Generation X - Genogoths

by Unknown Author

  “So,” continued Ev, “what do you want with this stuff?” “I’m a hacker,” he said, “but every wire coming out of this place is shut down tight. Find me a wire into the place, and you never know what might happen.”

  Smokey Ashe lay on his belly watching the slow movements of the heavily camouflaged Genogoth commandos on the hillside above. They climbed carefully over where the tree-covered mountainside was broken by open rock. He waited until they had moved out of sight over the next rise before moving forward a few yards himself.

  Something with too many legs had slipped inside his shirt and was now crawling across his bare back. He ignored it. In his ear, he could hear whispered radio traffic as the advance troops coordinated their work. Occasionally he would whisper a command or bit of encouragement, but mostly, they knew their jobs. Good thing, he thought, given that he hadn’t commanded a major field operation in nearly two decades. He hoped Black’s confidence in him wasn’t misplaced.

  The widely distributed force moved up the slope an inch at a time. A massive frontal assault on an installation like this would never work. Even a direct hit with a nuke might not take out the lower levels.

  Instead, they had mapped out the location of the ventilator shafts, and fed down hoses connected to nausea-gas bombs. As a nuclear-hardened installation, the ventilators would be designed to slam shut at the slightest sign of contamination, but the crush-proof hoses ran all the way to the bottom of the shaft, and would block any shutters or louvers slightly open, allowing a passage for the compressed gas.

  If the Genogoths couldn’t open the Hound base’s doors from the outside, the natural thing to do was to get occupants to unlock them from the inside. Most of his people were stationed around the big hangar door. As the largest, highest, and best hidden opening in the installation, it was the logical door to open in order to expel the noxious gas. The timers on the bombs were set to go off at four a.m. The anti-mutant forces inside were in for a literal rude awakening.

  Then he heard Espeth’s whispered voice in his ear. “Smokey, I just found some kind of seam in this rock outcropping my group is just passing. It seems artificial, 1 think we may have missed some—” Then a moment of silence. Suddenly her voice was loud, even yelling. “Darwin’s name!” Then things got worse.

  “It’s quite clever,” said Namik to Sharpe. “Pressure-forced gas released deep in the system, bypassing all our safety systems. It might have worked too, if I hadn’t had enough warning to shut down the ventilators well before they got there. They have their hoses at what they think are the bottoms of the shafts. Actually they’re stopped at the closure of the number one safety louvers. We’re on internal oxygen now.”

  Sharpe nodded. “Which gives us about a week before we have to worry about that particular problem. I don’t think we’ll need near that long.”

  Namik’s hand hovered over a switch on her defensive panel. It was labeled automated defense turret master-safety, and below that there were three switch positions, standby, auto, and active. The switch was set at standby.

  Sharpe watched the screen. Their camouflage was good. Even with the infrared cameras, he could barely see the figures crawling up the mountain. But he could see them. And if he could see them, so could the turrets.

  Namik looked at him. “Now?”

  He nodded. “Do it.”

  She pushed the switch under her hand to active.

  Espeth lay stretched out on a rock shelf, her fingers forced into the narrow gap at the base of the rock outcropping, trying to determine how deep it was, and if it was definitely as artificial as it seemed. It would be an embarrassment if it just turned out to be some natural cleft.

  A jagged rock edge cut into her stomach. She was glad vshe'd left the belly ring back at camp. If the piercing closed up, it would be the least of her problems. She tasted chalky' rock dust on her lips and some of it stung her left eye. She pushed her fingers deeper.

  Suddenly the rock under her body began to vibrate, and the cleft she’d been probing parted with a snap and a high-pitched whine. Her hands slipped into empty space, then touched smooth, oiled, moving metal.

  She said something loud and unintended, she didn’t know what. Then rolled back out of the way. She could see the whole outcropping rising up in the moonlight, like a sprouting mushroom, and under it something large and moving, something that rotated toward her. She saw the twin gun barrels, black against the sky just before the flash blinded her.

  Black stood in the lookout at the end of the notch. Even with the night vision scope there wasn’t much to see. That should change once the gas grenades went off.

