Starforge unsec space bo.., p.151
Starforge (UNSEC Space Book 3), page 151
Other than that, there was only Martian dust and the violence.
“Where to?” Jake asked, leaning his chest against the wall and firing his shotgun at a nearby armature.
“Thinking!” she shouted back, eyeing the height of the next “tier” of defenses. Already fire was starting to rain down from them, armatures poking rifles over the edge or—in a few cases—tossing grenades down on the battle below. We could probably jump up to that level without too much difficulty, she thought as she snapped her rifle up, spraying a barrage of plasma fire at an armature turning her way and slagging its head. The act caught the attention of its fellows, and she ducked back below the edge of the ramp, Sweets and Jake ducking with her. A grenade arced over the edge of their cover, bouncing once on the concrete before Sweets whipped it up and out of sight with his grapple. Whatever bang it made was lost in the ensuing cacophony of the battle around them.
If we just go up to the next level we’ll be swarmed by the defenders there. We need the drones to push. They could probably go up and over the walls if they needed to. The annihilators anyway. The tank … Her eyes flicked to the massive machine, already almost at the base of the ramp. As she watched its rear lit up, firing dozens of hard-light missiles into the sky that streaked on ahead, up and over onto the second tier of Eidre’s redoubt where they detonated with a series of concussive cracks.
The tank can’t climb the wall. It’s wheeled. So unless it can fly—and I wouldn’t be surprised at this point—it needs the ramp.
“We follow the tank!” she shouted as the massive machine rolled past. Its front end collided with one of the wrecked Wolves as it turned, a horrendous screech sounding as the debris was shunted to one side. Another barrage of missiles flew from the back of the Sha’o war machine, the fire coming from above the three of them lessened as the impacts drove the defenders back.
“Now!” She spun, springing over the edge of the ramp and landing firmly on the first tier, Jake and Sweets landing beside her. The tank was off to her left, and she moved with it, keeping the massive bulk of the machine between her and the defensive fire coming from the upper level. They were down to what looked like only six annihilators ahead of them, almost at the ramp to the second level … And then one of them blew apart, a familiar crack marking the appearance of another Wolf.
The Sha’o tank surged forward, picking up speed, its main gun already tracking. It fired a second later, the thunder of its gun mixing with the crack of its target shooting back. The gauss projectile from the Wolf slammed into the Sha’o tank’s shields, the force of the impact sending out a shockwave that rolled over Anna with the force of a tide, pushing her back and setting off pressure alerts on her hud.
Too close. She glanced at Jake and Sweets, but both appeared okay. A second later, moving forward in pursuit of the Sha’o tank—Pulsar, her mind suggested on account of its strange firing mechanism—she caught sight of its target, burning and blown out like the other two.
The sight made a faint shiver roll down her spine. This is how the Overseer beat the All, way back when. Tools that the All couldn’t match. The Pulsar rolled on, crushing battered and dead armatures beneath its huge tires.
The timer on her hud hit zero, and the ground shook beneath her feet as the orbital strike she’d called struck home. An annihilator clawed its way up the wall by the next ramp, its tendrils digging into the reinforced concrete to give it purchase. Flame enveloped its body as it crested the top, a thrower coating its hard-light shield and overloading it in moments. A tendril lashed out, and a ball of fire rose into the sky as the drone crushed the fuel canister of whatever had attacked it.
The Pulsar hit the base of the ramp up, accelerating toward the next level and lobbing more hard-light missiles as it went. Fire flickered across its shields as it neared the top, but it was sporadic. Unfocused.
“The defense is coming apart,” Anna said as she followed the machine. “We’re breaking through!”
Darts were landing on the wall of the third and final tier, firing down at what few defenders were left on the second. As Anna reached the point where she could see what was left of the defenders the Pulsar’s main gun opened up. Three of the small concrete bunkers scattered around the level—as well as two anti-air batteries—blew apart.
“That thing is amazing,” Jake said, his voice full of awe as the tank continued rolling forward, small arms fire from a few surviving armatures licking at its shields but still unable to make an impact. Anna lifted her rifle, ready to fire, only for the armatures to fall prey to lances of bolts from the darts.
“It’s terrifying,” Anna replied. “But that’s almost the same thing where war is concerned. I can see how the Overseer managed to win against the All.”
There was fire coming from the final, upper tier, but it was scattered and light, so much so that Anna drew one of her FOX-9s to fire back as they moved after the tank. Probably never figured anyone would get past this many layers of defense. Or that they’d get hit with such a force.
The Pulsar was almost at the base of the final ramp, now, still lobbing missiles up into the air. The darts were rising once more, their prey on the lower levels extinguished, striking out at the last semblance of defenders around the “data center.”
Still, Anna thought as the tank began to turn. If there’s anything left to throw at us, now would be the time to—
A familiar rolling cascade of thunder erupted as plasma fire slammed into the Sha’o tank, detonating and erupting from multiple sides. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw Jake skid to a shocked halt as the Pulsar’s hard-light shields failed at last under the sudden barrage. The tank fired back, its main gun adding a thunder of its own and triggering a massive explosion from the top of the ramp, but its silver skin was already glowing and warping under the barrage of plasma fire. A second later something within it gave, blue flames blasting out of one side and rising into the air. The plasma barrage continued, eating away at the machine’s innards until another explosion erupted that tore the tank’s remains in half, a larger ball of fire rising into the sky.
