Ricky gazed up out of the window and saw the drones following in tight formation high above the train car.
“What are the chances those drones are a coincidence?” Ricky asked the rest of his companions over his shoulder.
“Zero” Bingo returned quickly. “Those drones are following us.”
“Someone get the window.” Ricky nodded towards the glass before turning briefly to regard the three drunken passengers sitting on the bench across from them. They recoiled in visible fear when they saw Ricky pull his M1 Axiom machine pistol from under his vest.
This fear intensified when Bingo pulled back his fist and punched through the window, which exploded a rain of glass inside the cab as the sudden blast of wind rushed inside the new opening at over one hundred fifty miles an hour. Ricky leaned his pistol out the window and let loose a burst aimed at the drones above.
The three drunken Titans screamed. In the wastes between the cities, where violent gangs battled for territory and the right to survive, guns were a way of life, but for the city dwelling Titans, many went their entire lives without ever seeing one. To have one suddenly brought out in a public space and begin barking fire in an enclosed space was frightening. The possession of weapons inside city limits was strictly regulated and prohibited.
Ricky kept firing sporadic bursts out the window, though without using assisted targeting, the smaller moving targets some thirty yards away were relatively safe. Rocco was beside his brother a moment later, his own E-pistol powering on.
“Stop screaming.” Amiga insisted calmly as she came over to stand before the other three passengers. They seemed to instantly sober, though possibly because they assumed she also was armed, as they had no indication of the Foxen’s true nature. She may have been a nearly supernatural powerhouse, but didn’t look any different than any other Foxen female.
Ricky fired a few more bursts as his brother came alongside him to find a space at the window and fired a burst also. Ricky finally managed to hit one of the small drones, but the train was traveling so fast that he didn’t get to see the satisfying conclusion of the Zenith toy crashing to the ground.
“They aren’t firing back.” Ricky suddenly realized. “Why aren’t they firing back?”
“They’re chasing.” Bingo also leaned to gaze up out of the now open window.
“They have GPS.” Eligah, who was now on the floor, his arms still covering his head from the glass. “Maybe these don’t need to attack, they’re just following.”
“Sending a signal to reinforcements.” Bingo agreed, his large Etcher pistol now in his grip. “They don’t need to attack, just follow us.”
Ricky fired again, followed by Rocco and Bingo, the cyborg hit a second one, which fell spinning to the ground.
“That means they’ll likely have the station this train is going to surrounded. We fell into a trap.”
Amiga looked up towards the countdown ticker above the sealed door. It displayed a little more than three minutes until they reached the next station. Thinking quickly, she reached up and pulled the emergency brake lever.
The train car immediately put on the brakes, sending a shower of sparks and smoke into the air as the large machinery worked to stop the car’s momentum.
“This isn’t our stop!” One of the drunk females, who looked like a gopher but some of her features were masked behind her clothing protested.
“To the sun!” Amiga rolled her eyes. “It is now!”
The Foxen could tell the brakes would not slow the train car before it slid even more dangerously close to what by now they were all suspecting was a setup and went into action. She forced open the door while an emergency alarm began sounding its protest that opening the door while the vehicle was in motion was not allowed. She then grabbed hold of the high speed trolley and planted her feet outside on the ground.
Amiga’s boots dug into the tracks, the momentum taking her with the vehicle for a few dozen feet before she was able to get her balance and lift the car completely off the ground. The soles of her boots suffered some damage, but once the vehicle left the ground, so too much of it’s momentum stopped carrying it forward and transferred directly into the super powered Titan instead. Amiga’s biceps and shoulders bulged under the strain, but she managed to stop the forward momentum and then placed the traincar back down on the tracks.
Ricky was moving before the car even came to a complete stop and leaped out of the vehicle shooting up at the drones, now his Net-comm monocle was providing target assist and his shot percentage was now over fifty percent and climbing. Bingo was just behind him, and between the two of them, the drones were falling from the sky like electronic rain.
