Chapter Six

We took the right hand side of the gantry, all three of us running with Luna in the lead, each footfall making the old metal bounce and clatter.

It didn’t take long to find Gessh, but when we did? Fuck.

The gantry was old and made of steel, presumably, anchored into what appeared to be a stone bracing with some form of steel used to anchor it.

I guessed that much because as soon as we took the branch that appeared to the right, opening into a second basin area, the twisted and here, badly rusted metal that had once been the gantry way that had looped it, now led down at a sharp angle into the middle of a virtual mosh pit of specters.

Gessh was hanging desperately from a stanchion with one hand, her shotgun dangling empty, her sword in its sheath but out of reach as she tried to drag herself up.

She’d clearly emptied the shotgun first, then ripped her handgun free, and was firing almost at random as arms reached up for her, boney claws tearing at one leg.

She heaved, muscles standing proud in her left arm as she tried to lift her whole body with one arm, her body armor, her guns, her gear, all of it weighing her down, and yet she was dragging herself up and free…

…until a waving hand snapped over her foot and closed with a crack.

She screamed, the cybernetic hand clearly more powerful than her boot could protect against, whirring and closing tighter and tighter as she was dragged downwards, her handgun barking out one more round that ricocheted off something metal below her.

Then the mag was empty and her second scream rang out, as Luna roared and opened fire. The shotgun was a semi-auto, and fuck the echoing booms as she emptied the magazine were painful.

The chamber was thrown into almost daylight brightness as she fired shot after shot into the figures below, throwing them back, before the magazine clicked empty.

I hesitated as Luna dropped prone, grabbing her sister’s arm and hauling her upwards. The far side of the gantry looked stable, more or less, but as Luna heaved, Gessh cried out again.

The specter that had her by the foot originally was dead, its hand still gripping the foot, but the arm severed halfway down it’s length.

That dangling section though was more than enough for another to grab, and then another grabbed onto them. Gessh was being dragged inexorably downwards, and I knew what I had to do, as I dropped my rifle, its restraining sling dragging it back against my chest as I drew my own shotgun.

I fired half the mag at the specters that were pulling themselves up the angled gantry, then leapt, kicking out as I dropped.

I hit an upturned face with both feet, the neck snapping as she was hurled from her feet, and I landed on the bottom of the basin with a squelch of old mud, watered liberally with blood and fuck knew what else.

My training was to land with a roll in these circumstances, to absorb the impact and spread it out, then come to my feet, but to do so here, surrounded by hundreds of specters would be suicide.

Instead I twisted and staggered, pain shooting up my left leg from the awkward landing, even as I locked my shotgun onto the bodies that were gathered around Gessh’s dangling form.

I opened fire, emptying the remainder of the magazine, all solid slugs, most punching through body after body as I blasted them away from her.

Luna roared with the effort as she dragged her sister upwards, rolling to pull Gessh over her own body, and onto the gantry that creaked and groaned under them.

As soon as my magazine clacked on empty, I slammed the shotgun back into the sheath as I ripped the handgun free and opened fire three times, two headshots, one upper chest.

The bodies fell back from me, and I swapped my handgun to my left hand, dragging the plasma blade free with my right and triggering it.

The darkness of the abandoned basin was banished in an instant as the light of a constrained sun flared to life. The greys and greens, the washed out ‘wrong’ colors of the bodies all around me were banished as they sprang to full ‘life’, only to have that last semblance of life ripped from them by the passage of my blade.

I spun, blade extended at waist height as I sliced it through the bodies around me, metallic screeches, buzzing, and explosions of freed gasses and liquids erupting into the air.

As soon as there was enough room that I was no longer trying desperately to just hold my own, I was moving, heading to the fallen section of gantry.

I glanced up at it as I closed the distance, seeing the weakened connectors, the rusted through sections, and I cursed.

We’d been damn lucky that section hadn’t come down already, and judging from the shaking underneath Reign and the others, the one they stood on wouldn’t last much longer either.

“Get back!” I called out, before spinning and lopping a head off as another closed on me. “Get around the other side, be ready and I’ll fight my way around!”

“We could get down…!” Luna shouted, even as Reign fired, over and over.

I saw suddenly what I’d missed before. While I’d been frantically dicing and slicing, burning the bodies and hacking them apart as they closed, Reign had been keeping the next wave from overwhelming me.

Another body dropped, a single headshot punching through from just above the left eyebrow, back into the brain, sending the body to the ground.

