“Chief is all worked up about something,” he shouted.
“Hope your mutant-killing game is still strong,” the EI warned. “Get back. That might be a moho.”
“The hell is a—” The question cut off as a creature leaped out of the lava. It resembled a giant lizard with jet-black scales. Magma slid off its body as it hissed, staring him down with cold black eyes.
“Don’t worry about answering that,” Kaiden grunted, then snapped the latch on his rifle, and prepared to fire.
“Switch to ballistics. The laser fire won’t do jack against its hide. Best bet is to aim for the gullet when it’s snapping at you.”
“So I should wait for it to try to eat me?” Kaiden yelled, backing up as the moho crept inexorably forward.
“It’ll try to do that regardless of whether you wait for it or not.” Genos and Chiyo ran forward, their weapons at the ready.
“What about Genos’ cannon?”
“It might do some damage, more than your rifle shots. But this thing lives in lava, remember. It’s an important detail,” Chief stated.
Another hiss issued behind them and Chiyo whipped around. “Kaiden, two more at our rear.”
“Great,” Kaiden muttered. “To hell with it, let’s run.”
The Tsuna nodded, “Agreed, we don’t have the footing or room to engage well here.”
“Focus on the one in front and get it out of the way, then we run like mad,” Kaiden ordered.
“We don’t know what awaits us in the next room,” the infiltrator reminded them.
The ace flipped a switch on his rifle, changing to ballistic shots. “Better the enemy you don’t know than the one you do, right?”
“I don’t believe that’s how the saying goes,” Genos protested.
He frowned. “Like you can lecture me on that,” he mumbled, and his companion cocked his head in confusion.
“The ones behind us are closing in,” Chiyo warned.
“Let’s go. Fire, Genos!” Kaiden commanded. The two fired together, driving the moho back. The mutant let out an angry hiss as ballistic shots exploded against it and Genos’ plasma bolt exploded against the side of its head. It began to slide back into the magma. “Accelerators on. Move.”
The three sprinted down the remainder of the path and the other two mohos gave chase. “They are quite fast!” the mechanist shouted.
“They are even faster moving through the magma, so make sure to keep an eye— Watch it. On your right.”
The ace turned his head just as the moho they had shot lurched from the lava, lunging at him. He tried leaping over it, but it was able to sink its teeth into the bottom of his boot. The sudden stop caused him to drop his rifle and fall to the ground. The creature stared at him, holding his gaze when he turned to look at it. He reached quickly for Debonair, but the monster began to drag him to the blazing magma.
“Kaiden!” Genos yelled. He changed his gauntlet to the clamp, which he used to catch his teammate’s wrist and pull him back. The man grimaced at the pain of being pulled in opposite directions as he continued to reach for the pistol in the holster at his waist.
Chiyo turned back and tossed a small device at the two mohos pursuing them. It slid down the path and projected a hologram of her. The mutants snarled and leaped at it, sailing through it. They turned, confused and hesitant, and slowly approached the image again.
She stepped forward and shot at the eyes of the moho holding Kaiden captive with her submachine gun. Kaiden saw it wince for a second and stopped fumbling for his pistol. Instead, he felt for his supply of thermals. He managed to take out three and activated them. The beast finally hissed and released him after Chiyo’s constant barrage, opening its maw briefly as it turned away in pain. The ace threw the grenades into the opening before flinging himself into Genos.
The mechanist closed his fist as they tumbled toward the other side of the path and the magma. A crowbar popped from the armor compartment in his gauntlet and he smashed it into the ground to stop them from rolling off the walkway.
The thermals detonated in the moho. It didn’t erupt but smoke billowed from its mouth and its eyes rolled back into its head as it crashed into the lava, sending globs of the molten stone into the air. Chiyo rolled out of the way as the ace pulled his barrier and activated it to shield himself and Genos. Small blobs of the magma landed on the barrier. He raised it quickly and tossed it back to let the hot debris slide off before deactivating it.
“Thanks for the save.” He grunted as he stood and hauled the Tsuna quickly to his feet.
