Chapter Fifty-Seven

It was a close thing, as I crept towards the top of the nearest hill, but I’d made it, finally.

The small valley that spread out before me had once been part of the farming initiatives that the city tried to maintain every so often.

They got smaller and smaller each year, more and more facilities inside the city being used to grow crops in hydroponic factories that required a fraction of the space, and had little to none of the resident monster risks.

Out here, monster and beast—they were very fucking different things, some of the Great Beasts were almost sapient and mainly avoided the city, while monsters were batshit and brainless, as a rule of thumb—attacks were frequent enough that this entire area had been abandoned.

As a result, the town that had sprung up here, nestled in a dip in the valley and built as a central point to maintain the fields, had been abandoned.

There were a few dozen main buildings in the center, with a massive single building built as a secure fallback position. It was like most of its kind, massively reinforced, slope sided like a thick, stubby pyramid, with wide entrances at the bottom that could be sealed by great blocks of titanium coated stone.

The entire edifice was more than habitable still.

Where the other buildings were failing, the harshness of the storms and acidic rains, the monsters and the inexorable onslaught of time doing a number on the fuckers, the bastion stood solid.

On all sides the buildings sagged, roofs collapsing, walls scoured of cheerful and optimistic attempts at paint and technology dying like the crops that were once planted here.

The bastion towered over it all, and I mentally marked that as the ambush point.

There was no way I’d risk hiding troops in the buildings on either side of the damn thing, that was for sure, not unless they were a hell of a lot more reinforced than they looked from here.

I squinted, zooming in and scanning the area as best I could without breaking stealth.

No, the buildings were too damaged, too fucked to risk putting squishy personnel in, and even APS would be at risk of pinning in a collapse. Checking my map I noted the convoy’s location, the military transport’s transponder having been shared with the major’s team, and through them, me.

Twenty minutes out.

There’d been two sweeps of drones already, one had flown straight inside the bastion, so I was guessing that Blue One was doing his usual thorough job.

That meant that either the fuckers that were laid in wait—I had no doubt they were here, I just hadn’t spotted them yet—were either better than his tech at hiding, or…

I frowned.

A full on drone sweep, especially a well-equipped one like the ones I’d seen so far wouldn’t be easily fooled. I was using modified, spliced together stealth-suits, five of them in fact, across my armor, and they were plugged into my RI, with it running the interface through my suit’s normal camo systems.

I had a suite of additional batteries torn from Richie and Sync’s suits, as well as two more from the downed suits in my back to make goddamn sure I had enough power to hide from anything, and I was still paranoid I’d be spotted.

Taking that into account, and inside a well understood, standard layout security fallback bastion, how did they expect to hide at all?

The answer came to me quickly enough and I stifled the urge to swear long and loud.

They expected to, because they weren’t letting Blue use their drone. I was betting the major had his people running the drone, sending it on the loops to search for me and mine, other scavs or monsters or whatever, and was feeding a sanitized version to Blue.

That’s what I’d have done anyway, that or record it a few days ago, and send it all now as if it was real time.

That way they would have access to real time data, and Blue wouldn’t be any the wiser, and—

A sound, something that didn’t belong here, something that was alien enough it grabbed my attention, but not enough to be identified. I froze, staying perfectly still.

I shifted slowly. I’d literally used this Frankenstein’s monster creation of the stealth suits over my own integrated variant for one damn reason. My own concealed most of my emissions, but it couldn’t conceal everything.

Anyone familiar with the tech would recognize the emissions as one of us in stealth, but this? Multiple layers of suits literally glued over me?

It was a botch job, but it worked.

Admittedly there were still some leaks escaping, and sure, the loss of five top end stealth suits was horrific, my bank balance was screaming at me over the potential cost of replacing them.

The figure in stealth armor that crept around the side of a nearby boulder though was clearly tracking something, and he had no clue what it was.

“—confirm,” he finished in a low whisper. “No contact.” That said, he straightened, a blur in the air, before turning away, an arm extended as he apparently tried to track something else.

I stayed where I was, sure that it was something from me he’d picked up, but that whatever it was, the angle I was at currently was doing a better job of hiding it.

Several minutes passed, while I stayed there, crouched in my suit, cursing that a fucking scout was so close… before I decided I didn’t have the time to waste any more.

