“Kaiden?” the titan yelled. “Damn man, good timing. Silas is pinned down and Raul is drugged.”
“Was that before the attack?” the ace asked jokingly before he banked toward Silas. “I see you, Sy… Wait, who are those guys in the armor?”
“Take them out!” the enforcer shouted.
“There’s no need to say it twice.” He fired at the Arbiter ranks, destroyed the mechanicals, and forced the soldiers to pull back, although a couple were caught in the cannon fire and blown to pieces for their trouble.
The ace opened the back and hovered close to the ground. Mack ran over and helped Silas carry Raul while Luke ran onboard. “Hey, do you have any weap—” Kaiden tossed him his machine gun and pistol. “Thanks!”
The titan handed Silas the pistol after he and Mack placed Raul on the bench. They fired at any approaching hostiles while the last of the engineers scrambled aboard and the craft made its escape.
“Nice ride, Kaiden.” Mack laughed as he walked into the cockpit. “It’s good to see a familiar face in all this mess.”
“My same thought,” the ace agreed as he flew off the island before he banked to the left. “We’re not quite done yet, though. I gotta make one more stop.”
“Where at?” the vanguard asked.
“To the ride’s real owner.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Arbiter bots continued to pound on the reinforced doors of the armory as the mech rolled up. With it was a group of Ark soldiers, curious as to why the droids seemed so obsessed by this one location.
“Do you think a group is holed up in here?” one of them asked.
“If there is, they have nowhere to run. Behind the warehouse is nothing but the bay,” another replied.
One of them held a tablet up, connected it to one of the droids, and rolled back the saved footage. “It looks like they were pursuing some of the guards— Wait, look at this. One of them—that big one without the helmet—that’s Wolfson.”
“The head officer?” another asked. “The chancellor wanted to speak to him, didn’t he?”
“He is a priority,” the other said and stowed his tablet. “Preferably alive.”
“Preferably?”
“I think the chancellor does not believe we will be able to take him in alive. It would be better to eliminate him if nothing else,” the fourth explained.
Two of the soldiers waved him away and approached the doors as they retrieved explosives. “We’ll see about that. Everything up until now has been nothing more than a glorified— What is that?”
The source of their confusion was a rumble. They could feel it even over the mech as it prepared to fire. It felt like something charging directly toward them from behind the doors.
The armory gate catapulted free and flatted any droid that wasn’t quick enough to get away. The mech fired but only struck a large shield. Behind the dust, three large mechs—all white with a blue Nexus stripe—stood in the opening. One raised its arm and fired a charged blast at the Arbiter mech. The head erupted instantly, and it fell to its knees and almost toppled on top of the soldiers. The Nexus mechs began to move forward. One took point with a large plasma blade that it used to swipe and hack through the droids that attempted to engage it while the other two fired on the mechanicals indiscriminately to leave small craters with each shot.
“What the hell are those?” One of the soldiers shuddered as she pushed to her feet. “I don’t remember a brief on anything like that!”
“Quit whining and take them—” The soldier didn’t manage to finish his order before a hail of kinetic rounds burrowed through his back. His shields and armor did almost nothing to stop them and rapid spurts of blood erupted from the wounds as he fell.
A figure emerged from behind the mechs, grinning madly with a chain gun in his hands. His beard and hair were matted with blood and one good eye scanned the battle. “More of you, eh?” Wolfson chuckled and held the trigger down. “That’s fine by me. You’ll keep me entertained while my team gets their work done.”
Back at the Animus Center, another group of Ark soldiers made their way into the mainframe chamber. One looked up from their tablet and pointed deeper into the room.
“Are they both back there?” another asked.
The scout nodded. “The codex will be in the main terminal. One of you can get that. The Master EI will be in its own chamber deep in the back. They only use it for larger Animus projects like the Death Match.”
“Understood.”
“You didn’t have to reply. I’m not the squad leader,” the scout muttered.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Me either.” The group looked at one another and shrugged or shook their heads.
“Then who the hell—” Four shots rang out a split second before four bodies fell.
The scout was stunned. In one infinitesimal moment, half his team was dead. In the next, someone dropped from above, dug a blade into one of the soldiers, and drew a pistol to shoot another. The remaining man was finally able to react and aimed hastily with his rifle, but he only managed to fire a single shot before the marksman yanked his blade out and flung it at him. It caught him through the visor and he stumbled and leaned on one of the servers before the attacker shoved his pistol under the soldier’s helmet and fired, letting the body fall as he turned to the scout.
He tried to reach for his weapon, but the sniper snatched his hand and twisted, breaking a couple of fingers in his haste, which made the scout retch as he was thrust into another server. “Why do you need the codex and Master EI?”
“Like hell I’m going to tell you!” He winced when another finger was broken. “I won’t break that easily. And you don’t have the time for torture, do you?”
Sasha tilted his head and placed his pistol under the scout’s chin. “You are right, I don’t.” His expression cold, he pulled the trigger and shoved him aside. He holstered the pistol and vented his rifle as he placed it on his back, although his pistol was instantly back in his hand when he heard the doors behind him open. Hastily, he aimed it upward once he recognized the newcomer. “Head Monitor Akello.”
