Radiance 137

Chapter 137: Strikeback.

Seven was awoken by the shrill ringing of a bell that thundered across the landscape, shattering the peace of the sleeping town with every peal it released.

For a moment his brain struggled to comprehend what was happening until a surge of adrenaline hit it thanks to a very familiar sound, a high-velocity gunshot.

Before he was even half out of bed and even quarter the way to rousing his sleepy Claw their bedroom door burst open and Vizzy was stood there dressed in her full battle armour.

"We're under attack! The Boss and her people have found us!!" she yelled over the din of the yelling outside as well as the bell ringing.

"How the fuck did they find us!?" Seven yelled as he pulled on his clothes and used his telekinetic hands to shake Visa awake.

"No fucking idea but we already have casualties, two human sentries have been shot dead and it looks like they are setting up some kind of fucking mortar tube on the hillside so shit is about to get very real very fast, we need you out there like now!!" Vizzy yelled before vanishing back the way she'd come.

Thankfully Visa was now fully awake and having heard every word Vizzy said had rolled out of bed and was scrambling to don her newly refined armour.

As Seven and Visa charged out of the door to the treehouse, they could see people scrambling to man the battlements of the settlement which like their counterpart at Dry Rock gulch now had high walls topped with glass and razor wire not to mention sandbags to absorb some incoming fire, which were already paying dividends as rounds slammed into them.

Seven saw Timothy and Thundertail giving orders to the Gatorclaws and getting them rapidly armoured up and ready for an engagement.

"Any word on numbers?" he yelled causing the pair to turn towards him and the look of relief on Thundertail's face to see him and Visa said it all.

"Not yet but by the sheer amount of fire they are pouring down on us it's gotta be quite a few, but we did get a call from Dry Rock a couple of minutes ago, they are being hit as well but their defences are holding so far," Timothy said as he handed a crossbow which looked more like a cut-down ballista to a Gatorclaw who quickly rushed off to join the ranks of their pack.

"How the fuck did they fucking find us so quickly!?" Seven snarled as a loud high-pitched whistling noise began to ring over the compound.

"Incoming!!" Vess yelled while pointing skywards from the main square.

Seven looked up and saw the small smoke trail of an arcing mortar round that was completing its arc to begin its fall towards them.

With a loud snarl, he reached out and deflected it sending it back towards the hillside from where it had been fired.

Unfortunately without enough time to identify a true target the mortar round simply impacted the hillside with a dull thud as well as a shower of dust.

"Alright people we knew this day would come it's just a little ahead of time, you've been training for this very thing, so pull yourselves together and screw in tight, because this day we are going to show these raiding fucks exactly who they are messing with, because we are the Free Peoples of the Wastes and we live and die FREE!!!" Seven bellowed so loudly that his voice carried across the entire compound even over the din of the gunfire.

Visa lifted her armoured hand to the air in a clenched fist and let loose her best war roar that was instantly picked up by every other Claw in the place sending a synthony of noise so loud over the landscape that it managed to completely drown out the fight.

"Phalanx to the gates and everyone else get into formation, it's time to take this fight away from the civilians, if these fuckers want to test us let's show them exactly who they are fucking with!" Seven yelled pointing to the main gates.

The Phalanx were a group of Gatorclaws who were supporting far heavier armour than the rest of them, each of them had been equipped with a truly massive riot-style shield that had been designed to absorb as much incoming fire as possible being made up of layers of both metal. Ceramic and kevlar are all sandwiched tightly together.

"Snipers to your positions, as soon as those gates open those fuckers are gonna pour fire down on us and I want you ventilating their skulls as you see them, you are weapons free from the moment those gates are open," Seven said pointing to the high points and towers which caused the human and Gatorclaw sharpshooters to scramble for their positions.

"Vizzy and Varrel I want you two in the air as soon as the shooting starts, take a box of grenades and Molotovs each and show them the true meaning of death from above," Seven said the two Cazadors saluted him.

"You got it, boss, now it's our turn to show them what it feels like to see your friends fucking burn!!" Vizzy said with a clenched fist and a defiant buzz of her wings which her brother echoed.

