Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.66 - Clara 9

Until now, Clara had been in exactly one war. Two years ago, the surface world went to war with the Deep Ones. It had been short and brutal, and it resulted in the extinction of a species.

Somehow, the fighting outside of Belport felt even more intense.

The Deep Ones had been a coordinated hive-mind—Bastion's drones and Savanus's biomechs were even more coordinated. The Deep Ones had fish-men and monstrosities—the Brotherhood had a seemingly endless supply of heavy mechs and heavy drones. The Deep Ones had strange magic—Bastion had its own nanite swarm.

The one difference, as far as Clara could tell, was that war with the Deep Ones had been two-dimensional. Battles had been confined to the coastline and the rooftops. The fish-men couldn't fly, and none of the battles had happened underwater.

But this war was all around. Biomechs and supers littered the ground, but drones clogged the airspace. It was like a beehive and a hornet's nest had gone to war. Clara wasn't sure which one the Resistance was in that metaphor, and she didn't have any time to dwell on it. There were too many Fast-Response drones to count, and too many heavy drones for comfort.

Clara's team knew what they were getting into—

Or thought they did.

They were four miles outside the Belport city limits, in one of the many abandoned sectors of urban sprawl. It was as good a place as any for what TINA needed them to do. They were supposed to hold the line. But as the battle continued, Clara was slowly realizing just how crazy that objective actually was.

They were supposed to hold a perimeter around an unassuming block of warehouses. TINA had hollowed out the buildings and the ground beneath for one of the antimatter reactors. This one was built to only a fraction of the scale of the others. It would be enough for emergency power for Clara or for a nanite swarm, but it wasn't strategically necessary for TINA's plan.

This reactor was a decoy. TINA had leaked the location, and the Brotherhood's forces had converged on it like a swarm.

So far, no heavy hitters from the Summit had arrived. Clara was both relieved and worried about that because that meant all the heavy hitters were somewhere else. In all likelihood, they were going after the other leaked location in the Atlantic—where Emmett was.

Clara pushed the thought aside. She wouldn't worry about Emmett. She couldn't worry about him. There was nothing she could do, and holding the line here took every bit of her focus.

Clara flew through the maelstrom of drones, firing lasers out of both palms. There were so many that she hardly needed to aim, and each blast cut through three drones at a time. Enemy Fast-Response drones fired back, but their nanite shots melted before they even reached her. Both those things together resulted in a torrent of molten slag raining down on the streets below.

Most of Clara's team had learned not to fight directly below her. But some didn't care. Lock, Stalwart, and some of the other beefier supers shrugged off the molten rain.

TINA was coordinating their forces. All across the block, small groups of Resistance members faced off against Summit capes and biomechs. Friendly drones provided air cover, engaging everything in the air and on the ground. Which left the heavy hitters for Clara, Athena, and Lock.

Lock shrugged off cannon fire as he charged a heavy biomech. The hec unit was twice as tall as him, but it hardly put up a fight. By the time Clara looked back down, Lock had wrestled the hec unit off its feet and was ripping off its armor plating. A few seconds later, he punched through its chest and its spinal connections. Fluids leaked onto the street, and the heavy mech stopped struggling.