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HARI-9
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HARI-9 was making her way through the city when she started hearing gunfire to the south, along with shouts and other noises. Some guards were now rushing down the streets, so she took to the rooftops again and made her way toward the large three-story structure in the center of the town.
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The guards on duty here had brassards and looked to be a lot more alert, along with having actual magazine-fed bolt action rifles. They were also not leaving their posts. HARI-9 shook her head and began planning her attack.
Backing up, she took a running leap out and over the muddy street before crashing, feet first, into one of the pair of guards on the north side. Before the other guard could react, she had grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand and smashed him head-first into the ground.
The one she had landed on wasn’t moving, she had struck hard enough to shatter his spine, and the one she had grabbed now had a fractured skull and was severely unconscious. Leaving the bodies where they lay, she began to scale the wall of the palace.
It didn’t take her very long to reach a window, and, sliding her knife blade in through a crack, she lifted the blocking bar that secured it. Pulling the shutter open, she slipped inside and froze, listening for any strange sound.
All was still except for someone moving around on the ground floor below her. It was very likely that it was an internal guard alerted by the chaos that Bonchance had begun. The room she was in appeared to be some sort of office, and with her optics, the small amount of light coming from outside through the now open shutters provided illumination clear as day.
As she moved to the door, she saw a covered image on the wall. Pulling the cloth aside, she saw a map of the United States in remarkably good condition and looking like it had been machine printed. Immediately, she looked for the indicia on the bottom and saw that it came from ‘Federal Workshops, Government in Exile’.
The map itself had areas marked out displaying ‘Known Areas of True Empire Influence’, ‘Known Areas of The Kingdom of the Southlands Influence’, ‘Known Areas of The Kingdom of the Sun Influence’, ‘Known Areas of The Rock Republic Influence’, ‘Known Areas of Pine Empire Influence’, and assorted Duchies, Baronies, and Conclaves. She immediately reached up and removed the map from its pins before folding it into as small a packet as she could manage before stuffing it inside her jacket. Then she turned her attention to the walls and the desk. The desk was mostly empty, but thermal detected an unusual low heat pattern with a small bit of warmth at one point, mounted behind a cabinet. Glancing at the floor, she saw several scratches where it was clear that the cabinet had been moved out of the way, so she picked it up and did the same. It was extremely heavy.
There was a panel, but that warmth bothered her, so she switched to electromagnetic sensitivity. This had a far shorter range than her optics, but now she could sense a magnetic field. Something inside there was powered.
Mara’s overlay’s training suggested that it was probably an alarm, but without specialized equipment, she had no method of determining what kind or any means to disarm it. HARI-9 stood and decided to leave it for now and perform the removal during the extraction. Lord Malcolm needed to be disposed of first and unalerted.
She went to the door and listened carefully; still hearing movement downstairs, nothing above. Opening the door cautiously, HARI-9 checked the hall for any threats and then exited. There was a set of stairs leading up and down and two more doors on this level; she moved to the nearest and attempted to open it. The handle turned easily and revealed a closet with a broom and a bucket. The next door was locked, so she pressed on it gently, then slowly started increasing the force until the wood of the door jam began to split and tear with slight cracking noises.
This room was a conference room of some kind. The large table was bare, and there were no signs of anything useful, so she began to turn…then threw herself prone as she heard a floorboard creak right before the familiar sound of an L70 assault rifle began.
Crawling under the heavy table, she watched as the wood was chopped and splintered by the barrage of high-velocity 6.8mm caseless rounds. She was able to count the shots, so at reload, she suddenly stood, flinging the remains of the table at the gunman right as he was ejecting the spent magazine.
In nearly the same motion, she drew her pistol and fired through the flying debris. The wood turned her 10mm caseless, even better than it had deflected the 6.8 rifle rounds, but she emptied the entire magazine as she rushed forward to engage whoever was shooting.
