The worm came up short as it reacted to the multiple projectiles that tore through its glistening body. The creature attempted to flee through one of the many holes bashed in the walls of the building and Jada tracked it as she continued to fire.
Shots rang out to answer her own and the merc dove for cover, instinctively putting both the worm and a large chunk of fallen concrete between her and the new threat.
Instead of returning fire, Jada leaned out from the other side and put one more clean shot through the fleeing body of the worm, eliciting a gurgling noise that sounded to her ears like a death knell. The other worm that had her knife in it was still writhing around, though its movements had become sluggish. She dared a brief glimpse before ducking back into cover. She could see that it had absorbed at least one of the errant shots from her initial salvo.
Two voices began speaking, and though their words made no sense to her, they had a gravel-choked accent that was very similar to that of Vol and the other cast-off denizens of Downspire.
It had been a number of years since the liquidation of Vorhold, and Jada found it likely that the survivors had developed a dialect that was nearly all slang words and very little common corporate vocabulary.
Jada had a thick Grotto accent, indicative of her low hab block ancestry, but through her compulsory education and life off-world, she’d taken the edge off of it. These were clearly Downspire folk who had been far enough removed from corporate culture that they’d become totally reliant on local slang. Samuel Hyst and Harold Marr had spent the most time mingling with the locals during the Vorhold campaign, and apparently even they only understood the Downspire speech about half the time.
However, it didn’t take much for Jada to guess, from their tone and direction, that these two hostiles were debating whether or not to engage her. After all, she’d just wiped out their four attack worms and likely that represented a heavy blow to their confidence, much less the caloric bottom line that all survivors in such a hellish environment would be keeping an eye on.
They likely didn’t know how badly she was injured, and Jada considered just giving them a blast on full auto to drive them away, but she had something to finish here and it would not do to have hunters at her back when she made her way into the debris pit. Resolved to see this fight to the end, Jada swiftly and silently swapped out her half-spent magazine for a full one and racked the slide to ready the first round.
The sound of her weapon chambering spurred her enemies into action. One fired on her position, no doubt to keep her head down while the other moved around to flank her. It was a good stratagem, one that she’d have attempted herself if on their side of the field. She was going to have to act quickly before the flanking hostile got into position.
The merc quickly reached into a pouch on her belt and produced a small first aid kit. First, she unceremoniously dumped a vial of clotting powder over her grievous wound, following it up with one of the combat cocktails that Marcus made sure each merc had in the field.
This particular batch was designed to give the user a boost of adrenaline while providing a localized anesthetic, the combination of which caused minor hallucinations, which is what kept that particular brand of combat drugs out of scope for unenhanced soldiers. The Dire Swords were well equipped to dealing with the incredibly unpleasant ‘crash’ that occurred once the drugs cleared the system, not to mention being old hands at coping with terrible hallucinations.
The drugs surged through Jada’s system and she gasped as a newfound chemical strength flooded her limbs. She opened her eyes and sprang from her position, her legs pumping to give her tremendous speed despite her wounded leg, and she sprinted across the short distance between her chunk of cover and the large hole in the wall that the worm had fled through.
As she expected, one of the attackers was drawn out into the open by the sight of what he or she perceived as an easy target and the hostile opened fire, hoping to hit Jada as she fled. The merc had taken a gamble, chancing that she would be able to turn the tables on the enemy before a clean shot brought her down. When she reached the hole, Jada leapt up and through it, her powerful body giving her enough airtime to turn over and face her enemy, as planned. Her assault rifle was at the ready and she got a brief glimpse of her enemy as they exchanged fire simultaneously.
The man was dressed like a ganger from Downspire, with brightly colored patchwork clothing and spiral tattoos on his face and neck. His chest was covered with the cheap riot plates typically worn by cor-sec officers of the former Vorhold enforcer corps. He was armed with a cor-sec small caliber pistol and from his neck hung the accursed whistles carried by the Stalkers that Jada recalled all too well.
Whoever he was, there was no doubt in Jada’s mind that he was hard meat, for no common man would have been able to get his hands on one of those whistles, much less figure out how to command the worms. She’d been right all along: this was predator against predator.
Pistol rounds whipped through the air around her and one managed to tear across her ribs before Jada’s own burst of fire caught her opponent in the chest and sent him hurtling backwards in a blossom of blood and shattered armor. Jada landed awkwardly on the ground just outside the building, her fall somewhat broken by the body of the worm, which had indeed expired moments after its escape.
Jada grunted and rolled onto all fours and brought her rifle up as she rose to a crouching position. The ganger, wounded and frenzied as he was, sprang out of the hole moments later wielding Jada’s gory boarding knife. Jada let out a measured breath and punched a round through his forehead just as he emerged. His head snapped back but his momentum carried his corpse to the ground next to his killer. Hard men died hard, thought Jada as she wiped the boarding knife on the man’s clothes and returned it to the sheath, but they still died.
The merc heard the sound of running feet just around the corner of the building, and she hugged the wall before risking a look down the broken avenue beyond.
A woman with the same ganger look about her was fleeing through the street, a pistol in her hand and what looked to be a hatchet strapped across her shoulders. It seemed that she had decided the bottom line wasn’t worth fighting for after what had just happened to her partner and their worms.
Jada did not hesitate to raise her rifle to her shoulder and take aim. Battle had been joined and this was still a combatant, even if one in retreat. The merc squeezed the trigger once and watched through her scope as the round slammed into the ganger’s back. By the peculiar way the woman jerked before collapsing in a stiff heap, Jada was relatively certain that her bullet had struck the hostile’s spine.
Despite her surge of chemical induced strength and energy, Jada could already feel the crash coming. Now that the fighting was done, everything felt as if it was getting numb, her senses dulling by the second, and she knew that she had to hurry. Her body was already knitting itself back together, but the wound on her leg was not only severe, it was being exposed to all manner of pollutants and toxins from the environment. Jada knew she was going to have to pay the steep costs for emergency medical attention once back aboard the Far Rider. They could stabilize her and manage the various infections and pollutants until she could return to Sword Base for a full recovery.
Jada popped in a fresh magazine and consulted her nav-unit before limping as swiftly as she could towards the debris pit.
It did not take her long to reach the coordinate and it had been an arbitrary one anyway. Once she stood on top of the heap of rubble around the pit, she could see down into it to the bottom, a few meters down the slope of rubble. The explosions had done their job well, as had the professional salvage crews, and the freelance scavengers who came later. Only those students of obscure military history would ever know about the men and women who fought and died here, on all sides. Progress had left this world behind.