The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Thirty-Three

The sonic scream from a series of lightrake projection beams rattled the glass panes of the few windows remaining in the northeast-facing facade of the rooftop courtyard. The glare-shine from the light impact beams threw an expanding lemony yellow brilliance across the ash-colored gloom that had settled down over the roof, temporarily blinding any combatants nearby who were unprepared for the flare.

"There's a route out of here through the HVAC booth's service entrance. You should use it, because we're not going to make it if we stay..."

"NO! DON'T you dare say that! They'll come back for us." The ferocity of her response gave him a moment's pause. He was unused to hearing her express such volatile emotion.

"No, they won't. To do that would be suicidal. It's an unavoidable truth. We've lost what little element of surprise we had, they've brought up heavier weaponry we have no defense against and we're seriously outnumbered. Their squad leader has dispatched even more militia in heavy tactical armor..."

"I won't leave you! We stay together...!"

"Don't be an idiot. I'm damaged and barely ambulatory. You're still unhurt. You can survive. You need to get away from here, as quickly as you can. Do it now."

Pnoom-Aig tenderly took her brethren Kodespawn's face in her slender hands, tungsten carbide-titanium alloy hands that could crush carbonado black diamonds into powder, and she stared hard into Pnoom-Ogg's calm, clear eyes. His pragmatic, academic demeanor in the face of their violent, desperate predicament was maddening.

"You are not abandoning me to live my life alone with the humans," she said. "I won't do it. We stand, or fall, together. We are halves of the same machine, you and I, and we have weathered all manner of tragedies and triumphs. We are survivors. We will survive this."

"No. No, we won't. My internal bio-nanite repair system cannot undo the damage I've sustained. I've already calculated the odds of our continued survival in the face of a prolonged attack and the math does not support a hopeful outcome. We both will fall if we stay here. You need to go, Aig, you need to leave me -- I can cover for you, create a diversion while you escape. But we have to do this now...!"

The pair had taken momentary refuge behind the down-angled slope of a tall electronic utility shed on the streetside corner of the roof, completely across the way from the observation deck/rooftop plaza onto which they'd originally descended. The space behind the spot the electric facilities shed occupied was barely large enough to accommodate a trio of grown men kneeling, but, for the purposes of the synthetic gene-'bots known as the Duality of Kohra'andum, it was a bunker offering welcome respite from the heated assault of The Dragon's minions. The electronic utility shelter was an isolated outbuilding containing multi-breaker power panels, computerized bridge-router switching racks and fiber-channel cable conduits the width of an adult human body. The structure had been made to withstand the harshest elements of climature, the possibility of a major inferno, and to retain its structural integrity in the event of a building collapse. Disruptor ray, plasma beam, and lightrake projector gun discharges could not so much as scratch the utility shed's ruggedized surface.

"So tell me, what are they doing out there? I can't get a reading on anything not in my immediate field of vision. My external proximity sensor projection field is offline. No doubt due to damage from those multiple sonic-concussive blasts I took," he said. "Auditory hyper-scanning is still operable, but I can't accurately gauge the numbers of my attackers with that. It's like being half-blind. I don't know how humans manage it."

Pnoom-Aig blinked slowly, concentrating and laid the palm of her hand tenderly on her brother gene-'bot's broad chest for a moment while she expanded her perceptive senses.