“I suppose they had to have some sense to keep those active. What kind of droids?”
“Guardian—about six that I can see, but I can make out a few bots in the back. They are hidden in all the wires and poles, but they look to be older model Battle droids, maybe Havoc or Assault?”
“It looks like I get to finally do my job.” Chiyo unlocked the doors with a wave of her hand. “Being navigator is interesting and all, but I prefer to live up to my division.”
Genos nodded and gestured for her to enter. “After you then.”
“Sir, there was a breach in the central station,” the tech informed Walker.
“With the core? So that’s their game.” He clenched his teeth and considered the thoughts racing in his mind. “Send whoever is close to intercept them and have my shuttle prepared.”
“Sir?” the tech asked. “Are we abandoning ship?”
“We are being prepared for potential fallout. A word of advice…Jesse, was it?” The tech nodded, “You’ll live longer if you follow my plans rather than Swarn’s. Issue the commands and grab a gun. We’ll head to hanger seven.”
“Understood. Should I inform the captain?”
Walker shook his head. “Even that thick-skulled brute will understand what is happening here. If they compromise the core, it’s hard to not see the explosions and power failures. If he wants his pound of flesh, he’ll be delighted with tons. For now, do as I say and I’ll take you along with me. Would you like that?”
“Indeed.”
Kaiden fired three shots with Debonair and finally eliminated the large bastard who tried enthusiastically to cave his head in with a sledgehammer. He turned to the wall and kicked the grate in as he holstered his pistol. Quickly, he crawled inside the shaft and into the ducts.
“So the work of an Ace is fifty percent ass-kicking, ten percent giving orders, twenty percent planning, and twenty percent crawling through ducts?”
“I would call it fifty percent ass-kicking, forty nine percent making it look good, and one percent for incidentals,” he joked. “Crawling through these things has become something of a hobby.”
“I’ve heard stranger.” Chief chortled. “It looks like they are finally grouping and looking for you properly. You might wanna ditch the ID if you still have it They are more likely to avoid shooting at a no name than at the guy they are looking for.”
“Aw, hell, you’re right.” He squirmed an arm behind him to retrieve the ID chip from his helmet and crush it in between his fingers. “It’s a good thing Chiyo blocked them when we left the hanger. Otherwise, this would be a canned hunt.”
“It would make for a great Darwin award.”
“Do you think we should contact them and tell them to do the same?” Kaiden inquired.
“I wouldn’t risk it, The comm link might be intercepted. Besides, they’ve made it to the power core. Chiyo’s doing her thing now while Genos is taking a metaphorical crowbar to it.”
“You know, for all the grief they give me for my tiny degree of ultraviolence, they seem fairly apt in that regard themselves.”
“You’ve noticed that too, eh?” The EI laughed. “Maybe it’s only semantics and you simply prefer a personal touch.”
“I think it is most gentlemanly,” Kaiden agreed and continue his crawl along the shaft. At a fork, he looked one way to see he was blocked by a spinning blade, but the other side was clear.
“So, since we have time to kill, how do you feel about this mission compared to all the others?”
“It’s been bumpier than normal, but I guess that’s to be expected with a new year and all. Things should be get harder. Otherwise, I’ll continue to make everyone look bad.”
“It looks good on the eventual contract.”
“I remember telling you that I took the outside jobs so I could buy myself out of my contract.”
“You did, but I have plenty of time to think between games of solitaire and throwing and catching a ball against your cerebral cortex. What’s the point of buying yourself out of the contract if you’ll simply continue to do merc gigs?”
Kaiden stopped for a moment as he thought it over. “Well…I won’t be working for someone else.”
“You mean besides the person who hired you to do the job, which would be by definition working for someone.”
“It’s in the details. I can choose not to do it and how to do it. That’s not the same in a chain of command,” he countered and resumed his uncomfortable and slow journey.
“Is that the best you got?”
“I know your favorite pastime is ribbing me, but what brought this on, exactly?”