“Same to you. Virtual or not, I’d rather not have to experience being ignited by magma,” Genos stated.
“Or being eaten by lava lizards. Let’s go before they recover.” The soldier ran over and retrieved his rifle. “Quick thinking, Chiyo. Thanks.”
“Can’t lose you quite yet,” she said with a grin as she attached her weapon to the magnetic strip on her thigh.
“Nah, still got stuff to shoot.” Kaiden snickered. “Door’s ahead, two hundred feet. Double-time.”
The three dashed across the rest of the ravine. By now, the two mohos that had been preoccupied with the hologram had grown bored and continued their pursuit, but the distance was too great. Genos ran to the door and used the crowbar to pry it slightly open, then he and Kaiden pulled on either side and forced it wide. Chiyo ran through before the mechanist pulled it open a bit further and slipped in. Kaiden hurtled in after him and fired at the mutants to keep them at bay as the Tsuna shut the door.
As the metal slammed shut, he breathed a sigh of relief. “Next time I go in for training, I’m queuing up a map with a lot of those bastards and having a field day.”
“We all have our ways to relieve stress,” Chiyo agreed. “I think I’ll simply stick to not trying to make volcano exploration a common occurrence.”
“If nothing else, I certainly won’t complain about being stuck in a regular hallway anymore. Speaking of which, where are we now?” Kaiden stood. They were in another hallway, but it led to a room only a few feet ahead. The three of them walked cautiously into the massive chamber. It was square with halls leading in four separate directions, each with a door at the end.
“So, any suggestion or should we simply flip a coin. Eh, that wouldn’t work with three options. Got any dice?” he asked.
“Kaitō, do you read anything coming from this or any of the rooms?”
“There seems to be a node of some kind in the room to your left, madame,” the fox EI informed her. “Could be an opportunity for points, perhaps?”
“Agreed.” She nodded. “Kaitō says there is a node I could hack into in the room to our left.”
“Hey, I’m game for almost anything that isn’t carnivorous lava lizards or a battlefield of mechs and tanks,” the soldier said with a shrug. “Lead on.”
The three approached the sliding doors to the room. Kaiden and Chiyo held their guns at the ready as Genos pressed the button to open them. They slid easily, and the team was greeted by a trio of guns pointed their way.
“Hold your fire!” one of them shouted. “We’re initiates. Honor hasn’t activated yet, so it wouldn’t do you any good.”
“Something friendly for a change,” the soldier mused, lowering his rifle. “I’m Kaiden, an ace. This is Chiyo, our infiltrator, and Genos is a mechanist.” His companions nodded to the other team.
“An ace, infiltrator, and mechanist. I guess you guys got settled with the team name of AIM, right?”
“No, MIA,” Kaiden replied, making no effort to hide his chagrin.
“That’s a pity. Seems to be a perfect fit. Plus, MIA is like ‘missing in action,’ right?”
The ace crossed his arms. “Preaching to the choir, buddy.”
The man chuckled as he put his pistol away. “I’m Julius, a biologist.” He was dressed in light red-and-white armor and a box-like helmet with separate visors for either eye. “The big glowing guy behind me is our vanguard, Mack.”
�
��Howdy,” he greeted them in a noticeable southern drawl. He stood tall as nearly all of the heavy-type soldiers did, decked out in heavy silver armor that had the light blue glow of a barrier.
“Howdy,” Kaiden responded. “You Southern?”
“Memphis, Tennessee, born and raised,” he declared, holding up an arm. “How ʼbout you?”
He clapped his hand against the vanguard’s, gripping the side of his palm. “Born in H-town, mostly raised in Fresno, Texas, though.”
“A Texan? Nice to meet you,” Mack stated. They nodded and ended their handshake. “Our buddy over there is Otto. He’s an agent.”
“Agent? That’s a technician class, right?” Kaiden asked, looking at Chiyo.
She nodded. “They are the other side of the infiltrator coin. They work in plain sight, usually getting into targeted corporations or companies and working undercover. They are more akin to spies than thieves or saboteurs.”
