Chapter Seventeen

It took a few minutes to unlock the door, and by that time the first specters were starting to appear again, dragging themselves up through the damaged floor.

Todds worked his magic, unlocking it and getting us out, and I cut heads off as they appeared, punting them back into the hole, before grabbing and resituating my helmet.

“What the fuck happened in there?” Reign asked, as soon as I followed Todds out, and he got to work sealing the door again, welding it shut to make damn sure no more were getting in.

“I’ll fill you all in properly later—”

“The boss is apparently on speaking terms with a fucking banshee,” Todds said, “and he owes it some gear, now he’s got a directional gravitation mine attached to his back, and I need a fucking drink.”

“A banshee?” Reign asked, before looking up as though to pierce the levels overhead. “that what was controlling them?”

“A second one I’m betting,” I said, thinking fast. “This place was clearly set up as a full-on fucking deathmatch gameshow. They had ghouls welded into armored recesses in there, set up for us to get slaughtered when the door shut. That banshee forced its way in and was waiting for us. I think it was tracking us specifically.”

“Us?”

“It looked like it’d rebuilt itself a lot, but I’m betting it’s the same one that came after us in the tunnels, and it wants the device we found.” I waved off the looks they shot at Todds and me.

“I heard enough that I’m kinda all in now,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll not spread shit around if you boot me, but if you guys have more secrets on top of this shit? You won’t be able to surprise me more than you just did.”

“Wanna bet?” Luna asked with a grin.

I opened my mouth to add something, before a scream from overhead echoed down, then a sustained barrage of gunfire rang out.

There had been steady firing echoing down from above, and as soon as we’d left the trap box, there’d been plenty of evidence that Reign and the sisters had been fighting on this side while we’d been locked in…

But now?

The gunfire went from steady and controlled, to panicked. The controlled bursts to wild hammering, and another scream rang out, this time in fury.

“Fuck!” I snarled. “Right, we can catch up later, for now? Run like your ass is on fire!”

I did as I’d ordered, setting off running, my rifle up and ready.

The bottom of the stairwell was clear again—for now—of actively trying to kill us specters, but jam packed with dead ones, at least twenty bodies piled one atop the other were in the way, and I could see more trying to find a way down to us as I slid to a halt, released my rifle and grabbed the nearest body, dragging it backwards and out of the way. Luna moved in grabbing the next, and Gessh on her other side, as Reign and Todds took out the incoming few with headshots, making room as quickly as we could.

In under three minutes we were off again, running up another staircase, jumping and clearing two steps at a time, all of us switching to handguns so that we had a hand free to grab and pull and we leapt over bodies.

Floor by floor we ran, the cross-hatched pattern of the cages blurring as we raced past, finally making it back to the level we’d been on originally, and then moving higher.

Here and there we crossed paths with another specter, but after clearing away those lower down, they were few and far between.

As we made it to the next floor, and that much closer to the gunfire above, we saw why.

Specters, when they’re not controlled, are desperate, brain dead scavengers of mods. When they are controlled? Sure they’re different, but they’re still not very bright.

Up ahead it was clear the default that they were working on was ‘see it, kill it’ as there were hundreds clambering over each other trying to get past a small barricade made of their own dead.

They were on the floor above us now, and the specters that had been filtering down after us? They’d presumably heard closer gunfire and signs of life, and had turned around, heading for that instead.

As we raced onto this floor—a single long corridor that ran from one stairwell to the next—we were greeted by the backs of at least two hundred specters, all pressing forwards, desperate to make it to the next level.

“My turn.” Reign grinned, swinging the grazer around and firing a single solid burst at head height at the mass from behind.

Dozens collapsed silently, the flesh of their heads, necks and what was left of their brains simply cascading apart.

“Ten percent.” She grinned, waiting for the bodies to drop, before doing the same again, and again. After the fourth burst, she fired a much shorter one, then stepped back, unslinging the battery and replacing it with a new one, but damn it’d been effective.

By rocking it left to right in a narrow arc, the beams had been soaked up by literally just the heads, killing at least a hundred, silently. The majority of the mass were still struggling forwards, unaware of the bodies behind them collapsing to the floor.

“Luna, Gessh,” I ordered, as we all moved forwards, and the girls stepped into the lead, shotguns booming.

