* * *
MIRAI ONE PAVILION
Joaquim sprinted out of the room, rolled once and slid in beside Adlai Weiss, ignoring the Glaser the man pointed at his head. “Get ready.”
He reared back and lobbed a grenade over the barricade and the heads of the defending dynes. It landed almost at the entry doors and exploded, knocking two attacking dynes off their feet and hopefully blowing some holes in them.
“Lacese? What the hells are you doing here?”
He glanced at Weiss as he followed up the grenade with a blast from the assault rifle Dominic had brought him. “So I’m sitting on a bar stool at Rico’s, catching up with an old buddy of mine, when Blake Fucking Satair strolls by leading an army of Justice dynes in the direction of this here building. Since I figured whatever he was up to was not good news for the good guys, I thought I should come rescue you.”
“Rescue…me?” Weiss finally pointed his Glaser in a direction where it could be of use and fired past the barricade as one of the attackers climbed back to its feet and prepared to unleash a new barrage.
“Rescue anybody here I liked or…anyway, I guess Perrin has vouched you in. It’s your lucky day.”
Weiss winced as stray laser fire streaked overhead and debris rained down on them from the ceiling. “I respectfully beg to differ. What have you brought?”
“For one….” He counted down in his head until on cue, a powerful blast tore through the wall in front of them, creating a field of rubble that doubled as further protection for them. He gestured behind him. “I brought her.”
Ava’s skin shimmered from the active defensive shield she’d reluctantly installed after the Platform infiltration. “Where do you need me?”
“Use that new shield of yours to join the defenders up ahead and finish the damaged attackers off. Maggie, give her some support.”
“Got it.” The sisters hurried off into the billowing smoke toward the heart of the firefight.
Weiss stared at them both, then finally seemed to absorb the revised situation. “Nika’s facing tough resistance at the west entrance. If your people help me clean up here, we’ll head her way.”
Joaquim cracked his neck and motioned several more people over to the barricade. “Dominic, escort Parc up to the data vault so he’ll stop hyperventilating about the precious data. Ryan, send IkeBot with them, but you and WheatleyBot stay here. Let’s move up to our new barricade and see if Ava’s left us anything to shoot.”
They left Ava and Maggie at the east entrance with two Justice officers to dispatch any late arrivals and trekked through a long field of smoke and debris toward the west entrance.
What they found when they arrived no longer resembled an entrance to anything. The ceiling and possibly the second floor above where doors used to be had completely caved in.
On the plus side, the wreckage provided plenty of cover. Amidst a blast of dust stirred up by an enemy dyne firing into the rubble, Joaquim scrambled forward and landed next to Nika, where she and Dashiel had set up a defensible position in one corner.
Nika spun around, bracing herself against a chunk of ceiling as her dust-coated face screwed up in surprise. “Joaquim?”
“Who else did you expect?” He jerked a greeting to Ridani, dropped to his knees and fired over the rubble.
“Me, probably.” Weiss stumbled up to them and collapsed against the wall. “What’s the situation?”
“Wish I could say, but our line of sight is for shit through this mess. We could really use a drone to scope out the attackers.”
“Did somebody request a drone?” Ryan crawled toward them with WheatleyBot buzzing around his head.
Nika laughed, then started coughing. “Your sense of timing is impeccable, all of you.” She motioned haphazardly in the air. “Do your thing, WheatleyBot.”
Ryan made a more deliberate gesture, and the drone whizzed upward and darted over the rubble. Ryan’s gaze blanked for a moment. “Four dynes are operational on our side, but six on theirs. Four Asterions attackers as well, but one’s on the ground and—whoa!”
WheatleyBot careened back their way, smoke pouring out of a crack in its frame, and landed hard on the floor next to Ryan, who petted it reassuringly. “Yeah. That looks like all the players at present—wait a second. Parc says they need backup at the data vault. Intruders busted through the windows up on the sixth floor. How do I get there?”
Joaquim nudged Weiss in the side. “Tell him how to get there.”