As she crashed through, she saw a man wearing only trousers and an Old World Combat Harness with magazine pouches. Not slowing down, she engaged the ‘Predator’ overlay and brought a spinning elbow to his head.
The man stumbled back but didn’t appear even dazed, “What the hell?! Who are you?”
HARI-9 quickly switched through her optical modes, this time including EM. Her opponent definitely had extreme cybernetic enhancements implanted, as she could see the differentials on his arms and legs, as well as shadowing from an obviously reinforced skeleton and plates over vulnerable locations. His eyes radiated normal heat, so he presumably did not have optics, but the bulk of his limbs meant that very large flat motors could be installed. It was unclear whether he was physically more powerful than her, but it was quite possible.
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BONCHANCE
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Clea and I stood in the shadows, waiting.
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“Where are her troops?”
“They are on the wa…” I stopped speaking as she grabbed me and yanked me into the shadows. A moment later, there were two socs and four normal men approaching. As they came closer, they saw the open gate, and all of them readied weapons.
“Those are self-loaders,” I whispered.
“That’s not healthy,” she whispered back as she readied the revolver she had picked up at Feder’s.
“You see anybody?” one of the regular soldiers asked the socs.
“Somebody was doing some shooting…strange powder smell though. Like the Lord’s gun.”
Oh? I whispered, “Lord Malcolm might have an Old World weapon.”
Mara replied in a cold and distant tone, “Yes. I have found one, and as the wielder is a cyborg, that creates new questions.”
“Who are you talkin...” Clea shut up as one of the socs was looking right at us. I grabbed her and began kissing her passionately.
“Hey! You two!”
I thought fast, “Get your own girl!” I yelled out while only briefly stopping the kiss.
The soc looked surprised, and I felt Clea readying her pistol, using the cover of our bodies to hide that fact.
Then the soc laughed, a terrifying sound, “You see the guards?”
“No. Nobody at all since we got here; look, I have business to attend to,” I replied. “Now, shoo!”
Now the other soc and the men were laughing too, as I had put on the most aggrieved drunk voice I could and made the brushing away gesture with my left hand.
“Liquid courage…” the other soc said. “Claude, I don’t think he even realizes who you are.”
“I think you’re right.” The first soc said as he turned to look at his friend.
The moment he turned, Clea had the revolver up and fired one round right through his ear, one of the few places socs did not have armor. I had felt her tense and was raising and firing now, sending three shots into the other soc’s face and managing to hit both his eyes, one of the only other weak points. The strength of my replacement arm kept my aim rock solid, and the pistol was so accurate anyway; at this range, it felt easy.
Clea and I broke our clench and took advantage of their momentary surprise, her revolver booming out six perfect shots on the regular guards while I advanced on the blinded soc and, switching the pistol to my left hand, yanked down on his jaw with my right, and proceeded to shoot into his mouth.
“Not a soldier…my ass,” Clea laughed as she proceeded to reload while I was still breathing hard from the sudden release of tension. “That was some good shooting…and fast-thinking and talking. That kiss and the ‘Get your own girl’…that was perfect.”
“I’m sorry for taking advantage.”
“What? You saved our lives. There was no chance of either of us surviving without cheating,” she leaned over and kissed me on the lips again. “And you’re a great kisser.”
At about that moment, I heard the whirr of the Guts’ motors, and, like mechanical ghosts, they rolled up to the gate.
Cal opened the door, “Milord! Any trouble?”
“Not really; toss me my helmet and rifle. Oh! And a spare vest, one of those lever rifles, and the ammunition for it. Get someone with an AMR up on the wall; there are socs wandering around.”
“Yes, milord.”
A minute later, I had my helmet and an L70 and handed Clea one of the lever-action rifles, “Can you use this?”
She smiled, “I’d rather have one like that…This is all Old World technology, isn’t it…like your pistol?”
“And this vest,” I handed her one. “They do quite well to protect against gunfire that strikes them.”
She slid it over the jacket she was wearing, “I like the sound of that. What now?”
