These guys might have been smart and dedicated, but a bunch of grunts assigned to a far-flung depot and forgotten doesn’t have the most combat experience.
With nary a moment of hesitation, I mentally activated One Shot, One Kill, the barrel of the Arclight bursting with white light while unloading a burst of sparking particle blasts. Packing three times their normal charge from the buff, the tightly grouped shots punched right through the center of mass of the front-most Quib before he could even think to pull the trigger.
In my ears, my suit reported in its matter-of-fact tone, Enemy power suit disabled, life signs flatlined. Remote transfer initiated!
The familiar tinkling of power credits filling my suit’s coffers rang in my ears as what little power I’d spent on One Shot refilled from the transfer. These guys really were scrubs from the low amount of power I drained, but even a scrub with a gun can get lucky.
“Death before dishonor,” Turner roared with abandon, all four barrels of the Diamar bursting all at once, the entire front end slamming back as recoil compensators kicked in. Even so, it was almost too much for the four-hundred pounds of Bolderian to handle, his entire right side bucking back because, of course, he still had his shotgun grasped in the other hand. The diamond-shaped pattern of gyrojets burned through the thin air, spiraling parallel to Alyra’s column of force.
As the micro-rockets exploded, blowing two of the Quibs apart with bloody violence, Alyra smiled grimly as she flicked her wrist, swinging the tip of the Wander opposite the explosions. In response, the hard light column grew and flattened, swinging like the galaxy’s flashiest fly swatter with the motion of her pistol. One of the pair of Quibs she flattened into the side of the airlock managed to squeeze off a burst of his own, his Scarab blaster rifle peppering Alyra with off-white packets of charged particles before he and his buddy were pinned flat.
If you judged Alyra on appearance alone, you might have been worried, her terrible beauty in battle aside. Matriarchy power suits look like they are made of soap bubbles and wet dreams, after all, but I’d fought her. I didn’t even cast a glance of worry her way as the blaster bolts splashed against the ethereal plates of her armor, barely scratching her protective shields. The kinetic energy of the shots did, however, throw her backward. With minimal gravity, physics was as much of an enemy as the Quibs.
As she sought to correct her course with her wings before losing her force grip on the Quibs, the few remaining grunts that hadn’t gone down in the initial exchanged opened up in their ‘ambush’. With the light thrown off by Alyra’s constructs growing and our own suits’ low-light sensors kicking in, it was obvious now that there were twice as many attackers as I first thought, the tube filling with lasers, blaster bolts, and bullets.
With Alyra thrown back, Turner and I filled most of the space in front of her and thus were the lucky recipients of the barrage. It didn’t help that we were magnetically latched to the walls, something that the Quibs also seemed to be. Fortunately, the security team was as well armed as the rest of their station, a generation or two removed from the Matriarch’s frontline weaponry, and we were probably the tankiest members of our squad.
Lasers burned scorch marks in Turner’s heavy armor, and a particle blast sparked off his force dome helmet, the worst of the damage blunted by his shielding. I think the only reason he even noticed was the sparks of energy rippling right over his field of vision as he brought the Diamar around again. As for me, I trusted in my Ascension powers, the power of the dragon spirit growing in me as my shields absorbed the first barrage like a champ. With Scaled Victor blunting the damage by almost half and Breath of the Wilds eating the lasers for lunch, what damage did soak through into my suit was channeled into Recompense energy, a coruscating red aura that mingled with the white glow still suffusing my rifle.
“Okay, we don’t have time to mess around,” I growled, rearing back one crystal-knuckled fist.
Alyra steadied herself as I concentrated, both the raw, seething power of Recompense and the ever-present dragon flame in my heart rushing through my arm and into the Cestari. While I had never really ‘cast a spell’ before, Dragon Bolt seemed to work in my mind just like everything else about my dragon. I thought, and it responded if the request is in its power.
I threw my fist forward as Alyra’s crude flyswatter split and morphed into a mass of clawed tendrils that shot outward. Amidst the staccato of beams and bolts, a tremendous ball of dragonfire erupted from my fist, streaking down like a comet into the midst of the remaining Quibs. Meanwhile, Turner cackled like a madman and fired off another quad-burst of rockets. If he were a human, he’d probably have torn his arm off from that one, but Turner was made of far sterner stuff than that.
The result of that ferocious counterattack was obvious. The napalm-like gout of red-gold flame exploded across the center-most Quib, the fire melting through his armor like it was wax and sending splatters of Recompense-fueled oil across the chamber. That just made the hail of gyrojets that much more effective, each one targeting a Quib for death, and what little lived through the fire and explosions were torn apart savagely by the sharp-edged tentacles of energy that Alyra guided through the airlock.
As the storm and fury quieted, all that remained of Exo-7813’s security team was scraps of metal, shards of polymer, floating globs of scarlet blood, and drifting body parts.
