Some time to discuss tactics and set things up would have been nice, but reality was rarely so kind. It began with a wave of Model Ones that rapidly expanded to fill the room, obscuring our view of the stairs. There were surely other models coming down behind them, but we couldn’t see them through the Ones, which began dive bombing us the instant we couldn’t see the stairs.

“Alvarez Squad, you are clear to fire!”

“Alpha Team, open fire! Beta Team, sidearms only!”

Instantly three quarters of the mercenaries around me opened fire with rifles, with the rest brandishing SMGs or handguns. It was a withering fusillade, scything down droves of Model Ones in an instant. With practiced discipline, the troops then began trading off, alternating their fire so that someone was always shooting even when the others were reloading. I added my own SMGs to the mix, shooting down dozens of Ones every second.

Each time my magazine ran dry I ejected it and Juny placed a new one directly into my hand, allowing me to reload with minimal movements. Despite the volume of fire going their way, though, it felt like we were making no progress. More Ones rushed to fill the space left behind when their predecessors exploded, unrestricted by the need to run down the stairs to get into the room.

A Model Three burst from the cloud of Ones and I smacked it aside instinctively, with one of the mercs firing a pistol into its head when it fell. That Model Three heralded the end of the Model One distraction, but it wasn’t a positive for us. The Ones dispersed suddenly, revealing that their numbers had fallen to the point they were more of a thin wall than a swarm, and at the same time quills filled the air like a medieval rain of arrows.

“Shield drones!” I called out, and Juny moved the drones up to interpose them between us and the quills. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of them plinked off the drones. In the gaps between them quills sailed through, bouncing off or sticking fast in the barricade, floor, and equipment around us, but the drones were well-positioned to stop anything that would have actually hit anyone.

Ahead of us, Model Threes had already advanced to within meters of our barricade though, so we had no time to focus on the Fives somewhere in the rear.

“Samurai Taylor, if we set a ring of fire to hold them back, can you keep it from burning down the building if it starts to spread?” a voice said over radio. I didn’t know how they were speaking above the sounds of gunfire, but I wasn’t going to question it now. Partway through I realized Juny was displaying names off to the side on my augs, and a Sergeant Terry Jackson was highlighted as the one speaking.

“Juny?”

“Of course!”

“Go for it.”

“Fields, you’re clear to use the flamethrower! We need a wall, now!” Jackson ordered. I was apparently looped into their squad comms now, hearing any orders that went out.

“Yes sergeant!” answered Specialist Fields, who dropped his sidearm and stood, unslinging a tube attached to a tank on his back via hose. He flipped a switch and there was a spark in front of the nozzle as the pilot light flickered to life, and then he pulled the firing handle back. A stream of flaming gel sprayed out as Fields swept his flamethrower from one side to the other, spreading an arc of white hot fire in front of our position.

Any Model Threes that failed to stop in time and hurled themselves into the flames caught fire and burned to ashes in seconds. Even some that did stop in time caught fire, their plant bodies flash dried in an instant by proximity to the intense heat. I was probably the only one that could even see that, with my visor compensating for the bright light cast by the burning wall.

“Brown, munition count?” the sergeant asked next.

“Dry, sergeant,” said a familiar voice. “C4 but no grenades.”

“Juny, can you give her a resupply?” I asked as I swapped to my assault rifle, letting the SMGs be reloaded by my suit.

“Of course! What type of explosive would you prefer?” the AI asked.

“Literally anything that doesn’t kill us or destroy the building!” I shouted, ignoring the excited shout from my radio that followed a moment later.

“Scratch that sergeant, I’m loaded up!” Haley called out as she hefted her newly loaded grenade launcher.

“Thin out those Fives! Silverton, those Sixes on the stairs are your priority!”

“On it!”

“Roger that!”

Juny had apparently had some fun with the grenades, because a moment later there was a dry thump and the room lit up like a disco ball with colorful lasers flying every which way but ours, blocked as they were by the body of the Six the grenade had landed behind. The next encased a dead Six and everything around it in rapidly hardening foam, soon followed by another that sent electricity arcing through nearby Antithesis.

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“Sarge, I’m running low, the ammo press can’t keep up,” rumbled a woman that would have made me feel small even in my previous suit- Huifang Lin.

“Keep them topped up, Juny,” I instructed the AI in my head. There were several more call-outs from McIntire squad members, but none of them were relevant to me, so I focused on shooting. Alvarez Squad seemed to be doing fine on ammo, probably because they’d come straight from the armory.

Just when it was starting to seem like we had things under control, though, the hangar shook with a skull-rattling impact of something striking metal, and when I looked up, I saw a newly created dent in the thick metal shutters above one of the landing pads. The shooting came to a stop as everyone’s attention was drawn to whatever the fuck that was, but the squad leaders were quick to admonish their troops.

“Do you think this is a show!? Quick gawking and get shooting!” roared Sergeant Jackson.

