by Aer-ki Jyr
“Turrets neutralized,” Harry reported with obvious satisfaction in his voice.
David stood up, brushing the debris off him just in time to see some 6 more pop up out of the floor and walls and start shooting at the two of them.
“To hell with this,” David said, reaching into his pack and pulling out a partial glove that he slipped over his right hand. “Rockets get as close as you have to and light these bastards up. I’ll draw out the rest,” he said as two came by him in the tunnel before he’d even finished talking. He ran by Harry, who was already side pedaling to get out of the way, then pulled out a Kiritas grenade from his pack with his left hand and rubbed it against the activation pad on his right, taking several plasma hits to his shields that quickly went down again.
Harry pulled out a plasma rifle and started taking aim at the turrets, hoping to draw at least some of their fire away from David or knock one of them out as he ran forward, but held his position against the wall, neither advancing nor retreating as his shields also went down.
Rockets and lachar flashes filled the tunnel behind them and poured in on the turrets, blowing apart 3 of them almost instantly, with more of the trashcan-sized pylons popping up to replace them, including some coming down from the ceiling around the remains of the cannon turret. As he soaked up plasma hits on his armor, David sidearmed the remote grenade towards the nearest one then dropped to a knee, keeping his eye on the hockey puck with his thumb rubbing the detonation trigger on his right hand.
When it bounced off the floor and skidded up next to one he triggered it, blowing apart half the device, but not able to take out the firing eye that shot back at him once before a pair of sniper shots finished it off as they deftly found the hole in the casing he’d just made.
More turrets popped up and more got knocked down by the rockets, with David advancing a few more steps, arming another grenade and hurling towards a target, detonating when it got where he wanted it, then repeating the process several more times as his armor got very chewed up…but he knew he was the only one in the group with the denser ranger plates, so if someone was going to play bait it had to be him.
Eventually the defenders ran out of turrets, thankfully before the Archons ran out of rockets, but as David cautiously walked up towards the debris field around the heavily damaged but as of yet unpenetrated doors his mask filters locked up. He frowned and looked around the area, stretching out his Pefbar into spotlight mode and searching the walls…finding small ventilation shafts that were pumping out a cloud of toxic smoke that was quietly mixing in with the dust from the rocket explosions.
“Damn it,” he said, knowing that he only a few minutes of reserve air to work off of. They could retreat back down the hall, for he doubted they had enough poison to fill it all up, but it would be taking them in the wrong direction and buying time for the enemy…something they couldn’t afford.
David picked the weakest spot on the now damaged door and chucked a grenade towards it, telekinetically stopping it before it hit, then wedging it into a nook before letting go and detonating, then he checked with his Pefbar to see how thick the door was, finding in that spot it only had a few inches of material left.
David marked that position with a waypoint on their battlemap and stepped to the side, ignoring the toxins pouring out around him.
“We’ve got toxic gas coming in near the doors. I want every rocket we have left to hit the waypoint, and start bringing up the remaining det packs. We have to break through now,” he said as he slowly walked away from the doors as the rocket streaks started coming in and exploding behind him.
He couldn’t see much from the distant mongoose lights, nor his own armor lights, but in his Pefbar he caught all of them as they passed, along with the explosions behind him, allowing him to monitor the damage even with his back to the doors.
“Cease fire,” he ordered some 35 seconds later when he spotted a hole forming. Once the rockets fell silent he ran over to it, knowing his oxygen was still on the clock, and examined the basketball-sized hole beaming with light from the far side. He pulled out and primed three grenades and wedged them in and around the hole, with him having to telekinetically hold one in place as he backed up.
When he trigged them all simultaneously the hole expanded out wide enough for a single person to climb through…which he did after a quick Pefbar check of the far side. Going through head first in a gymnastic spillover that had his chest armor leaning on the bottom edge of the hole so he could squeeze his pack through the top, he rolled out into a bad somersault and fell off to the side, due to his lumpy pack. He got to his feet quickly and looked around, seeing a small clump of mini-skyscrapers and other buildings directly ahead underneath a very high and well lit dome.
Around the perimeter was an open ring that he now stood in, with The Word city inside covered with numerous Star Force ID tags.
“I’m through,” he said over teamcomm, walking away from the breach point and having his filters unlock and start drawing in fresh air, thankfully. He looked up at the top of the dome and saw a tiny hole in the ceiling plates where the drill team had come through, realizing that they had beat his team here and were already engaged.
“Everyone get in here, we’re late for the party,” he said, switching comm frequencies. “Status report?”
“Hey boss, glad you finally showed up,” Nathan replied. “We’re in a bit of a pickle right now.”
“What have you got?” David asked, walking a bit further away and looking around, unable to see anything on the outer ring that was completely devoid of buildings or other objects. The dome arched straight down into the floor, with two other large door entrances spaced around the perimeter as evidenced by the battlemap that was now updated with the information the drill team had already gathered.
