The missile that exploded behind me was designed to take out bunkers, heavily fortified military targets, places with unreasonable levels of interior reinforcement, which was probably all that saved us.
That and the fact that the explosion was so insanely powerful that it was entirely the wrong device for the job.
The building had a central spire that was load-bearing and interior walls, but most of the rest of the building was literally glass.
That meant that when the missile detonated, the force went outward and through the glass more than anywhere else. The upper floors of the building actually lifted off, radiating outward and shattering into a bomb blast that hurled wreckage into the buildings nearby.
The lower floors were much the same, but kicked downward. I was picked up and thrown through the air by the pressure wave from the blast front. I barely had the instinctual presence of mind to power down the plasma sword before it could cut me in two before I hit a parked vehicle and flipped ass over tit, hitting the ornamental grass and rolling to come up against the inside of the wall, dazed.
I shook my head, concentrating on my hand, the burnt ornamental grass below me, the dark torn loam…and the blood. I could see it smeared across my stealth suit, and I focused on it, quickly checking myself to make sure I wasn’t bleeding that heavily…
Nope.
The large medikit I’d hit myself with earlier had been working hard to keep me in tip-top health, sure. Hell, I could feel it right now, literally, as bruises, aches, and more vanished like a popped joint, suddenly settling back into place. But this much blood?
I pushed myself up from my prone position on the grass to all fours, and turned, freezing as I came practically nose to nose with an APS.
As I blinked, the condition of the APS resolved at about the same time I barely managed to not load my pants. The shattered hulk that was literally inches from my face was half crushed on one side, a beam of interior reinforcing driven in one side and out of the other.
The beam had been driven into the ground, and the combination of that anchoring the fresh corpse and the security vehicle that had been overturned—and that I muzzily remembered my legs smashing into only recently—had formed a sheltered alcove.
Blood ran from the various cracks in the shell of the APS and dripped free, a veritable stream that was only picking up speed as I winced and dragged myself out from underneath. I paused and returned, searching around as quickly as I could.
My own new plasma sword was easy to find, but the armor that had nearly crushed me was set to carry one as well, and I wasn’t damn well leaving without it. They were both insanely difficult to make and expensive as fuck.
Not to mention being a clear and valid counter against an APS by an unarmored man.
I found it after a few seconds. The hilt jutted from the storage pouch on the left hip—a bloody stupid place to keep it—along with a pair of additional batteries for the shield.
Well, that fucker was gone—who knew where and how—but I’d never have been able to control the shield anyway. The batteries, though? I hunched down in the lee of the corpse and frantically worked on the stealth suit.
It was torn in places, rips and stained, not to mention that I’d gotten fucking blood all over it, but…
Anything that could help was well worth it.
I stripped the original battery out, ripping the connectors and bypassing the safety cutouts, dragging my knife free and using it to strip cables down to the cores and then attach them to the battery.
It was a dirty botch job. The battery temperature jumped almost as soon as the connection was formed, making it clear that it was bleeding out at least as much power as it was using.
It worked, though. The suit blurred; looking down at my hands, they vanished, flickered, reappeared, and then vanished again.
I nodded to myself; it would do. It’d have to.
I was up and moving, a plasma sword in either hand, currently unpowered but ready to trigger at a second’s notice as I started to run. The previously pristine ornamental lawn that had run from the edge of the poured plascrete driveway was now burned and torn, literally still alight in some places, with bodies and sections of the building strewn across it. Not to mention the damn fog was still dissipating, the high background heat of the moisture-laden air playing hell with scanners.
“Ka…t?” A fragmenting link established, then cut out again.
“Reign?” I sent.
“Kab…!” The relief in her voice was clear, then it broke into a high-pitched yowl of sonics.
“Send again?”
“…PS!…us…”
This time when the connection dropped, it didn’t come back, and I swore, getting my bearings and running.
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Where they’d driven through the barrier had been to my right as I faced the tower. The tower was mainly a pile of smoldering wreckage now, but the remains were just visible through the fog as a mess of shattered stone and flaring fire.
I leapt over gouges torn in the ground, and hurdled shredded supports, passing bloody and stunned figures that stumbled here and there. I heard distant screams, panicked cries, demands for help, and more.
Already, in the distance, I could hear the emergency transports incoming, a cacophony of sirens and warnings as insurance and body-loss transports raced against ACE. They and others fought to be the first on scene, to collect their subscriber and get them out ahead of the rest, probably in expectation of a fucking bonus.
I didn’t care, leaping up from one fragment of wall to another, parkouring for all I was worth. I jumped, landing and sliding across a shattered section of stone. I slid to the ground on the far side of the wall. A couple of figures gawked at the destruction, presumably on their way back or to somewhere.
They screamed and ran. My suit flickered; the blood that covered me was clear in the air, seemingly outlining a bloody spirit racing from the building.
I sprinted down the alleyway, seeing the high-speed road at the end of it, running right to left. I skidded, turning out onto it, stumbling over debris and a random bloody hand, minus the rest of the fucking body.
It was disturbingly spongy as I stepped on it, gritting my teeth. I focused on the sight ahead: two APS, both all in black, facing the security car.
