time John checked on them. The looks of wonder on the faces of the diplomats weren't lost on John either, but Niskera's expression was actually a little disconcerting; the fervent gleam to her eyes looking eerily familiar.

Movement behind them drew John's attention and he grimaced when he realised what he was seeing. "Kirrix reinforcements!" he yelled to the girls in warning. "Coming from the side-tunnels behind us!"

***

Sakura dodged to one side, retro-thrusters adding more acceleration to her nimble manoeuvre as she narrowly avoided a quintet of neutron beams from the hive ship. In trying to evade the dogged pursuit by the remnants of the drone swarm, she'd been pulled out of position and was attacking this latest vessel from the wrong angle.

Running around the left flank of the hive ship, Sakura dodged another set of neutron beams as the Valkyrie ran between two tall administration buildings. The Kirrix gunners tried to catch her with their energy beams, slicing through the two buildings and neatly demolishing them. Tons of ferrocrete came crashing down and Sakura could feel the rumbling under the mech's feet as the ground shook with the impact.

"Sakura! I think we have a problem!" Faye gasped, her luminous eyes filled with worry.

The Asian girl finished her circuit of the hive ship and lined up her crosshairs on its engines. "What is it, Faye? I'm kinda busy..."

She clenched her two trigger fingers and the quad-mounted Photon Lasers began pouring pulsed beams into the rear of the hive ship. The closest two engines were sliced in half a second later, so she strafed the left pair of guns sideways, shafts of energy lancing into the Kirrix hull. The strafing burst destroyed the Power distributor at the exact same time as the right pair blew apart the last engine.

"It's the rest of the hive ships!" Faye called out in alarm. "They've started taking off!"

Sakura's heart leapt into her mouth and she glanced fearfully at her Tactical Map. "No! They can't get away!"

She let out an anguished cry of frustration and despair, watching helplessly as the eight remaining Kirrix cruisers started to slowly lift off the ground. There were hundreds if not thousands of civilians trapped inside those ships and she knew the dreadful fate in store for them if the hive ships got away. However, as much as she wanted to, she couldn't do much to stop them... The Valkyrie had lost its Punisher Gatling and the left Pulse Cannon to drone fighter fire, only really leaving her the Photon Lasers to stop them. They were fully operational, but already overheated and couldn't be fired again until they cooled down!

Cooled down...

Taking a steadying breath, Sakura closed her eyes, focusing her will inwards and embracing that supernatural sense of glacial cold. She shivered with delight at the thrill it sent through her body, feeling an icy breeze swirl around her in the mech's cockpit. There was a loud, splintering crack, like a glacier shearing in half. Ice began to form around the four Photon Laser barrels, triggering a sharp hiss of steam as the blazingly hot barrels melted the ice. The cold intensified, leeching heat from the guns and dropping the temperature to well below freezing. Sakura watched the heat indicators on the Photon Lasers drop like a stone, the guns flashing bright green in the weapon loadout as they were ready to fire.

Activating the Valkyrie's engines and cranking them up to full power, Sakura leapt into the air, the massive thrust launching her skyward like a rocket. The mech left the protective cover of Mulbharum's skyline, giving her a clear view of all the remaining Kirrix ships but also exposing her to their wrath. The skies above the city went from the black of night to a virulent green as the Kirrix fired dozens of neutron beams at the lightning-fast Valkyrie.

Dropping the crosshairs for her quad Photon Lasers on the closest hive ship, Sakura clamped down with both trigger fingers, pouring a flood of bright blue laser beams into the back of the Kirrix vessel. The ugly ship had barely lifted off the ground, so when she burned through its engines, it landed with a subdued thump.

She stopped firing as she rotated the Valkyrie to face the next one, her accelerated state making the mech snap around in a split second. After her burst of fire, the heat began to spike up sharply, steam pouring off the gun barrels in billowing clouds. The ice was leeching heat from the barrels but not enough, not for what she needed. Seeing that the Photon Lasers were too hot to fire again, Sakura focused inward, pushing herself to the limit and dropping the temperature still further.

The heat indicators flatlined and the guns lit up in the weapon loadout display once more. Sakura grinned as she raked the rear of the next hive ship with laser beams, then the next, and so on, in a terrifying display of pure destruction. Blanketed in a unceasing hurricane of beam laser blasts, each one crashed to the ground, the city shaking as though cowering before a massive earthquake.

The Kirrix beams petered out for a few seconds, their gunners reeling from the impact as they were dramatically forced back down to Khalgron. The temporary lull in shooting was made permanent, as Faye swooped in and began destroying the Power distribution nodes on the sides of the bloated hive ships. The last few began firing sporadically at the Valkyrie, desperate for revenge against the mech that had thwarted their escape.