The convoy was getting closer by the minute, the night wouldn’t last forever, and the major needed this to be over with before the sun came up.

That meant that whatever happened here, it was going to be over damn soon, especially if they were going to be keeping a lid on it. I started moving, sliding around the boulders, pausing every few seconds, searching for anything, anything at all that might… there!

A distortion in a pattern of a rock up ahead, laid across it and oriented down on the bastion. I slid forward, scarcely daring to breathe, despite the fact I was in a multi-ton mecha.

One step, two, three… by the seventh I was almost in range, so the eighth of course, was when a pair of pebbles clicked together underfoot.

The figure rolled, a stealth covering falling from a rifle as they spun towards me, and I grabbed on instinct.

My fingers closed over his head and squeezed, the helmet granting a half-second’s reprieve before it buckled under my grip. Blood, brains and bone burst from the shattered mass under my fingers, and I winced, really hoping they were the major’s team, and not a higher up sting patrol, but there was nothing I could do about that now.

They’d not gotten a message off, I was sure of that, but anyone monitoring their bios would know something had happened here.

I moved, running in full stealth, well aware the systems couldn’t keep up, not perfectly, but that it was better to be where they weren’t looking, rather than trusting to imperfect stealth where they were.

Thirty seconds later and I was slowing, drifting around the bottom of the hill and through a series of old dead trees, their branches long since torn free, and their trunks scoured down to skeletal fingers clutching at an uncaring sky.

I moved slowly now, but steadily, heading at an oblique angle for the bastion.

There were two main entrances, and two secondary, the largest always falling north and south aligned, with the smaller east and west. Those were the official entrances, but nothing hundreds of meters long could be kept that well sealed.

There were four additional smaller doors, set at the left-most edge of each face of the building, meant for emergency access, and used primarily for the workers that maintained and lived in such places to come and go without the powers that be spotting them.

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The first that I came to was buried by several tons of collapsed building, and I cursed, heading to the next. I needed one that was recently used, not sealed for the ages.

Two more sides came and went, and of course, when I finally found one, it was the last of the four. The handprint and code lock were dusty and filthy, but the cherry red gleam of a ‘locked’ symbol gave me hope, letting me know that it was alive at least.

“Okay Richie, do your thing,” I whispered into the comm relay, and he grunted in my ear.

“Already working on it boss, and Sync says you’re still shit at stealth, by the way,” he replied at a normal volume.

“Can it,” I ordered, shaking my head. “Keep contact to a minimum, no un-necessary data transfers.”

“My comm is buried in the mass of data needed for a remote link,” he drawled. “You have any idea how much data back and forth is streaming right now for me to be able to remote into your suit and then into the lock? We’re either already boned, or we’re fine.”

“Fuck’s sake can I put you back on ice?” I muttered.

“And… we’re in.” He grunted as the lock changed from a bright red to a cheerful green. “I still say you should have let me come.”

“You were walking in the suit like you’d shit yourself,” I pointed out. “You couldn’t run, if you tried moving like that out here you’d be shot in seconds. No dice.” I reached up and attached one of the relay drones I’d taken from Richie’s suit to the door, knowing it’d be able to pass information through it.

“You could have waited, left my suit alone until we knew for sure that…”

“Ah, the truth comes out…” I whispered, sliding inside, glad that the entrance had been made with farming suits in mind, just in case. That meant that there was just enough space for me to get in, in my suit. Provided I was careful and moved slowly. “…you’re just pissed I stole your secondary batteries.”

“And my shield emitter, and the one from the older suit, and my drones and…!” He broke off and ground out. “You never bothered with them in the past, why start now?”

“Because right now I’m on my fucking own, so hush.” I winced as the door sealed with an audible ‘clang’ of the lock reengaging behind me. “I really hope that’s automatic,” I muttered.

“Okay, start the integration.” I ordered, as Richie nodded to me, the joking banter dropping form his voice.

“Good luck, boss.”

Neural Integration Suite : Confirm additional insertions:

Yes/No

‘Yes’, I hit, of course , and I grunted as the second set of nerve induction points, that we’d stolen from one of the suits and plugged into the expandable slot jabbed into the spinal tap’s connectors.

