CHAPTER 40 – PATRIOTS
DATE POINT: MAY 12th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)
LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, INSIDE ANOMALOUS STRUCTURE
LIEUTENANT JUNIOR GRADE ALEX “GHOST WATKINS
“Almost through…. There! That should be plenty wide enough, thank you! Go ahead and put the plasma cutter away. Make sure you don't kink the cord! Ah! Ghost, would you care to do the honors?” Lance said as their efforts to cut through the half-slagged steel wall finally bore fruit.
“I’m all over it.” Alex replied with a smile. He activated the telekinetic field generators embedded in two of his four gun arms that extended from his suit’s armored backpack. Power flowed from the LFTR micro reactor that powered the suit, through the twisted graphene super capacitor stacks and into the field generating structures. Spacetime bent and curved as he focused its effect to tug, hard against the cut wall section from two different pulling points at opposing corners.
“Clear the way!” He shouted as the last sections of uncut steel tore and the wall section came free. He then lifted it and set it neatly off to the side against the wall. He checked the feed from his spy drone, the mere act of looking at it caused the screen to grow to dominate a slightly larger portion of his helmet’s internal view-screen.
Drones of multiple body styles sat dormant all throughout the outer edges of the room in a ring. Each one had its own dedicated charging cradle and console. Most had obvious apparent utility either as mining or construction drones, others were clearly meant for aerial or spacial combat. Already several minutes had passed, and his drone still hadn’t completed its mapping flight around the edge of the cavernous room, but he had a growing map and understanding of it.
“Move out, stay together as a group. HT two, stay close, watch your sectors. Yo, Ghost, you seeing a pathway through this maze yet?” Lance called over comms.
“Just a little off to the right, there’s a pathway through right on through a few curves that leads to the center of the room.” Alex said before he continued. “Just say the word, and I’ll take point and lead the way through the maze. So far I see nothing that is outright concerning or dangerous on the scanners aside from that heat anomaly underneath the center.”
“Very well, we’ll follow close behind then. HT one, bring up the rear for now. We'll continue to spread out and cover you.” Lance replied. Alex then flew his Patriot over their heads before he activated the powerful exterior lights on his mech while he subconsciously tightened his grip on the coolant jacketed .50 BMG rifle held in his mech's hands.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” Lance asked as they began making their way through a maze of machinery tall enough to block most of the overhead view. The path felt eerie, the effect made the industrial equipment feel dark and oppressive all around them, even from his elevated seat.
"You seeing what I'm seeing?" Lucas asked over comms in apparent awe.
The interior of the room was filled with a maze of thick steel tubes feeding huge foundry equipment such as giant vats, furnaces, casting pools, industrial sized forging hammers, lathes, and more. The more Alex saw and could identify, the more excited he became.
“A whole goddamn room sized jackpot prize is what we have. Ghost, get on the horn with the Fist of the Argonauts, would you? The Captain deserves to know what we’ve found.” Lance ordered with a gleeful tone in his voice.
“Yes, sir!” Alex replied before he opened his Q-Comm app. The small, low bandwidth unit embedded in his suit allowed for detection, interception, and hack-free communications with its twinned unit aboard the Fist of the Argonauts with a clarity that could never be blocked, even in the deepest sections of an enemy facility.
“Mission control, this is Ghost reporting.”
“Ghost, this is mission control, Glad to hear from you, how's things going down there?”
“Mission control, We have made entry to the main chamber and have visuals on multiple types of industrial scale foundry, forging, and machining equipment as well as a veritable army of what we assume are mining or construction drones. We are proceeding towards the center of the room and the heat anomaly. Still no sign of the reactor complex.”
“Copy that, Ghost. This is fantastic news! I’ll pass this along to the Captain. Update us when you have located the reactor.”
“Rog, thanks Leah.”
“Stick to appropriate titles when in the field, Ghost. You know better. Mission control out.”
Alex chucked to himself before replying. “As you wish, mission control, Ghost out.”
Alex weaved between an industrial sized hammer and anvil with inert robotic arms on one side and appeared to be a parts stamping assembly as he wound his way ever closer to the source of the heat beneath their feet.
