Amber sighed as she pointed down at his feet. “You put it into your boot so you wouldn’t lose it.”
“Right!” He laughed, bending down to fish the silver disk out of his left boot. “Good job remembering that.”
“I knew one of us had to be responsible.” She gave him a playful jab to the ribs.
“You still got ours, Chiyo?” Kaiden asked.
She nodded and held up her tablet. “We are to head to hall five for our test.”
Flynn slid his disk into his wrist-mounted tablet. “We are…in hall seven.”
“Looks like I won’t be able to hold your hand to calm your nerves,” Kaiden jeered.
Flynn gave him a wry look. “I’ll be fine. Besides, I got a pocket healer, remember?”
“I thought you weren’t gonna get shot?” Amber muttered.
“I mean, that’s the plan. But I wanna make sure you’ve got something to do too.” Flynn chuckled.
Amber rolled her eyes and began to walk away. “Just be sure that you take down the targets I call out. Keep yourself useful, and I’ll get you something pretty when this is all done.”
“Hey, I’m more than my rifle,” Flynn yelled back, jogging after his partner.
“Think they’re gonna be all right?” Silas asked as the marksman and battle-medic ran off.
“They’ll be fine,” Marlo assured him. “Amber told me they’ve been like that since they were kids. They bicker like that all the time before we run missions and stuff. This is actually quite tame for such a big thing. Before the Division test, they were jabbering at each other for the entire week leading up to it.”
“You guys gonna watch us?” Kaiden asked.
“For sure. Might have to flip a coin and see which one we’re gonna be watchin’, but I’m sure you’ll fill us in with your boasts and usual braggadocio,” Silas said with a smirk.
“Just know that we’ll be going to Chiyo for fact-checking,” Izzy added.
“Your cheerleading could use some work.” Kaiden pretended indignation. “Can’t you do a little jig or something?”
“There are a few clan dances and ceremonies we have for sending off those going into battle, but I do not believe we have the time,” Genos offered.
“Not what he meant, Genos.” Jaxon chuckled.
“You can always use the console in the observation room to switch between test channels. You can watch both teams,” Chiyo reminded them.
“You’ll probably just wanna stick to our test, though,” Kaiden said with cheerful bravado. “You know I like to keep things interesting and play to the crowds.”
“I recommend we hold off on that until we begin,” Chiyo said with a dramatic roll of her eyes.
Kaiden looked back at her over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, you can lead until you’re all cozy in your little infiltrator’s nest, then I can have my fun.”
“Again, we don’t know if that will work this time around,” she reminded him. “Just be prepared for anything.”
Kaiden nodded. “Don’t worry about it, Chi, we’ve got this.”
“The remaining members of the silver group must go to their designated halls at this time. The cooperative test will begin shortly.”
“That’s your cue, showstopper.” Izzy pointed to the elevators.
“Hey, guys.” The group looked over to see Cameron and Raul walking up to them. “What did we miss?”
“A hell of a lot,” Luke told them slyly.
“Where have you been?” Silas asked.
“Slept in, then the pampered idiot over here took forever in the shower.” Cameron sneered, pointing a thumb at Raul.
“I want to be refreshed on a test day, put my best foot forward,” he retorted, running his fingers through his hair. “Nothing a grimy lout like you would understand.”
The two began to bicker, and the rest of the group sighed or shook their heads. “You guys can fill them in on the way. Chiyo and I gotta head out,” Kaiden said.
“Best of luck to you,” Jaxon said.
Genos nodded. “I know that you will do well, friends.”
The rest said their goodbyes as Chiyo and Kaiden left for the elevators. They waited in silence, Kaiden humming to himself as Chiyo removed the disk from her tablet and put it away in her bag. Once the elevator opened they stepped inside, and Kaiden leaned against the back and Chiyo to the side. No one else entered as the doors closed and the elevator ascended.
“You ready?” Kaiden asked.
