Jeff squeezed his triggers again, firing at Horus, but his blasts never made it far. Either a leech intercepted the attack, a counterattack exploded his in midair, or it just collided helplessly with a personal force field the Apostle employed.
A young man was pulling his dying father across the ground, desperately trying to escape from Horus and the battle. Jeff wanted to scream at the young man, to tell him to extend his hand so Jeff could pull him up on his bike, but he was too late. Horus’s giant foot smashed the men without hesitation. Jeff looked away, unable to force himself to view what was left of them as Horus took another step forward.
Jeff’s bike zipped between Horus’s legs, every shot from its energy cannons failing to connect. Petra’s forces focused their efforts directly on Horus. Their concentrated efforts would have been enough to level a mountain, but they did little except destroy a few of Horus’s wing pieces. The leeches that had severed his limbs were still locked in position above Horus’s shoulders, forming giant wings. Each leech used its red lasers to destroy missiles and explode energy blasts before they could even reach their master’s shields.
His bike flew past dozens of leeches, dodging streams of energy and exploding casualties. Horus and his army were unfettered by Petra’s defenses as they approached the center of old Dallas where the leech factories had been. Jeff searched for a path to turn around, which would allow him another pass at Horus. If he was ever going to kill Horus or end the fight while some humans survived, he knew now was his best chance, while it was engaged in a battle with Petra’s army.
Something twitched in his mind, and he let his reflexes guide him. He yanked on the controls to his bike, pulling as hard to his right as possible. At the speed he was moving through the ranks of leeches, the force pulled his body away from his bike, and only his metal arm held him to the vehicle. Jeff righted his vision just in time to see a giant, crawling leech open fire on him. Hundreds of pin-size energy blasts erupted from the massive, faceless centipede. He screamed as he pulled the triggers to his guns in response.
The energy shields on the bike absorbed the attacks to the best of their ability, but the sheer number of projectiles overwhelmed its systems, allowing dozens of deadly needles of energy to fly past him, inches from burning a permanent hole in his body. His bike pushed forward toward the mechanical centipede as he fired blast after blast.
The leech’s shields gave way, and Jeff’s attacks split the twenty-foot-long leech in half, burning through its metal frame just in time for him to pass through the middle.
“That’s right!” Jeff yelled in victory. The smoke from the slain leech cleared, and dozens of leeches came into view, each of them equally grotesque despite their various designs. They fired continuously into the sky above him as volleys from Petra’s forces rained down on them, draining energy from shields or killing the leeches that were no longer able to defend themselves.
The scale of the battle was beyond his comprehension, but his boxing instincts had kicked in anyway. He knew when a fight was hopeless; he wasn’t capable of even bothering Horus, no matter what he did. The Apostle was on an entirely different plane of existence. Worse than that, there was no one left for him to save. Already, the thousands of people who had lived here in harmony with nature had perished, without a single shot being meant for them. He directed his bike away from Horus and punched the acceleration, forcing the bike out of the path of the next wave of leeches.
He swerved around mechanical beasts locked in physical combat, as the two sides had finally collided. Force-field weapons, saws, suicide detonations, and more all flew past him, clouding his view, but he let his reflexes guide him through the labyrinth of warring machines.
He shouldn’t have left Carlee. It was the only thought to drift across his mind as he cruised through the devastation. He’d never imagined anything like this; the battle he had witnessed in the skies years ago paled in comparison to the scale of what he was a part of now. Occasionally, he’d catch a glimpse of fallen humans or other animals, at least what was left of them. This was no place for organic life-forms. Carlee had been right, again. There was no way to save them from his brother’s murderer or the leech armies.
He emerged from the crowded battleground into a relatively clear section and breathed in what felt like the first time in minutes. His bike curved widely around the conflict, which was fiercest where Horus was closing in on the center of Petra’s forces, which were no match for the Apostle. Petra’s army would have been powerful enough to kill every human on the planet a hundred times over, but it was on the brink of collapse. Looking back at Horus, Jeff couldn’t believe that he had made it through the gauntlet alive.
His vision swirled as a projectile hit his bike, sending him spiraling through the air. By the time he landed, he was only marginally confident that he was still alive. He pushed on the throttle again, knowing that he if he lingered in a single spot, something would finish him off. The bike notified him through his hood that its shield systems were offline.
It took him a few minutes to regain his bearings, but luckily, the leeches in the area didn’t bother to put him out of his misery, not with the more deadly targets nearby. He was on the opposite side of the field of battle as the other vagrants now, but it looked thinned out enough that he might have a chance to slide through the rest of the warring leeches and make it out alive.
Jeff pulled back on the handles of his bike again, turning it around slowly until he had a path to the far side of the battle. If the vagrants had made it out alive, they would be in that direction. He looked to Horus once more and sighed. It was too powerful. He set his course to take him around the Apostle that had served as motivation to drag himself with one arm through the night—and every moment since.
He took a deep breath as he accelerated into the denser parts of the battle once more. The wind, smoke, and debris from the fighting collided with him because his shields were down, limiting the speed at which he could fly, but it also seemed to lower the amount of attention he gathered. He wasn’t like the tens of thousands of naked humans who had died helplessly in the battle, but he wasn’t a leech either, and apparently, that was enough to help him slide through the fight.
The fighting in front of him took the bulk of his attention, but he spared a glance over to Horus at every opportunity. Seeing the Apostle filled him with so much hate—for everything it had done at Fifth Springs and for what it was doing now. He desperately wanted to attack it again, but he knew when a fight had been lost. It wasn’t a god, but Jeff couldn’t imagine a way to even damage it.
The ground beneath his bike jumped, and as far as he could see, a giant cloud of dust burst from the earth. The leeches didn’t pause in their battle with one another, and on this side of the fight, Petra’s forces were having much more success. The ground shook again, and now pieces of the plains broke apart, as if a giant earthquake was tearing the world in half.
Jeff activated his enhanced vision on his hood once again, and what it showed him took his breath away. He almost rammed a leech with his smoking bike until he remembered to steer at the last moment. The piercing shriek of a siren filled the sky as Horus roared in delight.
The strange tower that had been in the center of the leech factories pulsed with energy now. The earth split as tentacles, which stretched hundreds of meters long, broke through the ground and Petra’s full form began to emerge from where it had been buried, lying in wait. Jeff’s bike dodged under one of the gigantic arms as it came to life, raining dirt and dust down on him.