She had almost emptied her pistol’s fifty-round magazine by that time, so she quickly changed magazines and replaced the weapon in its thigh holster. Then she looked up to the top of the two-storey warehouse between them and their goal, and jumped.
Muzik followed her through the air as they arced up and over the brick parapet of the old building. They both alighted heavily, and Muzik had to pull a foot loose from a soft spot in the old wood of the roof. “Watch that, we could fall through.”
“Got it.” Sidling sideways, she followed a brace beneath the surface, visible in the IR as the material sagged slightly around it, and showed a different temperature as well. Moving forward, eventually she caught sight of the laboratory, with its five-meter fence and lights blazing like white suns. Her HUD spotted motion everywhere and marked two dozen targets. She saw a pair of light armored vehicles parked within view, BTR-90s she thought, and prioritized all her weapon fire. Then she put her EMP projector in her left hand and readied her PW20 in her right.
Glancing at the HUD ranging readout, Repeth said, “Set your thrusters for sixty-five meters, and aim for that left air intake. EMP the left BTR, I got the right, then pick off personnel.”
“Roger,” said Roger.
Old joke, new circumstances. She jumped.
Compressed gas shot out of her boots as her feet left the parapet, giving Repeth the extra distance she needed to clear all the obstacles and land on the laboratory roof. It would have been nice to have more than one booster and one landing charge, but this ironman suit of hers was already overloaded with gadgetry.
Her HUD showed Muzik a fraction of a second behind her and off to her left. She fired her PW20 nine times in two seconds, letting her computer targeting system do all the work, while concentrating on the EMP cannon in her other hand. When she was as close as she was likely to get she triggered it straight into the turret of the BTR-90 armored vehicle.
All the lights on the vehicle exploded and the turret spun sideways, its electrically-powered chain gun spitting shells into the night. She saw it cut down one of its own soldiers, then fall silent with a last lone pop. Smoke began to pour from its engine compartment and troops bailed out, frantically beating at flaming uniforms.
Someone yelled as she and Muzik were spotted in the air, and a burst of tracers reached into the sky far from their position.
Too much to hope, not to be seen.
Both came down with a burst of retro-thrust to slow them, otherwise they might have broken through at least the top surface of the roof. As soon as she gained steady footing, Repeth holstered her EMP cannon and ripped a large air intake cover off its mountings and discarded it to the side, revealing a second layer a meter down consisting of welded steel plating – in effect, an armored roof. She reached to her back-rack and extracted a self-opening thermite cutter frame. Popping its clamp, she let it expand its slinky-like shape until it formed a circle a meter across.
Dropping it, she let it settle on a featureless stretch of steel, then stepped back and crouched, facing away. “Ready?” she called over her comm., as Muzik should have done the same near him.
“Ready. Fire in the hole.”
Simultaneous white-hot eruptions of high-tech thermite shot burning debris into the air, and before it fell Repeth waded into the smoke and dropped to the steel armor plate with a heavy clang. In front of her she could see a precise round hole cut by the breaching frame.
“EMP grenade!” she yelled into her suitcomm, detaching one of the devices from her back-rack and tossing it armed down the hole.
The electromagnetic pulse would have little effect on normals, so she quickly sent two Needleshock grenades after it and then fired a burst from her PW20 for good measure. Then she dropped feet first down the hole, knees bent and trusting to her armor and cybernetics.
She stood up in hell.
Something had caught fire, some kind of volatile chemical. Her helmet automatically switched to a forced-air feed good for fifteen minutes, and then she had ten minutes of internal oxygen in a rechargeable pack next to her lungs. Once breathing ceased to be a worry, the heat made itself felt.
Repeth’s HUD was completely overwhelmed, her external sensors blinded, so she chose a direction and walked until she ran into a wall. Moving rapidly to her right, she found what she thought was a door and mule-kicked it.
Now she could see an opening, and she charged through it, finding herself in a room with stainless steel tables and refrigerator slabs: a morgue. Formaldehyde, she thought. I dropped right into a room full of embalming fluid, and ignited it with my own grenades.
