High rise low life

“I got you!” Sulphyr yelled, Gradie watched his icon move to Mavericks on the mini-map. The MG went wild, and Gradie suspected that Nova hadn’t blinded the gunner as much as he thought. Whatever pity Gradie felt for the tragedy playing out across the hall, it died without even a wimper under the crushing weight of his own panicked desire to take as much advantage of the sudden calm in the pool room as he could.

He pushed on Nuke as she stomped forward.

“Would you quit shoving me?”

“We need to move! Before the MG—”

“I am trying! Quasar’s map thing doesn’t show when there’s a fucking chair in the way though, so you’re going to have to wait for me to clear us a path, unless you want to let go of me and go on your own!” Her pauses were punctuated by grunts as she kicked fold out chairs and boxes of resistance flippers across the tile, loudly.

So, in an odd moment of calm, not unlike some of the surreally banal pauses between firefights he had experienced in the Hardworlds, they moved in bursts of rushed jogging broken by frustrated kicks across the deck toward the door outlined in glowing orange on their HUD, as the MG fired in bursts at something a few walls away.

As they approached the door, the MG fire got louder.

“Must be close,” Gradie said, partially as an apology.

“Brilliant observation! Now tell me how many bullets they have left.”

“Uh, five.”

Another burst echoed in the walls.

“Ok, zero.”

Nuke snickered in her mask.

“Ok good. Than can you run up ahead and drop a grenade—"

The far wall of the room they had just entered, which was like a reception area mixed with a lounge lit by a thin portion of two story high window, exploded in a burst of wood paneling and drywall. Nuke squealed and turtled again, and Gradie crouched behind her.

“Moving!” Maverick yelled, and Gradie watched their three icons, one of which was marked with a little red cross symbol, dash across the gym. The MG fire was like a hailstorm, and unlike the bursts in the natatorium, this time the rounds fell freely everywhere, and Gradie couldn’t pinpoint a blind spot.

“Holy shit,” Luke said suddenly.

“What?” Gradie said, hoping he had cracked some weakness in the enemy’s position.

“It really is a big ass tree.”

“Would you quit staring at it and move?” Robin said.

“You gotta learn to appreciate nature.”

Like clockwork, the MG fire got a notch quieter and the rain of future-bullets around Gradie stopped on a dime.

“Cover!” Maverick shouted, and their icons scattered again, this time across a lounge on the other side of the big circular tree atrium from where Luke and his team were maneuvering up the staircase.

“Throw a smoke so we can move, please!” Nuke hissed on Gradie’s direct channel. He grabbed one off his belt, but stopped and looked at the holes in the wall.

“Wait, how will that help? We’re screened by the wall anyway.”

“Oh my god, they’re not watching us from there!”

“What?”

Nuke un-turtled one arm and pointed out the wide window.

“They have a camera out on some tower. That’s why Quasar couldn’t take it out! Now throw a fucking smoke!”

Gradie pulled the pin, but stopped. He had been looking at the ground for a good place to toss it when somethings stuck out. The last five feet of floor in front of the windows were completely unscathed.

“What are you waiting for?”

He tossed the grenade in the far corner next to the window and waited for the smoke to spread. Once it did, he slapped Nuke hard on the back and pinged the untouched scrap of carpet next to the window.

“What?”

“Blind spot.”

That was all it took. She de-turtled and dashed over yanking him along.

“You’d better be right!”

Gradie switched comm channels.

“Hey Notbanned, I think these MG’s have locked traversals.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. They got a big blind spot on the west side wall over here. Probably so they wont shoot out the windows.”

“Why would they give a fuck about that?” Robin said.

“Anti-Air emplacements,” Nova said. “They got the sensors stuck to the side of the building. Armored shell on the outside, but any round fired from within would have free reign on the internals. Good eye Corpse. Im gonna map the anti-air and overlay—”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The MG got loud again, which Gradie knew by now was a result of it transitioning mouseholes, and the Lobby next to them erupted. This time, not a single round hit Nukes Turtled armor, and after a few bursts she popped out.

“Ok, Im gonna blast this wall, then we’re moving in.”

“Wait,” Maverick said. “Let us move up and we’ll hit it—”

A distant roar broke out, and Sulphyr’s icon went red on the screen with a sound like a failed buzzer.

“Shit! Cover! The other MG!”

“I thought you said they couldn’t shoot towards that wall!” Mack screamed.

Gradie looked at the map. The eastern MG was marked as “engaged” and its line of fire was drawn as a dotted line, cutting westward in front of the circular tree atrium, and intersecting with the western MG’s line of fire in an ominous X right on Maverick’s position. The dotted line terminated on the western wall Nova had marked the first section of anti-air sensors on.

“They probably have range limiters,” Nova said. “So the rounds dissipate after a set distance.”

“So is this a trap?” Nuke said, looking around frantically.

“No, the west MG probably is probably restricted in that direction because the range limiters won’t work so close. There's a minimum distance—”

“Nuke! Move on that fucking MG now!” Maverick yelled.

“Quasar,” Luke said in a tone of calm reflection. “Could the MG’s fire at each other safely with those range limiters?”

“Uh, I’d have to compare the distance between them against known limiter models, but they might not want to take the chance. Personnel on this kind of defense is way more valuable than even anti-air, so—”

“Can you guys fuck off to your own channel!” Nuke yelled.

“I moved them,” Nova said. “Mack and Mav are pinned down. We’re moving to them right now, but I don’t know how long—”

“Don’t worry I’m not waiting!”

Nuke walked up to the yellow HUD outline of the north wall and slapped a charge on it. She backed up so fast that Gradie almost fell over getting out of her way, and when he was pressed between her and the south wall, she turtled.

“Charge out!”