“Alright, we are right over the top of the thermal anomaly. Keep your eyes peeled for anything that might be a control center, an access console, or even some kind of access to the floor below us. Fan out in pairs to search. Ghost, keep your eyes peeled for potential threats.” Lance said over comms.
Right, like I need you to tell me that, ass. Alex thought as he kept an eye on his patrolling spy drone and continued to switch between passive scans and visual filters. He was watching the whole damn room at once.
“Still clear, the place is dead. I’ll bet the party won’t start until we activate the reactor. I’ll be ready, just make sure your people are too.” Alex replied.
“Found something. Looks like a lift. Can’t reach the controls though.” Lucas said.
“I’ll be right there shorty, need a boost?” Victor jabbed.
“Nah, this is a job for a real giant, not a dime store Goliath like you. Ghost, your suit is Nephy sized, hell, bigger. For this work I need someone who won’t be standing up on their tippy toes just to see. Sorry Vic, so long as we got a Patriot, he's my new helper. Now! You should be able to work these controls no problem. I’ll call you when I need a walking meat shield, Vic.”
“You’re just jealous because you’ll always be an ankle biter compared to me. Keep projecting Lucas, its like water off a duck’s back to me. I could stand here in this rain all day!” Victor replied with an amused tone.
“Alright, sounds like a plan. Lucas and Ghost will investigate the lift. Hopefully it leads to the reactor complex. Everyone else on me, HT two, lets find you some good cover with open turret sight lines. I’ll check in with teams three and four in the meantime.” Lance said in a clear bid to shut down the mini pissing contest before it got worse.
“On it.” Alex said as he turned the corner around another large machine just to see the framework of what appeared to be an open air elevator frame.
He stood over the edge and peered down into the shaft, shining a powerful spotlight down. He was met with the sight of twisted and broken metal as well as a few sections of an armored, dismembered body that floating idly halfway down the length of the shaft.
“Well, fuck. Looks like a tech got pulped on the way up, appears to have seized up the lift in the process. Or maybe they blew themselves up to scuttle it on purpose.” Alex commented in the comms between them.
“Well, that made life a bit more spicy, didn't it? Got any ideas?” Lance replied.
“Yeah, but it comes with some risks. I say we finish the job they started and blow a bigger hole through the elevator shaft wall. Looks like there’s already a few sections already weakened by the initial blast." Alex said as he set firing solutions in place for a flight of his shoulder launched micro missiles.
“We don't know what's on the other side of that wall, but fuck it. Go ahead, I trust your judgement.” That was all he needed to hear, as a quick mental command sent three missiles streaking off towards their fixed target. Moments later, a small fireball raced up the elevator shaft before it extinguished itself in the airless environment. Alex then slung his rifle, lowered his suit down to the deck, and grabbed the gate in both of his mechanical hands and used all of his suit’s prodigious electro-muscle powered strength to tear it free from its housing. He then activated a one gee TK field to hover himself slowly into the elevator shaft before turning around at the tip of the precipice to stare at Lucas, holding a duffel bag of tools in one hand and his rifle in the other.
“You ready?” He asked Lucas, who simply slung his rifle and nodded.
Using another TK foci, he created a second field that lifted the man off his feet. Together they lowered themselves down the elevator shaft and through the hole he had blown in the wall.They emerged into a pitch black room, lit only by the occasional blue flash of light coming from deep in the center of the room. Alex blazed every light he had on their full blast and began to get his bearings. There were multiple columns around the outside edge, so he set them down between two while he swept the center of the room with light, a gleam of light on bright metal met his eyes in response. He soon illuminated a crescent-shaped electrium ring embedded into a metallic base. It was surrounded by four crystal obelisks that shot blue lightning between them.
"Whoah, this is wild. What is that thing?" Alex gawped at the sight.