Seven turned and headed for the gates with Visa and his team in tow where they took up their positions behind the Phalanx, well all except for Seven who was standing right at the head of the pack.

"Good luck everyone and I'll see you on the other side, open the gates!!" he yelled and with a loud creak the armoured gates began to slowly swing open.

No sooner had the large metal gates begun to swing outwards than a hail of bullets like a swarm of angry hornets streamed into the gap between the two heavy plates, Seven simply stood there with his heavy Laser Gatling gun spinning in front of him as the bullets slammed into his shielding sending ripples across the invisible barrier as it dispersed it's kinetic energy.

"Show time motherfuckers," he said in a deep snarl before charging forwards out of the gates with the Phalanx directly behind him.

No sooner had he exited the gates than the amount of fire that was directed down on his head intensified a hundredfold and now it was coming from every direction.

In his peripheral vision Seven could see the flashes coming from both the hillside and the scrublands to his flanks which told him the raiders had planned for this eventuality, but what they hadn't planned on was him being first out of the door and being able to tank what they were throwing at him.

Upon seeing this the phalanx did as they had been trained to and instantly curved themselves into a horseshoe shape with more and more of them building it bigger and bigger as they took their places at the ends to the side of the gates.

Their heavy armour and shields were doing the jobs they had been designed to absorb the incredible amount of incoming fire leaving the Claws inside of it completely unscathed.

Then as they had been ordered to the sniper teams opened up from their high vantage points.

A mixture of high-velocity bullets and large barbed bolts began to sail over the walls towards the attackers and they were first targeting machine gunners and any other heavy weapons operators they could see.

Seven pulled the trigger on his Gatling gun and began sending a stream of red-hot laser death out across the landscape before him in a large sweeping arc that ignited pretty much everything it touched.

But more importantly than that it gave both Vizzy and Varrel the time they needed to take to the air as the enemy scrambled to get their heads down to avoid the arc of red death as well as the sniper fire.

Though as one unlucky raider could attest to it wasn't fully effective as a tactic as one of the massive bolts fired from a Gatorclaw crossbow found them and promptly nailed their head to a tree.

The pair of armoured Cazadors split up and began to circle the battlefield dropping their makeshift bombs onto any dug-in nests they saw, sending mini mushroom clouds of flame and smoke billowing into the sky.

"Now!!" Visa roared and the Phalanx split apart allowing the armoured Claws behind them to charge past their defenders and out into the battlefield.

Now while Gatorclaws couldn't run as fast as their normal Claw counterparts they made up for it with the extra armour and heavier weapons their larger frames allowed them to carry, with a great many of them opting for a setup similar to Thundertail, which was to say a smaller version of the riot shield, a tail mace and something big, pointy and very very nasty.

A great many of them were carrying huge spears and halberds which thanks to their already incredible reach made short work of any unlucky enough to find themselves within said reach.

The makeshift armour the raiders had strapped to themselves was seriously inadequate to handle anything either the snipers or the Claws threw at them, hell power armour had a hell of a time trying to stop a determined and angry Claw so a couple of bin lids wrapped in leather and polymer had no fucking chance.

And nor did the multitude of helmets that the raiders seemed to have strapped to their heads as could be attested to by one individual who appeared to have put some kind of modified football helmet that he'd reinforced with metal caging, it did absolutely fuck all to stop Thundertail from cleaving his head clean from his shoulders and sending it sailing into another of the foxholes nearby where judging by the screams the occupants didn't really appreciate their surprise air dropped gift.

As it turns out a platoon of angry Gatorclaws dressed as medieval knights and supporting equal medieval but no less effective weaponry didn't exactly do wonders for the morale of the attackers who thanks to their dug-in positions really didn't have a whole lot of movement options available to them to deal with said angry Claws.

Seven himself now took to their air and began to circle the battlefield both directing the ground fight by highlighting targets for the defenders while raining fire down on dug-in positions with his Gatling gun before inevitably Vizzy or Varrel arrived to drop something nasty into their hole with them.

