Rocks and dust blew out from the cavern wall. The boom of the explosion echoed around the vast chamber and off the hill, mingling with a collective scream as people reacted.
Zamm ducked as the rocks ran out of momentum and rained down. Some of those chunks were big enough to cause serious injury, and did just that to folks in the rather packed crowd. Zamm’s hand sought out the pistol he’d brought, and a moment later people burst out of the opening that had just been created.
There was too much dust, darkness and distance for Zamm to make out details, but they wore heavy armour of some kind, and large guns. They came out shooting, with no pattern or clear goal. They were just shooting, and the crowd reacted as crowds do.
Zamm crouched lower, putting himself out of the attackers’ sight for the moment. This definitely wasn’t a one-man fight.
Damn it.
This also wasn’t the time for contemplation, so he acted on his second immediate instinct, and bolted across the street and back to that opening he’d been so worried about. He wasn’t the only one; some threw themselves prone behind the first bit of cover they came across, but more ran, scattering away from the gunfire. Some went either way along the street, but many went for the hill itself. Some beat him to it and made for the openings, while others started to ascend the hill. It was steep, but leaving the gravity plating behind gave them increasing bounce the further from it they went.
As Zamm was halfway there, some sort of cluster shot hit the slopes and burst out. The blasts it threw out weren’t big, but most of the fleeing people were unarmoured. And then Zamm heard another big explosion, like that first one, in another spot of the cavern. As he came to the tunnel, bouncing with ever-decreasing weight, he heard a third.
This was a coordinated attack. And it sure wasn’t law enforcement.
“I’m coming in!” Zamm shouted. “Let me in! It’s me!”
His head hit the roof of the cramped tunnel as he went, once, twice, and a third time, since he damn well wasn’t going to slow down. He did think to stuff the gun into a pocket, just before he reached the door. It wasn’t locked, and swung in, barely missing the kid from before.
The interior was pretty much what Zamm had expected; a grotto with wiring bolted to the walls and ceiling, carved-out hollows to serve as shelves, and a whole lot of battered furniture and storage lockers. Behind a desk of sorts was a middle aged man with wild hair, and a long-gun in his hands.
“Easy, easy!” Zamm said, and held his palms out. “I’m not part of this.”
“Get out!” the man yelled.
“No, I want that Type 2 stabiliser.”
“Get out!”
“I have the money.”
“Lock the door, boy!” the man yelled, but didn’t lower the weapon.
The boy, looking startled and twitchy, did as he was told, going around Zamm.
“Look-”
The man fired. A cylinder on the end of the barrel muffled the noise a little, but the tight confines still made for an ear-hurting report. They also made it nigh-impossible to miss, and Zamm felt a punch in his chest. But it was a small calibre round, and not even an explosive one, so his armour stopped it.
There was no plating on the floor, and the recoil threw the man a bit backwards, and his arms way up. Zamm crossed the distance between them one light bound. His tackle didn’t have the effect it usually would have, but he did get his hands on the gun before the man could aim it again. He flicked the safety on and closed his grip around it, while also keeping the barrel pointed at the wall.
The man struggled with him, and the low gravity caused them both to bounce around, dancing cartoon characters, until Zamm hooked his foot on some piping. It allowed him to swing the man up against a wall and hold him there.
“I’ll let that go,” he said into the man’s face. “All things considered.”
Outside, he heard yet another breaching explosion.
“Just sell me that stabiliser.”
With the man not fighting him for a moment, Zamm flicked the magazine release button, and the ammo drifted to the floor.
“Fine,” the glaring man bit out. “Fine. Boy! Get the blue box!”
Zamm let the guy go, but put one foot on the magazine. There were probably more, stashed somewhere in this fairly messy workspace. But he would just keep his eyes on the man.
The kid brought a blue box that was the right size and shape for a Type 2, and his uncle slammed it onto the desk.
“Here. Here,” he said. “Brand new. Oh cock, that is a lot of shooting! Close the damn panels, boy!”
Zamm didn’t pay attention to the boy, or to the rattling metallic sound that came next. All his focus was on opening the box and carefully examining the tube-like device within. It was packed into custom-fitted foam, and did indeed look straight out of the factory.