Releasing my mag-boots from the side of the tube, I pushed off, down towards the depot’s now-messy airlock. “They really just should have surrendered.”
8
“You’re almost there, darlings,” Clara reported over the comm channel. “Not much further!”
I didn’t grumble at that. I didn’t have to because Turner got to do it for me. “If we run into one more collapsed hallway, I swear by my eighteen sons and daughters that I will call upon the great Earth hydration spirit, Kool-Aid Man. Every wall shall become a door, and I’ve got enough detonite to do it!”
As we discovered as we walked down the stem-like hallway that connected the docking dome with the central hub of the depot, the shoddy state of the station was our true enemy. The shining white walls were scuffed, grey, and rusting, while the marble floors were cracked and dusty. The lightning was intermittent at best, not from lack of power, but from shorted light strips and short circuits. Once we made it to the hub proper, it got a hundred times worse.
Entire rooms and hallways had become choked off, either filled with junk and decaying stores or simply collapsed from disrepair. There were even a few sections that had been entirely sealed off by scavenged bulkhead sections, welded into place to keep the atmospheric seal for the station. Between Alyra’s constructs and Turner and my combined muscle, we didn’t always have to divert, but we lost more than a bit of time with backtracks and sealed chambers.
As we worked our way carefully through this OSHA disaster of a warehouse, Clara kept us up to date with sensor sweeps and updating our onboard maps, combining our new intelligence with the schematics of the station we already had. We didn’t run into any more soldiers, the few workers we ran into fleeing the instant they saw us if they weren’t already running to and fro.
Whatever mischief Tulip and Clara were up to was apparently going swimmingly, and I gave the order not to shoot down any of the escape pods that started to launch from the depot. We weren’t murderers, we were soldiers, and I’d be damned if I was going to add any non-combatant deaths to my conscience if I could avoid it.
I began to wonder just how long this place had been left limping along by the Matriarchy, and the implications of that. Considering how long it must take for the super-alloys used by the Matriarchs to give out from natural causes, Exo had been the ignored mole on the butt of the Matriarchy for, well, as long as those poor Beetles had been floating in space. Maybe the Matriarchy’s resources weren’t as infinite as they seemed. I would have thought the Resistance would have snatched this place a long time ago, but then again, with Leonis IV so close and so heavily reinforced, it mig
ht not have been worth the risk.
Finally, after a good fifteen minutes of navigating the crumbling space station, Alyra let out a sigh of relief and pointed ahead at a massive set of double doors. It was the first of several along this stretch of hallway, evenly spaced on the same wall. Standard door panels stood next to each one, glowing bright red to show their locked status.
“There, at long last, the main warehouse,” she explained. “Of course, considering how decrepit this place has turned out to be, if there’s a single intact crate of energy cells, we shall be lucky indeed.”
Turner laughed as he kicked a discarded ration tin down the hall. “Don’t feel too sad, Alyra. Even if we don’t find the weapons we need, we will have a glorious display on our way out as we watch this floating pile of junk explode into a million pieces!”
While I chuckled under my breath and moved ahead to inspect the first door, Alyra regarded the demo man with a faint smirk. “While I should be more concerned at the possibility of a new difficulty in our mission, it would indeed please me greatly to watch this eyesore on the face of the universe erased from existence.”
“I think we’ll all enjoy the fireworks, assuming we’re in a position to stay and watch them,” I agreed as I rapped the door panel with my knuckles. Considering how poorly functioning the rest of the facility had been, I half-expected they’d open with just a tap. “But let’s focus. We’ve only got …” I glanced at my HUD’s chronometer. “… forty minutes, give or take, to load up what we can find and get it back to the Orion. I could melt this door in a second if I go full dragon, or maybe with my Cestari, but that’s a waste.”
Turner and Alyra stepped up beside me, Alyra on my right, Turner on my left. The engineer rubbed his impossible square jaw as he assessed the problem. “Laser torch would do it, but it would take too long, even if we could reenact a half-dozen rather enjoyable heist movies in the process. I could blow the doors, but I’m worried that any rough shakes might set off a chain reaction.”
“Likewise, ripping or prying the doors might cause the same thing, my dragon,” Alyra added. “Perhaps I could brace a small collapse with my magic, but that would not hold forever.”
“Time to call in Null-K then,” I nodded after a moment of contemplation. Going to one knee by the panel, I switched to the Orion’s channel. “Hey, Tulip, we’ve got a situation that needs your special touch.”
The Fertish woman’s purr rumbled into my ear. “As much as I’m hoping this has to do with the bedroom, I have the feeling you need my velvet paws for a little electronic infiltration instead.” I could practically hear the mock-pout over the channel. “While not as fun as the first, this should still be almost as good. What do you need?”
