"You'd think most of the property damage from incursions would come from the Antithesis, but honestly? There's a reason most insurance companies charge extra for 'Acts of Samurai.'"
-A construction contractor interviewed in the wake of the 2056 Boone stealth hive incident
----------------------------------------
My first thought was to go up the stairs like a normal, sane person, but then I realized I had a perfectly good hole in the ceiling already made for me. I back tracked to the office I’d been fighting in previously, uncomfortably cognizant of the gross, squishy noises of the Antithesis guts beneath my feet, and looked up at the hole. My cryo grenade had frozen the Model Four that attacked through it and the subsequent rush of Nines hadn’t left much of it intact, so I had a clear shot up.
I still threw one more grenade up just for good measure, though.
Once I’d made certain the coast was clear I jumped up, my suit’s built in jump jets kicking in to carry me to the next floor. I landed in what looked to be a gym, with exercise equipment strewn about haphazardly. More poignantly, there were numerous holes dug into the floor, all of them stopping just above the ceiling tiles, providing convenient entry points. Were those all made when I showed up, so they could be sure I would end up under one of them, or were they trying to find a way past the auto turrets? Well, it didn’t really matter either way, now. Except to whoever had to repair the damage.
The Antithesis had seemingly thrown everything available at me, as none were left on this floor. That probably meant there were no humans hiding here either, else they would have kept trying to kill them, but I asked to be sure.
“Juny, where are the remaining groups in need of rescue?” I asked as the Eyebot floated up the hole behind me.
“One squad is in the armory on the floor above us, and another is defending the gunships in the hangar on the top floor! The second appears to be Alana’s squad!”
“Minus Alana, I’m guessing,” I posited, knowing Alana should be in surgery right now getting turned into the Million Dollar Woman. Juny bobbed up and down as if nodding. “Aren’t they armed with Samurai grade weapons?”
“They are! However, much of their equipment is too dangerous to use indoors.”
Considering Haley was a member of that squad, I wasn’t terribly surprised. Hopefully they had enough ammunition to last them until I got there, considering they were likely getting hit by a good number of the Antithesis in each wave. I didn’t doubt that they’d given the Antithesis so much trouble that they changed strategy and decided it was easier to clear out the rest of the building first.
“Alright, well, it wouldn’t make sense to skip the next floor and go right to them, so I’m going to have to rely on them being tough enough to survive a few extra minutes. Give me a map of the next floor so I know what I’m in for this time.”
As I walked towards the stairs the map popped up on my augs. It looked like the next floor was mostly residential, but it was the space dedicated to the rapid response teams, so their equipment was stored in an armory on the same floor. The halls formed a square with mostly dorm-like rooms on the outer ring and common rooms in the center, including the armory, although there were a few exceptions to the former.
I would be going straight when I exited the stairwell and then taking a left on the other side of the building. While it would have been nice to know what the Antithesis forces looked like up there, we had already entered a cloud of Model Nine scales, so sensors were jammed. That only left finding out with my own two eyes.
With that in mind, I headed up the stairs, stopping at the top to lean out and get a sense of what I was dealing with. Far down the hall, at the corner, I saw a cluster of Model Fives. These hallways were only designed for people, and Model Fives were the size of cars, but there had to be at least one far enough forward to throw spines, to say nothing of what was around the corner. I wasn’t sure what their plan was if the front most Five got killed, but maybe they were pushing the bodies along ahead of them as a barricade?
Sadly, that would probably work in my direction too. The one closest to me would block my fire towards the next one in line, and it would be hard to accurately throw a grenade over it at this distance. I could kill that one, but I’d have to get closer to get at the rest. Given that the squad in the armory hadn’t escaped, it was likely that there were more on the other side, so going around would result in the same conundrum.
On the bright side, at least I upgraded my armor before having this encounter. I could try using a grenade launcher, but I was trying to avoid blowing up the building, and besides, I didn’t really have any good way of carrying it right now. It was going to be necessary for me to find some way of carting around all my extra weapons at some point, but I wasn’t sure yet how to go about it. I only knew that I couldn’t keep strapping them to myself.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Maybe I could get a bag of holding. Or just something simple like a pack mule drone.
At any rate, I grabbed my assault rifle and exited cover, putting a burst into the first Model Five so its corpse would keep the rest where they were. With how crammed in they were right now I wasn’t worried about return fire, but there was still a number of rooms between myself and them, and any of them could be occupied, so I took things slowly, hurrying between rooms but checking them before passing.
It was a good thing I did, as when I approached the halfway mark, I sensed motion from the two doors ahead. It was faint, probably only detectable because the Model Nine scales had begun to settle, but it was enough to make me skid to a stop in time. That reduced the effectiveness of the ambush, but it didn’t ruin it entirely.