"Don't know, big guy, but what I want to know is what is THIS?" Lucas replied and then pointed at something casting a shadow at the edge of the light's boundary. Alex shifted the focus of the light to reveal a command console with a pull switch and a failsafe key still in its slot. The console sat several meters in front of the strange machine they had discovered. He walked up to the controls, finding them to be at a comfortable height and size to be used by his suit.
"Controls for this machine I'll bet. Well, it looks like we’ve found our heat anomaly at least. Not sure what the hell this is, but it’s clearly got some residual power running through it and there’s a clear means for us to reactivate it.” Alex reported.
“Better uplink some images to mission control and see if Doctor Silvar’Esh can identify it before we go playing with tech we don’t understand.” Lance said.
“On it.” Alex replied, before opening his Q-Comm app.
”Mission control, Ghost reporting. Standby for data uplink.” Alex said with a sigh before he sent several still images over the Q-Comm connection. The low bandwidth made uploading images or god forbid, short videos, an occasionally tedious affair. After waiting for the upload to finally complete, mission control called him.
“Upload confirmed, what are we looking at here, Ghost?”
“Well, I was hoping you could tell us. Or at least forward these images to Doc Ock to see if he could identify them.”
“Stand by for orders, mission control Out.”
After several long minutes, his Q-Comm pinged again.
“We have an identification for you, Ghost. Its some kind of wormhole power uplink. The Doctor thinks it likely is there to pull power through a zero width wormhole directly from a secondary source, most likely from Nii’Baruu. Captain says to activate it and be ready to evacuate if things go sideways.”
Easy for you to say from a hundred thousand kilometers away… Fuck it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“The Captain’s pet grey says it’s some kind of wormhole power generator that pulls energy from a secondary source. We have been ordered to activate it and be ready to evac if things go badly.” Alex said, ripping the band-aid right off.
“All right, if those are the orders, get it done. We've dug in up here, just in case something nasty wakes up topside. Give me a moment to update the other teams before you pull that switch.” Lance ordered.
“All right, Lucas, what do I need to do here?”
“I hate to ask this, but can you give me a lift? I can't see what's up there."
“Sure. Here you go.” Alex lifted Lucas up to better see the massive controls on the table, as it had been taller than he was.
“Fucking giant-ass xenotech. Please don’t tell Victor about this, by the way.”
“Sure, no skin off my back. I can keep a secret.” Alex said, chuckling. “So, what are we looking at? As I understand you’re the expert in working with strange xenotech systems.”
“Looks like a security override key has been left in the console, likely in a bid to evacuate as quickly as possible. Can you move the switch or is it locked in place?”
“Hang on, let’s check in with Lance before we do that.” Alex replied before switching out of their private comm channel to the larger team channel.
“Any word on the rest of the group?” Alex asked.
“Nothing, they must have gone out of range, or are too deep in the other side of the facility where the signal is blocked. You may proceed with the activation.” Lance replied.
“You heard the man! Want to do the honors?” Lucas asked.
“Sure, here goes nothing….” Alex said as he pulled at the handle, only for it to stubbornly refuse to budge.
“Try removing the key then do that again.” Alex then proceeded to turn the key to the right where it clicked to a stop, then back all the way around to the left before it finally could be removed. He then pulled the switch down and reactivated the TK field to lift Lucas up off the top of the control table and back behind himself as well as back on the ground.
Warnings began to appear on his screen, causing him to instinctively back up a few paces.
WARNING: POWERFUL ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD DETECTED WARNING: ENTERING HIGH RADIATION ENVIRONMENT
The pace of plasma bolts firing between the tips of the obelisks increased dramatically before at last a tiny black dot made of some kind of pure fluxuating energy popped into existence between the crescent horns. Afterwards, the plasma bolts stabilized as the crystal obelisks began to glow, seemingly connecting to and drawing power from the special anomaly at its center.
WARNING: HAWKING RADIATION BURST DETECTED UPDATE: SAFE RADIATION LEVELS RESTORED
“Thermals are going crazy up here! The drones seem to be waking up! Whatever happened down there has really kicked the hornet's nest topside!" Lance shouted.
“We activated the wormhole reactor successfully it seems.” Alex replied simply.