  He heard someone walk up beside him. It was the English lad, Starsmore. “I trust your friends are getting some rest?”

  “Most of ’em,” he said, his odd telepathic voice in Black’s mind. “I couldn’t sleep though, not with Espeth down there. Not even if this bloody operation is—Well, I’ve watched more exciting paint dry. Plus, I figured you’d like to know we were being good little muties and staying out of trouble.”

  Black sighed. “It’s not like that. I wish I could make you understand.”

  They both heard Espeth’s cry of alarm in their ear-set radios. Then the muzzle flashes started, in a belt around the mountain, about half-way up the slope, and behind most of the Genogoth forces, followed by dancing lines of tracer bullets, and the rattling roar of machine guns.

  “Bloody hell!” Jono stared out into the night, trying to figure out what was happening.

  He could hear the frantic calls on the radio, cries of the wounded, and requests for reinforcements. The Genogoths were pinned down and on the verge of being eaten alive. “Be careful,” he muttered to himself, “what you bleeding ask for.”

  Espeth lay on her back, colored balls and streaks like one of Jubilee’s light shows still clouding her vision. She could see the gun turret above her transversing rapidly and firing in response to any movement or sound. She lay, almost literally, in its shadow, too close for the guns to tilt down and lock on her, a tiny umbrella of safety in a sea of hellish fire. She was fine, so long as she didn’t rise from the ground or move more than a few yards from her current position. Violate either of those two conditions however, and the guns would cut her in half in a millisecond.

  Jono moved through the group, his carefully focused telepathic voice rousing his fellow Generation Xers without alerting anyone else in the area. Several of them, including Paige and Monet, hadn't been as asleep as he’d thought.

  He explained, once they were all up, “The whole lot of them got ambushed by some kind of machine-gun turrets. There are wounded. Espeth—Well, she was the first one to sound the alarm. I don’t know what happened to her.”

  Jubilee rubbed her eyes. “Did old Blackhead sign off on this?” '

  “What he don’t bloody know,” said Jono, “won’t hurt him. Why give him a chance to say ‘no’?”

  “Good point,” said Jubilee.

  “Do I get to break something now?” asked Monet.

  “Ooooh, yeah,” said Angelo, “I think you do.”

  Paige was pacing, in furious thought. “From what you’ve said, they’re pinned down up there. We need to punch a hole in those defenses so they have a line of retreat.”

  Jono stepped forward. “I can blast them from a distance.” Paige frowned. “That makes sense, but using your power and keeping your head down is an oxymoron. Don’t get anything else blown off.”

  “Point taken, luv.”

  “I can fly him up,” said Monet.

  " Paige nodded. “Ev can take one more up. I could do something bullet-proof.”

  Jono’s eyes narrowed. “These are some pretty big bullets.” “I’ll go,” said Jubilee.

  Angelo looked incredulous. “What? You’ll get killed.”

  “No more than Jono will! This is just like a walk through the old Danger Room for me. I can handle it. And I’ll keep those turrets busy while the fly-guys shuttle the rest of you in.”

 
Paige studied Jubilee’s eyes for any sign of doubt. “Take her, Ev. Just don’t get shot on the way up, even if it means she has to climb the last bit herself.”

  “I can handle it,” said Jubilee, confidently.

  “I hope so,” said Paige.

  Smokey wiped a streak of blood off his face. A near-miss had shattered a rock near his head, showering him with sharp fragments. He was grateful none of them had hit him in the eye. Unlike most of his troops, he was below the line of fire. If he was careful, he might be able to retreat down the slope. If he wanted to.

  He cleared his throat and spit. He could see the flashes from turrets on either side of him. Ahead, a split between some rocks seemed to offer cover. He started to climb.

  More flashes. He threw himself down before realizing that these were not tracers or muzzle flashes, but dancing ribbons and spheres of colored lights that swarmed up the hillside like a flock of fairies. The turrets all turned, locking on the rapidly moving lights, firing again and again. The bullets passed through the lights harmlessly.

