“I was on the other side of the battlefield, Wolfson,” the other man explained and moved past his friend. “I also assumed you wanted to at least make an attempt to take care of them yourself.”
The giant grimaced as he plucked a few metal shards from his face. “I appreciate the thought.”
Sasha took aim at something in the corner of the room and fired. Sparks and smoke erupted and died after a brief but satisfying sizzle. “That was the last array.” He turned to his companion. “I suppose she moved here to defend it. The hostile droids are still in action, but our teams must be close to shutting them down.”
Wolfson shattered the sniper’s rifle, removed her containers and pistol and destroyed them as well, then picked her up, placed her against the wall, and retrieved a net grenade. He held it against her and activated it to trap her there. “That means we only have a little more time to raise our tallies.” He chuckled as the marksman joined him and they walked out of the warehouse. “What are you at?”
“Forty-two, with the sniper,” Sasha replied and checked his rifle.
Wolfson laughed. “You need to catch up, Commander. I’m at fifty-six.”
“Weren’t you in a ship for a good chunk of the fight?”
He nodded and readied his shotgun as they drew closer to the central plaza. “Like I could keep count in that.”
“He’s here—heads down!” the infiltrator shouted. She, Magellan, and a few of the other hackers hunkered behind their chosen barrier as the back wall of the facility was hammered by cannon fire until it burst apart. Cyra and the bounty hunter looked around the machine that had sheltered them as a ship turned to present its side and a door opened. She helped the wounded man toward it. Julio reached the door and helped him into the vessel. “Thanks for coming.”
“I’m glad to help.” He scrutinized the patient. “Get your armor off. We’ll patch you up and get you behind the lines.”
“Just patch me up,” Magellan stated. “We still need to get these droids offline.”
Julio looked at Cyra in confusion. “I thought you did that already?”
She shook her head. “We shut their supply lines down, but—”
“Cyra?” Kit called over the comms. “I’ve found the main control for the droids.”
She nodded to the other man, who dragged his passenger away as the door to the ship closed, and she walked back into the facility. “That’s great news, Kit. I guess you need something on my end?”
“Some kind of command or password,” she replied. “I assume it’s a safety measure to make sure what we were planning wouldn’t be so easy.”
She found a console and began to search through different files. “It’s a good thing we split up. How’s the other plan coming along?”
“The droids and troops are making their way to the core. They were almost there when I last spoke to them,” she stated. “Hopefully, we can finish this without blowing the place up, There’s a lot of valuable tech in here.”
“You’ll get your chance,” Chiyo stated and joined the comm. “And I’ve made my way to their storage center. I have direct access to almost all their files. Kaitō is currently sorting through them.”
“That’s equally great news!” Cyra cheered.
“Is Kaiden there with you?” Kit asked. “He raced off almost immediately after we set foot inside.”
“He said he was going back to cover you.”
Before the woman could reply that she hadn’t seen him, a large explosion erupted in the hall leading to the core. Her map displayed Kaiden’s dot in the hall with the other troops. “He works quickly.”
A hacker flagged Cyra over and showed her a prompt. “Kit, I have it,” she said and accepted a clearance command. “Can you shut them down now?”
The Azure Halo hacker chuckled. “Even better.”
Wolfson backhanded an AO trooper who had moved a little too close and stamped on him as he blasted a second one in their chest. Vick and a few other Fire Riders pushed forward and dodged fire while they created a barrier, and more droids appeared from a few of the storage units. Sasha took aim from his perch but noticed some of the mechanicals had begun to stutter. Desmond, Janis, and Julio looked down from their ships and focused on the rapidly blinking lights amongst the robotic army.
The enemy droids powered down briefly and the AO troops seemed as confused as everyone else. The robots rebooted and as everyone readied to continue the fight, they turned to face any remaining Arbiter troops, their weapons at the ready.
The Riders, Kings, and everyone on the raiders side finally realized that the hackers had come through. Some asked for confirmation while others listened over the comms for details.
“This is Kit. We have command over the enemy droids,” she announced channel-wide. As soon as reality settled amongst the fighters, there were cheers and hollers. The few remaining fighter ships rolled in celebration as they turned to find a landing area. Sasha lowered his rifle, took a deep breath, and jumped from his perch. He passed shouting and boisterous troops on his way to Wolfson, who held a couple of Arbiter soldiers at gunpoint.
“You should know it’s over, right, boyos?” he asked, his head tilted and his expression smug. “We have questions for you, though, and we promise safety from our more…rowdy friends here if you promise to give us answers.”
One of the soldiers kept his head down but the other looked up and his visor slid to the side. “That’s not our choice to make,” he said, his tone dull and without emotion. In the same moment, the two began to shake. Wolfson and Sasha readied their weapons as they took a step back.
“What the hell is going on?” the giant demanded.
“Look, Wolfson!” his friend exclaimed. All around the battlefield, the soldiers began to tremble and collapse and lights brightened along their armor.