“Not that we don’t steal or sabotage,” Otto stated, turning back and showing his gunmetal-grey armor and rounded visor on his circular helmet. “We merely do it with a little more flair.”
“How’s it coming along, Otto?” Julius asked.
“Almost done here,” he answered, looking back at his holoscreen. He was working on some sort of terminal in the center of the room. “Minute and a half at most.”
“Good to hear.” Mack nodded.
“Well, looks like they beat us to it.” Kaiden stretched his arms as he looked at Chiyo. “Unless you wanna see if you can out-hack him.”
She shook her head. “I’ll have other opportunities. We can move on and try another room. There don’t seem to be any other paths here.”
Kaiden nodded, turning back to Julius and Mack. “All right, it was nice meeting y’all, but we gotta head out. Robots to disassemble, heads to shoot, servers to access, that sort of thing.”
“We’ll be heading out soon. We could stick together if you want,” Julius offered.
“Appreciate it, but we gotta make up for our little detour. By the way, when you go back there, don’t go to the room on your right. Lava lizards.”
Julius and Mack looked at each other. “Do what?”
“Got it. Three hundred and fifty Data points!” Otto shouted.
Kaiden heard the door behind them slam shut. He spun around and drew Debonair but only saw the shut door, then heard it lock in place. “What’s happening?”
“Safety node deactivated. Purging room of hostile targets,” a crackling synthetic voice announced.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Did that thing say ‘purge?’” Kaiden asked.
“Otto, what the hell did you do?” Julius demanded.
“I hacked the node,” his teammate said defensively. “That’s what we came in here to do.”
“Did you miss something? Because that voice seems pretty pissed that you were fucking with it,” Kaiden snapped, readying his rifle.
“I know how to hack,” the agent retorted. “But… Scheiße. It said it was a-a safety node. I fell for a dummy.“
“Chiyo, mind playing translator for a minute?” the ace asked.
“A dummy is a term for a false or trap target,” she explained. “It’s usually baited with the promise of helpful information or the appearance of something important, but will have been rigged with anything from an explosive or tracking virus. In this case, it was meant to trap a team in here.”
“To ‘purge’ us. Yeah, I follow. But purging comes in a multitude of flavors, so what are we going to have to deal—”
“Activating Assassin and Havoc droids,” the voice declared. The droids began appearing in flashes of light around them. The Assassin droids had black metal bodies and blades on their wrists and stared at them through crimson visors. The Havoc droids were charcoal in color with glowing yellow visors. They had large metal hands with gun barrels mounted on top.
“Killer robots. Pretty vanilla, but considering all the options and that we’re in a locked room with no way out, I guess that would be the sprinkles.” Kaiden huffed his annoyance. He and Genos covered the left side of the room while Julius, Mack, and Otto went to the right.
“You need to hold them off,” Chiyo ordered, taking a wire from the computer on her wrist and plugging it into the node. “I can reactivate this, and hopefully, that will deactivate the trap. If not, I’ll have to see if there is a way to access the system and shut it down manually.”
“I’ll help,” the agent stated, kneeling beside her. He took a wire from his own computer and plugged it into another port on the node.
“You should help fight the droids. I can—”
“I know you’re good. You wouldn’t be an infiltrator otherwise. But this is my mistake, and I can help you undo my work and make this go quicker,” he stated, looking at her. “Together, we’ll get this done in short order.”
She was silent for a moment before she nodded and caught Kaiden’s attention. “Do whatever you need to do. But keep them off us.”
“You do your thing, I’ll do mine. That’s the deal, and it’s worked out so far.” He hummed as he refilled his ballistic rounds. “Just make this a rush order, if you don’t mind?”
“Here they come!” Mack roared as the droids advanced on them.
The soldier placed his barrier on top of the node, forming a dome around Chiyo and Otto. He then turned quickly to face the oncoming horde of killer robots. Calmly, making every shot count, he began to blast the oncoming attackers back. Working methodically, he shot them with ballistic rounds when they were far enough away and switched to laser fire as they closed in.
