Cindy once again found herself in the rear of the squad. That was a diplomatic way of saying that one of the Genesis soldiers was staying behind to watch over her as she tried to catch up with the rest. She could track them on her HUD and found herself constantly amazed at their endless stamina. They didn't simply run ahead, oh no. They advanced. Checked their surroundings, covered each others' six, moved from cover to cover. A sensible tactic, but also one that put incredible stress on mind and body. Not that Eisel's freaks seemed to be bothered by it.
She continued to run, feeling the sweat run down her back in streams. Her power armour was customised to offer maximum protection for this mission and that meant that systems like environmental control were pulled out. She had never been physically weak, but the constant strain of combat was wearing her down at an alarming rate and her legs were on the verge of giving out again. Perfectly normal, she assured herself. All data we have gathered over years of combat point out that the human body and mind cannot continuously function in an active war zone. Even special forces require some downtime to give their minds and body a short break. Not Eisel's freaks, though. Their stamina was the very same as they were, utterly inhuman. She noted that. Wrote it down even. The footage from the combat cams really didn't transmit just how insanely fit her squad mates were.
Her attention was pulled by an insistent, gentle pinging. Dreamer was contacting her. She flipped open the channel. "Lieutenant?"
She didn't receive a verbal reply, only a set of coordinates very close to her position, and still a ways off from the mayor's office. It took her mind a moment to translate the accompanying colours into an actual message. Cramming in the dozens of colour codes that the Genesis used for their near instant communications had been hard, but not impossible. "Stay put?" she asked incredulously. "Dreamer, I'm supposed to—"
Another ping. Black with orange. Change of plans? she thought, confused. "Why?" she demanded, her authority slipping back into her voice. It was an instinctive reaction, brought forth by her exhaustion. They had already shown on multiple occasions that they didn't care for her authority one bit.
A mass of data flowed into her HUD. On top of it all was a simple, single line, which caused her eyes to widen and cold fury to fill her veins. He's pulling rank on me! she bristled, before calming down. Study it, ask questions. Don't get emotionally involved, she reminded herself. So she grit her teeth and made for the highlighted location.
A few minutes later she finally reached it. Despite herself she was amazed by how well hidden it was. Several large dumpsters had been pushed together, creating a subtle, yet well hidden barricade that kept her out of sight. The Genesis accompanying her, Stalker, she knew, waited for her to get into proper cover, then disappeared, causing a spike of concern to flare up. Are they trying to get rid of me already?
Another ping shattered that thought before it could fully form. Another command. Open the files. Clearly Dreamer was keeping close tabs on her. She sighed and decided to be a good soldier and do as her squad lead had ordered. She blinked twice and the first file opened. It was a snap of her health-lines. Elevated heartbeat, slightly dehydrated, lactic acids forming in her muscles and her energy reserves were too low as well. She blinked slowly at that information. She couldn't deny it. Leaving her behind was, beyond a shade of doubt, the right call. She needed to rest now, or risk falling apart in the coming hours.
She chose to forego the griping that ground pounders were so fond off and opened the next file. A small map instantly sprang to life, along with lines of text and attack vectors. Seven of the Genesis were moving to strike a large fuelling station. She frowned as she continued reading. Why would they strike there? It had no real tactical value at...
She scrolled back on the map, zooming out and looked at the path of the eighth soldier and it clicked. Then she opened the follow-up orders. Pages of pages of attack vectors and colour coded orders. She stared at them, trying to make sense of it all and understand the end goal. This wasn't a simple strike on a target of opportunity. It was a full on battle plan, to be executed over more than a dozen hours, which meant that they must have been planning this ever since she had given them some suggestions. Which begged the question...
What the hell were they up to?
Mayor Grubolo watched the men stream into the room. Police officers, forensic specialists, his most trusted aides, staff of the nearby hospital, an envoy from the military base just outside the district, ... And, on a large screen beside him, Captain Gilgi. The Captain was visibly fuming, a fairly welcome sight to the exhausted mayor. Nearly everyone else was showing signs of distress in varying levels of severity. Even the military attaché was looking rather queasy. Not surprising, given that the man was looking at video footage of the scene.
"Gentlemen," the Captain began, his voice rough. The sound of a man who had slept too little. "I will not waste time. You are here because we need answers and we need them fast. Imperials have invaded the planet, and the bastards are as ruthless as ever. As you have all seen they care not for the lives of civilians." There were several nods, but most people settled for looking distinctly uncomfortable. "I know this is outside of your respective fields and that the current situation horrifies you all, but the military will require your full cooperation. Mayor, if you please."
