Dallas was officially a worse hole than any Middle Eastern burg he’d ever fought in or over. Eric hung out of the side door of the Cherokee as he lifted off, a strap keeping him from plunging to the ground below. The Priminae GWIZ was in his hands and he was firing judiciously placed rounds with the power set higher than he’d normally prefer to use given his proximity to the targets.

Fifty or so of the drones were rushing over fallen debris and their own dead as they charged toward the Cherokee, scrambling up the side of a nearby building as they threw themselves at the flying machine with suicidal ferocity. Eric shifted and fired a round into the far corner of the building, the kinetic round causing an explosion of dust and debris as it tore right through and slammed into the ground beyond.

Damn it. He fired again, cursing the engineers who’d apparently decided to make the damn building as indestructible as possible and succeeded far better than he would have preferred.

“Watch it, sir! They’re on the roof!”

“Take them out! I’m trying to take the building down!” he roared over the sound of the heavy machine gun firing beside him.

The door gunner didn’t need that order. As soon as he saw the damn things literally crawling over each other in order to get a few meters closer to the Cherokee, he’d opened fire. The heavy automatic rail cannon roared. The noise blended into one single sound as he tore into their ranks, killing dozens.

It didn’t matter to them, however. They just used their dead as a bridge to get that one step closer. Eric watched it, fascinated, from the corner of his focus. He’d seen ants do that before, climbing over their dead and living to form bridges, buildings, even weapons with which to assault their enemies. He’d never thought to see it in a species this size before, and the imagery was enough to give him nightmares.

He had something to focus on to keep those thoughts at bay, however, and he re-aimed his GWIZ, firing again. This time it went into the building higher up but angled deeper down, and he watched with satisfaction as the entire lower section blew out in a massive explosion of dust. The structure began to creak, shifting visibly, and he watched even more avidly as he worried about just what direction it was going to fall.

“Holy shit!”

The pilot’s scream was understandable, but a little disappointing to Eric really. He liked to imagine that back in his day there was a little higher standard of professionalism. He was probably delusional, he knew, but so be it.