Chapter Nineteen

The first decision was the easiest to make, namely did we go in as a group, or split up.

Both possibilities had potential. Go in as a group, we were more likely to be able to support each other and make it past any enemies.

Go in as a half dozen or more small groups, or as three teams, and we had far less risk of all being taken out by a single well placed trap. We would also force the enemy to split their counters, rather than concentrate them.

Lastly, the space looked to be just wide enough for two abreast, if you were friendly. That seriously limited the options that we had for firepower concentration, and increased the likelihood of being taken down by grenades etc.

It was Liolet that came up with the counter to that.

“We move in pairs, but all follow the same route. Move a few meters apart, that way we’re close enough to react, and far enough apart that a single mine can’t get us all,” he said. “My scouts will crawl across the top of the maze, yours leads.”

“That works,” I agreed, as Doul, the new leader of Timur’s team nodded along gruffly as well. “How are we all doing on ammo?”

“Low.” Doul grunted. “Couple hundred rounds between us all that’s it.”

“For the shotguns?” I asked.

“Aye.” That was the only response I got and I shrugged.

“Fair enough, for the assault shotguns that’s only a few seconds firing, so you bring up the rear, be ready though, if we need you, we’ll really need you.”

“Aye.” Again, the same grim response, and I hesitated, before turning to Liolet.

“If your runners can stay on the tops of the walls? Great. I’m betting that’s been tried before, so tell them to be ready for traps.”

“They already know, and volunteered,” Liolet replied, clearly not happy I was giving orders, and yet willing to take them as well.

“They volunteered?”

“They were volun-told,” Liolet admitted after a few seconds of silence. “They’ll do their job.”

“Fair enough.” I nodded. “Todds will lead the way in full stealth and watch out for traps. We find the center, we claim it and kill whatever they’ve got there, and then we fuck off home. Today has been enough of a clusterfuck as it is, so do me a favor and let’s make sure all of our people survive from this point on.”

“We’ve got the back,” Doul agreed.

“My people on the tops and in the middle,” Liolet said, and I nodded.

“And me and mine leading the way behind Todds.” I finished the layout and gestured to the maze. “We take it slow and steady.”

And we did.

The raised lip that we’d been standing on had a sloped runoff to get down to the lower level, and as soon as we all got to the bottom, people moved to fall into their place in line without complaint.

Luna and Gessh boosted two of the half gobbos up and onto the wall on either side of the entrance, and for a few seconds they stood, checking the route out.

“We take a left, then two rights, then a left, and that gets us about halfway to the center,” one of them said after a few seconds pause. “Looks clear from here.”

“Then let’s go,” I ordered, watching as the blur that was Todds vanished inside.

Stepping in, the walls seemed to tower over us, despite them being literally a half meter over our heads. They were close enough, and large enough that they cut us off from the rest of the city, and as soon as we took our first turn, the last flickering neon of the lights were extinguished again.

Helmets and optical implants took over, bathing the corridors of the maze in various colors, and I moved in staggered formation with Reign behind me to my left, and with Luna and Gessh ahead.

I could hear the muttered grumbling of the halflings behind me, goblins of any mixture were apparently unable to keep their fucking mouths shut, but as we took the next turn, and then the third, even their chatter died away.

The maze wasn’t silent, not by any means, the distant sounds of the city still filtered in, as did the clanks and scrapes as something occasionally rubbed against the walls.

It was insanely oppressive though, the atmosphere, and as we came to the next section, one of the goblins on ‘overwatch’ on the left was forced to leap across the gap.

He’d clearly intended to land on the wall on the far side, but leapt a little too high.

He hit the interference field, and rather than pass through it, as we all expected… the entire field turned bright red, crackled, and suddenly contracted.

He screamed as hundreds of thousands of volts passed through him as a concealed shield flared to full life, knitting together with him half poking through it.

The shield jerked downwards, contracting towards the tops of the maze, and the second goblin screeched in fear, diving down and out of sight on the other side of the wall.

The unfortunate that was caught in the middle of the shield as it came fully to life, screeched as well, but not for long. The shield cut him in half, cooking the poor fucker as the bottom half of his body tumbled free, legs twitching to splat wetly onto the floor, intestines uncurling with a definite finality.

