"Whatever I lost, I lost a long time ago," - Barbara, Survivor, 2nd Terran Reanimation War, Resource War Era

The Executor Fifth Most High of Operational Security stared at the muzzle of the Terran Confederate Armed Forces magac pistol with wild eyes. His rear and side eyes were squeezed shut, his forward eyes wide, his feeding tendrils curled defensively. He could feel the roughness of the ferrocrete alleyway against his knees. His hands were behind his back, all four folded over one another as he looked up at the gigantic hole at the end of the barrel of the compact and ugly warsteel framed pistol.

It looks so much bigger than 10mm, the Executor thought.

Behind the pistol was the featureless black visage that the Executor had sent on more than a few missions in the hundred years he had held his position. The Lanaktallan had no name, no number, no rank.

He was just referred to as The Expediter.

"You thought I would not come for you after your pathetic attempt to assign assassins to eliminate the Terran Diplomatic Envoy Team," the Expediter rumbled. He pressed the barrel of the pistol against the Executor's forehead.

The Expediter paused for a moment, his hand going to his wrap-around datalink.

"You are indeed fortunate," the Expediter said. "I have a pressing appointment."

The Executor opened his mouth to thank the Expediter for his mercy.

The pistol coughed and the Executor's body dropped to the ground.

Ru'udamo'o trotted away quickly, heading for his vehicle. An ad had popped up on Kriegslist and he needed to answer it.

Speaks threw a em-flash grenade over the rapidly dissolving dumpster and rolled out from behind the dumpster, skittering forward as soon as his front legs hit the ground, at a full out run by the time his rear legs caught up.

The fweep fweep fweep of the rounds going by encouraged him to keep his head down.

They're using subsonic rounds, Speaks thought to himself. The door ahead was a hard light hologram that flickered to tell him that the physical component was now turned off.

He looked back as he slid behind another dumpster.

Four sets of red eyes, tall, bipedal.

The shoulders, neck, head shape, and arm/leg to torso proportions gave it away.

Terrans? What the in the name of the Detainee's floppy tits are Terrans doing after me? Speaks wondered, pulling his head back right before a burst of three darts whipped by him.

Speaks dug a tube out his pocket, holding the flat black cylinder close.

The Lanaktallan would shit if they knew the actual level of Confed Tech, Speaks thought to himself as he gave the cylinder a quick squeeze, one wrist snap shake, and opened his hand.

The little black cylinder unfolded into a brutal looking SMG. Speaks extended out the stock, synched up to the smartwire, and popped up the sight.

I'm not defenseless, he thought to himself. He pulled out a cube, tapped it, then tossed it to the side.

A black mantid, covered in gear, rushed out of him and into the alley.

fweep fweep fweep

The Terrans shot at it but all that happened was the personal protective screen flared.

Speaks broke for the doorway, keeping close to the wall, as the hologram version of him jumped into another dumpster. He felt the light resistance, like a soap bubble, and was through. He straightened up, pulled a thin mantid poncho out of a pocket and pulled it over his head, then walked through the back door. He took the time to lock it after he passed through, went by the bathrooms, and through another door into the main room of the business.

Ahead of him a GalNet cafe largely ignored him.

Speaks reached one of the computers and lingered, hotloading data from his memory into a chip. He reached down, slid a credstick, and opened the computer's GalNet connection. He dropped a quick daemon smartframe into the computer and moved forward to a row of empty computers.

He reached up, removed a chip from the eight slot data-slot port in the side of his head, and tapped it underneath the desk.

That done, he headed for the entrance.

He was three feet from it when the back door exploded off its hinges, the force of it knocking an Ikeekik female down.

Four humans moved into the room and Speaks stared.

They were all in black, wearing tight fitting thin layer armored vests, an equipment belt with pouches, black pants, black elbow-length sleeved shirts, black leather gloves with chrome studs on the knuckles, and black boots. All four carried black submachine guns.

That wasn't what caught his attention.

Their skin was bluish, their eyes red, they were completely bald. Their features were angular, sharp edges instead of normal Terran roundness. They were perfectly identical.

