As soon as Waits Until Sunrise stepped out of the barracks roost it was obvious that the weather was completely abnormal; he paused, staring up at the spiralling clouds. The sky, already dark, was getting rapidly blacker, as if the sun was moving away. A set of claws shoved him forwards and he turned, beak snapping, but it was only Dusty, who glanced pointedly at the State Security trooper glaring in his direction. "Scuttlebutt is that the pony princess blasted half the western ocean to vapour to make this to cover her invasion," he shouted, giving Waits another push.
"The sun! Skies above, the sun!" Feeling numb he cantered forward, heading for the hangar.
"Well, she isn't called the Solar Princess for nothing!" The gryphons ducked inside, running between the rows of hanging boost suits, spreading out to find one of the right size, then unpicking the carefully secured straps and attachment points.
The wind howled again, ruffling Waits' feathers as he struggled to get the underharness straps in the correct orientation. Both doors of the hardened shelter were open and the wind blew straight down the middle of the low building, making the flight packs dance and jiggle on their suspension lines. The four squadrons worked in silence, not looking at the trio of Talons covering them with their short-barrelled machine guns. It's not them that will kill us; my bet's on this unnatural storm... not even the Equestrians can match that for danger.
Waits pushed his forelegs through the rigid shoulder loops, catching hold of the master connector and trapping it between his hind legs, the metal cold and angular against the thinly furred flesh. Forelegs freed, he hunted down the thick webbing, finally locating it where it had become tangled with the suspension rig. Two quick movements and he was locked in; it was the work of seconds more to complete the fitting.
A yank on the power bus lit the afterthought of a display, nothing more than a little grid of lights, and made the engine whine as it started to take fuel from the paired tanks of cyclohexane that ran along his back. A warm wind brushed over Waits' tail, making the black tuft at its tip dance. I hate these things; always make me think my arse is on fire. A claw-flick shut the little turbine back down, and Waits disconnected from the suspension lines, lumbering forwards to join the others starting to gather at the far end of the shelter.
"Well?" he snarled at the closest trooper. "Are you going to arm us, or is it going to be claws against metal-matrix ceramic?" The Talon shrugged, then whispered something into his throat mike, smartly stepping sideways as a low-slung truck was wheeled in by the tired-looking armourer, who was also being watched by another pair of the State Security troopers. On it were stacks of grey rectangular boxes, all marked with explosives trefoils.
Waits strode forward, reaching for one of the weapon packs, then froze at a sharp beak-snap from somewhere behind him. Turning slowly, he glared at Reaper. "What now? Every second you waste, the ponies get closer."
"In case you should get any funny ideas," Reaper said, pitching his voice loud enough to reach all the pilots, "I have authorised the air defences to fire upon any object that leaves the confines of the valley. We will be watching... have a nice flight." He stepped back, making a grandiose gesture with one foreclaw.
"You really know how to inspire the troops, you know that?" Waits grabbed one of the boxes, passing it to Dusty Feathers, before taking one for himself and retreating to the arming stations that ringed the shelter. "Gods-damned rutting suicide mission," he muttered. "What is there here for the ponies, anyway?" He snapped the seals on the crate, lifting the lid.
Within, nestled on scuffed plastic blocks, was the angular shape of the cannon. Lifting it out with a grunt, Waits attached the receiver to the thigh straps and the barrel to lugs on Dusty's chest pack, then pulled the fire control unit forward so it rested halfway between front and hind legs, just the right place for the forelimb to curl around it when in high-speed flight. The ammunition pack came next, a compact drum that fitted between the fuel tanks in the middle of his back, connected to the gun by a linkless feed chute. Last on were the missiles; a pair of fat tubes that clipped to either flank, just under Dusty's wings.
Gesturing for the other gryphon to spread his wings, Waits tore open the wet weather pack, lifting the applicator and spraying the oily, fluorinated liquid liberally over the feathers. Dusty twisted, opening up his pinions so that the foul-smelling milky stuff could reach all his flight surfaces. "Gonna take a dozen baths to get the stuff off; can't stand the taste of it when I preen."
"I'm no fan of it, either, but better a bad taste than getting waterlogged. The valley floor is still mined... I wouldn't want to have to land there." Throwing the now empty canister to one side, he eyed the other weapon pack. Dusty bounced up and down a couple of times, settling the boost suit and making the cannon barrel bob suggestively. He winked at Waits, beak half open in an avian grin. Waits suppressed a groan, then sighed. "Worst case of penis envy I've ever seen," he said, making the weak joke that Dusty was expecting.