“You heard the man Alvarez Squad,” added Alvarez himself, and with that both squads resumed their firing- even as another impact, loud as the first, rang out, followed rapidly by more and more. It was as if a giant was playing the world’s largest cymbal. Blow after blow fell upon it, each creating another dent or enlarging and existing one, heralding an escalation I wasn’t certain we were prepared for.

I was in the middle of reloading when the shutter finally lost its lonely battle, metal breaking apart and giving way to a torrent of Antithesis viscera and shell bits, followed a moment later by an entire Model Six rocketing through the hole like a comet, dashing itself upon the landing pad below. More impacts widened the hole bit by bit until there was a gaping rent so wide the shutter may as well have been opened.

“What the shit…?” I muttered as I processed what I’d just witnessed. The Antithesis had realized they weren’t making enough headway and decided to use Model Sixes as kinetic weapons to make another way in. Then, utilizing a tactic I was starting to get sick of, more Sixes jumped through the hole from atop the roof. I couldn’t tell if they survived the fall, but their bodies were intact, and that’s what mattered.

A disfigured bee the size of a city bus descended next, perching upon the pad for only a moment before kicking off and vanishing into the sky. Before I could even ask what the hell it was, I found out what it had done, which was to drop off Model Fifteens inside the building and abscond before we could react. A disc shot into the air from behind the wall of Antithesis bodies, and I heard a yelp from above followed shortly by an impact as the person atop the crate jumped off.

He wasn’t a moment too soon, as the disc was intercepted by a shield drone and burst, sending deadly spines tearing through everything they touched, including my shield drones. The crate above us became a pincushion, and the only thing that saved the lot of us was that the drones absorbed enough of the punishment that the spines they intercepted never reached us.

Haley immediately adjusted her aim and sent a grenade sailing towards the Fifteen’s hiding spot, but the Model Ones I’d almost forgotten were even here came from cover just to form a living shield in midair and absorb the deadly explosive. Frozen birds fell and shattered, their duty done.

“More drones! Keep them coming!” I shouted at Juny, who obliged in an instant, materializing a wall of robots just in time to stop the next volley of Model Five quills from slaughtering the people around me. That wasn’t going to stop the Fifteen, though. When it launched another disc at us I already had my SMGs facing in that direction and used them as an improvised anti-air defense, emptying both magazines into the path of the projectile and detonating it well short of our lines. “I can keep it from hitting us but I won’t be doing much else in the meantime,” I told the mercenaries as I reloaded.

“That shot you intercepted took out a lot of its buddies, I’d say you’re doing a hell of a lot more than that,” quipped Huifang as she stepped forward and took my place on the firing line, no longer constrained by the need to preserve ammo. Her machinegun was the bane of Antithesis, mowing them down with admirable efficiency, even punching through the occasional Six, though still not quite enough to kill anything on the other side of them.

“Grenade out,” announced Haley as she launched the next explosive, which clipped a Model One and fell into the field of corpses below, killing only whatever models were nearby. “Shit. They keep blocking my shots.”

“Hey, Juny, remember that thing one of the drones did back in the tunnels? When it shot a Fifteen right before it could launch?” I asked as I shot down another deadly bundle of spines.

“I do, but the Model Fives are likely to shoot down any attack drones we send out!”

“What if you use a copy of your personal Eyebot to sneak around the side of the room and cram it down the Fifteen’s throat?” I proposed.

“There is no harm in trying!” she told me cheerfully, preceding the appearance of a second Eyebot right next to the first behind me. It zipped off a moment later, colors shifting as it pressed itself against the hangar walls.

An Eleven tried to descend through the hole in the ceiling, but after a quick order from Jackson, a rocket flew up and met it on the way down, turning it and all the troops it carried into a green mist. Haley continued to thin out the Fives, and Jamal found a new position to fire from, jamming the stairs up with Model Six corpses that the other models were struggling to get past. Fields laid out a fresh layer of whatever napalm equivalent he used, while the rest of the squads pumped ever increasing amounts of lead into the riff-raff filling out the Antithesis’ numbers.

I shot down several more discs before a sudden goopy explosion from the Fifteen’s hiding place told me the plan had worked. Once again, though, the Antithesis refused to let the fight shift into our favor. It was pure luck that someone from Alvarez Squad caught sight of it in time.

“Anyone else see floating Antithesis blood over there?” a woman asked into the radio, and my eyes snapped towards the direction she indicated just as the invisible figure accelerated. I took three quick steps over and shoved the woman to the ground just before she would have been torn to shreds. My shield failed the instant it made contact with the invisible assailant’s claws, but the resistance it provided was enough to stop them going through my armor.

Its strike having failed, the assassin bounded away, disappearing into the chaos of the battlefield once more.

“Sergeant Jackson, I really hope Alana’s gone above and beyond with equipping your squad, because that was a Model Twenty One, and I don’t have a single weapon that can hurt it.”