The top half? Well, the shield was slightly domed, and it slid—slowly—down the outside, crackling arcs of electrical discharge flickering over his remains as he charred, sliding from view.

As soon as it happened though? We were too busy to worry.

Here and there as we’d walked, we’d all noted tiny green LEDs, pin-prick lights that gleamed cheerily as we passed them.

They all, as one, clicked over to red, and the casual stroll through the maze came to an end.

Behind me I heard the bark of gunfire, but before I could look, a single horizontal line of light appeared before me, right behind Gessh, and crossing the corridor.

I blinked, then barked to the team. “Get down!”

The light had appeared at chest height, and as it burst to life, a track appeared, coverings sliding back to allow free movement.

The track was at the same height, but the blur as the laser projector slid along it, made it damn clear if I’d not been looking I’d have regretted it.

Probably for the rest of my life.

The laser was a thin red line, and as soon as it reached the end of the track just behind where I’d been standing, it shut off, the track covers sliding silently back up into place as I cursed.

“Move, MOVE!” I barked, knowing damn well the fucker would be resetting. I started running, Gessh and Luna were already past it and yet still moving, Reign at my shoulder and the teams behind me hurrying to keep up.

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As I passed the last section, of this part of the wall, I saw the folding plates that signified the laser’s reappearance… Then winced as someone behind us opened fire with a shotgun, blasting the wall.

At least half of the shot ricocheted off, some of it making Luna cry out in pain as several of the smaller pellets hit her, but at least the laser didn’t trigger again.

Todds appeared around the edge of the next corner, hurrying back to us, then dove forwards, hitting the floor and rolling… as a nozzle behind him deployed, spraying the area with some kind of plasma weapon.

The wash of heat here was bad enough, but Todds cried out hurrying as quickly as he could to reach us.

“Next section…” he managed to get out through clenched teeth, dragging a medikit out and stabbing himself, the back of his plate carrier smoking on his armor, even as the stealth sections warped and crinkled, clearly now useless. “The walls are… oh gods that’s better… the walls.” He tried again as the medikit took hold. “They’re moving, sliding into a new configuration and—”

“Get everyone up here!” I bellowed, a second too late as the nearby walls started to move too.

I had a split second view of the half goblin that had jumped down to the other side of the wall, as another wall slid sideways, revealing him creeping along on the other side… then the floor opened below him and he vanished, screaming.

The way the scream echoed before cutting off abruptly made me damn sure that he’d not fallen a short distance.

“Boss, they’re shifting the entire maze,” Luna snapped from my left. “This isn’t what they did on the show, this is specially done. What do we do?” she asked, clearly rattled.

“Who has the fastest reactions?” I asked.

“Us, probably,” Luna said, with Gessh nodding.

“And the fastest moving?” I asked with a grin.

“Me.” Gessh said firmly. “My new legs…”

“And you’re good with a sword,” I said, reaching behind my back, and tugging the plasma sword free, before offering it to her. “Think you could take out the traps?”

“The lasers? The cutters and the plasma…” She hesitated, thinking about it. There were a few seconds as they went live, literally two seconds maybe, that was how we’d lasted this long, as the coverings needed to slide back, the mechanism needed to be exposed.

As fast as Gessh was, augmented as she was?

She reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of stims, before getting another one from her sister.

Three of them, all expensive battlefield ones as near as I could tell, and the sisters exchanged a long look, before Gessh grinned, taking the blade from me.

“Always wanted one of these,” she admitted, rolling her wrist as it flared to life.

I smiled tightly, having sent an unlocking code to the weapon, and even though I knew it was our best chance, hating the feeling of fear it gave me as I handed over one of my ‘toys’ for the first time.

“Just clear as far as you can, make a cut in the middle of each panel, by the ground as you run, that should stop them being able to move the fuckers later on as well,” I ordered, getting a nod. “We’ll follow along behind, anything that triggers but you don’t get? Don’t worry about it, just try and mark the wall and we’ll take it out as we follow.”