Though while in the sky Seven was able to witness a particularly telling scene that ticked two boxes of 'Fuck around and find out' as well as 'Never mess with an angry Claw girl,' when he saw Visa yank one raider who had been firing at her out of his hole and pitch him towards Vess who like world-class batswoman hit him so hard with the flat side of the Metal Greatsword Chris had made for her that the guy not only folded up into the shape of a baseball but damn near cleared the entire hill side.

It took only ten minutes for the team to clear out their attacks and they routed them down to the last man who found out just how accurate a Gatorclaw with an oversized crossbow could be when as he was running away a massive bolt the size of a spear slamming into his back, picked him up and nailed his arse to a tree fifty meters up the road.

"Alright people looks like we're clear here, mop up and retrieve any weapons these fucking idiots left behind and make sure our wounded are taken care of," Seven said tenderly hoisting up a wounded Gatorclaw girl whose frontal plates looked like a pepperpot with the amount of fire it had absorbed, before delivering her to the medics back in the town.

"Seven I just got a call from Dry Rock, they are under heavy siege and could use a hand!!" Shauna called up to him as he was flying in more wounded.

"Alright form up the troops and get some of the marching, I'll take a squad and fly over there to support them," he called back and Shauna gave him a thumbs up before scurrying off to start grouping people up.

Seven landed near Visa and Vess and he quickly told them to get a group of Claws together as they were going to air-drop a scaly surprise party in on the fuckers attacking Dry Rock.

It took them only a minute to round up a few Gatorclaws along with Thundertail and once the group was ready Seven took to the sky once more, though this time carrying the weight of the large group of Claws while at the same time being flanked by both Vizzy and Varrel who had managed to quickly rearm themselves for the assault.

The flight from the Safari Zone over to Dry Rock wasn't a long one and as they drew close the sounds of gunshots and screams filtered up to them from the ground far below.

"Looks like the Boss's troops have surrounded the town and are hitting it from all sides," Vess snarled as she peered down through the invisible bubble that kept her and her scaly allies aloft.

"Alright here's the plan, Vizzy and Varrel are going to fly interference and are going to harass these fuckers with their grenades, this should force them up out of their covered positions, I'm going to do a high-speed loop around the outer ring of attackers and I will drop a Claw every so many feet, once you hit the ground get stuck in, its Claws free time and full on open season on these fuckers, we ain't taking prisoners, today we are going to send a full-on message to these slave taking, raiding fucks about what happens when the Free People's come for you!" Seven snarled.

There was a deep resonating growl from all of the Claws as they gave their agreement voice but not words, not that they were needed, Seven understood a growl like that no problems.

"Oh and the Boss is mine, I and her are going to have a little chat, that's if she had the balls to come here in person that is, if not I think once we've cleaned up here I'll take a trip to her stronghold and show her that walls while they keep her goons out, won't do shit to stop me," he said and with that Vizzy. Varrel and Seven all went into a steep dive towards the ground.

As they came close to the ground both Vizzy and Varrel split off from Seven with one of them going left and the other going right, while Seven himself went straight down the centre, dropping Claws as he did.

Seven cushioned their impact with the ground by reducing their speed and softening the impact enough so that they could hit the ground running and the effect on the attackers was almost immediate.

As Claws and fir bombs began to pop up amongst their lines a wave of confusion that rapidly turned to panic swept through them as they struggled to try and adapt to the rapidly shifting tide of the battle.

As soon as they saw what was happening outside the walls, the defenders of Dry Rock took the initiative to push back hard and released their own Claw defenders out of the gates.

The last Claw that Seven air dropped into the Enemy lines was his beloved Visa and she kissed the outside of his helmet before he released her right into the thick of a group that was trying to rally together to mount fire on the attacking Claws.

No sooner had Visa's large feet hit the ground than she used her momentum to incredible effect by spinning herself and using her long tail to whip the legs out from under quite a few of the group she now found herself amongst.

