The defenders readied themselves hastily as the attackers began their strike in earnest. The ace made a rapid head-count and identified only six members on the opposing force. He had no way to know whether the other two were out of his range and perhaps prepared for an ambush or were somewhere else entirely.
“Flynn, get to the techs as quickly as you can. They are finally attacking but two of them are unaccounted for,” he ordered before he turned to his group. “The rest of you”—he began to charge another blast—“let’s get them!”
Genos and Indre immediately complied with a concerted barrage from their machine guns. Marlo fired another blast before he switched his cannon to beam mode and took point. Kaiden held his fire, waiting for one of them to enter through the now damaged archway of the lobby. Silas, recognizable by his green and black armor was the first and the ace squeezed the trigger before his target could take another step. The attacker dodged the shot nimbly and lobbed a thermal at Kaiden and Amber. The ace lurched forward, snatched it off the ground, and flung it back, but Jaxon managed to shoot it in mid-arc. It exploded close enough to knock Kaiden back.
Luke charged once again but tripped one of Indre’s mines. Electrical surges enveloped his frame, but he apparently had mods to deal with that because his stride barely slowed. Marlo pushed forward and thrust a shoulder into his heavy opponent, who staggered back. He recovered quickly and raised his hammer to attack before Indre leapt in front of him and activated the flashbang lights in her helmet. The hammer descended for a power-strike, but the sudden flash disoriented him enough that it pounded into the floor alongside the smaller agent. She sidestepped the blow but the force was enough to cause her to stumble. Luke immediately pressed the trigger on his weapon and a kinetic blast activated to hurl her away and force Marlo back.
The defenders’ demolitionist recovered and fired his laser at the titan. A dome appeared instantly around Luke as Mack stepped behind him and formed a shield to protect his teammate while he recovered. Marlo continued to fire his beam directly at the protective barrier in an attempt to overpower it, but it held firm.
Genos raced toward the shield, holstered his weapon as he ran, and retrieved a grenade before he activated a setting on his gauntlet. The hand section transformed to become a four-pronged device that he thrust into the barrier. A small section distorted and opened enough for him to throw the grenade in. The ordnance erupted and hundreds of small nanos swarmed free to attach themselves to Mack and drain his power. The protection began to disperse and Marlo and Genos directed a fusillade against it with their weapons to hasten its demise. Luke, who had recovered by this point, activated the shield on his gauntlet and ordered Mack to retreat.
Kaiden noticed that Jaxon, through all of this, had remained amazingly calm. He broke away from their fight to assist the two heavies. Indre had fallen back and, together with Amber, engaged Silas and Cameron. Kaiden narrowed his eyes when he saw Julius hurry across to help Mack. The ace lined a shot up and fired and the blast struck the biologist in the ribs. Unfortunately, the man had already fired some kind of dart at Marlo which honestly seemed more amusing than anything else. No way would that even scratch his armor. Rather than impacting the suit, however, it lodged in a section of the demolitionist’s underlay between his waist and pelvis. There was no way to know whether it was blind luck or if the biologist was that damn good a shot, but the large man stiffened for a moment before he fell heavily as if his cannon had suddenly become an anchor to weigh him down.
The ace ordered Amber to help Marlo as Jaxon doubled back to assist the wounded Julius. He snagged one of his two remaining thermals and threw it at the pair. The biologist pushed the Tsuna back and rolled on top of it. The explosion finished him, but the team leader was safe—at least until his adversary could ready a shot.
Something thudded into the side of his helmet and the blast from his gun pounded the floor and thrust him upward. Shards of his armor spun around him as he focused and realized that Mack was his attacker. The titan had also been caught in the blast and while his shields might be down, he was still a heavy and an impact like that only seemed to make him wobble a little. Kaiden landed and Mack immediately drove in with another punch.
