One hobb drove each truck, while the rest walked escort, guarding the precious cargo, and watching the militia closely. Phyllis and Jada stood guard at the gates, following behind after all our people were out.

The militia immediately began securing their property again, pointing rifles and watching us leave. We did a slow roll at first, but then our troops all piled into the trucks, and we started moving faster.

Phyllis trotted alongside us, her mech jogging to keep up.

Our convoy made it as far as the main road out of Prescott before the Dearth Conglomerate troops caught up to us.

They had a convoy of their own, with a hovering air escort, that swooped toward us across the desert as soon as they were in view.

There were six primary vehicles, unlike anything we had seen from them before. They were low to the ground, ran on four globe-like wheels, and each had a gunnery station on the roof. The vehicles reminded me of armored personnel carriers, but much smaller and lighter, in solid black with blue trim, Dearth’s colors.

A seventh, aerial vehicle hovered overhead. It was kite-shaped, with large side wings that could pivot near the conical center. Two large, multi-barrelled guns hung from the wings, with a thick, green glowing cable attached to each.

I was still hanging off the side mirror and running board and changed grips to haul my highwater blaster around my shoulder. I still had six MIRV shells loaded in the magazine.

“Phyllis!” I shouted.

She looked up and noticed the convoy. The mech whined as it picked up speed, giant steel feet clanking across the desert. Phyllis veered into the desert toward the convoy and raised her gun arm to point at the flying escort.

The vehicle swung in low and flared its wings, targeting Phyllis beneath it.The dirt beneath it swirled and gusted as it came in low, and vibrant green pulses of energy lanced from its undercarriage guns toward Phyllis.

Rayna shouted orders in the truck cabin beside me, and the Hobb drivers all picked up speed. One of them ripped the tarp off our new grenade machine gun and got to work getting a box of ammunition loaded onto it.

I swiped up my still active com channel with my security chief. “Rayna! No! Get the convoy out of here!” I pointed to the road ahead.

Both roads joined in the nearby distance, and the Dearth convoy had timed their approach to fall in behind us. I clung to the rear view mirror as our convoys both picked up speed again and struggled to take off my bull ring. Once it was tucked safely in my bag again, I summoned the breaker gauntlets and leapt from the doorway at the road’s convergence.

Hitting the blacktop on my feet at that speed seemed like it might be too much for my sandals, so I flopped onto the road and grabbed at it with my metal covered hands. Sparks and chunks of blacktop flew as I gouged a pit across the road and ricocheted into the ditch on the other side.

I stood, suit tendrils whipping in a cloud around my body, as the first Dearth vehicle hit my freshly dug gouge at seventy miles an hour. It flipped, tumbling away in the distance, and I stepped into the hood of the next one, slamming my fist into it and activating the atomic breaker ability.

The vehicle’s front end caved in, in a series of waves, as blue light erupted all around us. I was sent flying again, tossed down the road in front of the convoy. As I tumbled to a stop, using the gloves to brake against the blacktop, I saw our hobbs escaping into the distance, toward camp.

I got up again, painkiller dulling my senses as the suit worked on me frantically. The cartoon starfish appeared again, dancing on the hood of the destroyed vehicle that had hit me. The rest of the strange, armored cars in the convoy braked hard, and drove to encircle me.

Orcs, Nah’gh, and hobbs all emerged from within, manning the gunnery stations atop their armored vehicles. I whipped my head between them, and they opened fire as one. Explosive shrapnel fired out of the four weapons, shredding, and burning my exposed body, and ripping through my clothing yet again.

I roared in pain as my torso and major internal organs were blasted away, fragment by fragment. Then I choked, as blood replaced air in my lungs, and I went to a knee, desperately trying to hold the breaker gauntlets in front of me. Several fragments struck my helmet, causing red warning flares to erupt from all sides.

