“Well, don’t wait around for my sake. This was my idea,” Kaiden stated, a ripple of concern stirring.
“Of course, but this is also your command now. You helped me to the best of your abilities during my command, and now I shall do the same.”
“Keeping those bots off me and the doors wide open is more than enough. I’ll see you soon.” With that, he marched out the door, pausing for a moment as he looked down the hall. “Which way to the elevator?” he called back as the doors shut.
“Go to the lobby. They are down the left hall,” she answered over the comms.
“Appreciate it. Keep your eyes glued to me. You’re gonna see what having a little joy in your work looks like.”
Two guards walked up to the elevators on the fifteenth floor, preparing to finish their shift. As they waited for the elevator to arrive, they busied themselves with inspecting their guns or looking around at the décor—or lack thereof—around them.
They made terrible small talk.
The elevator dinged, announcing its arrival. One of the guards had focused on a piece of art on the wall when he heard a loud bang from somewhere in front of him. He hit the floor as he saw his partner fly back to land a few feet away with a hard thud. He struggled to get up and grab his rifle, but a heavy weight slammed into his back and kept him down. His expression a mixture of pain and consternation, he craned his neck to look up at an armored person in a mask and wide-brimmed hat holding a shotgun. The figure stood literally on top of him.
The stranger looked down. “Hey there, buddy. I’m looking for some knick-knack currently held by your tech department on this floor. You mind helping a nice guy out and pointing me in the right direction?”
The guard reached up to his helmet, activating his comms. “We got an intruder! Fifteenth floor,” he shouted.
Kaiden shook his head, drew his pistol, and fired down at the guard. “Terrible service. I even asked nicely,” he grumbled.
The alarm sounded. He heard other guards storming down the halls and heading his way. A quick glance above the elevators revealed glow strips lining the ceilings with messages announcing an intruder alert and that defense units had been activated and were on their way.
“Well, that won’t be too helpful.” Kaiden chuckled, removed a shock grenade from his belt, and pressed the trigger, holding it down. “For them, at least.”
Several guards entered the lobby, raising their guns at Kaiden. “Ah, good evening, gentleman—and lady, I see you over there.” Kaiden pointed in the direction of the female guard. “I need directions to your tech division on this floor. Now, who will oblige?”
“Get down, now,” one of them commanded, and a few more guards joined the line-up.
“Guess I’ll have to find it myself,” Kaiden lamented. “I know you’re all technically AI, but you could have had a heart and helped a poor fellow out. But since you’re going to be so rude, I won’t be needing your services.” He flung the shock grenade at the group, leaping back as soon as it left his grip. The guards were torn between trying to shoot him and trying to dodge the grenade. A few tried getting out of the way, but due to Kaiden priming it, it exploded only a couple seconds after he let go, shocking all the guards and stunning a couple of the heavies in the back of the group that Kaiden took out with a couple of rounds.
Chiyo stopped the lockdown activation quickly. She rewrote the commands for the defensive droid units, causing them to see the guards as hostile and ignore any other target. She leaned back as she watched Kaiden move rapidly through the floor, taking out several guards with ease on his way to the room.
“To your left, Kaiden. Take the hall to the left and then go right four doors down,” she advised over the comms.
“Thanks, Chiyo, What do you think so far?”
“Are you curious or looking for a compliment?”
“I’m honestly curious, I swear it.” She saw him lean around the corner as two guards rushed up the hall. He whipped around the wall and fired two shots. Almost simultaneously, the guards were knocked back as their armor split apart.
“I think that all this commotion is causing all the red flags in my mind to wave furiously, and that this is quite different to what I had planned when we first got in here.” She used her visor to issue commands to close off the stairway door and prevent a group of guards from entering.
“Well, that’s par for the course, obviously. But this has got to be thrilling, right?” Kaiden asked. He stopped as he saw a guardian robot roll past him. He watched it go by and turn, then begin to fire at a guard in the hallway behind him. “Got the robots already. Nice work.”
Chiyo switched screens to see a trio of hellcats running after a group of guards. “Thank you, but as for whether or not this is thrilling…I am alone in the room at the moment, so the action is quite comfortably far away from me.”
“But it’s fun as a spectator, right?” Kaiden pressed.
“You are fishing for compliments.”
“I’m only trying to prove that our future lives of explosive missions across the stars don’t have to be all numbers and monotony,” he explained. “And, I have to say, it absolutely boggles my mind that I have to debate that. Which way do I go now?” Kaiden looked around the hall as he popped the vent on his shotgun open.
“Take another right, second hall on the left, and straight down to the central room,” she directed. “I understand what you are trying to say, Kaiden. But you have to know that not everything you do will be like this. Sacrifices have to be made at some time, and during other times, it’s simply a matter of putting the mission before yourself.”
“Trust me, I’m well aware of those cases. Why do you think I’m cutting loose right now? My last mission was all about teamwork and working towards a common cause and all that junk. Still had fun, though. Until I was blown up.”
“You were blown up?”
