Boothe waited for the turret to start firing, but the machine did not seem to be able to see the cloaked figure at all. When it turned away again, the figure quickly ran up to the bunker and disappeared down the stairway inside.
Then the loud crack of gunfire echoed from underground. He heard the distinctive boom of shotgun blasts, along with automatic machine-gun fire. The turrets above began sweeping the area quickly, looking for the source of the noise.
“Damn,” Boothe said under his breath.
Whoever that person was, they were either going to get killed, or they were going to get to the battery before he could.
Either way, he had to hurry.
2
Boothe rushed forward, staying low to the ground. He tried to get as close to the bunker as he could before the turret on the roof noticed him. It swiveled from right to left, then back again, its red laser sight scanning for any target. Boothe gripped his pistol in one hand, ready to fire if it came to that.
Stealth (45%) - FAILED!
The turret let out a high-pitched siren, alerting everything in the area. The laser sight moved over and locked onto Boothe. Stealth no longer an option, he ran as fast as he could towards the doorway at the front of the bunker. The turret’s rotary gun began to spin and then unleashed a hailstorm of gunfire. Bullets whizzed by Boothe’s head, pounding into the ground around him. Dirt exploded upwards from each impact. At any moment, Boothe expected to feel the searing pain of lead piercing through his body.
Then he dove into the bunker and out of the turret's line of sight. His drone flew in behind him, unharmed. The turrets seemed to completely ignore the small robot. More gunfire echoed from below and muzzle flashes lit up the gray cement hallway at the bottom of the stairs.
Boothe stood up, dusted himself off, and rushed down the steps, holding his revolver at the ready. The drone hovered slightly behind him, having nowhere else to go in the narrow corridor. About five-foot wide, the tunnel stretched out in front of Boothe, gradually descending further into the ground. Small lights set into the ceiling and along the bottom of the walls dimly illuminated the path. In a few places, cracks had formed in the wall, spilling dirt from the ground outside onto the floor. Gunfire flashed at the end of the hallway, about one hundred yards in the distance.
He hoped that the cloaked person he saw had not already been killed. If it was another player, it would be the first one that he’d seen alive.
He ran forward until he reached the end of the tunnel. There, the narrow corridor opened into a wide room. An array of pillars rose from set positions, holding the ceiling up from the press of the earth above it. Debris that had once been furniture and supplies littered the floor. Amongst the broken metal and plastic laid the sparking, smoking remnants of several humanoid robots.
From across the room came a deep echoing boom as the hooded figure Boothe had seen outside pulled the trigger of a shotgun and blew the head off the final robot guard. The machine fell to the floor, wires crackling electricity and fire spreading throughout its components.
Then the hooded figure turned the gun towards Boothe.
He dove to the side just as the wall he had been standing in front of blew outward in a shower of broken cement.
“Don’t shoot me!” Boothe yelled. He held up his hands and rose slowly back to his feet. “I’m not a bad guy!”
Bad guy? Who says that? So stupid!
“Who are you?” the figure asked pulling more shells from her belt and shoving them into her pump shotgun.
“My name’s Boothe,” he said. “I’m here for the battery.”
“So am I,” the figure said. “So you’re a rival then.”
“Or, we could work together,” Boothe suggested. “We’d have a much better chance of making it out alive that way.”
The figure pulled her hood back, revealing her face. Flawless brown skin with piercing green eyes and a short, rounded nose over thick lips. Her black hair was a collection of tight springy curls that formed a small cloud around her head. She looked over Boothe, then her eyes locked onto his. She held her finger over the trigger of her shotgun, as if she was still trying to decide whether or not to shoot him.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll work together. My name is Scarlett.”
“I’m Boothe,” he said and held out his hand to her.
She took it, and gave it a shake. Her skin was warm and smooth, her grip firm and confident. Text appeared on the bottom of Boothe’s vision.
Scarlett joins your group.
A marker with a health gauge appeared above her head. It showed 2 out of 6 HP.
“You’re hurt?” Boothe asked. He didn’t see any wounds on her. She looked down and pulled back her cloak to reveal her leather armor underneath. Blood seeped from a hole in the side of her abdomen.
“Oh,” she said. “I guess I caught one.”
“Do you have a medkit?” Boothe asked.
Scarlett shook her head. “I had one, but I used it already.”
“Take off your cloak,” Boothe said, pulling his medkit from his belt.
She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“You want me to heal you?” he asked. “Take off your cloak.”
She slipped it off her shoulders and draped it over a broken table nearby. Boothe spent a minute working on the wound, as she winced in pain. When he was done, he stood up and saw that the gauge above her head had gone back to full health.
“Thanks,” she said. “Really. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
Boothe noticed her arm as she put her cloak back on. She had that same tattoo - numbers and letters arranged into a square.
“Have you seen any other players?” Boothe asked.
“Nope,” she said. “You’re my first.”
“Well thanks for not killing me,” Boothe replied.
“So how do you think we get through this thing?” Scarlett asked, nodding towards the only exit in the room aside from the corridor they had come through.
