by Aer-ki Jyr
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to jump them…but we’ve got to find and disable that jamming signal.”
“Still think it’s in the command building?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go. I didn’t want to tangle with that tank anyway.”
“Are these the first to come through?”
“The first I’ve noticed, but I haven’t been at the window the whole watch.”
“Any movement inside?”
“Not a peep.”
Paul crawled back from the window with Kali following him until they were far enough out of sight to stand up, then they walked over to join the other two Archons.
“What’s the plan?” Harrison asked.
“Same as before. We keep hitting the command building until we can punch a hole inside.”
“Ground or walkway?”
“I hate to be predictable, but let’s try the walkway again.”
Kali smiled beneath her helmet where the others couldn’t see as an idea occurred to her. “Let’s hit the walkway…from the top this time.”
Paul cocked his head her direction for a moment, then nodded as he caught her meaning. “Grab our gear on the way out. Let’s see if we can’t permanently relocate across the street.”
Half an hour later Paul stood on the semi-flat roof of the walkway that stretched between the 16th floor on both massive buildings, carrying his rifle in one hand and a gear satchel in the other, balancing carefully against the light, but erratic wind gusting through the gaps between the city structures. They had a meter-wide flat section of roof to work with, then a taper down to the edges and a very lethal fall after that, armor or no. Below them the lizards had reinforced the broken walkway with additional turrets and barricades, but there was no way for them to see or reach the top, for unlike the glass-covered sides it wasn’t transparent.
On the opposite side was a bank of windows a meter and a half up from the roof. They reflected the now bright sunlight back into Paul’s face as he walked out of shadow, catching the reflective angle just right in order to blind him…but fortunately his faceplate cut out the harshness of the bright flash and he was still able to see his feet in front of him and keep his balance.
“Watch the glare,” he warned, crossing the midway point and continuing on ahead of the others to the far side where he carefully turned around and set his satchel down on the roof. He got a two-handed grip on his plasma rifle and aimed at the lower edge of the window and fired three shots in a flat line across it.
The panes melted and cracked, but didn’t break free as they had when the lizard anti-air plasma had hit the walkway. To remedy that fact Paul walked up and introduced the butt of his rifle to the cracked safety glass and tore open a hole large enough for him to crawl through. He looked inside to make sure the area was clear then pushed his weapon through before climbing up. From the inside he broke away more of the glass and accepted his satchel as Harrison passed it up to him, then his own.
Paul pulled both bags inside and tossed them to his right then grabbed Fred’s two satchels after Harrison came up. Kali came last, just in time to get to her feet in before a firefight broke out in the hallway just outside the office they were standing in.
“Stay or move?” Harrison asked, firing at a pair of lizards coming their way down a narrow hallway.
“Both,” Paul answered, running over to the door. “Fred and Kali, stay and guard our gear. Harrison, you come with me and we’ll lead them off. Once you’re clear, reposition our gear to another hideaway.”
“Have fun,” Kali offered as Paul nudged past Harrison who was half blocking the door. Once outside he charged toward the one remaining lizard and nailed it in the head as it popped out of cover to fire at him. Five seconds later more appeared, coming out of a room further down the hall, but Paul lit them up at range and sprinted forward, knowing that standing in the narrow corridor was akin to camping out in a death zone.
Harrison followed close behind, but couldn’t get a shot off past Paul until the trailblazer busted through three of them and landed on the other side. The adept shot two on the ground, then a third coming out of the room as Paul flipped around and shot the one closest to him as both men closed in on the doorway and fought their way inside, killing 4 more lizards in the process.
“What the hell is this?” Harrison asked, seeing a lot of lizard tech spread around the room. There were also even larger piles of computers, chairs, pieces of desks, video screens, and all other assorted items piled around, along with three cubes of metal lying on the floor next to one of the devices.
“Son of a bitch,” Paul said, motioning for Harrison to watch the door. “They really are moving in. This is recycling equipment,” he said, tapping a boot against one of the cubes. “Bet you a hundred credits they’ve got some sort of portable factory around here somewhere.”
“To make what?”
“I don’t know, but this definitely isn’t a smash raid,” Paul said, circling back to the door.
“You think they figure the only safe place from our orbital guns is in one of our own cities?”
Paul tapped Harrison on the shoulder, sending him back out into the hallway and to the right with him following a step behind.
“Set up their own colony inside one of our cities…they might just be bold enough to try,” Paul said as they ducked into an intersection and split up, taking a step to either side as they each covered a hall, finding both clear, then continuing on.
“Could explain why they’re not blasting everything in sight.”
“I hate to say it, but I have a bad feeling you might be onto something.”
“So much for the desperate lizard theory. Up or down?” Harrison asked as they turned a corner and came to a familiar staircase.
“You take up, I’ll head down. Keep on the run until they signal we’re clear, then go to ground.”
