Chapter Fifty-One

I was on a closed loop with Richie and Sync as we strode into the darkness, our lights flooding the tunnel and giving no spaces for our targets to hide.

We opened fire in short controlled bursts, the more massive rounds that our guns used passing through sometimes several of the specters before stopping, and Richie and Sync stepped up, striding past me to lead as I carried the nanites deeper.

They both still carried their plasma swords in their left hands, and their rifles in their right, the tunnel lit by heavy gunfire and flames as Gessh and Todds closed the door behind us.

I couldn’t help but smile, this had to have looked amazing from the outside, exactly the kind of shit they were used to seeing in the vids, the brave elites of the army stomping into the hellish infested zones of the wasteland and slaughtering everything, in constant horrific danger.

The reality was different, as I changed the orders.

“Okay people, lets clear the area, set up a solid position and bring the fuckers to us.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Richie called back, and I could damn well hear the smile in his voice.

“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” Sync sighed.

“Loving it,” he admitted. “Not only are we making bank with every shot, but we’re doing it for us rather than the filthy corpos and their pets. So, yeah, I’m fucking loving this.”

“Well, we have to pay for those rounds now,” I said, “So, we need to conserve ammo wherever possible, not to mention not bringing the roof down on us all. Sync, I want you to step up and protect the nanites once we’ve picked a place to stand, I’ll swap out with you and stand with Richie.”

“Swords?” she asked and I nodded unthinkingly.

“Yeah,” I said cursing myself for getting out of the habit of responding and gesturing. “Sorry, yeah, Richie and I will swap out guns and move to melee, kill them as they come, you focus on high concentration areas and any leadership castes.”

“Ghouls and Banshees eh?” she approved. “Can’t wait to kill a few of those.”

“The Banshees are heavily armed,” I warned her. “As well as insanely mobile. You remember the Archaeon?”

“The living dead?” she asked, cutting two specters apart with her blade and I grunted.

“Those fuckers make these look like paper soldiers, these are no threat, not to us, and barely to a well-equipped solider, but those? They were our predecessors, the lords of the battlefield, and totally mad.”

“And you think these are them?” Richie asked. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “They might not be, it might just be that the one that I saw with a similar armor unit found it and added it to its form, or that it’s just a logical form to a fucking brain dead psychopath…”

“They were created by army intelligence originally…” Sync agreed.

“… but regardless, they’re fucking dangerous and they’re heavily armed. I looked over records the other day, and the specters weren’t really a problem when they made the Archaeons, so it might be they started all of this, or they just weren’t in the news yet.”

“Why would they come back here though?” Richie asked firing a short burst and shredding a staggering group of specters, before stomping on them as he passed, making damn sure they were dead.

“They came from here,” I said. “They were our dead supposedly, so maybe they wanted to come home. Maybe they’re something totally different, I don’t fucking know. It just seems suspicious as fuck to me that’s all.”

The next few minutes passed in a blur, with me at the back of our little trio. I spent most of the time stomping on specters that were mostly broken, making sure by crushing their skulls.

Richie and Sync were at the front, and they went full ‘rock and roll’ for a few seconds, carving their way through the tunnel as it narrowed, more circular than before and funneling our targets in tighter.

Once we reached the bottom of the decline though, the space opened out into what had been a massive complex once. Now, while big, it was clear something had brought a section of the wall down on the far left. leaving a sloping pile of rubble that led up to a smaller chamber.

Machinery and old cranes filled the room, storage areas for carriages and machines to move them into place and out of the tubes were everywhere, as were the specters.

Where in the cooling tower it’d been a clear fucking setup, thousands of them captured and locked into areas, made to fight, and with the ghouls and Banshees somehow caught and locked into place, here the opposite was clear.

This wasn’t a set up.

These were specters doing whatever specters did in between feeding and being brain dead.

Thousands of them were waking slowly, even as hundreds were pouring like a slow moving wall of the dead towards us. Further and further back I could see them coming to life, turning from standing aimlessly around a huge central mass, where a few dozen creatures like metal spiders roamed over and over, assembling something.

In the mass were what looked at this distance to be three ghouls, all turned inwards and working on what, if I squinted, looked to be a smaller creature.