The ace dropped his rifle and dodged the strike, grabbed his opponent’s arm, and flipped him across the floor. The huge man landed with a solid thud but immediately moved to draw his hand cannon. Kaiden kicked his rifle back into his hand and fired. He only held the trigger for a little over a second each time to deliver a barrage of slightly charged shots at the downed vanguard. Finally, the giant stilled and his body vanished.
He turned to the ongoing battle behind him and was greeted by a blast to the chest, courtesy of Silas’ shotgun. Kaiden grimaced as the enforcer lurched forward to finish him but his gun was snatched from him and crushed by the vice-like grip of the claw on Genos’ gauntlet. Kaiden whipped Debonair out and fired three shots at the enforcer. His target dodged them easily but wasn’t quick enough to avoid the rapid-fire assault from Genos’ machine gun. The bullets eventually battered through his armor and he joined the other fallen members of his team.
“Are you all right?” Genos asked and proffered a hand.
Kaiden took it and the Tsuna hoisted him up. “I’ll be fine, we need to— What’s Marlo doing?”
The demolitionist issued some kind of orders to Amber and Indre and seemed hurried and intense. His armor was mostly compromised, and even with the medic’s help, he obviously hadn’t regained whatever strength he’d lost from Julius’ sneaky shot. His cannon had begun to glow, and the vents of the weapon were shut. The ace had seen Genos do something like that enough to know what that would inevitably lead to, which meant the Tsuna certainly did as well.
The mechanist helped Kaiden hastily behind a pillar. Luke scrambled to retreat with Cameron and Jaxon, but Marlo dropped the cannon and grabbed the titan’s boot. He used the weight of both himself and his remaining armor to slow his adversary enough to prevent his escape before the explosion. Clearly panicked, the trapped man tried to activate his bounce jet, but a single shot destroyed it before it could do what was required. Luke shook his fist at Amber, who simply waved at him as she and Indre left the lobby through a door to the inner hallway.
The cannon overheated and the power core overloaded before it erupted in a massive explosion. The two heavies were engulfed in the blast, and Kaiden and Genos dropped and braced against the pillar as an anchor as the debris rained around them. When the chaos finally settled, the ace surveyed the now empty hall with bemusement. “Damn, that was quick thinking on Marlo’s part.”
“We should thank him next round,” Genos agreed and held a hand up to his helmet. “Friend Amber and new friend Indre, are you all right?”
“Yeah, we’re good Genos,” Amber answered. “I don’t suppose Marlo—”
“There’s no way to repair what just happened, no,” Kaiden answered quickly.
“The big oaf. Hopefully, he doesn’t pull stuff like that in reality. He is too competitive.” She sighed, the sound tinged with both respect and irritation.
“You can rag on him later. For now, we have to—”
“Kaiden, I detect two people in the stairs heading up to the third floor,” Chiyo informed him.
“That was quick. Slow them if you can,” he muttered and scrambled to his feet. “I don’t suppose you figured out where the missing ones are yet, have you?”
“Maybe. I’ve picked up something in the vents,” Otto stated. “It’s only slight movement, and I thought it was from all the ruckus but I have a small read. Do you think that might be them?”
“I would bet on it,” the ace said and gestured to Genos to move closer. “If so, it looks like they have split up to go after the objective. Let’s put a stop to that, shall we?”
Chapter Six
Kaiden, Genos, Amber, and Indre dashed to the stairs. They wouldn’t risk using the elevator either and needed to pursue the fleeing Cameron and Jaxon to stop them befor
e they reached the target location.
“Chiyo, where are they now?” the ace asked.
“They are on the ninth floor, but they aren’t heading to the objective. That’s on the tenth.”
“What? So where are they going?”
“It looks like they are heading to another stairwell on the opposite end of the floor,” she informed him.
“What the hell?” He scowled and stopped on the stairs beside the door that led to the fifth floor to think things through for a moment. It was possible that two of the team tried to lead them on a chase while Izzy and Raul crawled through the vents toward the objective. As a tracker and a scout, they were the logical choices on the opposing team to locate the prize, grab it, and run. But that wouldn’t constitute a win. They still needed to take it back to someplace, right?