“Commander? I got your message and wanted to help but, uh…” She lowered her weapon when she noticed the bodies littering the floor and looked from them to Sasha. “I guess you didn’t really need reinforcements, huh?”
“Actually, your assistance would be most appreciated,” he admitted and gestured to the central terminal. “I need to remove the codex. While I’m doing that, will you transfer the Master EI to a more manageable device?”
“The Master EI?” she asked, although she soon realized that this wasn’t the time for long explanations and simply nodded and moved toward the back. “There should already be a specialized EI drive for such situations. I have access to it. I’ll get it done.”
“Thank you. These grunts were here to retrieve them for some unknown reason and I don’t want to leave them here for them to use later,” he explained as he activated the terminal and began to eject the codex.
“I’ve received scattered reports and heard that they are abducting students as well.”
Sasha nodded grimly, although he did take a moment to look at the soldiers he had slaughtered. “If this is the best they can offer, no wonder they want our students instead.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
As the shuttle took them into the city, Laurie could not tear his gaze away from the colossus as if he expected it to reactivate at any time and turn everyone to glass in an instant. He looked into the case he had with him. Nestled within were a few different devices he’d decided were worth saving and two drives, each filled with all the data he could cram into them. One had almost two decades worth of research and tests, theories he had worked on, and experiments he had planned. The other was a replica of the Animus OS to restart the system once they hopefully returned.
It was oddly humbling to see all that work crushed into two small objects he could hold in one hand.
Cyra leaned over an
d placed a hand on his shoulder. He turned and smiled to thank her for the small kindness as he put the drives away and closed the case.
“Laurie, are you safe?” a voice asked from his tablet. His smile widened as he took it out.
“Sasha, it’s good to hear from you,” he responded and glanced around the shuttle at the other passengers. “I’m quite safe now. Shuttles are going around the Academy to pick up whoever they can.”
“That’s good to hear,” the commander admitted with a long sigh. “I’m at the Animus Center. A group of enemy soldiers came here to try to take the codex and Master EI.”
“Do what?” he demanded, his head tilted in confusion. “Why would they need either of those?”
“I’m not sure. I’m with the head monitor and we’re preparing to take both with us. I hoped you’d be able to shed some light on that.”
“I honestly have no real answer,” he said and crossed one leg over the other. “The codex has all the personal Animus information of the students. I’m not sure what they could do with that. It wouldn’t really be any different from simply accessing their private files. Unless they are on the same Animus update we are, but even then, it would be no better than statistics, really.”
“I suppose I’ll have to let you take a look once we meet,” Sasha reasoned. “As for the Master EI, from what I overhead of their discussion, they seemed to know what we use it for but didn’t know why their leaders wanted it exactly or weren’t willing to divulge what they did know.”
“I see. If you can, please bring me a helmet or tablet from one of the soldiers. I’m sure there’s something in there we can use. And once you bring me the Master EI and we have a powerful enough system to run it, I’ll dig into the guts of it to see if it's hiding anything.”
“Do you think that’s a possibility?”
“At this point, I feel that there are many things I’m unaware of—more than I used to think,” Laurie muttered. “And when it comes to the Master EI, I wasn’t the only one who designed it.”
The shuttle rocked slightly and he and everyone else looked out to see if they were under attack, but it appeared to be nothing more than a quick evasive maneuver to dodge some of the shots from below. The professor drew a sharp breath and continued. “One more thing, Sasha—we need to think about really evacuating. Not merely into town but a place that would actually make that colossus think twice about attacking.”
“I know. I hoped we could at least have as many people together before we set out but time is of the essence.” The commander was silent for a moment. “We’ll leave many behind as well. Dammit. Listen, Laurie, when you get there, I need you to tell the police chief what will happen.”
Wolfson continued to laugh as he fired his chain gun in waves from side to side. The tactic caught any bots that attempted to approach him. Any of the soldiers who tried to return fire quickly found themselves either under assault by another fusillade of bullets or were now a target of the mechs once they emerged from cover.
“Sir, we’re almost ready!” one of the guards shouted behind him.
He looked back. “Really? I’m beginning to think we should simply keep going.” He lifted his finger from the trigger and let the weapon cool for a moment as he turned to the guard. “At this rate and with these magnificent mechs on our side, we might actually take the Academy back!”
Two large blasts from behind the head officer made both he and the guard whirl to face the new threat. One of the mechs fell as four Arbiter mechs approached the warehouse. The other cannon mech fired and eliminated one but immediately earned retaliatory fire from the remaining enemy. The melee mech also had difficulty as a couple of dozen arbiter droids took the opportunity to crawl over it, rip into its armor, and fired at close range.
“Damn. I might have been a little over-eager,” Wolfson muttered, raised his gun, and gestured to his team. “Activate the emergency shield. The doors aren’t an option anymore.”
“Right away, sir!” As one guard ran to comply, another approached.
