“Oh, someone's had their funny sub-routine adjusted.” Tolin scoffed.
Twenty-One
“You have got to be kidding me!” Nailor shouted into the comms. He fired off another four bolts from his M-715 zombie carbine. The shots deflected off the shield of the hulking infantry mech. Every time he seemed to get a bead on the Dreadmarr witch, that buffalo bot got in the way.
“Incoming!” shouted one of his crew.
The infantry mech poured its vortex blaster into the hall like a ruptured pinata dumps candy into the street. A sheet of bolts pressed on the Kraken team, blowing through the snap shield and shredding two of the operators on Nailor's team.
“Togo and Cappy are down! Pull ’em back!” the Major barked. He threw a HIDP grenade past his downed operators, sparking a pulse of shimmering green light. The mammoth mech and his witch pulled back under the onslaught of the hybrid explosive. From what he'd seen of the Black Taskers in this hall, the weapon probably wouldn't take them out but a twin burst of stun and ion pulses would make them think twice about sticking their blasters or bad intentions back into the hall.
“Major! Togo is fragged. Cappy's still with us, just not in a way that will let him shoot!” Dougie yelled over the cacophony of the gun fight.
Nailor loved having Dougie along. Aside from being the best medic he'd ever worked beside, she could punch holes in folks as well as plug them. It was also funny that in every coffee shop in or out of the Frontier they'd ever gone to, they'd always spelled her name wrong. Teams started calling her Dougie because they figured it was better than having her get upset because the barista called out Dan-a-rell-a-nah-kaka or something worse nineteen times before she got mad and trashed the place. “You know what to do!”
Dougie put a round under each man's chin, then stepped aside, giving Rigger the room to set them with explosives tuned for proximity detonation when anyone but the team passed by. “Cake is baked. Make sure we're outside when they light the candles!”
“Good! Viv, Torro, how're we looking on your end?” Nailor barked.
“Major, not going to lie, this sucks worse than being a drug dealer in church!” Torro said over the coms.
Viv cut into the transmission. “We shot down the bee hive's worth of Blaster Bugs that bot just threw at us. Came close but we got them all. Stupid thing just tried to push a spider gun on us. We blew that to pieces, too.”
There was a scream over the line. Another heavy infantry mech leaned around the corner, sending a brilliant green beam of light winging across the hall. It severed Torro, his armor and gun in halves that slid apart as a bloody mess onto the floor.
“Boss, we're not going to make it if we keep bleeding people like this!” Nailor said over the net.
Norris had gotten into the lab via an executive entrance. He was working a station like a madman, trying to keep their prize under control. “We just launched six more K-900s to you. That should help hold them off. I have Control prepping two more Dobermans. Can you hold?”
Nailor huffed into the line. “You promised me a good time, you didn't say anything about easy. We'll make it work.”
The crew continued to shoot around the drop barriers they'd thrown together in the hall. They'd been lucky to identify the marshal early in the battle. Hawk, their sharp shooter, had put a bolt into a power regulator at the end of the hallway, causing an explosion that blasted her into a wall. The impact must have knocked her unconscious because she hadn't moved since. Good. She was exactly how he liked his marshals. Out of the fight.
Sounds of another battle came through the passage. The K-900s must have come from the opposite side of the facility, catching the Black Taskers in a vice with them on one side and Norris' Krakens on the other.
Nailor pushed a combat map into his HUD. Six of the K-Nine-Ohs came into the rear entryway from the motor launches, putting a considerable amount of fire into the enemy line. If they could just put down the Dreadmarr, the bots might surrender. Then again, they also might just keep on fighting according to their programming. Another glance at the map showed two Dobermans were on a rapid advance following the K-900s. Then it was one. Then both blips vanished.
“Norris, this is Nailor. Just lost both Dobies on my screen. That a tracker glitch or should we tell those Tall Boys firing into the back of our bad guys that they have incoming?”
“Probably not a glitch.” Norris responded. “Have your team get ready for some epic level suck, just in case. You have a fallback position?”