She found her lower extremities still on fire from the liquid she had waded through. Unfortunately her armored hands were not dexterous enough to operate the fire extinguishers she could see, so she told her suit to inject painkillers and ignored the flames. They would burn themselves out of fuel.
A door across the room opened and she raised her PW20, aiming a burst into the portal even before she could see a target. Apparently affected by the heat, the weapon fired three rounds and then jammed.
Cursing, she slung it again. She could try to clear it later. Instead, she charged the entrance. The first figure through had fallen, struck by at least one of her shots, but the next took the full brunt of her rush.
And bounced her back.
Shock blossomed within her psyche as she scrabbled on the tile floor and almost fell, knocking over a table. Her suit stabilizers, still set for flight, jetted gas to help keep her upright, but her vision was fixed on the figure that had sent her reeling.
Large for a man, his size was not the issue. An implacability filled his movements, and his face seemed plastic, mask-like. He moved fast, almost as fast as she.
Cyborg. Shadow Man.
Snarling, she brought her EMP cannon up and fired it even as he launched himself toward her. She felt the charge pass from her palm contacts, through the conductors in her glove, and into the weapon. A bright flash confirmed its discharge.
Her suit jets fired again as the heavy weight impacted her chest and drove her backward, but then the thing fell to the floor, face-down and senseless. Now it seemed like a manikin, a human robot that had been turned off.
She brought her armored foot down on its neck, stomping repeatedly until its reinforced spine had detached and its head lolled. Then she turned off the stabilizer jets, afraid they would betray her by interfering with some intended maneuver.
The whole exchange had taken only seconds, and the adrenaline surge sang through her body as she turned back to the doorway to confront another golem. This one held a heavy weapon, a short-barreled high-caliber slug-thrower of some sort, perhaps an automatic shotgun. It hammered fire toward her and she felt herself spun around by its impacts. Going with the momentum, she rolled down behind a heavy stainless steel table and then came up lifting.
Three hundred kilos of stainless flew across the room to drive her enemy back, knocking his weapon off target even as he fired. Her impression was that these things did not have quite her speed, but were tougher in their natural state, with some kind of armor laminated into or onto their bodies themselves.
They might be stronger, too, and seemed to feel no pain.
Her fifteen-second countdown reached zero on her HUD, and she fired the EMP charge just as the thing roared to its feet. Lightning played across its surface, crawling along the steel table it held onto, and it staggered, but did not go still.
The metal grounded it, she thought, diverted some of the charge. While it remained weak and slow, she holstered the EMP cannon and grabbed the same table to lift it above her head, bringing its blade-like edge down on the center of the thing’s body with all her augmented strength.
The impact made a perceptible dent in the Shadow Man’s rib cage, but then it clamped on to the table with claw-like hands and refused to let go.
Fine, you can come with it, she thought, and swung the piece of furniture in a brutal arc that ended with both the table and the Shadow
Man flung across the room and into the chamber of formaldehyde flames that still burned behind her.
Then she slammed that door, dropped its locking handle and set another heavy table against it, then another, to let it burn.
By this time another fifteen seconds had passed, so she drew the EMP cannon and headed for the door, wondering just how many of these damned things roamed their factory. Once in the corridor, she turned left, hopefully in Muzik’s direction. Better to stay near him for mutual support. She had defeated two of the cyborgs because of the specialized EMP weapon, but God help her if it ever failed to work.
Bullets ripped from a cross-corridor as she passed, but she ignored their impacts. Her armor should be proof against rounds up to standard 7.62, and anything heavier she hoped to avoid, or at least survive to complete her mission. Right now she had one objective, and it wasn’t shooting red shirts.
A burst of static on her HUD told her that an EMP had just been triggered, and her shielded systems showed the energy came from up ahead, through the doorway at the end of the passageway. Speeding up, she aimed a front kick at the lock plate and broke it at that point. The door itself flew through 180 degrees and its knob embedded itself in the wall to the side, holding it fast.
