“They’re here already!” a recruit shouted.
“Fire! Get them into the center,” the ensign ordered as he raised his machine gun and fired.
One of the soldiers pointed forward and the bots attacked first, firing around the soldiers or leaping over them to attack the guards. The others began to push forward and picked off any target they could.
The guards and Arbiter forces clashed, accompanied by a loud banging noise from down the hall. One of the security officers gaped when a mech walked in, barely able to fit through the entrance before it lumbered over to the battle.
“Mech!” a recruit shouted before a blast burst the top of his helmet and head open.
As it raised one of its cannons to fire, a window shattered above it and Wolfson dove from two floors above, his arm glowing as he fell toward it. When he slammed the gauntlet into the top of the machine, a bright light erupted and hurled almost everyone in the fight off their feet. The walls began to crack and every window shattered around them.
Some of the guards recovered quickly and eliminated the briefly disabled droids while the Ark soldiers stared in shock as the once-great mech now had both its head and chest flattened. The arms were severed and sprawled on opposite sides of the hall.
One of the invaders looked at his teammates. “Who the hell was tha—ugh!” A heat-blade ax, tossed from the smoke surrounding the mech, buried itself into the back of his head. As he collapsed, Wolfson walked out of the smoke with a charged cannon aimed at the soldiers. “I’m Head Officer Baioh Wolfson,” he shouted, his aim unwavering and his face stony. “Get the hell out of my building and off my island, idiots.”
He fired the cannon and a ball of energy sailed directly toward the soldiers. They flung themselves hastily aside, but the orb impacted a droid behind them and released a wave of energy that destroyed their shields as well as a couple of other droids nearby.
The head officer took a thermal out, activated it, and rolled it across the ground while he charged another shot in his hand cannon with his other hand. One of the Ark soldiers lunged to catch the thermal to hurl it back, but as he raised his arm to throw, Wolfson fired his weapon at the explosive and it detonated in the soldier’s hand to obliterate him and half of an Arbiter bot that crawled next to him.
The soldier who had signaled the others to attack began walking toward Wolfson and ordered the others to continue the fight as he did so. The giant aimed his cannon at the challenger and fired. The soldier pressed a button on his belt that seemed to strengthen his shields as they went from almost translucent to a bright blue. The charged shot struck solidly, and the man slid back but did not fall. His shields were clearly gone, but he simply took aim and fired at the head officer.
Wolfson managed to retain his cannon as he dove out of the way of the machine gunfire. He landed behind a pillar but heard a loud click from the soldier’s direction, one he was familiar with. It indicated rounds switching in a weapon, usually to a heavier caliber. He pushed off the pillar as two ballistic shots impacted the metal plating and drilled through. Before the invader could initiate a follow-up attack, he turned and fired his hand cannon to force the soldier back. The man also dropped his rifle hastily when one of the shots grazed the chamber and ignited the shots inside. He tossed it away before it could erupt in his hands.
The security head prepared to make the final shot at the soldier but his gun was shot out of his hand. He muttered and looked over to locate the culprit. One of the other Ark soldiers had made a hurried shot at him from above despite the fact that he was harried by security bots and had probably intended it for his head.
The enemy he was fighting brandished a long, curved plasma blade that looked more like a machete. He twirled it as he stalked closer.
Wolfson took his spare ax out and pressed the switch to heat the blade as he motioned for the soldier to attack. His adversary took the bait and charged the giant, who simply drew his arm back and hurled the ax into his attacker’s skull. Momentum carried the body for a few steps before it fell limply and slid over to his feet.
The officer stooped, grasped the hilt of the ax, and pried it loose from the soldier’s skull before he turned to help the others. He checked the energy level of his force gauntlet as he stowed the ax.
Satisfied that he had what he needed, he nodded as he activated the switch on the gauntlet once more and jogged toward the center of the fighting. His armor and shields held up easily against the droids that fired at him. “You boys and girls had better brace for this!” he shouted and the security teams broke away from the battle as he leapt up and came down hard to pound his fist into the ground. The resulting eruption annihilated the remaining Arbiter bots.
“Come on…down here.” Dr Soni ushered another patient through the hatch. “Dr Calloway, is everyone down?”
“We’re only waiting on you and our rescuers to get down here,” he called in response.
“We’ll be right down,” she promised before she turned and smiled at Amber. “Thank you for coming for us.”
“Of course.” Her daughter nodded. “But we’re not out of here yet. We need to get into town.” She looked down the hall to where Flynn and Marlo stood guard. “Are you guys coming?”
“You two head on down first,” the marksman responded and held her gaze. “We’ll follow.”
Amber nodded and Dr Soni continued down the shaft. Once she was halfway down, the battle medic took her place on the ladder and called to her teammate. “Flynn, you should call Kaiden and tell him we’re all right.”
Flynn looked from her to Marlo. “I guess we should let him know what’s going on. He probably wants to stay and fight all the droids.”
The demolisher chuckled as he turned to enter the room. “Yeah, no—what’s that?”