“Like I said, I was thinkin’. I mean, I have a rep too, you know. One of these days, you’ll eventually wither away and die while I keep going I would like a better look than ‘Super advanced EI who was previously partnered with gig drifter.’”
“We’ve only been together a year and a half and you’re already thinking of replacing me?” Kaiden asked. He tried to sound sarcastic but a trace of genuine anger tinged his voice.
“Kaiden, baby, please don’t be like that,” Chief mocked. “I’m merely a future planner. Plus, with all the shit you get into, the reaper’s gotta be creepin’ up on your ass.”
“Yeah, and I’ll blow his boney ass away too,” he challenged. “Besides, isn’t that part of the reason I have you? To make death less likely?”
“And I’ve done that quite well, don’t you think?” Chief inquired. “But I ain’t a miracle worker, man.”
“So you choose this moment to show some humility,” he jeered and hesitated as he looked at the drop ahead. “Hold onto your ‘encouragement’ for now. Let’s see where this goes.”
Kaiden grabbed the rim of the end of the shaft and peered down into a darkened room filled with boxes and parts of ships and robots alike. It appeared to be a storage area. He eased out and dropped lightly to land on the tips of both his feet.
As he stood to examine his surroundings more closely, a large arm smashed into his neck and knocked him back several feet. He skidded but used the momentum to flip himself and stand as he took Sire in his hands and aimed in the darkness
“I figured you would come this way,” a guttural, growling voice stated. “I was able to get a bead on your ID for a while. You didn’t hide it, only switched the codes around. Otherwise, it would have been obvious that you weren’t who you were supposed to be.”
Kaiden pulled the trigger charging a shot.
“Rats always like this room, damn little pests. But it would figure you would end up here.”
“Have we met?” he questioned. A large figure stepped into the light. He was almost as big as Wolfson with long, matted hair, tanned skin, and thick eyebrows. While he scrutinized Kaiden over, the ace saw that the left side of his face was traversed by two long scars and no pupils were visible in his eyes. He wore a large coat in red and black, with black pants and boots and held a shotgun in one hand.
“You are making a mockery of my colors,” the man rasped. “I’ll have to peel them off you if won’t take them off yourself.
Kaiden raised his weapon. “First off, your colors? I’m fairly sure the Red Suns, the WCM Hell Diver Division, and at least five hundred colleges back on earth would have something to say about that.” He took a step forward. “Secondly, if you’re propositioning me, I don’t think you quite grasp what a pirate means when he says ‘booty.’”
The man aimed his shotgun and fired in an instant. The ace returned the shot, ducked down, and rolled to the side. He fired several quick, uncharged shots at the man after his first blast sailed past his target. The man deserved some credit. For someone as big as he was, he could move seriously damn quickly.
Fortunately for Kaiden, he had trained with Wolfson and he moved quicker than this bastard.
The ace aimed one last shot directly in front of his attacker and fired. The man saw it coming and threw a container up in an effort to block it. The energy shot merely drilled through the flimsy barrier and
struck home in the side of the man’s arm. Kaiden smiled for a second before the shot simply slid off and slammed into a pole behind him, and his face dropped.
“What?”
The man smiled. “Barrier threading in the coat,” he explained and straightened. “I don’t much like all that heavy armor stuff—it’s too restrictive—but I have tricks.” He aimed his shotgun. “My name is Captain Logan Swarn, and it’s my turn now.” He released a volley of rapid blasts at Kaiden and kinetic shots whipped around him as he tried to dodge but was hit in the shoulder, left arm, and right knee. He felt the impact, but his armor blocked the bullets from entering at the cost of them shattering.
The ace took refuge behind a large stack of boxes tied together by a rope. His opponent threw the gun aside but when Kaiden looked out he had already drawn a new one and fired that pushed him back under cover.