The other gryphon's grin widened, then he picked up the other weapon pack and slid it along the ground to Waits. "Come on, let's get this over with."
===
Nothing could quite match the feeling of air across the feathers, especially after such crowded confinement. It's just a pity I'm carrying all this junk. Wings beating to gain altitude, Waits felt the extra effort required to lift the boost suit, and strained to regain his normal flight performance. To his left, slightly above and behind, was Dusty, almost invisible through the stinging, pounding rain.
The view through his visor was a little better; the HUD fused the non-existent external view with that from the thermal imager and stored terrain profiles, leaving him with a smooth wire-frame in green neon, carpeted with the blurred grey-scale of the heat sensitive camera. Resolution was poor -- partly because of the low pixel count from the HUD projector, and partly from the rain interfering with even the infrared wavelengths. More worrying was how the wireframe occasionally didn't actually seem to follow the thermal surface, and Waits was left wondering when the local maps had been updated.
At least the rocks are still warm from the sun; this witch-spawned weather hasn't completely cooled them down. The thermal camera showed him the cool snake of the river, meandering down the centre of the glacial valley, and Waits turned to follow it, heading for the blue diamond of the target indicator. Behind him, two dozen of his fellows did the same, spreading out into their squadrons, only visible as a bare flicker of infrared from their idling turbines.
"Missile warning!" The voice, containing as much urgency and authority as the voice actor could force into the words, sent a thrill of panic dancing down Waits' spine, and he glanced down at the crude electronic warfare overlay. Lights flashed, bright, insistent points of fluorescent red, on the rear sector of the stylised disk, and Waits hunched his shoulders, quickly glancing backwards.
Yellow plumes, bright enough to actually illuminate the valley walls, were lancing up in sprays from rectilinear blocks around the airfield. These infrared dark objects, trailing flame-hot jets bright enough to saturate his camera, accelerated at a frightening rate, curling over to lance overhead. All this was in complete silence, and Waits counted the seconds in his head, ready for the massed crackle of sonic booms.
The missiles flicked by, disappearing into the rain as their solid fuel boosters were jettisoned, vanishing over the valley wall in the direction of the Equestrians. We're out of range of the field's guns especially if I stay low... for all Render's threats, there's no way those State Sec idiots could get me. Hit the emergency jettison, dump all that incriminating hot metal and electronics... I could be away and far from here before anyone found me. The idea was tempting, extremely so, but it would mean abandoning his country to the apparently limited mercy of that nightmare-in-white, Celestia.
More to the point, I'd be abandoning Dusty. Waits swallowed, pushing the idea away. Whatever its flaws, Razorclaw is mine. I won't see it dotted with lakes of glass without a fight.
The enemy was approaching fast, so Waits reached back and flicked off the safety for his gun with one taloned foreleg, the other pulling the charging handle to feed the first caseless round into the breech. "Flight, go hot," he said, opening the mesh radio link with a click of his beak. "Testing." A quick check of the local surroundings, not really needed as he, as the new flight leader, was at the front, and Waits gripped the paired triggers where they rested just below his sternum. The trick is not to look down... The words of his old combat instructor came back, and Waits nearly smiled.
A light touch and the guide beam came on, a pulsing indicator on his visor taking the place of the invisible and carefully coded infrared laser. Waits swept his head from side to side, moving the dot within the circular reticule that appeared on his HUD. The reticule remained stationary, bore sighted on the cannon itself. A flex of the wing tilted his course, shifting the circle and placing it over a likely looking clump of bushes on the valley floor. Waits pointed his beak at the unfortunate bush, then...
Beneath his belly, the cannon fired a single shot, the solid slam of recoil making him grunt. At the same instant there was the slap of muzzle exhaust, hot and pungent, on his throat and beak, the sensation strangely at odds with the cold rain that had long ago worked past his oiled feathers and soaked his skin. The projectile, already supersonic, accelerated further when the tiny solid fuel motor fired, subtle motions of its piezoelectric nose bending its course towards the particularly coded patch of infrared laser light. A breath later the bush exploded, and Waits straightened his neck.
And what are the odds I'll get close enough to use the thing? At least the missiles have a decent range, but there's no test firing them.
A touch of the thumb-claw control awoke the seeker heads behind their frangible, transparent covers, and the broadband cameras within started to search the sky for anything of interest to their tiny, paranoid minds. Green 'no lock' indicators appeared on his lower left and right, so Waits refined the designated search area to the expected zone of the Equestrian's appearance.
