by Aer-ki Jyr
Jack tentatively reached up and touched his bloody nose, then wiggled it back and forth experimentally. The pain was indeed gone.
The medic offered Jack his hand and pulled him to his feet.
“Thanks,” he said gratefully.
“You guys have been giving us some extra business lately,” the medic noted.
“The Black Knight?” Jason guessed.
“Is that what you’re calling him? Hmmn, yes, he does seem to be causing an abnormal level of injuries.”
“Who is he?” Paul demanded.
“Can’t say…I’ve never met him. But I hear he’s been kicking the crap out of you guys.”
“We only met today,” Jason clarified.
“Did he get all of us?” Jack asked.
“Oh yeah,” Paul answered. “You took the worst of it.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Jack asked the medic. “Will that thing heal a broken neck if he tosses us off a ledge?”
“Not this one, but this one can,” he said smiling, pulling out a much larger device that was equally shiny.
“Really?” Paul asked, a bit concerned. “So we’re free to get our bodies broken up as much as we want so long as you can put us back together again afterwards?”
“I wouldn’t say that. These ranges were designed to minimize the hazards, but there will always be some amount of danger associated with the type of training you’re doing.”
Jason looked around at all the sharp edged rocks and cliff walls. “Minimized, huh?”
The medic smiled ironically. “Why do you think there’s no water or deep sand in any of the environments?”
Jack caught his meaning first. “So we don’t suffocate when we’re stunned.”
“Bingo,” the medic said, sealing up his satchel and walking off down the canyon.
The three trainees let the man go, then turned to face each other in conference. “The others were right,” Jason whispered. “Whoever this guy is, he’s good.”
“And stupidly fast,” Jack added. “I don’t see how he can move so quick in all that armor, let alone for his size.”
“Are our weapons doing anything to him?” Paul complained/asked.
“I don’t think so,” Jack said, remembering how many times he’d shot the guy before he’d been offhandedly bounced into that rock. “I lit him up after you went down. He didn’t so much as twitch.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Jason differed. “Me and Ivan met up with Emily and Dan before he took us down, and several times I saw him duck into cover to avoid being hit. If his armor makes him immune to the stingers then he wouldn’t need to shy away from weaponsfire.”
“He didn’t shy away from mine,” Jack argued.
“There were four of us firing on him,” Jason reminded his recently wounded friend. “I’d bet you 100 laps in the pool that we can take him down with enough hits.”
“Like a super turret,” Paul added, not liking the concept at all.
“That attacks us at random?” Jack said, kicking the toe of his shoe in the dirt. “Doesn’t exactly make for a level playing field between teams.”
“Actually it won’t affect the team scores,” Paul said, suddenly seeing the logic in it. “It may delay us and the others, but as long as he isn’t showing up every time in the same challenge we’ll all have a chance to pass uninterfered with.”
“So what, he’s just screwing with us?” Jason asked.
“It might be just that simple,” Paul said, wishing he was wrong. “Another way to keep us on our toes.”
“Well that’s just wonderful,” Jack said, placing his hands on his hips in frustration. “What are we going to do about it?”
The three of them were silent for a moment, then Jason finally responded with a fiery confidence in his voice. “We’re going to find a way to take that bastard down.”
5
Five weeks later…
Paul held position just outside the stairwell with Emily as Jason and Jack slowly walked up, overlapping their narrow shields for cover against the waiting paintball turrets on the next level up in the new training course the trainees had dubbed the ‘tower.’
A completely ‘urban’ course, the tower was 15 levels of staircases with a finish pedestal on the top level. There were no windows inside the ‘building,’ buried deep within Atlantis’s inner structure, but there were heavy floodlights on some of the levels…offset by dimly lit levels and others with intermittent lighting, making it hard to spot turrets and trainers.
Today’s challenge was turrets only, with few barricades in the otherwise open levels. Each corner of the square rooms held a stairwell, either going up or coming up, with its opposite direction facilitated by another quartet of stairwells situated back to back in the center of the room looking like a large pillar that blocked the view of the opposite corner. That way, in order to climb higher, the trainees had to cross each roomful of hazards, though they could advance up any of the four stairwells they chose.
There were a few low barricades spread out across each level, but everything else was just open space and an easy kill zone for the turret columns situated along the walls, next to the center stairwells, and a few random ones placed out in the open to create additional fire angles. Normally the trainees would have sniped at the turrets to deactivate them from afar…problem was, they didn’t have their rifles in this challenge. They were only equipped with stun sticks and the new, but handy, personal shields.
That meant in order to deactivate the turrets they had to close to point blank range…or else just try and make a run for the next stairwell and ignore the turrets altogether. Neither was a good option, as usual, which made the 2s work hard for each level up the tower they advanced.
Paul heard several shots hit his teammates’ shields as they were only partway up the staircase, meaning there was a floater turret placed directly in front of the stairs…
“Paul!” Jason yelled.
“On it!” he answered back as he passed by Emily and put his foot on the bottom stair, looking up at his teammates hunkered down near the top, deflecting a steady stream of stingers that were thumping off their shields in mechanical rhythm. He flicked the power button on the stun stick in his right hand, hearing the soft crackle/pop as the ‘blade’ charged with stun energy. He repeated the process on Jason’s stick, which he held in his left hand. “Ready…give me the angle.”
