It only took me a couple seds to get a hold of Whisperer and Tina, it was as simple as eg to one of the bears and veying what I knew. tag Broodmother and Bright-Eyes took signifitly longer. Since I didn’t have any units in Jasper, I o 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 mao have a quick chat using the squirrels as intermediaries. I’m sure it probably looked io the local observers, but I was ed about spreading the information. I left that squirrel in p case we o pass any further messages along. It wasn’t like I could get it back to Hinton anyway.

  Once everything was done, I finally stood up and gnced over at the tuhat Jesse and the bears were guarding.

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

  “As much as I iunnels. This goop makes thiremely difficult, and I had to fly one of the scouts all the way to Jasper to make tact,” I replied. “I know we inally pnned on splitting up, but sidering the circumstances, we should probably move to join up with Whisperer and Tina again. If these Seventeens are capable of advanced pnning, we might he extra firepower.”

  Jesse paused for a moment, sidering, then nodded. “Sounds like a pn,” he said. “ 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, gng dowunnel.

  “We leave it for now. Even if we take the time to track it dht now, ces are it’s either luring us into an ambush or leading us in the wrong dire,” I replied. “Either way, it’s probably smarter to meet up first and 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 fr 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 pn.

  “Let’s move. The sooner we ect, 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 to the tuhe only one who didn’t immediately follow was Bandit, who kept gng at the tuhe 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 iigating. It robably nothing, but I still routed a squirrel into the tunnel, just to be safe.

  As we swiftly navigated through the tunnel, I closely monitored the map, making every effort to steer us towards the correct tunnels. However, it didn't take long for us to enter 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 o me.

  “There isn’t,” I replied. “In fact, there’s supposed to be an interse here.” I bit my lip for a sed before unholstering my thermal axe. “Gd I hrew this away,” I mumbled as I ha to Spooky. “Try a your way through.” The bear flicked a swit 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 uimated these Seventeens. They may be ging the yout 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. A moment ter a Model Fourteen moved into the tunnel beyond the polymer wall, further obstrug our path. At the same time, Bandit started panig, his seismisors were pig up a massive amount of movement from behind.

  “Fug… fuck!” I excimed. “Get ready! They’re ing!”

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

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

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

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

  Of course, I had to jinx it, as the first thing to careen around the tunnel’s er was a model Fourteen still accelerating. Thankfully I didn’t even have to give an order, Bob just rushed forward ahe beast head on. His fist ected to the monster’s face, and the creature practically exploded, spraying gore and causing the massive bulk to slide into him. Thankfully, with his spatial anchaged, he didn’t move an inch.

  Several smaller models, heavily wouried to crawl out from underh the ptes around its body befetting gunned down.

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

  “Got it,” Jesse replied. He said something I couldn’t hear, and a sed ter, a massive box nded by his feet. He spared no time ripping it open, revealing an absolutely massive on, nearly as rge as I was. As the man turned and aimed it at the wall behind us, the gun whined and the coils in the middle of the on glowed with an intense blue-white color. “You might want to move your bear,” he said.

  Spooky jumped out of the way a sed before a massive beam of psma burhrough the wall, slowly cutting through the Fourteen, and the wall of polymer oher side. It took about ten seds in total, a a molten hole where the beam cut, but it opened a path for us.

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

  “I already had it queued up, in case I . Pn fourteen,” he said simply as he rested the barrel of the still steaming on 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 psma cutter wouldn’t have been even half as effective. In that case, I would have goh something like pn seven, the smart mae gun.”

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

  Behind us, the Fourteen that Bob had caved in was slowly being shoved aside by the horde of antithesis behind it.

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

  “Probably a few minutes. Right now, it’s almost too hot to even carry,” he replied. Ihe 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 dey, the more roadblocks these Seventeens are going to throw up. We should get to the others.”

  Jesse didn’t argue. He just handed his neon to the moose, who burhe facade off its hands but was in no danger of taking actual damage, befrabbing his rifle. “Ready,” he said.

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

  Ba 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.