“Throwing a seeker,” Genos yelled as he hurled a grenade into the fray. It burst apart and sent dozens of tiny drones into the air. They scattered and latched onto the various droids around them. “These droid models are too advanced for the seekers to take them over, but they will stall them for a bit,” the mechanist explained.
Kaiden looked over to see ten droids halt in their tracks. Their bodies began to twitch, deactivating and reactivating every few seconds.
“Nice job. Take them out,” he shouted, continuing to fire on the advancing droids. “Feel free to use more of those.”
The Tsuna retrieved another seeker grenade. “I’ll toss one behind us to help the others.” He turned and threw it. The grenade opened overhead and sent out more seekers to attack the droids.
Mack roared as his armor lit up. He solidified his barrier and charged into the fray, plowing through a group of Havoc droids that blasted uselessly against the powered-up barrier. He caught a pair of Assassin droids as they tried to flank him, smashing them against one another. “Julius, you all right?”
The biologist medic fired a few more rounds from his semi-automatic pistol. The burst of laser fire chewed through the armor of the Assassin droid attacking him. “I have plenty of concoctions and poisons to deal with organic hostiles. Robots are not my forte!”
“That’s why you have me,” the vanguard shouted. His armor glowed again as he activated the bounce pack and jumped through the air. When he slammed back into the ground, he crushed two droids before a wave of energy burst from him and knocked all the nearby droids back.
“Thanks, Mack, but remember, that knocks my ass back too,” Julius shouted, having slammed into the barrier protecting the technicians as they worked.
“Sorry partner, but it’s better than shot and skewered by a bot, right?” Mack gritted his teeth as he felt two shots land on his back. He turned to see a Havoc droid advancing while his barrier generator needed to recharge from his stunt. As he reached for his hand cannon, a couple of laser blasts pierced the droid’s chest and it fell. He looked over to see Kaiden give a quick two-finger salute before turning back to deal with his side of the mechanical swarm.
“Bless ya!” the vanguard shouted as he stood and began to fire powerful shots into a couple more havoc droids that had recovered from the barrier nova he’d set off.
“More are popping in,” Kaide
n called. New Havoc and Assassin droids joined the fray, and he and Genos had to constantly dodge and move as they continued the fight. “How’s it going, you two!?”
“We’re in. The node is activated, but the signal is still going,” Chiyo answered
“Make it stop doing that, if you would, please!” he shouted.
“We’ll get it done,” she assured him.
“We’ll either need to reboot the node entirely or create a new command to shut it off,” Otto suggested.
“I can begin creating the command if you can find a place to put it.”
“How much time would that take you?”
“Three or four minutes.”
“Best guess for my side as well…” he muttered, wincing as a few stray shots slammed against the barrier.
“Purging not yet complete. Continued fighting unnecessary. Loading in Goliath model droids.”
“What? Nah, the fighting is totally necessary. We’re having a great time. Just keep it to the normal shit, please,” Kaiden suggested to the uncaring voice.
A massive droid appeared, only slightly smaller than a normal-sized mech. It had two large cannons for arms and moved on tank tracks. The body was heavily armored and stalwart, with a large scanner on its domed head.
“That is problematic,” Genos uttered, slightly shocked at the size of this new adversary.
“My energy is at seventy-five percent and climbing. I might be able to take one at full power,” Mack stated.
“Keep fighting, and keep them distracted. We’re almost out of this,” Kaiden called.
“I’m going to activate my technician’s suite,” Otto said.
“What? In this mess, that could be suicide,” Chiyo warned.
“Hopefully, the barrier will hold while I’m in there. Plus, our teammates are giving it their all. This is much faster. I’ll be in and done in a minute; ninety seconds at most.”
“It’s more than that. We are supposed to keep our use of the suite to a minimum. If you’re not careful with the systems or the node is broken or destroyed, it could mean more than simply failing the test.” She warned.
Animus series Boxed Set Page 80