We lost the element of surprise, admittedly, but in doing so we drew the specters attention, giving the teams above a little relief, and letting them know that we were coming.

The shotguns fired, blasting into the packed mass, limbs flying loose, heads exploding, and bodies fell over and over. As soon as their magazines ran dry? They stepped aside, letting Todds and I through.

By this point we were clambering over the bodies, each of them laid haphazardly atop another, and our aim was suffering, a slip of the foot here, an angle to the stride there, a face squashed underfoot?

All of them combined to make me miss as many as I hit.

Fortunately there was a solution.

As they got a little closer, I released the rifle, and drew my sword.

The crackling wash of heat that rolled out from the self-contained sun, masquerading as a sword, was both welcome and seriously effective. The specters ran at me, and I extended the blade, essentially lunging, then staying at that extension, and flicking the blade left and right.

It was ridiculous.

It shouldn’t have worked, hell it really shouldn’t have worked, and against a ‘living’ opponent it wouldn’t have.

Against the specters? These virtually mindless creatures, driven by hunger? It was insanely effective.

The only real issue was that there were so many I quickly had to start stepping back, clambering over the bodies. Going forwards, when I could see was difficult enough. Walking backwards was an order of magnitude more difficult at first.

Fortunately my team were as smart as I needed them to be, and in thirty seconds, despite me having almost fallen twice, I was holding the line while they cleared a path for me.

The press of bodies was difficult, but as the seconds became minutes, and then five became ten, the slaughter grew easier and easier.

After another five minutes beyond that, I powered down the sword and stepped back, letting Gessh and Luna take my place.

The gunfire overhead had returned to a steady pattern again, and as the sisters stepped up, firing over and over, the last of the throng filling the corridor fell.

We moved then, hurrying forwards. I realized that in my slow stepping retreat, beheading as I went, I’d been gradually pushed almost all the way back to the stairwell down, and as we moved up again, we clambered over fresh piles of bodies.

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I glanced at the ‘kill counter’ I’d had the RI add to my vision what felt like months ago, but was in reality only a few days now.

“Fuck me sideways.” I grunted.

“What’s that?” Todds asked, at the same time as Reign piped up.

“Too busy right now, see me later,” she said.

“Kill counter,” I explained. “Have you guys got one? I got my RI to keep a record, group, as best as it can, and personal.”

“And?”

“And you fuckers seriously need to start carrying your own weight, I’ve nearly got a solid third of the kills so far!” I joked. “Five hundred and seventeen, personal.”

“How many for me?” Todds asked, and I shook my head.

“I don’t have it monitoring individuals, and if I did I’d need access to your feeds—which is a point actually, we’ll need to cut the banshee section from that—so the kills for the overall team?”

“Yeah?” Reign asked.

“One thousand, six hundred and forty-four.”

“Holy shit,” Todds exclaimed, and I nodded.

“How’re we doing on ammo, boys and girls?” I had no clue just how many rounds, or even magazines I’d gone through so far.

Reign was the first to speak up.

“Two magazine for the solid slug sniper, each of twenty rounds, one battery for the grazer, one mag for the handgun.”

“Uh… three mags for my rifle, three for the handgun…” Todds winced.

I had almost my full loadout for the shotgun, but I was down to a single mag for the handgun, and two for the rifle. Worst of all was that my plasma blade was down to a third of the charge. Both the electrical charge and the containment were heavily depleted, but that was a hell of a lot better off than I would have been if I’d been using a gun all day.

The sisters, when we got them to cycle back and let Todds and I take the lead, admitted that they were both down to a single magazine each in the shotgun.

Rifles weren’t bad, and Gessh’s rifle was a grazer as well, which was a relief, a good hundred shots there for her, but by the time we clambered up the stairs, and my tac-com finally overcame the localized jamming and connected to another outside of my team, we were grimly accepting that we needed to start scavenging as we went.

The first connection was to Timur, who was mid-way through a rant about ‘proper fire discipline’ over the local frequency to both his, and Liolet’s teams.

“Really, that’s what we get?” I asked, cutting in. “Not even a ‘hi, how you doing’?”

“Who… Kabutt ?” he asked, stunned.

“Yup, coming up the stairs, so you know, don’t shoot me in the face, it tends to offend,” I quipped tiredly, making one more revolution of the spiral staircase.