“Now, we take out every overseer in town…Master Calvin, if you would allow myself and Mistress Clea to join you, we should head to the large building in the center of town. I have not heard from the Duchess, and I am becoming concerned. Master Wallace: follow at a distance, but turn on all the lights and sound the horn. Let’s make them curious!”
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HARI-9
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HARI-9 was hard-pressed against a combat cyborg that had trained extensively with their augmentations. As she had considered, the larger bulk of his mechanical limbs, which were clearly completely as synthetic as her own, meant that larger motors and actuators could be fitted, stronger motors. She learned just how much stronger, when she was thrown through a wall, tumbling back to her feet in the office she had broken into originally.
“What the hell are you?” the cyborg growled.
“Lord Malcolm might have an Old World weapon,” came over her commset, too little too late. She could not consider it Magellan’s fault, though.
Still, she needed to reply, “Yes. I have found one, and as the wielder is a cyborg, that creates new questions.” Looking up at the cyborg, she asked, “Are you Lord Malcolm?”
“You don’t know?”
“What I do know is that you have Old World technology…that is all.”
“Yes, I am Malcolm the Undefeated! Why do you ask?”
“Because I am here to kill you. I want to make sure I don’t kill the wrong individual by mistake, “ she replied in the cool, calm voice of the ‘Predator’ overlay.
Malcolm laughed, “You? You’re tough, but you’re no match for me! They remade me to be unstoppable!”
“Who did?”
“The gods themselves! They told me to go forth and conquer!”
“I see.”
The pair had been striking and blocking. HARI-9 was far faster, but Malcolm had vastly more raw power in his blows; he was capable of crushing stone with one of his punches. HARI-9 was certain that he could batter his way through her armor and destroy her internals if he managed to land a wound-up full-force hit.
Grabbing the desk, she used it as a momentary shield, blocking his view of her briefly before he turned it into splinters and shrapnel. She had used the moment to let go and move, counting on its inertia to keep it balanced on edge just long enough to slip to one side as the follow-through on his punch dragged him forward.
With all her force, she jammed her knife up and in from behind in the space of the hip joint. The blade riding along the edge of the metal attachment point and between the overlap of his pelvic armor and the reinforcement plates that fastened his synthetic legs to the augmentations of his skeleton.
She had struck there because of what had to be there. His thermal imagery had shown that he had a set of genitalia that radiated at the same rough body temperature as the rest of his real flesh. She was sure that he had some sort of protection for that, but he still needed blood flow for it to function, and she could not imagine a man like Malcolm wouldn’t want full function.
. The femoral arteries had been removed and probably looped into the remnants of the iliac veins when his new legs were fitted. There was no purpose to them when there was nothing but plastic and metal. So she thought that to feed the genitalia, they would tap off that loop, and with her long knife blade sliding in between the armored areas, she could cut that feed or, better yet, the loop.
He kicked hard back as he yelped in pain, shoving her out toward the stairs, but she saw the thick blood on the edge of the blade and knew she had successfully struck. Now, all she had to do was evade him. Suddenly, gunfire sounded, and she was diving and rolling as his guards had finally arrived.
He was going to go down on his own, so she was concentrating on the new arrivals while avoiding Malcolm’s strikes and attempts to grab. His guards were being treated as rag dolls when he accidentally hit them, as she dodged and weaved between them, using his own troops as cover from his blows. He was getting angrier and did manage to hit her occasionally, sending her crashing into one wall or another. If she had been human, she would have been completely battered into a broken mass by now.
“Why won’t you die!” he yelled as she hit a wall, bounced off while leaving a torso-shaped crater in it, and, rolling forward, leg swept him so he crashed onto the floor while pushing off so she was back on her feet in one smooth series of actions.
His guards were mostly down now, as she had been attacking them as she was evading Malcolm’s attempts to crush her, so now she could concentrate on him; rolling forward, she scooped up the dropped L70 and the magazine he had been attempting to reload it with before she had opened fire with her pistol.