Model Threes burst from the doors on both sides; a kitchen and a lounge if I remembered correctly. Nines accompanied them by crawling on the ceiling. I was taken aback by the appearance of the Threes- rather than large dogs, some of them looked more feline in nature, but I couldn’t afford to ask questions about it right now.
I had been on guard enough that my rifle was up and firing less than a second after the ambush began, tearing through the first few Threes and Nines, but they were appearing faster than I could kill them. They might have been using the same tactic as earlier- busting through the floor of the level above so they could throw more numbers at me than would have fit in the actual rooms.
As I fired I backed up, keeping myself from being overrun for just that much longer with each step, but I still only had a sixty round magazine in my rifle, which translated to twenty bursts. I had used one on the Model Five already, so that left nineteen, and the number trickled down with every trigger pull until it finally hit zero. That allowed a Three to get close, but I bought myself another moment by smacking bashing it with the butt of my rifle, then swapped my SMGs in while it was disoriented and in the way of those behind it.
By the time it recovered I had one gun raised and ready to fire, reducing it to shredded lettuce. My other weapon turned towards the ceiling and I opened up on the Nines just as they gained ground, tearing through several of their more fragile bodies and raining body parts onto the Threes below. The Threes continued to advance faster than I could kill them though, and soon they were right on top of me.
If nothing else, I was thankful that I was better equipped for close combat than yesterday. I smacked a Three across the face with one hand and shot it with the other, shrugging off a tackle from another a moment later and kneeing it in the face as my shields flared. I shoved it aside for the moment, its jaws too broken to pose any danger, and then put the barrel of a gun right down the throat of the next one and fired down its gullet, giving it the most explosive bowel movement of all time.
A pair of Threes darted past me as a Nine descended from the ceiling, but I managed to duck under the Nine in time and spun, gunning down all three before they could surround me. Another Three jumped onto my back, but its claws and teeth slid off my shields, draining them further but failing to deplete them. Its weight wasn’t enough to keep me from standing, and it fell away as I shot to my feet and spun, cracking its skull with a blow to the side of the head while my other hand shot into the crowd behind it.
That combat implant was really paying off.
I ran both SMGs dry firing into the oncoming horde, but their numbers were dwindling at this point. I holstered both and reached for my newly reloaded assault rifle, switching it to full auto for the final burst. Raising it to my shoulder, I hosed down the few remaining Antithesis in my way, leaving half the length of the hallway riddled in bullet holes and choked with corpses and alien goo.
Nothing more got in my way as I strolled up to the dead Model Five from before and hurled a grenade over its remains. When it detonated, the remaining Fives were showered with cryogenic fluid and frozen solid…which still left the hallway blocked, but it was a start. After a moment of consideration, I decided this floor was already fucked enough that a bit more property damage would hardly be noticed, so I went into the closest room and broke through the wall, continuing until I found myself in the same hallway as the armory.
As I expected, there were more Model Fives on the other end. They had been pushing bodies of their predecessors down the hall as they advanced, laying down suppressive fire to keep the armory squad from sticking their heads out too far. Nines were already positioned close to the door, waiting for them to stick their heads too far out. None of which put them in any position to stop me from mowing them down, then repeating my maneuver with the grenade on the other side.
The armory doors turned out to be sealed, but I saw some blood spattered around the entrance that told me it hadn’t been their first resort. I decided to knock.
“Ya’ll alright in there? The Antithesis are all dead, so you’re free to come out,” I yelled, not sure if they could hear me. Fortunately they could, and a moment later the doors slid open, revealing a room full of weapons and armor and eight bedraggled mercenaries who’d gotten too few hours of sleep.
“Thanks, ma’am. Lieutenant Alvarez, at your service,” the one closest to the door said as he gave me an exhausted salute. I nodded in acknowledgement.
“Anyone need healing?” I asked, tapping a foot on the ground where blood had fallen, but he shook his head and pointed out a man with a bandaged arm.
“Already took care of it, he’ll be out of commission for a while, but he’ll live,” Alvarez told me, pointing out a man with a bandaged arm and a broken Model Five spine nearby. I shrugged and asked Juny for a Nano-Regenerative Suite, handing it to the lieutenant immediately.
“Give him this and he’ll be good as new in a few minutes. Instructions are on the package. The hallways are a bit clogged right now so just sit tight for now; I need to go back up Alana’s squad.”
“Thank you, ma’am, but most of us are good to go. I’ll give Jacobs this, but the rest of us would prefer to come with you and help McIntire Squad,” he responded, a determined look in his eyes. I gave it some real thought this time. Alvarez’s team wasn’t part of the defensive deployments and were fully geared up. They hadn’t participated in the fighting yet because they were pinned down, so they were fresh. I wasn’t sure what we’d be dealing with up to, and I might need someone to hold the line while I broke through to Alana’s squad or assist in clearing the roof.
“Y’know what, sure. Just stick behind me, I’m a great shield.”