“Killing your own team?”
“Android priorities are not your concern unless I evaluate it so. You have three seconds to answer my question. The next words out of your mouth will be: yes or no,” says Drej, the veins in the sides of his face and down his neck glowing red.
Croft eyes his troops, many of whom have taken a pointless step away from the HolinMech.
Traitors, he thinks and he feels something in his mind slip away. It is a form of reason, perhaps, evaporating or draining, leaving a feeling of being boxed in, trapped, and nowhere to go.
Traitors deserve to die.
The people under the city will be safe anyway. He feels himself grin. No one person had ever taken out a HolinMech and that’s a nice big notch for anyone’s belt. “Then ‘yes’ it is. Open f—” he is cut off by a bullet tearing through his head. No one even sees Drej move, but he executes Croft with a lightning fast movement. Despite a faint whisper from one of Croft’s troops that sounds distinctly like skyward gratitude to what Rennin calls the Sky Fairy they remain standing still, all eyes upon Drej. The glowing red veins that are creeping down his arms begin to fade away.
Caufmann stands up, retrieving his sidearm from Drej as the HolinMech slumps forwards. “Easy, Arca, we’re almost out of here.”
“I have enough energy but keeping my limbs under full control is proving difficult. Many of my muscles and tendons are damaged, I can only compensate for the others if I focus.”
“How long will your nano-repairs take?”
An explosion from the tunnel leading to Blackhaven shocks everyone. Antares bursts out of the darkness at full speed. “Incoming!” she cries as a missile strikes the ground behind her. She dives forwards and rolls, diverting a great deal of debris with her personal shield.
Rennin takes a knee immediately and swings his gun to aim at the tunnel opening. “Did both those bastards survive the NAPA bomb or just one?”
“One was destroyed but the other is on all out attack, with two reinforcements.”
“We blew the tunnel, how did this happen?” asks Mia, taking up a position next to Rennin.
“A side passage, maybe it didn’t fall in completely, I don’t know,” says Antares.
“How was it sealed from this end before we arrived?” asks Rennin.
“Not by something that will hold three Suvacoes,” says Caufmann.
“Fall in! This is our only chance to have them bottlenecked!” calls Rennin to the troops.
Sabre, Carmine, Verge, Drake and Mia join him on the line immediately. After a split second of indecision Croft’s troops fall in line. Almost three-dozen guns are pointed at the entrance, the majority held by troops with no idea what is coming.
“Anyone with heavy ordnance, only fire on definite hits. These things are heavily armoured,” orders Sabre. “We cannot fall back and risk them flanking us, they need to be stopped here!”
Antares takes a knee next to Rennin. She is steaming from several new wounds but they look superficial. Rennin notes it’s a nice change from the grievous ones they’ve been subjected to lately.
“You’ve had a hard day, Sunshine, would you like to do your nails or something and let the men handle this?” he asks.
“The way you handled Prototype the night of the rally?”
“That was a draw.”
A pair of red, glowing eyes appear in the tunnel ahead.
“Fire!” calls Sabre.
The entire cluster of soldiers opens fire, pouring round after round into the tunnel. The first Suvaco strides out into view. Two more sets of eyes appear in the dark behind it. A shaking, trigger-happy rocketeer launches a missile that hits the wall, only serving as a mild distraction.
The lead Suvaco waves its chain gun, evaluating targets before opening fire. The first shot is followed by a hail of bullets, causing the defenders to break lines and scatter for cover. The initiative is already lost, with the three hulking androids moving inexorably forward with no resistance.
Antares sees her chance to attack their flank while the soldiers hold their attention. She drops her assault rifle and starts a run at the trio with her sword drawn. The blade has been the most effective weapon against the heavily armoured killing machines, as long as she can get close without being fired upon.
As she moves it feels like the world slows somehow. The CryoZaiyon wonders if this attack will see her killed. Her shields are almost totally depleted and her core is burning far more energy than she can sustain. One direct hit and she may finally die.
Her war could be over.
Her child is dead. Her parents are dead. Her husband is dead. Seeing him again, after losing the others, was her last motivation for surviving what she endured under Van Gower. She is only a walking puppet version of whoever she once was. Machines have no feelings, anyway. Machines don’t think for themselves. Machines follow orders. Machines don’t want revenge.
She forces her mind to go silent.
This is a way for her to die doing something worthwhile.
Something worth being remembered for.
Until she cuts these units down she makes herself believe she’s invincible. She can be wounded, blown apart and mortally injured but she will not fall until these units are dead. Certainty fills her mind with calm.
With what energy she has left she compresses it together, imagining a ball of fire, set to erupt on her command. Should she be incapacitated before killing them she’ll explode just as Drej threatened to earlier, with a localised blast radius that will do little more to the surrounding soldiers than scathe their skin, hopefully no permanent damage to their eyes and ears.
Machines don’t die, they become inactive. She forces this through her head, but she doesn’t believe it applies and never has. But it has to be better than this.
It has to.
She approaches silently, blindsiding a Suvaco by lopping its weapon arm off above the elbow. It turns to face her but the hardest energy channelled swing she’s ever performed takes its head clean off. One down, two to go.
She moves towards the next one but it is already aware of her. It swings its chain gun towards her, continuing to fire. Her skin shines with a green glow, absorbing the barrage from point blank range with what’s left of her shield. She forces her core to release more energy in a rage, manifested by a scream of very real anger in the kind of clarity a person seldom experiences.
The fusillade from the Horizon Military bounce off the Suvaco plate armour, without any acknowledgement. Antares’ shield degrades quickly and in no time the chain gun is shredding the remainder of her torso armour. She reverses the grip on her sword and slams the blunt side across the chain gun’s shaft, warping it enough to cause a backfire, successfully disabling the weapon. Her chest and abdomen hiss steam fiercely as she flips the blade again and slashes across its neck. Purple blood fountains from the wound and it falls to its knees, grasping its neck in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding with its hands.
Last one.
The final Suvaco is firing a grenade launcher that shoots freezing glowing spheres. Since cold rounds are useless against a CryoZaiyon she thinks luck may be on her side, until a rocket fired from a shaky Horizon trooper misses the Suvaco and explodes against her shield, shattering it.
After a concussion wave laced with shrapnel strikes her she can’t feel or hear anything as she is thrown off the ground, feeling something of herself open up to the world. All she can see is steam. She comes down hard a few metres away. Antares can’t see the still firing soldiers, or Rennin Farrow snatching the rocket launcher from the frightened trooper and laying him out with one severe strike from his combat chassis arm.