The rainbow barriers brought back a sense of uneasiness in everyone except for the twins. Vic glanced around wildly and flashed into fire. She’d been brought in outside the stash and John wasn’t in sight. She scanned around frantically.


    It looked like a psychedelic version of Earth. Things that were recognizably trees, shrubs and grass stretched away in myriad colours that clashed with the barrier extending into the sky on either side of them.


    “Remember what we did on the second wave?” called Sam. “Expect an attack!”


    “Where the hell is John?” snarled Vic.


    “He’s that way! About five miles or so according to his team buff!” called Evie. She had immediately used the Hide and Seek Champions 2024 bonus to locate all the team. It was confusing with so many Bob’s running about but her dad had stood out in her mind enough to pinpoint.


    “I’ll get him!” Bob boomed out of Doris as the giant mech pivoted and began to devour the distance in long, earth shaking strides.


    “Defences going up. Bob, are you going to help out here mate?” Sam asked as shining walls appeared around them, leaving enough space for Doris and a full sized Raoul to stand side by side in the middle.


    “What? Yeah. What the hell… never mind. Prime will help out. Soon as Doris is back we can start emptying the stuff in the stash out!” called a B-3000.


    “Flash! You and me up top! Vic, are you good?” called Evie as she floated into the air on a platform of force.


    “I’m fine,” snarled Vic as she blasted into the sky and took up a holding position above the rapidly forming defences. “Isn’t there another way though?” she called down.


    “Another way?” asked Felicity as she and Felix walked into the sky on black and white staircases.


    “Are we just going to kill whatever these things are?”


    “Yes Vic. We will. The System does not make requests. It issues orders. We must kill them," said Felicity.


    “I remember being like them. Wherever the hell they’re hiding,” said Raoul.


    “They face the same issue as us. Kill or be killed,” asserted Felix. “Which will you choose?”


    As they’d been talking Doris had made her way back to the impromptu fortress that Sam had quickly expanded and reinforced. Doris stopped just outside the walls and lowered one hand to gently deposit John’s body on the stony ground. Sam conjured an armoured bunker over John.


    “Is he ok?” she asked.


    “He’s unchanged,” said a drone. Doris stepped over the barricade and took up a sentinel position. The weapons mounted on her shoulders began independently tracking and hatches spiralled open across her torso and upper leg armour. Yet more barrels poked out to pivot back and forth.


    “Where the hell are they?” demanded Vic over the comm link. “Bob, anything on your funky sensors?”


    “I’ve got something,” said Reg. “Lots of things.”


    “Where and what?” demanded Raoul as he grew to half his maximum size having shucked the heavy power armour.


    “Dunno. Small, the size of a fecking kid. There’s warrens all around us, even under us and the wee boggits are swarming that way!” Reg pointed towards the setting sun. Whether it was east or west or even north if the planetary rotation was particularly unusual wasn’t at the top of anyone''s thoughts.


    “Shall I barrage? Bob, populate my map, dammit!” snapped Evie.


    “I can’t, I’m not getting anything! No metal, no movement. They must have mass or Reg wouldn’t be able to sense them but I can’t find shit!” complained the drone as Doris and the many drones spread out around them cycled frantically through their sensor spectrums.


    A modest swarm of flying drones flew out of the stash and began circling out trying to locate the locals.


    “Should I be seeing them yet?” asked Bob.


    “Yes, you should be seeing the fecking bastards by now! They’re only half a mile away! We all should be able to see them even if they’re short arses!”


    “Invisible or incorporeal!” yelled Evie. “Get off the fucking ground if you’re biological! Zeeg can you sense them?”


    “No sister. I am untouchable but I think the rest of you getting airborne might be a good idea. I will escort some of the Sam clones to see if we can get a feel for this new foe,” replied the dog as her head emerged from the dirt, quickly followed by her oversized body.


    Squads of Sam clones broke out into teams and moved to escort Zeeg while Flash scooped up John with a platform and lifted him up. Bob’s drones began emptying weapon systems out of the stash and throwing up hasty defensive positions around Doris. As Zeeg and her swarm of laser-eye wielding friends moved up to the conjured barricade a part of it dissolved and they all rushed through.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    “Ok, I can’t locate these things. They’re ghosts. Reg, point out the direction and how far,” sent Bob.


    “Yon fecking direction and half a mile or so?” Reg waved a hand towards the setting sun from where he now floated half a kilometre above Doris.


    “Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps an exploratory bombardment might be in order? Don’t go all out, we’re just testing the waters. Doris will mark targets,” Bob said authoritatively.


    Several of the shoulder mounted barrels on Doris pivoted and aimed in the direction Reg had pointed out. Half a dozen barked and clouds of smoke occluded the giant mech''s head. A series of flares shot out and landed in a grid half a mile away from the team. Then the energy weapons activated with tearing noises as the ionising energy burned through the atmosphere.


    The noise of Bob’s attack was quickly drowned out as a firestorm sprung up and swept across the grid of markers. Howling, burning winds tore through the flora as lightning began to fall. A large number of Sam clones on Evie''s platform narrowed their eyes and actinic red lines burned through the target area as well, criss-crossing back and forth to weave a network of deadly beams.


    The twins strode towards the supposed enemies and bands of black and gold intertwined and lashed out like titanic whips, carving deep lines into the dirt and throwing dust and debris fifty feet into the air. The barrage lasted thirty seconds or so as the carnival unleashed their attacks to try and clear the swarm Reg had detected.


