Chapter 20

Roth Industries Corporate HQ Innovation Square, Tower Exterior

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‎ Jon stood at the mouth of Roth’s tower entrance, facing out into Innovation Square. He took a moment, bracing himself for what was about to come. Raven had patched him a feed in via satellite, showing him several more vehicles approaching the tower. Assuming they loaded to capacity, he was facing down at minimum a platoon.

He’s not the type of guy to slack or downshift, but the idea seemed nice about now. When he set out on this shit show, he never expected constantly lopsided odds and the threat of death around every corner. But he knew if he didn’t face this down, more than just his own life stood to be ruined by all this.

Jon checked his power cell charge in his upper right of his hud and noticed that it was at full charge and had a plus sign next to it. Impressed with the regen rate of the protein cube, he smirked faintly. Trashed SUV’s littered the area and the sidewalk and street for several blocks in any direction were empty; cordoned off by the police. He had the advantage of seeing them coming before they get here. He glanced around, mentally mapping ideal cover positions in a retreating progression to the door, and marked them. He took a deep breath. Steeling his nerve for the firefight to come.

Jon’s goal was two-fold. Slow their advance and wear down their numbers to make them more manageable inside. This would have the knock over effect of making it so they wouldn’t have to worry about BioPharm cracking Roth’s security network if they had to trade fire more than tap at keys. He descended the steps into the bowl of Innovation Square. Bullet casings littered the area like cylindrical brass leaves. The normally clean and smooth surfaces of the square were pock marked and riddled, reminding him of the marble white lunar surface currently under colonial construction. A thin haze of smoke hung in the air like a lazy Angel City smog. He observed this after intense fire fights in some battle weary towns in Iraq or Syria or even some older black and white photos of cities post World War II.

The thought made him grimace as he sidestepped around the front of one of the SUV’s he shot with the cannon. The hardened armor body smashed like aluminum foil and the glass shattered and lay sprinkled all over the area, carried by the force of the blast. The black paint of the truck peeled and scuffed from crushed metal and skidding across the pavement. Walking across the battle site, glass crunched under his boots. He traced a finger along the ragged edge of the side of the SUV idly as he passed it. That might have cut his finger in the past, but now his prosthetic finger glided over the ragged surface without a care. Spent casings jingled, kicked away by his steps. The musical chimes of a post combat battleground.

He finally reached his furthest attack position, also his most exposed, about five meters in the open from his nearest covered position. A distance he could cross easily in the ensuing confusion and chaos he would cause with his first shot. He checked the mag in his rifle and then reseated it, then locked a round into the breach. He left the safety on for now. It would do to shoot his own foot while running, even if it was metal and composite polymers now. He planned to waste no rounds meant for his opponents.

The Sat nav showed his targets, making their last turn off the highway and getting onto the long stretch of road that Roth sat on. Jon slung his rifle on his back and then primed the PEPS cannon sequence on his user interface. When his hand and arm folded back to reveal the barrel and charging coil, he looked back up to the road. The SUV’s were just black specs on the horizon, but they soon resolved themselves the nearer they got. He leveled the cannon up, aiming for his designated point twenty meters ahead and slightly lower than level, half at the road, half at the lead truck when it reached the target distance. Then he waited.

He didn’t wait for very long as the lead truck soon entered his target threshold and the PEPS cannon belched out a powerful blue blast of compressed energy that rippled out of the barrel of the cannon, then soon bit into the road, gauging deep into it like a crashing asteroid. The lead truck’s nose crumpled and traveled the opposite direction of the vehicle as it just struck a blue wall of light. The ballistic proof window cracked into a million shards and erupted outwards, refracting the sunlight like glitter. Jon watched the stunned and panicked expressions of the driver and passenger of the lead vehicle as the front end smashed inwards amidst a shower of shredded asphalt. The front end then bit into the street, the rear end hurling itself skyward. Time seemed to grind to a standstill for the vehicle’s occupants. The air around the truck glittered with shards of shattered glass. Metal groaned and shrieked as the truck’s frame compressed and raked the street. One axle came loose, the tire bounced lazily for a storefront. The sudden change in inertia forced the rear of the truck to topple towards the ground, the nose smashed into the street straining.

Jon took this as his que to break for his first cover position. He could hear tires screeching as brakes were pumped, and they yanked wheels left or right to avoid collisions. Sliding into his position like a base runner stealing first, he pivoted around, his cannon pulling back into his arm as his hand and forearm slid back down and took hold of the fore grip of his rifle. Sighting down the rifle, he looked on with grim satisfaction as the first shot garnered the results he hoped for. Some black hat trucks had tried to swerve around the lead vehicle and press forward, only to tumble down into the deep scar he blasted into the road. Two of the trucks fell in, unable to carry on, their noses smashed.