“Copy,” Harrison confirmed as he hit the stairs. Paul went the opposite direction and began circling around, dropping down two levels before getting off and running through what he knew to be a heavy lizard zone from yesterday. He got through three turns of the hallway before running into his first opposition, gunning the lone lizard down at range then having three doors open up in response to the sound and start spewing lizards all over the hallway.
Paul didn’t hesitate and ran right into them, firing as he went. He plowed through their wounded or dead bodies as they fell, shoving others aside and all the while making progress down the corridor. When he finally broke through to clear running space on the far side he emerged into a large lounge with 20+ lizards scurrying about, some with weapons, some without as they worked to set up a makeshift barracks complete with the foul smelling foodstuff slices they heated on small powered plates.
Paul jumped right into the middle of them hoping to catch several off guard as he shot those with weapons first, then pushed a Human-made shelf over, dumping all kinds of lizard supplies onto the ground, some of which appeared to be liquid. He shot two more before running out another door, leaving a lot of dazed and angry lizards behind him.
The trailblazer didn’t give them a chance to regroup or catch up to him. As fast as they were Paul had gotten a few steps on them and that’s all he needed. He zigzagged across the level then ducked down a different staircase to three below, sowing as much confusion and alarm as he could and drawing attention away from Kali and Fred until he ran up against stiffer defenses, then rebounded back across the level in a different direction, collected a huge army of pursuit trailing him.
Knowing that he was quickly getting in over his head he switched tactics, gapping his pursuit long enough to get out of eyesight and duck into a supply room. Calming himself he climbed up to the top rack of supplies on a somewhat shaky shelf and laid down in between a pair of boxes, holding his rifle across his chest as he faced the ceiling less than half a meter above his face, making sure to pull his elbows in so they wouldn’t hang over the edge.
T
hen he waited. The room was dark save for the light coming in what had been an open door when he arrived, so he left it open at the same angle to avoid drawing suspicion. Never the less a few minutes later a lizard walked in with weapon draw, glanced around seeing nothing, then walked back out and closed the door behind it.
Taking a few deep breaths Paul studied his battlemap, noticing that his teammates were no longer showing up, as he’d expected. He’d gotten out of range by going lower in the building, but he hoped that Harrison was still in range to contact the others.
Studying the frozen battlemap he took a closer look at the level he was on and what was around him both up and down, planning out his next move as he recalled the lizard positions from yesterday. The bottom three levels had been the heaviest infestations, with the enemy setting up operations at ground level and working their way up in force, but having sent expeditionary teams up to the walkways and a few other locations, along with having roving security teams moving about once they realized that Star Force had been able to infiltrate the building.
Apparently overnight they’d moved more troops up into the middle levels while maintaining a strong hold on the roof where the transmitting gear was. They’d tried to get at it yesterday, but the lizards had made good use of the barricades that the Duke’s people had put up earlier and had kept the Archons bottled up long enough to whistle up reinforcements…which were now apparently using the elevators that had been locked down the moment the building came under attack.
That shouldn’t have surprised Paul. If they could hack their comm gear why couldn’t they also hack the elevator controls. It made him wonder how much more of their technology they could interface with, and was it because they’d studied samples of their tech for a long time or because it was so primitive by comparison that it wasn’t all that hard for them to figure out.
Star Force had been able to learn enough to work some of the lizard technology, but they hadn’t been able to hack into their computer systems because they hadn’t established an interlink program. The lizards, on the other hand, didn’t have access to any Star Force tech to begin with, unless they took it in those early raids. Regardless, the stupid bastards were proving to be more and more intelligent as time passed, despite their brutish combat philosophies.
After giving the lizards more than 10 minutes to look elsewhere for him, Paul carefully climbed down the shelf and cracked the door open, listening for sounds of movement before poking his head out. To his right he saw the back of one lizard walking down the hallway, but his left was clear so he snuck out and sprinted down two sections and turned right…running into two other lizards.
He grabbed one by the throat as he kicked the other one to the floor, then pulled the choking one close and wrapped his arms around its head and jerked, snapping its neck before it could fire its weapon.
The other one dropped its rifle as it fell, then bounced back up off the ground like a cat and dove forward trying to reach its rifle. Paul leaned forward and dropped to a knee, catching its clawed hand at the wrist and pinning it to the ground before bringing his right fist down hard onto the back of its head. When the body went limp Paul got up and ran on down a few more lengths of hallway until he got to another stairwell, one he hadn’t used recently, and shot a pair of lizards coming down just as he got to the entrance.
Knowing that the plasma fire was going to draw attention he dragged the bodies off the stairs and tossed them down the descending case, hoping to make any pursuit think he was headed that direction.
Running upwards he made it two flights before getting caught up in a firefight with four more lizards that slowed him down. All around him he could hear the screeching calls of the enemy as they verbally coordinated their hunt, trying to pin him in one place where they could amass the numbers necessary to take him down.
Knowing exactly what they were trying to do Paul retreated back down the staircase one level, knocked aside and killing another lizard in his way, then sprinted across half the building to find another staircase.