She did this while sliding backwards and using her Claws as brakes by digging massive furrows in the sand, which not only shed her velocity rather quickly but put her in a position to springboard herself forward into a devastating lunging attack where she put her Claws to highly effective use by swinging slashes in pretty much every direction like a windmill of claws and teeth.

While Visa was busy turning that entire group into red confetti, Seven did a high-speed lap around the perimeter and put his fully recharged laser gatteling gun to good use by spraying the squads that as of yet had been untouched by either Claw or bomb.

Now trapped between angry gatorclaws charging from the town with a few humans mixed in, air-dropped Claws from above, Cazadors that had quite a hell of a sting and a flying human missile armed with a gatteling gun the surviving raiders turned tail and fled, what little of them were left.

As they watched the rag-tag bunch of survivors running for the hills the people of Dry Rock Gulch let their joy find voice and a cheer so loud it echoed from every hill for miles broke free.

Seven landed in the middle of the battlefield as the Claws were wandering about putting down those that had survived the initial assault but were mortally wounded, as grim as a job could be but as it was the Free Peoples were not monsters or animals and they would not leave a mortally wounded foe to suffer needlessly.

"Visa take charge here and get everyone secured, tend to our wounded and if you find any potential sources of information that you think we can save feel free to take prisoners now," Seven said and his massive Claw girl drew herself up while giving him a fierce stare.

"Where are you going my love?" she asked.

"Myself, Vizzy and Varrel are going to follow that group of runners back to their home base, then we're gonna hit them so hard that the fuckers running this shit show feel every bit of it, it's time for us to really get this party started," he said before taking to the air again before his beloved Claw had any chance to argue, so instead she turned to the two Cazadors who were floating near-by with their wings beating so fast they were nought but a blur of motion.

"You look after my male you hear me?" she growled deeply and both of them nodded.

"You can count on us," they said in unison

The trio stuck to a high altitude as they followed the runners on the ground to avoid detection and while it took them a couple of hours the poor fools did exactly what Seven hoped they would do, led them right back to their home base, after all, where does one go when they feel truly scared but home?

The Boss's main base was a fortress and it appeared as though she had spent the spoils of the labours of her slaves on equipping her people with heavy weapons and good armour while also on strong defences.

"There's a slave pen under that main building there, it's where we were kept while we were held here," Vizzy said in a low snarl as she buzzed her wings angrily but quietly as they watched from a nearby cliffside.

"I'm gonna hazard a guess as to that being the Boss?' Seven said pointing to a young looking black woman who looked to be in her late twenties possibly early thirties who was currently standing before the group of runners screaming at them, she even went as far as to shoot one of them in the head sending his body crashing down to the sandy floor at her feet.

"Yup that'd be her," Varrel said with a buzz of his wings that echoed his sister's.

"My money would be on the second they either see us or we hit them they are gonna button this place down tight as a drum, so we have two choices the way I see it, if we wanna take this place whole and simply clear it out we're gonna need to cut the head off the snake early and not let them set up a defence, but if we aim to simply burn the place to the ground then we can simply hit them hard from afar and let fire do its job," Seven said thoughtfully.

"We should take it from them, they have taken so much from so many that the only way we are going to truly win this thing is to take it back, if we destroy it we are still left with nothing," Varrel said and his sister nodded in agreement.

"Alright then, stick to the darkness and use height, use explosives only and target only things like their armoury and barracks, only use fire as a last resort, leave the Boss to me," Seven said.

"You gotta get her before she retreats back into that place Seven, it's like a fucking hive in there, we saw tunnels down in the basement and chances are if she makes it down there we'll lose her," Varrel warned.

Seven chuckled to himself and nodded.

"Oh don't you worry Varrel the Boss is about to get a real nasty surprise but ironically it won't be me who kills her or even the two of you, it will be something far more powerful and far older," he said and both of them cocked their heads curiously.

"What's that then?" Vizzy asked with a curious buzz of her wings and a bob of her antennae.

"Gravity," Seven said pointing down at the base and like an ICBM launching out of a tube the Boss suddenly accelerated so far into the sky that no one, not even Seven and his two companions could even see her any more.