As I reached the top—and I climbed up the mound of bodies—I smiled at the sight of the two squads, as they maintained steady fire, taking down the seemingly endless stream of specters moving down the stairwell between us to head for them.

Whatever anyone might say about Liolet being a half goblin, or the rest of their teams specific mix, those fuckers were skilled at fortifications.

Sections of the gantry way had been cut through on either side of the corridor, right before the fortification, and additional plates had been sealed into place further narrowing the route.

They’d also angled sections of the corridor so that the specters basically must have been falling out and down regularly, rather than piling up right before the fortification, the ground and walls had been removed in staggered sections, and the bodies had been tumbling away through those gaps.

The more I looked, the more impressed I was, as well as understanding why so many of the fuckers I’d seen before had looked quite as battered as they had done, and where the stragglers had come from.

Where we’d been fighting our way down, then clearing the area, but still getting fuckers pop up now and then? They’d been using the situation to their advantage.

Bodies had been falling and hitting the cages, then bouncing off and off, the various levels breaking their fall until they hit the lowest level.

A living, sane being would have been screaming for help, and probably dying.

A specter? No reaction beyond a slight loss of functionality, it’d just get back up and try again, but it’d have to climb all those stairs on the way.

We’d been killing their tossed off victims for them, I realized.

“Oh you utter bastards,” I grumbled, too tired and despite myself, impressed , to really be annoyed. I remembered the amount of times I’d seen, but not really consciously registered the bodies falling past, or the dents in the cage.

“Kabutt!” Timur greeted, actually looking pleased for the first time. “You’re alive! And… and all your squad!”

“Yeah, we’re here,” I said, waving. “Hold up, we’ll come to you…” I lifted my rifle and starting to thin the herd from my side with careful shots.

I lasted about five seconds before Reign tapped me on the shoulder and reached out expectantly.

“No room,” Timur said flatly. “There’s barely enough room for us to squat in here, and we had one lad fall already. No, I think it’s time to advance.”

“You do?” I muttered, shaking my head. “Well I think it’s time for a fucking break first.” I passed Reign my rifle, and moved to the side, leaning against the side of the corridor cage as she fired over and over, a single cycling shot, one round, one kill.

“We’re being watched and recorded,” Timur reminded me in a low voice on our private command channel. “Best not to show them anything they can use.”

“They?”

“The fuckers who set this sick game up,” he said. “This was well planned. We tried to cut our way out, the main doors were reinforced and molecular bonded. We’d need serious gear to get out.”

“So we forged ahead with the clearance plan despite the bloody stupidity of it,” Liolet growled. “I’m glad you’re alive, Kabutt, we were wondering, but seriously, we need to hole up, brace ourselves and hold for rescue, you know that Julius will be coming for us…”

“Yeah, but he needs us to earn from this to keep things afloat,” I said. “He’d probably have come straight for us under normal circumstances, but our contract is for clearance, there’s nothing in it I bet that stops or makes this illegal. Yeah, there’s dodgy shit going on, but they’ll claim it’s old stuff from when it was a deathmatch site. Hell, if Julius blasts his way in to rescue us? They’ll probably sue him, and fucking win, for the damage to the building!”

Silence met my take on it, and I went on.

“I’ve sealed the lower floors, aside from the occasional asshole that fell off here, I think we’ve taken most of them down now, that we’ve not been hit much since I reached here?” I shrugged. “I think we need to push on, take the upper floors and then finish this, claim our wage and then…?”

“Then?” Timur asked, and I nodded.

“Then we find the organizers of this little party, and we ‘discuss’ their methods of generating credits with them.”

“Sounds good to me,” Liolet said grimly. “Two of my team are dead. I’ll not let that slide.”

“We came damn close a few times,” I said, and Timur grunted in agreement.

“So, you hold that line at the bottom of the stairs, we’re coming out,” Timur said after a few seconds, and I passed the agreement onto the rest of the team.

Reign took over the suppressing detail, emptying magazine after magazine, as I broke out the spare ammo I’d had in my bag, letting the team reload as we waited on the others.

By the time they made it to us, and one of Timur’s assault shotgunners took over, we were ready for a drink, some food, and to relax a little.

Not that any of that was going to happen for a while.

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