5
“There he is,” Harrison whispered to himself as he saw Paul’s tracking dot reappear on his battlemap three levels below. The Archon left his concealed post and headed over to the stairwell he thought Paul was headed up and caught a lizard from behind on the way, taking it down with a shot to the back of the head before jumping over the body. He got to the stairwell three seconds before Paul came into view motioning him backward.
Harrison complied, stepping back and letting him pass him going up the steps, then Paul turned around and fired back down at the hoard of lizards following him up. Harrison opened fire as well, surprised that there were so many so close to the trailblazer.
“Hold here,” Paul said, dropping to a knee along one side of the entryway, obscuring half his body from view.
Harrison did likewise on the opposite side and the pair held position, mowing down two dozen of the lizards before the flow finally stopped, then Paul leapt up out of his position and ran back towards the tracking dots of the other two Archons partway across the level.
“Kali, you secure?” Paul asked over the comm.
“We’re good. This level is mostly quiet.”
“Bring me in.”
A moment later a waypoint materialized on Paul’s battlemap, leading him to a position 20 meters away from Kali’s and Fred’s tracking dots. Apparently they had positioned themselves just outside their newly acquired base.
When he and Harrison got to the waypoint he almost laughed, noting that they’d chosen a restroom to hole up in this time. “Nice locale.”
“Saves us from making extra trips,” Kali commented as Paul pushed in the door and saw a double row of urinals transitioning over into stalls. The opposite end of the long room had another exit, meaning it would be difficult for the lizards to pin them in if they ever discovered their location.
“Third on the left,” Harrison suggested.
Paul walked down to the third set of stalls and opened the door on the left, finding their gear satchels stacked neatly on the floor. He opened the one containing their plasma rifle ammo and pulled out several small disposable boxes that held 9 rounds each, then sat down on the floor in the middle of the room and began to reload his weapon.
“Now that we’re in…” Harrison asked.
“Thin their numbers,” Paul answered, still loading. “Randomly. Hit above and below this level, but don’t try to carve out any territory. See what kind of reinforcement rate they have and if we can bleed them dry. If we can’t, then we move our base up progressively until we get near the barricades, then we find or make a hole to get through.”
“Before or after we run out of ammo?”
“Depends how many lizards they’ve got to throw at us. If need be we use their weapons, but the more we kill here the less they have to redeploy elsewhere. And you’ve already seen that they’re setting up this building for a long term occupation. The more we disrupt that the better,” Paul said, finishing his reload and standing up.
“Pairs?”
“Singles. Kali, Fred, make a run through the two higher levels. Keep it random and a straight shot and shoot what you can on sight, but don’t get pinned down. Harrison, you’ve got this level. I’m going back the way I came for a weapons grab.”
Harrison walked past Paul and headed out the far door while Paul backtracked through the half mile wide building to the staircase he’d come up, finding the stack of bodies where he’d left them. Listening for sounds of activity further down he began rifling through the corpses and pulling out their plasma rifles, tucking a stack of four under his left arm before retreating one section over and stashing them in a random office, hiding them under a desk.
He repeated the process in other rooms across the level, killing two more lizards who had the misfortunate of running into him. He left those bodies and the others where they were for the other lizards to find, not wanting to give them the impression that he cared about this level more than the ot
hers by cleaning it up.
Afterwards he conferred with his fellow Archons and began following up their raids with sneak runs to grab up the lizard weapons. He wasn’t always successful, as more lizards began moving into the areas they were cleaning out, but later on that day his captured weapon count surpassed 120, which he used to create small weapons caches around the building that he marked on the battlemap for the others to find should they run out of ammo without being able to return to base.
The next day the incoming flow of lizard reinforcements coming up from below suddenly stopped, with Paul thinking they’d finally bled them dry until Kali happened across a group of lizards coming down from above and heading straight through the 10-15 levels that the four Archons were terrorizing without even bothering to get off the staircase. Paul found that odd so he caught up with and followed the lizards down all the way to the lower five levels, noting that all others in between had been empty as far as he could see.
The usual check points, barricaded halls, and guarded rooms were devoid of lizards. Paul even made a side trip over to what they had identified earlier as a lizard stronghold, finding the room full of lizard gea but completely empty of occupants. Frowning, he retreated back over to the staircase and followed the lizards on down, wondering what they were doing…and hoping that they hadn’t decided to blow up the building.
To his surprise blue dots began popping up on his battlemap when he descended to the 4th floor, suddenly explaining why the lizards had been moving down en mass.
Abandoning his recon run Paul charged down to the third level, then the second before he caught up with any of the lizards, running up on the back of a group of six that were holding a barricade checkpoint near the stairwell as others were retreating back to their position in ones and twos.
Tucking his rifle onto his back Paul whipped out and activated his stun sword, running up behind the lizards and getting the drop on them, jabbing and slashing them into unconsciousness until he claimed the checkpoint barricades for his own, then he switched over to his rifle again and began shooting the retreating lizards from cover, sparring a shot now and then for those on the ground around him.