“Lock in on that, Sync, I want a recording and an identification,” I ordered, knowing that whatever it was, it was important to the specters, so the research geeks would pay for the data.

“Scanning,” she agreed, locking down and powering up her Lidar, movement scanners and a dozen others that played hell with the electromagnetic spectrum.

I knew they played hell, because as soon as she triggered them, the pile of swarming, crawling creatures, swung as one, orienting on us, and started racing forwards, claws raised and feral rage filing the air.

But that wasn’t the worst of it, because that was when the ghouls suddenly screamed in outrage, disbelief and hatred.

Whatever the smaller creature or creation was, it detonated, an explosion of unstable crap that blanketed the area in radioactives and chemical traces that made utterly no sense, even to my advanced sensor suite.

Of the three ghouls, two survived, more or less, one was badly damaged, the other almost intact, and the pair started moving as soon as they could orient.

The damaged one remained in the middle of the room, while a ‘pretorian guard’ of Specters gathered up whatever was left of the destroyed creature. They spun on their heels and headed for a far tunnel, the more intact ghoul in their midst carrying most of the remains while others fell in to make sure we couldn’t follow.

The other one was making a sacrifice play, guiding the swarm and throwing the entirety at us.

The factory floor before was filled with shattered hulks of long abandoned carriages, mounds of rusted debris were water had seeped in over the years, and rails running here and there, or gantries.

Cranes lay slumped and broken, entire sections had been torn free, and what was most likely once technology broken loose, although if it was by the specters to build whatever that thing had been, or if it was by thieves long since I had no clue.

All I did know was that there were several thousand specters and they were PISSED.

They raced forwards in a great wave, and my carefully laid plans, the nanite bait, the electromagnetic waves we’d plotted to use to draw them close to us, so that we didn’t have to follow them down into tighter and tighter tunnels?

All of it was a fucking waste of effort.

There was no need to go hunting them, they were adamant they were coming to us.

“Fall in, three meter separation, full loadout, cut them down!” I barked into the stunned commlink.

They responded as they’d been trained, two steps back to stand on either side of me, I dropped the cylinder of insanely valuable nanites to the floor, drawing my blade as the three of us stood ready.

“I want a line of cluster bombs on my mark,” I ordered, picking out a line across the middle of the advancing wave. “Rolling detonation, half a second delay, Richie, me then Sync, three bombs each ten second delay between each of us launching. One barrage to start.”

“Oohrah!” Richie approved, getting the green light from me and firing.

The cluster bombs were old tech, built upon and improved for a new era of warfare. Each launcher—of which there were three on either side of the shoulder, just to the side of the swivel mounts for the advanced weapons like my railguns—fired a tiny canister.

That canister flashed across the distance like it’d been fired from an old school mortar launcher.

Once it reached the set target area, a small sail deployed from the rear, a string attached, and attached to that? Tiny sub-munitions.

There were typically a dozen of them, although for specialist encounters there could be more, and as the sail caught the air, it ripped free of the canister, dragging each of the bomblets free as well.

They scattered in predetermined paths depending on loadout, creating anything from a dense cloud of knockout gas, to a shredder pattern of flechettes, to an overlapping explosive pattern that was designed to batter all foes in the area to the ground.

We were loaded with the final option today, and damn they delivered.

The first wave landed in a growling, rabid mass of specters, packed almost shoulder to shoulder, and they literally blasted them apart.

Great holes appeared in the middle of the charging swarm, those that were closer to us staggering and falling, the pressure hitting them from behind, others that were behind the target area being flung this way and that by the explosions.

Those in the middle?

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Most of them were rendered down to bone fragments, rotted flesh and fractured mods.

We opened fire, carving overlapping rows of destruction through the charging mass, and I gritted my teeth, remembering that casualties meant nothing to these things.

“Maintain distance, fire at will,” I ordered, my own cluster bombs launching in their pattern now, landing on the edge of the area Richie had hit and walking the explosions to the right.

As they detonated, more of the specters that had been racing forwards were picked up and hurled around again, the pressure waves doing as much damage as the explosive detonations. We killed hundreds, Sync opening fire ten seconds after me, and hers taking the edge of my target area, then moving further right to end on the carriage that was funneling them into a narrow squeeze.

