Chapter Fifty-Four

The others hadn’t responded to my frantic call, but some of them were alive still, that much was clear, as I burst into the street again, seeing three more of the ghost squad moving into the warehouse, getting hammered by fire from several points from above.

One of their number was down, what looked to have been an insanely lucky shot that had penetrated the non-baffled front on the cluster bomb launcher at the worst time, causing a chain reaction.

The suit was sprawled on the floor, unmoving, with smoke rising from its back and the armor cratered and torn.

The remaining three were split between trying to squash the annoying gnats that were my team, and retrieving our suits, a heavy transport having landed behind them, with the walkway inside opening as I raced towards them.

Here and there soldiers were scattered around the buildings, torn apart by everything from our concealed turrets to Oshbob’s goblins and more, dozens in unmarked black military grade armor, falling back on their transport. They’d not been ready for my new allies that was for sure.

For a brief second I reveled in the ‘minor’ detail that these fuckers had older suits, no shoulder mountings for additional weaponry, only the cluster bomb launchers. Then I opened fire on the nearest, as he started dragging one of our suits out of the burning building.

He was walking backwards, arms locked around the suit, headed towards a small team of regular soldiers that were readying a recovery sled by the rear of the transport, shielded from shots from the warehouse by a shimmering force shield.

My shots hit him from the side, staggering him, before my stolen railgun fired a much heavier round into the upper arm just below where the shoulder joint met the arm.

It deflected off, barely missing my target, and instead of fucking his arm and sending him staggering, he spun, dropping the suit and ripping his rifle free.

The other two turned as well, all three lining up on me, opening fire at once. I was hit, over and over, my armor ringing like a bell as warnings lit the screens and I ‘felt’ the damage through the system spinal tap linkages.

Armor integrity: 76%

The warning was barely there before it was gone, a second flashing up in its place.

Armor integrity: 65%

By the time it’d flickered twice more and I was hitting the forties, I’d triggered my jump-jets and strafed sideways, avoiding two of the streams of fire, the third ripping free a shoulder mounted railgun.

They’d been returning fire though, focusing on the weak spots of the older armor variants, upper arm joints, cluster bomb dispenser ports and the very center of the armor.

The railgun impacts on the center wouldn’t be enough to fuck their visuals easily, but repeated hits would.

I lifted the rifle and locked in the target, firing just as I was hit again and again, my aim thrown off and the round from the heavier weapon taking the arm out of the leftmost target, rather than the chest.

He staggered, and I cursed, diving, rolling and coming to my feet, firing the second, and final, load of cluster bombs I had onboard.

They weren’t the high explosive that could have been fucking useful, oh no, they were the flechette version, and more dangerous for my people than theirs… so I had to be good with targeting.

All three landed right on their transport cockpit, exploding and damaging the hardened structure, then tearing into it with hundreds of tiny darts. The shields were limited use on a transport like this, they drew too much power when the damn thing needed so much to fly anyway, so they powered only those needed, generally.

I was insanely lucky that they’d just kept the ones protecting their crew up.

Then I was moving again, all fire from the suits drawn onto me as they frantically tried to take me down before I could take out their ride, the rear shielding flickering as power was diverted, side projectors glowing as they started to power up.

I didn’t give two shits about the craft in general, beyond the fact it was an insanely expensive, heavy transport that was literally perfect for mission deployments. No I cared that they needed it.

As I sprinted for it, the suits opened fire again, and a pair of turrets on this side of the transport deployed in a blast of pressurized gasses, swiveling to track me.

My surviving shoulder mounted railgun tracked one of the suits as they locked in on me, unleashing a heavy barrage of fire that took my left leg off at the knee, sending me to the floor in a sliding crash.

I returned fire; three shots, three hits, all center of mass, and I saw him pause, his hands coming up as inside the suit the pilot frantically reached for failing screens, cut off from the world around as he tried to get them back.

I locked the stolen sniper rifle on him, and fired three more shots, this time without him moving I managed to get dead center hits of my own, and they fucking punched right through, taking him down.

I was hit twice, left shoulder, driven a few inches back by the force as my left arm spasmed and shuddered, then I was hit again, a fast hard barrage of a dozen or more hits into that shoulder, losing the arm entirely.

My shoulder railgun twitched as I set three targets as fast as I could, two rounds fired before the turrets tore it free, even as I twisted the rifle around to line up… on the transport.

My shoulder mounted railgun had fired on the rifles of the last two figures, a single shot each, aimed at their rifle barrels. One hit, one miss, leaving only one of the two surviving suits with a usable weapon—beyond the cluster bomb dispensers and built in systems anyway.

At the same time I pulled the trigger on my stolen railgun and emptied the last five shots in the mag, straight through the cockpit.

The turrets went dead, as blood splattered the inside of the cockpit glass, and I collapsed back, done.

