With floor forty seven being equipment and parts storage, I planned to take my temporary squad past it and straight to the forty eighth and ninth floor- a gunship repair and maintenance facility that took up two entire floors of the building. Its layout was essentially one huge room with three elevators up to the roof, where the landing pads were, and a fourth, smaller freight elevator going down to the forty seventh floor. There were cranes and racks for storing gunships along the ceiling, giving the hangar space for far more gunships than it was actually equipped with, and multiple bays for mechanics to service gunships in.
There were only two gunships in the hangar as of now, with one of them having been lost on day one along with an entire rapid response team. Alana’s squad had used cranes to position both gunships in adjacent maintenance bays from which they could defend them both at once. I was looking out from the top of the stairs onto the hangar bay floor as they huddled behind spare parts and heavy vehicles like forklifts, using them as makeshift cover.
It seemed to be an effective form of defense, judging by the number of Antithesis bodies. Just about every combat model under ten had joined the pile, with a surprising number of fallen Sixes now serving as cover for Fives, which were lobbing spiny quills in arcs over the corpses. Threes and, I was sure, Nines, crept through the bodies to get closer to McIntire Squad, jumping out only once they ran out of cover, but accurate covering fire from someone not far above the gunships, lying prone on top of a crate suspended via crane, killed them before they got far.
The rest of the squad beneath that marksmen were putting out disciplined return fire in short, controlled bursts, popping out of cover only long enough to take aim and shoot. They didn’t seem to be in a whole lot of danger, in all honesty. The Model Fives pelting them had little accuracy since they were attacking indirectly, and the Threes were coming at them piecemeal, throwing themselves into the open bit by bit so that the pinned squad couldn’t advance.
I could hear whistling from somewhere among the dead Sixes, so at least one of them was probably alive and giving orders. There were no advanced models I could see, so the mysterious Model Twelves I’d heard had dropped these Antithesis off probably couldn’t carry the combat models in that range. I decided there wasn’t much point over thinking things and went to comm the others at the bottom of the stairs, but when I tried to access the channel, there was no response.
“Comms are being jammed. Another flight of Model Twelves has likely grown close!” Juny announced. I cursed; that definitely meant he situation was about to go downhill. Instead of talking on the comms I hurried down the stairs to meet Alvarez and his team face to face.
“McIntire Squad has things handled right now but enemy reinforcements are close. Think we’ve got a choice to make here,” I told the lieutenant as I skipped the last few steps.
“Well, we’re not holding this position.” Even I could understand that much; the warehouse floor we were on had lots of crates sitting around, but most were too heavy to move on short notice. “We’re going to have to either reinforce them now or fall back to a more defensible location. I’d suggest the latter; we don’t need them getting deeper into the building again.”
“…if you think that’s the best course of action, I won’t stop you, but I’m going in. If we can break the Antithesis here we should be able to dig in on the roof before they can come back. I think they’ve been targeting Alana and I, so if they see me in the hangar they’ll probably try to overrun me instead of sneaking past,” I told Alvarez, shaking my head. I turned back to the stairs, but a hand reached out and grabbed me by the shoulder. It wasn’t enough resistance to stop me in this suit, but it was enough to get my intention.
“Wait. If you’re going in, we’ll back you up. I’ve got a better idea, though.”
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The freight elevator was big and could handle a lot of weight, but it wasn’t fast by any measure. It was also positioned dead in the center of the hangar, equally distant from each of the gunship elevators. That meant whoever went up it was going to immediately be the center of attention, and would have several moments of vulnerability while the elevator was high enough to expose them but not all the way raised yet.
With my jump jets I could circumvent that last problem, but I didn’t, because I wanted to be the center of attention. And while all the Antithesis turned towards me, a big, exposed target with no cover to protect me, Alvarez Squad could rush in from the other direction and hit them in the flank- all while I was in the middle of them, keeping them from shifting their attention.
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The doors above me opened up as the freight elevator shuddered into motion, lifting me steadily up. Bodies of Antithesis fell around me while the doors receded, a ring of bodies around the elevator preventing them from being shifted onto solid floor. I saw a couple human bodies in the mix, likely mechanics and the like that hadn’t had the time to evacuate.
I chose to go with the assault rifle for this for its mix of stopping power and capacity. I leaned forward a bit in anticipation, ready to start moving the instant my shields were down. Model Fives weren’t a huge threat to me, anymore, but they could still penetrate my undersuit, just not as easily.