Inside, she saw one enemy cyborg down and another throw Muzik across the room to impact on a slab-sided steel door. OBJECTIVE MATCH flashed on her HUD and she realized this was the entrance to the computer vault.
But she had bigger problems.
Now that Roger was out of the line of fire, she aimed and triggered her EMP, but nothing happened. Glancing down at the weapon, she realized a rifle bullet had torn through its outer casing and rendered its mechanism inoperative.
She had no time to think as the Shadow Man accelerated toward her with freight-train speed. Bending her knees, she fell backward even as the thing reached for her, and she lifted the sole of her foot as her shoulders hit the floor, kicking upward. This did not damage it, but sent the cyborg sailing over her to embed itself in the room’s wall, buying her a moment’s time. Rolling to her feet, she stripped off her left-hand gauntlet and slapped her bare palm on the metal skin of the enemy cyborg’s leg.
Nothing happened.
Fifteen seconds, she thought angrily. I triggered the EMP, expending the charge, but the weapon did not function, and I lost track.
That was all Repeth had time to think as the thing kicked out at her, but it still flailed half-inside the wall, so she added her right hand to its leg, pulled and rotated as a man swings a small child in fun.
Only this time, the cyborg wasn’t going to enjoy it.
She aimed to slam its head into a heavy lab bench, but it got its arms up in front and instead grabbed tight onto the furniture. Now she merely had hold of a leg, while it had an anchor point. It began to kick.
It’s stronger and tougher than I am, Repeth reminded herself. Seven seconds remained on her HUD countdown, which was about five seconds longer than she would be able to hold on.
She let go. Her right hand dipped down and grasped the PW20, which she thumbed to full auto even as she performed a clearing procedure and reloaded with a fresh magazine, the motions fast and machinelike from endless practice. When she pulled the trigger, thirty heavy Shock rounds smacked into the cyborg center mass, sparking discharges as the thing scrambled to its feet. The barrage staggered it backward and it swayed, disoriented and damaged from the .50 caliber electrical bursts..
Quick-swapping the magazine, she got the weapon lined up and pulled the trigger again even as the Shadow Man’s hand closed on its barrel and twisted. Between two cybernetic limbs, the PW20 bent first, specifically the barrel, and after the first shot it jammed again. Repeth let it go.
The cyborg immediately swung the weapon like a club, but Repeth ducked and lashed out with her foot to sweep the thing’s ankle. This damaged neither fighter but did knock the Shadow Man to his knees and cause him to drop the PW20. In turn he shot forward like a wrestler, hands questing for a hold.
If ever he gets me in his grip, I’m done, she thought. Her advantages included speed, armor and weaponry, while his were strength and the ability to take punishment. Controlling his reaching arms, she gripped the naked metal skin near his articulated wrist joint and let the raw electrical charge explode through her palm contacts.
The cyborg stiffened to rigidity, glowing eyes winking out. Not certain how long the thing would remain disabled, she quickly took a grip on its skull by plunging her fingers deep into its eye sockets. She could feel the human tissue give behind the mechanical eyes as she pushed them into its organic brain. Then, with the purchase the orbits gave her, she set a knee against its neck and, with a roar of effort, ripped its head off.
Gasping in her helmet, she whirled, checking the room for further threats. Movement in the corridor alerted her to more enemies coming. The only firearm she had left was her PW5 pistol, which she pointed as she crouched, popping off single shots at the human guards working their way toward her. Ripples of automatic fire came back at her, ricocheting around the room and striking her armor in several places. One plucked at her ungloved left hand, and when she looked down, her little finger had lost most of its flesh, showing nothing but gleaming laminated bone. Automatic pain control ensured she felt little of the damage.
Dodging behind a lab bench, she worked her away around to where Muzik crouched, shaking his head. “Roger! You all right?” she asked.
“Will be,” he mumbled. “Need a couple minutes. Hit me in the head, and I think I bruised my spine. I’ve got shooting sensations all along my extremities.”
