Lionel's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Lionel crouched behind a slab of broken stone and studied the tower. The map had led him true. High on the tower's peak sat the machine, its sensor dish sweeping in slow circles. Red and blue lights pulsed across its face. That machine would smell his armor from a mile off. He had traded his blade for these coordinates. Now he had nothing left to cut it down. He drew the only weapon on his belt. It was an old pistol, short and heavy, worn smooth by other hands. He weighed it in his palm. One shot might crack the machine's housing. But the report would echo across the whole waste. The xenos would hear it and come. Lionel picked his angle. He braced the pistol on the stone and lined the barrel on the sensor dish. He breathed out and fired. The round struck the machine dead center. Sparks burst from the dish. The lights flickered, then died. The slow sweep stopped. Smoke curled from the shattered housing. The eye that hunted him was blind. But the gunshot rolled across the ruins like thunder. For a moment nothing moved. Then Lionel heard it. A dry clicking, faint at first, growing fast. It came from the cracks in the stone all around him. They poured out of the rubble. Sleek metal bodies, each the size of a hound, ran on jointed legs. Their green and pink lights glowed in the dark. Dozens of them. The dead beacon had not saved him. His shot had rung the dinner bell. Lionel rose and put his back to the tower. The nearest spider leaped. He caught it in the air and smashed it against the stone. Its legs went still. Two more climbed his greaves. He tore one loose and crushed it under his boot. The other bit into a seam in his armor. He felt the cold pinch on his thigh. He fired the pistol into the swarm. One shell, two. Each blast threw a machine back in pieces. But the pistol held only so many rounds, and more spiders spilled from the ground. He could not kill them all. He could not stand here and win. Lionel looked past the tower. Beyond it, low against the hills, he saw the shape of the ruined vault. His brothers' seed lay under that stone. It was close now, closer than it had ever been. He fired his last shell and ran. Spiders chased at his heels. His seals leaked where the bite had opened them. But the beacon was dead. No new swarm would rise behind him. He had blinded the machine and bought himself a path. He reached the vault's broken door and threw himself inside. The spiders massed at the entrance but did not follow into the dark. Lionel pressed his back to the wall and counted his breaths. The tower was down. The seed lay somewhere below him now, in the black.