“Go!” I ordered, holstering the handgun and taking the blade in both hands, as I ran in the other direction, right at the thickest concentration of the enemy.

I figured they were bunched up for a reason, maybe a narrow passage from the basin, like the one I’d seen from above.

Whatever it was though, there were at least a hundred more ahead of me, and probably another hundred in the basin spread out behind. That meant either I pushed through in a single go, and ran… as well as got insanely lucky, or?

Or I had to cut the numbers down.

I was operating on a mixture of APS training, of army tactics, and a healthy dose of fucking madness and desperation.

The biggest advantage I had was the plasma sword, far and away it was the best weapon for this environment, and definitely for these fuckers.

It did damage to the mods, yeah, that sucked, especially as I might be costing us hundreds, possibly thousands of credits worth of loot, but if I didn’t live to claim it? Fuck it.

Against flesh and blood enemies—which these were, even dead and resurrected as mad puppets of technology—the plasma sword barely registered the impact.

That wasn’t to say it didn’t cost me power, the blade was draining its battery at a horrific rate, but rather than the hundreds upon hundreds of rounds I’d need if I was trying to do this with a rifle? Hell yes.

I raced into the thickest press of the specters, and I slashed right and left, carving a path inwards, bodies collapsing, arms flying free, flashes as metal reflected or partially deflected my blows.

Then I spun and raced back the way I came, sword flowing in a figure of eight, lopping off arms, legs and heads. I shifted to the right, taking two more out, then darted to the left, taking another down.

I spun and kicked out, planting my foot solidly against a chest, sending the staggering figure tumbling from its feet, then spun as I dropped low, the blade tugging slightly as I carved through legs that drew near.

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Then I was off again, sprinting at a narrow gap in the closing encircling force, and through.

Seconds later I was out, the light of the blade casting shadows of madness on the walls as I heard distant gunfire raging, and I saw the wall appear before me.

Twisting, I planted one foot against it, and turned back to face those I knew were following, panting for breath as I counted, more and more stumbling and squelching out of the darkness. Dozens came, and then more, the gaps between the filthy, bedraggled figures filling with more of their kind.

I kicked off the wall, running to the right, sword flashing and flaring as I swung, dragging it through the outstretched arms, necks and heads.

I let them tumble to the floor as I raced back across the closing arc, hacking them from their feet one after another. They kept coming, not one of them so much as fucking hesitating as I cut their companions down, but unlike them, I couldn’t keep this frantic pace up, one trip, one slip, and I’d be mobbed before I could recover.

Skidding in the muck, I twisted, hacking out, the blade rising over my shoulder and cutting down into the chest of the figure before me, its cybernetic arms reaching for me, before collapsing, but as I looked left and right I saw more and more closing on me.

As much as I’d cut down literally dozens already, there were more coming. I’d ran from one spot to another, hoping to thin the herd, planning to try and cut most of those already in the basin down. I’d thought that if I could do that, if I could clear the area behind me, I could cut their numbers down, force them back to the entrance to the basin, and there manage them… somehow...

I was clearly fucking wrong though, as the enemy seemed endless!

I swung again and again, forced to give up a step, then another, being driven slowly back. The next in line that attacked I swung at his head… only to have him duck, the blade clipping the very top of his head, and throwing me off balance as I staggered, swearing as a second leapt at me from behind.

No longer were they the slowly staggering or moving, mindless specters, I realized, stepping to the right and spinning on my heel, chopping through the leaping one at waist level, sending him to the floor in two halves.

The eyes around me, the sensors and optical processors, the cameras and desiccated, fleshy orbs all seemed to flare to life as they closed, and I swore loudly, knowing what that meant.

“Ghoul!” I bellowed into the flaring darkness and shadows. “Fucking ghouls!” I repeated the warning, unsure if the others could hear me, but damn well determined that when, not if, I got out of this?

I was investing in some much better goddamn armor.

Hacking right and left I widened my stance automatically, years of training in the dojos, repeating the katas that we were taught as a unit, came back to me like never before.

In my ears I heard Scott, our melee specialist, and far and away the most naturally gifted of us all with in-close fighting, as he swore and cursed, good naturedly bullying us all back to our feet as we laid around exhausted.

We’d done it, grumbling all the time, as we’d forced ourselves through one more kata, one more training session, one more blur of blades as we trained until it was muscle memory, and the mind truly seemed to disengage.

Now, as then, it came to me.

That sense of disconnect as the body reacted, the jerky movements that were created as the brain attempted to inflict control upon it, vanished.