The major scanned back down the passage they still controlled. “Yeah, we have a landing pad at the end of this level. We can retreat there and call in a bird. After that, we can work something sneaky to get it done.”
“Do it, but don't take too long. Tarot's disguise-o-tron welded the door in this lab for some reason. If they try to break in again, it won't hold.”
“Roger out.” Nailor said.
The Krakens pulled back through the open hall, dragging the drop barriers along their rolling withdrawal. Another wave of Blaster Bugs, tiny drones filled with a smidge of malleable high explosive, swept around the corner toward the team. Rigger, a short, muscular, badger of a man who looked more machine gunner than techie, was the team's drone wrangler. He swept through the displays in his HUD, launching a curtain of floating metal marbles along the length of the hall. The Blaster Bugs sailed into the net, becoming collections of sparking parts littering the floor.
“Nice one, Riggs!” Nailor said, pumping his fist in the air.
“Won't hold long though, sir!” The team's drone jockey dug into his pack, quickly assembling a pair of blaster machine guns. “Spider guns on the run!”
“Send them!” Nailor switched his position in the network. “Foss, this is Nailor. You get that VTOL running?”
The icon of an enclosed pilot's helmet with a smiley face painted on the front popped into his HUD. “Skids just hit the deck, Major. Doors are open for you as soon as you hit the flight line out here.”
“Push power to the shields. Going to be a rough day at the office when we hit those doors.”
The enemy bots flowed into the hallway, following the retreating Krakens. The big infantry mech with the vortex gun was leading the way, having recovered from the pulse grenade. Rigger's spider mounted machine blasters doused the passage with suppressing fire in answer to the robot's attempt to flood them with bolts. The mounts moved the guns in erratic patterns, making hitting their sleek profile possible for only the most agile shooters. The bulked up combat robot suffered several shots to keep them from hitting its team. The other infantry model stepped in, flashing its energy shield to take the brunt of Rigger's counterattack.
“Pop the doors. Krakens, split to either side once you're through!” The major sent a targeting package to Foss through his lid. The last man through the portal, he pivoted on a foot to clear the door.
The HS-54 Hunter Wasp was a light reconnaissance craft capable of carrying a six-man team. Some maniac at Triton Expeditionary RnD had retrofitted new high output engines on it so it could bear extra weight. Whenever soldierly types get their hands on more push, they always try adding extra armor, guns, or both. In this case, they went with the guns.
Thirty millimeter vortex cannons spun to life, their whining chirp a sound that was all too familiar to anyone who had served in a combat zone. The gun spat a wave of bolts in keeping with legendary creatures using their breath weapons to cook entire armies in a single fly over. The rotary barrels were capable of savaging the hallway at over two thousand shots per minute. In the short, violent burp, the gunship had mangled the interior of the hallway and the lead mech when its shield failed. The heavy armor was no match for the high energy bolts that blew most of its front out of its back.
A shriek of the Hunter Wasp's repulsor engines drew the Major's attention back to the craft. It cried out, hitting the deck with a sparking slide that saw one of its landing struts collapse, causing its tail stabilizer to act like a kickstand.
“Mayday! Mayday! Major, I'm being dragged off the...”
The cockpit exploded, flame ripping through the vehicle, turning Foss into firewood. The frame bent and twisted on the bounce. Somewhere in his death spasm, the pilot pulled the trigger, sending a final burst into the team on one side of the door. The large-bore bolts destroyed the waiting Krakens. Something beyond the team's line of sight took a final unyielding yank, pulling the flaming wreck from the landing platform.
“Twin Hells!” Viv shouted. She dropped to a knee, aiming her Stone Gate XK-20 heavy machine gun to the empty landing pad. The gun, sometimes referred to as the Ex or the Ex-Girlfriend, was a staple among the Direct Operations Groups in Triton's employ. It fired a caseless explosive round at obscene rates of fire. While most civilized forces tailored their armor to protect against energy rounds, the Ex-Girlfriend had a habit of chewing through it to render the meat underneath into pâté.