He opened both eyes to stop focus aiming and kept a watchful eye open for movement. Sure enough, doors flew open when the BioPharm attack force realized they would not get any closer in their vehicles. He sighted in on the first man out of a door and took his shot, dropping him unceremoniously. Then to the next, sending a round clean through his shoulder, spinning him around before putting a round through his head. Brain matter and bits of skull splashed against the body of the SUV he was next to. When he wasn’t able to maintain suppression, he snapped off a burst of fire to end the mag and retreated to his next position and reloaded.

Jon squeezed off rounds again, though this time had far less luck as the BioPharm mercs used their trucks for cover. He cursed under his breath, wishing he had an SCM-10. The mag rifle could punch through the armor to take down the opfor. Unfortunately, he had to fight with what he had, and the tech rifle wasn’t here. He glanced back over his shoulder to Talbot quickly, “Hope you’re ready. They’ll be in here in one more push.”

“We’re ready,” Talbot said grimly.

Jon hoped so, he did what he could to wear them down initially, but then it was just a game of slowing them down as he made for the safety of the Tower interior. Roth’s lobby was large, but the security aspect of the layout was very intuitive. The floor contained several armored panels that lifted from the ground when the system detected a nearby friendly and lowered at the presence of a hostile. He could see the system at work as the Roth black hat teams scrambled around to set up better fire lanes to cover the door. He hoped they had more than that to work with, though.

High-powered rifle fire bit into the mouth of the door and forced Jon to fall back until he tumbled over something in his backpedal. Landing on his back, he felt the air violently exit his lungs as his head struck the floor. Pain thunder clapped through the back of his head in a rippling wave that threatened to onset nausea. His ears rung and he saw one of those armored barriers from the floor had deployed. It was the damn defensive systems auto-deploying in response to the attack. It could not determine if you were facing it. That would cause problems if he wasn’t careful.

He grunted as he peeled himself off the floor behind the barricade, rubbing his temples that were now throbbing intensely. A physical and CAT scan later felt prudent. He didn’t feel disoriented, but it was possible he had a low grade concussion. Rounds pinged off his barricade, bringing his attention to the immediate situation and not his injuries. He snuck a quick look and could see that they stacked the BioPharm teams at the door and throwing rounds inside to keep the defenders’ heads down.

He popped up to take a few shots and then ducked down behind cover again. He shot a concerned glance at Talbot, who gave him a reassuring nod. Jon just had to trust that Talbot had set up something effective during his stalling maneuver. To answer his worries, as soon as the defenders had finished piling in through the doorway, it slammed an armored gate down, trapping them inside. Then several auto turrets deployed from the ceiling of the lobby, belting out high caliber rounds that shredded the floor of the lobby and slammed into the armored gate. The entire massacre took less than a few minutes, and every BioPharm black hat lay in a ragged mess of gore at the mouth of the entrance. When the computer detected no more defenders, the cannons pulled back into the ceiling.

Jon stood up about to ask why they just didn’t do that to begin when he saw Talbot stand up with a worried look on his face and rushed over to one of the downed men, nudging him with his boot to check he was dead, then kneeled down to check his pulse. He then rolled the man’s head over and saw a network hack module and grimaced, pointing it out.

“Good thing you slowed them down. He’d burned through the firewalls and was already sifting through the network by the time the defensive cannons chewed through these guys. If we’d given them another minute or two more, they could have turned those guns on us.”

“So if you’d just bunkered down and let them come inside to engage them in here, they could have overridden your security systems?”

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Talbot nodded grimly, pointing again at the augmentation. “He’s got some groundbreaking hardware, and it’s nothing we designed. Whoever put this together has been working on this for a while.”

Jon frowned. “You think BioPharm designed that intending to take over other companies?”

Talbot shrugged, but didn’t disagree. “Makes sense to me. Everything depends on tech anymore. Whoever controls it controls the fight. I’d have thought you knew that already since you took out that BioPharm antenna,” Talbot said wryly.

“This is all new to me. Not exactly my cup of tea, so I’m learning as I go. But you’re right. Whoever controls the tech controls the fight.” He kneeled down and inspect the man’s implant. “This is on a whole other level of scary, though. I’ve got a hacking mod, but it still took me a bit to crack a network and maneuver it. You’re saying the guy was inside and rooting around?” Jon said.

Talbot nodded. “I get automated intrusion alerts from the system. I figured they’d try to blitz the network when they got here. It’s why we tried to keep them outside as long as we could manage. Your brief diversion lets us set up a few extra barriers inside to slow them down enough to make use of our systems.”

Jon nodded, seeing the complete picture. “Glad I could help.” He meant that mostly. He still found himself with an odd bitter taste in his mouth for helping a corporation, but if he had to help one, he preferred Roth who worked to provide better quality of life for people, than someone like Haltech or BioPharm, which only had an endgame of control the public and profit.