He got down just in time, now convinced she had forgotten he existed. The blast ripped the room apart. Almost immediately, the soft glow of the late twilight sky broke into the interior. The blast had blown out the floor-to-ceiling windows and most of the smoke was gone in a rush of wind almost instantly.

“Moving!” she yelled, before the blast had finished echoing out in the night air, and sprinted forward. Gradie scrambled after her and a drone whizzed by overhead.

“Wait, wait!” Nova said. “Let me—”

Nuke stomped over the smoking ruins of the wall and immediately fired her grenade launcher across the room. Unfortunately for Gradie, the room was less than ten yards across. Large for a bedroom, but still compact enough to funnel the shockwave back at him with painful effect. His bones still shaking from the breaching charge, he tried to believe it was all just make-believe, but in the back of his mind, the burning feeling of the round ripping through his calf reflected his words like armor.

“Nuke! Let me check—”

Another grenade blast cut Nova off. This time the entire bedroom wall blew apart and revealed a two-store open space, an artsy lounge and living area cut from some high end New York high rise. Strange hanging sculptures swung in the blast, mirrors and framed art reflected subtle evening light filtered in through angled skylights, but after a moment, the penthouse-ness faded, and he noticed qualities that stood out of place; lights and lasers flickered in all spectrums in his goggles. Entire masses of floor and wall had been cut out, while other portions had been formed by the same molded material he had seen in the kill-hall, and dark holes and slits, impenetrable even to his enhanced infared light, watched him from everywhere.

Nuke had taken one step into this space, and must have realized what was up just before Gradie, because by the time the MG erupted from a dark hole in the far wall, she was already turtled.

“Shit!” Gradie dove behind her as the rounds ripped the tile floor to pieces and cracked behind him into the bedroom.

“My gun!” Nuke yelled.

Gradie saw a chunk of what used to be her grenade launcher drop to her feet, along with a broken tube of grenades which he hoped the MG fire didn’t set off, just before he rolled his last smoke grenade between Nuke’s legs. It bounced across the floor towards the hole in the wall spitting fire and broke open with a cough.

“Damn girl, guess you’ll be throwing them,” Mack said.

“Moving!” Nuke said as the smoke spread, and Gradie grabbed onto her handle for dear life as they sprinted into a darkened kitchen to the left and back into what was hopefully still the MG’s blind spot. The MG fire, which had been a single focused stream on Nukes torso, now fanned out and raked the living room behind them as Nuke stomped across the kitchen tile towards the long dining area waiting sleepily under more two-story windows.

Then, suddenly, the MG went silent, Nukes loud stomps echoed in the dead still apartment, and Gradie knew they had fucked up.

“Shit, the windows,” was all he got out before a new, more focused stream of MG fire eruped from some other mousehole, and sprayed right into Nuke.

“Ahhh!” she screamed and turtled, and Gradie, who had been sprinting after her, ran smack into her now support-pillar-solid back and crumpled backwards onto the floor, which was a bit of luck since the stream of lethal rounds danced where he would have been standing and sparked off Nuke.

“Do something!” She yelled, and something in her squeal sparked an epiphany.

For the last twenty minutes, he had been hiding like a bitch every time the MG sneezed, to the point that he had forgotten he was even armed.

He activated his jump suit and launched himself up off the ground in a twist and snatched a grenade off his belt. As he landed ten feet away from Nuke, on top of the kitchens stone counter, he threw the grenade at the fire spitting mousehole, then stood there looking at it.

“Get down you moron!” Nuke yelled, but it was too late. Gradie, somehow, had unlearned every grenade lesson Philip had ever given him, and watched as the blast threw hot shrapnel all over him.

“Fuck!”

He back flipped off the counter and crashed into a kitchen rack.

“Frag out!” Nuke yelled, and for a moment Gradie thought she was talking about the one he had just eaten, until another blast rocked the kitchen.

“Frag out! Frag out” Fuck you!” She screamed. Gradie rolled into a crouch and saw over the top of the kitchen counter that while her head was still turtled and immobile, her right arm was pliable and spinning like a windmill, tossing what he guessed were the spare grenades from her launcher.

The MG fire died again. Nuke gave it two seconds before she de-turtled and bolted to the window.

The MG started again, this time distant and muffled.

“God damn how many holes this mother fucker got?” Mack said. “Quasar, you can’t fly a bomb drone through not one of these fucking things?”

“They block them up and pump EMP through when they fire,” Nova said sadly.

“I’m hit!” Maverick yelled, before the channel went quiet. Nuke had apparently moved her and Gradie to their own line, as he saw the rest of the teams icons light up but didn’t hear them.

“I am no longer having fun,” she said flatly. “I hate this god damned call of duty shit.”

Gradie crept over to her while keeping one eye on the now widened hole in the far wall. She was sitting down with her back to the window like a boxer after a fight, very clearly bored. In the near dead twilight amplified by his goggles, he couldn’t see a scratch on her armor.

“So how much damage can your suit take?”

“What? Oh, it’s immune to projectiles and any blast up to a tactical Nuke. At least the plates are. Cost me years of saving up and honestly I’m not sure it’s worth it. I’d rather have more mobility. Just staying alive isn’t as fun as you might think.”

The words “any blast” had cooked off something in his head, and he was already scanning the mini map, now amplified by Novas latest tonal scans, as a plan grew in his mind.

“This is going to sound like a stupid idea,”

“Stupid might be fun,” Nuke said, sitting up.

“The MG is in that back bedroom. Looks like the walls are pretty thick, but the space is small. What if you took all of your charges, stuck them to the front of your suit, snuck up to that wall, then turtled and—”

The MG cracked open the air around them and turned the tranquil window and patio into a hellscape of falling glass and breaking everything.