This was almost certainly stolen, but it could have changed hands many times before ending up here, and Zamm was not about to start moralising. Better stolen goods than no goods.
“Well, MONEY!” the seller demanded.
Zamm’s answer was to bring out a little palm-scanner Lesi had given him and run it over the thing. It searched for those tiny, tiny imperfections that could lead to a catastrophic failure of unspeakably hot elements in the dead of space. And it found none.
He wanted to do a second check, but the gunfire outside was only getting louder, and closer, and so he dug into his suit for a wallet.
The man had written a price on the box at some point, in several currencies, and so Zamm counted out bills of Akkian trade units with a hurried hand. He went slightly over, but it wasn’t his money anyway, and there was too much shooting to give a damn.
“Here. Take it. Keep it.”
There were no straps on the damn box, but the low gravity came in handy again and he tucked it under one arm.
“Now, uh…”
He gestured at the door, now covered by armoured panels.
“Could you open that?”
“Are you insane?” the man asked him bluntly. “You want to go out into all that?”
“I want to leave all that,” Zamm said back. “Do you have a back entrance?”
The man groaned.
“Take the damn vent,” he said, as he strode up to a blanket hanging on the wall.
Pulling it aside revealed a grating, and four quick touches with a multitool from the man’s belt loosened the covering from the wall.
“It goes up.”
“I’ll take it,” Zamm said, and went in.
It wasn’t a great fit, especially not with the box, but he managed it. He stood on another grating that covered a spinning fan and looked up into a rocky tunnel that was, of course, completely unlit.
“Now go!” the man demanded, as he started fitting in the grating again.
“Yes, yes,” Zamm said, as he fished out a little light and stuck it in his mouth. He then carefully readied the box on both of his palms, then flung it upwards. The low gravity gave it quite a toss, and also made scaling the shaft by pressing hands and feet into the walls easy.
It was uncomfortable, it was claustrophobic, and he of course had to keep throwing the box up as it came back down. But he conditioned his body for harsher things than this, and soon enough he was in a sitting position up at the top, his feet pressed into one wall and his back into another. The box was in his lap, and of course another damn grating blocked his final exit to the top.
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He worried about having to bash or pry it open, until his hand found a latch. Of course. The seller-guy was safety-conscious. It made sense for him to have an escape route.
Zamm opened the grating, lifted the box out and onto the rocky surface, before climbing out.
He was on top of the hill that made up the centre of the cavern, and had a panoramic view of the ongoing assault. Many of the lights had gone out; a result either of destroyed bulbs or generators. Little fires made up some of the difference. Since there was next to nothing to burn in this place, the attackers had to be using incendiaries.
He still saw no pattern or purpose to any of it. The only point seemed to be wholesale destruction. There were now at least four groups carrying the assault out; mostly visible as muzzle flashes. A few of the locals were shooting back, but surprise followed by momentum was a powerful mix. And so was armour and heavy guns.
Zamm ignored all that and started running, along the top, back towards the entrance he’d come through. He had the box under one arm and the light at the end of another, and then he turned it off, because he was waving a light in darkness during a massacre, like an idiot. Some of the attackers surely had enhanced vision modes, but there was no reason to actively draw attention to himself.
He plunged into darkness, all he saw was the circle of lights and violence that was the rest of the cavern. It was like he was some disembodied spirit, observing the world of the living from the beyond. Except that was stupid, and he kicked that notion out of his skull the moment it entered.
He was very much alive, with buzzing nerves, feet and knees that bumped into uneven rock, and the awkward burden of the box under his arm.
There was no plating up on the hill, and if those who had made the ascent were still here, then they were being smart and laying low, while some dummy bounced along with a box and stupid notions.
He had been heading steadily upwards for a bit, as the storm of echoing gunfire just continued to abuse his ears, when there was a sudden flash of light in front of him. It came with a truly deafening bang, and a shower of little rocks that actually hit him. He came to an awkward stop as the latest assault team dropped down directly from the cavern roof.
Evidently, there had been some coordination mess-up.