“Sorry for the inconvenience.” Eligah responded sympathetically to the other three passengers, who seemed to have been properly traumatized by the event. They were covering their heads and trembling all over, if they even noticed the old Titan, they gave no indication.
Expecting a little bit of target practice, the tables soon turned on the group of outlaws as the drones received new programming and instantly went from a follow and monitor routine into attack mode. Even with the multiple drones the Titans had shot down out of the sky, there were still around ten left immediately overhead, and more were racing to join them from multiple directions.
Each one of the drones’ panels shifted slightly, the wings dropped down into a lower positioning, a few of them lengthened also, but a submachine gun spun around from their inner housings and exposed into a front facing position. They began opening fire on every Titan in the area.
Amiga had forced the train car into a stop in a much quieter and less populated area, but the act of a Titan picking up and suddenly stopping a train trolley was quite enough to garner attention from those that were nearby, and a few came outside who had witnessed the incredible feat from a window. When the shooting began many cried out in absolute terror and fled for their lives, but that’s when a strange thing happened to the other half of the onlookers. The easy living of this city must have done something terrible to the denizens of Furwood’s survival instincts, because a good amount of them simply began recording the shootout with their Net-comms and commentating live to the Titannet.
Rocco hit the button to activate his flight pack as soon as he stepped out of the doors to the traincar that had been forced open and now looked to be hopelessly damaged beyond repair.
“Fly!” The large Procyon yelled the command, and his flight pack activated and engaged, lifting his body weight into the air.
Rocco flew up right through the middle of the heaviest concentration of aerial drones, causing them to scatter off balance. They didn’t seem to have programming that included flying Titans ready to respond to. Rocco’s Axiom machine pistol barked a stream of bullets as he went streaking by, and with a shower of sparks, two more dropped to the ground.
“Shitfire!” Bingo growled instinctively, dodging to the side of a burst of small caliber bullets from a drone aimed at him and returning fire with two rounds of his own that blew the wing off the drone.
“What now?” Amiga moved in front of Eligah, who was now also off the train and trying to cross the street. Several submachine gun bullets pinged harmlessly off her skin as the elderly Titan used her for cover. She was unfortunately unarmed and had no way of striking back at the buzzing drones, until she caught sight of the wreckage of a fallen one. She quickly moved to scoop it up and throw it as hard as she could at the nearest airborn enemy. The drone easily managed to gracefully move aside, but the piece of metal continued on into the distance until it flat out disappeared from view.
“Impressive throw.” Eligah complimented her.
“Getting more readings. A lot more readings.” Bingo answered while turning to face down the street where several huge, armored vehicles were coming to a stop.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Side doors on the vehicles opened and automated “drawers” extended from them. In mere seconds, these drawers were depositing folded up Delta series MV1 Battle drones from the magnetized slots in the drawers. They fell to the ground and immediately unfolded, deploying into action.
The street was instantly a swarm of angry bullets, a storm that was raining down from the submachine guns mounted on the drones, which were being reinforced by dozens more from the East, and rapidly growing numbers of battle drones.
“Shitfire!” Ricky seconded Bingo’s earlier assessment of their predicament.
Amiga had now nearly crossed the width of the street, which was now transformed into a warzone, the cacophony of single shot and burst fire weapons were singing a chorus into the night, echoing a chaotic song several blocks away. Many of the onlookers who were using the dangerous situation as a way of trying to garner more online attention were ruthlessly cut down by the Zenith drones.
Amiga herself was able to protect Eligah with her own body, the small caliber bullets felt like little tickles as they bounced off her, at worse some felt like stings. But just as Eligah ran out and crossed the rest of the divide between the street and a side alley, something hit the young Foxen that actually did hurt, and even managed to knock her back a step from the force.
