“Flip over a few photos,” she told him.
He scrolled down and paused at the image that displayed the mechanicals ripping metal objects apart. One showed a droid holding an arm out with a blue light emitting from it. “Shit. These are probably based on the one I fought back at y’alls base.”
“I reached the same conclusion,” she stated. “For mass production, I’m sure some of the finer details were left on the floor but fighting a horde of those things will be quite difficult.”
“Do you think it could hurt the bottom line?” he asked. “Maybe I’m hopeful, but when we estimated the number of bots they had, we assumed they would only use modified droid designs, which would have been faster.”
“They might have less. From the pictures Fritz sent, this seems to be the bulk of their force,” she confirmed. “But did you notice the guards amongst the pics?”
The ace refocused on the images and identified men and women in medium and light armor. There were only a few but it confirmed a human presence there. “The armor doesn’t look like anything special. It’s certainly not off the rack but it doesn’t look like something they made themselves.”
“I’m sure they are modified,” Kit reasoned. “But you also said this organization has hands in several companies you know of. It’s certainly feasible that this armor was made by one of them to their specifications.”
“Yeah. It certainly could be,” he murmured. “I guess we’ll have a ton of things to look into once we pick it off the bodies.”
“That would be the most direct way,” she agreed. “I’ll let you go now. See you in the morning—assuming we can find each other.”
“Are you still heading up part of the hacker team?” he asked.
“Fritz and I will work with a group of hackers and engineers before we break off. I’ll then head into the main building from the ground. Your infiltrators will have to take care of the airdrop, but don’t worry. Janis will send a team to meet them there.”
“All right. Best of luck.”
“Same to you.” With that, she signed off. Kaiden put the tablet away as Wolfson walked up to him, a large shotgun with a rotating chamber slung over his shoulder. As he gave him a wide grin, the door to the warehouse opened and Sasha, Magellan, Cyra, Genos, and Chiyo walked in. Behind them, Julio pushed a cart with several crates.
The ace nodded a greeting as he approached them. “It’s good to see you. Wolfson and I readied the ships.” He gestured to the three aircraft behind him. “We’ll meet up with Desmond to pick up some of the troops and we’ll all set off together. The ground forces are ready at the base.”
“And Janis?” Sasha asked.
“He’s flying in as well with the majority of the droid infantry.”
“It looks like you have everything set to go, Kaiden,” Magellan commented and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Are we ready?”
“Almost.” He studied the armored Magellan, Sasha, Julio, and Cyra. “You guys only need to get on the ships.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kaiden sat on the bench as a couple of Desmond’s troops checked one another’s gear. Jet-jocks was the slang term for these outfits—light armor, large packs on their backs, mods for stabilizing, and weighted segments on their gear to help to remain level during flight. Something always seemed a little off with the equipment, even in the professional outfits. The Skyway Kings, while they certainly had a reputation, were not so professional. He could smell the leaks in the gear and he closed any external vents in his helmet and relied on the meager oxygen tank. It definitely wouldn’t help to get high on the fumes and on that note, he also checked his weapons to make sure they weren’t sparking. He would also prefer not to die in an explosion before they even reached the big fight.
It would be a rather stupid epitaph—charrr-poof.
He was distracted by one of the few dozen ground troops the Fire Riders had left behind from the first group. The man rolled something around in his gauntlet—a rosary by the looks of it, although the beads were made of glass and the various symbols seeming handcrafted from junk and scraps.
“Are you religious?” the ace asked.
The man looked up. He wore a rounded helmet with a faded visor and while it looked in shape, the repairs were rough. “I am for the next day or two,” he responded.
“Have you made many confessions before heading off?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Yeah.” The merc continued to turn the fetish in his large hands as if by rote. “Although honestly, I hope to get enough off the haul when we win this thing to pay for a big-ass penitence.”
“Do you wanna toss a couple of creds into the swear jar?” he joked.
The man laughed weakly but honestly. “That’s an ongoing tab.”
Kaiden and glanced at Genos, who now made his way through a few of the other soldiers toward him. “Wolfson wanted me to tell you we’re almost there,” the Tsuna stated.
The Fire Rider nodded, stowed his rosary, and picked up his machine gun before he moved to the back of the ship to join the other ‘shock troopers’—or, at least, that’s what they were today. The ace moved back to allow the jockeys to take their positions at the door and then made his way over to the cockpit.
He placed a hand on Wolfson’s shoulder and leaned closer to the monitor on the screen. It displayed five different panels with Sasha, Magellan, Desmond, Julio, and Zena on each. “Is everyone ready?”
“It would be a hell of a time to get worried now.” Magellan chuckled. “I’ll peel off and take a couple of Desmond’s fighters with me to make sure the hackers get on that roof and escort them where they need to go.”
“Thank you, Magellan,” he replied and drew in a sharp breath. “Can you tell Chiyo something?”
“Good luck?” the bounty hunter guessed. “She wished you the same. She also wanted me to pass along that you need to focus on what you do best and she’ll do the same—saving your ass.”
