Dark Convergence - By Dave Gross Page 0,51
the slightest mental nudge, Nemo activated the Fireflies’ storm blasters. Galvanic bolts leaped out to strike the center of the shield wall. The lighting shattered its targets before leaping to the victim’s nearest comrade. Another blast, and they would start punching holes in the shield wall.
As rifles fired from the east and west, Nemo sent the Stormclad straight into the middle of the clockwork defenders. Perceiving his foes through his warjack’s sensors, he felt like a giant wading into battle. Before it closed, the Stormclad raised its generator blade. Lightning curled around the sword and lashed forward, tearing apart a halberd-wielding soldier before leaping past to obliterate another behind it.
More fire barked from the east. A moment later, the western woods echoed the sound, and a rising din of shouts told Nemo the infantry charged in from either side. The soldiers ran past the Convergence battle engines even as blue-white rays screamed down to tear the men to pieces. Brief flashes high above the ground showed where the orbiting servitors intercepted incoming shots before falling, ruined, to the ground.
Nemo paused for an instant, considering the damage to the clockwork soldiers’ front line. They had suffered somewhat more to the east.
Half-closing his eyes, Nemo shifted his focus to the Lancer on his right flank. Drawing on the arcane channels he had developed through years of study, he summoned a circle of blazing runes around his body. By force of will, he poured lightning through the arc node inside the Lancer. The storm lashed out into the clockwork soldiers, leaping from one steel body to another until several more lay scorched and mangled on the ground.
Far behind the clockwork troops, three explosions rang out, one after another. The sounds told Nemo his rangers had begun breaking the prisons in Calbeck. From east and west, the infantry drove inward to join them, capturing the outer streets to control the exodus of captives before the fighting reached the village center. With their attention focused on his swift assault, the Convergence forces would now have to choose between defending their position and recovering the escaping prisoners.
The remnants of the Convergence shield wall parted to allow an assault team through. Heavy clockwork troops bearing shields on both arms rushed forward. As they charged, heavy triangular blades shot out from their shields.
The storm gunners blasted a few of the attackers to the ground before they closed the distance. The others crashed against the knights. The blades of their protean shields punched through the Cygnaran armor, leaving mangled bodies on the ground
The Stormblades struck back, but most of their glaives clashed against the impenetrable shields. Those that slipped past severed steel limbs and left brass viscera scattered in their wakes.
Nemo returned his attention to the Stormclad. With the heavy blade he cut a mace-wielding soldier in half. He reached out with the warjack’s open hand to crush the head of another.
And then the colossal stepped forward.
It roared like an army of engines, the earth trembling beneath the force of the displacement field under each of its titanic legs. Clockwork soldiers scrambled to avoid being trampled. Trios of giant conical drills, each larger than a light warjack, jutted from the ends of its arms. It advanced, shrugging its shoulders like a fist-fighter, drills shrieking as they spun.
From one of the heavy units mounted on its shoulders, a projectile fired with a sharp pneumatic report. A monstrous harpoon shot through the chassis of Nemo’s Stormclad. An instant later, its heavy tow cable jerked the massive warjack forward, dragging it across the battlefield toward the Convergence colossal.
Even as Nemo directed the Stormclad’s open hand to grasp the cable, the warjack slammed into the colossal. Nemo barely had time to raise the generator blade in a futile gesture of defiance before one of the triple drills fell upon it, grinding the blade and the arm beneath it into steel filings. The shriek of sheared metal carried across the battlefield. Friend and foe alike turned to see the warjack struggle as the second drill arm fell upon its back.
As the Stormclad was destroyed, another harpoon shot out toward the west. The tip of the weapon fell short of the crackling orb of the lightning cannon, but where a stormsmith had stood, only a haze of blood remained. As the colossal reeled in its harpoon, the surviving stormsmith pulled back on the driver’s yoke to move the battle engine farther from the lethal foe.
Nemo heard the crack of another loud pneumatic report, this time