“Good, figured that had to be it. Now get your asses up here, we're going to need you!” Lance ordered.
“Contacts! Hostile, flyers with pulse lasers at two o clock, another flight four o’clock overhead!” O’Brien shouted.
“Lead your targets! Fuck they’re fast!” Lance said over comms. Alex sprang into action and activated a TK field for him and another for Lucas. “Hold onto your lunch!” Alex said as he lifted them off the ground.
They rushed through the air towards the hole they had blown through the elevator shaft wall.
“Eat breacher bitches! YOU ARE NOT READY!” Victor shouted with his maniacal laughter clipping off midway through as the comms closed.
“They’re everywhere! We need to fall back! My shield is almost gone!” Janessa said in a panicked voice.
“Jump over to O’Brien, he’ll cover you! Where the hell are you Ghost!?” Lance shouted.
“I’m blocking Bryant, she jumped over here in time, she’s alright for now!" O’Brien reported back, losing his composure. "Spoke too goddamn soon! New group on our six, they’re trying to flank us!”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Not on my watch!” Alex roared as he shot through the broken elevator shaft. He then snarled and set targets with a thought as his onboard ASI interpreted the impulses from his neural implant at the brain stem in real time. All four repeating railguns at the ends of the arms extending from the back of his mech opened fire, coring one drone each with a hyper-velocity slug. Simultaneously, he raised his .50 BMG rifle and began dispatching the drones harassing his squad mates with efficient double taps as the gun arms fired on other targets in the background.
Off in the distance, a group of crab like mining drones with powerful lasers massed their numbers in assault against HT two and Lance's position. With a mere thought identifying the targets, his ASI calculated firing solutions for a flight of micro missiles. Another thought sent six of them streaking towards the oncoming group, slagging enough of them to break their charge. An alert on his screen informed him that Victor’s shields were dangerously low. He expended the rest of his mag into the flying drones that had been chipping away at his shields, scattering them and giving the man time to recover them. He then flew overhead and dropped Lucas off next to Victor to reinforce his position.
An impact registered, buffeting him in the air, causing him to turn his attention to another group of reinforcements flying his way. Automated evasion protocols and ASI aim assist fought against the limitations of physical hardware as he struggled to take the brunt of the attention from seemingly every drone in the air firing pulse lasers at him at once.
“Their numbers are thinning! Help cover Ghost!” Lance shouted as an airburst round from HT two blew several of the bogeys on his tail to bits. Alex rolled his suit in the air and launched another flight of missiles into the largest concentration of drones before dodging hard to the side. He began sweating profusely as his heat sink warning began to tick over from green into yellow, yet still he fought and dodged. Right as he felt the bolt lock back on his rifle, an explosion rattled his suit, knocking him from the sky and into the ground below.
“ALEX!! He’s been hit!” Janessa shouted.
Alex shook off the impact, and shot back into the sky, dismissing the alert that his upper right combat arm was non-responsive, presumed destroyed.
“I’m alright! It’s gonna take more than that to kill me!” Alex shouted in defiant rage as he fired off his second to last flight of missiles into the group of ground based crab shaped laser drones that had nearly shot him down. He continued to make the slight dodges and rolls necessary to prevent laser strikes from melting away at any particular armor plate for long enough to begin melting through. Unfortunately, the mass of directed energy that he was absorbing, even in the smaller doses he was, was nonetheless warming his suit up faster than he could cool it in the airless environment. An alert popped up on his screen, his rifle was reaching dangerous temperatures itself. He then vented the overheating coolant from his rifle and slapped a refill tank in place, changed mags, and kept firing, this time keeping himself lower in the sky.
“I’m almost dry on ammunition, guys, I’ll try and draw as many of them off you as I can!” Alex said as he began playing cat and mouse with the remaining drones chasing him through the dark maze of industrial machinery. Deep shadows fought with the reddish glow of the overhead emergency lights, which made it nearly impossible to use his visible light filters at all.