"Thank you, Captain," Grubolo took over. "Most of you have worked with me on many occasions. Whether it was to curb crime, find out the truth behind industrial accidents, provide disaster relief or just on meetings, we have all solved problems together, as a group. Now we'll need to work harder than ever. The military is stretched thin and is rallying as quickly as possible to respond to similar disasters such as the one we are in now across the entire globe, so it is our duty to help them to the best of our ability." He looked at the balding police commander and nodded towards him. "First point on the agend—"
A powerful flash of light tore through the windows and cast dancing shadows within the room. Then the lights dimmed, only to be replaced by a deafening explosion that rattled the reinforced windows.
"What the hell is happening?" Gilgi demanded, incapable of following the situation from his station.
He ran to the window. A massive cloud hung in the horizon, secondary explosions tearing apart what little remained of the structures underneath as more fuel silos went up. "They struck Lavost station..." Grubolo realised, his face pale. "Captain, we need military support and we need it now! Lavost station was our main refueling point and—"
And the lights went out.
X-12845621 shook the tingling feeling out of her fingers as she dropped the cabling. Without her armour and all her equipment she had been forced to resort to alternative means to get the job done. The power surge that had briefly run through her hands as she manually disconnected the building from the grid had been an unpleasant sensation, at least until the breakers kicked in, but it had done no permanent harm. She gave her handiwork a final look over, making sure there were no back ups that she had missed. Barring internal generators, which she couldn't hear, all power had gone out of the building. It was time for her to go to work.
She quietly slipped out of the small shack, making sure to put the door back in, then gazed upwards. No bulkheads had appeared to protect the building, even as the shockwave had slammed into it. That was good. It would make breaking in easier. She could not stealthily break open metal protective shutters. She took a few steps back, then sprinted towards the wall. One powerful leap later, her fingers were bending the metal frame of a window on the first floor. Gravity was tugging on her and her massive weight. It didn't bother her, but she could feel her handhold slowly weakening. She steadied her breathing, ignored the threatening creaks of the metal, and listened. Nothing. No sound of people running around in a panic, at least not nearby. Not on the inside. Good.
Her fingers dug deeper into the metal as she pulled herself up, slowly hoisting a leg onto the windowsill. It didn't fit her, not even remotely, but as long as everything held for but a moment, she could maintain her balance. She checked the window in front of her. The panes opened inwards. Perfect. Muscles pulled taut as she brought her foot up and pressed it against the window. She had to be careful. Too much sound would alert those outside. Steadily she exerted more strength. The frame began to groan as the small lock was forced to slowly succumb to greater forces, before finally snapping. The window flew open and she leapt inside, catching the panes before they broke. As she shut the window again, she listened once more. People were running around, shouting questions, demanding answers. They were not expecting an invasion. She kept listening. Had to find out key information. No Muninn to supply it for her. She had studied a map of the building beforehand, but that intel was eight years old and could be inaccurate. Best to confirm. She had to strike the security station first. The enemy had to be cut off and blind. No calling for help. Once she started, none could escape.
Nothing she could hear was of value to her. No matter how she strained her ears, all that reached her ears were sounds of confusion, which had already been predicted. She pondered her options for a moment. The windows still provided light, even if the cloud from the explosion limited it. Emergency lighting was on as well, but that only dimly lit the directions towards emergency exits. No alarms were flaring, so no stampede towards those doors occurred. She made up her mind. It was time to move.
She darted through the hallway, her footsteps echoing heavily. Unavoidable. She forced herself to speed up, felt some tiles crack under her bare soles. Minor loss of grip. She rounded a corner and came face to face with four people, each of them holding up a datapad to light their way. They froze at the sight of the near naked supersoldier, clad only in the thin undersuit of the Svalinn. She didn't freeze. Her arms shot forward. Hands connected with throats and shattered them in an instant. The two last ones reared back, tried to scream, but she dropped the two corpses and immediately repeated her attack. Four men dead without a sound, aside their corpses falling to the ground. If they were found, screams would definitely ensue. No place to hide the bodies, though. No time either. She had to keep moving.