The top-down map gave him the best view; it was obvious this was just a small group of aircraft, on some sortie out to the critical infrastructure deeper in country, perhaps one of the larger bases, or the heavy mass-drivers that protected them. The bases' few remaining aerodynes had gone out to meet the intruders, preceded by the salvo launch of the air defence missiles, but they were all gone now; playback had shown a series of kills in quick succession, but it was obvious that these were just decoys, and the three fighters had blown through the aerodynes in a moment, leaving nothing but burning wreckage in their wake. Only three, though. They normally come out to play in fours... at least we got one.
They were coming in low, just a little below the speed of sound, far faster than a gryphon in a boost suit could ever hope to manage, even in a power dive, which really only gave them one chance to intercept. He picked the engagement plan, one of a clawful he and the rest of the pilots had devised while they were finishing the load-out, and sent to the rest of the gryphons. At least it has the advantage of simplicity.
The time indicator blinked twice, and Waits pushed the suit's little turbine to full power, pulling in his wings to reduce drag. There was a steady, rapidly building push in the middle of his back, and the high-pitched howl of the engine sang through the rigid carapace armour, sending hot air blasting over his hindquarters and tail. Speed climbed rapidly, nearly as fast as the fuel indicator was dropping, but Waits held his course, heading straight for the rocky wall of the steep-sided valley.
A quick check of his six confirmed the crude tactical map, showing the rest of the flight doing the same manoeuvre. The cliff was growing larger, filling his entire world, so close that even the thermal imager was showing the scrubby bushes and low trees that clung to the nearly sheer side-- Waits twisted his wings, feeling the strain of the boost suit's extra mass on his shoulders and the rush of blood to his foreclaws and hindpaws, holding it, holding it, then turning over at the top of the arc as the cliff-edge shot by only a few wingspans away.
Feathers held back, giving his missile seekers the best field of view, he goosed them into priority search; the risk of false positives was high, but at least the things would find something in this mess. That, and the Equestrians had the ability to make really stealthy kit. The low-pitched burble of the missile's 'hunting' sound changed to the pulsing warble of 'lock' in his right, then left, ear, the tactical repeater throwing up blue tracking boxes somewhere in the right direction. Good enough for me. Waits For Sunrise reached between his hind legs and grabbed his tail with his left foreclaw, then held down the paired triggers with his right.
A brutal flash of heat washed down each flank, hot enough that he was sure the short-cropped fur on his hips curled and singed, then the missiles were away. Kicked out of their tubes by charges of solid fuel that burned so fast that it was completely consumed before the missile had gone more than half its length, they travelled silently on ballistic trajectories, then lit their main motors and accelerated away.
Waits changed heading, killing his turbine and dropping down to skim within claws-reach of the rocky ridge the flight had just climbed above. Warning receiver shouting in his ears, he manoeuvred violently, just in case he was outside the arming distance of one of the missiles fired, relaxing as the paranoid device decided that nothing was actually on course to hit him. Overhead there came the crackling roar of massed exhausts, as every gryphon fired at the same time.
===
There was a swarm of thermal plumes coming over a ridge, tiny things compared to the more diffuse heat signatures of the aerodynes, but at a higher temperature. Vague reflections in the infrared gave them a shape and a size; they were cruciform with a central engine and a five metre wingspan. As Echelon watched, the blurry outline of the wings flexed and pulsed. That explains it; must be those 'boost suits' of theirs, the pegasus thought, feeling slightly ill. I had hoped they wouldn't have the nerve to fly naked in this weather. The thermal signature got abruptly brighter, small things accelerating rapidly. More missiles, great.
There was nothing for it; the enemy were right on top of the prison complex. Can't leave all those scouts hunting my FOALs. A waggle of his jaw activated the master arm and selected dumb fletchette 'canister' rockets. Lips parting, he gripped the trigger and bit down.
The Loup-Garou bucked as the weapons were kicked out of its belly-bay by Willow's augmented telekinesis, then their own motors fired and pushed them supersonic. The range wasn't that long, only ten kilometres or so, and flight time was short. The targets suddenly got brighter again, sprouting their own thermal plumes, then twisted and spun, obviously receiving some warning of his launch.