“Thanks, Ghost, you really saved our ass. Remind me to thank you a little more personally later.” Janessa said to him over a private comm, causing him to take a distracted second to wonder what she meant before he rounded a corner right into firing sight of three crab-drones. All three had their lasers primed and ready, and all three blasted him straight in the chest plate, knocking him back and causing emergency alerts to spam his screen. Oh fuck! He thought in alarm as he raised his barrier and ordered his suit into a full reverse of his prior course. He jerked in his restraints at the abrupt change in momentum as his barrier system strained to take the strain from three powerful mining lasers at once.
WARNING! CORE TEMPERATURE AT SUBCRITICAL LEVELS – EMERGENCY RECALL ACTIVATED
“Override code Sierra Romeo Seven Seven Six!”
OVERRIDE ACCEPTED
NULL BARRIER SYSTEM OFFLINE
TELEKINETIC DRIVE SYSTEMS OFFLINE
EMERGENCY RADIATORS EXPOSED
REACTOR COOLING CYCLE ACTIVATED
Alex’s suit stumbled backwards, landing in a heap several meters back and out of the line of fire. He forced himself back to his feet, and began to run, trusting the electromagnets on his suit’s feet and micro-G training to keep him firmly anchored to the deck. Multiple plates along his suit’s sides and backs blew off, exposing glowing hot radiators to the airless void. It would be significantly less efficient than if there was an atmosphere to wick the heat away, but it would still help if he could stall for enough time.
Now all I have to do is survive long enough to get full functionality back.
“Ghost reporting, my suit is in sub-critical emergency mode, so I'm grounded! I’m making my way on foot towards the rest of you. I can see them converging on me through thermals and my spy drone camera. We have thinned their numbers tremendously, but in my condition I'm going to need immediate assistance!”
“Reading you loud and clear, they’ve dropped the slack on us, we have regrouped and are heading your way to assist. Stay safe and keep moving. Help is on the way!” Lance replied, helping Alex ease some of the panic he was desperately trying to suppress as his ammo counters continued to tick ever lower on his display. If he could just get to the Rhino, there would be extra mags and hoppers full of ammo. Not enough to fully refill, but it was enough to get back in the fight.
Stay calm, one step at a time, one shot at a time. I’m not dying today! Not dying today! Alex thought almost like a mantra as he ran, desperately clearing corners, while firing at any thermal signature without a friendly IFF.
“Team two, this is team four, we've been engaged by some of the same drones you've reported . Team three is on site and providing support!”
“Roger that, hold your position! We need to keep our line of retreat secure. Once we link up with Ghost, we are going to head your way!” Lance replied over comms.
“We have wounded, but we will hold the best we can as long as we can!”
Alex winced as he watched his rapidly depleting ammunition counters on his repeating rail guns. He only had a few magazines left for his rifle too, he thought miserably as the bolt locked back on an empty mag and he reached down to the storage slots on his thigh armor for a new one. Things were looking grim, but they would make it through. Things had to get better from here.
There was no way they would die in some god-forsaken place like this.
“This is technical … Gardner …. for immediate assistance, Team one...under attack … immediate assistance … friendly forces! DOES ANYONE COPY!?” Alex’s comms blared to life amidst bursts of static
Oh fuck. Was there any part of this plan that wasn't going to absolute shit!? Not helping right now. Alex chided himself as he brought himself back into the moment.
“Reading you loud and clear Gardner, teams two through four are currently pinned down and engaged and are unable to provide support, over!”
Alex pied a corner and lit up a pair of drones with the last of his repeating railgun rounds. He looked down at his heat display, which was still frustratingly at just above ninety percent capacity and thus still very much in the red zone.
“Team one is engaged…needs support! We… do something!” Gardner replied, refusing to take no for an answer.
An idea lit up Alex’s brain as he was forced back into cover by a withering barrage of laser fire that had scorched more of his outer armor plates. Four, maybe five of those damn crab tanks...good an excuse as any to use these... He then launched a half flight of three missiles from his left shoulder missile pod that arced up and then back down like a mortar right into their last known position. Can only do that one more time...
“Lance, are you hearing Gardner?” Alex asked.