The mindless state, the Zen, or as Scott had called it, the Mushin came to the fore, and I seemed to retreat from my body, hovering behind me, watching both as if through my eyes, and yet set aside, an emotionless observer.

My body moved, almost dancing, as the blade existed apart from me no longer. Bodies collapsed, flames spreading and flaring as old cloth and flesh caught light.

I watched as my body flowed from stance to stance, dipping to one knee in ‘The Kingfisher Rises’, then launching forwards, the blade beating left and right in great arcs that flowed from one side to the other in ‘Beating the Reeds’.

I pirouetted with a grace I would have sworn I was incapable of, even in the dojo, with solid ground beneath me, and yet I managed it here, the blade reaching out in a spiraling arc that gave ‘Fireflies dance’ its name, and all around me bodies fell, many diced and sliced over and over.

I lunged forwards, suddenly back in primacy as the gunfire rang out, a solid slug hitting my left shoulder and ricocheting off, then another hitting me solidly in the upper right of my chest.

Staggering, I almost fell, but pushed on, the pain radiating out from the chest, letting me know that the bullet had been stopped by the armor, but not fully.

That fucker was going to leave a bruise.

I saw him before me, both eyes replaced by a single band across his face, six glowing optics staring at me, a pattern of reds, blues and purple that glowed malevolently in the darkness as he fired again.

This time, one of his mindless drones caught the bullet for me, taking it in the back of the head and dropping bonelessly out of the way as I lunged to the left, stabbing out straight, the blade sinking into a torso, then ripping out to the right, eviscerating the specter.

It collapsed, hacked almost in two, and a bullet flashed past my ear, close enough I could feel its passage, as more and more gunfire rang out distantly.

I took two quick steps to the right, keeping bodies between the ghoul and I, stopping the fucker having a clean shot at me, as I cut and sliced.

Another from behind leapt at me, the body hitting me square in the back and sending me staggering forward three steps, the head dipping, aiming for my throat…

…then meeting the hissing, spitting coronal flare of the plasma sword as I dragged it back.

I felt the heat, as close as the blade was to my flesh, and yet still it was distant. Mushin cradled my mind as I cut and lunged, twisted and kicked.

A figure to my left took my foot in the stomach, doubling over as the blade hacked a body apart to my right, and I distantly noted that at some point I’d drawn the vibro-blade, holding it in my left hand.

I ripped the blade across the throat of the figure as it folded around my boot, severing the head, then stuck it downwards into the meat and bone of its shoulder and flipped the body aside.

I’d never felt so ‘at one’ with my surroundings as I did then, and I moved entirely on instinct, a step to the right as I straightened up, the plasma sword extended forwards, taking a figure in the head, driving through her face and out the back of the skull, before I rolled my wrist, the blade flashing right to lop off an outstretched arm, and then a second hand.

As the body before me collapsed, my left hand came up and back then flicked forwards, the vibro-blade flashing end over end to sink tip first into the Ghoul’s skull with a meaty ‘thwack’ as its last bullet flashed back along the path.

This one connected.

I’d not had the chance to buy a new helmet yet, not a decent one, and I’d been wearing one of those we’d looted, a half helmet, covering the top of my head and the sides, low at the back of the neck, but exposing my face, and the bullet hit the padding on the right hand side, where it ran along the temple.

The metal there—a single arc that was clearly designed for just this—sent the bullet off again into the darkness, but not before the damage was done.

The world spun around me, light and noise like someone had set a fucking flashbang off against the side of my head deafened and blinded me, sending me to the floor.

I landed on all fours, the plasma blade—automatically—cut off as soon as the grip was released, and that was probably all that saved me from cutting myself in two.

The specters staggered and slumped as the ghoul’s death brought a loss of control and guidance, but on the floor, reeling, stunned and with what had to be the beginnings of a concussion, I missed the chance to take advantage of it.

The next thing I felt were hands.

Arms wrapping around me, fingernails dragging and ripping free of rotting hands as the specters fell on me. Teeth chewed on my armored shoulder, frantic fingers ripping at my armor, trying to find a way inside. I curled into a ball on instinct, as more and more of them fell on me, and I shook, trying to reboot my brain, trying to make sense of it all.

Then my fingers found it. unconsciously I’d reached up, and yeah. Here it was.

I ripped the incendiaries free, dragging the pins out, snarling in my hidden cocoon under the pile of specters, refusing to go out on anyone’s terms but my own.

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