I dove for the lance instinctively, only starting to look toward the window as I hit the ground, sliding and…

A massive, and all-too-familiar foot crunched down on one end of it, reducing it to scrap.

I stared upward as a rifle, sized to fit the rest of the blitzkrieg loadout for the APS before me, moved over to a stop directly before my eyes.

“Don’t fucking move,” a voice rang out of the external speakers. “Remove the node lockouts on this floor, and remain absolutely still.”

My brain raced, wondering first how the fuck Blue had made it so fast, then realized this was a member of the Ghost Squad. “I’d need my datadeck…” I whispered after a few seconds of silence, me staring into the barrel of a gun exactly like I’d carried for fucking years.

“Move slowly,” came the response. “Try anything? A single round is all I’ll need.”

I moved, slowly, deliberately, knowing damn well that any hit from that rifle was me dead. If it hit my hand? It’d not be a hole in my hand; hydrostatic shock would propagate through the arm, and I’d be a pale-pink fucking mist.

Either way, though…I was massively outclassed by the suit behind me, and the way that he moved, the gun alone tracking me, showed that he knew it too.

I watched him in the mirror as I moved around and over to Tyrannus’s body, disconnecting the wire from the remains of his neck, and rolling it up slowly.

“The lockouts—take them down NOW!” he ordered.

I nodded, lifting the deck in one hand to show I was doing as he asked, slowly turning back to him, as I dumped all but two of my flash-bangs’ triggers.

I was counting down silently as I stepped toward him, holding the deck up as if to show I had it, and ripped a sticky grenade free.

“What the fuck do you think that’s going to do?” he asked, the speakers carrying the obvious derision he felt.

I triggered the three-second countdown, and flung it at him.

He caught it with his left hand. Four of my flash-bangs went off all at once as I closed my eyes and dove to the left. My senses overloaded, but I was ready for it.

The sticky went off in his hand, gluing the fucker closed and shooting out to the left and right, covering the ground as I rolled and hissed in pain. The goddamn flash-bangs shredded half the riot armoring I was wearing, setting fire to more, but my second sticky was flying already, even if I couldn’t see properly yet.

My eyes were enhanced, replaced with cybernetic ones, but like the visual systems in the APS suit, it took a few seconds to adjust.

He twisted and saw me, locking the rifle into place and apparently deciding I was more trouble than I was worth as he fired. Three shots, one after the other, hit dead center…in the mirror.

The sticky grenade went off, in midair, and while his servos were more than powerful enough to strip the shit off him, he had to see it first.

When it went off, the upper half of his armor was covered, literally fucking covered in glue, and he roared in frustration. Titanium alloys rubbed against each other as he tried to scrape it free. The rifle switched to full auto as he fired a full barrage, left to right; the backup ammo storage bin over his shoulder kept the gun going, and my eardrums were in danger of perforating.

I sprinted a handful of steps, then leapt, throwing myself through the fucking door and out onto the main floor.

Although the screams hadn’t gotten through the blockers to disturb the revelers, the fucking heavy rifle’s slugs certainly had, and the pleasant pool area was now filled with screaming people.

I ran a handful of steps, then stepped off the edge of the walkway into the water, my armor pulling me down.

I was struggling out of it already. The emergency release for the riot armor was a commonly needed thing—for some reason, people disliked seeing someone in this gear, and if they could kick the fuck outta you? Once that battery was drained, they were going to try. Best to be able to get out and run—and I triggered it. The straps and powered sections unfurled, opening up to free me.

I swam sideways, my lungs reminding me I couldn’t stay down here forever, especially not when it was as shallow as it was, but…

I pulled the hood over my head as the water around me shivered. The stomping feet of the APS came closer, and I laid on my back, staring up.

Waiting.

The vibrations got stronger, the impacts hitting…and then the flare as the rifle opened fire, making me wince as I wondered what the fucker was firing on.

I waited until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, then I triggered the stealth suit, well aware that with the battery as drained as it was, that I’d get little fucking coverage.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

I breached the surface. The slick material of the suit covered me head to toe, and I grinned at the APS facing the other way, scanning the room.

I dragged myself up, moving as slow as I could to minimize both sound and the effect of the water sluicing off me. I moved behind a tree, slipping around the edge of the pool, moving around the fucker as it stood half in and half out of the room I’d been in, swearing loudly as he tried to get around the lockout for the local area.

Without a connection to his commanders, he was left making decisions “in the field.” And the scattered shredded bodies, both corpo and hired staff, suggested that wasn’t his fucking strong suit.

It helped that he’d only uncovered two of his cameras, one on the front and one on the back. The scratches marring the surface of his suit made it clear how hard he’d had to drag his claws over the front to get that shit off.

Fucking amateur.

Sticky grenades were a problem just over a year ago. Word had gotten out to the scavs that it was one of the few things that worked against us, and they’d gone overboard.

We’d found, however, that the suits were great for thermal insulation, and the sticky shit burnt really well. Our solution? Set fire to each other. An incendiary grenade, or anything, really. Just make sure the gunk caught, and a minute later you were clean again.