  He was still puzzling it out when something large and dark whooshed over his head, like an enormous owl swooping down on a field mouse. Then it was gone, and he was left to wonder if this was a good time to start being superstitious.

  Monet chopped Jono off just below a ridge line, then turned back to go pick up Paige. Jono could see the flashes of the tur-rets'just above him. He climbed up the rocks, loose pebbles slipping under his boots as he climbed. Near the top, he paused, popped his head up for a quick peek, then back down again.

  A moment later, a line of bullets ricocheted off the rocks just above him. He would have whistled if he’d been so equipped. He’d just caught a glimpse of the turret, a metal tower mounted with twin machine guns, a fake boulder sitting on top like a party hat, and it had still had time to lock on and take a shot at him.

  He was guessing, guessing, that a full-force TK blast would disable the turret. Trouble was, he’d have only one chance at it, and he’d have to be fast. There’d be no time to duck if he missed, or if he didn’t have enough juice. “Don’t think,” he coached himself, “just do it. Use the bloody force, Luke.” Jono tugged down the wrappings over his face and chest. Flickering orange light from the energy that filled his body danced on the rock face. “Great,” he said, “I'm a blinking illuminated target. Oh, well.”

  He braced his feet so he could pop-up like a Jack-in-the-box, silently counted to three, and then jumped.

  Loud things happened.

  Jubilee moved up the slope gesturing like a puppeteer operating marionettes. In fact, what she was doing wasn’t much different. The plasma constructs she controlled drew the fire from the nearby turrets. Every time a gun would swing toward her, she would draw it away with one of her little targets.

  It was good for a laugh, but it was getting old, and she was getting tired of concentrating so hard. Keeping this many objects under such control was taking a lot out of her.

  Not to say that she was otherwise straining her abilities. Fact was, Jubilee’s powers scared her. A lot. She’d once blown up an entire house, and since then she’d usually kept her plasma projections at the level of fireworks. But there were times when you just had to cut loose.

  She crossed her arms over her head, left hand pointed right, right hand pointed left. She bit her lip until she tasted blood. It wasn’t the bullets that scared her.

  A blast of plasma shot from each hand like a rocket, and they lanced toward the two nearest turrets.

  Then the world seemed to explode.

  Espeth climbed as far under the turret as she could. She knew that, if it retracted right now, she’d be squashed like an insect, but she had to find a weakness, some way of disabling the turret. It was dark down there, the turret and rock shell above blocking most of the moonlight. She tried to puzzle things out by the light of the strobe-like flashes, by touch without getting her fingers caught in the constantly moving mechanism.

  Then she heard a shout. She rolled over in time to see someone running across the open ground toward her, saw' the turret spin above her head, was deafened by the report as the running figure was cut down, fell and lay still.

  Espeth’s mouth was open in an unvoiced scream. Who?

  The turret swung away, tracking for another target.

  And the figure was up and sprinting toward her. The guns came round again. The figure ducked, the guns passing over his—no—her head.

  She ducked, rolled into the recess under the turret next to Espeth. Espeth reached out to touch a hand, shockingly cold and metallic.

  “Well, Espeth, darlin’,” said Paige, “fancy meeting you here.”

  Smokey ducked behind a tree. Ahead of him he could see an open space, and in the middle of it, what looked like a girl, doing what almost looked like some kind of dance. It took a moment to register. Those mutant kids. Did Black actually send them in ?

  Then the girl swung her arms and some instinct told him to cover his eyes. For a split second he saw the bones in his fingers, black outlines in red. When he uncovered his face, the two closest turrets were smoking ruins. He’d lost sight of the girl though. Then, to his right, another explosion, orange, not as bright, but with a force that he felt deep in his chest. Another turret fell silent.

  No time to look for the girl now. “All forces,” he said to the radio, “we got breaks in the defenses on the west and northwest quadrants of the mountain. Fall back and regroup outside the fire zone. I repeat, fall back and regroup!”

  Sharpe watched the red lights appear on the defense console. Namik gave him a look of concern.

  Sharpe shook his head. “They’re just the outer defenses. They’re no closer to getting inside than they were two hours ago.”