Echelon's canister rounds, along this those from Green and Red Two, detonated a hundred meters from the wave of gryphon flyers. Each contained several hundred tungsten needles and, under the influence of carefully programmed explosives, they sprayed out at precise angles, ending up as a flying disk only one projectile thick. The little dots of infrared, still scattering, flared and flashed, some becoming large and enormously bright, while others just disappeared as if they'd never existed.
I've seen what those things can do on a test range, Echelon thought, the feeling of sickness returning, then all considerations vanished as the gryphon missiles arrived. A dense wave of flying metal, closing at almost three times the speed of sound, filled the tactical overlay with red diamonds, all prioritised by the threat they posed to the Loup-Garou. An ear flick released packages of flares and short-lived RF jammers, while the tape cutter in the nose keened as it pumped out clouds of fluttering metal foil.
"On it." Willow's voice had that distracted tone again, and red light grew like an aura around the spellcraft amplifier's antennae. Missiles swerved and fell out of the sky, some dissolving into streams of flower petal confetti, while others simply detonated upon striking immaterial and very short-lived disks of pastel light or grew great, spidery fans of metal crystals and tumbled out of control.
Only a half dozen of the fifty or so missiles actually made it through the arcane defences and these, without the sophisticated anticountermeasure systems of the Slugfish, curved off in random directions, following infrared and radar ghosts. Explosions dotted the sky, but the Loup-Garou were long gone. Echelon goosed the throttles, punching through the pitiful scattering of still airborne gryphons in a moment, then dropped into the valley.
Radar traces lit up from points all along the steep walls and flat floor, highlighted with crawling points of blue where his fighter's threat assessment systems had found something that concerned them. Many were marked as priority, already assessed and located by the Friendship Express' clairvoyance surveillance, and had additional signifiers for gun platforms or munitions bunkers. Ground attack was Willow's job, so it was only moments before those markers changed from points to squares.
She took a selection of the closest artillery sites, earmarked as probable anti-air installations, muttering in a rapid, abbreviated language to the unicorns on the other fighters. More diamonds appeared, the pale blue that denoted targets designated by the rest of the squadron, then they contracted as missiles started to fly.
Echelon twitched his lips, starting the automatic sequencer. Two meters below his hooves, a set of doors snapped open, and the Loup-Garou seemed to float, jumping upwards as it lost two tonnes of weight all at once.
===
Wings straining, Chirr tumbled in the dark, rain-thrashed air, trying to distinguish sky from rock. His artificial horizon spun at the same rate, and he ignored the maelstrom, twisting and flexing his wing membranes until the little two-tone ball stabilised. Chirr spun, a tight turn balanced on one wing-tip, sweeping around until he found the markers for the FOALs, then pumped his wings and headed after them.
The valley walls, slick with moisture and near invisible, rushed past, so Chirr opened his throat and squealed. The echoes were weak, distorted things, coloured by his rapid motion and the myriad of water drops in the way. The added information made his flight that much more certain, and he rapidly gained ground.
Thunderous detonations echoed from the rocks, making strange and brilliant false images in his head; Chirr gritted his teeth and hunched his shoulders, trying to ignore the shuffling motion of the exoweapons on his shoulders. The things were horribly alive, now he was in battle mode, and moved about as they hunted for the source of the explosions. Nervously, Chirr checked their safety settings, making sure that they would only find targets, and not actually open fire. Another few ear flicks made them quiescent, stilling the shuffling of spidery legs around his barrel.
Trailblazer and the others were already at the prison's landing platform when Chirr swept in for a cantered landing on the slick, rain-soaked steel mesh deck. Trailblazer nodded in his direction, gesturing for him to fall in behind Blevie, then returned to intently watching Nightstorm as she worked on the doors. Big things, large enough to take the rear end of a gryphon cargo transport, they were made of segmented metal plates, and were intimidatingly solid-looking.
Pale orange fire danced around Night's horn, the only part of her exposed to the elements, a similar glow from the lock controls around the much less imposing personnel door inset in one corner. The microphone spines, slender things mounted high up on each pony's helmet that mimicked the movement of the operator's ears, made a few quick, sweeping movements, then the arcane light about the door vanished. Chirr's brow furrowed. There's something familiar... he thought, smiled. Waggle code looks really odd without real ears. Now he knew to look for it, the motions were obvious -- the language, devised back in the time when radios hadn't been invented, was perfect for when you needed silence, or when your mouth was busy holding some tool.
'Done, watchers neutralised,' Night's ears said, and she shuffled back a pace.