Add in the psychological damage that seeing an APS suit, utterly unconcerned about the fact it was on fire, mowing down all your friends?

It was fine by us.

We solved the issue easily.

That this dickhead hadn’t come across that problem, and its creative solution, was clear.

That made me think.

His suit was repainted, all black and grey, clearly meant to blend in, in the dark. His weapons? He had a blitzkrieg build, the plasma sword sheathed still, and the shield replaced with a heavier version…He did, however, the fucking idiot, have cluster bombs attached.

And they were the older, unbaffled design.

That dated his suit to a second generation for me, and I grinned.

The cluster bomb dispensers were replaced from the third gen onward. Mine, a fourth gen, was massively different internally, and as soon as I dated the model he was wearing, I was fucking moving.

He wasn’t an APS operator.

The second gens were replaced better than thirty years ago, and he’d sounded like—and his actions proved—he was a dumb kid.

That meant he was a corpo fuckhead black ops soldier wannabe playing in one of our suits.

His front-facing camera gave good vision, as did his back, but he kept panning left and right, checking to make sure nothing was sneaking up on him.

I was in a current-gen stealth suit. Yeah, I had just over two percent of the charge left, but that wasn’t the point. His systems were out of date and covered in fucking glue.

I sidled up to him—almost being crushed by his rifle when he pivoted suddenly—and waited until he started to pan in the other direction.

I stuck my last two flash-bangs to the glue right next to his rear camera easily, and I backed up, waiting to see whether he’d see them…

Nope! Great, phase two.

Frag grenades.

Three of them, all primed, pins pulled, and pressed into the armpit, nice and deep into the glue.

He clearly felt something, as he swung around. I tried to back up, but wasn’t fast enough. The rifle smashed into my right forearm, snapping the bone and sending me flying. I hit the wall and slumped down, stunned, as he turned to see what the hell he’d just hit.

That’s when the flash-bangs went off.

Both of them went off with an insane level of brightness. I was facing away, eyes closed, and it still fucking hurt them. As he was? With only two cameras working, he screamed, waving his arms.

The flare ignited the sticky shit, which roared across his frame.

The natural reaction, seeing flames licking across the cameras as they were uncovered, feeling the detonation, and seeing the light from behind?

He spun, gun coming around as he opened fire on the empty room behind him, convinced he was under fire.

Then the three frags went off.

Pressed in close into the armpit, they were in a point of weakness already. The multitude of frags were driven by the explosion through the limited underarm armor, and they fucking shredded the body inside like a smoothie machine set to fucking puree.

Well, I imagined that was what happened anyway.

What I saw was the armored figure stagger, then drop to its knees, before falling facedown.

I stood shakily. The sound of gunfire from outside finally made its way to me, and I shook my head, my senses overloaded from all the explosions and shit going on so close to me. I snarled in fury as I realized that I’d missed that my fight was only a tiny part of what was going on.

I also had a fuckload of notifications that the others were trying to call me, but they’d been suppressed by the RI through my danger settings and their lack of proximity.

“What happened?” I barked into the commlink, dragging the rubberized covers off the medikit and stabbing the large medikit full of nanites into my right arm.

“Fuck’s sake, now? NOW you answer?” Reign screamed at me. “We’re under fire! There’s APS everywhere and we’re getting our asses handed to us! Fucking HELP US!”

I ran around the side of the fallen suit, skidding to a halt as the gunfire echoed up—the crackle of lasers and grazers crossing, the boom of a turret going live—and I reached down.

The rifle the APS had been carrying was too big for a normal human to carry, but the plasma sword? I’d had some interior reinforcing done when my collarbone was smashed and my left arm upgraded; my right was healing at an insane rate, the bones snapped back into place. I felt the familiar weight as I hefted the weapon.

We trained with these—both in and out of the suits—mainly because it was the one weapon that you could still use, the hilt being the only physical component.

I triggered it. The whoosh of ionization and the crackle of contained sun burst to life in my hands as I turned and looked toward the broken window.

The plasma sword felt almost light in my hands as the years of training with them came back to me: the hours upon hours facing Fergie, Scott, Sync, and Richie in the dojo, the endless hours of forms we drilled in.

I remembered the clack of training blades as we fought mock battles, and the scarcely controlled fear when we faced the few captured enemy versions of the APS.

We trained to face them no matter what, to fight on foot, in APS and from vehicles.

The APS, both our versions—which were obviously the best in the world—and the inferior imitations of the other cities, were the kings and queens of the battlefield, beaten only by the great assault mechs that were kept hidden in readiness for the next war.

As such, we were both the lords of war, and the only realistic counters to other APS. We were trained to fight in them, and to face them, to never permit our suits to be taken. And if, for whatever reason, our suit failed? We were trained to take up our swords and finish the fight.

I unclipped the monofilament drag line from the back of the APS, used in case we needed to drag each other out of a ditch or whatever, and I wrapped the end around my left wrist, then stepped up to the broken window, staring down and out across the city.

It was time to go and fuck some shit up.

With that thought in mind, I leapt from the window and fell into the night.