“Walkers, small quadrupeds and one big biped. Big one shot up on our way down, with a couple of guys falling and getting messed up really bad. They’re alive and we’ve got them out of the fire in a building, but we’ve got our hands full. There are a lot of stationary turrets that we’ve been working our way through, but the big one is preventing us from bringing anyone else down from up top. We’ve got 9 down here and not much in the way of plasma weapons to work with.”
“David, glad somebody finally showed up,” Rikku broke in. Apparently the ranger had been one of the first ones down.
“There’s gas at our entrance. They using it anywhere else?”
“Not that I know of. It’s all walkers and turrets in here…with no people that I’ve been able to find, though we haven’t had much of a chance to look. I can’t sense any within Ikrid range.”
“Hiding or bugged out?” David said, hearing footsteps approaching from one of the narrow streets between buildings as his team began to come through the door hole one at a time.
“Don’t know.”
“Stand by,” David said, running up towards the noise and pulling out his plasma pistol just before a horse-sized quadruped walker moved out and swiveled its dual back turret his way. It pumped more plasma into his already damaged armor, with his shields holding up against the first two shots before going down again.
David shot back, but rather than gun it out with the thing he sprinted towards it and slid underneath the legs, jamming his own between its metallic supports and twisting them askew. With some heavily applied leverage he tipped the beast over onto its side and kicked his way free before climbing up over onto the back and pumping four shots directly into the turret barrels and slagging them as the walker started to stand up despite the Archon’s weight on it…which wasn’t much with him weighing about 225 lbs including armor and pack.
David stayed on top of the thing as it righted itself, pumping shots into the main casing until he melted through, then he tossed his weapon aside and pulled out a grenade, primed it as the thing tried to buck him off, then pushed it into the hole…or tried, for he did fall off the second time.
The grenade fell askew, but with a quick reacti
ng telekinetic grab he redirected it back into the hole then blew the thing, popping out the armor plates like a flower and leaving the dead hulk of the walker standing erect like a dead AT-AT.
“Sorry,” David said, getting back on the comm. “You guys in any immediate trouble?”
“We’re holding on our,” Rikku replied, “and thinning out the stationary turrets where we can. It’s the big mech we don’t have the firepower to take down.”
David looked on his battlemap for the tag, and found the enemy mech just outside his view behind the buildings around the ring to his right.
“I’m on it. Any signs of a self-destruct?”
“Not yet, but we’ve been pretty busy so don’t hold me to it.”
“Keep your eyes peeled. We’ll take care of the mech.”
“Have at it,” Rikku prompted.
“Need help?” Nathan offered.
“Nope, he’s mine,” David said, running off along the buildings in its direction.
4
“How many rockets do we have left?” David asked over his teamcomm as he poked his head around the corner of one of the buildings and got eyes onto the mech as it twisted to the left and fired its two arm-based plasma cannons up to the ceiling as a rope dropped down from the drill hole. The plasma melted it in half even as a couple other Archons were peppering the mech’s legs with small arms plasma fire, trying to create a distraction.
Once the bottom half of the rope fell, the biped mech twisted its torso around and angled its arms down and fired into the street gap between buildings as the Archons fled back to cover, with David spotting a bulgy rocket pod over its right shoulder along with what looked like a stubby head.
“Seven left,” Harry reported after taking a quick count.
“Get up here and unload on the thing. Everyone else into the streets and go after the quadrupeds…and stay away from the big one. It’s got a pair of heavy plasma cannons, but it looks too large to move anywhere aside from the outer ring.”
“And the tunnels?” Harry guessed.
“Probably,” he answered as the first of the rocket launcher toting Archons came up behind him. “Pick a spot and everyone hit it. We can’t afford to scatter fire.”
“We still have some det packs,” Synker-8299 suggested.
David pulled one of the silver discs out of his pack and held it up for Synker to see. “I still have some of these. Get me a hole in the armor if you can.”
“Pick your spot,” the acolyte said as two more rocket launchers caught up to them, each with three rounds that they’d collected from the others.
David grabbed his plasma pistol in his right hand and leveled it at the back of the big mech and fired a single shot, making a tiny pot mark just below the ‘head’ and off to the right. The mech didn’t respond to the sting, but continued to take pot shots the other way as it walked further around the ring and temporarily out of sight.
“As fast as you can,” David said as the foursome ran up, with him diverting into a side street as he continued to talk on the comm. “Don’t shoot anywhere else if it turns around,” he said, running to the nearest cross street and ducking to the right, intent on getting ahead of it in case it did turn around.
But between him and it was another quadruped roaming moving up the street, with him turning right into its firing path. Wanting to save his grenades he exchanged plasma pistol fire with it, eventually winging the turret and knocking out one of the barrels before he got up to and jump kicked it down onto the ground…along with himself as he fell off.
He pumped several more shots into the turret then took off running again, not sure if he’d completely disabled it or not, but needing to get over to where the mech was.
David passed the next side street, noticing another Archon to his far left taking on another quadruped, along with several other hulks further into the tiny city. Up ahead there was a junked turret that Rikku’s team had already gotten to, and David noticed that it was the same rising variety that they’d encountered back in the tunnel.