“Damn.” She muttered, seeing the cause of the damage coming around from one of the rear deployment vehicles still parked in the middle of the road ahead of them, and providing cover for the nearly hundred MV1 battle drones now approaching them. “CMIs”.
Cybernetic Mobile Infantry units, hulking heavily armored walking tanks had deployed from one of the rear vehicles, six that she could see were now coming in hot, with 160mm cannons on their arm, armed with HE rounds judging by the light fire surrounding her after the sudden burst hit her.
Ricky had found some cover behind a sturdy passenger van parked along the side of the road. The steel of the vehicle had been enough to deflect much of the small caliber submachine gun rounds raining down from the aerial drones overhead, as they kept him pinned in place. One tried to flank him but he was ready, as soon as it came into view of his Net-comm targeting system, he let loose a burst that turned it into smoking scrap scattered across the pavement.
But then one of the CMI cannons fired his direction, he heard it and immediately ran the opposite direction with his head down. The van may have been sturdy enough to deflect most of the incoming pistol fire, but the HE cannon round tore straight through it and exploded, the blast and heat wave caught Ricky up and tossed him through the air violently. Thinking quickly, he yelled into his flightpack, and instead of fighting the blast, he used the momentum to carry him away quicker than on the merits of his pack alone.
“Retreat the opposite way!” Ricky spoke into his Net-comm, hoping that at least Rocco and Bingo had enough sense to be in their private server room by now. “They have that road completely blocked.”
Ricky’s flight pack made him fast, much faster than normal passenger vehicles, and he was crazy enough to push it, even when flying low with way too many obstacles in the way to be anything resembling safe. He flew several hundred yards away from the sudden warzone that had appeared in the middle of Furwood, only to realize their team had been split up in the confusion.
A few light security drones, they were equipped with far less armor and a different color scheme than the Zenith black, probably some branch of local Federated Territory police bots were now firing at him from one side of the street as he slowed to look around.
Ricky managed to dive behind another vehicle for cover, this one appeared to have been just simply abandoned in the motorway, and several pinging sounds like large hail began to sound from the body of the car. He managed to ease around the side and return a burst that went wide. He ducked again from a hail of security drone fire and then shot his machine pistol again. This time he managed to spray an arc that took down both of the flimsy bots.
In the near distance, down the street in the direction that he was now retreating, he suddenly saw a chaotic display, dozens of flashing police lights filled the street and the neighborhood, growing closer to the commotion, trying to navigate through the crowded streets. He waited a moment, hoping that the others were not far behind him, but none of the others emerged from the gunfire he had just escaped.
Ricky began imagining the worst. His brother and the others might have been cut down by the gathering army of enemies that wanted them dead. He had no time to wonder how they had tracked them halfway across the world to the Federated Territories, or to debate himself whether the others might have simply went another direction. With the lightning storm of flashing police and security vehicles heading towards him, he knew only that he had no immediate backup to assist him.
Ricky took a look around the street and saw a busy building behind him. The sudden whizz of a bullet flying past a few dozen yards to his right told him he was out of time for debating strategies. He hit the button to temporarily power down his flight path and began running towards the large well-lit building. He barely had time to read a sign out front that identified this building as a museum of natural history before he crashed through the doors and immediately tried to get lost in the sizable crowd within.
As Ricky was headed through the door to the museum, down the street in the thick of the fighting, Eligah and Amiga were running into a dark alley as the sound of a full fledge war exploded from the street behind them, scores of gunfire bursts sounding out all at once. One of the large cannon rounds from a CMI exploded a few feet away from Amiga’s head, sending a shower of bricks and mortars raining down upon her and blowing a hole in the side of the building.
“Eligah!” Amiga tried her best to try to shout after the rapidly escaping old Titan over the din of battle. “You’re gonna have to go on through the alley and try to find a place to hide or a way through to escape. Contact the others later…I have to do some hero shit or we’re all gonna die.”