'Standby.' Trailblazer nodded, then moved past her to crouch next to the opening. A slight touch of a hoof pushed the door open a fraction, then a slim tentacle uncoiled from under his muzzle, its tip sliding through the gap. There was a long pause, so long that Chirr thought they might have encountered a real problem, then the pegasus retracted his probe. 'Clear'.
Really? Chirr blinked, then shook his head. There really should be someone on guard, even if they do routinely clip the prisoners... perhaps they think all the guns outside are enough. He stepped forwards, over the threshold and into the prison, gently closing the door behind him. Inside was a plain concrete box, easily big enough for a score of gryphons, and another large metal door, the same design as the first. It was completely dark, apart from the pale, shifting radiance of Night's magic, but a combination of thermal infrared and light amplification rendered the scene in bright shades of grey.
Nightstorm was just attaching a grey metal disk to the underside of a security camera cluster in the middle of the ceiling. 'Done, got thirty minutes,' she waggled, trotting silently to the inner doors and examining a control panel. This time she shook her head, and reached into a conformal pannier to pull out a boxy device, making one of her exoweapons shuffle out of the way.
Chirr swallowed, his ears folding back. I never really got a chance to see them on somepony else... The armed machines, powered by a mixture of electronics and spellcraft, were disturbingly biological, and looked like nothing more than oversized ticks. The illusion was heightened by the situation; their wide, flat bodies, each with six slender legs, moved over the mare's body like they were hunting for a place to insert their mouthparts.
While Trailblazer watched Night work, Blevie was also busy with the outer door. Unlike the others, her suit fairly bulged with external storage panniers, wide things that ran from shoulder to tail and spine to belly. Her pair of exoweapons were mercifully still, lying in the groove between the panniers, legs stretched out to the front and back, turning them from ticks to something more snake-like. If Chirr squinted, he could almost think they were a part of her suit, until one of them moved, dipping its head into a pannier and coming out with a flat disk, passing it to the mare. She gripped it with her suit's mandible, tucking it in an unobtrusive place between two of the big metal segments.
The dedicated lockbreaker did its work within a dozen breaths, popping the inset door open with the harsh clack of a solenoid bolt. Everypony froze, waiting tensely while Night checked the area behind the door, then relaxed when she flicked her suit's ears. 'Two gryphons. Watchers neutralised.'
A video feed, popped up in Chirr's visor, showing a brightly lit ramp that ended in an open grid of heavy mesh, with a small guard post to one side. A pair of gryphons sat in the area, little more than a marked area on the concrete floor. One was leaning heavily against the meshwork, while the other seemed half asleep on a folding cot, his foreclaws stretched out like he was a housecat. Both were armed, short barrelled firearms that attached to harness over one shoulder or the other, designed so that the gryphon could shoot on the run or, by pulling it forwards, fire it over a barricade. Behind the mesh was another boxy space, just like the one at the top of the ramp, and another large door.
One of Trailblazer's exoweapons jumped from his withers, landed silently and scuttled like a low-slung spider, one of those ones with long legs that can move like the wind, to the door, turning sideways to slip through the crack. One of Night's followed it, clambering down her front leg before assuming the same break-neck pace. Chirr watched them on the little inset video window; each of the machines had the same photochromic coatings as the armour suits, and had changed colour to match the black anti-slip coating on the ramp. They were barely visible even though he knew where to look.
Resolutely, he ignored the siren call of the video feed and turned his back on the pair of ponies, watching the outer door in case something should follow them in. He awoke his own weapons and instructed them to stay motionless at the normal attachment point; their short, wide mouths were just forward of his hips and, although their legs remained still, their bodies tilted and twisted, following the motions of his eyes to aim wherever he looked.
'Ready.' The waggle of Trailblazer's ears attracted Chirr's attention; despite his best efforts he found the little video window irresistible. It had spawned two more views, low down things that bobbed violently then froze, as the exoweapons made little dashes towards their targets, covered with traceries of targeting information that were far too small to actually read.
'Chiropt, come. Take left.'
Chirr blinked, then jumped to Trailblazer's side, ignoring the questioning look from Nightstorm, who stared at the pegasus, then shrugged minutely. There were two subdued thumps, then the gryphons jerked and thrashed, falling sideways with limbs covered with a spiders-web of electrical arcs. Orange magic closed over them, holding their beaks closed, as Trailblazer launched himself through the door and half flew, half fell down the slope.