It was a thick steel door, tightly shut and locked. A small keypad was stuck to the wall next to it. Over the keypad, Boothe’s goggles displayed a marker that said Drone Access Available.
“I think I can handle this,” Boothe said. He turned to his drone and said “Connect.”
The drone flew over to the keypad, hovering just in front of it. The claws at the end of its two tiny arms rotated inward and were replaced by a sort of probe that it jammed into the sides of the keypad.
Drone Connected. Waiting for input.
“Uh,” Boothe muttered. “Open?”
Hacking (75%) - SUCCESS!
With the hiss of compressed air, the door slid to the side, revealing a hallway.
“Handy little machine you got there,” Scarlett said.
“It has its uses,” Boothe said with a smile. He motioned towards the door with a slight bow. “After you?”
“Oh, I get to go into the killer-robot infested bunker first?” Scarlett said. “How kind of you.”
She gave her shotgun a single pump, loading the next shell, then walked inside.
3
“One robot guard,” Boothe whispered. “Around the corner ahead. It has some kind of electric coil on its arm.”
He called the drone back to his shoulder, the camera feed on the side of his vision fading away until he needed it again.
“Stay back,” Scarlett said. “Let me lead.”
She took her hatchet from its loop on her belt and held it confidently in her right hand. Then she pulled her hood up over her head, obscuring her face, and moved down the hallway at a crouch. When she reached the corner, she took a small canister from her belt, pulled the pin on it, and rolled it around the corner towards the robot. Boothe heard a series of beeps, the hum of servos turning, and crackling of electricity from the coil on the robot’s arm. After a hiss, white smoke began filling the hallway.
Scarlett rushed around the corner, hatchet held high. Metal clanked against metal, t
hen the robot let out a short whine as it crumbled to the floor.
As the smoke began to clear, Scarlett peeked her head around the corner, motioned for Boothe to follow, and said, “Let’s go.”
Boothe followed her, staying low and stepping as quietly as he could. The robot laid on the floor, its metal head split down the middle. Boothe looked it over for any components that could be salvaged, but there was nothing obvious. The weapon was completely attached and Boothe doubted that it would function if he removed it. He might be able to spend a few hours pulling the thing apart, but Scarlett was not going to wait around for him.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Quit fiddling with that thing.”
“Yeah okay,” he said. “I’ll send the drone ahead.” He nodded towards the drone and said, “Go scan for enemies.”
Search mode activated.
It flew down the hallway, turning to look in doorways and around corners, searching for anything hostile. Boothe and Scarlett followed a few steps behind, their weapons held ready.
Boothe slowly opened the first door to the right. Inside, the rotten smell of death hit him immediately, threatening to make him sick. Rows of disheveled bunk beds lined the far wall. A couple had collapsed, their mattresses torn and bedframes broken. A body hung off the bed, decayed beyond recognition, its remaining flesh drooping from its bones and a dark stain spread on the mattress beneath it. Boothe quickly shut the door and moved on.
Much of the place was in a similar state - broken furniture, filthy rooms, and rotting corpses - people killed long ago and left behind to rot. They found a cafeteria filled with smashed tables, spent shell casings and bodies littering the floor. It seemed that a huge battle had taken place some time ago between the robots and the humans who once lived here. The robots had never bothered cleaning up after they massacred the previous inhabitants. There were several offices with broken computer terminals, fallen file cabinets, and scattered blood-soaked papers.
“There is probably all kinds of information about what happened here,” Boothe said. The papers showed lists of people who used to live in the bunker - their ages, family members, and medical histories.
“Who cares?” Scarlett said. “They’re dead. I’m just here for the battery.”
The bunker was a complex maze of rooms and hallways and as they made their way deeper into the place, the lights grew dimmer and the air louder with the noise of clanking machinery.
Enemies detected: 3
The words appeared on the bottom of Boothe’s vision. He looked over at the camera feed from the drone and saw it highlighting three robot guards in the room ahead. One had the same electronic coil as the previous guard, while the other two looked similar to Robert from Caden’s Outpost with their machine gun arms. They stood in some kind of server room, with rows of damaged computers and large racks of routers and switches. The three robots were standing there, motionless.
Behind them, inside a metal case, the high-capacity battery was connected to the rest of the electronics. The drone highlighted this in green, and displayed a marker above it that said Quest Objective.
“Hold up,” Boothe said. “The battery is in the next room. Three more of those robots too. You have another smoke grenade?”
“One more,” Scarlett replied. “You go right and I’ll go left, okay?
Boothe nodded.
“You ready?”
Boothe nodded again, gripping his revolver tight. He hoped that the little pistol would even hurt these things. He should have gotten a better weapon from Wulfa before he left town. It felt so inferior when compared to Scarlett’s pump shotgun.
Scarlett tossed the grenade into the room.
This time, when the smoke spewed out, both of them moved forward as a team. Scarlett circled around one of the broken servers, leapt up and slammed her hatchet down into the electric coil robot’s head, smashing the camera lenses that served as its eyes.
Boothe went the other direction, shoved the revolver into a second robot’s face, and pulled the trigger. Circuit boards and wiring blew across the room in an explosive bang and the robot crumbled to the floor.