She ran into small groups of people two more times. Every encounter ended the same. People died before knowing what struck them. Still the locals were unaware of her infiltration. All of that changed when she entered the long hallway that lead to the security station. This wasn't an empty hallway, nor a dimly lit one. This one was thoroughly illuminated, had two guards at the far end standing in front of the door, and a small turret in the ceiling that immediately beeped as it spotted her. Her eyes narrowed as she saw it. That was new. A dangerous error. No time to think of how she could have fixed the situation. It was aiming for her. She had to act.
She flashed into the hallway, the turret swivelling quickly as it reacted far faster than its human counterparts. It fired. X-12845621 let herself fall to the ground, the burst narrowly missing her. The turret adjusted its aim as she got back up, firing a new burst even as she jumped up. She brought her arms up, the small calibre bullets slamming into her tensed up muscles. They pierced her skin and damaged her flesh, but didn't penetrate or slowed her down much. Then her fists reached the turret. The metal itself held, but the ceiling above it did not. It kept firing for a brief moment more, its barrel pushed well out of harms way, then she came down again, her fingers wrapped around the turret's frame. There was a second of resistance, then the entire thing was torn loose from the ceiling.
The guards were finally reacting, reaching for their weapons. Pistols. Small calibre. Less damage, but higher penetrative power. They would end up embedded within her arms. Not tolerable. She threw the turret at the right guard and watched it shatter his ribs. The man coughed once, then died. The left one managed to unholster his pistol, but then she disposed of him by simply slamming her mass onto his. His entire body broke in an instant, bones snapping like twigs. She bounced back off the now dented wall, ignored the blood and innards that now covered her, and grabbed hold of the door even as she was still tumbling backwards from the impact. Then she tore it loose, forcing herself back into a stable position. The metal groaned, then gave up. Six more men were inside, each in varying states of confusion. Only two had their hands on their pistol. She prioritised them. She charged inside, saw the men recoil in fear. By the time their training kicked in and their hands went to their holsters, the first man was dead, her fist leaving an imprint on his broken skull. Then she twisted, one leg and one arm stretched out, bowling everyone over. One man tried to brace himself, but was taken off guard by how heavy she was. It left him functional. The other two who were hit by her foot now nursed broken bones and the two hit by her fist were dead, temples smashed in. She cut short the cries of pain of the heavily wounded by giving them both a quick stomp to the face, crushing their heads. The final guard looked up at her, a look of abject horror on his face as he tried to point his gun at her. She batted it aside and studied his features. His trembling lips, the wide open, blood-shot eyes. The dark stains on his trousers hinting at a loss of bladder control. The twitching of his fingers, the way tears streamed down his cheeks, how the colour drained from his face. Then she saw her own reflection in his eyes. Leaning over him, as certain death. Covered in blood and gore from his compatriots, all of them unable to do more than slow her down, and only barely at that. She bared her teeth, awkwardly, and was rewarded by seeing him flinch. More data. More possibilities. She had seen enough and crushed his neck.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
She walked over to the security system, which was still unlocked, and went to work. No alarms had gone off. She was in the clear. It was time to move on to the next phase.
Screams. The entire building seemed to be full of them. No. Not full. Just temporarily occupied. Whenever a scream began, it would be cut short the very same moment. Short lived, blunt echoes of fear and horror that only lasted as long as it took the intruder to snap the life out of the poor soul that released it. And it was making its way towards them. Of that Grubolo had no doubt.
The atmosphere in the meeting room roiled as powerfully differing opinions clashed. Most people were afraid, yet the military attaché and the police officers present were quietly talking to the few guards that were in the room. They were the calm amidst the storm and the sole reason the others had not yet succumbed to panic. Grubolo was honest enough to admit that he would have been amongst them.
"Mayor," one of the officers coughed as their little group began to disperse. "We're going to move the tables and make a barricade. I've sent out a global alert. More of my men will be rushing towards us. They'll relay the message of what has transpired here to the military as well. All we have to do is hold out until then." The man spoke loudly, not just to make himself heard over the occasional scream, but to calm the others.
"That is good," Grubolo replied, nodding mutely. "I'll help."
"That would be appreciated."
"Are you sure you'll be able to hold them off? They're Imperials," one of the doctors of the forensic department asked. His voice was all but choked by fear, an emotion the mayor could understand, unwelcome as it was. Everyone had heard rumours of what the Empire was capable of when provoked. Genocide, slave-taking, human experiments, ...
"The hallway is long and it is the only way in," the officer said, his voice confident. "The tables are thick enough to stop small arms fire and will provide excellent cover."
