TBoB - Book 2 - Chapter 43 - The labyrinth 

It only took me a couple seconds to get a hold of Whisperer and Tina, it was as simple as connecting to one of the bears and conveying what I knew. Contacting Broodmother and Angel-Eyes took significantly longer. Since I didn’t have any units over in Jasper I needed to get one of the squirrels to burn all the fuel in its take off rocket, fly over to the other town, then scour the area for one of Angel-Eyes’ squirrels. 

Thankfully it didn't take that long, and the two of us managed to have a quick chat using the squirrels intermediaries. I’m sure it probably looked insane to the local observers, but I was concerned about spreading the information. I left that squirrel in place, in case we needed to pass any further messages along. It wasn’t like I could get it back to Hinton anyways.

Once everything was done, I finally stood up, and glanced over at the tunnel that Jesse and the bears were camped out at.

“Everything sorted out?” Jesse asked, once he noticed me moving around again.

“As much as I can in these tunnels. This goop makes things extremely difficult, I had to fly one of the scouts all the way to Jasper to make contact,” I replied. “I know we originally planned on splitting up, but considering the circumstances we should probably move to join up with Whisperer and Tina again. If these Seventeens are capable of advanced planning, we might need the extra firepower.”

Jesse paused for a moment, considering, then nodded. “Sounds like a plan,” he said. “Can you find them in this maze of tunnels?”

“I have the maps from earlier, and the other team has my bears with them, so it should be fairly simple to locate them,” I told him.

“What about the Seventeen?” Jesse asked, glancing down the tunnel.

“We leave it for now. Even if we take the time to track it down right now, chances are it’s either luring us into an ambush, or leading us in the wrong direction,” I replied. “Either way, it’s probably smarter to meet up first, deal with it afterwards.”

Jesse didn’t even turn to look at me. “You think it’s smart to leave it to follow us?”

“We’ll keep one squad at our rear, to prevent it from trying to sneak up on us, and I’ll call some squirrels back to keep an eye on the area, just in case.” Even as I said it, I could feel the bears and squirrels moving to implement my plan.

“Let’s move. The sooner we connect, the sooner we move on.” I said, slowly moving towards one of the other exits. Jesse quickly caught up, and was only a step or two behind by the time I made it. The only one who didn’t immediately follow was Bandit, who kept glancing at the tunnel the Seventeen pulled its worm out of, and back at me, before finally running to catch up. I didn’t want to waste a bunch of time investigating, it was probably nothing, but I still routed a squirrel into the tunnel, just to be safe.

As we quickly made our way down the tunnel I kept an eye on the map, trying my best to keep us going down the right tunnels, yet it wasn’t very long until we ran into a dead end. 

“I admit I’m not the greatest at reading maps, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t supposed to be any dead ends in this area,” Jesse said as he walked up next to me.

“There isn’t,” I replied, “In fact, there’s supposed to be an intersection here.” I bit my lip for a second, before unholstering my thermal axe. “Glad I never threw this away,” I mumbled as I handed it to Spooky. “Try and melt your way through.” The bear flicked a switch on the shaft, causing the axe head to glow red, before heading up to the wall of polymer.

“What are you thinking?” Jesse asked nervously.

“I think we may have already underestimated these Seventeens. They may be changing the layout of the tunnels,” I said.

“Shit…” Jesse mumbled. The two of us watched as Spooky carved a small slit in the wall, and for a moment we could see a tunnel beyond. Right before the space was completely filled with several tons of antithesis flesh. At the same moment, Bandit started panicking, his seismic sensors were picking up a massive amount of movement from behind.

“Fucking… fuck!” I exclaimed. “Get ready! They’re coming!”

“Which way? How many?” Jesse asked, splitting his attention between the fourteen and the tunnel behind us.

“I don’t know, but it sounds like a lot,” I replied as the bears setup in a combat formation. “We have two choices, hold the line, or somehow move that big fucker so we can get through.” Spooky was still slowly cutting his way through the wall, making a large enough hole for us to step through, but it wouldn’t do much with the Fourteen sitting in the way.

“How long can your bears hold out?” Jesse asked.

“Fucking hours,” I replied, “assuming we’re only dealing with smaller models.” 

Of course, I had to jinx it, as the first thing that appeared in the tunnel was a model Fourteen, charging at full speed. Thankfully I didn’t even have to give an order, Bob just rushed forward and met the beast head on. When his fist connected to the monster’s face, the creature practically exploded, spraying gore and causing the massive bulk to slide into him. Thankfully, with his spacial anchor engaged, he didn’t move an inch. 

Several smaller models, heavily wounded, tried to crawl out from underneath the plates around its body before getting gunned down.

“Bob is pretty much the only thing that can deal with those big fuckers,” I reported to Jesse, once the immediate threat was taken care of.

“Got it,” Jesse replied. He said something I couldn’t hear, and a second later a massive box landed by his feet. He spared no time ripping it open, revealing an absolutely massive weapon, nearly as large as I was. As the man turned and aimed it at the wall behind us it began to whine, the coils in the middle of the weapon glowing with an intense blue-white color. “You might want to move your bear,” he said.

Spooky managed to jump out of the way a second before a massive beam of plasma burned through the wall, slowly cutting through the Fourteen blocking our way, and then the wall of polymer on the other side. It took about ten seconds in total, and left a molten hole where the beam cut, but opened a path for us.

I stared at the man for a second. “How the hell did you find a weapon like that so quickly?” I asked.

“Already had it queued up, in case I needed it. Plan fourteen,” he said simply as he rested the barrel of the still steaming weapon on the ground.

“I thought you were making excuses earlier, and just didn’t want to spend your points,” I replied.

“I don’t want to waste my points, there’s a difference,” Jesse said. “If we’d run up against a horde of lower models, the plasma cutter wouldn’t have been even half as effective. In that case I would have gone with something like plan seven, the smart machine gun.” 

“How many plans did you make? You know what, not the time for that conversation. Thanks for buying that thing, and cutting our way out of here. I have a feeling we’re going to need it again,” I said as I jogged over to the opening. The Fourteen that had attempted to block our path had died almost instantly, nearly cut in half by the beam. The polymer was still warm, but not glowing. Probably safe to cross.

Back on the other side of the tunnel, the Fourteen that Bob had caved in moved. It was slowly being shoved aside by the horde of antithesis behind it.

“How long until you can fire that thing again?” I asked. 

“Probably a few minutes. Right now it’s almost too hot to even carry,” he replied. Indeed, the gun’s coils still glowed, heat radiating off them. 

“Give it to either the moose, or Bob to carry, they’re shielded against the heat,” I told him. “Even though we could farm some points here, I have a feeling the longer we delay, the more roadblocks these Seventeens are going to throw up. We should get to the others.”

Jesse didn’t argue, he just handed his new weapon to the moose, who burned the facade off its hands, but was in no danger of taking actual damage, before grabbing his rifle. “Ready,” he said.

The two of us took off at a light job, the bears a few steps behind. 

Back in the tunnel I could hear the Fourteens shift, getting pulled back. I could only hope we would be far enough away when they were cleared to avoid pursuit.