With those two dead, the third robot came to life. A light on top of its head shined a beam through the smoke, searching for the attackers. It readied its machine guns, its body rotating with the whirring of servos.
Boothe took cover behind one of the broken computers as the robot screeched out an alarm. They had to shut that thing up before it alerted others.
He leaned around the computer and aimed the pistol at the robot’s boxy metal head. It spotted him immediately, its lights turning to shine directly into Boothe’s face.
Boothe pulled the trigger, but the bullet didn’t find its target, ricocheting off a cement wall in the distance. He ducked back behind the computer just before the robot began firing its machinegun.
Bullets pounded into the computer’s metal casing, some puncturing all the internal components to rip through on the other side. Boothe felt one hit just by his head, and scrambled back to find safer cover.
He hoped that none of those stray bullets would hit the battery. He was sure that Giles would not give him the car if they accidentally destroyed the thing that he had sent them here for.
The robot walked towards him, lifting one heavy metal leg, then the next. Each stomp seemed like it would crack the floor. It never stopped firing its machine guns, turning the computer that Boothe had been hiding behind into a twisted heap of metal. Boothe crawled away from the gunfire and into a closet lined with broken shelves, and took cover. The wall there would protect him from the bullets, but now he found himself trapped with nowhere else to run. The robot guard continued marching forward, each bullet it fired chipping off large chunks of cement.
It would march him down. It would walk into the closet and fill him with bullets. He had nowhere else to hide.
The footsteps grew closer. Light from the robot’s headlamp illuminated the inside of the closet. Boothe held his tiny revolver in front of him, his hands shaking. A pair of machinegun arms slid through the doorway, then Boothe saw its head and fired.
One of the robot’s camera-eyes exploded in a shower of sparks and metal. It screeched an electronic tone, then turned and pointed its machine guns at Boothe, its remaining eye narrowing in on him.
“You’re terminated,” Scarlett yelled. She stepped into the doorway behind the robot and shoved her shotgun against the enemy’s back, blasting it apart in an explosion of computer components. The robot collapsed to the ground, its guns clanking against the floor. The light on its head faded away to nothing.
“Nice,” Boothe said, standing back to his feet. “Thanks for that.”
“Were you hit?” she asked.
“No. You?”
“I don’t think they even saw me,” she smiled, walking over to the case where the battery was kept. She reached out to unhook it.
“Wait!” Boothe said, his goggles now highlighting something new. “It’s trapped.”
The battery was attached to the automated defenses of the bunker. Boothe reached up and flipped the thermal vision of his goggles on, allowing him to see the wiring behind the walls. He followed the wires and saw where they all connected. To a huge supply of explosives below the floor.
“The whole bunker is rigged to explode,” he said. “Why the hell would anybody do that?”
“Robots, man” Scarlett said. “They just want to watch the world explode."
“That’s crazy.”
“Can you do something about it? You’re an electronics guy, right?”
“I can try. I’d have to divert the power from the battery to something else without breaking the current.”
“Don’t explain it,” she said. “Just do it.”
Boothe stepped up to the console next to the battery. He had his drone connect to it and pulled up the command line. Then he looked for a way to divert the power away from the battery.
Hacking (75%) - FAILED!
Sirens howled thr
oughout the bunker.
“What the hell did you do?” Scarlett yelled.
A feminine robotic voice echoed through speaker that lined the hallways.
“Intruders detected. Automated defenses activated.”
“Shit,” Boothe sighed.
4
Boothe pulled the battery from it its case and yanked the wiring free. He held it in the crook of his left arm, his pistol gripped firmly in his right hand, ready to fire.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” he said and took off back the way they had come.
“I thought you were good at that electronic stuff!” Scarlett said, following as they ran through the halls.
“I am!” Boothe said.
Boothe caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A panel on the ceiling slid to the side and a turret dropped down, swiveling to track them. Neither stopped as the bullets rained down - deafening in the confined space. The floors and walls cracked, sending shards of cement crumbling to the ground as the bullets ricochet.
Then they turned a corner and escaped the turret’s line of sight. From other hallways, Boothe heard more robot guards marching towards them, their steel feet stomping along the ground.
“There’s more coming!” Boothe said.
“Keep running!” Scarlett yelled. “We can outrun them!”
Boothe dashed as fast as he could down the hallway until he made it to the room at the bottom of the stairwell where he had originally found Scarlett. A metal door had dropped down in front of the exit when the alarms sounded, closing them off from the stairwell and blocking their only escape.
“Shit!” Scarlett said. She ran up to the door, looking for a way to open it.
“There has to be a control panel somewhere,” Boothe said.
“Here!” Scarlett shoved a broken metal shelf nearby, knocking it to the ground with a clang. On the wall behind it was a panel with a keypad.
Boothe pointed his drone towards the keypad. “Can you get that open?” he asked.
Open [DOOR], Confirmed.
He and Scarlett crouched behind an upturned table, their guns held over the top to shoot anything that came through the doorway.
Apocalypse 2020: A Wasteland LitRPG Page 5