It was heavily armed: twin crowd suppression launchers on the roof, short-range dispersant taser projectors, the works, for the busy corpo shitbag who didn’t want to wait for people who dared to cross the road before them.
None of it was any use against an APS, though.
I ran full speed at them. The nearest one stood by the driver side of the vehicle, rifle pointed in the window as they clearly checked the group. I saw the rifle shift, straightening as the operator presumably got the okay to eliminate the “loose ends,” and I snarled in my suit. Both swords flared to life.
The effect was instantaneous.
Both APS twisted, their suits and operators trained and experienced, jerking around at clear movement, only to see the blades already in motion.
I hacked through the rifle, severing it halfway, leaving a glowing molten metal half in the suit’s hands as they fired. The heat and the fucked weapon set the magazine off, exploding as I threw myself down, skidding, slashing across the backs of both the suit’s legs.
The second APS was on the far side of the car from me, and they opened fire before I could close on them. I popped to my feet. The bullets tore through the air by the side of my head, then cut off as one hit their companion, who toppled backward, arms waving and his rifle reduced to scrap as his shoulder-mounted rail guns swiveled and opened fire.
I went down again, rolling, frantically dodging the fire as best I could…until the suppression launchers on the car opened fire.
They were basically more powerful versions of the arse-lance, firing a thousand rubberized and electrified bullets a minute from either barrel.
They slammed into the still-standing suit, shoving it sideways as they hit, unexpected. Then the car was moving, backing up. The fire was constant, and the APS spun, sighting on the car, and opened up. Twin rail guns, much smaller caliber than the sniper rifle one of their number had, but still powerful, sent the car’s shields into overload. The bright blue of the shield appeared in the air. Sections appeared darker and darker as the rounds slammed into it, even as Reign spun the wheel and floored it, running directly over the downed suit.
I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to my feet and running, leaping through the air at the still-standing figure, triggering the swords as I flew.
The APS operator twisted at the hip, rifle coming up to block my swords, even as his rail guns continued to hammer the car, the shields running closer and closer to redline.
I speared both blades down. The tips punched through the rifle and into the armor, hissing and juddering as they skittered across the front, making me curse.
Then I was flying through the air, backhanded.
My ribs shattered; the world flipped over and over as I tumbled through it, before hitting the road. I bounced and rolled. My chest felt like a literal bag of broken glass and shattered ribs, before the APS appeared over me, rail guns swiveling down…
I was dead…I fucking knew I was…until her voice rang out.
“RECORDING!” Reign shouted. “I’m recording and backing up. If I cut out? The broadcast releases!”
“Recording!” Luna shouted, stepping out as well; Gessh joined her too, calling the same.
“You’re black ops!” Reign called to the suit that had hesitated over me. “You can’t stop me sending this, and that fucks your op! Look around. How many people are broadcasting you right now? WE KNOW who you are, though—they don’t…”
There was a long silence as the APS operator checked the local area, seeing how many figures were in windows and more.
I tried to breathe, plasma swords clattering to the ground as I released the activation triggers. My left arm searched feebly for the last medikit, as my right arm…well. It flopped uselessly, pain radiating up and down it.
The knock that came through was from the major, and as soon as it appeared before me, I knew.
“Well…looks like an impasse,” he said flatly.
“Y…yeah…”
“You don’t seem like you’re doing too well, but here’s my offer, Kabutt. You’ve got some bright people working for you, and this operation’s achieved what it needed to, even with our cover being blown. We’ll spin it, make out it was a sanctioned team, throw some captain to the lantons for not reporting it…you know how it is.”
“You…”
“My team’s pulling back, and your team is going to keep their mouths shut. As it is? There’s not much you can do. But I know you’re a paranoid little fucker, even if you are easily manipulated, so here it is. You survive this? Scurry off and hide in a hole somewhere. If you cross my path again? I’ll nuke you, like I did that building.”
“Bast…ard…” I forced out, as my suit tore, the robotic left arm dragging the large medikit free. Gessh was there a second later, pulling it from my grip and uncovering it, priming, and then apologizing as she stabbed it into my upper chest above the impact point.
The medikit plungers activated, driving a mass of nanites into me, the horrible feeling of an alien mass snapping bones into place and restructuring things as I screamed in pain.
“Remember, Kabutt. Run and hide. Show up on my radar again? I’ll level an arcology to squash you.” The major sneered, before cutting the connection.
“A…PS?” I gasped to Gessh, who shook her head.
“Retreating.” She winced as cracks echoed, and my chest sagged on one side. “Shit, boss, we need to get you to a carver!”
“Fuck!” Luna gasped, appearing next to me, then calling out as Reign backed the car up. “We need to get him outta here!”
The next few hours descended into a blur of screams, blood, and worse. Somehow they manhandled me into the back of the car, and from there to a carver.
I was too out of it to make choices, and my next of kin? Well. Long gone. The world spiraled away from me. Blood sprayed as the carver frantically cut my chest open; a saw ran down my chest to split the partially rebuilt rib cage.
I remember faces, and voices…garbled. Hands gripping me. And pain.
So. Much. Pain.