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Sprinting through the loading bay Teo encounters few hostiles, mostly just groups of terrified workers huddled in corners. Any bonafide pockets of resistance dispatched almost as a formality, nothing slowing his pace.
Ahead he sees Saara and Colton cutting down another Pitbull. He hopes any other dogs tucked away will be the older models with aftermarket armament. Back from before Boston Dynamics got all the military contracts and started integrating weapon systems. En masse those could turn into quite the handful, especially in conjunction with a hardened aerial swarm.
Teo has the briefest of moments to wonder what they’ll encounter after they breach the bunker, when the three amigos blitz him.
They dash out behind cover of a heavy lifter, it’s the closest thing to surprise Teo has experienced all week. He’s reflexively juked and put rounds center of mass into the farthest’s chestplate when the closer two tackle him into the forklift.
His carbine spits an arc of fire as they wrestle for control. Just as he breaks it free, a dozen sledgehammers batter him from the side.
Not quite stunned, disoriented too generous a term, the Auto-Saiga’s barrage still commands Teo’s attention long enough for the man in front of him to swat carbine aside, wrap a bear hug, and suplex him into the metal pallet.
Uppercutting the man’s groin, Teo is on his feet again almost immediately, pushed back once again into the Komatsu.
The headbutt he throws in the clinch knocks the man’s teeth out. The check hook he follows it up with collapses the right side of the man’s face, eye bursting from shattered orbital socket. The now-cyclops remains unfazed—probably wired up on fentyl-tabs and bootleg adrenostat.
The Cyclops throws a right cross at Teo’s head, or rather at the spot it sat just an instant before, now simply being perfect millimeters out of range.
Before that swing is even halfway finished, Teo has drawn his secondary and rendered the Cyclops’ head a gaping maw.
Before he can get another round off, Cyclops’ buddy plows into him like a freight train. A well timed hip toss sends the Linebacker into the wall—but he’s fast, faster than expected, and he immediately has one hand on Teo’s sidearm and the other on his wrist, and they go to the ground.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
With slugs still detonating around and against him—evidently the amigos aren’t too concerned about friendly fire—Teo wrenches the man’s arm to the sound of cellophane and snapping sticks, forcing barrel under chin and emptying the contents of Linebacker’s skull into the air.
He’s barely to his knees when the man behind empties the Saiga’s drum on him again, jackhammer blasts mostly soaked up by that bulletproof snakeskin—mostly. His kinetic absorption honeycomb is starting to crumple. Ribs are starting to crack.
The last amigo has retrieved Teo’s carbine, smiling as he levels it at him. His face registers the faintest hint of surprise at the completely ineffectual trigger pulls. Teo remembers where he is, it’s entirely possible that man has never seen a biometric trigger lock. Analogue is still king in the developing world.
With sidearm slagged by a lucky slug, Teo pulls his blade. The man tosses the carbine and pulls his as well.
Teo is slightly surprised at the man’s willingness to engage. Evidently he fancies his chances hand-to-hand. Maybe he thinks he can overpower him in his battered state. Maybe he has a trick up his sleeve.
Or maybe Teo is attributing too much foresight to the man. 3rd-world genehacks aren’t known for preserving a subject’s powers of reason. Amigo is probably just seeing red.
He charges, attempting to underhook Teo, who opens a deep gash across the man’s chest as he torques him to the ground. Teo wonders how augged the man’s mito count is, he’s strong—but Teo is stronger, holding back the man’s full weight with one arm while the other ice-picks great chunk of flesh out of his torso.
By the time the man manages to slide the molecular knife under his ribs, Teo’s is already behind his collarbone. Stirring the pot, the incision becomes a gurgling cavern of viscera.
Amigo’s head is almost separated from his body by the time Teo heaves the still twitching corpse off of himself.
Staggering to his feet and retrieving the carbine, Teo reflects on the rarity of hand-to-hand combat in the modern combat theater.
Then he gets shot in the face.
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The impact knocks him off his feet, but doesn’t quite put him out cold.
Blinded in his right eye and all but deaf, he reflexively rolls to cover, crawling towards the heavy loader as more rounds cut through the air around him.
He props himself up against the engine block when his legs refuse to bear any weight. His left arm isn’t moving, shoulder an open blossom of frayed tendon and bone shard.
For a second his world fades out, then he’s on his hands and knees coughing up blood and—pieces.
He feels his face, or where his face should be.
His jaw is hanging on by the threads of his left cheek. He sputters and chokes as a river pours from where the lower half of his face used to be. The coags will do their job soon enough, but already he’s lost a lot of blood. The vision in his remaining eye oscillates from red tinged blur to full brown-out. He shudders at the thought of how much work the docs have cut out for themselves.
His face plating and tac glass is completely blown away, ballistic mesh shredded. SyNAPS is toast too. He has no comms, no way to establish contact, not that he could formulate anything approaching coherent in his current state anyway. He slumps to the ground as his vision tunnels.
“Eagle, eagle, eagle! Friendly behind! It’s Elcko! I got you, Teo!”
Kikl doesn’t slow or wait for a response, he simply hefts Teo over his shoulders mid-stride and continues his sprint, new objective: save Teo’s sorry ass.
Bouncing limp on Kikl’s back, the last thing Teo notices before blacking out is the gaping hole above his left hip where a kidney used to be.
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