by S. A. Lusher
“Spread out!” Callie called. “Open-”
She immediately discovered just what it was these new monsters did as an arc of pure white electricity shot out of one of them and barely missed her. Judging by the startled shout issued by Pendleton behind her, it did hit him, however. Callie felt her whole body shudder as a wave of hot static discharge washed over her. Static wavered across her HUD, briefly disrupting it. She dove to the side as a second arc of electricity came for her and narrowly avoided it. She opened fire as she dove and hit the floor.
A few rounds landed and sent the first elite guard off-balance as it was gearing up for a second assault. As it stumbled back, its hands went up and the new arc went straight into the ceiling, causing burn marks to appear on the material and a few bulbs to explode. Callie scrambled to her feet as the others spread out and opened fire. She barely managed to strafe out of the way of another arc of lightning. She aimed and squeezed the trigger as she saw an opening and felt a grim sort of elation as her round punched right through the first elite guard’s pale, decaying forehead and causing it to stumble backwards.
As it jerked and twitched, another discharge of white lightning was fired randomly from one of its metallic hands and, in a moment of good luck, slammed right into the other elite techno, causing it to freeze up and making it a hell of an easy target. Three streams of gunfire converged on it and it was sent flying back several feet. As it slammed into the floor, Callie swept the area with her gaze and her rifle, saw they were alone and hurried over to Pendleton, who was still on his back, not moving at all. Not another one…
She relaxed as she peered into his faceplate and saw his eyes open and moving, his mouth slowly working.
“You okay?” she asked.
He nodded slowly. “I’m okay. Suit’s not moving,” he replied.
“Hold on,” Hollis said, kneeling by him. “Here, help me roll him over.”
Callie and Shaw knelt and rolled him over so that Hollis had access to his back. He worked at it for a moment and suddenly there was a barely audible hum of power.
“There we go,” Pendleton said, slowly waving them off and getting up.
“I activated your backup power units,” Hollis said as they all got up. “So at some point in the near future you’ll want to find some way to put more juice into that suit, because that thing fried your primary power cells.”
“You feeling okay?” Shaw asked.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Pendleton replied, though he sounded in pain. “We don’t really have time for anything else.”
“He’s got a point, come on, let’s get out of here,” Callie said.
They headed up to the far door across the room, opened it, found themselves looking up a stone stairwell and began hustling up it.
* * * * *
Allan made his way quickly down a narrow, poorly-lit stairwell. He and Han had raced through the top floor and were onto the next floor down. There was supposed to just be two more floors between them and the ground level.
And who knew how many meat machines in between them.
As he hit the bottom of the stairwell, Allan waited, listened, heard nothing and opened up the door. Another corridor that was an odd patchwork of stone and metal awaited his inspection, stretching away from the door. It was vacant and void of life, laden with foreboding. Allan led Han into the corridor and quickly down it, hoping to get through this as fast as possible. He’d started a countdown timer in his HUD and synched it to the one he’d found in their network. They had a little over twenty five minutes now. Not a whole lot of time to play with.
Especially if you threw combat into the mix.
Allan felt every second slam by, knowing that some vast explosion was waiting for him in the near future, a thing that would kill him with all the blind idiocy of a stray comet, and he and the others would be just another causality to a universe unable to care. He almost didn’t even question the decision to set the generators to overload, but now he was. Why? Why the hell were they doing this? A last ditch effort?
Were they evacuating ReSequez?
If so, where? How? Why?
But none of this made very much sense and all there was time to do was to shut this fucker down and then move on to the next thing. In a way, Allan was grateful that there wasn’t much time and he had to act now, because it was easier this way. Action left little room for thoughts. The corridor came to an end, terminating in an open door way that segued into a much larger room. As Allan stepped into it, barely sensing Han at his back, he took it all in at a glance. It looked like some kind of dining hall. Most of the area was taken up by about half a dozen huge wooden tables and benches and though they were covered with all manner of plates and silverware and cups, those things were themselves covered with cobwebs and dust.
It all had an unreality to it.
There was still nothing and no one waiting for them, so the pair began to make their way through the dining hall. Allan found himself wondering where everyone was. Given that they’d had to dispatch a good dozen of the meat machines upstairs and by all the ruckus it sounded like Callie had been causing downstairs, it seemed like they’d be on full alert. Well, obviously they were on full alert if they’d set the generators to overload. So what was going on? Were they evacuating, all of them? Well, that’d certainly make this easier.
Up ahead, at the far right side of the room, was another large set of double-doors, these ones made of some strange blue wood reinforced with metal. There was supposed to be another stairwell on the other side of those doors and they would take them another level down. As he approached it, a tremendous bang suddenly shot through the room and the doors shuddered in their frame. Allan and Han froze.
A second bang sounded and cracks began to appear in the wood.
Both men raised their weapons and began backing up, trying to find better positions among the tables and benches.
A third and fourth bang sounded, and one of the doors popped out of its frame. It was the fifth one that sent one of the doors flying inwards, landing heavily atop the nearest table and sending cutlery and glass flying everywhere. The second one flew inwards but remained at least partially in its frame, hanging at an awkward angle, swinging back and forth. The now broken-open doors admitted something completely new.