“Half meter left,” Jason said, holding his and Paul’s shields tight together as he rotated the one on his right hand about in preparation. He glanced at Jack, who was brushing up against his left shoulder, pinched between the sides of the stairwell coming up from below floor level.
Jack nodded and looked forward. A moment later he and Jason leapt up four steps and into view of the wall turrets on their flanks. They pulled their second shields over to cover the additional turrets, trying to scrunch up in between the corner of the too narrow shields. With a well placed shot the turrets could get through the gap, but it was a risk they had to take.
When the pair had run up the steps they’d also split apart, leaving a narrow gap between them that Paul ran towards. When the turret directly in front of the stairs came into view he shovel threw one of the stun sticks forward, trying to keep as much rotation out of it as possible, then let himself fall face down onto the steps and out of the line of fire.
The stun stick passed between his teammates, almost hitting them in the shoulders, and flew true to target. The silvery ‘blade’ hit the target sphere atop the turret and on physical contact released its stun charge. The stick bounced off the sphere and fell to the floor, bouncing across the carpeted surface until it hit one of the waist-high barricades.
Jason and Jack readjusted their shields to the sides, providing better cover now that they didn’t have to defend against the immediate forward arc, though there were a pair of turrets flanking the inner stairwell directly ahead, but at the moment they weren’t aimed at them.
On the two adjace
nt stairwells the rest of the 2s were gathered and distracting as many of the turrets as they could. Jason and Jack had poked up last of all, hoping to avoid most of the attention, and as of now only four turrets were pelting their shields with paintballs while the other two groups were getting most of the turrets’ attention.
“Emily?”
“I’m ready,” she said, standing directly behind Paul and activating her own pair of stun sticks.
“Jason?” Paul asked.
He glanced at Jack again. “Go!” he yelled, stepping up out of the stairs and onto the floor to the right. His two shields blocked everything above his knees, and he hoped the turrets would track his center of mass.
Jack did the same thing on the left, opening up the stairs and further distracting the turrets as Paul and Emily ran up and out, hurdled a low barricade, and each smacked one of the turrets guarding the inner stairwell with their stun sticks before running halfway up the stairs and out of view of everyone except Jason and Jack, who quickly retreated back into their stairs to cover their exposed shins and feet.
With two of the four center turrets down, the fire on the other groups decreased, allowing them a little breathing room, but not enough to try and break free. It was up to Paul’s group to take out the rest of the turrets on this side of the room.
Emily exchanged hand signals with Jason, then took off running back to their position. He and Jack walked up and out again, distracting the few turrets aimed at them and clearing the way for Emily to slide feet first back onto the stairs. She skidded down several on her butt, but she avoided getting hit by any of the stingers.
Paul followed her a heartbeat later, but ducked down behind the barricade, midway between staircases and waited. Meanwhile Emily came back up with Jason and Jack covering her in a wedge of shields. They sidestepped to the right, then backtracked along the edge of the stairwell opening towards the wall, careful not to fall down into it, for there was no railing.
From there they advanced to the nearest wall turret, blocking paintballs at point blank range. Emily jabbed one of her stun sticks out in a narrow gap between Jason’s shield and the wall, poking the turret’s sphere. The stun charge deactivated it and the three man ‘turtle’ moved down to the next one.
One of the turrets tracking Megan’s group suddenly turned away and aimed for the threesome, now under remote control from one of the trainers. The barrels dipped down and shot at their legs from a distance, hitting Jack in the shin.
“Down!” he yelled, half falling into Jason, but Emily grabbed hold of him by the waist to keep their shield wall intact. The three of them knelt down, covering the incoming fire but unable to move forward.
Emily’s torso popped up suddenly and she side-armed one of her stun sticks into the turret they’d been heading for, now only two meters away and took it out, clearing that half of the wall so Jason could readjust his shield angle for better cover.
Meanwhile Paul had leapfrogged to another barricade and ducked down again. There were two turrets left in this quarter of the room, on the wall beside Megan’s group. One held an auto turret shooting at Paul’s guys, while the other was the trainer-overrided turret, now doing likewise.
Before Paul had a chance to act, Megan chucked one of her stun sticks out from their now clear left angle and hit the trainer’s turret, leaving only one left shooting at his group. Once they were in the clear, it wouldn’t be difficult to clean the others out and secure a path to the next level.
About to rush the last turret, Paul’s peripheral vision caught sight of another floater to his left just in time for him to reverse his course and drop back down behind the barricade as it swiveled and shot over his head.
“Damn,” he whispered, scolding himself for being so sloppy. The others hadn’t had a chance to take that one out yet.
Jason stepped aside from Jack, who was now sitting on his legs behind his two shields, protecting Emily as they crept away from their wounded teammate, walking on their toes with their knees almost pinned to their chests toward the last turret on this wall. Emily caught a glance of Paul moving between barricades just as a sliver of splattered paintball caught her in the forehead.