In the last of the sparks, he just barely caught silhouettes as they came down. They were every bit as bulky as the other ones, and so were their guns. Finding cover would require turning the light on, which would get him killed. If they did have enhanced vision, then standing still would get him killed. So, like a proper ranger, he stayed mobile.
Zamm leapt to the side, making the most of the bounce. He did it again, and again, as the team behind him opened fire on someone, and on the third landing he felt a noticeable incline. He kept on going, down an ever-steeper slope that he couldn’t actually see. His feet slipped a bit, but he stayed upright, as he descended into the unfolding nightmare.
He wasn’t far from the entrance now, but the curve of the hill blocked his view of it. There was a horrible chorus of panicked voices, all blending together in a solid mass of noise. As far as Zamm knew, there were only the two main entrances into the entire area, and neither of them was wide enough to accommodate hundreds of people, all rushing as one panicked mass.
He came to a stop in the darkness behind a row of houses that hugged the hill. It was hard to actually pinpoint any sounds, but it seemed that the shootings closer to him had switched from a constant, chaotic assault, to being more sporadic. His guess was that at least one kill-team had switched from sowing chaos with random killing to actively hunting people who had chosen to hide or make their stand rather than run.
He had awkwardly bounced a short distance, still behind the row, when it seemed his theory was proven out.
Through the very narrow cracks between shacks and cabins, he could see a small group of people sprinting by in full panic. They all wore jumpsuits of a cheery blue colour, and Zamm recognised them from a large booth that sold soft drinks and some little treats. Now they were dodging bullets.
He didn’t see the burst of fire, but he heard it, as well as the thump of a dropped body, and the screams of the others. He stopped by one of the cracks and took a look through. There were three of them left, and they dove into one of the tunnels dug into the rock, screaming to be let in.
They were out of the line of fire for the moment, but the kill-team was close behind. They didn’t shout angrily or make a big scene with their arrival. They just came, running along on gravity plating that clearly didn’t work anymore.
Damn it.
He put the box down, drew the gun, and acted. He leapt up with all his strength, soaring over the shack. His aim wasn’t perfect; he’d hoped to come down directly behind the one in the rear. But by reaching out and grabbing the killer’s helmet from behind, he managed to steer his landing, and do just that.
Before the killer could react, Zamm pressed his pistol against his neck and fired. The bullet went past the hard plates and through the thin fibres that covered the skin, and the man’s startled yell turned into a gurgling scream.
The other two turned. Zamm put an arm around his victim, keeping the man up as a shield. It bought him a moment’s hesitation from the pair, and he used it to fire again. One of them wasn’t wearing a full suit, but a helmet that left the lower part of his face exposed. At this distance, Zamm didn’t miss.
The third one fired. Zamm couldn’t dodge bullets, but he could move when he was expecting them, and hope for the best. The near-blinding muzzle flash spat out a burst. Some of it the armour of Zamm’s bleeding, dying human shield, and some of it flew past his own head.
He also couldn’t throw a grown man with one hand, but in such low gravity he could give one a hard push forward and let him sail. The third man saw his comrade coming, and walked backwards and reflexively batted at the body to clear the way for another shot. His mistake was to do it with a sweep of his long rifle, rather than take one hand off it. Before he could aim it again, Zamm was on him.
This one was fully covered in armour, complete with a hard neck guard that stood out of the torso piece. Zamm pressed the gun up against the helmet’s opaque faceplate and fired. A pale crack appeared, and the man let out a yelp, but the bullet bounced off to who-knew-where.
His momentary advantage was gone, and now they each had one hand on their own weapon and one on the others’. Neither of them had a noticeable strength advantage, and so they wrestled, throwing each other around in low gravity. Zamm’s much shorter weapon was easier to use in a melee, but he wasn’t the one with elbows and knees covered with hard armour. The other man put those advantages to frenzied use as he fought for his life.
Zamm took the pain of the hits and tried to fit the gun against another weak spot. His finger pulled the trigger in all the awkward, floaty fighting. The clang of the hard armour was drowned out by the gunshot itself, but Zamm felt the hit of the bullet ricocheting back into his own chest.
