Chapter 27
The outriders at the front of the pack pulled ahead of the main body, rushing the street at the foot of the tower. Haltech had erected several barricades with black uniformed security behind them. Rather than slow to a stop, the Outriders just raced around and right past the defenders, rendering their cover obsolete. Rather than waste shots with smaller caliber rounds, the outriders were packing heavier weapons and started throwing down fire with their turrets.
Jon could see the ricochets and strikes even at his current altitude as the Outriders danced around the Haltech defense emplacements in the street. The GSI airship he was riding in looped into a lazy orbit of the square at the foot of the tower. An alert klaxon trilled, causing the pilot to curse, yanking the airship into a hard banking dive. An instant later a missile plum cut itself across the night sky, hissing by the airship and missing it by a narrow margin.
The pilot swung the airship around as Jon kicked open the side door and readied up the crew served auto gun. Before he could start dumping rounds into the offending Haltech aircraft, a brilliant fireball engulfed it. Debris rained out of the sky where the VTOL craft had been. Squinting his eyes, he zoomed down the street and saw the smoking main gun of the Hammer as it roared down the main drag with a commanding presence.
As the main body of his invasion force approached the tower, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning, he found Winslow directing his gaze at the sleek black walls of the tower. Something was wrong with the sides, and Jon had to zoom in and focus to see what Winslow noticed. The sleek exterior was rippling, like the building was shivering.
“The fuck is going on?”
Picking up a scoped rifle off a weapons rack, he zoomed in to see. The surface rippled; combat mechs poured down the tower’s sides like viscous black fluid. Haltech had wrapped its building in a skin of combat drones who were now crawling down the sides of the building and clamoring for the street. He hoped to curtail their ability to make so many war mechs, but clearly, they’d had a significant stockpile.
“Your people aren’t going to punch through all that,” Winslow said over the dull roar of the craft’s VTOL jets.
Jon frowned as the mech force scaled down the side of the tower. The Outriders were looping around and throwing fire into the mechs at the base. Several small pops and bursts of energy and parts signaling exploding batteries and components. Jon mounted the auto gun and sighted down at the mechs, letting the auto gun get into a shouting match with the Hammers’ anti-personnel gun.
They were just throwing pebbles against a tidal wave, though. The mechanical horde surged forward. Until the main gun of the Hammer roared, carving a twenty foot sized hole in the mech front. Winslow whistled appreciatively. “Got damn boss. I knew you guys had that Hammer, but damn is she a beaut.”
The tank hurled shell after shell of anti-personnel munitions into the mech hordes. Normally the shotgun like shells would shred humans to pieces, leaving behind misty red clouds of gore. Instead, the tank was contributing to the Capital City Recycling drive for Haltech. GSI, great for the environment, Jon mused to himself. Small arms fire crashed against the composite laminate armor of the battle tank. Both its guns going off as quickly as they could. By now Masri’s trucks began disgorging their occupants, who set up battle lines on opposite sides of the street using parked cars for cover. Masri’s men proved adept at urban combat, having inherited decades of experienced handed down from encounters what was formerly the US armed forces.
The combined small arms fire of Masri’s men helped the Hammer in forcing the front back. Bright pink-orange tracer rounds continually lit up the night. Combined with Jon’s auto gun fire, the stream of mechs fell back. The near solid stream of lead pressed the horde back, but it did not stop them. This was the peak that he could ask for here. Time for phase 2.
“Bravo Team, we’re up,” Jon said.
The GSI team in the aircraft rose from the streets, the battle shrinking below them. Clearing the rooftop, Jon opened fire with the auto gun, shredding the luxury helo parked on the rooftop. Several Sentry turrets rose from the rooftops deck. Guards and mechs alike scurrying from exit doors to open fire. The GSI troop ship ran several strafing runs, giving Jon plenty of time to line up shots and shred the opposing forces.
Winslow and the others let out a whoop as they cut down the last remaining mech and its compressed graphene battery pack exploded. The GSI gunship banked hard about and settled in to land. The infiltration team hopped down onto the roof and the gunship lifted back into the air and disappeared below the edge of the rooftop again, the dull roar of its vtol jets ebbing softly.
Winslow tried a rooftop access door, and the locked buzzed negatively. Taking a knee, he shrugged his back off his bag to retrieve a breach charge. Jon gently brought him to his feet and cleared them out of the way as his arm telescoped into its cannon configuration. Once the team was clear, Jon fired a charge into the door. The blast punched the door clean off its hinges and sent it ricocheting off the interior and down a couple flights of fire escape stairs.
Winslow gave Jon a withering look. “If they didn’t know we’re here, they do now.”
Jon deadpanned, then gestured to the carnage on the rooftop. “Pretty sure they know we’re here. Now let’s get inside before they redirect any mechs to the roof.”