“I should go—” A blast shook the foundation of the rubble, sending chunks of concrete cracking apart and tumbling toward them, and everyone jumped back.
“No, you should stay here. Tell him.”
“Right.” Weiss pointed back the way they’d come. “There’s a service lift down the first hallway to the left. I’ll send you the access code and let Selene know you’re on the way with a drone.”
“Got it.” Ryan grabbed WheatleyBot under his arm and hurried faster than safety dictated down the hallway then disappeared.
Joaquim squinted at the others. “If we add our firepower to that of the defenders on the other side of this barrier, the four of us can tip the odds and finish these assholes off. But we’ve got to find a way through this blockage, or we’re just twiddling our thumbs waiting to be blown up.” He checked his pack. “I’ve got one grenade left.”
Weiss might have frowned; Joaquim couldn’t tell. “If we blow a hole in the rubble, we risk simply opening a path for the attackers to get through, after which they’ll have free reign of the building.”
“Not if we don’t let them get through. Weiss, can you warn your dynes to get clear of the right third of this pile, then to prepare for a charge by the attackers?”
“I can…done.”
Joaquim nodded, and everyone moved farther backwards. He waited until they were five meters away from the bulk of the wreckage. “One hole coming up.”
He pitched the grenade hard into the rubble, and it lodged between two slabs of ceiling material.
Everyone turned away and shielded themselves, but the detonation still sent an avalanche of debris raining down on them. In the aftermath, the dust grew so thick they could hardly breathe. But they needed to do more than breathe—they needed to move.
Nika ripped a strip of cloth off her shirt and tied it around the lower half of her face. “Defensive shields to full. Let’s get to the other side while we have the advantage of surprise.” Then she was scrambling through the small, jagged opening in the rubble the grenade had created.
Joaquim followed.
They stumbled out the other side into a firefight starting to lean in their favor. Three more attackers were down, giving the machine advantage to the defenders. Now, with their arrival, they had an Asterion advantage as well. One of the defending dynes grappled in close combat with an attacker; its left arm broke free and aimed for the head of the attacker—
—all the dynes, defending and attacking alike, dropped to the floor.
Weiss shouted off Joaquim’s left shoulder. “EMP!”
But no energy pulse tingled his skin or shut down his systems. His shields didn’t so much as fizzle. “I don’t think so—get down!”
Laser fire shot past them as they dropped to the jagged, uneven floor. Joaquim stretched out one arm and manifested as wide an energy shield as possible. “More attackers are moving in!”
Weiss crawled outside of the shield’s protection and leapt to his feet, Glaser steadied in both hands. “Drop your weapons and raise your hands in the air!”
As if that was going to work…. Muffled scuffling answered the order, followed by a new round of laser fire.
Joaquim pinged Nika. Watch my back. He shrunk the shield down to a manageable size and crept to the right wall, silently crawling over an inert dyne on the way. One of the Asterion attackers stood near what must have once been the entry doors, eyes darting between something outside and the scene inside.
Joaquim dropped the shield, extended his bl
ade from his wrist, activated his kamero filter and closed the distance between them. His blade pierced the man’s port and sliced all the way through to the front of his throat, killing all functionality instantly. He withdrew the blade and eased the body quietly to the floor.
Ηq (visual, 70%) | scan.infrared(240°:80°)
The outlines of two more Asterions appeared, both slinking closer to the pile of rubble and its defenders. One positioned themselves flush against the wall, leaned out and aimed his Glaser at Weiss’ head three meters away.
Joaquim sprinted forward, barely avoided tripping over an upturned slab of concrete, and drove his blade into the small of the man’s back. They both tumbled to the floor.
Laser fire streaked above his head, but he couldn’t worry about that. His arm and blade were twisted under the man’s body and pinned painfully. The man’s gun arm swung wildly for him, firing blindly. Joaquim slammed a forearm into the man’s wrist, knocking the Glaser away.