“Sir, the weapons are ready to load, but where will we take them?” she asked.
He stared in surprise. “What? My ship hasn’t arrived yet?” He put the chain gun down and retrieved his tablet. “I called it over here before I headed out there so it should be close enough for me to summon from here—what? It’s heading this way but it’s on manual.” He growled a low oath as he pressed a few buttons on the tablet and connected to the comm in the ship. “Okay, who the hell is in my ship?”
“Could it be anyone else?” Kaiden responded, and in an instant, Wolfson’s mood brightened.
“Kaiden! It’s good to hear from you, boyo.” He laughed. “Heard about the work you did at the docks. Nicely done! And I see you made it to the hangars.”
“With help from my friends and Haldt’s team,” the ace confirmed. “I’m coming in. Are you ready to go?”
“It’s good of you to think about me in all this mess.” At a thud behind him, he turned to see a single droid shooting at the shield, but more were coming. The guard stood at the ready and looked at him for orders. “Say, Kaiden, we have weapons ready to go here but we may not have the time to get everything loaded. You wouldn’t happen to have extra hands aboard, would ya?”
“As a matter of fact, I most certainly do,” Kaiden replied. “Open the bay. Let’s load up the toys and get your big ass out of there.”
“Roger that.” Wolfson stowed the tablet and gestured for the guard behind him to open the loading bay doors as he hefted his chain gun. “All of you back there, get the crates on the ship!” he ordered and readied his weapon once more.
The ace coasted the ship into the landing zone. When he opened the rear platform, Luke, Silas, Mack, and the four remaining engineers scrambled out. The engineers helped the guards move the crates onto the ship while the soldiers each found a weapon in the armory and stood beside Wolfson, ready to hold the droids at bay.
“It’s good to see you, Wolfson,” Luke said cheerfully. He held a titan hammer and attached a shielding gauntlet to his left arm. “And it’s even better to have a real weapon again.”
“No kidding.” Mack chuckled and primed a cannon.
“Do you boys think you should be here?” the head officer asked somewhat sarcastically as he nodded to the shield which had begun to shatter beneath the barrage from at least thirty droids now firing at it. “We don’t have much room to fuck up here.”
“What do you think we’ve done all day?” Mack asked.
Silas stepped up and aimed a machine gun. “Besides, this is what we trained for.”
Wolfson smiled and pressed down on the trigger as the shield collapsed. “Damn right.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
A panel on the left of the mainframe’s central console opened and a pentagonal device ejected. Sasha retrieved the codex that held all the Animus users' information. He placed it in the satchel on his belt and began to shut the mainframe down. “Akello, are you almost finished?”
“I’m transferring the EI now,” she stated and her gaze darted from her screen to the drive she had prepared. “It will take a few minutes.”
The commander nodded and drew his rifle. “Then I will keep watch and begin the deletion process in the meantime.”
“Deletion? Of the Animus?” She looked surprised. “I can lock it out. Without any of Laurie’s clearances, they won’t be able to—”
“They seem exceedingly familiar with the system,” he reminded her. “I assume these are the same people who have hacked into the system over the last few years.”
“What?” Akello exclaimed. “Why wasn’t I informed?”
He turned to reply but was prevented from doing so by a loud crack as the glass was shattered in the front of the building. The commander looked at the exit of the maintenance chamber. “Later. For now, complete your objective. Then, I’ll help you get out of here.”
“We’ll both get out of here, right?” she asked and stepped away from the t
erminal to approach him.
“I’m sure I’ll leave the building at some point,” he replied dismissively.
“You know I mean the Academy, Sasha,” she pressed.
He turned back to her. “There are still students being pursued or taken away. I am the chancellor now. Should I simply leave them to their fate?”
“You can help us get them back,” she protested. “We won’t simply give up the fight after today, will we? If they are kidnapping the students, they have a plan for them, right? We can rescue them. Or do you think it’s better that we lose two chancellors in less than a day?”
Sasha made no answer but simply looked away and exited the room to deal with the new intruders, leaving her to her task. She was right, in a way, but it didn’t make guilt or fear diminish.
It occurred to him that he had left the army so he wouldn’t have to feel like this again.
Damyen smirked as he read the information on his tablet. “The general still hasn’t taken control of the Academy?” He chuckled. “It’s been a couple of hours since we talked. I assumed he would have found his stride by now.”
“Chancellor, the second and third Ark division have reported in,” one of his aides said. Damyen looked up from his tablet as he lounged on the bed in his personal quarters. “The second division has access to the target’s codex. The third has secured the facility.”
He smiled with satisfaction as he raised the glass of whiskey to his lips. “Well done,” he murmured as he took a sip. “What news do we have from the first, fourth, and fifth?”
“The first hasn’t reported since their last message. They said the resistance was heavy but that they were about to receive assistance from the droid support units,” she informed him. “As for the fourth and fifth, they were able to make their way into the ships but it appears both vessels immediately began to fly back to Terra once the alert was put out. They are still in the process of taking the ships over to delay them arriving at the capital where they could get reinforcements.”
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