A shard hit my advanced helmet perfectly, sinking in through the translucent metals and webbing thin cracks across my vision. The vehicles slowly circled, keeping up their concentrated fire. My suit deployed at maximum, hundreds of tiny tendrils whirling around me in a storm of activity.

I slumped, falling to my hands and knees, rocked by endless shrapnel fire. The mid-day sun glowed in all the cracks in my vision, and the red warning flares pulsed regularly through my entire being. I realized I hadn’t taken a breath for too long, when my vision started to go black around the edges.

As my vision was failing, I realized the cartoon starfish would likely be the last thing I saw before I died, begging me for more charge, and scolding me for not being careful enough.

Phyllis and her mech arrived in the melee, ramming a truck from the back, and lifting it violently. It tumbled away, slamming into the ditch, and she fired her plasma cannon at the next.

“What would you do without me, Tyson dearie?” she crooned, as the Dearth APC slagged in a heap of burning metal. “You’re essentially helpless on your own, you know.”

New lung portions were installed, and I took a deep, rasping breath. “Shut up and kill ‘em Phill.” I garbled around a mouthful of blood. The turbine ejected gore and shards of metal as the suit worked in a frenzy, patching up my many wounds, and drawing shrapnel from my body.

The flying craft was in the near distance, smoking in its own crater. I’d been so busy getting shot that I hadn’t even heard it go down, but it had also damaged Phyllis.

Her mech was covered in scorch marks, melted armor plating, and holes in the structure. Phyllis had her helmet open to see, it was partially melted from the plasma bombardment. Her gun arm seemed to be working fine, though it too had badly damaged armor plating. The other arm hung limp at her side, melted through on top of the shoulder. Her back was also covered in slagged portions and holes in the armor.

Life coursed back into me as artificial blood filled my veins and flesh foam was slathered in place where it was needed. I stood from behind my ninety-three year old friend and roared, clanking my gauntlets together before I started running toward the nearest vehicle.

Phyllis ducked down in her mech, giggling, as flak filled the air again. She carefully aimed, spun up her plasma cannon, and destroyed the vehicles one at a time.

Gunfire erupted from behind us, and I took a few more rounds through the chest, staggering in my charge. Coughing and choking in annoyance at my brand new lungs being ripped apart again, I raised the highwater blaster.

Four Dearth mercenaries had survived the crash after Phyllis hit them, and they used the ditch and wreck for cover. More rounds splashed through me and pinged off the parts they couldn’t, and I collapsed as my knees were shot out.

From the pavement, I roared in anger and fired the blaster. My MIRV shell sparkled in the air as it flew, before erupting in fire and death. The explosions set off the Dearth vehicle, and the entire ditch went up in a gout of concussive force and oily flames.

Phyllis grunted behind me, and I turned to watch her cut into the other overturned vehicle, the first one I had stopped with my hastily created furrow. Nobody was shooting at us from it, as the entire front end and roof had partially caved in when it crashed, but there was a persistent voice calling for backup and emergency medical services. The voice sounded human, and female.

It cut off abruptly when Phyllis sawed through a portion of the overturned vehicle with her plasma torch. I collapsed in the road while tendrils swarmed across my body. Painkiller, pain, and dulled sensation took me, and my mind detached, seeking comfort in Molls.

Her soft, warm skin and scary, exciting smile. I found myself smiling more around her just in the hope that she would smile back. In the distant sunlight overhead, I could nearly see her beautiful, reptilian face, until Phyllis stomped into view and stared down at me.

“What’re you doing?” she asked, as ash from her joint tumbled down onto my cracked helmet.

I sighed and sat up, the moment lost. My tendrils finished their work, and I looked down at my brand new knees. Hairless and miscolored, awesome. I was also mostly nude again, the attack had shredded my clothing.

“Feeling sorry for myself,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, you should. Really got your ass kicked back there,” Phyllis said with a laugh. She spit out her joint stub, after drawing one more large breath from it. I had to wonder at her lungs, and what the machine had been doing to them to allow her this much use. “Plus, now you look ridiculous, dearie.”