“Hang in there,” Repeth said, rising up to engage the guards. “Where’s your PW20?”
“Thing took it away. Broke,” he replied. “AK over there.” He pointed toward a corner, and a Russian-made assault rifle in the dead hands of a fallen guard.
Dropping back down, Repeth crab-walked over to pull the AK from the dead man’s hands, taking his ammo pouches as well. Stamping ruthlessly onto her conscience, she fired three magazines on full automatic at the guards in quick succession. Her only concession to lethality was to aim low, hoping the ricochets off the hard floor would be less deadly.
The Russian guards were, after all, only human.
Once they had been driven back, Repeth pulled an electronic lock pick the size of a pack of cigarettes from a slot within her armor, checking it first. Fortunately undamaged, soon she had it slotted into the card-reader-and-number-pad lock on the large steel door, where she pushed a button on its side. A red light lit up to let her know it was doing its work. In five seconds, the telltale turned green.
“Got it,” she told Muzik. “Can you cover me?”
“Think so,” he grunted, rolling to his knees behind the lab bench. Taking the AK and the remaining magazines from Repeth, he rose up to rest his elbows on the black plastic, the rifle pointed toward the open door. “Go,” he rasped.
Dashing into the vault opened, she was surprised to see two techs cringing behind computer desks. The lockdown must have gone into effect without letting them out. She popped each one with the PW5 and let them flop on the floor in electric convulsions. Then she started looking for hard drives.
As small as such things could be anymore, she had to hope her quarry was recognizable and wasn’t hidden or disguised. If it had been her she would have set up several decoys, but then again, they certainly didn’t expect anyone to get this far.
Of course her EMP grenade and her last breaching charge would between them probably fry or destroy all the chips in the room, but she didn’t want to gamble. As she searched the room, she mentally kicked herself for shooting the techs. Perhaps one of them would have talked.
Instead, she grabbed everything that looked like a data drive and stuffed it into an outer pouch, and then kicked all the computers to smithereens. Stuttering AK fire from the outer room reminded her that the whole base was probably converging on their position. She’d have to accept the slight possibility that the
data would survive if they were to get out alive. It wasn’t worth dying for.
First she threw the somnolent techs out of the vault, then she set the breaching charge on the middle of the floor. Exiting the room, she took out an EMP grenade and tossed it back into the enclosed space, slamming the heavy door on it. The electromagnetic pulse should wipe all magnetic media, and would also set off the blasting cap embedded in the block of plastique for a one-two punch.
Once she felt the blast through the closed door, she moved away to take up a position at the entrance to the outer room. Firing a shot at a dimly-seen target down the corridor’s angle, she asked, “You good to move? Because we gotta go.”
“Yeah,” Muzik said heavily as he got to his feet. He handed her the AK as he moved from behind the table. “My targeting and HUD’s all screwed up. Take this. I’ll follow you.”
“Right. Going for an egress breach.” Her HUD had mapped everything it had seen so far, and plotted a path toward the nearest wall outer.
Repeth led them along a different route, AK in her left hand, PW5 in her right. More than once enemy bullets slammed into her armor, but it was easily tough enough to handle such conventional rounds. The Russian propensity for keeping the old Kalashnikov standbys in service was their salvation.
After shooting more than a dozen guards with Needleshock, she ran out of the specialized ammo. Holstering the pistol, she stomped down corridors with the AK firing single shots, precisely aimed by her HUD caret. Seldom did she need more than one round to put a target down.
At what the HUD predicted was an outer wall she handed the AK to Muzik. “Hold the door. I’m going to break through.” They’d only had one cutting frame each, so she was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.
A few powerful kicks broke the inner paneling and then burst the ancient brick of its construction. Harsh white light shone through, but she did not wait to survey their escape route. She had to hope they could penetrate whatever cordon had been set up, by dint of surprise. “Let’s go!” she barked, charging outward unarmed.
Cyborg Strike Page 13