Chapter Ten
Gaxasas city – 17 hours later
Sahib shot a Sowir in the head. As it dropped, he could feel a fog lift of his mind and he could see the tool-soldiers around them freeze and get mauled down by the bullets, plasma, and energy weapons. He moved quickly, exiting from building he was in and jumping on the Guxcacul walker-transport, grabbing hold of the railings not designed for human hands. Immediately behind him followed his six squadmates and Riss. He held firm as it started walking up the pillar to the next level of the city that the Sowir now used as their base.
He had stopped counting how many Sowir and their tool-soldiers he had killed after the first hour of combat. It seemed as if there was no end to them. He and his squad had been a part of the Guxcacul offensive. Every able Guxcacul soldier was a part of it, thousands of soldiers attacking the Sowir bases from beneath, just as the Empire pushed from above.
The walker reached the next level, and some of the Guxcacul soldiers started moving from the back of the transport to the buildings. Sahib, the rest of his squad, and Riss waited for the Guxcacul troops to disembark, as they would be of limited use fighting in the strangely built Guxcacul buildings—at least, the humans would. Then, after they were alone on the walker, it started moving further up the pillar to a carved-out platform. He and his squad disembarked there, and two more walkers arrived soon after from the other pillars or bridges that connected the various parts of the city.
Sahib, Riss, and his squad followed the Sowir troops into the main city building, and what the Sowir now used as the base headquarters. Upon entering, the Guxcacul soldiers opened fire with energy weapons similar to those of the Sowir mounted on their middle arm set, while they used their top scorpion claw-like arms to batter away any Sowir that tried to get into melee range. The Sowir wore full body armor suits, similar to the Empire’s battle suits. Riss wore his Warpath battle gear, which allowed him better movement, as it covered only his critical areas.
The energy beams from the Sowir slowed and then stopped as the Guxcacul cleared the entrance. Sahib and his people followed deeper inside the building. They took the twisting bridge-like staircases that led to the top level, where they encountered another enemy force. Sahib raised his NP-04 plasma rifle and fired at the tool-soldiers racing towards him. The bolt went right through the first, and scorched the second enemy. Then another tool jumped out of the small defensive wall, this one dressed in a heavier armor. Sahib fired at it, but its armor soaked up the hits, although Sahib could see damage. As it almost reached Sahib, Bella stepped in front of him carrying a shield, one that had been designed to fight against the tool-soldier in melee combat.
She used the full strength of her powered suit to bat the attacker to the wall. Then she stabbed at him with her monomolecular blade. The mono-blade pushed through and impaled the creature, but it wasn’t enough to outright kill it. So Sahib approached and fired three more shots point blank and killed it. As more of the enemy troops left the wall, Riss moved in front and let loose with his own, more powerful plasma rifles, mowing them down.
The Guxcacul soldiers charged the wall, crossing over and killing the defending enemy. Sahib and his squad followed, but as they entered deeper into the building, they were forced to split. Sahib, his squad, and Riss took one of the side tunnels, while the other Guxcacul soldiers took the other four.
Riss led the way with Sahib and his team following. Sahib noticed his sensors ping on movement ahead, and he and his people spread out in the cramped passage. The enemy came at them from around the bend, firing their energy weapons from their backs. But his force quickly cut them down.
They continued moving forward, clearing rooms and nearing the most probable location for the Sowir control room. All tunnels eventually led to that central room, but when Sahib and his people arrived, none of the other had reached it yet. Instead, they were met with another fifty tool-soldiers and five Sowir. Immediately after noticing them, the Sowir directed their tools to attack.
Loca stepped forward and pointed her heavy weapon, the CFG-02. The centrifugal-based weapon fired and sent thousands of bullets into the room, smashing computer screens and furniture and ripping through the enemy. The Sowir hid behind their tools, but even with that, two of them fell to the onslaught.
Behind Loca, Riss charged inside, firing his plasma rifles and smashing into the group of the enemy tool-soldiers. The arthropod grabbed them with his upper claws and then fired his plasma rifles point blank. His movements were quick, precise, and deadly, and Sahib was reminded that Riss was a Sentinel from Clan Warpath, and that even though he had a completely different body shape, he had trained with Adrian, who’d helped him develop fighting styles.
Riss was unstoppable as he used his greater mass to pin and kill the enemy, whether by his claws, stabbing through them with his feet, or by liquefying their insides with his plasma rifles. Sahib provided help and covering fire from the entrance of the room, just as his squadmates moved inside and started clearing the remainder of the enemy. The three Sowir survivors, seeing that they would lose, decided to charge Riss in a futile attack. They were armed with energy weapons similar to what they had given their tools, but it didn’t matter. Upon seeing them, Riss turned and blew one apart with his plasma rifle. The second he hit with his clawed hand and sent flying into the wall on the other side of the room, while he grabbed the third one and squeezed with his other claw, slowly decapitating him.
Sahib motioned for his squad to sweep the room, and then opened a channel to the Guxcacul forces, telling them that they had secured the control room.
Squad Leader Zhu “Pyro” Zhang Wei ducked behind a rock as the Sowir threw something at him. He heard it impact the wall not far from him, and then he was shaken by a small explosion. He peeked out of his cover and fired his CF-13 light assault rifle, sending centrifugally propelled bullets right into the Sowir, puncturing him with dozens of holes.
“Take care, they have some kind of grenades. Less powerful than ours, though,” Zhu warned over the comms.
“It won’t help them much,” Anton said over their squad comms.
“You should really work on that arrogance of yours,” Dson chimed in. “If they bring to bear enough troops, there won’t be anything that we can do. They will overwhelm us.”
“I doubt that they will be able to d that. We are hitting them all across the planet; if they pull forces from one side to help another, we get through,” Toferami added.
“Let’s focus on taking this base, then we can weigh in on the probable Sowir decisions,” Zhu said. Then he proceeded to move to the next rock in the vast tunnel leading downwards towards a former Guxcacul city, which was now a Sowir base.
There were many different types of tunnels, from small tunnels barely large enough for a human to move through them, to vast tunnels large enough for several tanks moving beside one another to pass. Zhu glanced backwards and saw exactly that, four tanks moving towards the massive gate below that led into the city proper. They knew that those tanks would be of limited use inside the city, as they weren’t really built anything like human or Nel cities. But the Sowir had the gate closed, and they would need the firepower to open it.