“Chief, the other team doesn’t win if they only have the serum, right?”
“Nope. At least one of them has to make it back to the pad with the objective for it to count as a win,” the EI confirmed.
“Then there’s no point in trying to do that while we still have control of the interior defense and also outnumber them.” He looked at the group who had gathered around him. “I think this is another ploy to try to whittle our numbers down.”
“You think they will still try to win this by elimination?” Indre asked.
“Maybe. But it’s more likely to try to swing the numbers and the map in their favor, which means the techs are probably in trouble.” Kaiden contacted Chiyo. “Which floor are you on?”
“Fifth, you can look on your—” Kaiden cut her off quickly.
“Flynn, where are you?”
“Fourth floor, opposite the stairwell,” the marksman advised him. “Do you want me to intercept our friends?”
“You got it. We’ll try to get there as fast as we can.” The ace turned his attention to Genos. “Do you mind backing the techs up?”
“Of course.” The Tsuna nodded and immediately eased forward to open the door. A small black orb ejected in an upward arc from a device on the ground. “Get back!” he shouted.
The ace whipped out his shield device and activated it a second before the orb exploded and blew him, Indre, and Amber back into the wall. Genos, unfortunately, was annihilated. Kaiden cursed. He should have thought about a trap rigged by Cameron.
“Sorry, Genos,” he whispered, as he stood slowly and helped the battle medic and agent to their feet. “Flynn, there’s a change of plans. Ignore my last order and help protect Chiyo and Otto. Genos was eliminated by an explosive trap.”
“Cam?” his teammate guessed.
“It looks like it. He is a bounty hunter, so traps and junk like this are his thing.” He sighed and looked at his remaining team. “They might have trapped each stairwell door. It could be why they are doing all that running around.”
“Let me check,” Indre said. She adjusted a knob on her helmet beside her visor and looked upward to the floors above them. “Maybe not all of them, but most of the doors above do have traps on them.”
“Wait, you have an x-ray visor?” Kaiden asked.
“Pulse. It detects functioning equipment and their power levels and energy signatures in waves similar to a motion sensor,” she explained. “I apologize. I should have thought to run a search before we pursued.”
“That’s why we train. It’s better to make a mistake here than in the field,” he responded and pushed his irritation aside. “For now, we need to focus on finding and eliminating Jaxon and Cam before they lock us down.”
“Even as a bounty hunter, Cameron has a limited number of gadgets at his disposal. I doubt their master plan is to simply trap us in the stairwell,” Amber pointed out.
“Agreed, although if we did happen to blow ourselves up, I doubt they would say it wasn’t the plan. Cam, at least, would take credit,” he mumbled. “If they aren’t going for the objective right away, then what are they doing?”
“Kaiden, they are back on the first floor now,” Chiyo stated.
“What? How did they get down so fast? Did they use the elevator?”
“They did, but they dropped down the shaft rather than using the elevator itself. I lost them for a few moments or I would have let you know sooner.”
“Lost them? Did they take out the sensors?” Amber asked.
“You can have your EI control the power in your suits to send out very small waves of energy. It depletes your reserve shields, but it makes you briefly invisible to sensors for a short time,” Kaiden explained.
“That sounds useful. Is it something you learned in the ace workshops?”
“It’s something Genos taught me. My guess is he taught it to Jax as well.” He vaulted over the railing of the stairwell onto the floor below. “Let’s catch up. My guess is they have gone down there to give themselves space or to try to flank us.”
“What about the serum?” Indre asked. “Shouldn’t we try to protect it?”
“The traps and reinforcements Marlo and Genos set up should hold them off. Even if they get in through the vents or some other way, they will probably have to leave by the normal route, which will buy us time. But if they are targeting the techs, we need to make sure we still have the numbers advantage, and we are currently only up by one.”