The edge of it was shredded, leaving pointed, gleaming metal that still more cut themselves apart on as they were bounced and jounced against it.

The cluster bombs were insanely effective against living foes, taking charging waves out of the fight in a bright flash that left body parts raining over their fellows in splatters of red rain.

Here though? They were effectively useless.

Sure they killed and destroyed a lot of the enemy, but as soon as they fell? More took their place.

“Hold the cluster bombs,” I ordered, annoyed at the lack of effect. We’d probably killed a couple of hundred, that was it, and cluster bombs were going to be one of those munitions that we’d have an issue getting our hands on I had no doubt.

“Sustained fire,” I ordered. “Cut them down.”

All three of us opened fire, carving great lines free of the bodies that raced forwards, and I triggered my railguns, firing a handful of the precious rounds.

Each of them punched through dozens before failing and I barked an order to Sync.

“Get those ghouls!”

“On it,” she said, switching from slaughtering the mass, to focusing on individuals.

Three shots rang out in fast succession, and the one that was making its way out of the chamber collapsed, its head and upper body missing.

She shifted, zooming in and spoke up quickly. “The rest of the pack are grabbing whatever it was carrying, do I cut them down?”

I hesitated, then cursed.

“No, take down the other ghoul, that should confuse them all, then you can reorient as we slaughter.

“Aye,” she agreed. “Targeting.”

Richie fired a drone off his left arm, the small device rocketing upwards to hit the ceiling and lock into place, giving us a bird’s eye view of the room, as we continued to fire.

The swarm was closing on us now, hundreds rolling over the fallen, smashing anything that wasn’t killed as it fell, into a smear on the floor, and we continued to fire, overlapping fields cutting them down like wheat as the feeds for our rifles chattered like magpies.

Hundreds of rounds filled the air, the hiss and whine of feeder mechanisms rang out and bodies exploded, hit in the crossfire, carved in pieces, they simply ceased to be recognizable, as Julius called me.

“Hey, Kabutt, how…” he said, and I cut him off. I’d added him to the approved list for this job alone, letting him call me, and not get bounced, because I needed to know if there was an outbreak somewhere outside.

“Little busy here,” I shot back, flicking my feed to him, and getting a stunned silence for a few seconds as he watched the true devastation that an APS could bring.

“I… can I send in a drone?” he asked after a few seconds.

“You get the two mil?” I asked him, surprised.

“The bidding hit three point seven. A studio wants to use it in a movie.”

“Whatever,” I snapped, “Slave it to Richie.”

“Incoming…” He gulped and a few seconds later something at the outer edge of the rear sensor range something sped down from the levels above.

“Richie, incoming drone, it’s slaved ready…”

“Got it,” he agreed. “I’ll maintain.”

“Good man! Sync?” I changed direction on the fly, firing a barrage to the right, cutting down a pincer attempt from that side, and she grunted, then fired, four shots into a carriage on the far side, each round hitting and penetrating, bursting from the far side in a shower of desiccated remains and electrical parts as mods were viciously parted from their former owners.

“Fucker’s hiding,” she growled. “I know where, but he won’t stick his head up…”

“Richie, cluster here,” I ordered, marking the exit that the racing group were making for, and he shifted, the ‘chunk-chunk-chunk’ of the containers leaving their holders solid and felt in your stomach as they rocketed across the room.

“If that doesn’t draw the fucker out then we go to him.” I growled. Whatever they were carrying was important to them, and the cluster bombs would most likely destroy it all, but it was that or wait for the fuckers to come to us.

Sync switched to local area suppression, her rifle switching to rapid fire as she carved through the incoming mass, punching one that made it too close and splattering him across a nearby wall.

Then as the explosions rolled out, the first few landing a handful of meters from the exit, and each subsequent one closer and closer, the ghoul apparently lifted its head in the carriage.

Sync shifted, clearly having been monitoring it with some sniper split situational sense of kit, and locked it down to a single shot.

It rang out just as the drone came to a halt over the battlefield, and the ghoul was scrubbed from the face of the planet, the shot hitting it in the side of the head and ripping what was left free in a single spray.

The swarming specters sagged, load of them collapsing, still more simply slowing, stumbling and tripping, as I barked out the next orders.

