Then she swung the weapon like she was chopping wood and cut one of the drone wolves in half.
The robot split as if it was a paper pinata, and then Aasne spun to her side, twirled the two-handed axe around her body like it weighed nothing, and made an upward swing that cut the belly and legs off a drone-wolf that was trying to leap at Elana.
I turned back to my own attacking wolves and then put my last two bullets into a pair that were about to take bites out of each of my hips. Both of their heads and shoulders turned to shrapnel instantly, but then one behind them jumped for my throat.
I dropped my revolvers as the robot landed on me and then wedged both my armored tiger-hands into the wolf’s jaws. It tried to close its maw down on my arms, but I let out a growl of anger, pushed up and out with both my hands, and tore the thing in half at the jaws. It began to twitch and pour out oil from where I had ripped open its jaws, and I kicked it away before I grabbed my revolvers and jumped to my feet.
I was just in time to watch Aasne behead the last drone-wolf with her new axe, and I quickly reloaded my revolvers as I assessed our group.
Eve was kneeling behind Elana, but as I looked at her, she gave me a smile, and pushed herself up with her rifle. Elana quickly jumped to her feet and then popped her power magazine out of her sniper rifle before inserting a new one. Aasne rested her axe over her shoulder, and she turned her head towards me. Her tiger helmet looked even more fearsome with her burgundy glowing eyes and the large axe that she held, but then her mask dripped away from her face so she could smile at me.
“I like this weapon,” she said as she glanced down at the axe. “It is made of aegis steel and is comfortable in my hands.”
“Good,” I growled as I walked back toward the golden doors. “Let’s use it to kill some Jotnar queens.”
“We have all our fliers but just two of the drone-wolves,” Paula said as the group of drones came to walk and fly next to us.
“We’ll make it work,” I said. “Zea, how is that barrier looking?”
“I found a release trigger for it, but there is nowhere in the system where I can make it go down. It has to be local on a closed circuit.”
“Does that mean we are fucked?” Aasne asked. “If we can’t get through the wall, we can’t get to him.”
“I will solve the problem,” Eve said. “Just give me half a minute and let us get as close as we can to the wall.”
“Got it,” I said.
“They have some guns mounted in the ceiling of the throne room,” Kasta said. “I can’t control them, but I have an off switch that should work.”
“Should?” Elana asked.
“Well, you know. I can turn them off right now, but it might be more theatrical if he hits a button to make them work, they pop out of the wall, and then they don’t shoot. I bet his dick will go limp.”
“Just turn them off,” I hissed.
“Awwww, okay,” Kasta laughed, and then we walked back into the throne room.
“You should be dead, fool,” the king spat as soon as we walked inside.
“You’ve made a mistake, Uffe,” I said as we walked forward toward his throne. “Vaish is not crow anymore.”
“Ohhh?” he growled as he leaned forward
“We are tigers,” I said.
Uffe laughed, and the group of naked and tattooed woman sitting on the steps laughed with him.
“You are kittens!” He growled as he slammed his fist on the armrest of his throne. “And soon you will be dead!” He pressed a button on his arm rest and ten panels on the roof slid open.
But nothing came down to fire upon us.
“What?” he said as he pressed his finger on the button again. “Where are my gun--”
“Let me help, sire,” a woman at the foot of the stairs said as she stood. She wore a bikini bottom, but her breasts were uncovered, and she only had a few tattoos of wolves on her arms. She blinked at us a few times, and I noticed that her eyes were not red.
“You cannot--” He began to say, but the woman had already stumbled up past the other naked women on the dais and came to kneel beside him.
“This switch and then this button,” she said, and her voice rang out hollow in the throne room and she slid both of her hands over the control panel on Uffe’s arm rest.
Then the glass barrier dropped down with an angry hiss.
“I got it!” Zea shouted as Uffe and his wives’ red eyes opened impossibly wide. “Eve made that woman hit the button that gives me control over the security system.”
“You idiot!” He screamed as he swatted the woman aside and jumped up from his throne. As he moved, his naked body began to drip with the metal from his aegis, and I could see the pewter colored fur sprout from his legs. “Defend me wives! Kill the Vaish!”
Half a moment ago, the naked women on the steps of the dais had regarded us with the focus of people who had spent their lives in an opium den. But as soon as Uffe gave the order, all of them barred their teeth, snarled like rabid dogs, and leapt down the stairs toward us as their bodies became covered with metal. They moved impossibly fast, but Elana, Aasne, and Eve were ready, and as soon as the glass barrier dropped low enough, we were all firing our weapons at the women.
Except for Aasne, who charged into the thick of them while swinging her axe like a golden scythe.
I raised my revolvers at Uffe and pulled both triggers. His armor had taken shape over most of his body, and I could see that his forearms were covered with impressively bulky metal plates. He raised his arms to shield himself from my bullets, but he must have not guessed at the power of my revolvers, since the first bullet hit him in the left shoulder and tore his arm off, while the second hit the shield on his right arm and sent him flipping back over his throne like a discarded doll. His crown tumbled down from his head when he fell over the back of his chair, and it bounced down the stairs toward Elana.
One of Uffe’s armored wives jumped at me, and she moved to rip at me with metal claws along the edges of her fingers. I raised my own forearm to block her, and her claws just scraped across the metal of my aegis with a screeching sound. She growled and tried to scratch at my face, but I cuffed her on the side of the head with the butt of my silver pistol, and she tumbled away from me.
Another woman jumped at me, but I ducked my head down a bit as I walked up the stairs and then flexed my back up as soon as she landed on my shoulders. She was thrown clear behind me, and then tumbled down the rest of the stairs with a painful sounding crash of metal.
Plasma spray from the drones floating above us rained down on the group, and I saw Aasne cut the heads off two women with a swing of her axe while Eve flung another woman through the air with a wave of her fingers. A bolt of blue energy tore into the skull of an armored woman that was about to try to cut me with her nails, and I turned to give Elana a slight nod before continuing up the dais.
Then I was at the throne, and I backhanded an armored woman and then kicked her down the stairs before I walked around the chair to where I expected Uffe to be.
But he was gone except for his arm.
I glanced to my left and saw the trail of grease and blood dripping down the stairs. From the map of his suite we had looked at earlier, I knew there was another exit to the suite at the back kitchen area, and that looked like exactly where the blood trail was leaving.
“He ran in the left hallway!” I heard Kasta shout, and I saw the door in the distance swing close.
“He’s going to try to get to the kitchen!” Zea shouted. “I sent the staff in there a notice about a meeting on the surface floor of the castle, so they aren’t in there now, but I can’t stop that elevator from going up, so you need to stop him before he gets there, or you’ll have to deal with a lot of guards.”