I worked with the igni and the sparkers to get the railgun assembly fixed. The power cabling had blown under the voltage load, which wasn't surprising since it was held together with literal sparker spit and wishful thinking. But I managed to jimmy it back up and get the capacitor banks charging again before the surviving tide of skittering onyx nymphs spilled over the ridge.

The kinetic mass driver (colloquially known as rods from God) packed the punch of a ballistic missile into a spike of iron the length of a pickup truck. Traveling at orbital speeds let Spinefish fire the rod from a modified railgun at something close to 12 kilometers per second. Even getting slowed some by the atmosphere, the kinetic energy it carried into the ground was enough to devastate and discombobulate the swarm. But null devils were spaceborn macro parasites. If it had been that easy to wipe them out, some wizard would have done it years ago.

"Hold the railguns!" I called as the muzzles started to rotate down. Instead, I scrambled up onto the back seat of the gun buggies. "We'll thin them down." Chuck swung in behind the controls while Armstrong took his place at the loader. A half-dozen other vehicles roared to life with us, engines sounding raw and rough without the Ifrit to smooth them. We'd barred any kind of magic from the drill site to evade the null devil notice until the very last minute. I'd almost forgotten what a goblin engine sounded like without one of the fire elementals rattling around in the combustion chamber.

Chuck noticed it too, grunting as he put the buggy in gear. "Feels rough without Balvaquon," he said.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"The Ifrit that runs my bike and my jet. Know's how to squeeze all we can out of the juice. He's off baiting the big jobs."

"Huh," I said. I had Taquaho riding much closer than shotgun almost constantly any time I was at the controls of a buggy, jet, or even rocket. It never occurred to me that the other pilots might have a particular Ifrit they liked to partner with.

We bumped along the uneven ground, sliding and bouncing more than usual thanks to Raphina's lower baseline gravity. We weren't in danger of flying off into the sunset, but we'd definitely gotten airborne more than once. Between you and me, I think Chuck was aiming for the bumps. We started to close the difference, and damn if the little ones weren't every bit as foul as their sires and matrons. Black faceted forms spilled over each other to get to us, crawling on spindly legs or dragging themselves with massive, malformed arms as they bounded across the floor of the valley.

"Alright, let's—woooah! Look out!"

Chuck yanked the controls to the left, turning us hard to avoid a stream of red liquid that had shot across the hundred chooms separating our lines.

"Not cool," I said, watching the grass sizzle and smoke where the discharge had landed. "Acid is not cool. Armstrong, let them know we don't approve."

"Thought ye'd never ask, boss," said Armstrong. He connected the ammo belt to my gun mount as I swung the muzzle toward the nymphs and began to spin up the barrels. Armstrong held the ammo belt clear to avoid jams and gave me the thumbs up. I nodded back and hammered my thumbs on the triggers. The belt blurred in Armstrong's hands as the goblin version of a minigun belched a stream of rockettes into the coming swarm. Chitin flew, and dozens of the creatures stopped dead in their tracks or tumbled back. I put my weight into turning the mount, sweeping my fire across the front ranks of the approaching aliens. Chuck got us turned around, and Armstrong spun the entire gun mount to keep me lined up with the swarm. The rest of the buggies followed suit, and I should add that they were more effective than me, owing to their poacher subjob skill. The remainder of the swarm whittled down as we raced ahead of them. My ammo belt ran dry about two kilometers out from the drill site.

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In the brief lull, I heard the shrieking whistle of missile motors. I looked overhead to the gun platforms, where three magic-seeking missiles had just launched to the west.

"Boss," said Chuck, hand pressed to his radio headset, "Eileen's got eyes on two more null devils coming high over the canyons to the west. Says her dreadnaughty wing can handle one before it gets to the drill."

"Tell her we'll take the other," I said. "And step on it!"

We surged ahead of the other buggies as Chuck found the lead in his foot, and it was all I could do to hold on to the gun for dear life. We'd cut down most of the swarm that had managed to survive the mass driver impact. Back at the drill site, igni with RPPs and mortars began to fire as the swarm drew into range. Just a few minutes later, we surged past the line and skid to a stop. Several goblins ran up, carrying a box of new rockette belts between them. I hopped off the buggy so they could climb up and reload the gun.

I whistled for the ignis manning the missile racks on the western side. He looked down and waved. "Hiya, boss!"

"Incoming on your side."

"Come on, lads, put them legs to work." The ignis put his hips against the side of the missile rack and with the help of another dozen forest goblins, nudged it to the side. After about a second, it snapped back to the original position. The ignis waved down. "Got us a solid lock, boss!"

"Fire away."

Goblins at the back of the racks brought strikers up to ignite the missile motors by hand. One of them was vaporized for his troubles, but the rest managed to get out of the way as three missiles ignited and shot off the racks. They sped up into the air, and then course-corrected themselves to a flat trajectory as they shot over the inland sea towards the canyons west of our site. The null devil was still too far to see from the ground, but I heard the distant whump of the missiles hitting their mark.

I looked around and found the sparker carrying my radio. "Eileen?"

"Good hit, boss, it's limping now. But it ain't the only one coming. Two smaller devils further to the north over them steam vents, and another crawler to the south coming out of the water with more of the little creepers."

More and more of the null devils were keying in on the fact that something was happening at our drill site. Whether by instinct or intelligence, they were converging on our position from further and further away. Between ground, air, and space weapons, we had a field of fire making quick work of individuals and small swarms. But how stressed would our defenses get, and how thin would our resources stretch when faced with battles on multiple fronts?

"Alright, thanks for the warning," I said.

Two of the railguns on the balloon platforms overhead fired, both aiming to the north. I whistled for the attention of the hobgoblin gunners and the noblins manning the magic-seeking missile launchers and mortars. "Listen up! Targets coming from the west, north, and a ground swarm south. We won't have Spinefish support for this one. I want missiles to the north to slow them down, and fire on the western one as soon as it clears the canyons.

The radio crackled again. "King Apollo, my kin and I are down to reserve fuel and are nearly returned to the dig site. I have been monitoring communications between you and Eileen, and we shall attempt to thin the southern swarm."

"Good to hear your voice, Taquoho," I said. "Any losses on your end?"

"We were fortunate. We destroyed one of the null devils without losses. But we, too, sensed the flare of energy at the drill site and the null devils ceased pursuing us. The other two will reach you in perhaps a half hour."

I could just hear the dull roar of the Ifrit delta jets in the distance.

"Alright, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. You're clear for your attack run."

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