He chuckled. “She’s a little cocky, ain’t she? But that’s about right.”
“I’ll make sure it all goes right, I promise.” Magellan glanced to the side at another screen. “There aren’t any turrets we need to worry about, right?”
“There were but there are less now,” Kit confirmed. “Fritz took care of the bigger ones last night, but I should let you all know it won’t be a permanent fix once they realize they are offline.”
“And about how long will that be?” Julio questioned.
“About the time they try firing them and they don’t work,” Fritz answered as he appeared on a new screen and turned the monitor into two columns of three panels. “I would guess you’ll have a few minutes of relative safety but the smaller turrets are still active, so fly like you don’t wanna crash.”
“That’s generally the basics,” Julio retorted. “I’ll try to take out what I can with my cannons once I drop my cargo.”
“How long can you last?” Zena asked.
He shrugged. “As long as my baby will hold.”
“I hope you work fast or that ship is well-shielded,” Fritz commented.
“I’ll help you with that, Julio,” Wolfson assured him. “Along with the jockeys and fighters. We’ll take care of the problem before it becomes one.”
“Janis arrived only a few hours ago,” Kit informed them. “The droids are ready to go. He’s already set up and will begin their activation soon.”
“We’re on the move as well,” Zena stated. “You’ll probably still beat us to the gate by a few minutes, at least.”
“Arrive fashionably.” Kaiden looked up as Magellan banked away. Three fighter ships followed and Wolfson pulled ahead. The ace took one last look at the monitor. “Keep a kill count, everyone, and let’s compare when this is over.” Somehow, the flashback silliness of their student training made him feel a little better like they would all actually be there to compare at the end.
Lycan yawned loudly and stretched his massive arms above his head as the morning sun cr
ept over the mountains behind the base. He was dressed in nothing but a pair of black briefs and he let the wind tease at him while he smiled a toothy grin to meet the day. His morning stretches—one of the few routines he’d kept as a strict tradition ever since he was in the Omega Horde and one of his favorite parts of the normal day. He had even been able to persuade some of the other soldiers to join him, although he could see they didn’t seem to share his enthusiasm for the tradition. As fighters, they should know the importance of keeping limber.
“Uh, Mr Lycan, sir,” one of them called and pointed to the side. “Your tablet is blinking.”
He frowned and glanced at the device. It could only be Raz. Both Jalloh and Cascina were well-mannered enough not to interrupt him in the mornings. He scowled as he picked it up and, sure enough, it was the team hacker. “What is it, Raz?” His tone was deliberately curt when he answered the call and his teammate’s face appeared onscreen.
“Lycan, tell me what you see,” Raz demanded. His voice sounded anxious and his expression seemed doubly so.
“A little bastard ruining the beginning of my day,” he retorted.
“No, idiot!” he snapped. “Look at the horizon. I’m getting a ton of readings here.”
“What?” Lycan muttered and looked over his shoulder. “Are you sure that’s not another surge from the core?”
“Everyone in here is reading the same thing,” the hacker explained feverishly. “One second, it was fine and in the next, there was a giant—”
“Hold on.” He held up a hand and turned to squint at the horizon. Several dots showed against the sky. As they drew closer, more appeared, followed by a couple more after a second or two. And, he realized, they were getting bigger. The familiar sound of fighter engines edged into the silence.
Part of him was worried but the other was simply excited. Finally, something was happening. But as more dots appeared and some turned into actual shapes that now raced toward the base, he realized that a whole ton of something was happening all at once.
“Son of a bitch!” he cried and startled the other guards. “We’re under attack.”
No sooner had he yelled the warning before a barrage of fire sent everyone on the roof into a scramble to find cover. Below, the droids responded with the comforting clank of metal against metal. Lycan turned to one of the defensive cannons but it hadn’t moved. “Raz! The cannons.”
“They aren’t responding,” his teammate stated. “Someone hid a series of junk commands in the systems. I need to force them out.”
“Reboot them, you jackass.”
“That would take longer,” the hacker countered. “I’ll do what I know, and you do what you know. Go kill them!”
Lycan snorted and noted that the other guards were already bolting for the door to head to the armory. “I’ll ignore the disrespectful tone,” he muttered and tossed the tablet aside as he walked to the stairway. “Because I can take my anger out on something else now.”
The last of the jockeys leapt out and Kaiden caught hold of a railing above him when Wolfson plummeted to a lower altitude and slowed barely enough as the back of the ship opened. He drew Sire, looked back, and raised an arm. The mixed team of gang members hollered, cheered, and raised their weapons in a show of unity and he pointed and led them forward. He was the first to jump and the shocks in his armor dampened the impact when he landed and whipped around to see the jockeys had already begun to cause enough chaos to draw the droids’ attention.
The ace charged a shot as one of the mechanicals focused on him. It’s arm transformed into a cannon but before it could even aim it toward him, he fired and it took the almost fully charged shot full in the chest. Unfortunately, it didn’t buckle or break. While it fell back a little, it regained its balance and he was caught momentarily off guard and tried hastily to charge another shot. Laser fire and kinetic rounds erupted around him to obliterate the droid and a few of the others in a hail of deadly projectiles. This was immediately followed by more raucous shouts and whoops as the soldiers who landed behind him surged forward. Some screamed for loot while others argued who had achieved those kills.
