"We were all surprised when that hive turned up. The Stalking Tigers were here for decades to keep one from forming, y'know? When we found out how it happened...well, let's just say no one was sad to trade them out for a Samurai or two."
-Anonymous survivor of the Boone Stealth Incursion
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I stopped when I crested the stairs and detected movement around the corner. I peered out and saw a mixed group of Antithesis trampling the remains of a long counter as they filed down a hallway heading deeper into the floor. That was odd, since the staircases were both connected to the lobby on this floor, on opposite sides of the elevator. Gunfire erupted shortly afterwards, though, answering the question for me.
“I am detecting a single human on the other side of this floor,” Juny announced from behind me. I caught the odd phrasing immediately.
“Detecting? So they didn’t tell you someone was stuck here? And that sounded like a lot more than one person shooting.”
“This floor contains the commanding officer’s staff offices and personal office. Automated defenses are set up around the door to the main office,” Juny explained. Strange that it wasn’t on the top floor. I couldn’t help but ask, even if it wasn’t an appropriate time.
“Why isn’t it a penthouse office?”
“The upper floors are dedicated mostly to support facilities for the anti-air defenses, sensors, and aircrafts. This was the highest floor available.”
Huh. Well, not important, at any rate. I stepped onto the floor and made for the hallway, figuring I may as well save that one person while I was here. It seemed odd that no one knew they were here though, which made me think they were up to no good. And when it came to people I’d suspect of causing trouble, well, there was only one name on the list. Maybe I was biased though; it wasn’t like I knew a whole lot of people here.
“Why is this floor the only one with automated defenses?”
“Budget cuts!”
“Bet the old CO would have ‘found’ the money real fast if he’d survived this long…”
At any rate, the time for talking was done. Even before I reached the hallway I could detect movement from surviving Antithesis, and I heard the whistling of a Model Six to boot. I raised my shotgun as I got closer, but when I was getting close, I caught another ping on my sensor- from the other direction.
I realized the first Model Six had been communicating with reinforcements when a second one slammed into the ground from the direction of the upper floor stairs, transitioning into a charge the instant its feet made contact with the floor. Amidst shattered floor tiles the colossal Antithesis rushed me across the relatively narrow lobby, and I barely had time to dive out of the way before it hit me, landing hard on my belly- I wasn’t quite athletic enough to turn my fall into a roll. Not yet, anyway.
The Model Six rammed into the corner where the hallway began and the wall lost, a shower of plaster and insulation coating its front. I hurried to my feet and spun while the Model Six did the same, but I could turn faster on two legs than it could on six. I fired an explosive shell into its flank, staggering it, and then fired another for the kill a moment later.
Just one problem: it wasn’t the only Model Six coming down the stairs.
This time I was closer to the staircase; more or less directly in front of it, in fact. The second Model Six landed and then launched itself into me before I could bring my shotgun to bear. I took the body slam right to the chest and my shields popped like a bubble as I felt something crack inside me. I was lifted off my feet and flung straight through the wall behind me by the Antithesis’s mass and momentum.
For a moment there was a blinding pain in my chest and a constricting tightness, but it disappeared before I could think about it too much and I pushed it aside for later. I found that I was lying on my back in an office longer than it was narrow, atop what was left of the desk I landed on. A low beeping sound alerted me to my collapsed shields. The Model Six that put me there was shoving its head through a me-sized hole in the wall, only barely restrained for the moment by the wooden planks spaced out every few feet inside it.
Behind me I both heard and felt the entry of several Model Threes into the room, and I grabbed an SMG off my thigh and turned to spray the lot of them down. That left the Six; I didn’t have to think too much about lifting my shotgun and blasting it in the face from my prone position. It slumped over dead, plugging the hole in the wall almost entirely with its mass. For the second time in minutes I shakily stood back up, wary of the damage I’d taken from that ramming attack. Fortunately my shield was already recovering.
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“What the hell was that…?” I asked Juny, hoping she knew what that pain I’d felt had been.
“Your primary heart was compressed by the impact and stopped beating for a moment, but it was undamaged, so the secondary heart was able to restart it!” the AI announced in my head. Her drone must have still been in the lobby. I turned away from the dead Model Six to find the door but stopped a few steps later when Juny spoke again. “By the way, I’m detecting Model Nine interference!”
I barely had the time to even think the words ‘oh shit’ before the ceiling tile above me burst apart in a flurry of tentacles. They wrapped around me faster than I could move. One settled around my neck like yesterday morning, but when the tentacles constricted to hold me still, they merely slid across my shields harmlessly.