The trio raced down the stairs and Kaiden contacted Flynn once more. “Flynn, are you at the—”
“I’m with Chiyo, yeah,” he answered.
“Apparently, I’m not here,” Otto grumbled. “I’m purely a figment of my own imagination.”
“I’m looking at the screens with them. Cam and Jax constantly appear and disappear. We can’t identify a pattern.”
“And the other two?”
“It looks like they are in the vents all right. Chiyo was able to scan individual points on the outside of the building and found one of the alarms was blocked off. It’s probably one of Raul’s doodads and is easy to fix but you have to know to look for it.”
“I’ll flush them out,” Chiyo advised crisply.
“The vents have defenses?” Kaiden questioned.
“No, but I will lower the temperatures. They will either freeze in there or use the power of their suits to warm themselves. When they draw on the heat, we can target them and find their location,” she explained.
Kaiden turned back to his teammates. “Did you get that?”
Amber nodded. “Yep, it’ll get a little frosty.”
“I’ll begin no—” The lights in the building fizzled and shut off as the team burst through the door to the first floor and halted immediately to look around. “What happened?”
“The power is off. There’s a secondary generator but it can’t power the whole building, only emergency systems,” Chiyo advised them.
“The power unit is on the first floor, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It is. That must have been Jaxon’s target.”
The ace gestured for the other two to follow him. “We’ll head that way now. Do what you can but don’t hang around unnecessarily. You’re sitting ducks there with the defenses down.”
“I’ll keep them safe, Kaiden,” Flynn promised.
The trio on the first floor sprinted to the power station while the hackers and marksman prepared for the inevitable clash with the infiltrators. Neither side had a clear advantage yet, so the outcome could go either way.
Chapter Seven
“Is there anything else you can do?” Kaiden asked the team in the security room. Flynn sent an inquiring look at his companions. Otto shrugged while Chiyo shook her head. “Without the power, I’ll have to divert what little emergency backup we have to individual nodes.”
“For example, we are locked in this room unless we unlock the console to the door personally,” Otto explained and pointed at the exit.
“You might wanna move on that. We don’t wanna be stuck in this small space if the other two decide to drop by,” Flynn ordered. The other man nodded as he pushed from his chair and crossed quickly to the cons
ole.
“We’ll try to intercept the assault party, but Cam and Jax are more slippery than I gave them credit for,” the ace confessed. “Can you guys make it to the objective and wait for us there?”
Chiyo opened a holoscreen to display a map of the building. “We do have a route. It’ll take some time as there are two locked gates between here and there, along with having to traverse the stairs.”
“Use the elevator,” Kaiden said.
“Uh, Kai, I think we’ve established that the power is out.”
“The shaft. Use the elevator shaft, smartass,” he chided with a hint of amusement in his voice. “Hopefully, they didn’t trap that, and it could be faster than having to unlock the doors and disarm the traps along the way.” Quiet muttering followed on his side before he spoke again. “We’ll go dark from here. Best of luck.”
“Same to you, mate,” Flynn acknowledged, signed off, and looked at Otto. “How does it look?”
“The door’s open,” Otto confirmed. He straightened and drew his pistol. “My EI confirmed there are no traps outside this door. I don’t think they have the layout of the building down yet. Otherwise, you would think they would have swung around by now.”
“Either that or they could be using the time to acquire the serum and get a head start,” Chiyo pointed out.
Flynn readied his rifle and pressed a button to shorten the barrel. “I’ll take point.”
“And I’ll guard the rear,” Otto confirmed.
“Which means I’ll be responsible for taking care of any problems along the way,” Chiyo noted.
“I hope Kaiden is right with this. Using the elevator shaft could be faster. There should be maintenance ladders or platforms in there we can use to reach the tenth floor,” the marksman reasoned.
Animus Boxed Set 2 (Books 5-8): Revenant, Glitch, Master, Infiltration Page 48