I frowned at her. We stood in the epicenter of a battlefield, the ruins of bodies and vehicles alike littering our immediate vicinity, and my sandals were shot to pieces. It felt like most of my lower legs were brand new. My crystalline colonies felt weaker than ever down there, but they had a massive, strong population centered in my forearms. The rest would come and go with injury, but I made a point of protecting my forearms, after what the yarsps had done.

“Been in a lot of fights already today, Phill. Don’t pick another, please.” I grumped, picking at my silk shorts.

“Oh very well, your highness. Don’t mind my observations and suggestions. I’m only your bodyguard, for some odd reason,” she huffed. Her face receded inside the mech, and returned a moment later, holding up a small, clear bag full of joints. She produced one with a purple tip, nodded to herself, and then reached a large metal hand in to carefully grasp it, before offering it to me.

“No thank you Phill,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “But if your mech is still working, I’d love a ride home.”

Phyllis pushed up to peer out of her compartment, looking over the mech. Her arms and upper body were much stronger than before. She also had somewhat fewer wrinkles and was no longer wearing her glasses.

“Huh,” she exclaimed. “Explains why the other arm ain’t working. I suppose I need some time in the shop, then. Sure, climb on board.” Her mech turned and knelt down, so I used the recently formed holes in her armor as hand and footholds, gripping it securely as she stood back up.

“On board good and snug, dearie?” Phyllis asked.

I worked my feet into the slagged holes in her armor I had chosen, making sure I had a good, but loose and comfortable grip. “Yeah, Phill. Hold on.” I turned, took in all the smoking wreckage and bodies behind us and said, “BuyMort, I’d like to sell all the battlefield salvage, and any bodies. Through the affiliate, directly to The Dearth Conglomerate, Arizona branch.”

A positive reply pinged from my app, which I swiped closed as I focused on Phyllis again.

“Thanks for the save, by the way Phill. Didn’t mean to stop you from giving me good advice, before. Just,” I paused. “It’s a lot today.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen. We need better armor. You more-so, but I could do some further upgrades myself. I get half the morties from that salvage,” she said.

The mech picked up speed, moving from a walk to a jog, up to a trot before it leveled out. I was alright if I kept tense, at that speed. And Phyllis deserved a cut of the scrap sale, I had no problem with that when it came in.

She continued talking, redirecting my attention again.

“You’re vulnerable Tyson, and they know it now. You shouldn’t have told the hobbs to leave, they were going to help us.” Phyllis said, yelling back into the wind.

I scowled at the back of her mech and said nothing.

“You can’t do everything on your own, dearie. Your suit may make you hard to kill, but I can think of a few ways to manage the task, so I’m sure your enemies can too,” she continued.

“I can’t let the hobbs get killed,” I shouted back.

“Not up to you, they will at some point or another. Trust me on matters of death, Tyson. I ran with a resistance cell when I was fourteen. You’re going to lose some soldiers, fighting a war like this. Save those you can, but you nearly bought it here because you sent them away,” the old lady shouted.

Her voice was significantly stronger than it had been a few days ago, I was sure of it.

“What should I do about it then?” I yelled back.

“Keep doing what you’ve been doing, dearie, it's been working so far. Just bear in mind you may have casualties you alone may not be enough to prevent. Not only does Dearth know how to incapacitate you, but they also know you’ll throw yourself on a grenade for your people too. They will use that against you.”

I zoned out, thinking about what she had said. Perhaps I could use that against Dearth. If Garthrust had survived, which I assumed he had since I hadn’t been billed a billion morties, he was doubtless talking.

What did Dearth know about me?

The longer I wasn’t crushed, the worse their response was going to get. Especially with the space elevator in place.

They didn’t want riffraff in the area.

“Thanks Phill! You gave me a good, bad idea!” I shouted, patting her mech.

She ignored me and continued trotting toward home.