One Inch Tall, One Power a Day - Swarm in the Crabgrass

She shaved four thick rounds off the cured pork sausage, tossed them into the broth alongside a spoonful of spicy pepper paste from Gidley’s spice kit, and watched the fat melt into glistening orange beads across the surface.

She ate directly from the pot with a pair of wooden chopsticks, blowing on the steaming noodles before shoveling them down in three massive, greedy mouthfuls. The heat flared in her chest, washing away the lingering metallic taste of adrenaline.

“First day without immunity,” she said between bites, looking at the heavy iron door. “Time to see how fast the world moves when it’s trying to eat you.”

She washed the pot with a splash of water from the condenser, strapped the leather cuirass tight over her wool undershirt, and manifested Cinder in the center of the room.

The soldier ant clicked its mandibles in greeting, long antennae sweeping the floorboards before dipping its head so Wren could swing her leg over the wide chitinous thorax. She hooked the safety sling of her hand-crossbow over her right shoulder, checked the tension on the five-inch needle at her back, and unlocked the heavy deadbolt.

The door swung outward with a low wooden creak.

Outside, the Micro-Realm was different. The heavy, humid stillness of the first three days was gone, replaced by a constant, nervous rustle that rippled through the lower stalks of the crabgrass jungle. Shadows darted between the chickweed stems. High in the fescue canopy, leathery wings snapped and fluttered with the sharp, violent cadence of hunting predators.

Wren nudged Cinder with her heels. The ant surged down the packed clay ramp, six spiked legs moving with a smooth piston-stroke that propelled them forward at six meters per second.

Wind whipped through the seams of her hood, carrying the sharp scent of crushed clover and dry quartz dust. Cinder’s jointed legs absorbed every pebble, root-arch, and mud gully, holding her torso steady enough to raise her crossbow one-handed while her thighs locked the chitinous saddle-ridges.

Her interface map laid out a smooth circular sweep around the western boundary. Within fortyfive minutes, she had scooped three One-Star Caches from the brush without even dismounting, leaning over Cinder’s flank to touch the iron boxes and send them straight into her haversack.

She pulled Cinder to a halt beside a rotting acorn shell to mark a fourth box on her map when the canopy above exploded.

THWACK-CRACK!

A massive, bright-green shape dropped out of the thistle leaves, landing four feet ahead of Cinder with a ground-shaking thud.

A mature Carolina locust, easily ten inches long from its blunt, armored head to the tips of its leathery, folded wings. Its compound eyes were the color of tarnished brass, staring straight at Wren with cold, mechanical hunger. Two massive hind legs, thick as pickaxe handles and lined with double rows of triangular black spurs, coiled against the clay.

The beast lunged forward in a low-angle leap, its serrated mandibles snapping open with the precision of a hydraulic shear trained on Wren’s throat.

“Down!” Wren shouted. She threw her upper body forward, pressing her chest flat against Cinder’s headplate.

The locust’s heavy, armored abdomen whistled through the empty air four inches above her back, the spiked tibial spurs raking across her helmet in a screech that sounded like a nail dragged down a chalkboard.

Cinder held its ground. As the locust sailed overhead and landed awkwardly in the dirt behind them, the ant spun on its rear legs, its secondary mandibles snapping open with a hiss of pressurized formic acid.

Wren pushed herself upright, spun her torso sixty degrees in the saddle, and leveled the handcrossbow.

The locust was already turning, its wings keening at high speed like a circular saw winding up to cut again. The distance was two feet.

Thwip.

The micro-bolt left the rail with a clean, pneumatic hiss. The guidance matrix took over, the steel tip snapping through the thin cervical membrane between the locust’s head and thorax with a crunch of bursting chitin.

The insect shrieked—a high, rattling hiss of escaping air—and dropped to the loam, its long hind legs kicking wildly in death spasms that shredded the nearby clover stems.

Wren jumped down from the saddle, pulled Gidley’s gas chainsaw from her belt, yanked the cord, and severed the thrashing head with a single downward stroke.

Puff.

The locust carcass dissolved into a swirl of emerald light, leaving behind a brown butcher-paper parcel tied with coarse jute twine.

Wren picked it up.

Fire-Roasted Grasshopper Skewers (Vacuum Packed) x20

Nutritional Profile: High protein, seasoned with sea salt and cumin. Restores 4 satiety points per skewer.

“Monster loot drops,” Wren said, blinking behind her visor. “The system actually wants us hunting these things.”

She tossed the skewers into her pack, wiped a splash of green hemolymph from Cinder’s front leg, and remounted.

She gathered two more caches along the southern ridge over the next thirty minutes.

Then, as they crossed a narrow ditch choked with rotting pine needles, a dark, greasy shadow darted across the sky and landed on a dandelion stem five feet above them.

Wren looked up and felt the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up.

An American cockroach. Eight inches of flat, oily, reddish-brown armor, its greasy pronotum glistening in the afternoon sun as if polished into a shield. Two whip-like antennae, longer than Wren’s entire body, swept the air in frantic, twitching figure-eights, tasting the formic scent rolling off Cinder’s carapace.

Wren gagged. “God, I hate those things.”

She brought the crossbow up, aimed for the small gap between the roach’s head and wing covers, and pulled the trigger.

Thwip.

The roach was blindingly fast. As the sear tripped, its long, spine-covered legs kicked, dropping its body off the stem a split second before the bolt arrived. The steel tip grazed the edge of its right wing casing with a clink, spinning harmlessly into the weeds.