“Sync, overwatch. Richie, with me, rack the rifle!” I barked, slapping my rifle to my back where the magnetic plate shifted and locked it into place.

I lumbered forwards, switching the plasma blade to my right hand, and setting to work, wide sweeping rolls of my wrist burning through multiple figures as they threw themselves at me, and I stomped forwards.

Some of those that had fallen never rose again, crushed by their companions, or by my own multi-ton feet, as I raced into the middle of the mass.

I swept the sword left and right, dozens flaring into flame as the light of a miniature sun carved its way through them, purifying their atoms back to stardust.

Skidding, I turned, folding my right arm across my chest as I shut the blade off, the wash of excited photons and plasma washing over me, as I picked up speed, a little voice inside wanting to scream ‘ramming speed’ for some reason.

I contented myself with an evil grin as I crushed them, one and two at a time, barely slowing until I came to section where two of the carriages were too close together at one end.

Then I leapt, triggering the jump-jets and soared.

I couldn’t stay aloft for long, and the repairs I’d done were minor, I needed a lot more time to get them really working, but damn.

The backblast of the repulsors hurled the few that were closing on me from behind and away. They bounced off carriages and debris, and I scrabbled across the top of the nearest one, the old metal deforming inwards over my much reduced weight, as I cut the power and landed with a deafening crash on the far side, in the middle of a press of the rotting fuckers.

I lashed out right and left, knowing that while they were as ants compared to me, enough of them could still take me down. Instead I made sure none lived long enough, punching, sweeping and crushing, battering them aside, feeling ribs pancake, the brittle snap of old bones crushed as bodies flew here and there.

I closed a massive fist over the head of one, and squeezed, almost no effort required to mush its head, before punting another that got too close. The body shattered as it sailed backwards, and I saw the drone overhead swinging to focus on me as I triggered the plasma blade again, swinging low, carving through ten or more at once, the flash of fresh pyres filling the air as their dry, brittle corpses caught light, tumbling backwards.

The fight dissolved into a blur of melee, of dancing the forms in a suit that was meant to inspire bedwetting fear in enemy armies, as I slipped back into my memories, Scott’s voice correcting, berating and guiding as I moved, the overwhelming press of the specters fading to something more manageable as the minutes ticked by.

I used them, and I sent a message to Richie and Sync to do the same.

Our blades flashed and wove fiery trails through the darkness as we used the ready-made practice dummies that we so rarely got access to, to improve our skills.

An hour more we fought, as they kept coming, like flies drawn to shit, hundreds upon hundreds swarmed from holes and tunnels, until eventually, Richie caught the last of them in an outstretched fist, before casually ripping its head free and tossing it aside.

The body collapsed, the strings of puppetry cut, and I realized I was breathing heavily.

The fight had been a long one, nearly three hours, all told, when I checked the clock, but damn.

Seven thousand, two hundred and four kills between the group, with Sync just edging the lead over the two of us.

We finished, we straightened, and I looked up at the drone that had shifted to get all three of us, battle weary titans, in frame.

We all looked up, silence hanging there as we stared at the lens, knowing in a strange way, that millions stared back at us.

“Julius,” I said, my voice filled with exhaustion as I connected to him. “Get that thing out of here.”

“Sarge…” His voice was awed, and he was clearly at a loss for words. “You just, I mean, we…”

“Whatever,” I growled. “We need to start the harvest, before anyone else comes in and we lose this chance. Get them out.”

“Shit, of course, sorry.” He cursed. “I’m on it!”

The drone twitched and moved back, as if knowing it was about to be sent away, then started flying around the room as fast as possible, capturing everything it could, before finally turning tail and heading from sight.

Reign, Gessh, Luna and Todds joined us a few minutes later, as did Julius, and I climbed from my suit, glad that as I’d known I’d only be in for a few hours I’d not had to suffer the indignity of the special underwear and the pipes and tubes.

I sat on a clear section of the ground, as Sync and Richie settled down to sleep in their suits, their bodies still exhausted. I used the harvester to strip the corpses of their pure nanites, filling container after container, as the others searched for the best of the mods that had survived.

The battle was done, and all that was left now, was the clean-up.

Thank fuck.

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