“Just static and a few words. You’ve got the better comms equipment, you tell me! What’s she saying?” He replied.
“Team one is under attack and is in over their heads too. I can use my Q-Comm connection to the Fist of the Argonauts to route a call for assistance, bring in the gunships to help teams three and four and Locust to help team one.” Alex said.
“Do it.” Lucas replied with zero hesitation evident in his tone whatsoever.
Alex activated the Q-Comm app with a thought as he rounded the corner and opened fire on the last surviving drone from his missile strike, downing it in spectacular fashion.
“Mission control, this is Ghost, team two is mopping up a huge batch of drones that attacked when we activated the facility, we are fine for now, but teams three and four are pinned down with wounded and need assistance we cannot provide. Team one is surrounded on the upper level and is engaged as well and needs support. We need you to send in the gunships to clear the LZ and medevac casualties. I highly advise we signal Locust to support team one immediately as well!”
“Goddammit, I knew this was going too easy. We’ll route the message along. Help is on the way, stay alive in there. Mission control, out.”
“All friendly forces in range, I just got off the line with mission control. The cavalry is on the way, you just need to hold out a little while longer. Gardner, be ready to receive Locust and to send him in to support team one! Teams two and three, the gunships are coming to provide air support and medevac!”
“Music to our ears, Ghost! We… we lost Estrada, Wilson is hanging in there still, no sign of Gardner anywhere. No matter how bad it gets, we’ll hold the line.”
"Give em hell, gunny."
Now here's a different problem, Gardner should have heard me, yet didn't check in.
“Gardner do you copy?”
Nothing.
“Gardner, do you copy? Locust is on the way to your position now!”
Fuck, I hope she’s alright. Alex thought with a horrible pit in his stomach that persisted, even as he fought his way to link up with the rest of team one. According to his eye in the sky, they were pinned down just a few turns away.
Almost there, almost out... Hang in there, everyone, I’m coming!
MEANWHILE….
DATE POINT: MAY 12th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION)
LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, OUTSIDE ANOMALOUS STRUCTURE
LIEUTENANT BRANDON “LOCUST” HERRERA
“Locust, this is mission control, I don’t know if any mission comms have reached you, but teams one through four are pinned down and need immediate assistance. Please direct gunships one and two to provide air support and medevac for teams three and four. You are ordered to link up with Technical Sergeant Gardner and proceed to team one’s last known location to back them up.”
Mierda. Brandon cursed before he activated his mic to respond.
“All we’ve caught through all this rock and steel is bits and scraps, mostly unintelligible. I had no idea things had gone to shit that badly. We’re on our way!”
“Good, bring them home safe for us.”
“Wilco, mission control. Locust out.”
Brandon cracked his neck and then activated his comms app.
“Alright flyboys, our people are in trouble down there and have called in the cavalry. Teams three and four are bogged down defending LZ two and need medevac. Meanwhile, I've been ordered to support team one. Let’s get a move on!” He said as he reached up and racked the charging handle on the side of his rifle.
“Dammit, told you we should have stayed closer on site. I had a bad fuckin feeling about this op from the beginning.”
“Bro, you always have a bad feeling about everything.”
“What's that supposed to mean?!”
“Cut it out, we picked this spot to be out of sight of those AA guns when they hit the power switch in case they woke up. The inside teams were then supposed to find a way to turn them off for us. That never happened, and those guns are wide awake now, so we have little choice but to run the gauntlet. Now we need to focus, fly low and fast, and be ready to take as many of those towers out as we can along the way.” Brandon cut in, refocusing them.
Together, the four gunships lifted off the craggy bottom surface of the installation and arranged themselves in a tight formation with Locust at the head. Brandon accelerated off, setting the pace for the rest to follow. As soon as they rounded the bottom edge of the installation, his display absolutely lit up with active radar signatures to the ringing tone of a positive radar lock on his suit.
“Evasive maneuvers! Cycle radar seeking rockets! Fire at will!” Gunship one’s pilot yelled out.