After that he began noticing more circles on the ground, possibly additional turrets that hadn’t been raised yet, but he didn’t have time to try and dig them out. When he came up to the next side street he turned right…then skidded to a halt and backtracked as he saw the mech looking at him from the other end.
David ducked into the other side of the intersection just as the first rocket slammed into the mech’s back…then after that David didn’t see anything, but on his battlemap the mech icon began to move, so he reversed his direction again and headed back into the street, just seeing the right arm of the biped disappear to the right behind the buildings.
He sprinted forward, only to have one of the hidden turrets pop up ahead of them and start shooting. His shields indicated that one of his emitters had been fried, leaving his maximum shield strength at 82%...and he knew that with a few more armor hits the rest would go out too, leaving his chewed up plates as his only defense. But the mech came first, so he ran into the oncoming fire, dodging this way and that to make some of the shots miss, then skidded to a halt right in front of the turret and fired his plasma pistol into the ‘eye’ where it had no plating and melted the firing chamber.
The next shot it tried to fire blew the whole thing up like a grenade, tossing David into the building on the right as he tried to run past. He slumped to the ground, shook his head once, then got back to his feet and sprinted on, coming up to the outer ring and poking his head around the corner where he saw the mech walking off chasing after the rocket launchers with a bit of armor damage in the back…but not enough to penetrate all the way into the interior.
David took a breath then ran after it, pulling out a Kiritas grenade and arming it in his right palm. When he got partway up to the mech he stretched out his Pefbar to see into it, confirming his suspicion that it was carrying some very thick armor plates…then the mech stopped and began to twist its torso around to target him.
“Damn it,” he said, turning hard right and ducking into the closest side street just as it fired its right arm plasma cannon.
The blast just missed his feet as he dove into cover, but his diversion got the mech’s back exposed again and three more rockets flew in, causing the mech to pause as it decided who to shoot at, eventually picking David and walking out in front of the street so it could fire down it.
As it did David backtracked and ducked underneath its legs, running out the back side before it could move and step on him. He kept jerking around, avoiding its steps and arms while getting it to turn its back again on the rocket launchers, getting the 7th rocket to come in and hit the damaged area, reducing the armor there to less than an inch of thickness.
As if in response to the mech’s inability to get at David, two quadrupeds popped out onto the outer ring and came towards them, firing their turrets with impunity, unafraid of damaging their bigger twin with leg shots.
David knew he couldn’t take them down from range with his pistol, so he tagged them with a waypoint requesting fire support, then he worked his way around until he got a clear view of the mech’s back and flipped an active grenade up towards it, telekinetically steering it into the breach.
He wedged it in as best as he could, then ducked out of the way of a backwards step by the mech’s big foot and detonated it, seeing with his Pefbar that there was still a bit left, but only a couple of millimeters, though he couldn’t measure accurately at this range. He saw enough to know he needed another, so as the quadrupeds kept melting additional divots in his armor, he activated and slung another grenade up, steering it into place.
When it blew it knocked out a tiny section of the armor, which David immediately followed up with another grenade, forcing it inside and blowing apart the innards of the mech and expanding upon the hole in the armor slightly…but it wasn’t enough, for the big machine continued to move about and fire.
Fortunately the quadrupeds got flanked a moment later, with one turning to deal with the approac
hing Archons and the other still tracking David, only to get forcibly knocked over with a jump kick by Rikku. Her green armored hands shot into the turret top and physically wrenched it off the machine as the one behind her got bathed in plasma fire from a side street.
The mech rotated around to shoot at Rikku, but she sprinted up and got underneath its legs along with David, who sent her a quick telepathic message. The other ranger moved to the side as the mech repositioned, then put her hands together into a makeshift step and waited for David, who ran up and put his foot in her hands.
She used all her strength to get him as much height as possible, which was just enough for him to snake a hand into the breach point. He held on and leveraged himself up into a two-handed hold, then swapped a hand for a foot and climbed up on top of the mech’s shoulder where he did a spread eagle to try and hold on as the mech shifted about.
Rikku ran off out of sight of the mech and ducked into a side street before it could fully turn around, leaving David alone to wrestle with it, now that the two quadrupeds were down.
He waited till it settled and got up to a knee…only to have it pitch forward and try to dump him off, but he got a hand on one of its edges and held on, then pulled himself back up to the peak and wedged his feet against the side of the missile box and his right forearm against the flat ‘head’ while he ducked his free left hand into his pack and pulled out another grenade. He swiped it against the activation pad on his right hand then repositioned himself as the mech jerked again, taking a brief moment of opportunity to reach down and tuck the grenade inside the hole.
David didn’t detonate it, but reached into his pack and dug out three more in sequence, having to be very careful not to get bucked off. He activated each of them and stuffed them inside, saving his last two as he slid his legs around and dropped off the back. He crunched into a ball on impact, then took off sprinting away as he thumbed the detonator button on his right hand.
He felt and heard a small boom from the grenades, then a much larger one as the internal detonation reached up into the missile box and triggered the missiles’ fuel loads to combust. When David swung around the closest corner and into a side street he glanced back, seeing that the mech was missing its right arm and a third of its torso…as well as standing perfectly still.