Eligah did not turn back around to face the Foxen, one hundred percent of his energy was working towards moving as fast as he possibly could deeper into the alley. At his age he was neither spry, agile or fast, and he immediately sensed that she was correct in her assumption. There was no way that he would be able to outrun the automated robots, he was already sucking wind so badly the edges of his vision were cloudy white noise. He did manage simply to lift a thumb in the air to acknowledge his agreement.
As Amiga now changed focus and spun her body back towards the opening of the alleyway, she found herself facing down the closest CMI, which was leveling the massive cannon forearm directly at her. She pressed the button to fire up the final flight pack, nearly forgetting about it in all of the confusion. But she knew that before she could shout the phrase that would activate thrust and propel her forward, the cannon would fire. It had her dead to rights and all she could do was cringe and wait for the blast…
Only the loud sound like a crack of thunder exploded, but went wide, exploding inside the other building outlining the alleyway. A small, fanged instrument of fury leaped atop the mobile infantry robot, alive with a flurry of strikes that send the bot off balance. Amiga had fully embraced her death at that moment, or at the least perhaps a dismemberment…she really didn’t know what it would take to actually kill her at this point, and it took her a moment to realize what it was that had crashed into the huge hulking robot.
It was a bionic Wolverine, lashing out in a furious rampage, his cybernetic enhanced muscles struck the robot with the force of a giant piston, a crane, or a bus traveling at highway speeds. Only unlike all of those things, which were large and cumbersome, the Wolverine was supernaturally fast, like her, and within a moment of his unrelenting anger, the tanklike robot lay in a smouldering, crumpled heap.
Still Bingo continued punching, the only thing that finally caused his barrage to cease was the sight of a line of MV1 battle drones striding towards the mouth of the alley, followed closely by about six more CMIs. As fast and strong as he was, he was not invincible, and the enemy group was in tight formation. He had little chance of surviving a head on…
Amiga blasted past him without warning, a soft warm glow trailing from the flight pack on her back. In the confusion, the Wolverine had become separated from the others, except for her, he had no idea where any of the others were, or if they were even still alive at that point.
As Bingo watched the awe-inspiring young Foxen crash through the formation of CMIs, knocking several to the ground and continuing past at a high rate of speed, he knew that he would not be able to go toe to toe with the column of enemies, but that did not mean he could not do damage. The cyborg instead fired a few shots at the smaller Zenith battle drones and ran further into the alley, keeping his eyes open for a good place to set up an ambush of some kind.
* * * *
“Sir, we found an…anomaly.”
Sabre Khan clicked the button to answer the communicator.
“I’ll be right up.”
Sabre did not rush back to the bridge right away, he instead finished his workout in his cabin. Staying in shape was important, especially when the pirate never knew when he might be called upon to defend himself in a life-or-death conflict. The Skullia-One was not equipped with any type of state-of-the-art exercise equipment, he instead settled mainly for bodyweight exercises. When he was finished, he exited the captain’s cabin and went up to the bridge.
“What’s going on?” Sabre asked immediately upon crossing over to the captain’s chair.
“Sir, I think we may have actually found something.”
Sabre walked over to the crew member seated at a sensor station.
“Show me.”
The crew member adjusted the screen and projected a holo image above it. A 3D map of the surrounding asteroid field popped up, spun around and centered on a specific location. With thousands of miles of asteroids in every direction, it was difficult to distinguish one from any other.
“Our scans show iron, nickel, iridium, palladium, platinum, gold, magnesium, osmium, ruthenium and rhodium. But here…” The crew member pointed at the asteroid where the holo image was centered upon. “We found trace elements of Plutonium on our scans.”
The fierce red wolf pirate scowled at the much smaller Titan operator before him at the console. Clearly he was in no mood for a science lesson, and this was reflected on his face.
“So?”
“Plutonium is not found naturally. Especially not when combined with trace elements of Uranium. I think we found something Titan-made here.”
“Full speed ahead and get the boarding craft ready. Expect resistance.”