There was an eerie silence that followed the ship tumbling from the dock. The battle was holding its breath for the inevitable splash or explosion sure to come. It got both. The power cells on the Hunter Wasp caught fire, exploding with enough force to shoot a geyser of water up from the surface below. As the spout reached its apex, great sheets of ice displaced by the blast vibrations, followed it back down to crash into the pool.
Nailor scanned his dead. Four troopers lay in tatters, their remains lined up with craters on the platform caused by the runaway gun. Something above them caught their attention, moving amid the falling ice. Water dripping off it turned to tiny shards, sparkling in the overhead light to obscure its shape. It struck the flight pad, sending spiderweb cracks all the way back to the door. Ice on the platform shattered in all directions, turning the teams heads away from their descending doom. Deadly metallic tendrils slammed the deck a millisecond after it landed, sending a second shock-wave flying at the crew.
“Boom-Snuggle!”
Its voice was deep, a powerful bass dragging a bag of rocks across carcrete. Its speakers amplified its announcement to the level of a roar, the tone smashing more ice free from its hold on the building. The nightmarish techno beast on the platform was a squat wide death machine on four legs, flashing its Cheshire meat rippers at the remaining team. Its hide was covered in resicarbon, along duradium alloy plates strangled by layers of cyber-strand and myo-fiber. Sensor nodes swept back to look like ears, framed a face that looked like the Devil's death cat.
Six K-900s dropped to the deck from the floor above, bringing their heavy blasters to bear against the Doom Cat.
It retracted the tentacles on its panther-like frame. “Oh look. They brought out the junior varsity. I'll consider this the warm up before the main event!”
Norris washed over the control station, working to augment the psychics pushing against the psychokinetic onslaught that was Orin Lashra. Without the damnable Justicar buffering his abilities, he was burning out his handlers under the strain of whatever he was doing. Every time they pushed against his reach into the Crucible, one or more would go into cardiac arrest. Malachi was working just to keep them alive, never mind being able to subdue him so they could take control again.
He changed his attention over to a red plunger button covered by a sheet of ceramaclear. One push would flood lethal arcs of electricity into the harnessing chamber, killing everyone, including the handlers. It was a last resort. Allowing the mongrel, Lasher, to escape would put all of his plans in jeopardy. He'd come too far to risk everything now. There was an empire to build and it would rest securely on his shoulders. This half-breed aberration who'd survived every attempt at finishing him off wouldn't be able to interfere this time.
Norris looked up from the controls. Outside the blast doors was their lost buffer. Gigantic by human standards, the Vosi Justicar focused his concentration at the door. A hurricane of blaster bolts sailed around him as though it was destiny for them to do so. Standing in the midst of the storm, he turned to face the camera in the hall. His amber pupils set in coal-black eyes bored through the display, unnerving the normally unshakable agent.
“Oh, that's not good.” Norris slammed his fist through the ceramaclear, pushing the plunger.
Sharp snaps and ethereal cracks worked in time with streaks of lightning flashing across the chambers. The psychic death throes of the hapless handlers being cooked in their medibeds threw countless machines into the air. Some even tried to free themselves from their prisons, provoking the targeting system to focus the lightning’s wrath into bursting internal organs with every strike. The harnessing chamber was awash in smoke-filled ruin, the sizzle of Norris' victims the predominant sound in the room.
“We are the walkers in the web,” came a ghostly voice from somewhere in the lab.
Norris flashed his blaster carbine where he'd heard the whisper. It came across his internal speakers as an amplified bit of audio data from somewhere in the room. He checked the settings on his ultra-frame, making sure that the intense electricity didn't fry his systems.
“Control, this is Norris. Do you have comms with Mr. Haas?”
“Negative. He's been quiet for some time. Then again, unless he makes contact from the bunker, we won't be able to reach him. We'd have to go to the bunker to make contact.”
“Control, can you Cyphercast me from within my armor?” Norris asked.
“This is control, dangerous, but it can be done.”