The man’s left hand jammed its way up Joaquim’s chest to close around his throat. Fingers dug viciously into his windpipe, and for a second he feared it was about to get ripped it out.
He focused on what feeling remained in his pinned arm and with a grunt wrenched the blade around. The hand at his throat fell away.
He shoved the man to the side and dragged his arm free, then rolled the man onto his back.
Blood gurgled out from the lips of Blake Satair; malice shone hot from his dying eyes. “You….”
“Whatever. You’re dead.” He retrieved the discarded Glaser from the floor, pointed it at the man’s forehead and fired.
A hand grabbed hold of one of his arms as he swayed unsteadily. Then another, on the other side. He gazed woozily at Nika, then at Weiss. “We get them all?”
“I think so, but we need to confirm. Dashiel, can you help him?”
Ridani appeared beside Nika. He didn’t look much better than Joaquim felt, but he didn’t seem to be having any trouble standing as he eased in and took Nika’s place holding him up. “Come on, Lacese. Let’s find a wall and check you for holes.”
Weiss patted him on his broken shoulder, which was just uncalled for, then he and Nika vanished into the haze toward the blown-out entrance.
Ridani helped him pick his way through the debris to a span of wall. As he eased down to the floor, he glowered at Satair’s body. “That was damn satisfying. He killed the love of my life, you know.”
Ridani had the decency to act somber as he felt along the length of Joaquim’s twisted arm for broken bones. “No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry. He’s hurt a lot of people.”
“I’d say now he won’t hurt any more, but you all will wake him back up in a new body in a few days, won’t you? Put him back in a cell he’ll break out of.”
“We’ll make sure he doesn’t break out of the next one.”
“Uh-huh.” He glared at his right arm. The blade mechanism must have gotten jammed, because he couldn’t get the blade to retract. “Just fashion me a sling or something. And put a sock over the tip of the blade.”
“A sock?”
“Unless you have a better idea for how to keep me from slicing open everyone I pass. We need to ensure the first floor’s clear then get upstairs. I assume people are trapped pretty much all over the building.”
Nika and Weiss reemerged through the ruined entrance and came over to them. Nika scowled at his arm. “All the intruders are down on this side. This makes twice now you’ve popped up out of nowhere looking like shit.”
Joaquim started to shrug, but thought better of it. “I do enjoy making an entrance.”
Weiss actually chuckled. “You succeeded tonight, no question. Reinforcements will be here in sixty seconds to secure the perimeter, but we still need to secure the interior. Whoever is up to it, heading upstairs is a good idea. Selene’s reporting they’ve subdued the intruders at the data vault, but I’d prefer additional guns to clear the floor. Nika, can you check on Spencer and those he took to the fifth floor? I’m going to the fourth to check on Perrin and her group.” His eyes flitted to Joaquim as he said her name, but he didn’t hesitate or stumble over it.
Joaquim breathed raggedly past his bruised-but-at-least-not-ripped-out windpipe and nodded at Weiss as Ridani helped him climb to his feet. “Yeah. You should do that. Now, where’s my sling and my sock?”
34
* * *
MIRAI ONE PAVILION
Spencer, what’s your location?
Fifth floor, east wing. If you’re headed my way, bring help, because we have a problem.
And she’d thought this was over. What happened?
Before all the attackers shut down, they blew apart the wall and part of the ceiling, blocking access to the conference room. I was in the hall, but everyone else is trapped inside.
Everyone else included Maris. She filtered away the panic that surged. On my way.
Nika sent another ping as she stepped on the lift.
Josie, Geoff, if you’re free of hostiles, meet me on the fifth floor, and bring whatever gear and weapons you can find.
Geoff responded. Josie took a hit to the leg. She’ll be fine. I’ll bring Maggie.
Maggie. A stab of guilt flared in her chest; she’d hardly had a chance to so much as say ‘welcome back’ to the woman since her regen. A wave of nostalgia chased the guilt. NOIR, The Chalet…a simpler time, before the world went mad.
Sounds good, Geoff.