“Yeah, that’s something else I’ll tell you about later. All I’m trying to say is—” Kaiden turned to see a guard hobble into view, looking like he’d been mauled by a hellcat. “You have to live a little…unlike this guy.” He fired a shot while holding the shotgun with one hand. The weapon spun out of his hand and into the air, hit the ceiling, and crashed to the floor as the shot hit the guard and knocked his helmet off in a spray of blood.
“Ow,” Kaiden whimpered as he rubbed his arm.
Chiyo saw this moment of buffoonery and responded with a slight chuckle. She looked at another monitor and saw a team of four guards headed her way. “Please hurry and finish the mission. It looks like I won’t be staying much longer.” She rerouted a couple of guardian droids to come her way.
“Yeah, right, I’ll get on that in a minute.” He winced as he made his way into the central room and looked around for the device. “Hey, Chief, what’s this thing look like again?”
“Onscreen,” Chief said, bringing up a display of the device. It was some sort of power core kept in a white briefcase. “What the hell are you doing? Showing off?”
“I’m having a laugh.” Kaiden rolled his shoulder as he searched for the container. “Most of my missions are these serious team exercises or solo rescue ops or something. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything how I like doing things—dancing around gunfire, taking your enemies head-on, that sort of deal.”
“Just don’t try to strike a pose and then get shot in the head or something. Your moments of idiocy kill me a little bit each time,” Chief muttered.
“You lose data bits or memory space instead of brain cells?” Kaiden chuckled, finally seeing the briefcase on a table next to a few other devices.
“Pity I can’t— Hey, I feel something.” Chief cautioned.
“What’s up? You sound rather serious,” Kaiden noted as he opened the briefcase to make sure the device was inside. Confirming that it was, he closed it, took the machine gun off his back, and used the magnetic strap to keep the case in place on his back.
“Give me a sec… Ah, dammit, I knew it.�
�� Chief growled his frustration.
“Knew what? Fill me in here,” Kaiden demanded, opening his machine gun and heading back to the lobby.
“Axiom Industries was a real place. A company owned by the Asiton corporation.”
“Asiton? You mean like the guys who created that big ass robot from the loadout training map?”
“The Reaver, yeah. I’m picking something up. It’s coming this way from outside the building.”
“It wasn’t in the glossary,” Kaiden pointed out.
“Neither was the Reaver if you recall. That didn’t stop it from showing up.”
“You think another one is here?” Kaiden increased his gait, running through the halls now.
“Something like it is. You need to get out there but send a warning to Chiyo first,” Chief advised.
“Chiyo, are you outside yet?” Kaiden asked, trying to retrace his steps as quickly as possible without drawing attention to himself.
“I am. Just made it out and heading to the retrieval point,” she responded.
“Get back inside. Chief says there’s something on the way,” he warned, his tone urgent.
“I didn’t see anything on the radar, and I blocked any requests for outside reinforcements. We should be— Wait, there is something coming. It’s in the sky and coming straight down towards the building.”
Kaiden finally found himself back in the elevator lobby. He looked down the hall and saw a row of windows. He ran over, activating the machine gun as he moved, and shot out one of the panes. Without further thought, he leaped from the building and fell the fifteen stories to the ground. The shocks and dampeners in his boots and leg armor absorbed most of the impact, but he still felt a thudding pain shaft through his legs. He ignored it and ran into the field, looking for Chiyo.
He saw her a couple of hundred yards ahead and raced over to her while looking up in the sky to see what was coming. What he saw caused him to stop in his tracks, his eyes wide. He yanked the case off his back and ran over to Chiyo, handing it to her.
“We won’t make it to the spot before it gets here. Get back inside and keep the device safe.”
“What about you?” she asked, a slight hitch in her voice as she processed everything.
“I’m going to keep whatever the hell that is busy, but I need you to see if you can figure out what it is and what we can do about it,” he explained in a rush as he watched the thing draw closer and closer. “I don’t think my rifle is gonna cut it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chiyo sprinted across the lot, heading back to the building from which she had just escaped. Her head raced with thoughts and ideas of how to deal with this incoming threat. Questions about where it came from and why it wasn’t in the description intruded, distracting her from the more immediate need to find a way to destroy it.
She would find out later; she always did. For now, she had to get the device to safety and find a way to help Kaiden.
He watched as the thing in the sky came spiraling down, but as he began to raise his machine gun, a thought stopped him.
One that Chief also decided to voice.
“You need to get the hell out of the way,” Chief commanded. “That thing will crash into the ground, so it’s your ass if you stay here.”
“That just dawned on me,” Kaiden admitted, holding the machine gun to his chest and sprinting away across the lot.
“Get close to the building,” Chief ordered. “It can still change direction and hit you.”
“Then why can’t it hit the building?” Kaiden yelled.
“Of course it can. But if this is part of the scenario, then that thing won’t attack the building itself. The Asiton droids were programmed to not attack anyone affiliated with Asiton Corporations.”
“I thought the Asiton wars began because the robots broke their programming and attacked humanity as a whole?” Kaiden replied frantically. This was so not the time for a history lesson.
“Let’s hope it hasn’t gotten that far. Move it!” Chief hollered.
Kaiden turned and ran toward the building, moving as fast as he could on his stiff legs.