Cutting out her engines, Sakura let the mech drop to the ground as energy beams criss-crossed the sky around her. Arresting her fall at the last moment with retro-thrusters, she brought the Valkyrie down safely amongst the cover of the buildings. Panting heavily after pushing herself to the limit like that, she dropped her psychic speed and let her arctic embrace fade away, the heat indicators on the Photon Lasers spiking dramatically as a result.

*No more energy for you, young lady! I'm cutting you off!* Alyssa declared imperiously.

Despite her exhaustion, Sakura managed a weak laugh. While Alyssa's tone had been stern and disapproving, she could feel the blonde's pride in her over their empathic connection. The Asian girl rubbed her tired face, then gazed down the avenue at the bulging ochre hull of a crippled hive ship. Sakura turned the Valkyrie towards it and broke into a loping jog. She couldn't stop and rest, not while she still had work to do...

***

John's finger tapped a steady beat on the Quantum rifle's trigger, taking out one Kirrix soldier after another as he backpedalled down the gallery. Flanking him were Dana and Rachel, the three of them bringing up the rear of their desperate group. The Kirrix reinforcements had started as a trickle before turning into a flood of furious insectoid forces. They charged after John's retreating group, seemingly intent on bringing them down whatever the cost. He wouldn't have been able to hazard a guess as to how many they'd killed so far, he only knew how desperate their ammo situation was becoming.

There was a bass rumble of pain as one of the Trankaran soldiers was hit by a burst of incoming fire, dropping him to the ground amidst the piles of broken insectoid corpses. Rachel backpedalled in his direction, her eyes already glowing as she crouched beside him.

"Cover me!" she called out to John.

John stepped in front of her and hammered the Kirrix, sending bursts of shots through their front runners and momentarily halting their advance. Rachel placed her hand on the Trankaran's shoulder, enveloping him in her grey aura and healing his wounds. He looked at her in wonder, just as the other Legionnaires had done when she soothed their pain and repaired their injured bodies.

"You're back in the fight, Vokhad," Rachel said with a tired smile, rising to her feet and offering him a hand, stifling a yawn as she helped haul him to his feet.

The Trankaran gave her a respectful nod in gratitude, then rejoined his line of rock-brothers in protecting the diplomats from Kirrix fire.

John gave Rachel a worried glance. "Are you okay?" he asked, having seen that sudden onset of fatigue before.

She nodded, but the fatigue in her grey eyes was quite apparent. Vokhad was the sixth Trankaran she'd had to rapidly heal in their evacuation, the brave Legionnaires shielding the diplomats with their hulking frames.

"I'm out of energy," she admitted as she rose to her feet.

Giving her a moment to collect herself, John focused on the Kirrix soldiers, dropping seven more before a beep from his HUD warned him he was out of ammo.

"Reloading!" he called out to his young companions, dropping to one knee and reaching for a fresh magazine.

He ejected the spent mag, then slapped in a new one - for the eighth successive time in this interminable battle - leaving him with just two more magazines. As he was worrying about the precarious ammo situation, a burst of neutron bolts stitched across his chest, leaving ugly steaming craters on his chestplate's embossed lion. The impact knocked him off balance, but a steadying hand caught him before he fell.

Looking up, he saw Legionnaire Volnir's stony face above him and realised it was the Trankaran's hand at his back. The Legionnaires joined their firing line, fusion rifles hissing as they incinerated the closest of the pursuing Kirrix troops. Taking advantage of that brief lull in neutron gun fire, John risked a glance over his shoulder at the Maliri twins.

The pair of them were working in perfect synchronisation, with Irillith mowing down droves of Kirrix and Tashana picking off the stragglers that survived her sister's brutal onslaught. He knew Alyssa couldn't be coordinating their fire without being present, so he could only guess that Irillith had taken the lead, communicating telepathically with her twin. As their group had retreated along the gallery, he'd heard the occasional explosion amongst all the gunfire, then had to sidestep around the evidence of Tashana's pyrotechnics in the form of several burning Juggernaut corpses.

Despite the Maliri girls' lethality, they'd started taking hits, just like he and the Terran girls had. They just didn't have the firepower to suppress the Kirrix forces from both sides, even with the Trankaran Legionnaires helping. John looked beyond the insectoid horde along the colonnade and felt a sinking feeling in his chest. They still had at least a mile left to go before they reached the station and Kirrix troops were still pouring out of the side-tunnels in front and behind them...

Alyssa's urgent voice suddenly blazed through his mind. *Sakura's knocked out the hive ships! You can take the next tunnel to the surface!*

Darting a glance towards the upcoming tunnel on the left, John contacted all the girls via the internal comms. "Girls! We're taking the next tunnel! Irillith, Tashana, hold position beyond the entrance and give us covering fire!"

