CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
Stranger slowly heaved himself to his remaining three feet, staring silently at the dead body of his adversary and onetime partner Urchyn McAvi. The Wolvark had managed to put up one tough fight, but the Steef’s battle rage had allowed him to win over the smaller being in the end. He picked up the Slig rifle he had dropped at the beginning of the fight, only to find out that the weapon’s barrel had been crimped shut.
Instead, he picked up the Wolvark’s weapon, a thicker and broader carbine with three barrels, a formidable weapon to use against any unshielded opponent. The sounds of battle outside the gate had gone silent, something the battle-hungry Steef found disappointing now that he was thick in his thirst for death.
Why had the guns gone silent, and why did he hear Abe’s voice instead, bouncing around the Glukkon capital as if the Mudokon was using a Slig microphone? He heard the rousing words of Abe’s furious speech, but he could not tell what the Mudokon hero was saying due to the loud sound of a Slig jetcopter buzzing through the sky overhead.
Stranger’s jaw locked. He remembered the Gabbit, the one that could wield power, and knew it had to be that idiotic Bringer of Pain flying in that jetcopter.
Lifting his new three-barreled weapon to his shoulder, he pulled back on the trigger. The weapon was not automatic, which displeased him a small bit, but the trio of blasts that it fired at once nearly made up for the lack of automatic fire. The jetcopter’s shields caught his blasts and those of another gun from outside, but Stranger kept firing as fast as he could pull the trigger.
He remembered the blaze of pain the Gabbit had given him, and wanted to pay that blasted being back in full for everything the Bringer of Pain had done to him and Abe.
He heard Abe’s voice roaring “Fire! Fire now!” and suddenly the air was full of the spattering of energy bolts. Stranger’s eyes widened, as he saw that not only were there the blue bolts of Mudokon Spoocebows, but also the reddish/yellow lasers of Slig carbines. Abe’s speech must have been motivational indeed, if he had gotten both the Sligs and Mudokons to help him.
Then the Gabbit began to fight back. Huge cannons on the sides of the jetcopter blazed away at the Mudokon and Slig armies outside the city gates, and Stranger heard lots of screaming, sizzling, and other sounds he guessed were lasers disintegrating flesh and armor.
But there were so many lasers striking the jetcopter that eventually its shields failed. Storms of bolts burned their way into the jetcopter’s body frame, and smoke belched out of multiple holes. It might have been his imagination, but Stranger thought he heard a deep, guttural voice cursing as the jecopter began to spin out of control toward the ground.
The jetcopter twisted out of Stranger’s sight past the city walls, and there was the massive roar and gout of flame that announced the end of the vehicle – and the Bringer of Pain.
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