“Everyone, back away!” the officer shouted, although most of the raiders had already begun to retreat. The soldiers’ armor began to erupt and small explosions engulfed the field while the gang members took cover or sprinted to the gate. Even the already fallen soldiers weren’t spared and their bodies joined the others as makeshift bombs.
It was over in minutes, but when the dust settled, even Sasha and Wolfson stood aghast and stared at the remains of the soldiers they had spoken to. “Suicide?” the officer finally asked, his voice gruff but shaken.
“It would seem to be,” his friend muttered and holstered his rifle. “But by choice or design?”
Merrick finished his drink and shut down most of the monitors on which he’d watched the battle once the soldiers kill command was activated. He contacted the assassin. “There is no need to pursue, Dario. It’s over for now. Return to base and we’ll discuss our future actions. As for the Fenrir Base, I’ll prepare it for disposal.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Good God,” Kaiden croaked as he crouched and raised his arms when the last of the droids guarding the core chamber was destroyed by AO soldiers suddenly exploding. He and the other troops stared at the fragmented robotic and body parts that slid noisily down the walls or rolled along the floor. Some looked at others, asking if they did it, but when they tried to defend themselves, he shook his head.
“It wasn’t any of us,” he announced. “It looked like some kind of failsafe or trigger maybe? I don’t know what caused it.”
“Maybe when the bots were compromised?” a King jockey suggested dubiously.
“It could have been.” He glanced at a small camera in the corner next to the chamber door. “It could have been done remotely too.”
“Hey,” a Rider grunt muttered and waved a hand in front of his face. “Does it feel hotter to any of you?”
The ace straightened and he felt it as well—the same kind of heat one would feel if they stood in front of a furnace or engine, and it felt as if was coming from the room beside them.
“Get the door open, Chief!” he ordered and bolted to the terminal.
“Something is trying to push me out,�
�� the EI stated. “Wait, no…the paths are closing…the system is going offline.”
The remaining lights in the hall went off to be replaced by emergency red glowstrips. “What’s happening?”
“I unlocked the door.”
A few others joined him to grasp the edges of the large chamber doors and yank hard to slide them open. A blast of heat greeted them and cables uncoupled with loud hisses as the core grew brighter and the metal shell buckled. “Oh no,” the ace whispered and slapped a hand to his helmet. “Chiyo, Cyra, Kit—”
“Kaiden, all the files are being deleted,” Chiyo yelled. She and Kaitō tried hastily to download what they could as the petabytes of files and data began to vanish and the systems tried to cut her out.
“You have a worse problem than that,” he responded urgently. “The core is overloading!”
“What?” Cyra shouted.
“I’m trying to stop it,” Kit announced. “But nothing is accepted—dammit, my console crashed!”
“It’s a purge,” Chiyo deduced. “We need to evacuate.”
“So much for our haul,” the Halo hacker muttered and shouted to her men to grab what they could and retreat.
Kaiden also told the troops with him to get out. “Chiyo, we need to go.”
“I can still get a little more,” she protested.
“We have enough,” he insisted. “Blueprints, pics—hell, we can take some of the robot scrap and show it around. We have to get out of the blast radius.”
“We currently have almost a terabyte of information, madame,” Kaitō confirmed. “We can go over it in due course. I’m sure there is sufficient information that we can bring to light with this amount.”
She gritted her teeth and nodded as some of the servers behind her began to short out or spark. Reluctantly, she unhooked her gauntlet from the console and raced out of the room to catch up with Kit’s team. “Cyra, where are you?”
“We jumped out of the hole Julio made,” she explained, voice hitched and breathing heavy. “It was a rough landing, but we can get out through the back of the fort.”
“We’ll meet up later,” Chiyo promised. “Kaiden, where are you?”
Her answer was a wall behind her imploding. Kaiden and a Rider heavy held their guns up and ushered the others through. “I didn’t feel like making all those left turns,” he explained. “Now, everyone, move your ass!”
Wolfson marched over with the enemy sniper hoisted over his shoulder while Zena watched the main building shake and rumble.
“What the hell is going on in there?” she demanded when small explosions erupted all over the building.
“They had a huge power spike,” Fritz stated and glanced up from his holoscreen. “Kit, what the hell?”
“Someone activated the core remotely,” she explained. “It’s going to blow.”
“What? Where are you?” Desmond demanded.
“Heading out of the building,” Kaiden replied. “If we still have some dropships, we could use a lift.”
“I’m on my way,” Julio said and his ship took to the skies. Magellan frowned as he watched it bank toward the building.
“Same here. Meet you at the steps,” Desmond stated as he pulled his ship around.
A number of larger explosions on the upper levels hurled rubble in all directions that troops retreating on the ground were forced to dodge or hurdle as they raced toward the gate.
“Well, those backfired,” the bounty hunter muttered, believing his explosives were responsible.
Lycan drew in a deep breath and grimaced when a blare screeched and lights flashed red around him. It wasn’t really a surprise to end up there. But, as his senses returned—without his muscle movement as yet—he realized that despite how loud and hot it was, he wasn’t dead. He managed to roll onto his back and looked at the ceiling as the building shook and a series of blasts detonated somewhere above him. He chuckled. No, he wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.
