Though this is only a drill, we ask all citizens to remain calm and wait to be cleared individually by the Defense Force officers and synthoids.
Again, please remain where you are for your own safety until you are cleared by the Defense Force.
We appreciate your cooperation. Thank you!
Chapter Five
When your entire childhood is spent as a Conglomerate black site experiment, it’s a guarantee that you’ll never have a dearth of nightmares. Anyone that’s survived trauma figures out eventually that they have their own personal “greatest hits” list of recurring nightmares.
If my senses were to be trusted, one such “hit” was unfolding right before my eyes. The scene is hazy, and it certainly feels dreamlike. As it continued to unfold, I hoped fervently that I truly was unconscious.
I am falling through the air… And then strong arms are holding me. I immediately think of… No, it can’t be him. He’s far away and being important. And annoying.
Instead, I see Leon. He's still skinned up, but the synthetic nano-derm peels in places on his face due to battle damage.
In the distance, there is a terrible monster. It harvests parts from its fallen compatriots and has become something more. Something stronger and deadlier than any of us could imagine. Something powerful enough to make me believe that we will not be able to defeat it.
It takes to the air, flying and shooting green fire at my friends.
My family.
They are fighting it and they are losing.
All of a sudden, faint blue light washes over everything. It affords me a moment of comfort. A brief moment where I can believe that this is just another terrible dream.
Then, I realize we’re under Leon’s protective field. And the pain in my joints and body thrum in chaotic cadence with the ringing in my ears. In an instant, my memory of the last few minutes comes back in full force.
Octavia’s newest creation.
The fifth Huntsman. The one she kept close to her. The one that was ready for me. Stronger now after using pieces of the other Huntsmen to augment itself.
The Huntsman deploys something from its hands. It happens so quickly, and I am too disoriented to notice it sooner.
I watch in horror as the pulse particle explosion completely engulfs Bellona in flames. What’s left of her torso lands on the ground with a thud.
An enraged cry erupts from Iñigo. He leaps at the Huntsman, armed with only one blade and missing an arm. The Huntsman tries to block the cutting blow.
At the last microsecond, Iñigo pulls his strike and pivots to the side. He grabs the monster’s arm and tucks it towards him, allowing Jean Philippe to plunge his daggers into its side.
White hot light bursts through Iñigo’s chest as Jean Philippe’s blades bury themselves in the Huntsman a second time, this time through its neck and torso. The Huntsman casts Iñigo's limp, lifeless body aside like a broken doll and blasts Jean Philippe’s head clean off.
Mila’s battle cry drowns out my screams. She and Mick fire round after round at the Huntsman, drawing on their own power cores for energy when their weapons have run out ammunition.
The blue light around me fades as Leon heads out to join the fray. This is no dream, and the sudden assault of sound and sensations is a nightmare. I am both numb and in extreme pain.
A bright light shines directly into my eyes as gentle hands cradle my face. A faint flash of blue passes over me and I realize Doctor Capaldi is examining me.
“Bell… Iñigo… JP… five hells, he hated being called that.” I stammer, trying to get up, reaching for weapons that were no longer at my belt for me to draw.
“We don’t have time, child. We have to focus.” The Doctor says, diverting my gaze from the battle with the Huntsman. I do my best to focus on the Doctor, but I still see the moment it breaks through Leon’s protective field and stabs Mila through her chest cavity.
“Whatever happens, you need to use this only when all of us are lost. This is my last one, so make it count.” The Doctor says as he tucks the last med-pen into my thigh holster. “And try to forgive us and yourself for today.”
I try harder to get my bearings as I watch him head out to try and repair the heavy damage Mick has sustained. Nearby, Leon tries to hold off the Huntsman’s fire. He barely manages.
Less dazed, I look around for a weapon to use to defend myself. There are none near me, and I stagger to my feet and run towards Jean Philippe.
I stop short, horror creeping in as I realize I can't feel him through the neuroweave. I scan frantically through the weave, but I can't feel any of them. How much damage could they have sustained for them to be completely disconnected from the neuroweave?
My denial lasts only for a second. After what I had just witnessed, the simple truth of it washes over me: they were all gone.
Part of me fights, asking the right questions. I understood numbly why the others would no longer register on the neuroweave. But Doctor Capaldi? Mick? Leon, who right now was doing his best to shield the others? Nothing. I couldn’t feel them at all, and I had no idea why.
But I don’t have the time left to worry.