The lift lurched to a crooked stop just short of the fifth floor. A chunk of the shaft wall had crumbled and lodged in the machinery, preventing the lift from traveling any higher. She hauled herself up and over debris partially blocking the opening, and found herself in the aftermath of a military-scale bombardment. Damn.
Satair had clearly intended to take out as many Advisors as possible, though she couldn’t say—and didn’t care—whether his motives had been mere base revenge or a more strategic desire to remove as many obstacles as possible to him and Luciene retaking control of the government. “Spencer?”
Motion to her right caught her attention; an arm waved through the dust-clogged air. She hurried down the hall and found Spencer on his knees beside a towering mound of cement, plaster and structural supports that stretched to the ceiling and beyond.
A thick layer of dust coated his skin, with multiple bloody rivulets streaming through the dust. A clot of blood soaked his hairline, and his left sleeve had darkened to crimson.
She frowned as she crouched in front of him. “You look terrible.”
“Well, a good portion of the ceiling fell on me, so I would.” He grimaced as he forced a half-meter chunk of ceiling off the pile and sent it rolling down the hall.
He was trying to dig out the people trapped in the room by hand. Admirable, but it was never going to work. She asked the question that had hovered on her tongue all the way here. “Maris?”
“She’s functional. Injured, I think, though she won’t admit it.”
“And the others?”
“She said Basquan, Forchelle and three others are unconscious. Everyone else is ambulatory.”
“All right. Here’s what we’re going—”
A commotion erupted to their left as Maggie and Geoff scrambled past debris and hurried toward them. Nika stood. “Tell me you have grenades.”
Geoff patted a bag on his hip. “We raided the armory.”
“Fantastic.” She studied the wall, then turned back to Spencer. “How wide does the room stretch?”
Understanding dawned on his pained features. He gingerly stood and picked his way over to her, then took an additional five steps and flattened a hand on the wall. “At least to here.”
It was closer to the towering debris than she preferred. Risky. But the conference room lay near the center of the building and enjoyed no exterior windows, which meant this was their best option. “Have Maris tell everyone inside to get to the far opposite corner.”
She took one of the grenades from Geoff, then motioned
him and Maggie farther away and studied the wall. The pile of debris. The dimensions of the hallway. She’d overplayed this sort of gambit at The Chalet and nearly gotten one of her people killed for her efforts…she dialed down the setting on the grenade. She only needed a hole half a meter wide, after all. A little bigger would be better, but not at the expense of bringing the remainder of the ceiling down on them.
Spencer nodded as he joined Maggie and Geoff. “They’re ready.”
She placed the grenade at the base of the wall and activated it, then leapt away and sprinted down the hallway—
—the blast slammed into her back like a shockwave, sending her sprawling face-first to the floor at Geoff’s feet.
“Oof!” She groaned but pulled her makeshift mask up over her mouth and nose and started crawling back the way she’d come.
Spencer limped past her and dropped to his knees in front of what might be a reasonable-sized hole in the wall. Too much dust clogged the air to tell for certain.
A head appeared through the jagged hole, followed by shoulders. Spencer helped—Nika squinted—someone she recognized but didn’t know as they struggled the rest of the way through the hole and into the hallway. They gestured a thanks and climbed to their feet, only to take two steps and sag against the wall.
The shock of curly black hair that appeared next was unmistakable even coated in dust. Spencer took Maris’ hand and carefully eased her through the hole. Once on this side she rose to her knees, then basically fell into Spencer’s arms. Her left sleeve was torn open, revealing a nasty gash in her arm, and a more worrisome bloodstain decorated the white fabric of her shirt above her waist.
She blinked up at Spencer. “You saved us.”
He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Actually, it was N—”
Nika chuckled to herself. “He certainly did. He’s a hero.”
Maris peered up at Nika and gave her a weak smile. She really didn’t look good.
Adlai, Selene, Harris, whoever’s available, we need to get first aid supplies to a central location—Conference Room 2-A if it’s secured—and send the injured there.
Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4) Page 83