Kaiden and the others reached the entrance and sprinted down the long hallway to the steps. Julio and Desmond’s ships hovered in readiness. The doors opened and the thirty remaining troops and hackers scrambled in.
“Where’s Cyra’s team?” Julio asked as Chiyo and a hacker dragged Kaiden in.
“She escaped through the back,” the infiltrator informed him as she pressed the switch to close the doors. He nodded, pulled the vessel up, and banked away from the building. Desmond followed.
All the troops and members of the assault had made it out of the fort, but that didn’t stop their flight. The couple of hundred left either jumped inside any remaining shuttles or dropships or simply ran frantically across the mountainside as the stronghold began to collapse. Julio and Desmond flew up so no other ship was in their path and both boosted their vessels as the core finally reached its threshold and erupted. The force of the blast rattled their ships but they sustained no damage.
Dario sighed as the last of his visuals cut out. He shook his head and leaned back in his seat. Well, that seemed to be a waste. He looked at the remaining golem that still sat hunched over and paid close attention to the wall in front of it—a rather creepy hanger-on, he decided. His first inclination was to simply dissolve it, but Merrick might still have other uses for it and considering they had lost one of their bigger production facilities, perhaps it was best to hold on to the assets they had.
He received a notification on his tablet that the golem he had left in London had finally finished the download of its personality and orders. Morosely, he activated it and slid his tablet aside. He didn’t get to finish his mission and the chance to face these raiders had slipped through his fingers. It was a bad day for him. He even saw Kaiden in the fray, along with other potential interests such as Baioh Wolfson and Sasha Chevalier, both decorated soldiers of the WC military. That could have been fun.
This would raise a few flags, of course. They might be able to stave off investigations and remain hidden for a while longer, but they couldn’t rely on the relative safety of the shadows any longer. They would be forced to take more direct action now.
It really was a good thing Solos has his little toy. That would come in handy. For now, he would return to Italy and see how Merrick would deal with this new complication.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The raiders finally slowed as the last of the distant rumbles from the stronghold began to fade. Julio drifted into a slow descent. A few of the troops moved out of the way as the door to the dropship opened and Kaiden leapt out. He watched as jockeys helped each other out of their gear and soldiers checked on their teammates, either helping with wounds or congratulating one another. A group crowded around Zena and Fritz and he pushed his way through. “I’m glad to finally see you.”
“You made one hell of an exit there.” Fritz chuckled and offered his hand. “I haven’t felt a rush like that since… Well, you were there.”
He shook his hand and smiled, nodding to Zena. “You train your men well. It wouldn’t have been nearly as smooth a fight without them.”
“I would hardly have called all that smooth,” she muttered before she gave a half-hearted shrug. “But we’ve trained hard since Ramses. I’m glad it’s paid dividends.”
“Any idea how many we lost? he asked.
“I haven’t had the chance to do a headcount,” Fritz admitted. “I know I saw a few go down and many more bots, but those are much easier to replace.”
The ace nodded and stared at what remained of the base. “After a breather, we can go back and try to recover their bodies—or at least their tags if they had them.” He glanced at the troops. “And, of course, you can take anything of interest.”
“Assuming there’s much left to take at this point,” one of the Riders muttered.
“I’m…fairly sure that some of the warehouses and storage blocks should still be standing,” he pointed. “Although I’ll admit that the explosion probably spoiled most of the uh…spoils.”
“You all should feel lucky to
be able to grab whatever you can,” Wolfson interjected sharply. The group turned as he and Sasha approached. The security officer had a person slung over his shoulder whom he promptly dropped once he reached them.
Kaiden removed his helmet and looked questioningly at the captured individual. “Who the hell is that?”
“A sniper Sasha and I had to deal with during the fight. She gave us a good run around and we went back for her after all the other soldiers spontaneously exploded.”
“It was probably some kind of purge,” Kit said as walked up behind the group with Chiyo, Desmond, and Magellan in tow. “A failsafe in case the facility was compromised.”
“I guess we should consider ourselves fortunate that the droids didn’t blow up as well,” Zena muttered.
“Probably because Kit and Cyra already had control of them,” Fritz reminded her. “I’m certain that if the soldiers were wired to blow, you can bet the droids were.”
The ace glanced quickly at Chiyo. “Cyra? That’s right…Chiyo, did you hear from her? Did she make it out all right?”
She nodded but frowned slightly and held a tablet up. “She did. There was an open gate that allowed her and her team to get to a safe distance in the mountains, but she found something along the way.” She handed the tablet to Sasha, although Kaiden, Wolfson, and the other leaders leaned in to see. It showed pictures of men and women in white coats and shirts sprawled over the forest floor, the back of their heads burst apart and bodies fallen in odd positions as if they had been shot in mid-sprint.
“Are these…the techs?” Kaiden asked.
The infiltrator nodded. “Techs, scientists, and other non-combat personnel. It would appear that even they weren’t spared from the organization’s failsafe.”
Raid (Animus Book 9) Page 18