It took the wind out of his for a moment, and the man on the other side of all this seized the chance. He dropped his rifle, put the spare hand on Zamm’s pistol, and then kicked his feet out from under him. The landing wasn’t hard, even with the man’s attempt to make it so by slamming him down, but it still put him at a great disadvantage. He got his legs up between them, hooking them into the man’s arms, and pushed.
For a moment they were at a stalemate, their arms shaking due to the fight for the gun.
Then one of the blue-clad women pressed the dropped rifle against the back of the man’s head, and fired. The gore and helmet-shards dropped down at a fraction of base-gravity speed, and Zamm had time to get out of the way before it reached him.
The woman didn’t spare him a glance or a word, just got back on her way with the heavy rifle in her hands, and so he did the same. Even in the mad cacophony and ever-diminishing lighting, he knew there was a second team nearby. And his suit was definitely weaker than that helmet had been.
He bounded back over the shack, snatched the box back up, and got going. He’d done it again; put this whole venture at risk by doing the right thing.
Zamm clutched the box to his chest as he again started bounding along with all his strength, leaping over smoking ruins, low houses, and bodies. He stuck to darkness as much as he could, but the confines of the cavern sometimes gave him no choice but to at least dip into the peripheries of the light. That was how he spotted a particular mess of bodies, as he touched down near them. One of them still had a grip around the handle of one of those little hover-scooters.
“Eh.”
Zamm knelt down and pried the fingers off with all the respect he could while also rushing for his life.
“Sorry, man.”
The engine still worked, and he planted his feet on the deck, activated the repulsors, and took off. He hadn’t stood on anything like this since childhood, and he felt like the galaxy’s biggest dork as he steered the thing awkwardly over uneven gravity, with the box throwing off his balance, and only one hand available to steer.
“Come on, come on, come on…”
He got a brief view of the entrance area, and it was every bit the mess he’d expected. There was a crush, which of course made for the easiest shooting imaginable. A few of the locals on the outskirts understood this enough to take what cover was available, and those with guns were firing back. But this wasn’t a winnable fight. As the kill-teams started running out of targets in the market itself, they were joining in on the reaping.
But the two entrances weren’t the only options, were they? Because those slaughtering bastards had created their own.
Zamm swerved around as nimbly as possible, which was to say, not very. But he could throttle the repulsors, and now went back the way he’d come at high speed. There were plenty of obstructions; the whole place had been made even more chaotic through random destruction, and he had to go around blasted bits of wall and collapsed booths, through acrid smoke and beneath damaged electronics that spat sparks.
The worst of it was what had apparently been some sort of distillery; the walls had been exceedingly thin, and some sort of blast had collapsed every single one of them. And the tanks inside had blown apart, and their contents were spread out and burning.
Even with all that, it was an easier route than the surroundings, and so he put the lift to max and bounced the scooter onwards and over it. He held his breath and closed his eyes, and felt heat sting what little skin was exposed. As he opened them he saw one of the kill-teams.
There were four of the monsters, and he’d spotted them an instant before they noticed him. His hand screamed for the pistol, but he couldn’t drop the box. They had to have the box, to continue the pursuit. And so, as the four armoured killers raised their heavy weapons, he instead threw all of his weight to the side, as he yanked on the handle.
As they were designed to do, the scooter’s thrusters shifted, pushing against the near-horizontal pose in order to correct him. He fought back against it, forcing the sharpest turn the thing’s frame could possibly manage, and vanished around a sturdy brick building.
He heard the shots, and heard rock splinter, but didn’t look to see if the bullets actually penetrated. He just let the scooter correct itself, before throwing it the other way, and weaving his way around another building, further cutting line of sight.
Seconds later, he was at his goal: One of the entrances blasted open by the kill-teams. It must have taken a great deal of patience to dig multiple tunnels in without anyone picking up what was going on. Although, given the overall discipline on display in Zintu Rock, perhaps not. What mattered was that this one was wide enough to allow a team of burly, armoured killers with heavy guns. And so it could allow him and his little scooter.
He didn’t know where it led, but it was a Ranger’s job to leap into chaos and deal with it. And so he did.
He went in.