“Of course. I would have insisted on more training otherwise,” Chiyo answered, looking his way.
“Just wanted to say before we get in there, thanks for the offer to team up. Hate to think what scrub I would have been saddled with otherwise.”
“It was my pleasure. This has proven to be quite a fruitful partnership.”
“Time to see how the fruit bears, eh?” he jested.
Chiyo stared at him. “Kaiden, have you ever considered you have Witzelsucht syndrome?”
“What’s that?” he asked as the elevator stopped on their floor.
“I’ll… You can look it up later.” Chiyo stated in a slightly strangled tone. The doors opened, and they left to find their hall.
Kaiden stopped in the middle of the room to look around at the other duos. There were ten initiates, including himself and Chiyo—five teams to a hall. He looked over to the hub to see Chiyo handing an advisor their chip. He looked at her a moment before waving. “Advisor Faraji, how’s it going?” he called as he walked over.
“Hello, Kaiden, good to see you again.” She offered him her hand.
He shook it. “How have you been?”
The pressure around his hand tightened, and he winced slightly. “You would know if you actually showed up to my workshops once in a while,” she pointed out, a now unnerving smile on her face.
“I show up. I just don’t stick around that much,” Kaiden sputtered, trying to pry his hand from her grasp. “I’m using the Animus like you taught us. That’s gotta count for something.”
“Oh, it does, but you could learn so much more than the basics.” She released him. Kaiden yanked his hand back and rubbed it as Akello looked at her tablet. “Well, considering you’re partnered with Chiyo, maybe she can start getting you to shape up a bit.”
“You’re in her Animus workshop too?” Kaiden asked.
The infiltrator nodded. “I find the teachings and inner workings of the Animus fascinating. Advisor Faraji is a very engaging teacher.”
“Why, thank you, Chiyo.” Akello beamed.
“Kiss ass,” Kaiden muttered.
Akello narrowed her gaze. “Chiyo happens to be one of my top students if you must know.”
“Yeah, kiss ass,” Kaiden repeated.
Chiyo looked glumly at him as Akello shook her head. “What have you gotten yourself into, girl?”
“I can attest to Kaiden’s abilities, though there are some things we may not see eye to eye on.”
“Well, I can agree with that, at least.” Akello tapped on her tablet and pointed to a pair of Animus pods down the line. “Pods nineteen and twenty are yours for the test. Once the preparations are complete, you will be synced and have five minutes to learn your mission and assemble your loadout.” The pods opened, awaiting the pair. “Good luck to you, Chiyo.”
“What about me?” Kaiden asked.
Akello frowned. “Don’t fuck this up for her.”
He scowled, flexing his hand as he stared the advisor down. “Is one of the trials of the test to see if I can pass with lowered self-esteem?” he jeered.
Akello snorted. “I’m not sure anyone can actually put a dent in your massive ego.”
“It is one of a large number of things that make me so great,” Kaiden murmured as he inspected his hand with mock nonchalance. “Though Chief does try his damnedest.”
Akello laughed, ushering them off with a wave of her tablet. “Get in there and good luck. To both of you.”
They nodded and headed over to th
eir pods. Kaiden hopped into one, leaning forward as Chiyo climbed into the other.
“Got any last bits of wisdom before we head down the virtual rabbit hole?”
Chiyo sat back and glanced at him. “We will plan accordingly when we get the mission details. Until then, simply relax and make sure that you keep yourself in check throughout the test.”
Kaiden flicked a thumb to the advisor. “So, what she said then?”
“I’m not sure if I would put it like that…” She smiled, her expression almost conciliatory. “But it is a solid piece of advice.”
“Duly noted,” Kaiden said with a smirk.
“The test is about to begin. Everyone get into your pods and prepare for sync,” Akello ordered.
Kaiden leaned back, looking up at the ceiling as the door to the pod closed. The glow strips illuminated, and the scanner traced along his body. He heard the familiar hum as the Animus booted up, closed his eyes, and clenched his fists.