“Impact in ten,” Chief announced.
Kaiden slid under a carrier just outside a loading dock, peering from beneath it at the object about to smash into the earth. He closed his eyes and braced for the impact. Instead, he felt a large rush of wind and heard a loud whirring, but no cracking of the ground or cars and trees sent whirling in the air.
He opened his eyes to see a large white machine. It looked like a stealth bomber with large wings on a triangular body, two massive, spinning blades on either wing keeping it afloat. The sharp triangular head held a single red-eye which currently focused on examining the lot as the robotic creature hovered a few feet from the ground.
“Oh, good, it’s only a robotic pterodactyl,” Kaiden joked.
“That’s an Asiton Lancer, one of the fastest robots capable of flight in its time,” Chief revealed without humor.
“Great. Now that I know what it is, how do I kill it?” he asked.
“Not with that dinky machine gun, that’s for sure.”
“Helpful,” Kaiden sneered. “Got something a bit more morale-boosting?”
“You still got that arc pistol, don’t ya?” Chief asked.
He reached to his hip and brought out the arc pistol. “Yeah, what about it? This thing is smaller than my machine gun.”
“Good things come in small packages.” His body began to shift, taking the form of the Lancer in a tiny wire-framed display. Chief’s eye appeared in the body of the display.
“Wow, that’s new,” Kaiden said in shock.
“Like it? Just one of a number of new tricks I picked up with my upgrade.” Chief chirped happily for a minute before narrowing his eye. “But we can admire me later. Right now, we gotta worry about taking out that Lancer.”
“What are ya thinking?”
“As long as that thing can fly, we ain’t going to be able to do much good. But if you can short out those propellers, it’ll have to land,” Chief explained, highlighting the propellers in the visual.
“It’s that easy? It doesn’t have any backup generators or nothing?” Kaiden wondered at the apparent stupidity of the design.
“Nah, part of the design was that the blades helped stabilize the Lancer in flight and acted as a perpetual generator so it could remain in the air for long periods of time. Take them out, and it will have to conserve as much power as it can and make a landing,” the EI explained. “It ain’t gonna be easy, either. You gotta hit those blades dead on. Otherwise, there won’t be enough power to short them out, or it’ll simply get absorbed by those dispersers in its wings.” He pointed out the two rods on either wing.
Kaiden nodded. “All right, sounds good. When it lands, can we wait it out until it powers down?”
“Nah. When on land, its internal power can still last something like twenty-four hours. But the real problem will be its surge laser.”
“What’s a surge laser?”
The carrier above them exploded. Kaiden covered his head as he heard another explosion behind him. He rolled out from underneath the carrier and looked at the Lancer, the arc pistol at the ready.
Chief transformed back into his normal form. “That! That is a surge laser,” he yelled. “It fires from the eye and takes a few moments to charge. Keep moving and keep out of the way.”
“How close do I have to be for this arc pistol to work?” Kaiden asked as he held down the trigger and began to charge the shot.
“It should work within fifty yards,” Chief answered.
“That’s getting damn close.” Kaiden huffed, then saw the Lancer’s eye begin to glow. “Aw, hell!”
“Move! Once it fires the beam, it only travels down a line. If you can leap out of the way, it won’t follow.”
Kaiden continued to watch as the Lancer targeted him. When he saw the eye reach a bright red glow, he heard Chief shout, “Jump now!”
He dove ahead, hearing the blast cut into the cars and concrete behind him as he rolled across the pavement. He checked his legs to see if he had been hit, but he wasn’t so much as singed. “That wasn’t so bad,” he said with a cocky smirk.
“It’s charging up again,” Chief warned. Kaiden looked up to see the Lancer hovering just above him. He yelped and took off, leaping over the hoods of cars and toward the gate. He heard the beam fire, this time rolling under a van as the beam disintegrated numerous vehicles in a straight line. Kaiden crawled out quickly and turned to see the Lancer rise up in the air and glide toward him.
He took the opportunity to attack, aiming down the arc pistol’s sights just in front of the Lancer’s path and to the right, aiming for one of its propellers. He fired as it drew close, watching as a stream of electricity surged through the air. The Lancer banked away. The electricity followed and hit the tip of the wing but not the blades.
“Dammit!” Kaiden swore, turning to run as he saw the Lancer begin to charge another blast.
Chiyo made it back to the security room, scrambling over the bodies of the guards that she had the guardian droids attack. She sat at the console and placed the briefcase on the ground beside her, then focused on the monitors for the outside cameras. The design of the creature was immediately recognizable, and she gasped. It was an Asiton model droid, but what was it doing in this scenario? She looked up to the corner of the monitor at the Axiom Industries logo, recalling a history lesson where she learned about Axiom’s involvement in the creation of some of the Asiton designs.
Was that why it was there? Was this some sort of secret objective for the map? She forced the questions to the back of her mind and looked quickly through the system for anything that would allow her to deactivate or take control of the robot. Nothing seemed even a remote possibility. Whatever was issuing commands to that thing, it wasn’t coming from there.
Animus series Boxed Set Page 50