Something that gave Allan a serious moment of pause.
This thing seemed more metal than meat. It was huge, bulky, easily ten or twelve feet tall. It had to duck to fit through the doorway. For one crazy moment, it made Allan think of old school knights sheathed in old school gleaming armor. But there weren’t blades or guns or bludgeons at the end of this thing’s arms, there hands, actual hands, with long, gleaming metal fingers, like chromed bone. Its eyes were two blazing beacons of frozen blue neon, stabbing out from the darkness of its face, shrouded in shadows beneath a metal cowl.
Its chest and arms and legs seemed to be almost totally covered with solid metal and Allan wondered how the fuck they were going to deal with this.
He supposed, as zeroed his sights, they would deal with it the same way they dealt with basically everything else: shoot the fuck out of it until it died. That didn’t always work, though. Allan squeezed the trigger and began throwing shots out in three-round bursts. As the first three hit its chestplate, Allan’s hopes sunk as he saw them go in, but not very deep. Whatever armor it was wearing, it was tough fucking material. He cursed, adjusted his aim and tried to get some shots into its face, but the creature raised one arm and blocked the shots.
Then it was barreling towards them.
Allan quickly began backing up, he had an idea that if it got its hands on him or Han, it would mean a quick and brutal death, power armor or no. As they continued opening fire on it, the great metal beast seemed monetarily stymied by who to go after. Then it quickly passed the logic test by picking up a table and throwing it into Han. Both him and the table flew across the room. With one threat eliminated, either permanently or for the time being, Allan couldn’t tel
l if the man was dead or alive, the huge creature began coming for him, crossing the distance quickly with vast strides of its long, powerful legs.
“Oh, fuck!” Allan cried as he kept backing up, emptying the magazine into the creature and doing apparently no damage.
The gun clicked empty. Allan ran into something, one of the benches behind him, and fell over backwards. Scrambling as the machine bore down on him, he managed to get under a table. This, however, provided very little cover as the thing made a fist and punched straight down through the wood, which was as resistant as toilet paper to this behemoth. It barely missed Allan’s feet, the fist slamming into the floor mere inches from his power armor. He gasped and began hurrying backwards, shoving himself back on his hands and knees, blind terror lighting him up like lightning as that fist opened like a metal flower.
And came for him.
It made a grab for him, its fingertips brushing against the bottom of his boots and motivating him to move faster. Suddenly, he was out from under the table. The thing looked up at him and twin beams of neon blue light zeroed in on him and for a few seconds he was frozen, pinned to his spot like a bug pinned to a whiteboard. Then the metal beast began coming for him, smashing through the table as if it were nothing and reaching for him. That got him going again. Allan shoved himself up to his feet while turning at the same time.
He got to his feet and ran.
The thing had been reaching for him once more and although it didn’t grab him, it did hit him and he stumbled, yelled and tripped over another bench, crashing to the floor again. His rifle went from his hands and the beast was closer. He couldn’t see or hear Han anywhere, he had to deal with this himself. Allan saw his rifle was too far from his grasp, so he grabbed his pistol and spun around, aiming up into the shadowy face and the two blazing blue eyes and began squeezing the trigger as rapidly as he could. He was shaking from raw adrenaline and fear, so several of the shots went wide, but three of them disappeared into that darkness.
And he must have hit something sensitive because the beast let out a deep, low resonating growl, straightened up and backed away. It gave Allan just enough time to drop his pistol, scramble over to his rifle, grab it and get up.
As he stumbled to his feet and looked around, groping for a new magazine and shoving it into his rifle, he still didn’t see Han. Was he dead? Alive? Unconscious? Didn’t matter, Allan had to deal with this thing himself, right here, right now. He raised his rifle and looked around. The beast was already recovering, already coming for him again, kicking its way through the tables and the benches, smashing them into splinters.
That’s when he saw it.
Up, overhead, was a huge chandelier. Of course, because why not? Why not a big fuck-off chandelier in a black stone castle? Whatever, it worked. Allan raised his gun, aimed carefully, tried to time it as best he could and as the big metal fucker walked under it, he fired. It was perfect. The chandelier, which had to weigh a couple hundred pounds, fell from the ceiling in perfect silence for maybe half a second.
Then it smashed into the metal behemoth.
Allan took a few steps back, watching it carefully as the thing collapsed under the weight. In fact, it was so heavy that it crashed straight through the floor. Allan laughed as he watched it disappear into the hole, then suddenly yelled in surprise as the hole widened abruptly, creating a yawning chasm that took the remaining tables, benches, debris and him with it. He screamed as he fell to the next floor and smashed into something hard and unyielding. For several seconds, there was a tremendous crashing sound as the overhead ceiling continued collapsing.
Then, abruptly, all was still and silent.
Well, he’d been wanting to get down to the next floor, and here he was. Groaning, Allan carefully pushed himself back up. He lumbered to his feet, breathing heavily, sure that he was bleeding from somewhere on his face, probably more than one place, and his ankles, ribs and right shoulder were really hurting now, though they didn’t feel broken, but the monster wasn’t moving anymore. So that was that, at least.