The reaction among the rest of the Overseer’s drones was instant, every nearby machine turning toward the ramp and moving with purpose. Dozens of darts zipped past overhead, ignoring the small arms fire that came their way in favor of whatever the source of the plasma fire was.
“A PR6,” Jake said.
“No,” Anna corrected. “At least three. Two now.” She could hear the distinctive overlap in the shots as they detonated, working back and forth across the sky and just as effective against the drones as hers had been beneath North Shore. She turned her gaze to the wall. “We go up. Flank before they do any more damage.” She was already moving, her feet pounding over the concrete. An annihilator went down, its sides melting under a plasma barrage, molten metal raining across the battlefield.
She jumped, pushing off with her toes and rising up toward the wall, sailing with ease through the reduced gravity. She kicked off the wall just below the lip at the top, giving herself a final push upwards before catching the edge with one hand, pulling herself up and over, eyes scanning for targets. A nearby armature spun and she fired, spraying close-range SMG fire through its head and cutting the strings that held it in place. Another armature nearby shifted its rifle toward her, and she activated her emitters, blocking the machine’s shots. Before it could adjust its aim a blast from Jake’s Rezzer splintered the front of its face, the machine twitching and jerking. A second shot put it down while she tracked a third armature—only for a white-hot blast from above to cut right through its body, Sweets landing nearby with his own cannon at the ready.
“There!” she shouted, her eyes locking on a source for the plasma fire. A heavy armature was standing near the burning remains of some sort of armored vehicle, probably the third source of fire that the tank had put an end to. The familiar hefty shape of a PR6 was clutched in the machine’s hands, spitting plasma across every drone that came close.
Worse, it was looking right at them.
Anna dropped her FOX-9, drawing her rifle even as the heavy began turning in their direction, sweeping its stream of death toward them. Jake and Sweets both fired, their shots striking the heavy’s armor but not stopping the machine. Anna fired from the hip, her shots streaking out but already going wide as the wave of plasma spitting from the PR6 came closer—
Darts dove out of the sky, intercepting the heavy’s shots, a bright burst of freed, expanding plasma filling the space between them and the armature. Anna fired from memory, three shots snapping through the air as the sharp whites of the blast front faded—and snapping past a number of shots now racing toward her.
Only to splash against a hard-light barrier just meters from her. It failed in an instant, overwhelmed by the blast. A wave of heat rushed over her, like she’d stripped herself of her armor and strode out into the hot Brazilian sun but even worse, along with a concussive force that flung her back.
I’m alive. Even as she tumbled, rolling and flipping in the low Martian gravity, the thought shot through her head like a lance. I’m alive! Her suit hud was screaming at her, and the front of her body felt like it had been burned, but—I’m alive!
She looked up. A few hundred feet away the heavy armature had been blasted back into the remains of the armored car behind it, its body glowing and melting with heat. I got it. Behind it the last thunder of fire was being overwhelmed by several annihilators closing in on all sides, the armature able to kill any one of them but only at the cost of letting the others near. A second later one of the annihilators struck, eating a plasma orb at point-blank range for its efforts … but the explosion that resulted was close enough that it took out the armature as well.
A silence descended, almost ominous in the wake of the constant fire and thunder that had filled the air seconds before.
“How are we alive?” Sweets asked, pushing himself up. “Those last shots …”
“That’s the problem with high-speed plasma,” Anna said, walking over to where her rifle lay in the dirt, torn from her hands by the closeness of the detonation. “If one sphere goes, the ones following behind slam into it and destabilize. The spread is just enough that the explosion won’t work its way backward, but if your shot detonates before it reaches the target …”
“All the shots coming behind it will too,” Sweets finished with a nod. “Okay. We’re alive.”
“Thanks to the Overseer.” Anna glanced up at the seashell drone that had deflected the last blast. Its hard-light barrier was gone, and the machine itself was glowing with heat so excessive that the tips of its cooling fins appeared to be slumping.
“You are the triumvirate,” the AI said. “I could not permit-allow you to perish-cease.”
“Yeah well … it’s appreciated.” Jake let out a sigh of clear relief, then looked in Anna’s direction. “Front door?”
Anna nodded. “Any door, really.” She looked up at the squat, blocky structure they’d worked so hard to reach, examining its heavily reinforced design. It’s not much, she noted, eyeing the hard lines and basic black paint coating the otherwise bare concrete. Here and there solar panels dotted the edges of the roof. More for show, she suspected, than actual use.
Heavy, reinforced doors were set into the walls around the base, large enough that even the Sha’o tank could have passed through them. And probably where a number of our defenders originated.
“Pick a door, any door,” Sweets intoned, then tilted his head toward both of them. “Old meme. So, plasma fire?”
