“Whichaway should we be a-fightin’?” Sally asked.
“I’m a bit bamboozled, I am,” was Mothball’s reply. “Paul and Sofia are back there.” She nodded toward where Chu’s attack was starting. “I reckon we best go that way.”
The two of them charged behind other soldiers, bringing up their weapons to take aim. Master George followed, fighting the temptation to wink himself straight out of there.
Come on, Rutger, he thought to himself. Don’t fail me now. After all these years, don’t fail me now.
Tick’s body bounced, something he didn’t think was possible for a human body to do. But he did. With the protection of Jane’s Chi’karda bubble gone, he’d flown through the air when the ground erupted from below, then landed fifty feet away and bounced. At least twice. He rolled to a stop, dazed and bruised. The winds were fierce and hard and loud around him, lightning flashing everywhere, the sounds deafening. All was a gray blur; he might as well have been blind.
He got to his knees, then tried to stand up, but the gusts ripped at his body and made him fall again. Back to his knees, he squinted his eyes against the wind. He looked in every direction, saw nothing but the mist and fog of the Void swirling and churning like boiling water.
“Jane!” he screamed, though the sound was caught up and whisked away before even his own ears heard it. “Chu!”
He tensed his leg muscles and tried to stand up once more. He’d just gotten his balance when the surface below him exploded outward again, throwing his body forward. After flipping and flailing, he bounced and rolled again. Every inch of him hurt.
Chi’karda. He needed to use his Chi’karda.
Power filled him at the thought, consumed his insides with alternating waves of hot and cold. Orange sparkles mixed in with the gray that filled his vision. With a thought, he replicated Jane’s protective bubble of air. It formed around him and cut off the wind and a lot of the sound. But there were thumps that he felt through the ground. Those eruptions were happening all over the place. And it dawned on Tick what was happening.
The Void didn’t want them to find its core, its heart, or whatever represented its essence. The Void was trying to protect itself.
Filled with the raging power of Chi’karda, Tick went in search of Jane and Chu.
Paul tried not to fall apart inside as utter chaos ruled around him. Metaspides cut across the ground with their spindly legs and jumped on top of soldiers, who had to fight with all four limbs to keep from getting hurt. The Denter machines stomped around, shaking the ground beneath them, swinging those massive, spiked arms at anything that moved. The Ranters spun and flew through the air, trying to cut a path to victory.
But the soldiers of the Fifth weren’t giving up. Not by a long shot. They fired their Shurrics and threw their Ragers and tossed their Squeezer grenades at the creations of Chu Industries. They battled with their arms and legs when their other weapons failed. It was an all-out war, and Paul found what little bravery he could and did his part.
He slowly moved forward, legs bent in a crouch, sweeping his Shurric left and right to fire at any machine that came close. A Metaspide leaped into the air, came down at him. A quick jerk of his arms, a hopeful aim, a pull of the trigger. A thump of pure sound sent the thing catapulting away.
Sofia was at his side, skipping Ragers in strategic locations. One of them balled up into a sphere of ground and rock and destroyed two Denters and a Ranter in one fell swoop.
But people were dying, getting hurt. The Fifth Army was getting smaller and smaller. How much longer could they hold out?
Paul shot a Metaspide to his left, a Ranter spinning in from the front, and then blasted a Denter to his right. Sofia threw an entire handful of Squeezers at a pack of machines that had somehow slipped behind them. Paul gave her a quick cheer.
They kept fighting.
Sato pushed out of his mind the screams that kept piercing the air and invading his thoughts. They were an army. This was a battle. People would die. All he could do was try to prevent as many deaths as possible. He ran across the fields, shooting his Shurric at the creatures of the Void, aiming for any that looked ready to open those mouths of theirs and spit out fire. The other soldiers had caught on as well, taking care to kill the monsters of mist before they sent out streams of flaming heat that were almost impossible to defend against.
A beam of fiery orange came sailing through the air, straight for Sato’s head. He dove to the ground, spinning onto his back just in time to see the terrifying flames swoop over his body and land in a patch of flattened grass. It caught fire but was soon put out by his soldiers running across it, looking for something to shoot. Some soldiers tossed Ragers, which proved very effective, often taking out five or six of the Void creatures in one destructive roll.
Sato leaped to his feet and rejoined the fray.