“Set it up, control. Make it fast. Call me when you have it.” Norris swept the room, moving around the debris scattered from the psychic tornado that erupted during the death of the handlers. He had to make the exit, get to the ice pack above the facility so he could Cyphercast from this body, back into his own. All he had to do was get past an enraged Vosi, a panther-shaped murder mech, and whatever was left of the Dreadmarr team.
“Norris, this is Nailor. Control just dropped a slew of K-900s to give us a hand, but that damn Doom Cat is ripping us to shreds!”
“Hold out as long as you can. If you get waxed, I'll brief you back at the bridge.”
“This wasn't what we signed up for!”
“Well, this is the job. Make it work, Major. Norris out.”
He could feel something crawling up his spine, despite being sealed in some of the most advanced light combat armor in or out of the CORAL.
“Death in venom's shade,” hissed another whisper.
More Dreadmarr. A different Rook than the Black Tasker. They each had their sayings they told to people to sound intimidating. He had to admit, at this moment, despite being protected by a near impregnable lab, encased in an ultra-frame, and riding a body that had some of the best combat-mods in the galaxy, he was still pretty intimidated. He whirled around; the fear chilling his skin under the myoprene at the sight of Lasher's chamber being open.
“Oh, crap!” Norris turned into the path of a fist, rocketing toward his face. Deftly blocking it with his rifle, he ventured a hyper velocity kick at his assailant's groin. Lasher's foot blocked the incoming shin, the ultra-frame's servo motors whining in protest against the hasty barrier. The half-Vosi took hold of the rifle. Working himself into a spin, he flung the Triton senior agent end over end toward the blast doors. Norris corrected himself in flight, looking to land against the barrier on his feet in order to spring back the way he came. Once he boomeranged at the mongrel, he'd feed the musclebound twit a heaping dose of his own medicine.
The heavy duradium shutters crumpled like tissue paper, the weld along the seam flaking off as they flew into their wall housings. Vai caught the tumbling agent by the neck, slamming him face first through a control console. The hulking red alien wordlessly stood over his road kill for a moment, diving into the Crucible to deliver mystically empowered pile drivers straight into Norris’ back.
Warning indicators flared across his HUD. “Yeah! Yeah! Blah, blah, structural integrity, blah, blah, armor compromised. Fine. They want to do this old school?”
Rotating seal locks unwound themselves until latches across the armor popped ope
n, giving Norris a way out. The back plate burst off, opening to a means of escape. He rolled off the broken control station, face to face with Lasher. Norris extended his hand, the echo of rushing water playing across the surfaces of the lab. Pushing in both directions, he executed a pressure wave, swatting the two Crucible enhanced warriors away.
“That’s new.” Fluffang Doom-Snuggle slid into the open hatch, covered in blood and broken robot parts.
“You’re not going to worm your way out of this one. Even with your new tricks, this is where it ends.” Lasher recovered from being knocked aside, moving toward his enemy.
“You know, don’t you?,” Norris said, glowering at his adversary, “Or you had some vision that led you to me.”
Lasher nodded. “Not really that hard when the Crucible is all.”
The Justicar swept to the side, freeing the Doom Cat to have an unfettered sight line to Norris’ back. “It would be best if you surrender. With the three of us, we can easily Judge you.”
“Four.” Katarina stepped into the lab, a holographic globe working between her two hands.
“Five.” A black-clad warrior wearing reflex-plate armor slithered from the shadows, breaking to the opposite direction from Kat.
Lasher was quick to reengage the Triton agent. “So how was this supposed to go? You use me to amp things up on Tythian, then what? Use your newfound influence to take over Triton and become the ultimate bad boys of the galaxy?”
Norris’s grin became predatory. While to anyone else it appeared he was outmatched, his expression told a much different story. “Get me talking. Stall for time while the Sentinel Cyborg back there locks me in. Then you rush me and take revenge for your mommy? How pitiful. Control, now.”
“Um, are we waiting for something to happen or can I just bite off his head?” The Doom Cat shifted into its hybrid mode, walking upright while still maintaining the lethality of a smart-mouthed savage robotic man-panther.
The Sentinel: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 3) Page 26