Anna shook her head and reached for her waist, hoping she hadn’t lost the charge she’d placed there over the course of the battle. Her grasping fingers met squared-off plastic, and she tugged the explosive away. “No,” she said. “We make a hole with these.”
“Will that work?” Jake asked as she moved over toward one of the doors, checking the construction.
“I don’t know,” she replied, setting her charge in the center of the door at head height. “Put yours here and here,” she said, tapping the metal a bit further down from her charge. “If it doesn’t, we call in an orbital strike. That will.”
She turned away from the door, looking out over the battlefield as Jake and Sweets moved up to place their charges. The battle appeared all but over now, explosions and gunfire still echoing, but muted and faint as the last bastions of resistance were swept away. Even the sky was almost completely in view, no longer blocked by hard-light barriers save at the corners of her view.
“Overseer,” Anna said as she turned back toward the redoubt. Jake was just affixing his charge to the heavy door. “Are there any more hostiles on this level or the tiers below it?”
“Only on the lowest,” the AI replied. “Darts are currently engaging-dealing with them now.”
“Then relay Admiral Shirai and the fleet, since we don’t seem to have comms with them yet,” she instructed. “Tell them that we’ve secured the redoubt grounds and are going in after Eidre.”
Jake stood and gave her a thumbs up, his charge secure. She stepped forward and tapped each of them, syncing them with her suit’s comm system and readying them for detonation.
“Done,” the Overseer said in her ears as she stepped back. “Admiral Shirai-schoolherd has requested-asked that if possible-capable you spare-preserve Eidre-foe’s life.”
“Noted.” She threatened my family. “Anna out.”
She triggered the charges, the trio of blasts overlapping into a single loud bang, dust rippling out around the base of the door as the whole thing shook. But even before it cleared she could see that the explosives had done their job, blasting a hole through the thick metal just large enough for one of them to fit through. Past it Anna could see flickering lights illuminating what looked like a garage.
“Wait,” she said as Jake moved to step forward. “Darts? We need a scout.”
A few seconds later a dart swooped down, tilting its body sideways and slipping through the opening. They waited as it turned, moving out of sight, and then came back. No fire emerged from deeper within the structure to strike out at it. Anna waited a few seconds longer, then stepped forward. The sides of her suit scraped against the twisted metal as she ducked through the opening they’d made, echoing on ahead of her.
“Well,” Jake said as he squeezed through the hole behind her. “This is creepy. It looks like a factory for harvesting people.”
“You’re probably not far off,” Anna said, looking up at the rows of hangers that filled the ceiling. Hoses and cables dangled next to each claw-like protrusion, and it wasn’t hard to envision the whole of the space above them being filled with armatures. Racks set up against the walls showed similar cradles stacked atop one another, either for heavies or some form of more compact storage.
Other than that and several automated maintenance stations where vehicles had clearly been parked before the battle had begun, the space was empty. Anna took several steps forward, peering through the flickering lights for an exit, the sounds of her footsteps echoing faintly around her.
There. Along one wall a heavy-but-standard security door rested, the lights next to its controls glowing red. She moved toward it, drawing her plasma rifle once more.
“Neres …” The voice echoed around them, coming from all sides much like Lohit’s had. Only this voice had none of the defensive AI’s smooth, masculine tones. It was unmistakably feminine, and lacking any warmth, cold as deep space. “That is you, isn’t it? And Tames and Candy with you? Who else would Pisces send, I suppose, other than their pet psychopaths?”
Anna opened fire, the bursts of plasma heating the metal until it was white-hot and smoking. By the third burst the framing—or maybe the hinges—failed, the door blasting inward as the explosions ripped it from its housing. Smoke filled the air, the faint scent of burning metal making it through her filters. The destruction assuaged the rage building in her heart for the moment, but only just.
“You don’t have to do this,” Eidre said as soon as the sound of the echoing blasts had faded. “Think about what you are doing.”
Anna strode forward, ducking under the still sizzling and bubbling frame, her rifle at the ready. The space beyond the door was simple and unrefined, mostly bare metal and unfinished concrete. Straight ahead of her was another door, now partially covered by the melting remains of the twin she’d just blasted back. To her left was an unadorned wall, naked save for a single light, but to her right …
A set of stairs set in a square spiral around an elevator shaft, the inner workings and framing of both exposed to the world. The light on the elevator control panel was, like that of the door she’d just knocked down, glowing red.
She motioned toward the steps even as she moved for them. Eidre has to be down there. She took a chance, peering over the railing and eyeing the bottom some distance below them. Or at least, the current location of the elevator car. It was a decent drop.
“What does it take to make you see reason?” Eidre asked as Anna began making her way down the steps, the metal ringing and clanging with each strike of her boots. “Mankind needs a firm hand. It cannot survive without it. There are few who possess the necessary will to do what has to be done.”
“You murdered millions,” Jake said aloud, his voice mirroring Anna’s thoughts. “Needlessly.”
“Mankind must be united!” Eidre’s shout echoed around them, cascading up and down the shaft as they dropped with step after step. “It is only when we stand together that we are strong!” Anna tightened her grip on her rifle, the metal squeaking as her anger made itself known.