Todds spoke quickly, filling her in on what to look for, as she injected the first stim.

“Fuuuuuck!” She groaned, shaking her head and grinning, before tearing off down the corridor.

“She…” Todds cursed, cutting off. “Fuck’s sake she barely knows what she’s looking for!”

“She’s not an idiot,” Luna snapped, glaring at him, and then at me. “I know what you’re doing boss.”

“What’s that?”

“Sending her ahead with her ass in the wind like that! You’re playing fucking redshirt with her life!”

“Who has the best chance out of all of us to survive it?” I asked her grimly. “Because you damn well know I’d have done it if I could.”

“Then why—”

“You and she were bred for war,” Reign snapped. “Faster reactions, stronger, better stamina, all of it and—”

“Yeah, just like you were bred for fucking! I don’t see him sending his favorite piece of ass ahead, do you!” Luna snarled, as the corridor went silent, Gessh already out of sight ahead and round the corner, a glowing scar fading on the wall as the plasma blade took the plasma jet out.

“Luna…” I started, knowing that she was both right and oh so wrong, and that this was coming from fear for her sister.

“No,” Luna cut me off. “No, boss, sorry but you don’t get to make this right, not now at least. If she survives, yeah, maybe, but if not? You just sent her to her death, and I can’t keep up! That’s the worst part!”

“I know,” I said. “That’s why its shit to be the boss. Sometimes you have to send a friend to die, to save the team. I hope I didn’t just do that, but we’ll see. For now? Todds, lead the way.”

“Yes boss.” He sighed, about facing and starting back down the corridor. The sections of wall that we passed that were scarred and cut seemed to roughly correspond to all of the traps, sure here and there, there was an extra one, either something that hadn’t triggered in time, or that hadn’t been seen at all, but damn, the girl did good.

Plasma jets were followed by a set of needlers, launchers on one wall that fired a barrage of tiny darts at the far wall, riddling anything that was passing at the time.

The launchers were spent when we found them, half cut apart with a burned trail across their surface as the blade had slashed them apart. The rest had fired, and judging from the number of barrels in the wall, and the number of darts broken on the floor? Gessh was seriously moving fast.

After the needlers was a trap floor, the middle panel of the floor still hanging there from one edge, and we quickly moved to one side of the corridor, inching our way past the lip.

After that we had several carved and broken panels, a collection of cracked and seemingly blown apart panels where something had exploded outwards, and then several twists and turns ahead—we were following the clearly damaged sections that she’d cleared for us—we found the razorwire section.

It was like a spiderweb of glistening razor sharp steel, here and there, there were splatters of blood, letting us know that here at least, Gessh had struggled, but by and large? She’d carved her way through them all without missing a beat.

There were two small medikits ahead, discarded on the floor, and I picked them up, pocketing them, noting the blood that covered one of them, and the blood trail ahead of us.

After a few meters though, it noticeably lessened, and then as the medikits took hold it almost vanished, much to the relief of all of us.

Two more sections were blank, before a shout from a passing corridor and a new heart attack for us all, resolved into a member of Liolet’s team limping up.

Borrolet, as she introduced herself, had gotten disconnected from the rest of the team by a sliding wall, and had been panicking ever since, while still moving forwards.

She joined us, moving up to work next to Todds, and while she wasn’t as fast as he was, she was still a relief to have. Half an hour we followed marks in the wall, cut as the trail went back and forth, and occasionally we caught a glimpse of Gessh in the distance.

Luna spent most of the time alternating between cursing me, cursing my ‘fuck-toy that just sucks his fucking dick’ and apologizing to us both, admitting that Gessh was doing an insanely effective job.

It wasn’t until half an hour more had passed, as well as both the second discarded stim injector, and the third, before we heard heavy gunfire and screams rising from ahead.

That was it, until then we’d been able to take it slow and steady, but no more.

We set off running, full belt, all caution dismissed as we sprinted, a left, two rights, a third, then a fourth, another left, a stairwell that led down and under where I guessed we’d literally just ran a few seconds ago, and then a second stairwell up…

Then we burst out into the center of the maze, a much bigger area than I’d been expecting, with all hell breaking loose.

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