The roach hit the ground running, its legs churning the loam into red dust as it scrambled straight toward Cinder’s rear abdomen.

“Cinder, move!” Wren yelled.

The ant bolted forward, but the roach launched into a low, buzzing flight, spreading its leathery outer wings and slamming directly onto Cinder’s rear gaster with a thud. The impact threw Cinder off balance, the ant skidding sideways into a clump of chickweed.

The roach’s spiny legs wrapped around the ant’s waist, its mouthparts reaching downward to gnaw through the soft intersegmental membrane.

Wren twisted around in the saddle, unclipped her sewing needle, and drove the five-inch steel shaft straight down into the roach’s thorax.

Squelch.

The needle pierced two inches deep, releasing a foul, oily stench like rotting grease.

The roach shrieked—a dry, clicking hiss—and kicked its barbed hind legs directly into Wren’s chest. The leather cuirass absorbed the blunt force, but the sheer leverage tore the roach free from Cinder’s back. It scrambled skyward on rattling wings, Wren’s sewing needle protruding from its back as straight and rigid as a flagpole.

“Hey! Bring that back, you bastard!” Wren yelled, reaching for her crossbow.

The roach didn’t flee into the distance. It circled twenty feet in the air, rubbed its spiny hind legs against its wing covers, and emitted a high, piercing stridulation—a grating, rhythmic shriek that carried across fifty yards of crabgrass.

Within three seconds, the weeds around the clearing began to scream.

BZZZZZ-CLATTER-CLATTER!

Seven massive, reddish-brown shapes launched into the air from the surrounding thistle patches, their wings beating the heavy afternoon heat into a furious, greasy gale as they formed a hunting circle directly above Wren’s head.

Eight giant cockroaches, circling like armored vultures.

“Run, Cinder!” Wren shouted, slamming her heels into the ant’s flanks.

Cinder accelerated to maximum velocity, six legs blurring as they tore across the moss, but the swarm was airborne. They dove in alternating pairs, spiny legs reaching down to snatch at Wren’s shoulders, heavy carapaces buzzing inches above her visor.

A roach dove from the left, its claws raking across the hazard suit’s hood and tearing a three-inch gash in the synthetic fabric.

Wren pulled her paring knife and slashed upward, clipping a wing, but two more dropped from the right, their massive bodies slamming into Cinder’s side and driving the ant into the dirt. They were going to get swarmed and ripped apart in thirty seconds flat.

Wren reached into her haversack utility slot. Her fingers closed around the cold, textured pineapple casing of the miniaturized fragmentation grenade she’d looted from the Queen’s hoard.

“Eat this, you filthy roaches!”

She hooked her pinky through the steel ring, pulled the split pin with a violent jerk of her wrist, and held the spoon down for one second. She hauled back with her right arm and hurled the grenade straight up into the center of the diving swarm.

“DOWN!”

She threw her entire body over Cinder’s head, tucking her chin into the leather cuirass and wrapping her arms over her neck.

BOOOOOOM!

A concussive thunderclap tore through the clearing, the shockwave flattening thirty square feet of crabgrass under a weight like a giant’s footfall. A brilliant flash of white-orange fire shredded the sky, followed instantly by the whistling hiss of two hundred high-velocity steel shrapnel fragments tearing through chitin, wings, and plant stems.

The blast wave slammed into Wren’s back, driving the breath from her lungs and pressing her flat against Cinder’s shell.

Gooey chunks of black and yellow roach flesh, severed spiny legs, and shredded wing covers rained down across the dirt like hail.

Wren stayed down for five seconds while her ears rang with a high, deafening whistle. She pushed herself up.

Five of the roaches were completely vaporized, their remains scattered across the scorched loam. Two more lay thrashing in the dirt ten feet away, wings blown off and thoraxes peppered with shrapnel holes.

The last roach—the scout with Wren’s sewing needle still stuck in its back—was crawling blindly in circles through the crushed clover.

Wren hopped down from Cinder, drew Gidley’s gas chainsaw, and walked through the smoke.

Rrrr-whack! Whack!

She cleaved the two wounded roaches in half with two quick strokes, then walked over to the scout, planted her boot on its head, and yanked her sewing needle free from its shell before sawing its thorax in two.

Silence dropped over the clearing like a cut wire kills a current.

The acrid stench of burnt roach armor and high explosives hung heavy in the cooling afternoon air.

Wren dropped to her knees in the dirt, chest heaving, hands trembling as she wiped the gray soot from her visor.

Around her boots, seven neat parcels of loot materialized on the scorched earth:

Industrial Roach Pyrethrin Spray x2 Canisters

Insulated Heavy Copper Wire x1 Roll

Stamped Copper Currency x2

Sterile Pressure Bandages x2

Topical Burn Salve x2 Tins

Broad-Spectrum Cold Tablet x1

Miniaturized Fragmentation Grenade x1 (Full Refund!)

Wren picked up the replacement grenade, wiped the dirt from the casing, and let out a long, wheezing laugh.

“A full refund,” she said quietly, slipping the bomb back into her belt. “The system really does love a brawl.”

She loaded the rest of the supplies into her haversack, checked Cinder for injuries—only a few scratched leg plates, nothing deep—and remounted the ant.

The sun was dropping fast now, shadows stretching long and black across the crabgrass floor. She turned Cinder toward the north and set a steady pace back to the oak tree before the night hunters could smell the blood in the clearing.