Part the thirteenth
Bonky hits his suit lights, temporarily blinding the opposition and giving him time to advance: his helmet view dims in response to allow his eyes time to adjust to the glare. He meets the first hostile ten metres from Mel’s position and swings with the ‘axe, blades chewing into the pig’s tough hide then through and out, spattering his armour with blood and leaving the corpse to slump in the shit. One of its companions follows up behind it and tries to jump at Bonky: he simply twists slightly, and allows its exposed belly to rake along the whirring teeth of his weapon. The results are predictably messy, and Bonky finds he has to wipe his faceplate to see more clearly.
Unfortunately, this allows another pig the opening that neither of the others has had so far, and it launches itself at him, sending him off balance and splashing down into the shin-high muck. The impact onto the steel floor of the tunnel gives him a nasty jolt and the Chainaxe is thrown from his grasp. Bonky shouts something that might be a curse or might just be incoherent noise, and tries to reach for his backup 603. The only trouble being that his right arm is currently being treated like a chew toy by a large creature whose nearest and dearest are only scant seconds away, and his left arm is pinned beneath him.
Of course, the pig is chewing on his right arm.
Bonky grins, and triggers the GASH fist. The pig gains two new easy-access nostrils before finding itself paralysed by the hiss of the weapon’s injectors coming online. Servos in Bonky’s armour squeal and groan as he lifts the carcass and heaves it in the direction of the other creatures. They squeal and dive out of the way: one of the smaller ones is unlucky and is trapped pathetically underneath the body, trotters flapping helplessly as it slowly suffocates under the weight of its cousin, trying unsuccessfully to keep its snout clear of the shit soup.
“Bonky, down”
Mel’s voice can be heard clearly over the ‘com, calm and in control now the engagement is underway: Bonky drops as soon as he hears her instruction and sees out of the corner of his eye the deceptively beautiful blossoming of yellow Ebb light as Mel activates her blast through the flintlock. A fraction of a second later he hears the soft whump of the impact of force ebb on pig hide and feels himself thrown back into the side of the tunnel, He knocks his head, and the helmet HUD flickers briefly before coming back online using backups. Telltales indicate he has suffered some sort of head injury: he can feel blood trickling down the back of his neck. Bonky grimaces and draws his 603 with his let hand, crouching low to present less of a target to his attackers.
Who are still numerous. Some have lost interest in the tricksy bipeds and are nosing around the corpses of their fallen comrades with a view to a snack: the struggling pig has already lost a limb and an ear to exploratory munchings. Some however seem to be being goaded on by something sparking behind them, the same blue light that Bonky saw before. He shakes his head, think it might just be concussion, but shaking his head only makes it hurt and doesn’t stop the blue light so he decides its probably still there.
“Ow!” he tight beams to Mel, before taking aim with the 603 and snapping off a shot at one of the pigs who seems to still be heading in his direction. His aim is slightly wide and furrows a groove down one side of the pig, serving mainly to enrage it more than was already the case: no mean feat. Bonky thinks that maybe the wound will go bad in the sewer and the creature will eventually die of disease and that the wound will get gangrene but then checks himself because he thinks he might be thinking a bit silly because of the headwound. In any case he now has another enemy to take care of before it threatens the other members his squad.
“You were in my way, dumbass” comes the reply from Mel, who offers some more concrete support in the form of a shot from her Blitzer, directed at the screaming creature now en route to Bonky’s location at a distressingly swift rate. The shot from the heavy pistol drills it neatly between the eyes, and the pig drops to a halt inches from the Stormer’s armoured feet. It has a slightly confused expression on its face. Bonky can almost sympathise. He looks to his left, towards where the pigs were coming from, and sees that the others of the herd are now all engaged in either eating or trying to run away. He takes advantage of the slight lull to slot a vial of KickStart into his armour’s injection system and fires it off. The medication dulls the blossoming pain from his head injury, and he can feel himself starting to feel a bit more the ticket. He takes a moment to collect himself, then heads to his left, down the tunnel slightly.
“Mel, can you see a blue light?”
“Negative B, sorry I caught you in the blaszzzfztt, check your HUD medical display, ‘Kkkkk?”
But Bonky ignores Mel and goes to check it out for himself. He edges around the three pigs who are left munching away at the carcasses in the middle of the tunnel. He is mildly sickened by the fact that they are covered in shit and still able to chow down some lunch, apparently oblivious to what it is they are actually eating. But these thoughts soon leave him as he locates what it was he was looking for.
Behind all the pigs, wriggling its tiny mechanical legs in a pitiful fashion, is, well, Bonky isn’t quite sure what it is. It has six metal legs and a body the size of a couple of armour helmets, and attached to the front is a large pole, which seems to be wedged into a grating. Bonky tries to grab a hold of this as it seems to be the easiest way to get a handle on the thing, but before he does so it emits a high pitched buzzing noise and a flash of blue light. Bonky’s suit notifies him of an increased level of ozone in the air around him. He doesn’t know very much about ozone, but he knows a Crowd Pacification Weapon (Mk II) when he sees one, and he’s seen what it can do to the face, anus and genitals of a DarkNight insurgent when wielded correctly. Bonky pulls his 603 again and puts one round through what you might call the thing’s head. It gives an electronic death rattle and its legs give one last little spasmodic twitch before stopping moving altogether.
Anyone else might have investigated further there and then, but Bonky is friends with one of the best, who always used to tell him to give electronic thingies the count of ten before messing with them any more, as any engineer worth their salt would have put some form of fail safe in there somewhere. He duly gives it to the count of twenty five and the thing wakes up, performs a self test routine and then finds itself, distressingly enough, in exactly the predicament it was in only a couple of minutes previously. Bonky puts another round of 10mm through the casing, waits for another ten, then GASH fists it open carefully, wedging the powered blade in where one of the jointed legs meets the casing proper, then tearing round the outer shell. Inside, there are no standard components, instead a mish-mash of circuit boards and cannibalised materials neatly covered in some sort of light alloy. It is not nearly as durable as other Soft Company robots Bonky has encountered, and has clearly been engineered as a kind of robotic pig herder: small enough to keep out of the range of trotters but packing enough of a punch to show the cattle who’s boss.
Bonky is slightly puzzled, however. Mostly the people who hang about in the sewers are either weirdos who pose no significant threat, or else DarkNight insurgents, who favour hit and fade tactics: hit above ground, then fade (sink?) into the cover of the sewage system. Neither tend to have the expertise or even the desire to mess around with complicated electronics. The weirdos would probably worship it as some kind of a god, and fancy pants devices would just slow the DarkNight Interceptors down.
Bonky’s train of thought is interrupted by his GASH fist beeping, telling him that its charges of muscle relaxant are depleted and would he please refill them at his earliest convenience. Bonky OK’s the command through the armour’s HUD and goes back to thinking. And then stops. And looks once at the GASH fist, and once at the small robotic spider. Once at the GASH fist and once at the spider. Something clicks then, and he starts to feel a complicated feeling deep in his belly. He doesn’t know exactly what he’s going to do about it, but he knows that one way or another, things are going to be different from now on.
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