“Let’s kick this pig,” he declared as he drifted off to begin their test.
Chapter Thirty-Two
When Kaiden opened his eyes and looked around him, he noticed he was in some sort of carrier. There was a row of seats along either wall, but he saw no driver or driving mechanism in the front of the room. It was eerily silent.
He focused on getting his bearings but began to feel slightly woozy. Some of his muscles twitched, and a massive influx of information began swirling around his head. He knelt on the floor to steady himself until the feeling passed and the new data began to settle.
“Are you all right, Kaiden?”
Kaiden looked up to see Chiyo seated in one of the seats near the back of the row. “Yeah, I’ll be all right. It’s the new talents loading in,” he said groggily. “Did you know you can take out a battalion of enemy troops with a bundle of mangoes?”
“Yes, although they were all poisoned and not quite a battalion. You are referring to the sabotage of a Black Lake merc group’s food supplies by Captain Jean Lafayette, correct?”
“That sounds about right.” Kaiden nodded, standing up once again. “Where are we?”
“Inside a burrowing carrier. I recommend you take a seat and buckle in. We will be leaving soon.”
“When is soon?” he asked, then heard the roar of an engine and saw orange glow strips line the floor and ceiling of the carrier. He was thrown to the floor as the vehicle sprang to life and sped forward.
“It would appear I was a little late with the warning.” Chiyo activated the computer on her gauntlet as Kaiden pushed up and dragged himself down the line until he was across from her.
“Just a tad.” He grunted as he grabbed the back of a chair and hoisted himself onto it, buckling himself in. “We’ll work on the proper amount of time it takes to warn someone later. You got our mission details?”
She took a few more moments to read the description on her screen, sighing when she looked away. “I do. It would appear that I was right to think that our normal strategy would not work here.”
“What do we got?” Kaiden asked, bringing up his loadout screen. “And should I get a bigger gun?”
“Honestly, it would appear that we have not done enough training for this sort of scenario.”
“That bad?”
She shrugged. “Maybe not bad, per se, but it will require much more work than we have typically done thus far. This is a data point retrieval mission.”
“You make that sound so ominous,” Kaiden muttered, looking through his various guns and gadget options. “How is that so different? We find out where the data is stored, get you in there to do your thing, get the data, and blast our way out, no biggie.”
“True, a regular data retrieval mission would be no problem for us, but this is a data point mission,” she clarified.
“And that one word turns this into a clusterfuck?” Kaiden inquired, mulling over explosive options.
“We will be looking for three specific servers throughout the facility…” Chiyo pressed a button on her gauntlet, and a projection of a large four-story building appeared as a hologram. “I will need to manually hack into these servers and retrieve specific files. I am already trying to find their locations.”
Kaiden saw a multitude of red dots blinking around the building. A few would disappear at one time, and the number grew smaller and smaller. “The glossary states that there are no robotic hostiles that we have to face, only mercs of various specialties.”
Kaiden opened the glossary in his visor, taking a peek at the enemies they would face.
Red Sun Grunt:
Armor: Medium
Weapon: Light Assault Rifle
Gadget: Fragmentation Grenades
Description: Basic mercenary infantry, plentiful but easy targets for skilled soldiers. Laser and plasma rifles will blast right through their armor.
Total: 150
Red Sun Heavy:
Armor: Heavy
Weapon: Shotgun or Heavy Assault Rifle
Gadget: None
Description: Heavily armored mercenary soldier, usually one or two in a squad. Their weapons can shoot through most medium armor within a few blasts. Requires explosives, heavy arms, or several successful hits to blast through their armor.
Total: 75
Red Sun Pyro:
Armor: Medium
Weapon: Flame Caster
Gadget: Oil Grenades
Description: Frontal assault unit that wields a fire-emitting weapon. While most armor sets have interior cooling mechanisms, the chemical fire that the Pyro’s weapon casts out will overwhelm the target and cook them alive in their armor. However, their weapon is attached to a tank of fuel on their back that can be exploited.