Inside the tower, most video displays showed a generic Alert to Shelter In Place warning, followed by instructions for where to find the nearest shelters. That was good, at least. It meant the odds of random civilians being caught in the crossfire would be negligible. Jon took a moment to snag a quick map of the tower’s floor index. He wanted to minimize his network footprint until it was time to upload the Dragon.
“Looks like there’s an access terminal I can use here,” Jon said.
He flicked the waypoint and map to the rest of the team and let them digest the info. Once they were all tracking, they stepped forward again. Interior resistance was pretty minimal. Most of the towers forces had descended to the front and street level to face his army, leaving the upper levels virtually untouched. But just because he didn’t see anyone up there to fight didn’t mean the tower was defenseless. He knew the AIs were likely watching their every step.
Opening the door to access the complex with the terminal, they caught a video feed from their gunship outside.
“Boss Actual, this is archangel 1. Heads up, boss, looks like a company jet just whisked in to ferry away the veeps,” the pilot said over GSI’s channel.
Jon watched with a frown. He expected they might flee, but he didn’t have the manpower to take prisoners. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t have any other choice than to let them flee.
“Let them go for now. Focus on the main body. Our mission is the company. The figure heads come later.”
“Understood, archangel 1 out.”
The team pressed further and finally came to the Main Operations hub. The MOC was smaller than he expected. There was a large wall screen at the front, with a row of waist high cubicle work stations in front of it. The MOC also had a second deck lined with offices for managers and project leads. It’s not the biggest he ever set foot in if he was being honest. Then again, having an AI that ran most of the processes and collated nearly all the information, he figured that reduced the size of the workforce you needed to keep the company moving. His heads up display highlighted the terminal input jack, and he edged around Winslow to go jack in.
“That’s far enough,” a voice called up from high and to the left.
Jon froze like someone had just called out a land mine.
“I know you. You’re that stain I smashed in Iraq a year ago,” the voice said. It was familiar and different at the same time. Like he recalled it, but something about it had changed since he last heard it. Turning in a slow, deliberate pace, he saw Eric Price. Or rather what they left of him after some rather extensive body modification? The man was more like a humanoid panzer now than anything resembling a man.
He stood a head taller, easier than anyone else in the room. Black heavy armor gave him a distinct non-human like silhouette. A dull, red glow came from deep within his armored chest. His hands were enormous. Jon figured the guy could hold a skull in his palm. Jon figured he was also armed like the Hammer, if his size was any sign.
Price lifted one of his massive mechanical hands and pointed directly at Jon. “You and I got unfinished biz.” the grin on Price’s face cooled Jon’s blood.
“Taking you out is going to be pretty satisfying, I have to admit. What she saw in you is beyond me,” Snyder said, walking out from around Price with a lit cig clamped in his lips. “It’s a shame you didn’t get with the fucking program. But taking you out is gonna be fun.”
Winslow and the others tensed at Snyder’s presence. Jon stepped up shoulder to shoulder with Winslow. The two of them stared down at Price and Snyder.
“I’ll take the talking dump truck,” Jon said.
“Shitbag is ours.”
Price took two lumbering steps and fell from the upper deck down to the ground level of the command room. Several black monitors shook, waking up the alert screens. Jon noticed the rather deep impressions Price’s clawed feet left on the polished floor tiles.
“You just ruined the floor. Now the Janitor’s gonna have to wax and buff that again.”
Price chuckled, “Yer a funny man. But yer also a dead man walking.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jon watched the GSI team fan out and away from him. Good, that meant he could focus on the big guy free of worrying about them. Price had no such compunctions and charged, his massive clawed hands flailing as if to cut at the air in front of him with each stride. Jon timed his advance and then dove to the side at the last minute, allowing Price to crash clean with a server cabinet. Sparks showered the big man as half the room’s monitors went to static.
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Scrambling to his feet, Jon missed the spiked chain harpoon Price shot into the ground by a hair’s margin. He gestured at the spike embedded in the ground in mock frustration, “Come on, man, floors!”
Price yanked on the harpoon and an enormous chunk of the floor ripped up, flying into the metal monster’s hand, crushing it like gravel. Jon scanned Price thoroughly. Looking for anything might present a vulnerability he could exploit. Nothing jumped out immediately. The charge on his PEPS cannon was filling up, but not enough to use yet. Fishing one of his high cal pellets out, he threw it into his mouth and swallowed it without even chewing.
Price charged again, crashing through several cubes of workspaces. Jon dove again to avoid the attack, scrambling back to his feet and sprinting to gain more ground. At the rate Price was going, he deny Jon any cover if the fight could continue. The PEPS cannon was creeping into 90% charged. The only upside was that the big man was forcing Jon to exert himself heavily, which means the piezo-electric generators in Jon’s body would build plenty of excess energy to charge the weapon.
