“Jawa, go with them, drop your gun if you have to.”
“No way in hell I’m dropping old faithful,” says the heavy gunner moving to stand beside Sabre.
“Sindaris, Drake, you too,” orders Caufmann.
Wayne grabs Rennin’s arm as he passes by. “Thank you, Rennin.”
For a moment Rennin doesn’t know how to respond so he just goes with the first thing in his head. “Make sure you run those thighs off,” he says as he watches Wayne and his family leave.
He half smiles. There is no way he will ever see them again.
“Verge, you go too,” says Caufmann.
The corporal shakes her head slowly, a frown on her face. “Not a chance. I’ve got a score to settle.”
Rennin, Mia, Verge, Antares, Drej and Caufmann turn back towards the reservoir and there is a breath taken from each almost in perfect unison. Rennin and Mia take a few steps back towards the reservoir and crouch. The cylindrical tunnel isn’t very wide so they have an advantage, in that the incoming Suvaco units won’t have room to manoeuvre. The massive downside is a severe lack of cover.
Rennin remembers Roths telling Caufmann about Del’s armoury being taken when the Suvacoes left the lab. The thought of all those hulking androids being armed is greatly unnerving.
Rennin pulls his sniper rifle off his shoulder and slings his assault rifle across his back, sighing as he’s really feeling the extra weight. He takes out the clip and switches the necessary pieces back to bolt action. He grips the silencer, weighing up his options. The deafening sound in here will make each shot punishing for his hearing, but it will be more accurate. On the other hand, no one else is running suppressed so he removes it.
Rennin notices Mia eyeing his actions.
“Stronger and straighter this way,” he whispers, winking like a salesman.
“You’re talking about your rifle right?”
“One of them, yeah.”
“Contact,” says Caufmann taking aim with his pistol.
Mia presses the butt of her sniper rifle to her shoulder to look through the scope. She can’t see them yet but their steps are growing louder, she can hear their approach.
Rennin’s artificial eye can just make out an outline. He wants to take the shot, but he finds his hands frozen, awaiting an order to fire. Two pairs of red eyes suddenly flash on closer than expected.
Rennin’s instinct responds.
Target acquired.
He fires a round into the head of the one on the left a split second before Caufmann calls out for them to shoot. He can’t tell if the bullet penetrated the helmet or glanced off but he pulls the bolt back on the rifle, loading another bullet, and fires again.
The tunnel is extremely dark but when Drej, Verge and Antares open fire the area is lit up with orange and yellow light and screams of gunfire reverberating off the walls. The Suvaco unit Rennin hit is stumbling back and the other has raised an arm over its face to block the barrage of incoming fire.
Rennin and Mia fire until their sniper guns are empty and overheating, before dropping them on their sling and raising assault rifles to continue their rapid fire. A grenade sails over Rennin’s head, thrown by Antares. It explodes on impact but the Suvacoes still don’t go down.
The ringing from the gunfire is deafening and Rennin can’t even hear his own voice yelling as he fires at the red-eyed giants. They move in, more quickly now.
The Suvaco on the left aims its weapon towards him; Rennin feels himself sag before a stab of dread takes over. Being confronted with a chain gun is not what he expected today. The figure of Antares eclipses his view as she steps in front of him, coinciding with the creature unleashing its first array of fire.
Rennin stays low wishing he could curl into a ball like an armadillo and roll away. Now the only light in the tunnel is coming from the chain gun barrel and the sparks from everything it impacts. Rennin finds himself hunched down screaming, feeling the percussion of every bullet hitting Antares’ kinetic shield like a drumbeat in his chest. Barely a moment passes before her shield is torn away, leaving her defenceless.
Drej has positioned himself in front of Mia, absorbing a wave of bullets that glance off his plate armour, but when they hit his skin they tear straight into it. Rennin is mesmerized by that terrible image and can feel it burn into his memory.
He cannot believe that either of the androids are still standing. Antares is still being pummelled. Looking behind him, Caufmann is protecting Corporal Verge. He’s taken a shot to the head and if an android could look dazed, Caufmann would be the poster child.
The chain gun finally stops shooting, the tunnel goes dark, and Rennin feels Antares spring off into the smoky haze. He can just make out Drej slumping forwards.
The HolinMech took a lot of fire, but he braces himself, one hand on the ground as he reaches out towards their enemy; a red energy beam exploding from his hand.
It slams into the Suvaco on the right just as Antares careers into the one on the left. She glows green as she throws punches into its face, crushing the weakened faceplate inwards with sickening force. The hulking Suvaco takes a clumsy swing at her but she ducks under it as if it were attacking slow motion. She manages to leap onto its back to pull at its helmet, drawing its head back to expose its throat.
“Shoot it!” she yells.
Rennin and Mia grab their sniper rifles, reload them quickly, and take aim.
“The neck!” Antares directs.
“I can’t hold on much longer.” Drej continues to fire his weakening energy stream.
“Ready, Saker?” Rennin calls to Mia.
“On three?”
“Three!”
They fire.
Rennin’s shot hits the Suvaco’s neck padding but Mia’s hits just above, tearing through its throat, taking it out. The android stumbles sideways, Antares leaping from it to take grip of her sword and lop off the leg of the second target, cutting through its knee from behind. It collapses, giving her easy access, and in one smooth movement she removes its head.
Drej’s blast stops and he falls forwards to his hands and knees, finally depleted, and bleeding from a multitude of gunshot wounds. Rennin looks from Drej to Antares as she decapitates the Suvaco Mia shot in the throat with one clean stroke.
Always double tap.
A flare burns to life behind him and he turns to see Caufmann slumping down in a cloud of cold steam with Verge crouching over him, hands fluttering as she tries to help. It’s difficult to touch someone when they’re bleeding a liquid that will freeze your skin solid. Antares is also hissing steam heavily as she sheaths her sword and hurries back to them.
“Arca? Are you alright?” she asks.
Drej looks up and forces himself to stand. The effort isn’t so much seen in his facial expression as it is in his shaking limbs. He’s taken some grievous wounds.
“I am damaged,” he says absently, looking at his right hand and the perforation a shell has made straight through it. “Are you hurt, Antares?”
She examines herself, finding her arms torn, exposing bone and circuitry. Her torso is largely intact despite her armour being all but broken. “I don’t feel any pain.”
Caufmann rubs a wound in his forehead where a bullet ripped through all but his skull. A few rounds managed to punch through his armoured lab coat, and his breathing is laboured. “I have a bullet lodged in my right lung.”
“I didn’t know your kind had lungs,” says Verge.
“My kind were your kind,” he says more rudely than he intended. He places a small cylindrical object to the hole in his chest. With a disgusting wet slap, the bullet is drawn out into the tube. Caufmann ejects the slug and puts the cylinder back in his pocket.
“What the hell is that?” asks Rennin trying to get a good look at the device.