“Tell me why you’re here and I won’t bother with torture,” the captain offered as he strolled toward him. “I’ll have a kill either way, but I’ll be generous enough to let you decide if it’s today or when I finally get bored.”
“Power core at critical level. Please engage safety measures.”
“What in the blazing hell?” Swarn roared.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you now,” Kaiden said cheerfully as he drew his blade, cut the rope, and shoved the crates violently toward the captain.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“They’re destroying the core. Are they fucking insane?” a pirate yelled as he and a group of more than fifty others rushed into the central station.
“Someone, get it open.”
“To hell with that! We should abandon this wreck.”
“Can we even shut it down now?”
“Everyone, stop your blathering and take them down!” The group of men ran to the door and one of them set up at the terminal to force the doors open. “There’s no way they will survive all of us. Even if they did somehow make it past the turrets and bots, they gotta be tuckered by now. We have them by the—”
The doors swung open and the group were immediately greeted by a hail of gunfire from repurposed droids that waited for them within the chamber. Some of the pirates tried to retreat, but several turrets descended from the ceiling of the central station and annihilated them before they had even moved a few yards.
“Well played, Chiyo.” Genos complimented his infiltrator teammate from where they stood on the far side of the room. “How much longer?”
“I’ll use the droids as a distraction. I’ve charted a path to the hangers from here. I don’t have any resistance to my hacking, so I guess anyone in charge of cyber security has more foresight that this group.”
The Tsuna nodded and chuckled as the droids left the room and continued their assault. “I doubt the ship we came in on will be ready. To finish this test, I assume we would have to get far enough away to not be caught in the blast.”
“That would be in the ‘not dying’ part of the objective,” Chiyo agreed.
“If we can pile into a fighter or, at the very least, a mid-tier shuttle, we should be good.” He glanced at her. “Can you find anything in the stations’ inventory or directory to tell us if we have something?”
“I’m sure there are plenty of fighters.” Chiyo moved her hands as she looked around the map on her holo-screen. “It would all depend on whether or not we can get to them in time and before they are all taken by others trying to flee.”
“I would assume that those higher up the chain have their own personal vehicles,” he said thoughtfully. “They would certainly have something with enough power for us to get out in time.”
“Agreed, let me see…” She continued to scroll and her eyes lighted up after a moment. “Here. There’s an AA-class shuttle in this hanger. It’s closer than going for the main hanger bays.”
“Should we expect trouble?”
A blast from overhead, shook pieces of metal from the walls and knocked some of the railings out of place. “I think we’re already in trouble. How much longer do we have?”
“A conservative guess would be about fifteen minutes.” Several wires near the console sparked alarmingly. “I would prefer we leave in ten if we can manage that.”
“Let’s move. I’ll contact Kaiden.” Chiyo turned her screen off and the teammates set off as she opened her comms. “Kaiden you there?”
“I’m a little busy,” he shouted as the captain threw another box at him, fired the last two shots in his shotgun before throwing it to the side, and yanked the machine gun from his back.
“You come to my station, kill my men, and then blow it up?” Swarn yelled. “I’ll tear your guts right from your stomach!”
“I don’t think this guy will let up anytime soon, Chiyo. We’ve had something of a misunderstanding.” Kaiden dropped Sire, drew Debonair, and fired shots at the captain’s gun and hands in an attempt to make him drop his weapon.
“This isn’t the time for you to fight for sport, Kaiden. You’ve have five minutes to get out of there and make it to a hanger. We’ll pick you up.” With that, she signed off.
“We have five minutes to kill this guy Chief.”
“That’s essentially what I took from that,” The EI agreed. “That coat makes him almost impenetrable, unless you can get a head shot.”
“I tried, but he hasn’t exactly given me a lot of room to aim properly.” He snatched Sire up and dashed across the room as the captain fired a stream of laser blasts from his machine gun. “That coat can deflect moderate laser blasts. What about a charged shot?”
“That’ll definitely break through, but he’s already shown that he can dodge them. You gotta get close.”