Jon stood up, holding the cannon behind his body to keep it from Price’s view. The big man racked his massive clawed foot against the floor like a bull, and Jon bit back a laugh. Price charged like a runaway garbage truck at full speed. In the last instant, Jon lifted the cannon up and fired cleanly into Price’s chest. The blast threw them both apart, carved a half circle into the floor.
Price crashed through an office, and Jon rolled off the top of another set of waist high cubicles to tumble to the floor with a pained groan. The barrel of his PEPS cannon glowing orange steaming next to his face. Price howled in rage and the ground shook as he exploded out of the office, searching for Jon, then surged across the room. His massive hand scooped up Jon’s foot along with part of the floor as he whipped Jon against the furniture and equipment like a rag doll.
Jon’s world crashed into him again and again, went spinning rapidly until it slammed to a stop. Vertigo gripped him as it took a moment for him to take in where he was. Price was some twenty feet away, chuckling to himself with a twisted smirk on his expression. Jon was extremely thankful he had his augmentations because the amount of physical pain he experienced without them would have destroyed his mind. That, or just be die.
Price scooped Jon up again, his massive metallic clawed hand palming Jon’s head, and smashed him into the reinforced ballistic shatterproof window. It refused to yield, so Price smashed him into it again and again. Eventually the window began to spider web and crackle. The massive cybernetic leviathan held Jon close to sneer at him. It occurred to Jon that he couldn’t really tell what Price’s breath smelled like. Everyone’s breath smelled like something. Food, cigs, drugs, drinks, something.
“Wanna fly little bird?”
He tried to speak, but Price’s hand on his face made his voice come out muffled, so Price set him down to pick him up by his neck instead. It’s not a significant improvement as far as speech and interrogations went. The enormous cybernetic body hefted Jon closer to his head sarcastically.
“What was that little bird?”
“I said...” Jon gasped through strangled breaths, “You first.”
Jon’s left arm distended and elongated as a panel snapped open on the top. A long wicked blade shaped like a praying mantis claw deployed, energy sizzling down its edge. In one fluid motion, he severed Price’s arm just above the elbow, stepped to the left of Price, and shoved the man forward with his right arm still in its cannon mode. The fractured window offered little resistance against the human shaped battle tank as Price flailed his way through it off balance and fell.
Before Jon had a moment to catch his breath, a spike soared up through the hole in the window. It connected a spiked chain to it that wrapped around his ankle and yanked him out after Price. The two cyber titans plummeted like falling stars. As the air whipped at him, Jon slashed at the spiked chain snared at his ankle, cleanly severing the connection, allowing Price to descend ahead of him.
More chains whipped out at him, launched from Price’s massive gauntlet. Jon deftly swatted the chains aside with his blade, sparks flashing quickly with each deflection. The charge gauge in his UI indicated the cannon had almost recharged, but not enough for a significant shot. It was time to change tactics.
As he willed the configuration change, the barrel shortened and part of the primary firing components rotated out for a fresh set until the cannon was now an automatic rifle. He straightened his body out, reducing his drag, and flew at Price like a half human, half cybernetic arrow. At the last instant he flipped himself so he landed on Price’s chest feet first, and brought the PEPS rifle down to bear on the man tank’s torso armor, riddling it with energy fire. Price howled as they continued to fall, and Jon continued to roar as he fired until they crashed into the writhing mob of mechs at ground level and smashed into the ground.
Everything came to an uncertain stop. A large plume of dust hung in the air, kicked up by the impact of the landing. A few of the less mangled mechs tried to crawl free. The Desperados and Masri’s men all ceased fire as well. The Hammer edged forward in the line of battle; the optics zooming in on the impact site.
A black prosthetic hand reached up to grab the edge of the impact crater. A collective sigh of relief exhaled from the Desperados when Jon weakly pulled himself on top of the smashed mech pile. The surviving Haltech mechs formed a line of battle and stood braced, but did not show the intention to act. Jon rose to his feet, swaying from side to side. His hud showing damage reports and errors from all over his body.
The ground shifted behind him, drawing his attention. Price drew himself up to his full height. The dense front armor on his chest still smoking from Jon’s assault during their drop. Metal ground in ear piercing noises as Price strode out of the wreckage, crushing the smashed drones underfoot. His remaining clawed hand flexed, preparing to stab down into Jon’s chest as he swayed on his feet.
“Get down,” Dez said coldly into the com.