I reach the spot where Jean Philippe has fallen and seize all of his weapons. I even take the concealed wrist blasters embedded into his left arm, though it takes me a moment to figure out how to pop it free from his wrist.
For the life of me, I can’t remember when he’d last modified it. He’s always tinkering with the Doctor, so this must be a new upgrade. A vise closes around my heart at the thought that this is the last of the concealed weapons mods of its make I'll ever see.
I turn to run, but an explosion knocks me back a few feet. I almost black out again, but fight to remain conscious and upright.
Taking in the scene before me, I almost wished I was unconscious.
Mick was in pieces and Leon hung impaled on the huntsman’s blade. Doctor Capaldi inches towards me, his midsection completely blown out, then slumps over, the light in his eyes flickering to darkness.
I cannot even begin to describe the sound that tears through me as I begin attacking the Huntsman. I shoot and slash, darting in and out of its path. I land a few blows and a few shots, but the damage heals instantly.
“You see, my dear. Stripped of your friends, you are honestly unimpressive.” The Queen comments.
As I continue fighting the monstrosity that killed my family, I notice the crew status on my HUD. I would have been able to acknowledge the loss if it said terminated, but all seven of them register as status not found.
The Huntsman takes advantage of my distraction and manages to land a few blows on me.
“Frankly, you are no greater than the sum of all the parts of your unit. But don’t feel too bad. That was part of your design.” The Queen drawls. “So reliant on the neuroweave and on each other that you fail to function at optimal order when the weave is disrupted. Disappointing, but predictable.”
So, that’s her other ace. She finally jammed the neuroweave. It wasn’t cruel enough that we were set up to fail. She just had to make sure we were disconnected from each other in the end.
Rage freezes in my veins. I take a deep breath and play my last card for this round. I play it hoping that my friends... my family would give me strength for this one last gambit.
“On your own, you are in no way remarkable. A brilliant fighter, marginally intelligent, sure. Clever even. But certainly not extraordinary.” She continues. “Your friends and their data cores are now mine. See how cleverly they have been dismantled?”
I shut the neuroweave off and dig deep into my mind to activate some of our omega protocols. They may be offline, but I’m not. Not yet.
“The only reason my Huntsman has not killed you is because it has strict orders to incapacitate you.” She says, as I toss a few obscurers in the Huntsman’s path to give me some cover.
As I activate omega protocol seven, I run towards Leon. I manually trigger his protective armor to disengage, ripping t
hrough his nano-derm skin. It immediately begins to arrange itself around me.
When the last piece affixes itself to my nape, my HUD interfaces with it and I can see that the armor is only at three percent charge. Still, I feel stronger, sturdier even.
I lunge toward what was left of Bellona’s body and retrieve her processor, annexing it to the side of my head. It clicks into place and interfaces with the body armor. I feel an immediate mental boost and my mind clears up.
I dodge the Huntsman’s next salvo of energy blasts and slashes as I continue my desperate scavenger hunt.
I make my way to Iñigo and Mila. I take Iñigo’s lumenblade and his visor, merging it with Mila’s targeting system.
The Huntsman comes at me, blades out, and I narrowly escape the attack. I have to keep moving!
With these new pieces in place, my battle senses heighten. I swear I can almost predict what this Huntsman will do a nano-second before he does it, like it’s telegraphing its movements right to me.
I make my way over to Mick’s torso and take his processor and whatever explosives he had left.
The Huntsman lunges straight toward me for another killing blow, but I use a full percent of Leon’s armor to repel the attack with an energy field. The force sends it hurtling back towards the far side of the nearly demolished training yard.
Finally, I make it to Doctor Capaldi. I retrieve his processor, and go through his supplies to take the remnants of the reparative nanites he brought.
Leon’s armor drops to point five percent power, but I have what I need. As Bellona's processor runs overtime and Doctor Capaldi's processor syncs up, I spend another point two percent of power fitting Mick’s remaining ordnance into Iñigo’s lumenblade and doing a full analysis of the approaching Huntsman.
I drop to one knee and feign exhaustion. I only had one chance left. And I sure as the five hells was going to make it count.
“Sleep well, child.” The Queen says. Her Huntsman charges toward me to deliver his final crippling blow. “I assure you that this is not a slumber you will wake from.”
At the very last moment, just as the Huntsman’s blade is a millimeter away from piercing my skin, I pull all power from the suit and channel it into the tip of the lumenblade.
Silver white fire erupts between me and the Huntsman as I thrust the lumenblade with all my might into the Huntsman’s torso. The small blast sends us flying in opposite directions.
