Shadow of Cthulhu: Lovecraftian Mythical Fantasy (Chronicles of Cain Book 6) by John Corwin

Author:John Corwin [Corwin, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Raven House
Published: 2022-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

22

These weren't ordinary people. They were mechanists.

None of us had a particularly good relationship with them in Prime or Alpha. We'd stopped the mechanists from achieving world domination on Alpha and foiled their plans to steal the artifacts from Hephaestus's lost armory in Prime. I imagined our alts on Beta probably weren't besties with them either.

Layla hit the accelerator, apparently intending to plow through the mechanists blocking the road.

The rear end lifted, and the front tires squelched, unable to grip the road enough to tear free. I looked back and saw why. A man in a brass metal exoskeleton had gripped the rear bumper.

I tried to summon my staff, but the pickup tilted wildly as another man in an exo-suit lifted the truck from the side.

The truck was armored with bulletproof windows, but it wouldn't stand up long to exo-suits.

"You will turn off the vehicle and exit!" the man lifting the side of the truck shouted. "Or we will remove you by force!"

Duffel bags spilled from the back of the truck as it tilted even further. If not for our seatbelts, we would've all been piled against the right-side windows.

Layla bared her teeth and turned to me. "Fake surrender. Then we kill them all."

I nodded. "Do it." I considered slipping on Panoptes and pulling a vanishing act but decided against it since the mechanists had already seen me.

Layla took her foot off the accelerator and raised her hands. "We surrender."

The truck tilted back down to level as the man released it, but the exo in the back kept the rear tires off the ground.

I unbuckled the seatbelt and exited the passenger door. A pair of mechanists gripped my arms and guided me away while others escorted my companions over to join me. Other mechanists collected the weapons and loaded them back into the pickup.

It was interesting to note that the mechanists wore military camouflage of varying designs with very little uniformity. It seemed likely that they'd scavenged the uniforms from wherever they could. Some still bore arm patches bearing the flags of their originating countries. Only a scant few wore the royal blue mechanist uniforms that I'd seen on Gaia Alpha. There was one commonality among the outfits. Everyone wore a pair of brass goggles with lavender-tinted lenses.

A mechanist in a standard royal blue uniform approached us. "Well, it seems our scouts were correct. There are sane survivors still out there."

Layla raised an eyebrow. "What do you want with us?"

He looked confused. "We mean you no harm, but we are looking for every able-bodied human still alive to help us fight back."

She laughed. "Fight back? My gods, you've already lost!"

He stiffened. "As long as humans continue to exist on this world, we haven't lost."

I crossed my arms. "Explain to me how you intend to win."

"We will provide more information later." He offered a curt bow. "I am Lieutenant Millar, and I will guide you to our base." Millar looked at the bags of weapons in the truck. "I would also like to know where all these weapons came from.

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