Wings popping out of his carapace panels, Chirr followed him down, landing with a solid thump on 'his' gryphon. The instant before he hit the electricity vanished, the gryphon going limp, little trembling vibrations making his claws twitch. A flick opened the end of his muzzle guard, then Chirr gripped a set of self locking restraints, hooking them over his prisoner's forelegs and beak, pulling them tight to close the beak and hold it together with the claws in a tight bundle.
Another flick locked the hind legs together and bound them to the other restraints, curling the gryphon's body into an untidy circle. The creature was recovering from the shocks and resisting feebly, but a quick hoof to the ribs left him too busy trying to breathe through a closed beak to worry about struggling. He stripped off the gun harness and dragged the guard over to one side, placing him next to the one Trailblazer had already trussed, then carefully plucked the spider-like shock cartridge from the guard's flank. Alternating red and green lights pulsed on the body of the thing, indicating it was safe to touch, but still held plenty of power.
He winked down at the glaring orange eye, then shifted his gaze to trace a line down the gryphon's neck and back. I've not had the chance to study too many of these at this distance, but I'm sure that's not normal. He ran a hoof-boot along the guard's spine, feeling the irregularities in bone and musculature. There was far more muscle than there should have been, and it bulged out in odd places. 'Pegasus, look.'
Trailblazer took one look and nodded, gesturing at his own prisoner. "I think we can lay off waggle, now we're in, Chirr," he murmured. The same sorts of defects were there, but they were not identical; this gryphon had odd bulges to the bones of her wings, so much so that she had trouble closing them and probably would not be able to fly in a straight line.
Night and Blevie trotted down the ramp to join them, a combination of their soft shoes and the rubberised ramp making their hooves near silent. The earth pony accepted a wide, circular drug patch from one of her exoweapons-cum-utility robots, holding it delicately between her teeth while she used her muzzle to nose between a gryphon's hind legs, placing it on the thin fur near his torso. "And you didn't even have to buy me a drink first," she whispered in his ear, gently using a hoof to make sure the patch had good skin contact. The gryphon had gone rigid at her touch, straining against the plastic ties, but his muscles slowly relaxed and his eyes reluctantly closed.
Night was doing the same with the other guard, although with magic, then quickly fixed another of her little metal disks to the camera cluster in the ceiling. "Really, Blevie, you are getting worse."
"Just thought I'd reduce the tension a little; the poor dear was probably quite stressed by the whole thing."
I think I'd have bad dreams, drugs or no, if the last thing I saw was Blevie in that suit getting too close to my hindquarters. Chirr shook his head, then carefully picked up the guard's keys, cocking his head at Trailblazer. The pegasus nodded, and Chirr unlocked the gate.
"I can't believe that there is so little activity, but I think from this point we'll lose stealth. Stay loaded with shockers, unless we come across armed resistance. We cannot get bogged down... kill them if you have to. We'll go in first; you take care of anything we miss."
Trailblazer looked straight at Chirr as he said that, and the chiropt nodded. We've all been briefed, but I am the unknown here.
"Chirr, we're going to be sharing for this... I'm sorry you can't join in," Night said, her horn starting to glow. Sparkles of orange light condensed about Trailblazer and Blevie's heads, seeming to sink through their currently pale grey ceramic armour helmets.
Taking a step back, Chirr felt a new set of shivers running down his spine. This was only rumour... but I can see the sense of it. There was that unicorn mare back when I was on secondment, she offered but I didn't really... He watched the others closely, filled with an intense curiosity. What was her name, Sunny something? Perhaps I should look her up, if she's made it through all this.
The herd of FOALs, who already moved with the long familiarity of ponies who had lived and worked together for years, suddenly started to move in complete synchronisation. A quick shuffle and pirouette; it could almost have been the opening moves of some formal dance, but had the feeling of ritual about it. Something to make sure the magic has taken hold, I'll bet.
Exoweapons leaped from their shoulders and clustered around the door, those from Blevie crawling over the surface and laying a trail flat disks they went, then returning to her side. All the FOAL's ears flicked, in perfect synchrony, 'Ready,' the signal just an afterthought for his benefit.
Chirr's ears folded back, half in reflex, even though his suit would protect his hearing, and half from a crawling sense of unease at the unnatural movements. He let his own weapons have a little more freedom and, released from their restrictions, they shuffled around his body, constantly hunting for the best shooting positions as his gaze shifted. He crouched as three pairs of ears flicked again: Once, twice, three--
A ragged arc of the gate vanished in a cloud of dust and metal splinters, blowing inwards as if bucked by a giant's hoof.