There was a moment of pain, then a strange mirroring as I seemed to feel two of the suit around me, then… nothing.

I climbed the stairs slowly, making it to the next floor, then slipped out, moving into a long but narrow corridor, for me in armor, anyway, and ignored the signs on the wall about parking any exterior suits in the suit storage garage before proceeding.

Panic started to rise in me, a fear that the integration linkup, rushed as it’d been, I’d botched, before a new screen unfurled before me.

Spinal Tap Assessed : Minimum congruent processing points are available. Assessing second tier congruent processing points.

A small progress bar showed in the corner of my vision, and started counting slowly up as gentle ripples of sensations ran up and down my body.

I moved as quietly as possible, passing from dully-lit light to shadows, the emergency lighting providing spotty illumination as I passed doors on the right and left every few meters.

Several minutes passed, and I was nearly at the end of the corridor when a door ahead opened, and two men in battered leather and scruffy armor exited, their guns gleaming and obviously recently provided.

I glared at them, my stealth camo down to just over half, even with all the additional batteries, as I stood frozen in the middle of the passage.

One frowned, glancing down at me, and cocking his head to one side as if unsure, before shaking it and heading off after his companion as the older man called for him to hurry.

I let out a long breath, surprised to find I was sweating in my armor. All I needed was some random scav to shoot a round down this way to check it or something.

“That was a lucky one,” I whispered. “Think he saw my shadow or…” I frowned, clicking on the transmit, checking comms and then gritting my teeth.

Nada.

Comms had gone, and considering I was using a secure relay through micro-drones, that meant that either someone had fucked with the drones, possible, but unlikely, or there was a jamming field in place.

That it’d gone live already? That wasn’t good.

I set off again, hurrying the last few dozen meters to the end of the corridor… just as the same figure from before came running in, calling over his shoulder that he’d ‘…get them…’

Freezing in place I watched him as he ran towards me, gun in hand, swearing as he cursed the ‘fucking lanton slurping asshole that left the box in…’

I moved.

He was a meter from me, running forwards, gun in hand, other hand lifting as he neared the door he wanted, and he fucking saw the shift. The door was literally to my right, and I’d hoped to step back, to let him reach it, and keep hidden, but the way his eyes widened in sudden alarm?

My left hand ripped the gun from his right, his mouth opening in shock and pain as a finger—the fucker had it in the goddamn trigger guard—was torn free in a sudden snap and jerk. My other hand closed over his head, and I wrenched it to the right, the reverberation of the bone snapping barely felt.

I dragged him close, tossing him over my left arm and fiddled with the door to my right, the fingers of my suit’s hands far too big to use the tiny latch easily, before kicking it open.

The room beyond was a mess, clearly being used as a doss-house and barracks for someone, three bunk-beds on the left side attached to the wall, an enclosed shower and toilet presumably behind the closed door on the right and a little table and chairs area.

These were standard layouts, but the piled boxes of ammunition, the circuits, the memory crystals and food? No, they were all army issue, and there was no way the body I under-arm tossed into the room was army.

From his clothes to his walk, everything had screamed scavenger, and the gun? Current army issue, latest models.

I paused, had that been faster than normal? The way the suit had reacted to me, to grabbing him? Was it more agile, more dexterous already, or was it my imagination?

I dragged the door shut again, every instinct telling me I needed to hide my presence as much as possible, and yet? For anyone to get to the door, they needed to pass down the corridor, and the door from here into the main atrium?

It was ‘normal’ sized. That was going to be a problem.

I banished the thoughts and moved, the slowly cycling wheel in my peripheral vision ticking along happily.

I walked up to the door, moving slowly as I knelt and reached out and gingerly fumbled with the latch, managing it on the third attempt, expecting to slide it only a fraction open to allow me to peer out…

The door slid open smoothly all the way, and I froze, the atrium before me clearly a level up from the entrance, formed into a bridge, with solid sides that looked out over the lower level.

I froze because right in front of me, crouched on either side of the bridge, weapons ready, were at least thirty scavs, and a good dozen army troops in the distinctive ‘unofficial’ armor that the fuckers this morning had been wearing as well.

And below?

The hum and crunch of a heavily laden transport convoy approaching the nearby entrance into the lower levels.

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