Brandon began to swerve and roll as he took grazing shots from incoming laser fire to prevent the ablative armor from overheating in any one single spot. Dozens of rockets fired from the wings of the gunships behind him, each seeking their own targets in pairs. The networking algorithms integrated into each ship courtesy of FleetNet helped ensure that their targets were adequately spread out to avoid wasting too many rockets on the same target.
“Incoming missile launches! Rely on your wing gunners, but don’t be a hero! Raise barriers if you have to!”
Multi-spectral laser batteries set to work, dazzling the sensors of the inbound missiles on some, the rest destroying others outright, Brandon’s onboard ASI handled his personal defenses by shooting at radar locked and threatening missiles with his four repeating railguns. In far too short a time, with not nearly enough missiles destroyed, they were overtaken by the incoming missile flight. Off to his side, gunship two was flashed with a laser, illuminating it's full rocket pod before it ignited as the null matter from his activating barrier cut off his view to the outside world. Everything went black for a moment as his barrier worked to deflect the explosions, which buffeted him about mercilessly.
Once things seemed clear, he dropped his barrier just in time to see gunship two reduced to a cloud of expanding debris and the other three ships swerving or reactivating barriers to avoid the shrapnel. More than half of the enemy AA emplacements had gone silent thanks to their anti radar rockets, but the survivors had already launched another flight of missiles their way. With the new threats closing far too fast, they had little choice but to barrier up again and hope to ride out the storm.
They were less than halfway to the LZ. Those damn AA guns were supposed to have been shut down... this is a fucking nightmare! Brandon thought miserably as he once again was knocked around violently by the explosions outside.
He dropped his barrier faster this time, hoping they would have time to launch another flight of radar seeking rockets. He then activated his comms app before he realized there was a massive flight of missiles converging on them from another angle. His brain nearly broke in confusion and panic until he realized they had passed right by him. One after another, the last remaining surface AA guns went silent in a series of bright flashes. His mouth hung open for just a moment until his comms flared to life and his radar picked up multiple squadrons of IFF tagged friendlies coming into outer detection range.
“Mission control said you boys needed support; just wish we could have made it a little sooner. We’ve been running max distortion strength to make it here in time. We’ll escort you in the rest of the way, now go bring our ground teams home safe.”
“You just pulled us out of the fire there, I don’t even know how to thank you. I just wish we could have saved GS two. Gonna miss you Eddie, Jasper... Deb. This mission better be worth it!"
“I know, but they would want us to push ahead and save everyone we can. There will be time to mourn later, but first we need to save our ground teams.” Brandon replied, feeling sick to his stomach, angry at the situation, and ready to absolutely kick some ass at the same time. His comm flared to life, breaking him out of his mind state.
“Need assistance! … lost HT three! Too goddamn… them! … on ammo and are surrounded! ... friendlies in area… assistance!”
In that moment, all the emotional noise dissipated and was replaced by a focused background anger.
“This is Locust with GS support flights inbound, ETA thirty seconds! We’re going to clear every last one of those bastards out for you. Prep your wounded for evac. The cavalry is coming!”
“You have no idea how happy... to hear your voice! Hold the line! Pull the wounded ... back! Frag out...three o’clock!”
Brandon overshot the edge of the giant hole that had been blown in the side of the titanic iron pyramid with the gunships hot on his heels. Together, they curved their flight out into space while decelerating hard before they looped all the way around and entered the facility at a crawling hover. A flight of rockets laid waste to the encroaching horde of crab-like laser tanks while powerful wing mounted laser cannons shot the flyers out of the air. Brandon picked off the closest of the drones that were the most directly threatening to the beleaguered defenders with his rifle.
“God bless the power of air support! Get the wounded together and loaded! The rest of us are staying to make sure team two has a safe LZ to fall back to! You! Locust! What are you still doing here, man! Gardner missed check in and team one needs you!"
Got called out... yikes, he's right though. Better to probably just go...
Satisfied that the gunnery sergeant currently barking out orders seemed to have the situation well in hand, Brandon accelerated himself out and up towards the upper floor. Moments later, he passed the floating corpse of the mutant snake-dragon that team one had found and sent pictures of. He set down to inspect it, disturbed that it was nearly as tall as his suit, if one straightened out the length of the two longer necks in the rear.