Androids? Androids? Who the HELL can send androids after me? Speaks wondered, heading for the door.

The four moved forward, their motions automaton-like, all four looking around at the various denizens of the GalNet cafe.

Speaks paused at the door, glancing at the traffic light. He knew the last thing you wanted to do, even if you were a semi-public operative, was do anything in public. That led to inquiries and...

All four opened up at the same time, shooting each customer in the face then chest with the SMG's they were packing. The sharp THWAK telling Speaks that they weren't interested in subsonic any more.

Shit, they're misting them! Speaks realized. He didn't bother looking at the light, he just broke across the street, pushing through the first door.

The four androids jogged out of the cafe, one swapping out magazines.

The traffic was thick and fast and Speaks held off on moving deeper into the building. It was an abandoned apartment hab but he wasn't sure who else might be there. He tilted his own SMG, glanced at the ammo counter, and then back up.

The androids obviously got tired of waiting and two opened fire on the oncoming cars from each lane, tight bursts straight into the faces of the driver, shattering the windscreen, the cars careening off track and slamming into each other.

Speaks cut loose with a tight four round burst, straight into the chest of the lead one as they jogged into the street.

He could tell that his rounds didn't penetrate the thin looking body armor.

Great, now I can flatten light rounds against body armor even faster, he thought, pulling out another grenade. Guess it's time for Plan E.

Speaks threw the grenade and took off running, instinctively covering his back by folding his bladearms behind him.

one one thousand

Two bursts hit his personal protective shield and made it flare, almost knocking him down since he was running without kinetic dampeners.

two on...

The grenade went off and Speaks cursed. The androids had shot it out of the air.

Speaks bypassed the stairwell, cutting right. The civic planning maps of the area were way out of date but Speaks had toured the area repeatedly before, making maps of his own.

He ducked behind a heavy vending machine and glanced outside.

Red and yellow flashing lights were panning over the four as they finished crossing the street and Speaks knew the LawSec had shown up.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

One of the androids fired a quick burst.

Speaks could hear the alarms from outside the building as the androids jogged into the hab.

A quick burst from Speaks' SMG shattered the face of one of the androids and it went down, immediately starting to steam and bubble. The others immediately moved to cover, smooth mechanical movements that was much faster than it looked.

Two started firing at Speaks as the third broke cover and moved forward.

Speaks pulled a flat circular sticker pad out of his pocket, slapping the sticker on the side of the vending machine and pressing two fingers, one on each side of the little metal nipple. It looked like a black heart monitor pad, only black and shiny. There was a little puff of air and a dart flew across to stick to the far wall.

Speaks dropped a prism vapor grenade and rushed for the far end of the hallway.

Two bursts caught him hard, one sending him tumbling ass over thorax, but he managed to get two legs under him and he threw himself to the right. He got upright, his feet only sliding a few times on the slick tile, and scurried down the hallway, the tapping of his footpads loud as he dropped two more grenades.

Something exploded outside the building.

He was halfway down the hallway when the explosion made dust puff up from the floor and down from the ceiling. Speaks knew the androids had crossed the little low power IR beam and set off the tiny directional mine.

He didn't figure it killed any, but it might just slow them down.

Speaks fired at the door at the far end twice, throwing it open, then turned and rushed through an open doorway. The room was full of debris and garbage, the upper floor collapsed into rubble.

But it let him climb up to the second floor quickly and scurry through a hole in the wall.

Speaks stopped for a second to catch his breath, looking around.

He still had a headache from the biofeedback attacks by the black ICE and those one-eyed avatars. His SMG was only slightly useful. He was low on grenades, running low on kinetic options. He had no backup, nobody coming to save him.

He pulled out a magazine, went through the context menu on the side of it, then watched the counter as the mag heated up slightly in his hand, the open end steaming slightly. It beeped and he looked at it.

It would have to do.

Speaks swapped out the magazine in his SMG.

Terrans killed androids by the billions, my people killed Terrans on the battlefield by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, I'm equal to at least a dozen androids, Speaks thought to himself.