My visor peaked above floor level and I saw the field of corpses from the inside this time. I was surrounded by a blanket of Model Threes, with peaks jutting out above them in the form of Fives and Sixes. By the time I was at chest height, a handful of Model Threes had caught sight of me and jumped in my direction, but the sharpshooter above and behind me dispatched them for me. When my waist cleared the floor quills started sailing towards me, impacting all around the elevator from places unseen.
Some hit through sheer volume of fire, taking a few percentage points off my shields at a time. Still, I didn’t move. I had no line of fire on the Fives launching at me, and I wanted to give them all time to notice me. When my knees were above ground the whistling sounds shifted and everything exploded into motion immediately.
Bullets flew from behind me. Quills fell all around me from multiple directions. Model Threes and Nines burst from cover and were gunned down. I looked around, taking stock of where the Fives were hiding, and then gunfire from a different direction provided my cue to move.
I shifted from a lean to a run in an instant, trailing spines as the Fives around me tried to adjust their aim, somehow aware I was on the move. I sprinted half the length of the building and turned around a dead Model Six to find two Fives crouching in its shadow, already turning to face me. One burst each killed those two, and then I ran past them towards the next Five’s location, trusting my back to Alvarez and his men.
While I was still under fire, it was already decreasing in intensity from the rear, and I wasn’t catching any movement in the other direction on my tracker, so I knew I wasn’t the only one having success. Threes from all across the battlefield and even the stairs to the roof, dozens at the least, converged on my position, but I ignored them in favor of focusing on the Fives.
A shout from the direction of McIntire squad preceded concentrated fire behind me when I ran in front of a Model Six instead of behind it. My pursuers were shredded as they ran headlong into a crossfire while I jumped atop a dead Six and fire down into the Five hiding behind it, then spun and shot another one near the Six that I had passed. I jumped down, crushing a crippled Three with my landing, and then headed for the next target.
Behind me both squads of mercenaries maneuvered around the killing field to bring new targets into sight while the Antithesis focused their attention on me. Most of the melee models were dead by now, and the Fives couldn’t see their targets directly, so by the time they knew they were outflanked, they didn’t have time to react. Every moment reduced the volume of fire I was dealing with, and before long I was seeing spines flying towards me just a few at a time instead of the coordinated and continuous volleys from the beginning.
I finally found the surviving Six partially hidden behind one of its siblings when it surged into motion the moment I got close. Its head had been far enough out of cover to give it a wide view of the room, unsurprisingly. When I approached it from behind it suddenly kicked off the ground with all six legs, throwing its massive rear end right at me, too fast for me to respond with gunfire. I jumped instead and my jump jets kicked in to speed up my ascent, throwing me up and over its mass so narrowly that my feet brushed against its back.
It almost seemed surprised when I landed in front of it and turned to press the barrel of my rifle into its face. It was certainly as surprised as I was when I pulled the trigger and heard a click instead of a burst of bullets, causing me to realize at the worst possible moment that I had lost track of my ammo count during the fast-paced battle. The Model Six reacted with stunning alacrity, reaching out with its maw in an attempt to bite me, but I reacted just as quickly and snapped an SMG from my thigh, thrusting it forward into its mouth and holding down the trigger with a death grip.
A dozen bullets travelled right down its throat in a mere moment as its teeth met, causing enough damage to keep its jaws from shutting with full force. It crunched down on the barrel of my gun but I was able to retract my hand in the instant before it could overcome the metal, and while its teeth reduced the gun to scrap, I found enough time to brandish my shotgun in its face.
With the barrel pressed directly to its forehead, there was no one on Earth that could have missed the shot. The Impaler sent a shell right into its forehead, and then its head exploded from within. We didn’t have time to celebrate, though, because there was no way of knowing how long we had until the next wave flooded the room.
“More incoming! Take cover!” I shouted as I matched my words with action, sprinting for the position McIntire Squad had already fortified. Those that had shifted their position for better lines of sight returned quickly, and Alvarez Squad booked it across the hangar floor, cramming themselves in wherever there was space with practiced coordination. “Juny, give me another SMG and some more of those shield drones to reinforce the barricade.”
Antithesis began to flood down from the roof access stairs even as I spoke.