A group of droids exited one of the buildings—a warehouse or assembly building if he had to guess. He turned his weapon to them and fired, but having learned from the last shot, he followed quickly with a thermal. The droids exploded twice over and he barreled after his team while a fighter ship screamed over him.
The raid had begun.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jalloh and Cascina waited for the doors to the main building to open. Raz was busy dealing with the internal security measures and unraveling the numerous ‘small annoyances,’ as he put it. The merc leader could hear explosions outside that actually made the building shake. Whoever this was came prepared to fight and cause a ruckus. But, when the doors finally parted and the numerous Arbiter droids at his back entered the battle, he would respond in kind.
“That’s one cannon down,” Julio yelled as his ship’s guns finally dislodged the west cannon. It plummeted to shatter into pieces and destroy the buildings and robots that tried to slow him down with laser fire from over a hundred feet below.
“Well done,” Sasha complimented him and tapped a few buttons on his ship’s console. “I’ll connect my ship’s autopilot to yours. I need to get on the ground.”
“Understood. See if you can find Kaiden in all this madness. I’m sure he could use your rifle.”
“I need to sabotage any arrays they have in this area,” the commander stated. “I’m sure they have the bulk of their forces in the main building, but they wouldn’t connect each droid here to one terminal. That would be too easy for us. I’ll go around and disable any other—”
“The droids are pouring out of the fort!” Wolfson bellowed on the open comms. “Hundreds are streaming into the main plaza.”
Sasha muttered a curse under his breath. “I’m going. Take care of the other cannons as quickly as you can, Julio. Desmond, can we have air support for the ground troops?”
“I’m already working on it!” the Skyway Kings leader shouted. “I had to pull my jockeys back. Those droids are too accurate when in full force. The fighters will try to cut a path or at least deter them.”
The commander pressed an escape switch and his pilot’s chair leaned forward and dropped him down a hatch to the ground below. As he fell, he had a view of the robotic horde. Wolfson hadn’t exaggerated as a stream of droids poured from the mouth of the main stronghold. Dozens in the front of the onslaught were already firing as several fighters swooped in above to deliver fusillades of missiles to annihilate two large groups at once. Many others simply pushed forward to replace the old and two of the fighters were disabled by a barrage of charged bolts. One impacted into a wall, while the other spun and crashed into a section of the army. At least he took some with him, although that was little comfort.
Sasha landed as another group of fighters streaked in to attack, but they had to break away when the droids turned their focus quickly on them. While it would buy the ground forces time to find cover, the fighters now had to weave and spin and dodge the blasts. They were only able to fire a few random shots from their main guns and a few missiles struck the perimeter of the enemy force with little damage.
“Zena, Janis, where are the reinforcements?” he demanded.
“I’m in the Zeppelin with the bulk of the droids,” Janis responded. “But I sent two carriers’ worth with Zena for faster transport.”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes, sir,” she assured him. “I can see the gates.”
He swore as another fighter spiraled out of the sky and landed only a couple of hundred yards away from him. “Isaac, scan for arrays, nodes, or anything that allows remote function,” he ordered.
“I will compile a list as fast as I can, sir,” the EI responded.
Sasha raised his sniper rifle and fired at the group through the gaps between buildings and warehouses. It was certainly not the most difficult
feat he had ever accomplished, given the hundreds of droids on the march. Honestly, it would have been more impressive not to hit something.
He felled four droids in quick succession but several finally turned toward him. His eyes widened when their cannons snapped in his direction and began to charge. He grunted and sprinted out of range. These new models responded surprisingly quickly. The ground trembled with the residual force of an explosion behind him and he realized he would have to stay on the move. Hopefully, the other members of their team would realize the same thing.
Two more men fell when a round of lasers sank into their backs. That was seven so far that Kaiden had seen die. He howled in outrage as he hurled another thermal at the advancing droids. One simply caught it and flung it away. These bots were adapting. He’d thought they were merely better armored and geared, but they seemed to learn faster than any other metalhead he had fought in his life. Either that or whoever was controlling them was way more skilled than he gave them credit for.
He fired a blast at their feet, which thrust them back and provided enough time for him and the men behind him to get around the corner. Now that the droids had reached them, his team had actually moved back from where they had dropped and had to weave through the grid-like pattern of the buildings for cover and distance. One of the men stopped and charged his cannon and he followed suit to prepare a shot while two others readied their machine guns. When the bots appeared, they all fired as one to eliminate their pursuers before they could respond.
“Look up!” another shouted. The ace did so and scowled. Three droids perched on the ledge of one of the buildings, prepared to fire, but they were stopped when several small explosions detonated around them. Two fell over the side and two jet-jockeys flew overhead with a cheerful wave.
Raid (Animus Book 9) Page 14