Jon stopped fighting gravity and let it slam him down on the ground. From a distance, it looked a lot less graceful than he imagined it did. From inside the Hammer, Dez sighted down the optics square at Price’s massive armored torso. The cannon wasted no time in dispensing a shell. The gigantic fireball blossomed from the muzzle of the 120millimeterr smooth-bore cannon with a cacophonous roar.
The sabot struck Price center mass, punching clean through him with brief resistance. The sheer air speed, however, tore both him and Jon and the myriad of debris off the ground and threw them in a sprawl across the plaza floor. The world spun and tumbled like he threw into the maw of an angry washing machine until he slid to a stop in a shower of sparks. His ears rung as the audio processors struggled to mitigate the sound damage.
Dez threw open the lid to the Hammer, disconnecting from it and hopping down from the side to sprint to Jon over the wreckage of Haltech’s combat drones. The ringing in his head was subsiding, and he could faintly hear her shouting at him from the distance. His world shifted suddenly, and he was looking into dark brown eyes.
“Are you ok?” she shouted.
He struggled to sit upright and glanced back. Price lay on his back with a massive smoking hole in his thick shell. He’s not none yet. Jon struggled back to his feet, despite all the warning messages in his heads up display. He should be dead by now, and by all rights, maybe he was. He could debate the finer points of technology driving biology later. For now, he still had a job to do.
He plucked a frag off of Dez’s combat vest, turned back to Price, who was stirring but made no progress getting upright. Dez followed his gaze and paused.
“Finish that fucker.”
“Plan to.”
Jon hobbled to the metal monster. On closer inspection now, he pitied the man. The only shred of human tissue left on Price was his face. Gone were his organs, all replaced with cybernetics. All to make him a more efficient combat machine, no doubt.
Jon yanked the pin on the frag, holding the spoon down as he approached. Sparks and crackling energy danced from many open wounds in Price’s hardware. His face blackened and bleeding. Price coughed, sputtering a black fluid that Jon couldn’t tell if it was blood or oil. With so much extensive modifications done to his body, it was a wonder any part of him was still alive at all.
“Well. Go on then. Finish it,” Price coughed with a twisted smirk.
Jon wanted to hate this guy, but all he saw in Price reflected what he could have become. The company man turned corporate demon. The patriot that never asked questions. A slave to the system.
“Can’t fuckin do it can ya? I knew ya didn’t have the stones.”
Gravel shifted when Price tried to lift his arm. The panels of Jon’s arm slid, twisted and transformed as the cannon’s barrel emerged. Jon discharged the round into the clawed hand before it got close. The ball of condensed blue energy struck Price’s open palm and detonated, blasting the bladed fingers into shrapnel, leaving a smoking heap of wires and servos. Price groaned as his twisted metallic hide creaked.
“Some assholes are just beyond redeeming,” Jon said, stomping down on Price’s mangled chest. He lobbed the grenade into the hole in and strode away.
“You think you’re the one calling the shots, but you’re still just another puppet!” Price shouted.
Jon didn’t reply as the grenade blew. A few large pieces not destroyed clattered to the ground. Limping his way back to Dez he sucked in a ragged breath. They had a few minutes’ reprieve before additional mechs and security elements from Haltech’s subsidiary companies poured in.
“You look like shit,” she said wryly.
He tried to shrug, but his left shoulder suffered many system failures. Settling for a disgruntled sigh instead, he looked back up. “This isn’t over yet. I still need to get in and deploy the virus.”
She nodded. “No more leaping out of windows this time.”
He glanced back up. They could actually see the smooth windows and building surface now that the building had deployed all of its combat mechs in its defense. He felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over him at the mere thought of having to go back up there. He glanced down at the steadying hand on his shoulder and followed it back to Dez who gave him a concerned smile.
“No sleeping on the job, tinman.”
“Yeah,” he said wearily. “Bravo team, sit rep?”
“Snyder’s down. I’ll send the shuttle down to get you.”
Turning back to Dez he could see the urge to go up with him in her eyes. He didn’t have the heart to tell her no. Not now that he was facing her down again for what could be the last time. His resolve melted away in a reluctant sigh. “Find someone else to run the Hammer if you’re coming along.”
Dez smirked, turning back to the gathered crowd, and snapped her fingers. A Desperado stood up from their position and climbed into the tank. She gave him a wink. “I figured you’d say that, so I had someone else train up on it just in case we had to rotate pilots for any reason.”
She hooked an arm under his to support him, and it felt good to have someone to lean on. It was just his imagination, but he felt heavier lately. Skyward, the GSI VTOL shuttle ran a slow descending loop around the Haltech tower. The dull roar of its jets growing steadily louder as it drew nearer. When it finally landed, Jon felt a rush of relief blast past him. Mixed with the warm jet wash from the vertical jets angled down at the ground. Together, he and Dez marched forward to slip inside to ride upwards. This was going to end tonight.