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While he waited, he could hear Naomi loosing arrows above, trying to hit the second flying drone.
By the time one of the rollers took an experimental shot across the bridge, Naomi had felled the other drone. He heard it hit the wooden platform of the tower as he ducked to avoid the blasts.
“Nice,” he yelled to her. “Stay up there. We’ve probably got more coming.”
It was a lie.
But when the first roller slid directly into the moat water and emerged on the other side, he was glad he hadn’t told the truth.
He didn’t want Naomi down here in this.
“Fracking amphibians,” he muttered, rushing over to slice at the roller with one of his swords.
There was a sizzling crack and the dome-blaster slid off the chassis.
He stabbed at the screen, and it cracked into smithereens, ending the feed, he hoped.
A second roller was already emerging from the water, so he went for it, repeating his slicing and stabbing and removing it from commission before it could clear its sensors of the water.
He was just beginning to feel like he had everything under control when three more emerged at once.
He spun to take the first and barely caught the second.
But the third roller had time to recover from its journey. Its dome lit up as it began blasting.
There was no time to swing at it, instead he had to try to find cover. He moved to the other side of the open drawbridge, knowing he was still partly exposed.
Suddenly, there was a loud crash and the blasting stopped.
Naomi whooped joyfully from above and he saw that she had dropped the little drone she had felled earlier onto the bigger one’s dome.
“Nice shot,” he yelled to her, sprinting back to the water to take out the last roller as soon as it emerged.
He was just turning to scan the valley to see if more were coming, when something zapped into view in front of him.
There was a shivering, bell-like sound and then every cell in his body was riddled with pain.
“That’s a nerve-net,” a man shouted to him from the small craft that hovered just on the other side of the moat. “I know you Maltaffians are too hung up about universal ethics to use them, but I find they get the job done nicely without a lot of collateral damage.”
Gage sucked in a deep breath, willing himself to remove his mind from his physical reactions and stay calm in spite of the agony.
“It’s a good day to die, Naomi Peterson,” the man yelled out. “The sun is shining. The birds are singing.”
Something about what the man said tickled Gage’s pain-addled mind.
25
Oberon
Oberon awoke in darkness.
He had just spoken with Naomi and Gage, perhaps he had experienced a glitch.
And yet…
His time tracker was the first thing to blink back to him, feeding him an impossibility.
Time had passed.