They confirmed his order with a nod and John ran to join them, knowing they'd have to clear a path through the reinforcements racing out of that passageway. As they ran parallel to the tunnel entrance, Irillith swung to the left and hosed down the entrance with laser pulses, a sharp chorus of Kirrix shrieks proving the effectiveness of her shooting.

"Use grenades ahead and behind!" John called out, letting his rifle dangle by the shoulder strap and grabbing two grenades from his webbing.

He hurled them high over the Maliri girls' heads into the press of Kirrix beyond the front lines. A couple of huge explosions ripped through their forces as he pulled out two more grenades, lobbing them down the passageway into the endless waves of insect troops. The passage trembled with the rippling detonations, the girls adding more grenades to his barrage, with the ensuing blast waves devastating the formations of enemy soldiers.

Taking advantage of the momentary lull in the fighting, John switched his rifle to full auto and darted into the tunnel entrance, spraying rounds through the deep ranks of tightly-packed Kirrix soldiers that were marching down the ramp. Wiping out those troops, he beckoned the group of terrified diplomats into the tunnel, Sub-Warden Dhormun and his six Legionnaires running past to take the lead. The Trankarans threw the mangled corpses aside, making slow progress as they cleared a path through the carnage for the dignitaries. The other six Trankarans pulled into the entrance, leaving the girls blazing away to the front and rear.

"That's it, let's go!" John yelled to them, eyes widening in alarm at the intensity of the crossfire they were caught in.

Rachel let out an agonised scream, falling backwards as she was shot in the leg, a neutron bolt striking her thigh where the armour had already been deeply gouged. He could see her expression contorted with pain; wounds from neutron weapons were excruciatingly painful - as Alyssa could attest.

"Rachel!" Dana yelped, darting a panicked gaze at her lover.

The brunette slumped over, tears rolling down her cheeks at the searing pain, but still managed to gamely fire her rifle at the Kirrix storming towards them. John dashed out to grab her, ducking under the furious hail of green neutron bolts as he scooped the sobbing girl over his shoulder.

"I've got her! Move!" he yelled at Dana.

The twins dived into the tunnel, with John carrying Rachel and Dana following close behind.

"Tashana, I need you to join the Trankarans on point! If a Juggernaut comes down the tunnel they're fucked!" John barked at the Maliri girl as they backed away from the gallery. As she turned and bolted up the slope, he continued, "The rest of us need to cover our backs!"

Dana shook her head furiously. "Fuck that! It's payback time!"

"Sparks! What the fuck are you doing!" John blurted out in disbelief as she casually discarded her Quantum rifle.

The redhead turned to look at him, a look of fury on her face. The golden coronas around her pupils were blazing with a radiant intensity. "You all got to play with your powers... now it's my turn!"

She stormed back down to the entrance of the tunnel, vortices of energy swirling around her arms. The strobing golden light banished the oppressive darkness of the tunnel, bathing them all in a warm glow. Dana crouched down by the entrance to the pillar-lined passage and slammed her armoured fists into the metal ground, sending rippling shockwaves across the floor.

John shared a shocked glance with Irillith, then placed Rachel carefully on the ground, so he could chase after the Maliri girl as she ran forward to cover Dana. He took a fearful glance around the edge of the tunnel, expecting to see the Kirrix horde about to overwhelm them, but what he saw in the passage left him gaping in horror...

The metal plating that the Trankarans had laid as the floor to this tunnel appeared to be melting! The Kirrix soldiers were struggling through the morass of sludgy metal and insectoid corpses, while liquid metal rained down on their heads from the dripping ceiling. The walls, floor, pillars, everything... seemed to be sliding down into a sticky grey mire that was slowly oozing off the edge of the platform into the ravine below. The scene reminded him of some kind of twisted, surrealist painting and the sight made his skin crawl.

Dana tapped him on the shoulder, making him jump. "Yeah... we probably need to start running," she said with a wicked smile, pointing across the gallery.

John followed the line of her finger to a drooping pillar, which now looked more like a melting ice cream than a robust buttress. He suddenly wondered what would happen to the thousands-of-tons of rock above their heads if these pillars weren't holding up the ceiling any more... That thought had only just crossed his mind, when he heard a terrifyingly loud groan, as if the underground canyon itself was in pain. Eyes widening in alarm, he turned and followed hot on the girls' heels as they sprinted up the passage.

Rachel had propped herself up against the wall, Dana's abandoned rifle now slung over her shoulder. She took one look at their fearful faces and tried to hobble up the tunnel ahead of them. John effortlessly swept her up off her feet, carrying the brunette in his arms as they sprinted up the slope. They could all feel the shuddering vibrations under their feet as they heard more bass rumbles from back in the canyon. There was a terrifying crack followed by a deafening boom, the floor suddenly bouncing them up in the air as the tunnel convulsed. The thunderous sound eventually faded away, to be replaced by Dana's harsh laughter.