Standing on a small hill overlooking a highly functional military base in the Philippines, a black, mechanical suit surveyed the site. It was nighttime and the sound of waves was only a short distance away, the island breeze was lost on Samson since he was covered in his suit. As he stood there, he started to pace back and forth nervously. "Come on," he said, his voice coming out synthesized, "you've been preparing for this for years. This is your big moment!"
The suit did a few jumping jacks, ran in place, then started towards the base before turning around and going straight back to the top of the hill. "Come on, man up," said the black suit to itself, hopping up and down to psyche himself.
"Hey, you up there," came a shout, and Samson followed the noise. Two men carrying machine guns were climbing up the side of the hill. Samson just looked at them as the night shrouded him from clear sight, but their flashlights shined at him. "You are trespassing on government... property...." They lowered their guns as the black suit faced them, then they instantly raised their guns again. "Do you speak English?"
Samson decided to go all in, so he stepped forward towards the two guards who raised their weapons at him. "Stop," cried one of the guard in a shrill voice, then they pulled the trigger. The bullets whizzed through the air faster than the eye could track, but Samson could track it due to the high electric content of his body. It came within two feet of his suit, then it was naturally deflected by the anti-gravity field being produced. The two men emptied their clips, but nothing hit the black metal suit as it continued its approach.
The two military men cried out something to the base as the black metal suit continued to advance. The two men ran back into the base and started shouting about the intruder, then a loud boom blew up the hill where they had once been. There was an eerie few seconds of silence, then the black suit fell from the sky.
The military compound was largely underground, but there were a few tanks and vehicles stationed there that the black suit could mess with. Landing on the top of a tank's hatch, the metal dented at just the powerful impact, but it wasn't completely broken through. The black mech pulled one of his arms back, then a light at the elbow blasted its fist right through the armor of the tank. Pulling its fist out, the black mech seemed satisfied at the result.
Stepping down, the world suddenly erupted in gunfire as a line of men began shooting. Not a single bullet got close, all of them deflecting to the sides. An alarm was going out over the entire base, but the black suit was filtering out that noise. Suddenly, the black suit erupted from the feet, sending a powerful shockwave in all directions. The soldiers nearby were blown away as the black suit was lifted into the air on powerful boosters.
The suit was able to get its bearings as bullets whizzed by only to ricochet off the anti-grav barrier. Seeing the remaining tanks, the black suit positioned its arms to blast a hole in the tank and to stabilize him since he was in mid-air. The shot went out with a powerful blast and the tank exploded from within. Nobody was nearby, so Samson sent another blast at the last tank on base, obliterating it. "Oh, this is too cool," said Samson, happily, and he dropped back onto the base.
Gunfire rained continuously on Samson, but he just walked through it as though it was any other rain. Samson saw the way into the underground section of the base, so he went up to it and tore the door off. Putting the door on the side, he went into the base and tore every door off of its hinges looking for the command center.
After going down some more stairs, Samson began to pick up something strange coming from further below. He got to the bottom of the stairs and a group of men were standing to one side with long cylindrical guns positioned like rifles. "Fire," came a shout, and the guys pulled the trigger to release powerful blasts of continuous heat. Samson was surprised, especially since the blasts seemed more effective than bullets. The anti-gravity which had been drastically altering the path of a bullet didn't do so well against laser beams.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Most of the lasers missed, but by a margin that was much less safe than the bullets. Without a pause to breathe, Samson returned fire with his own beams across the cieling above the soldier's heads. Some dust fell down while Samson sent a powerful blast out of his heel to lessen the distance. Grabbing the face of one guy and giving him a shock, Samson tore through the men by freezing up their muscles and administering concussions. Once they were taken care of, Samson picked up one of the laser weapons and looked at it closely.
"Looks like I got a gift," said Samson aloud.
"Not so fast, monster," said a very determined voice. Samson looked up to see a man wearing dress greens with multiple racks of medals on his chest. He was old and a bit crusty, but in his hand was a small remote with a few different buttons on it. "You've seen too much, so now I've got to blow this whole base apart with you inside. So either turn yourself in, or I'll be forced to destroy this entire base and everyone in it."
"You wouldn't," said Samson, but the general seemed particularly adamant. "Okay, you might."
"Either surrender yourself before me or I'll blow this whole place apart," said the general strongly. "You have ten seconds."
"I surrender," said Samson, putting his hands up.
"Then step out of your suit and come over here," said the general soundly.
"I can't," said Samson, "this suit is keeping me alive. I step out, I die."
"Then we have an impasse-" the general's arm suddenly dropped and Samson made a beeline for the remote. Samson was able to grab and at the same time, punch the general in the gut. The general fell to his knees while Samson kept the remote, holding it in his hand. Using electrical pulses transmitted through the remote, Samson found out about a nasty surprise.
"I can't believe you," said Samson in disgust, "sacrificing the lives of your own men just to keep some stupid lasers a secret? I already have lasers, dummy, what would I gain from stealing one of yours besides a trophy?" Lightly slapping the general in the back of the head as punishment, Samson leaned down to look at the general face-to-mask. "Also, that little timer you set just in case; I deactivated it."
"You won't get away with this," sneered the general angrily. "Nobody gets away with assaulting a military base!"
"Such a shame, then, that I took out your comm towers," said Samson offhandedly. "I also hacked into your video feed before all of this happened just to set a delay to deleting your footage. Not only will I leave here without any penalties, but you won't be able to prove I was here at all besides a few smashed tanks." Crushing the remote in his hands, Samson let the remnants fall onto the general who was lying on the ground in pain.
Samson stood up and walked further back into the base, then he saw what he was looking for. There was a dark room filled with caged in servers and whirring backup storage. Samson walked in, put his hand on one of the servers directly, and then began looking for the most heavily encrypted information there was. Might as well, since he had already assaulted the base. As he searched, he found several things with an extremely high level of encryption.
Using a storage device in his suit, Samson downloaded the information through the suit and made full use of a lot of other files. When he was done, he went out into the corridor and smacked the general on the back of his head one more time for good measure. After that, Samson left the base by just walking into the ocean. Once safely in the ocean, Samson used his thrusters to propel himself through the water towards home.