Now, to find Han.
Allan began to turn, then froze as a big pile of rubble shifted.
“Oh, come the fuck on!” he moaned.
A huge metal fist punched up through the debris. It was quickly followed by the metal behemoth. It was dented, scraped, battered, but still mostly functional. Allan looked around frantically. His rifle and his pistol were nowhere to be seen. He had two grenades left, maybe he could-
Han suddenly appeared overhead, standing at the edge of the remains of the floor above, his rifle raised. He opened fire. As he did, the monster abruptly turned around, snatched a piece of debris from the floor and threw it up at Han. There was nowhere he could go. The debris smacked into the piece of flooring he was standing on and it dislodged, coming down and taking him with it. But before he could even hit the floor, the creature snatched him out of the air.
“Han!” Allan screamed, running forward, unsure of what he was going to do, only knowing that he needed to do something. Anything.
But then everything seemed to slow down.
What happened next happened over the span of what felt like both milliseconds and hours.
Han looked at Allan over the thing’s shoulder, as the beast was now facing away from Allan and it had caught Han when he was facing towards it. From the way Han was beginning to be turned and the beast was raising its other hand, Allan could already see that it was going to turn him on his side, reach up, grab his legs and rip him in half. But at the exact same time, he could see Han’s hand coming up with something.
A little black device that was red on top.
Allan realized it was a detonator. All at once he knew that Han must have had some kind of explosives on him. They’d raided who knew how many makeshift armories on the way here and patted down dozens of bodies. Allan hadn’t found any explosives, but Han had. And now he was rigging them to blow.
He could see it in the man’s eyes, which were cool, calm, detached.
A solider to the end.
Allan had just enough time to stop, turn around and begin to run away when the explosion hit him. It picked him up like a great, invisible hand and threw him roughly the entire length of the room he’d fallen into.
And then all was dark.
* * * * *
“There,” Callie said.
Dead ahead, the doorway to the room that Allan had indicated held the shutdown switch. She and the others rushed down the length of the corridor, capping a few stragglers, and hit the door. They’d been fighting their way here ever since coming up from the basement. A couple of minutes ago there had been a tremendous crash somewhere overhead, followed by a huge explosion. Callie had called to Allan or Han, but neither answered and she found herself fearing the worst already. But no time for that now, no time at all.
They had less than five minutes.
Callie led the assault into the room beyond, not knowing what she’d find. It turned out to be a relatively small square room dominated by a huge workstation that had two technos plugged directly into it, wires running from the device to their brains. Callie capped them both, secured the room, then pointed Pendleton over to the device.
“Hurry,” she said.
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he muttered, letting his rifle hang from its sling as he hurried across the room and stood before the workstation.
A minute went by in terse silence.
Two minutes went by.
Then three.
“Well?” Callie asked. “Can you stop it?”
“Hold on,” Pendleton replied tightly.
They held on for another ninety seconds before Callie began to speak up again. “Pendleton-”
“Got it!”
There was no noticeable change, and they all waited the painful remaining thirty seconds to see if he really had gotten it. Nothing happened. Thirty more seconds went by and they were all still alive. “See, told you,” Pendleton said.
Callie l
et out a deep breath.
“Okay, that’s one thing out of the way. Now we need to go find Allan and Han-”
“Han’s dead.”
She looked over, startled, and saw Allan standing in the doorway. He looked like absolute shit. His armor was dented and covered in soot, his faceplate was cracked and he was bleeding. Callie hurried across the room to him and the strength seemed to go out of him as she got close enough. He pitched forward and she had to catch him. Shaw was there in another few seconds and they eased him carefully to the floor.
“Hold still,” Shaw murmured, getting his helmet off.
“What happened?” Callie asked.
“Big fucking metal bastard, too hard to kill, got ahold of Han, he blew himself to hell to take it down,” Allan said. He seemed a little more there now, though he was really pale. Shaw hooked into his suit and ran his vitals.
“Hmm,” she grunted, pulling out her kit and tending to the three wounds he’d gotten on his face. One of them had bled a lot, a scalp wound, and covered one whole side of his head. She handed Callie a sanitation pad. “Clean him up,” she said quietly. And she began to, carefully. The others hovered by uncertainly, keeping watch.
“Is he going to be okay?” Callie asked.
“He’ll be fine,” Shaw replied. “Just took a bad hit to the head. Some ribs and your right shoulder are bruised, not broken or fractured though. No internal bleeding, no concussion, thank god. You just need a little bit of rest and some painkillers.”
“Ah shit,” Allan muttered, wincing as she finished patching up his wounds. “We don’t really have time for that.”
“Make time,” Shaw replied sharply.
“Pendleton, where is this fucker? Where’s ReSequez?” Allan asked, still laying there.
“Give me a minute,” he replied.
Shaw sighed and kept working. A minute passed, then another, and then a third. Shaw finished up and she and Callie got Allan sitting up against a wall.