It immediately numbed her senses, making her a bit lightheaded, but she stayed on her feet. A few seconds later and they were right in front of the turret, where she jabbed out again along the wall when Jason created a gap and took it out of play.
“You hit?” Jason asked as Emily slumped against the wall.
“Yeah,” she said, grimacing. She pointed to her forehead. “Just a piece.”
“Stay put,” Jason said as Paul jumped up, ran forward, and dove at the floater turret, slapping it inactive, then taking cover behind its base. “Here,” he said, handing her one of the shields. “You’re out of the heavy fire now.”
“Get it this time,” she said, gripping one of the shield’s handholds and snugging it up in front of her knees and chest. Jason left her alone and moved off to help the others, meanwhile Emily rubbed the numb spot in her head, trying to disperse the energy into the surrounding tissue and blood, thus diluting the effect. The tip of her index finger went slightly numb in the process, but that only meant less charge in her head, so she accepted the tradeoff as she waited out the denumbing process. Regardless, she was going to have one hell of a headache afterwards.
With one quarter of the level clear of turrets, the attack angles favored the trainees, who were able to overlap shields to greater effect and carefully pick off the rest of the turrets after a brief confab between Jason and Paul, who had gradually become co-team leaders of the 2s over the past few months. They were currently on level 14, with only one level more to go and the defenses increasing the higher they went.
This was farther than they’d gotten in their previous attempt, and though they were down a man from earlier, plus having Emily and Jack partially incapacitated, they mutually decided to clear out this entire level so they could approach the final room from all the stairwells, as well as be able to move about below to reposition people for multiple confusion if the trainers chose to take direct control of the final set of turrets…which they knew they would.
With 8 team members fit to continue fighting, for now Jack was back on his feet though limping heavily, they split up into pairs and probed the final level’s defenses, walking slowly up the final flight with shields held above their heads.
They received incoming fire almost immediately, signaling that there were turrets on the ceiling this time. That wasn’t something they’d had to deal with on the lower levels and would provide a different challenge. Paul was trying to gage the distance that he’d have to throw from behind his shield when the impacts suddenly stopped. Jason frowned at him, and he returned the gesture, wondering what was going on.
Suddenly something heavy hit his shield from the side and knocked him into Jason, with both of them falling backwards down the stairs, tumbling on top of their shields and stun sticks…which fortunately had been turned off and reattached to their belts.
When Paul twisted around and got to his feet he looked up the stairs but saw nothing, then heard a similar clamor on the far side as Megan and Dan took a tumble down their set of stairs.
“What the hell?” Jason asked, quickly grabbing his shield and hitting the stairs. Paul followed a step behind him but neither of them was shot at as they ascended, which he wondered might be a trick on the part of the trainers until his head cleared the last step and he saw the finish pedestal in the center of the room...with the Black Knight stalking about beside it.
“You think those turrets are really off?” Paul whispered as the others emerged from their stairwells and stared down their opponent, who was keeping close to the pedestal and making no move towards them.
On the other side of the room Brian walked sideways, keeping the Black Knight locked in his vision, and tapped one of the turrets with his stun stick. Likewise, the other trainees spread out the room, still hiding behind their meter-long shields, and deact
ivated all of the wall turrets.
Paul threw one of his stun sticks at the ceiling, hitting one of the low riding turrets there and let it fall to the ground beside him, resisting the urge to catch it out of the air and potentially stun himself. With Emily’s stick held in front of him warily, he reached down and picked up the other…all the while the Black Knight walked about impatiently, never getting more than two meters from the finish pedestal that would end the challenge in a victory for the 2s.
Ivan and Kip deactivated the other ceiling turrets, with Paul getting the last one. Now that they had made sure they were out of the equation, they looked at the Black Knight, unnerved by the sight of the 7 foot tall monster…but equally freaked out by the fact that he wasn’t attacking them. In every other encounter they’d had, he was constantly in motion, taking them down with lethal precision and never giving the trainees a chance to breathe, let alone plan out a counterattack.
Paul slapped both stun sticks together, making a loud clap that got everyone’s attention, then he went through a series of hand signals before dropping his shield and thumbing both sticks on. He spread his arms wide in preparation and walked toward the pedestal.
The Black Knight stepped in between it and him, holding up his long black stun sword in a guard position. When Paul got within three steps of the Knight he leapt forward and slashed sideways in a faint with his silver rod, less than half the length of the Knight’s sword.
The Knight ignored the faint and spun his sword around his body, stepping forward once as it completed the circle and lashed out at Paul’s side. The trainee brought both stun sticks up in guard and wisely deflected the Knight’s ‘blade’ up and over his head, with him having to duck to avoid the arc. The power behind the Knight’s swing was mind boggling, and there was no way he could have stopped it with brute force.
The blade swung up over the man’s helmeted head and came crashing down on where Paul had been a moment before, missing his retreating shoulder by inches. Twin stun sticks slapped at the blade, trying to delay its movement as Dan jumped out from the wall and tried to make a run for the pedestal…but the Knight was ready for him and reversed his direction of attack in a blur and jabbed his sword out across the pedestal and caught Dan in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him and dropping him to the floor unconscious.