The rifle was empty, my cluster bomb dispensers were empty, my left suit leg was amputated at the knee, my left suit arm at the shoulder, making me damn glad I was in the suit, not wearing it like the first generation had, arms and legs sticking out into the greater limbs.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I had two weapons left, and as I tried to push myself upright, a kick caught me in the chest hurling me back. The plasma sword I’d stolen from one of their men was ripped free. I was kicked again, then again, before finally I got a call from Major Marcial, the assholes pausing as he clearly ordered them to wait.

“What do you want fuck face?” I grunted at him conversationally.

“That’s no way to talk to the man that’s holding your life in his hands,” he replied. “You’ve cost me a hell of a price tonight, Kabutt.”

“Oh, too bad, so sad,” I shot back. “I was kicking back ready for a fucking beer when you sent your pets after me, this didn’t have to happen.” I snarled, forcing myself to stay on task and not panic over the others situation right now.

“I warned you this wasn’t over.”

“You told me to run and hide,” I pointed out. “I left you alone, hell we kept quiet about you and your fucking team.”

“You did,” he agreed, before sighing. “Then you turn up with two more suits. Let me guess, Red Five and Six? They survived that little incident and were hiding all this time in the Fingers?”

“We knew you’d be watching,” I said, shifting around, wondering if I overclocked the suit… if I lifted the safety limiters on my spinal tap…

I’d already found I was markedly faster than they were, and I’d only just touched the surface of how much more accurate, how much smoother I was. If I removed the final safety lockouts, and went all out?

Then I saw them.

I couldn’t help but smile.

“You find something amusing?” the major asked, and I couldn’t help it.

“Fuck yes. You’ve no idea what you’ve done, you prick.”

“Kabutt…” he growled warningly. “I hold your life in my hand. You really think it’s wise to piss me off more?”

“Get on with it,” I snapped, forcing myself to a sitting position, braced on one arm. “You wanted to gloat? Fine, get it over with.”

“I didn’t stop them just to gloat Kabutt, but to make you an offer.”

I opened my mouth, then paused, I’d certainly not seen that coming.

“Go on.” I encouraged, happy to gain a few more seconds.

“Work for me, for real this time.” He suggested. “Come and take the second slot in my black ops team. You’ve no idea how much those corpo scumbags pay me for these jobs…”

“And I’ve just killed half your team,” I finished for him with a grunt, seeing it all. “You need more than you’ve got for an op!”

“I do,” he admitted. “And so you’ve got a chance. I knew you were good, but Red never stood out above the other teams, not the way you have since leaving the force. What was it? You just didn’t bother to put the effort in before? OR did you need a kick in the ass?”

“You stupid fucks.” I snorted. “You, dumb stupid mother fuckers.”

“I needed more modern suits Kabutt, mine are older, you’ve seen the difference between them and the latest generation, there was a ceiling on the upgrades they could take. Your suits would have fixed that, and let me compete with the remaining three black teams.”

“Three?” I choked in disbelief. “There are three more black ops teams out there?”

“There are, and the motherload, Kabutt! There are fifth generation suits, prototypes that are being delivered to the army, so classified that if the right people die tomorrow? No-one will even know that they’ve gone missing!”

“You wanted my suits, to give you a better chance at getting those,” I guessed, getting a nod from him.

“They’re five, maybe ten years from deployment, Kabutt, everything your suits have? They’ve got better. We’ve got them, or we will have. The step between Assault Mechs and the APS. A new Lord of the battlefield! I can give you one of those…”

“Because you’re just so trustworthy,” I shook my head. “You think I’d trust you? After all of this?”

“I hoped you were smart enough to see your choices clearly Kabutt.” The major sighed. “Well, you had your chance, fuck it. What a waste.”

“Yeah, no.” I shifted, propping myself up as more and more of my systems failed, and I squinted at the screen. “You know what Major? You made some serious fuckups tonight, hell, you made a lot, but you know what the last one was?”

“Enlighten me,” he invited coldly.

“Well, besides monologuing like a fucking children’s vid villain I mean, that was fantastic, because yeah, I’m going to find out where those suits are now, and I’m gonna piss on your parade! But no, the biggest mistake?”

“Go on.”

“You distracted your fucking idiot operators and had them watch over me , when they should have been watching…”

Todds triggered his plasma sword from full stealth, standing right behind the suit that still had its rifle, and drove the sword through the weak spot I’d drilled into all of them that was under the armpit.

“Where…” I said.

Sync fired her massive APS sniper rifle, laid across a bench, held in place by Dondo and Gessh, the round taking the remaining APS in the powercell regulator, triggering a full emergency SCRAM, and shutting down his suit. He collapsed to the floor, screaming and twitching as power surges fried back and forth inside his suit, shocking him over and over.

“My team…”

Richie staggered out of the remains of the warehouse, his suit damaged, filthy and the new paintjob fucked, but he was upright, and he was pissed.

“And my new friends were.”

The massive figure of Oshbob strode out of the darkness, the gamma cannon held cradled in both hands, as he lined up on the transport, and the half dozen soldiers that were left inside, as he glared at them.

“Time to die,” he snarled.

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