    The sudden silence was almost deafening in its stillness. Larger particles of debris fell down with thuds that rang out in the quiet and the dust gradually cleared in the gentle breeze, bringing the smoke and dust towards Doris. As it swept over the barricade Sam had created the team looked down to see Doris vanish up to her waist in the clouds.


    “You ok in the fog, Bob?” asked Vic.


    “Yep. Light isn’t that necessary for the bots. Reg, update?” snapped Bob.


    “Well, ye tin can bastard, we drove them off. I don’t think we killed any, ye ken? Just scared ‘em off.”


    “How did that not get any kills?” asked Vic, looking down at the burnt and ravaged ground, stretching in an arc for nearly a mile from where they had started landing their attacks. As the smoke cleared further and they could see what they’d done they saw a devastated landscape but no bodies, nor any evidence of whatever beings might have been there.


    “Are you sure they were there, Reg? No disrespect but these guys should be way lower level than us and that was basically a controlled nuking, we carpet bombed that place and there’s nothing there, no kill notifications, no nothing!” said Evie.


    “The feckers fecked off. They’ve moved that way and headed towards the barrier.”


    "Maybe we need to get physical?” asked Raoul, smiling happily that he might get a chance to shine.


    “Maybe. That’s a risky proposition though. Let’s send out the clones and the bots to test it before you go off like a berserker though, eh?” said Sam with a smile in her voice.


    “Marriage is so restraining!” Raoul complained before a red beam flashed out at his feet and made him jump sideways on the forcefield he was standing on. He scowled up at his wife before grinning broadly.


    “Idiot,” Sam replied fondly. “If we can’t see what we’re fighting, it’s going to be an issue. Reg, can you link your grav-sense to your implant and let Bob mark it on the map?”


    “I don’t like that metal prick in my skull. I’ll not be letting him borrow my sense,” grumbled the old man.


    “He won’t get access to your bobnet search history you crotchety old weirdo. It might let us figure out how to deal with these things,” said Evie.


    “Should we even be killing them?” asked Flash quietly. He hadn’t used any of his abilities during the first barrage, not only because it was a less than ideal situation for him to be useful as he was an up close fighter at heart, but he had reservations about slaughtering whatever-the-hell these things were just after they’ve been dumped into the system.


    “What? The System has commanded it. We must serve our purpose. It’s sad that these things must die but Earth must be held in the foremost position in our thoughts. We have enough power to defend the Earth, we just need to get home and use it! So these things must die,” said Felix.


    “Die!” echoed Felicity.


    “For god’s sake don’t start the ‘repeating each other’ schtick again! I’m with the twins though, Flash. We need to kill these poor pricks, get Dad patched up and get home. It sucks but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it,” said Evie.


    “The system must really hate them to sick us on them for a second wave,” said Reg.


    “Maybe not. It was always kind of balanced, in a twisted way. Maybe this is actually a fair match up for us?” said Vic thoughtfully.


    “The fact we just nuked a bunch of them and got no kills would tend to support that theory,” said Bob flatly. “I agree with the twins, we don''t have a choice so whatever these invisible buggers are: it’s us or them and I’m not voting for them!”


    “Ye’re not too far off now,” said Reg as he monitored Zeeg''s location on his HUD.


    “Noted. I can’t see anything,” the dog replied.


    “I’ll go forward,” offered Sam. A pair of clones moved ahead, cautiously at first but with growing confidence as nothing seemed to happen. They pushed aside the foliage carefully, wielding summoned spears that they used to nudge open a path.


    The air was still here, the breeze blocked off by the thicker trees, and they began probing the empty air ahead of them with the sharp points of their weapons. They inched forward as Zeeg hung back and remained incorporeal. Zeeg considered the situation and decided to take a risk. The clones were ahead of her so she briefly dropped back to being mundanely material and took a deep sniff. Her nose twitched in a way that would have been adorable if she wasn’t eight feet tall at the shoulder.


    She immediately became incorporeal and bolted back the way she had come, making a beeline for the barricade. As she fled she sent an urgent warning but it was too late for the clones.


    “RUN!” she snarled as she followed her own advice. The Sam clones spun and began to move at speeds normal humans would be incapable of. Before they could get more than a couple of steps the air turned black, like the clones had suddenly been dropped into a tar pit. The other clones all collapsed, all across their little base and on the platforms floating above. Then they disappeared. A single Sam was left on Evie’s forcefield and the girl spun, dropping down next to her friend and checking for a pulse.


    “You know her constitution shows in the team report?” asked Reg.


    “Fuck you Reg!” snarled Raoul. “How did she drop so low?” he demanded after taking a moment to check. Sam had plummeted to 5% of her constitution. Of them all Sam was the most unkillable. The only real threat she’d have faced if she stayed on Earth was eventual old age. It hadn’t been widely known but she always kept one body, which she considered the original “her”, secreted in a small cottage out in the wilds of southern Scotland before they went on campaign. There were other safe houses as well where clones lived quiet lives, just in case something terrible happened.


    That body had come along with them when they were swept up by the Kipragtsek but even without that failsafe, how can you kill a being capable of almost endlessly cloning themselves and jumping their “real” mind to any remaining body? Sam was brash sometimes because she very rarely faced a real threat to her continued existence.


    Whatever attack the locals had used had plunged her closer to true death than any of the carnival had been for years.