The students turned as several figures in dark armor appeared from around the corner with their weapons at the ready.
“It looks like we found who took out the droids,” one of them muttered and aimed his rifle.
“Flynn, get out of here!” Marlo yelled as he fired a beam from his cannon. The soldiers were able to get back in time to avoid the blast, but one fired a dart from their gauntlet that struck Marlo in the chest. He staggered to the side and slid against the wall as the chemicals in the projectile made their way through his system.
“Marlo!” Flynn called and glanced back as Amber crawled out of the tunnel. “Amber, get out of here.”
“Flynn, don’t!” she shouted as he thumped the heel of his palm on the door panel to lock the pathway door and force the hatch shut. She was forced to climb down again and heard several shots go off before the hatch closed fully and locked.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dario walked into the dimly lit hallway and sent a message on his tablet that the reinforcements had arrived and were already joining the main force and that he was on his way to take care of the other thing.
The timing was excellent, considering the massive number of ships that had appeared around the cloud city.
According to his current count, there were five battleships, two destroyers—formerly three—and four dreadnaughts, plus all the cruisers that usually accompanied the much bigger vessels. Things had become a little claustrophobic, but they wouldn’t threaten the main building yet. They had to confirm hostages and try to make them stand down and surrender—much like what he imagined was happening at Nexus right now, only in reverse.
The assassin wasn’t too concerned. He still had alternatives should everything go awry, but he felt confident. After all, he had already succeeded in infiltrating and damaging the supposedly impenetrable World Council—granted, with some help—so he could find a way around a few ships with the power to destroy entire stations in a matter of minutes that hovered outside his door.
And right now, he had a way—or, rather, a choice they had to make.
He slid the card into the panel and the door in front of him opened into the main power chamber. It closed behind him as he tossed the k
eycard to the side and walked down the steps to the central terminal, a giant glowing orb held in place by several tethers inside a shielded cage hung above him. This was Terra’s original power core. It certainly wasn’t the greatest design, despite the fact that it was able to accomplish getting the first cloud city airborne. The disadvantage was that it had the potential to be rather destructive if not handled properly. It had been replaced by an arc-link system over time but they couldn’t exactly safely dispose of a core like that and besides, it could always be used in case of emergency.
Dario felt this was an emergency and he felt most of the WC would agree with him, although only technically.
Footsteps behind him gave him pause and he looked back at a man—probably a military staffer—who aimed a gun at him. There was dried blood on the arm of his dress shirt and the side of his head.
“Well, hello,” the infiltrator said cheerfully and turned fully toward him. “How did the bots miss you?”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the man yelled and his finger slid along the trigger of the gun.
He folded his arms and leaned back. “Now or at the beginning of the day? One is actually easier to explain.”
The man's expression became instantly enraged at the casualness of this uncaring response. He tightened his finger on the trigger of the gun and took a step forward as he bristled with fury and indignation.
“Listen, you fucking prick. Do you know what you’ve done—how many of my teammates and friends you’ve killed today? Fuck you!” He held the rifle with one hand and drew his knife with the other. “I don’t know what you think you’ve accomplished, but this kind of terrorism will be answered in kind. All you have done is earned the wrath of the entire planet. You will be made to take punishment for birthath hava koleth—”
His words jumbled in his throat and he began to taste a metallic liquid. Startled, he felt his mouth to see what was wrong and why he couldn't seem to speak. He slid two fingers into his mouth and his eyes widened. Sweat appeared on his face and trickled down to his throat when he realized he had no tongue and that the liquid that filled his mouth was blood.
He spat the puddle of blood out quickly and startled when something clanged noisily on the floor at his feet. Unbelievably, his knife had fallen beside him and more blood dripped from it. He frowned when he realized that the drips came from above it.
Shaking, he raised the arm slowly and recoiled when he saw that the hand that had held the blade was gone, replaced by a bloody stump that appeared to have been cut clean through by a razor. Before his mind could make sense of it, he collapsed and fell hard chest-down but flipped quickly to see both legs gone, severed above the knee.
Now in a full-blown panic, he used his one remaining arm to drag himself along. A trail of blood spurted from his lost legs. When he felt something behind him, he looked up at the assassin, who smiled.
“You know, I was having such a pleasant day up until now,” he murmured before he kicked the once defiant man away. He recovered and attempted to crawl away. While he didn't understand what was happening, this man had to be the reason and he had never feared anyone or anything as much before.
Dario walked beside him for a while and simply observed before he drove his boot into the man's hand and stopped him. His victim shrieked a garbled cry before he caught his breath and looked slowly at his assailant. The assassin knelt, removed his foot from the pitiful man's hand, and gave him a slow, devilish smile.
“You may be right, one day, on the whole having to answer for my crimes and all that. But for now, all you have accomplished is to make me waste two hundred and seventy-eight nanos.”
He raised a finger with a glowing orb at the tip and settled it next to the man’s ear before he stood and walked over to the console. Casually, he slid a device into one of the slots and began to type.