One of the androids chose that moment to just step through the wall in a showed of cheap plas drywall, its SMG already coming up to aim at Speaks. Speaks triggered a burst nearly reflexively, the gyrojet hypersonic rounds exiting the suppressed barrel with a loud KA-RACK! and slamming into the shoulders of the android.

It went down with an unholy screech, firing at Speaks, who had ducked back. The rounds blew through the wall, the ceiling, and as far as Speaks knew, kept right on going to orbit, all five rounds leaving behind a dazzling white after impression on Speaks eyes.

When Speaks glanced out he saw the android was already bubbling and dissolving.

Bullets ripped through the cheap plas drywall, not finding anything with enough mass to detonate on, and exited through the roof.

Time to go, Speaks thought, rushing through the hole in the far wall. He kept running through the next apartment, weaving through the frontroom littered with debris and garbage, past the built-in kitchen, through the bedroom, jumping on the mattress and through the hole in the wall.

The two remaining androids had stopped firing.

Kalki's white goats, androids are such assholes, Speaks thought to himself as he wove between piles of garbage. He cleared one room, made it to the front door, and darted across the hallway to the next door, blowing open the lock with a single shot from his SMG that chunked out a piece of the door the size of Speaks' head.

Inside the room wasn't just trash and garbage and Speaks froze at the sight. There were a half dozen Puntimats on a bed with a pair of Hikken males. There were spotlights pointing at the bed and two Tri-Vee camera operators as well as a handful of flycam drones and two Plekit females in robes. There were two Elmetankii in suits.

"HEY!" one of the Elmetankii yelled.

"Closed set!" the other yelled.

"You might want to get out of here," Speaks said, hefting the SMG.

The first one that spoke snapped his fingers and two Tukna'rn that had been out of sight stepped into sight, both with cheap pistols.

"You leave," the Elmetankii ordered.

Speaks eyed the far window. The shade was pulled down, but he knew what was outside the window.

The fire escape.

"I'm telling you, you..." Speaks started.

The left hand wall shattered into dust as one of the androids just stepped through the wall like it was a hologram, ignoring the chunks of plaster and cheap granular plastic that showered down around it. It went to raise its SMG at Speaks but wiring from inside the wall tangled the android's arm.

Both Tukna'rn looked at the two Elmetankii.

"Shit!" Speaks yelled, running across the room.

The door he'd come in through flew off the hinges with one swipe of the android in the hallway's hand, bouncing twice and knocking down a flycam and one of the Elmetankii.

Speaks didn't bother anything fancy, he just threw himself through the window as the androids opened fire without bothering to clear their firing arcs.

The octet on the bed exploded into rags of flesh, both Tukna'rn went down, blown into chunks, and both Elmetankii were reduced to bloody gobbets.

Speaks rolled on the barred platform, shredding the shade with his bladearms as rounds whistled by. He felt his PPD take three hits and a high pitched warbling whine warned him it was damn near overloaded.

Speaks dove down the fire escape, just jumping over the railing and landing in a pile of plastic garbage bags. As he scrambled free and ran for the end of the alley, both androids exploded through the wall, rotating to get a view on him.

Speaks tossed his last microprism grenade and his second to last emflashbang, and skidded around the corner.

A ricochet still blew his footpad off on his back right leg. Speaks bit down on the pain, knowing that the round must have bounced off the tarmac or a wall. If it had been a direct hit it would have blown his leg off at the knee.

He hobbled forward, seeing a gap in the traffic, and sprinted across the twelve lanes of traffic. Horns blared, vehicles swerved, and he saw a LawSec vehicle peel away from the swarm of a dozen or so above the hab complex he'd just left, its amber and red lights flashing and its searchlight coming on to rake the traffic.

Speaks got underneath the overpass, pulling a line out of his harness, and slapping the adhesive patch onto the railing.

The two androids jogged out of the alley, joined by four more.

Who the hell can field two androids, much less eight of the damned things? Speaks wondered, attaching the line to his belt. He rolled over the railing just as the androids opened fire on the oncoming vehicles as well as two of the newcomers, wielding battle rifles, opened fire on the LawSec hovercraft.