As they spoke, a team of mechs deployed from service doors along the lobby to begin the process of cleanup. They would lock the lobby down for repair and cleanup, and it forced the employees and citizens living inside the tower to use the side entrance for a while. A small price to pay to maintain freedom of BioPharm and Haltech. It made Jon wonder just how many of these disruptions people had to endure lately, ever since that corporate conflict bill passed. The idea left him disgusted. Conflict was just a fancy word dressing for war. People would tolerate a lot as long as you gave it to them on a silver plate with garnish. That optics made a case more than the morality of it left him unsettled.

Talbot spoke to some of his men, giving them orders to do some sweeps and searches for any other intrusion attempts, physical or otherwise. Jon understood the need for thoroughness in a situation like this. You didn’t want a singular rogue agent moving around in your system somehow. Not that he knew anything about that. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned around to see Dr. Preston.

“Jon, you came,” she said with a thankful smile.

He gave her a nod. “Yea, Raven put out a call, said you could use some help.”

Rebecca nodded, playing at the edges of her white lab coat. “Yea. The building went into lockdown. All I could think about was how they were going to come and steal all our research to twist it into something dark to profit off of.”

He frowned at the thought and then shrugged it aside. “Well, it won’t happen now. We pushed back their attack, so you won’t have to deal with that.”

Rebecca remained unconvinced, however, “For now, sure.”

“You think they’ll try again?”

“Somehow. Roth has always had other companies targeting us, but until recently, it’s not been a problem. Now that we have to defend ourselves, its taken a toll on the company. We used to be a research driven firm, but now we have to allocate money for defense and protection. It’s warped the company in ways just because we’ve been forced to adapt to it,” she said.

Her words echoed in his mind and in a startling and uncomfortable way. He realized it was uncomfortable because now he could see himself mirrored in what was happening to Roth. Forced to undergo a metamorphosis because of changes to its outside world, to become something it didn’t want to be to survive.

Rebecca glanced up and frowned. “Sorry, you may not want to hear all this complaining. Not with your own problems.”

He frowned, shaking his head. “No, it’s ok. I was just realizing something. That’s all.” He gave her a reassuring smile.

She backed off, pressing about and it, taking his reassurance at face value. “Ok. So what will you do now?”

He pursed his lips. The ache in his head was still there, and he winced as a spike lanced into his mind. “Well, I took a nasty bump to the head, so I’ll go get that looked at.”

“Somewhere other than here? Not on my watch,” Tyler Roth’s voice said from behind him as footsteps signaled the man’s approach. “What kind of host would I be if I sent an injured man away to tend his wounds elsewhere? Nonsense. Dr. Preston can help you out upstairs. Anything he wants or needs. Help him out, Becca.”

Jon turned to face the man and gave him an appreciative nod. He didn’t want to walk very far. Just standing here was making his head throb and ache. It felt like someone had his head in a vice clamp and they were playing the drum beat to a song on his temples with hammers.

“I’ll get you a chair. If you’ve got a TBI we don’t need you walking up on your own,” Rebecca blurted out, walking off in a rush.

Tyler gave Jon a thankful nod and moved off to speak to Talbot, leaving Jon to himself for a moment. As he leaned against the countertop, he received an incoming call. It was from Snyder, Raven’s man, in her own little merc outfit. He took the call.

“Hello?”

“Snyder here. Raven had to step away to handle some work in the Agency. Wanted me to check in with you on the status of that attack.”

Jon nodded with an appreciative smile. Leave it to Raven to check on him even when she couldn’t. “We held them off, but we were cutting it close.”

“Survivors?”

“None.”

There was an awkward long pause and then Snyder responded, “Understood. I’ll report back to her. What’s your personal status?”

“Took a nasty blow to the head. Waiting to get it checked out now.”

Snyder chewed on that for a moment, “Hnnm, well, get that patched up. Boss won’t like if you’re walking around with injuries.”

“Yea,” Jon mused, the corner of smile rising a little higher.

“How many did they sling at Roth and you?”

Jon paused for a moment, running the numbers through his aching mind. “Well, I’d wager two platoons easy, maybe an entire company.”

Snyder made a noise that sounded like he was wincing. “Ouch.”

“Yea. It was touch and go for a bit, but we held out.”

“I’m sure.” there was an edge in Snyder’s voice and Jon fumbled at why. Maybe he disliked being Raven’s messenger. Probably felt like he had better things to do than baby-sit Raven’s asset. Despite the reasons, though, Jon got the impression that Snyder isn’t as pleased about Jon’s success as Raven would be.

“Well, keep your head on a swivel. Snyder out.”

The call ended before Jon could even give him an acknowledgement of his statement and sighed. “So much for politeness.”

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