“I killed many of your friends, you say? I’ve killed many people’s friends. I’ve actually wondered if I should keep a separate tally for that category,” he mused as he pressed one last key and the console began to upload. “As for the World Council, I’m not the one with the issues against it. That would be my boss, who is much more proactive than I am. In another life, he might have been a great council member.” The man could barely hear him now, having lost too much blood.
“At this point, what happens next isn’t up to me anymore,” he admitted as he knelt beside the man and smiled once again as he raised his hand with his thumb pressed against his middle finger. “No more than living is your choice now.” He snapped his fingers and the man’s eyes rolled into the back of his head.
The assassin stood and sighed. He had been somewhat dramatic, he acknowledged. Not to mention that, while normally two hundred and seventy-eight nanos was close to nothing, he had used them rather liberally since the attack and was out of spares. He needed to be more conservative until he returned to his ship. The thought brought a frown. Holding back was not his favorite necessity.
He received another warning on his tablet. Two more battleships had arrived. Thus far, the ships had dispatched troops to assist with the fight on the ground. They would grow tired of this tactic soon enough and would decide that a building—and the people within—could be replaced and therefore sacrificed to repel the invaders. He did not intend to be around once that particular decision was made but he would speed the process up.
The upload had finished, and Dario watched the orb inside the machine begin to descend into the depths. It would still take several hours before everything would be in place. He’d stick around until then, but he would be sure to get out when the time came and find a suitable viewing point.
He wanted to see what it looked like when a cloud city was forced back to Earth.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“We made it,” Izzy shouted as the group of Nexus students and faculty saw the double doors at the end of the tunnel.
“We should still be ready,” Julius warned as he and Otto helped officer Malcolm to increase the pace. “The attacks seem focused on the Academy, but I’m sure they wouldn’t leave the city undisturbed.”
“We haven’t heard anything from the police force.” Malcolm grunted and nodded to Otto and Julius to let him stand on his own. “Try to reach them on the terminal at the door first. We don’t want to rush into the waiting arms of those things after we managed to escape them.”
Indre nodded. She, Izzy, and a handful of students approached the terminal and she glanced over her shoulder as she activated it and selected the comms channel to the Bellingham police department.
Several seconds passed with no reply before the connection died. Murmurs of unease rippled through the group until a messenger popped up.
Standby, doors will open shortly.
“They didn’t answer the call,” Indre commented and prepared her weapon. “Could this be a trap?”
“Maybe their commlink is down,” a student suggested. “All of ours were until a few moments ago.”
“Everyone, stand back,” Malcolm ordered as the latches on the door slid back. “The doors are opening.”
The group took several steps away from the exit, hopeful but hesitant as the doors began to open. Light poured in from the other side where several figures stood waiting for them.
All wore police and medic uniforms.
“We have another arrival from Nexus,” one of the cops said into a comm as the group helped to usher the Nexus students into the emergency shelter.
“It’s good to see someone friendly after all this.” Indre sighed as she walked in to take a seat on one of the benches.
“I wouldn’t get too relaxed,” a medic replied as she bent to examine the agent. “There’s fighting going on above in town.”
“How bad is it?” Otto asked. “Many of us are in shape to fight if you can provide weapons.”
“That’s not the protocol,” one of the officers replied.
“This isn’t really normal circumstances,” Izzy countered and refu
sed to relinquish the pistol she had when one of the officers looked at it. Fortunately, the man stepped away quickly to indicate that he wouldn’t attempt to disarm her.
The lead officer helped Julius take Malcolm to one of the beds. “It’s weird to say it like this but compared to the Academy, the fighting here has been almost pedestrian considering the initial strike on the island we saw.”
“It looked like you would be obliterated almost immediately,” Indre’s medic added and handed her an energy tab. “Those pods—we thought they were bombs for a minute there. The police force scrambled to go and assist but then we came under attack only a few minutes after you did.”
“We feared the worst when our messages didn’t go through and the tunnels wouldn’t open,” the lead officer explained. “We now have confirmation that they have all activated again, so more of the staff and student body should be able to make it through.”
“It depends on how many survived the attack,” Malcolm reminded them as he eased himself onto the bed. “And the tunnels will automatically lock if unregistered forces try to enter. The idea was for evacuation before an attack could happen, not hours into one.”
“It’s what we trained for,” Julius pointed out, although he grimaced after a moment. “Most of us, anyway. I worry about the first years.”
“Did anyone see what’s going on with that ship?” Otto asked and glanced at the ceiling of the shelter as if he could see the vessel through it. “Getting off the island is one thing, but we aren’t exactly safe as long as a colossus hovers above us.”
The lead officer frowned. “We’re preparing shuttles and carriers for evac, as many as we can muster. The ship seems to have powered down slightly and some of the sections have deactivated. We haven’t been able to determine why yet but we won’t simply stand around and hope they have somehow hobbled themselves.”
Invasion (Animus Book 10) Page 14