mc776 | Nano Writing Month, 2017.12

Every day, write some bit of fiction. Preferably over 50 words, but there will be no standard beyond "something". Posting is entirely optional.

I was fighting at a disadvantage. Both my shotguns were being upgraded in the armory and all this fugitive crap meant I hadn't even touched them all week. Scheduling conflicts meant my agility had been steadily deteriorating since all that chocolate-covered fruitcake I was eating like popcorn last Christmas. So naturally they promoted me to management: I would help Science Officer Finkelstein (gifted as they were with an eagle eye, a rock-steady aim, and a scandalous lack of the signature Terran Plains Ape kill drive) launch their plasma grenades where they would provide most cover on them and most useful illumination for us, while occasionally dual-chainswording the ones that inevitably got past the said plasma grenades, Captain Alvarez's Extra Jumbo Snipe-'N'-Splode, Mr. Orgoth's 500-round TR-458P "Trashpanda" rotary carbine, and the Ellobius' magigrav shield bits which Gunnerbot was assembling into pretty (but effective) shapes while improvising poetry with words only he knew the meanings to.

The remembrance of chocolate and the tinkling of the Snipe-'N'-Splode brass left a fragment of The Carol of the Bells stuck in my head. I did not notice this until Gunnerbot mentioned days later that the plasma grenades had been exploding in sync to that song.

It had been dusk and a thunderstorm had just started rolling in out of nowhere, forcing us to land on the opposite end of the ancient ruins from where we had first gained visual on the Phlogistroni. It was fairly obvious from the get-go that our fugitive was sending in this welcoming committee: they were pouring out of the city the moment we touched down. For the first hour it seemed like every worn window, every rotting city gate, every overgrown hole in the mouldy green masonry, the very dust of the ground was made of them; the way Gunnerbot blasted them with the engines I thought we were going to take off again. After that they thinned out enough that we could start taking the fight closer to the city; but even then it was a terribly slow going, and more of them were getting too close for comfort as I had to start doing ammo runs for people at the expense of my own Voorheesian fun.

"What do you think he's hiding in there?" Orgoth asked, his robot monocle rapidly spinning and swivelling as it helped him line up dozens of targets by the second. We always switched over to our old headsets during planetside ops, so the etherscrambling was a nonissue.

"Nothing," answered the captain. "Fucker just wants us dead."

Nothing but the sounds of killing more of them for a few seconds. Then S.O. Finkelstein spoke up while reloading: "Captain, how certain are you that killing us is their aim? This all seems terribly inefficient."

"I have to admit, Finkelstein, I really haven't had time to give it any sort of thought. Kinda busy here."

I bashed one of them off the ramp with a sack of grenades, sending it flying into Orgoth's line of fire below. The scream it made was unpleasant. "They're right, Cap. If these guys had let us into the city and then jumped us in a back alley we'd be dead by now. They are just here to delay us."

It was probably for the better that we could not tell whether her irritated tone was on account of the two of us questioning her judgment, or just anger at the situation generally. "But why attack us at all? Why not just barricade our route instead of stupidly throwing away their forces at us like this?"

I tossed the sack of grenades behind Science Officer Finkelstein and, hand now free, immediately flicked out my chainsword to decapitate one of them that had been trying to sneak up on them (that is, to sneak up on Finkelstein) between reloads. The look on both their faces was priceless. "To keep us from having the time to think."