I do my best to land on my feet. With no charge left in them, Leon’s armor and all the other pieces of my friends I had affixed to it start falling away from my body.
The Huntsman stands up, convulsing slightly thanks to the electrical pulse coming from the lumenblade embedded in its torso. It will have difficulty moving so long as the blade keeps emitting that pulse, which won’t be for very long.
“Hmph.” I barely hear the Queen say. “Very resourceful. I’ll give you that much.”
Pushing through the grief and the excruciating pain shooting through my body, I taunt her. “All that crap about not being ‘special’ when I’m all alone… That’s just you projecting. I’m not less of anything with or without them. And I swear on the five hells, you will pay for what you took from me today, but I’ll be damned if I don’t take your monster down with me.”
I run towards the Huntsman. This is it. This is the moment this gamble pays off or I die a horrible death at the hands of this lunatic. In case of the latter, I really hope I'm unconscious for it.
I reach the Huntsman with just a few precious seconds left of the immobilizing pulse and grabe the hilt of the lumenblade. I force the hilt down as far as it can go, which jams the tip of the blade upward into the Huntsman's shoulder area.
With more than half of the weapon embedded into the Huntsman, I duck as low as I can and detonate the explosive core I wove into the blade using Doctor Capaldi’s reparative nanites.
The explosion throws me back with such concussive force that I am winded and seeing double as I get up. I push past the white noise ringing in my ears and the double vision to tap into my auxiliary power cells. You know, the ones that keep my nanites turbocharged so that I can process information, think and act faster and better than any human in the galaxy.
I need one last boost of clarity if I wanted to put this monster to bed, just enough for a second or two worth of enhancement.
Right now, I see how its nanite-enhanced Physicorum shell has erupted into an angry mass of roiling circuitry and molten alloy. But amidst the technological chaos, I see it: the Huntsman’s core circuitry.
Draining my own power cells to almost nothing, I assess within pico-seconds which key component would take the Huntsman out.
Wasting no time, I sprint towards the Huntsman again. With my remaining strength, I plunge Jean Philippe’s last dagger into the nexus of connections near its energy core, disrupting the flow of power to its entire frame.
I make short work of the huntsman’s transponder with the last few charges on Jean Philippe’s wrist blasters, destroying its receivers. It won’t be getting further instructions from the Queen.
I disengage, but not quickly enough. Even as the Huntsman shuts down, it still jabs me in the side with a small blade.
Pain tears through me. My legs give way. Darkness creeps along the edges of my vision.
Gritting my teeth, I crawl away from the Huntsman's body. Its hulking form flails as it tries to repair itself with failing power and no instructions from its mistress.
The Huntsman manages to right itself as I continue inching backward towards the remains of my family. If I was going to die, I wanted to be surrounded by them one last time.
It seems like the Huntsman has managed to fix itself. It lurches forward, slower than before. Perhaps it's drawing on some kind of auxiliary power source?
Even without my enhanced senses, I can tell it’s not even a fifth as lethal as it would have been on full power. I can also tell that with the kind of injury I have, it can execute its mistress’s most recent command with very little effort.
I rummage with shaking hands for something, anything on my person that I can use against it. I see what’s left of my friends, and for the first time in a long time, I feel despair. The same kind of despair I felt as a child in Leghrelnis after discovering my ultimate destiny, especially since it appeared like I was going to finally fulfill it.
Each movement was agony, and only sheer adrenaline kept me from blacking out again. I hardly even registered the Queen fussing at her creation.
In desperation, I grab hold of the med-pen that Doctor Capaldi had asked me to keep. I pulled it out of my med case, fingers trembling.
“You shouldn’t be this incapacitated, cut off from your main power source… What could possibly be draining your…. Aha!” I hear the sound of tapping as the Queen fumbles with her datapad.
The pain is too overwhelming and it drowns out my horror at the sight of the Huntsman powering up fully.
"There's a good boy," she cooed. "And what an important new discovery! The neuroweave dampening field consumes ever so much power. Well... We don't need that now, do we?" She sneers as she disables the field.
The Huntsman starts towards me again just as I am about to jab the med-pen into my thigh. I want to make my last stand on my feet, and I hope that there's enough of this dose to numb my pain. I'll not go quietly, I think grimly, even if I have to use my teeth, I'll do it.
My confidence wavers for a moment when I glance at my bleeding side and the trail of blood I left. 'Tis but a flesh wound', I think, recalling some pre-galaxy era footage I watched as a child.
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