"A table?" the man asked incredulously. "You expect that a few centimetres of wood will be able to stop those, those things? Have you seen what they did to those poor people out there!?"
The officer held up a hand. "The Imperials out there were clad in power armour. The ones in here, however," he stated pointedly, "are not." He gestured down the hallway. "If they were, we'd feel the floor shaking. Without power armour, they will not be bringing their heavy weaponry along either. Whoever is in here has broken in with the intent to launch a quick attack and then run away again, as they have been doing so far. Except this time we're armed, and we will be ready." The man made a point of chambering a round in his pistol. "All that I ask is that you stay behind us, do not give in to needless panic, and let us do our job. We'll keep you safe." Then he turned and made for the rapidly forming barricade. "And we'll make those bastards pay for what they did."
X-12845621 kept sprinting through the building. Behind her were dozens of corpses. She was no longer operating under perfect stealth, but that was acceptable. It was no longer needed. This stage depended on speed and she was fast. She rounded a corner, allowing her body to slam into the wall rather than slow down to make the turn, and sped off towards the next group of people. Once more they screamed. Once more they died before the sound well and truly had left their lips. Her hands no longer simply crushed throats, now that she ran at full sprint. Now they tore through them, often decapitating them with a single blow. It was more gruesome and would fuel the terror of those who witnessed the sight, but that was, at present, still irrelevant to her. First, everyone had to die.
She slowed down at the sound of dozens of people talking. She knew exactly where she was, having memorised the map of the entire building. It was where the mayor was, along with everyone else partaking in the meeting. They were waiting for her, no doubt. She could smell the sour scent of fear, but the panicky voices that usually accompanied those who succumbed to it were absent. She paused briefly, inhaling deeper. Her nose filtered the dozens of scents. Her brain flushed old memories to the fore. Hours of training, of learning how to recognise materials by their scent alone. Oil was present. Powerfully present, even through the scent of fear. The oil used for ballistic weaponry. Her mind ran simulations. She placed herself in their scenario. Maximised her chances of survival. Applied her tactical knowledge. There will be barricades, she knew. They are armed and dangerous and waiting for me. The hallway is an open killzone. A threat She made a mental note of it, then ran past the opening. Slowly. Deliberately so. They would have spotted her, ever so briefly. She wasn't sure it would work, it was only a theory, but one that needed testing. She would return for them. Soon. For now, they were not her priority. They would remain there, after all. Prey, caged up and helpless. First the others, she thought, her objectives clear. Then them.
"I saw something!"
"Hush!"
"Sir, I know I saw something."
"I know, Grist, I saw it too. Now shut up and keep aiming."
"Did you see how fast it moved?"
"Grist, shut up," the commander hissed.
"Sir... was that... was that—"
"You will stow it, Grist," his superior threatened. The man looked away from the small hole in the barricade for long enough to give the officer a withering glare.
"Right... Sorry sir," came the demure response. The commander nodded, placated by Grist's acquiescence.
Then the screams resumed. Closer this time.
It is peculiar, X-12845621 noted. She had been briefed of the three main reactions to an unexpected situation by undisciplined soldiers; fight, flight or freeze, but she had not expected that so few people would chose the logical solution of fighting back. She had slowed down her attacks to further put this theory to the test, knowing that the lower levels were now completely devoid of life and that there was no chance of people escaping past her. Still, the result of the experiment baffled her. People were trampling one another in a desperate bid to get away from her. They should have already been aware that they could not escape that way. Their only chance, as they would view it, was to overwhelm her through numbers. Yet there came no such attempt. Occasionally a man would launch himself at her in such an attempt, but the attacks were solitary and futile. They did not rely on tactics at all. They were blindly panicking. No discipline, no reason, just wild, blind abandon. It defeated her most optimistic prediction, and that annoyed her. Making wrong estimates was dangerous.
She would have to learn much to ensure that such a situation would not repeat itself, and this was the perfect learning opportunity. The way fear paralysed these people, sometimes forced them to sit still while she slowly approached them, was wondrous. It made her mission much easier. She would have to find a way to accurately recreate similar circumstances to add this tactic to her abilities, and later on to the rest of her unit.
She was beginning to see a connection between damage and fear. The more damage that she inflicted, the more afraid the survivors would become. Illogical, but the evidence was undeniable. Crushing a man's neck and dropping his corpse did not inflict the same level of paralysis and panic as crushing a man's skull and showering the surroundings with grey matter. It seemed there was a direct correlation between how many organs and how much blood was displaced from the inside of the body to the outside, and how much fear those who witnessed it emitted. Screams were the same. Wounded men screaming in pain had a similar effect.