Total: 50
Red Sun Shocker:
Armor: Light
Weapon: Arc Blaster
Gadget: Shock Grenades
Description: A fast and dangerous specialist that uses their arc blaster to zap their target with large discharges of electricity, disrupting equipment and stunning them. After several shocks, the cumulative effect could lead to heart disruption and death.
Total: 30
Red Sun Goliath:
Armor: Mech Suit
Weapon: Nova Cannons or Plasma Lasers
Gadget: Self-Destruction Core
Description: Red Sun mercs piloting stolen or repurposed mechs. Frontal assault with basic weapons is foolish, but there are usually weak points that can be exploited or some mechs can be hacked.
Total: 5
“It’s not a total loss, you can hack the mechs,” Kaiden pointed out.
“That, and there are a few turrets I might be able to use to our advantage. We’ll have to plan accordingly.” The last bunch of lights around the hologram finally dissipated, leaving three blinking lights at each level and a large glowing blue one at the top. “I found them.”
“So, one on each floor. Looks like all that climbing around in vent shafts will have a use, after all.” Kaiden smiled. He looked at the larger blue dot and pointed to it. “What’s with baby blue up here?”
“That would be our bonus objective. While we are recovering the data from the other three servers, there is an optional code we can download as well. Each server has a piece of the code, and once we collect all three, we can use it at this main server at the top of the building.”
“To do what?”
“Doesn’t say,” Chiyo admitted. “I would guess that it gives us overall control of the base. It would make escaping much easier.”
“I was going to bet it just makes the whole thing explode… I’ve still got twenty Nexus credits left over. Wanna gamble?”
Chiyo stared at him for a moment before shaking her head and looking back at the hologram. “Once we’re inside, we will simply have to make our way to the first server on the ground floor. Each server room has a maintenance ladder that leads up one floor to the server above. If we do this quietly, we should face little resistance as we complete the main objective.”
<
br /> “And the bonus objective?” Kaiden enquired.
She studied the map, chewing on her bottom lip. “There doesn’t appear to be a ladder to the main server room, but we can exit on the third floor and go into the main hall. It has a staircase to the top floor, or we can take the elevator. There are also the ventilation shafts as you said, but I can’t get a good layout of them with the map provided. There might be a more detailed map on one of the servers.”
Kaiden examined his loadout screen for a moment before sighing. “Hey, Chief, see if you can find some silenced weapons or something. Looks like it’s going to be another one of those missions.”
“On it. Let’s see if we can get us something with a sneaky look without sacrificing a bit of the ultra-violence,” Chief chirped, scanning quickly through the loadout.
“Thank you, Kaiden,” Chiyo said as she opened her loadout screen and began to make a couple of changes.
“For what?”
“I didn’t even have to ask you to change your weapons this time around. It shows that you are learning how best to tackle a mission.”
“I’ll have a chance to do it my way later,” he said with an indifferent shrug. “Besides, this is the real deal. I’ll be happy to do it your way if it gets us a smooth victory.”
She looked back at the hologram of the building. “I’m not sure about smooth, but this is the best way to approach the mission with as few problems as possible. It’ll take some time for me to break into each server without the proper codes or an access key. I’ll also have to make sure I don’t trip any alarms unless you want three hundred and ten armed mercenaries to come knocking at our door.”
Kaiden crossed his legs and leaned back, resting his head in his linked hands. “Wouldn’t bother me none.”
Chiyo closed out her screen, an arc pistol and sub-machine gun taking the place of her old guns and her infiltrator armor replaced by a dark-blue light armor set. “I admire your confidence. Although I must say that every declaration you make does make me wonder if you truly believe yourself to be that good or are merely in denial about the overwhelming odds.”
Animus series Boxed Set Page 58