He poked at it with the muzzle of his rifle before he shrugged and decided to move on. The 185 grain penetrator rounds that the crew that discovered it had shot into it seemed to have mostly been absorbed into its torso, with few exit wounds. If they fragmented and tumbled around they might have done some severe damage had it been alive. They did seem to work well in penetrating through the thick scaly skin and even thicker bands of corded muscle in the xenoform's torso. If this was what they were fighting, team one had a chance it seemed. He swept the room, and then headed towards the only warm object in the whole area.
“Technical Sergeant Gardner, this is Patriot two, callsign Locust. Do you copy?”
Nothing…
“Come in Gardner, this is Locust, do you read me?”
Brandon came up on a cleverly rigged panel with a human sized override lever hardwired into it hanging down at ground level. He then took a deep breath and gave the order to open the cockpit. The front armor of his Patriot mech split down the middle seam, opening outwards. He then grabbed his rifle from its cradle next to his acceleration couch then rode the lift tether down to the ground.
“ASI autopilot mode, ROE shoot to kill.”
ACKNOWLEDGED
Above him, Locust sealed its cockpit doors shut and held its rifle at low ready, ready to defend him and shoot at anything without a friendly IFF. Brandon flipped the switch, and the door opened, blasting him with escaping air. They walked through the threshold together before another door stopped them. He looked around and realized there was a matching set of jury rigged controls.
“She made an airlock! Clever girl.”
Wasting no more time, he closed the outer door, opened the inner one, and then sealed it shut behind him. The corridor continued on into the distance before it disappeared around a corner.
“Open the cockpit and lower the tether.”
ACKNOWLEDGED
It’s way too quiet. I need to hurry. He thought with a chill as he grabbed the tether and rode it back up to the cockpit to resume active control. Refusing to waste any other time, he began to fly down the corridor instead of running.
“Gardner, this is Locust, where the hell are you!? Come in!”
As Brandon approached the next corner, he saw something that made his stomach drop.
A trail of blood with hand prints smeared through it were visible on the floor in the dingy emergency lighting. Someone had been dragged away from this position while alive. Anger welled up in his core and he shouldered his rifle before he rounded the corner. Towards the latter half of the visible path, he saw what he simultaneously expected yet had hoped not to be true. Two other smaller xenoforms dead, both were humanoid until the shoulders gave way to a fused head of a giant golden scarab with cruel bladed mandibles. A carbon-scored Paladin armor chest plate with deep claw marks punctured right through it lay abandoned, torn off and discarded. Bullet casings were everywhere, as well as a discarded magazine. A meter away, a ruined rifle lay discarded. He blasted his way down the corridor, following the blood around the next corner.
Found her. Madre de dios...
One of the four headed dragon mutants had two of its heads buried inside Gardner’s chest while another was busy working on freeing her leg from its armored prison in conjunction with its clawed hands. The fourth head was staring at Locust as he shouldered his rifle, lined up his shot, and pulled the trigger on his .50 caliber rifle. Released from tension, the hammer drove the firing pin into the primer, lighting off a mass charge of powder which launched six hundred and sixty grains of all-ending pain spiraling down the rifling into the air in a controlled arc, shattering the skull of his enemy on arrival. The impact of his stated feelings and intentions in the moment painted the walls with its now hated enemy's brains. A fitting tableau for the arrival of his intense fury.
With neither time to waste, nor mercy to give, Locust repeated this performance, blowing chunk after bloody chunk from the center mass of the reptilian monstrosity. Each round punched through its thick scaled hide like it was paper and cut from its body another hunk of flesh. He had scarcely given it even the time to howl in pain before it was thrown from its victim in a bloody heap torn near-utterly in twain.
Locust charged off towards the top of the pyramid, alight with a deep hunger for vengeance as such that when he had eaten his fill he swore there would be nothing left standing. Nothing, he hoped, save for his allies; if only he could arrive in time.