  “Do you want me to send out the defense drones?”

  “Save them,” he smiled slightly, “there are mutants out there. This is just the opportunity I’ve been looking for to play my aces in the hole.”

  Ev didn’t have as much confidence in his synched invulnerability as Monet did in hers, but he found that if he flew fast, low, and erratically enough, the turrets couldn’t quite get a lock on him. The near misses were getting unnerving though, and it was a great relief to fly into the zone cleared by the two exploding turrets. Around him. Genogoth commandos were scurrying down the mountain.

  One, a muscular woman with close-cropped hair stopped and put a hand on his shoulder. “Get yourself to safety. Please.”

  He shrugged her hand off and proceeded to climb up the slope. Those were Jubilee’s plasma balls. She had to be around here somewhere.

  Something moved in a clump of bushes to his right. “Ev,” a voice said weakly. “Synch?”

  “Jubilee?” He followed the voice. She was curled on her side in the bushes. He reached to help her up, and she threw her arms around him. She was trembling.

  '“I think I did good, Ev.”

  He nodded. “You did good.” He realized that he was supporting most of her weight.

  “Could you take me out of here, Ev? Someplace where I can blow-chunks in peace?”

  Paige hammered on the turret’s mechanisms with her metal fists, but other than making a sound like an anvil concert, it didn’t seem to be doing any good. “I could pound on this thing a week before doing any damage,” she grumbled.

  Espeth pointed over at the next turret. “Notice how that one has a clear shot of us, but hasn’t taken it? I think they’re programmed not to shoot each other.”

  Paige squinted up at the moving gun barrels. “I wonder how much force it would take to redirect the aim?” She reached up and grabbed the barrels as they swung by. The barrels were nearly red hot, but she barely noticed it through her metal skin. She felt the guns elevate to avoid pointing at the next turret, tried to pull them down. They resisted, moved a little, then lifted her weight off the ground. She grunted and dropped free.

  She looked at Espeth. “How much do you weigh?”

  “What

  “Never mi
nd. Let’s just hope it’s enough. Grab around my waist, and hold on for all you’re worth.”

  The gun swung back in the other direction, tracers shooting out. Espeth grabbed her. Paige grabbed the guns. Felt them resist. Felt her body lifting. Something inside the mechanism slipped. She dropped. The next turret was blasted full of holes, something inside caused a small explosion, and the guns fell dead.

  Paige kicked her feet in delight. “Whoo-hoo!” She rolled. There was another turret to the north. “Crawl over this way,” she said to Espeth, “we’ll do it again.”

  “A couple yards of extra skin,” complained Angelo, as he ducked behind a boulder. “More area to put holes in is what it is'.”

  Then there was a sound like a mallet striking metal. The whir of the turret’s mechanism became labored, then turned into a screech. Something snapped, and the shooting stopped.

  Angelo cautiously poked his head over the rock. Monet stood in front of the turret, one of the two twisted gun barrels still in her hand. She let go of it, and the barrels swung down to the limit of their travel with a clang. She spun and did a spinning side-kick, smashing a panel above the barrels that seemed to be the tracking system. “That was refreshing,” she said. Then she squinted at him. “You make a good target, Angelo.”

  He scrambled up the slope. “Thanks a bunch, chica. Thanks a bunch.” As he passed the disabled turret, a glint of something light-colored caught his eye. He turned back and peered inside the smashed sensor panel. “M, wait up. I got something here.”

  There was a crack in the panel, too small to get his hand into, but he was easily able to snake his extended skin through the opening. He fished around blindly for a minute. “Ah!” He pulled the skin back out slowly and produced a bit of blue cable with a connector and a fragment of circuit board still hanging from the end. He carefully pulled, and was able to extract several yards of slack cable before it stopped moving. He held up the end of the wire and grinned. “Get Styx on the horn. We got Satan’s pay-per-view right here!”

  Smokey looked up the slope as another turret went out. There was now a gaping hole in the defenses. There were wounded, but they were being pulled back for evacuation. Now that surprise was no longer an issue, the helicopters could be brought in to fly them to hospitals.