Both these discoveries clashed directly with how the Novican soldiers on Lufer had acted. They had grown more aggressive in response when facing such circumstances. Fear had remained present, but had not overruled. They had sometimes lost tactical cohesion, but not always, yet they had always grown more aggressive as an individual, and often more dangerous as a result. Here... The word "tactics" could not even be applied to her current targets.
She thought of the armed men below. Was that the difference? The guard had been afraid, but he had acted similarly to the soldiers. If being armed made a difference, was it possible to create a situation where blind terror would overrule training? She assumed it was, which lead to the important question.
Could she reliably employ it as a tactic?
Her gaze went to a small group of survivors, who were huddling down in the far corner of the office.
Her mind made up, she marched towards them.
The screams refused to die away now. They were hurled down hallways, echoed through the darkness and terrified all those who listened. Grubolo felt his liver fold in on itself and he found himself moving towards a corner subconsciously, towards the illusionary safety of the walls.
"Sir," Grist began, but he was cut short.
"Listen!" he whispered. "There's footsteps. Survivors. They're running."
"You're not suggesting we try to save the—" Grist began, his eyes wide as saucers at the thought of venturing out into the dark.
"No! Hell no! We're staying put!" the commander shook his head. "Just keep your gun trained on that hallway. The moment you see anything, anything, coming this way, you open fire. Don't blind fire, but conserve your ammo."
"Sir," came a muted acknowledgement.
"Get ready men," the commander said, ignoring how the screams were being silenced one by one as they came closer.
X-12845621 darted past the last survivor, jumping in front of the terrified woman. The terrified office worker screamed in blind panic and chose the one path left open to her; the guarded hallway. Not a moment later a series of gunshots resounded and the last of her targets not in the room ahead fell to the ground, dead. She heard shouts of cease fire and felt the smell of fear intensify. Good.
She reached out and grabbed the leg of the woman, staying in cover. The darkness made it hard to see for her targets, but what few rays of light that slipped around the corners illuminated enough of the hallway that they could see the corpse being pulled off. The scent grew even denser and X-12845621 was pleased. Then she tore off the woman's foot and threw it down the hallway, with enough force that it thumped against the barricade.
"What... What was that?" Grist asked. He turned on his tac light and immediately wished he hadn't. His pale skin coloured green and he turned around to vomit. "No..." he whispered, begged. "No, no, no, no, no!"
Another disgusting ripping sound, followed by an even worse meaty 'thunk'.
The commander froze. He had tried, dammit. He had tried so damned hard to maintain discipline. The enemy was Imperial. They were supposed to be human, dammit. But nothing about that creature on the other end of the hallway was human. It was casually ripping apart a corpse. As if it was a bloody horror show!
Another thunk.
He didn't want to look. Didn't want to turn on their lights in a bid so they could see the enemy coming. Couldn't even bring himself to yell at the still vomiting Grist to turn off his damned light.
Another thunk.
And another.
And another.
Then something sailed past the barricade, bounced off one of his officers' back and rolled to a stop just behind them. It had left behind a trail of something warm and sticky. He thought he knew the smell of blood. He had seen it in dozens of cases, had been in enough shootings to be familiar with it. He had been wrong. Then Grist's tac light fell on the object and a woman's head became visible, her mouth locked in a silent scream, her eyes frozen in pure, unspeakable horror.
Half the people manning the barricade bolted. Some tried to climb to their feet, falling over themselves in an attempt to do so. Others crawled away. Others just stared at it mutely, their brains unable to fully comprehend what they were seeing.
"Eyes forward," he said. Or tried to say. He couldn't force the words out of his mouth. Couldn't even look away. He felt his arms lose strength, his weapon slowly sinking to the ground. The screams began. The room descended in a panic. He didn't hear it. All he could do was gaze into those dead eyes. Were they looking at him? Screaming at him to get away, knowing there was no escape for him, just like there had been no escape for her?
He didn't hear the footsteps as the monster walked down the hallway. Didn't see Grist put his pistol to his own head and pull the trigger. Didn't see how the tables were pushed backwards, as if they were no more than a minor hindrance.
He didn't even see the curious, inhuman eyes of the Imperial as they studied him.
His eyes remain glued to those of the poor woman, even as he joined her in death.