“Intimate. Got it.” The ace fired a few more shots at Swarn from Debonair before he holstered it and closed Sire’s vent. He released a couple of half-charged shots to rocket past the captain and hit parts and boxes. Hopefully, the shrapnel would help to disorient him. He held the trigger to charge the weapon as he closed in and retrieved his blade as he saw the man reach for his pistol. He threw the blade instinctively. It struck the gun as his adversary fired and a powerful round careened overhead. Kaiden held Sire up and fired when he was only a few yards away. The recoil from firing a shot with only one arm pushed his aim slightly off center, but at that range, it didn’t matter.
The captain saw his intention, but he was too close to leap out of the way. His eye glared at Kaiden as he whipped his coat off and held it in front of him to contain the blast. The discharge of energy blew up the containers and any parts around them and hurled the ace back even further. He crash-landed as sparks, steam, and metal fell around him as he looked around but couldn’t find Sire. His ribs felt like they were broken and he wheezed as he checked his body. Most of his armor was all right, so he had that at least.
As he looked around for an exit, heavy boots thudded behind him. He cursed and moved a hand to his belt as he spun on the floor. Swarn, covered in blood and burns and his face a mask of rage, walked toward him with a large cleaver in his hand.
“I’ll give you respect for being a fighter,” the captain growled as he stopped a couple feet in front of Kaiden. “But that won’t excuse you from my wrath.”
“Do you really want to die in the middle of one of the seven deadly sins?” the ace asked as he pushed himself onto his elbows and fixed his adversary with a hard look. “Although I guess by this point in your life, you ain’t much of a one for repentance, huh?”
“Choose your last words and say them,” the captain ordered and brandished the blade at him. “At least the ones that won’t be screams.”
Kaiden flicked his thumb to knock a pin off the device in his hand as he sat up and threw it at his attacker, who caught it in his free hand. “Are you trying to go out fighting?”
“I’m going out of here in a ship,” he responded. “You’ll go out in pieces.”
The frag grenade in the captain’s hand exploded a split second after a surprised and angry howl. Shrapnel from t
he explosion embed themselves into the ace’s armor and one almost blinded him as it pierced his visor. Chief’s avatar looked at it in the HUD with a wide eye before the display went static and disappeared. Kaiden removed his helmet and stood to remove the other pieces of his armor. Swarn was very dead, his left arm blown off, and blood dripped from his head and chest.
“The coat may have given you style points, but you still should have had armor,” he snarked and threw his chest piece to the ground beside the corpse.
The body shifted and Kaiden immediately drew for Debonair and aimed it at the man’s head. Swarn looked at him and sneered before he shook his head, confusion on his face. His laugh sounded wispy and almost inhuman. “So Walker was right. You are one of those damned siks.”
“Sik? The hell is a sik?” Kaiden asked.
“I think that blast knocked out the Broca’s area of his brain,” Chief volunteered.
“To think…that Swarn…captain of the…Dead Space Crew…would…be felled…” His voice became thinner and thinner, his breathing ragged as it slowed, until Kaiden could barely hear him over the flames and electrical static. “By a damn…doll.” The captain’s head fell to the floor, his body finally motionless in death.
Walker and his two assistants made their way to the ship—a sigma-class shuttle and one of. the few luxury items Walker had amassed. He had, in fact, wrenched it from Swarn’s clutches. He tapped a button on his tablet and the shuttle ramp lowered. “Quickly now. I’d prefer to be in safe harbor before this place blows up,” he ordered.
One of the assistants turned to take the case he carried. He looked up over the leader’s shoulder and lurched for his gun, but a laser shot pierced his head and caught Walker off guard.
The leader spun as the other assistat was gunned down in a hail of laser fire. Two other DSC members walked up to him. Now would be the opportune time for a mutiny, but he could deduce who these attackers were.
“I assume you are two of the three people we can thank for this current situation?” he asked as they approached, their guns at the ready.
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