“Nice try. Juny, cryo grenade, please.” Once I had a grenade in my hand I primed it and chucked it up through the hole above me. It burst and spread cryogenic fluid over every surface of the Model Four’s body, freezing its tentacles solid while sloughing off my shields harmlessly. All I had to do was step forward and the tentacles shattered. “They’re getting way too good at putting me right where they want me…”
That wasn’t the end of it though. I’d hardly freed myself before spindly figures, eerily silent, rushed into the room. Some came through the tiny gaps left by the Model Six’s corpse, while others came through the open door and even more piled in through the ceiling. I had been expecting an ambush by Nines since Juny spoke up- though not expecting the sheer number- so I was sidestepping away from the hole in the ceiling and drawing my SMGs a fraction of a second later.
They were fast, but none of them had a straight path towards me when they flung themselves into the room, having to reorient themselves and change directions. I opened up on the group coming through the door before they could spread out, the my shields flared an instant later as several flew past me from behind, raking their claws across me as they passed.
With them now in front of me I was easily able to kill them before they were able to round on me again, but I realized I’d made a mistake when the next hit popped my shields, allowing a Model Nine to wrap itself around me from behind. Unfortunately for it, I wasn’t wearing my old suit. I was a lot more flexible in this one, and stronger to boot. I dropped one of my weapons and reached over my shoulder to grab the bugger while it was still trying to cut through my suit, peeling it off in one hard pull.
I cast the Model Nine in my hand to the ground and stomped on it, crushing its head beneath my boot. My downed shield alarm continued to blare as I put distance between myself and the hole a few Model Nines were still struggling to squeeze through. When I looked back they were almost through, but almost wasn’t good enough. They died helpless and I didn’t even feel bad about it.
“…was that the first time I survived a fight with Nines without a grievous injury?” I asked rhetorically. Juny was happy to answer anyway, of course.
“Technically, no, since you have several broken ribs!” she corrected me cheerily.
“Sure, but the Nines didn’t break them,” I said while I retrieved my shotgun, which I must have dropped while grabbing for my SMGs. Once I had it in hand I walked back to the door and looked out to find the first Model Six I’d heard still there, whistling as Model Threes rushed past it into automated machinegun fire. I casually put few shells into it, putting it down for good, before stepping out, not detecting any more motion.
I examined the scene in the hallway to find an impressive number of dead low-number models scattered around a large room with a secretary’s desk at the far end…with two automated machineguns sticking out of open panels in the front. Another one was mounted in the ceiling, but it was hanging limply, disabled- there were several Model Five spines in it that I traced to a dead Five a few meters behind the Six.
The area seemed clear, so I headed for the office in the back. The door was locked, but despite the heavy security outside, it was just wood. It didn’t hold up to a solid kick that splintered it around the latch, flinging the door open.
“You couldn’t just knock!?” screamed a familiar voice when I walked into the room. I groaned internally at being proven right. Tommy Thompson was rising from behind the large desk on the other side of the office, handgun wisely pointed well away from me. By training or choice I wasn’t sure.
“Hey, uh…y’know, I was going to call you by your rank, but I actually forgot what it was, Tommy. Anyway, funny story…I got intel on where everyone trapped behind enemy lines were, but you weren’t in the list. Don’t suppose there’s a reason for that?”
“…I forgot my radio. And that’s Major Thompson to you,” he snarled in indignation. I wasn’t really all that intimidated considering I was wearing several hundred pounds of power armor, though.
“So, you come here often?” I asked next, moving my head from side to side deliberately to indicate the room we were in. The room which very much did not belong to the major.
“That’s none of your business, civilian,” he replied, emphasizing the last word. “You don’t have the rank.” I considered pressing the matter, given that while I didn’t have the rank, I did have the beyond-bleeding-edge armor and a shotgun that could render him into ludicrous gibs, but I didn’t actually have time to deal with the guy right now. There were people that actually mattered still in need of a rescue.
“Fine, fine. Way’s clear, so you can head on downstairs. Or don’t. Up to you.” I stepped aside to allow him through the door. Thompson regarded me warily for a moment as if suspicious that I’d given up on the matter so quickly, but then he nodded and walked around the desk and out the door.
Didn’t actually thank me for the rescue, unsurprisingly.
“Leave a message for Alana telling her he was up here,” I told Juny once he was out of earshot. I had no way of knowing what he was up to but maybe once there was time she’d be able to find out. Hopefully it just tied back into his evident corruption and nothing like sabotage…but from my few interactions with him, it seemed like he was growing more incensed with every instance of collateral damage in the city, so it was probably just a matter of time.
“Done! Would you like me to ask for him to be detained?”
“No, I don’t think we’ve got the authority for that. Best to let him think he got away with whatever he’s up to until Alana get nail him. Let’s just keep moving.”