As Speaks dropped he saw the hovercraft's windshield explode inward even as one engine exploded in flames and the purple snap of a graviton engine blowing out.

Speaks hit the ground after a 200m rappelling, looking around quickly as he popped the harness connection with one hand and tugged out a can of Medfix with the other. He quickly twisted, sprayed his amputated foot, then sprayed some on a few cracks in his chitin that he could see. Then he pushed the can in a pocket and took off running as best as he could with three feet.

All six androids landed behind him with thuds, blowing craters in the ceramcrete, looking up immediately from their down on one knee, fist holding their weapon up, other fist in the crater pose. They stood up right as Speaks made it to where a couple of shipping containers were outside a chainlink fence.

Speaks fired behind him as he skittered around a shipping container. The gyrojet rounds broke through the sound barrier, oriented, went hypersonic, and hit within a second.

The legs blew off of one android.

The one next to it turned, aimed its weapon, and blew off the crippled one's head. The body began to steam and bubble as the five androids began to job after Speaks.

Speaks sprayed the fence with a can, kicked free the softened metal, and ducked into the shipping yard. He paused a second to slap down a couple of 'boom patches' on the conexes as he hustled through.

He knew they were following his thermal residue as well as the blood molecules he was leaving behind, but there was nothing he could do.

As he wove through, two LawSec armored hovercraft dropped down through a gap in the above layer, turning on their searchlights and flashing them around the conex yard.

Pinpoint accurate fire shattered the heavy armaplas windshields, blew through the armor around the graviton engines, and sent the hovercraft plunging to the ground in flames.

Both exploded when they hit.

Speaks had counted thirteen total fire streams and doubled the amount just to be safe.

Thrice damned persistence hunter built machines, Speaks cursed. He slid to a stop and looked around himself.

Heavy loaders, trucks, hover trucks, VI driven cargo flats.

Speaks reached up and tapped his datalink, almost instantly linking up with every vehicle in the yard even as he hustled toward one of the buildings. It took his onboard smartframes a few moments, but they were through the rudimentary software lockouts on the vehicles in seconds even as he used his bladearm to slice open the door and duck inside.

Outside all the vehicles started up and started moving around in a preprogrammed routine that Speaks kept modifying quickly as he crossed the one room office, leaving the door swinging back and forth behind him. He broke the window and climbed out.

A datanudge hit him and he popped a linkflare, keeping it carefully shielded.

Something nudged him. Something old, something primal, something that ran down his thorax spinal cord.

Speaks ducked and rolled.

The sniper round blew a crater in the ferrocrete a foot wide and four inches deep.

Speaks managed to scramble behind a heavy piece of machinery.

One of the heavy loaders exploded as battle rifle fire rippled it apart.

Four heavy rifle shooters, one sniper, unknown number of SMG gunners, Speaks thought to himself. He looked out and the sniper damn near got him, blowing a hole in the conex, the explosion rumbling the inside the conex when the round found sufficient hardness to detonate.

A LawSec High Threat Response Team armored grav-striker dropped down.

It was shredded out of the sky before it could pass its spotlight over more than a few conexes.

Speaks had seen the sniper though.

He triggered a burst and ran for it, darting around the conex, unsure whether or not he'd tagged the sniper or not.

You're not killing me in a loading yard, Speaks thought to himself. He took off at a sprint, dropping the last of his masking grenades. He jinked through the rows of containers, twice ducking under automated loading vehicles, dodging a pair of Sec Droids that were heading toward the explosions back in the yard, and once almost getting grabbed by an android that loomed out of the darkness, swiping at him with one hand while the other brought the SMG into play.

Speaks shucked out the android's chest like an oyster with a quick burst and stopped, staring at what was inside the conex.

A Class VII nanoforge. The iris was open and the baleful red glow was coming from inside. The hum was low and malevolent and the telltales over the computing display were a steady amber of signal processing.

You're fucking kidding, Speaks thought to himself.

An android's hand reached out of the nanoforge and slapped against the outside as the android within started to pull itself out.

Shit.