Chuckling under my breath, I resolved to make sure to find the time soon to spend a night with Tulip. “Right on all counts. I’m transmitting my suit camera to you, and Clara has our location. We need an open sesame as fast as you can manage it. I’m sure you’re already hacked into the depot’s systems, aren’t you?”
“You know me so well!” I could hear her fingers tapping on her screen. “And while I don’t know what open sesame means, I’m guessing it’s something like the tale of Felinus opening the golden urn of Nippa.”
I was about to ask what that was when the door lock suddenly beeped loudly, echoed by every door lock down the hallway. In lockstep, all the reds turned to greens, and with the strain of aged hydraulics, the warehouse doors ground open.
“And now you can sup upon the godly herbs within,” Tulip purred. “Hopefully there’s some real loot in there!”
“You and me both, honey.” I stood back up as my other squadmates moved cautiously through the door, lights on Turner’s suit coming to life to cut through the dusty darkness. I was close on their heels, my own lights cutting through the gloom as Alyra’s glowing force armor seemed to increase in intensity.
Not that we needed those lights long. The whiff of ozone and the buzz of electricity echoed through the surprisingly large chamber, and most, not all, of the room’s lights came to life. Eyes adjusting to the sudden light, I blinked once and prayed my vastly lowered expectations wouldn’t be confirmed.
The depot’s armory was a rectangular vault-like chamber, a good ten meters deep and half the length of a football field, and whatever gods were out there saw fit to smile on us, as the place was actually intact. A thin layer of dust coated the scuffed black metal floors, the white walls here marginally cleaner than the rest of the depot. From the looks of it, no one had been in here for a week maybe. After all, it’s not like you needed to visit a place like this often when the universe seemed to have left you behind.
More importantly, it wasn’t completely empty. Sure, it wasn’t fully stocked, not by a long shot, but with an armory this size, that would do. It was certainly a hell of a lot better than any of us had expected. Gun racks lined the walls on the right third of the room, with cubbies below them for cases and crates, likely ammunition and energy cells. On the opposite side, storage wardrobes for power suits, unfortunately, hung open and empty, but there were some sealed storage crates tucked into cubbies that might have goodies.
The middle third of the room was dominated by drone storage and repair. As I knew from the game and now first-hand experience, the Matriarchy leaned heavily on automated units on the ground as well as in space. There was a full robo-fac, an automated facility for building and repairing robots, with a long-forgotten hover drone half-disassembled in it. While I didn’t think there was much useful there for the revolution effort, I did catch a glimpse of three hover sleds, the ultratech equivalent of motorized pallet jacks parked around the robo-fac.
“It’s not quite like your Christmas, David,” Turner said after a low whistle, “but it’s more than many freedom fighters ever see, in the Resistance or not.”
Alyra cast a glance toward the suit racks, starting to drift that way. “I know it was perhaps too much to hope for, but even a handful of extra power suits, no matter how old, would have been useful.”
I nodded. “Still, beggars can’t be choosers. Turner, see if you can get those hover sleds going.” I pointed over to the weapon racks. “Alyra, go ahead and start gathering and crating every weapon and scrap of ammo you can find. I’ll go ahead and give the armor area a thorough search.”
Turner snapped a salute, clamping his shotgun to the side of his pack and exchanging the beautiful Diamar with a toolkit as he walked over to the dusty sleds. Alyra turned from the armor wardrobes, frowned vaguely, and nodded. “As you wish, my dragon. Are you sure you wish everything?” She quirked an eyebrow at some of the older looking gear as she flap-stepped past me. “I doubt—”
“We can’t be choosy, Alyra,” I countered. “Even if they only have muskets and kitchen knives, every armed slave is better than an unarmed one.”
“Very well but …” Her voice trailed off for a moment before she glanced back at me. “What is a musket?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. As she looked at me quizzically, Turner too had a bit of a chuckle. Fluttering her wings, Alyra pouted, a cute little thing I had never seen her do before. “I … you’re not making fun of me, are you? Like asking me to find striped paint?”
Well, I guess some jokes were universal, but I shook my head. “No, no, sorry. I just forget that not everyone knows Earth stuff like Turner and Tulip do.” Giving her a serious smile, I continued, “Muskets are stupidly primitive guns from my home.”
“Oh,” she said simply, rubbing the back of her head. “Well, apology accepted.” She gave me a small smile and turned back towards the weapon racks. “I should get to it. Time is of the essence, but if I do find something as … primitive … as these muskets, I will make sure to include it just in case.”
Shaking my head, I got to my own work, hoping that Alyra would find better things than the Matriarchy equivalent of muskets and that I’d find some hidden doodad that would make the difference in the fight ahead. At least Turner seemed to have an easy job
getting the first sled online and was on to the second.
I started off going through the racks, just to be safe. After all, the ones we had on the Orion retracted back into the wall, so it was worth seeing if anything was still stuck back there. When that came up empty, I turned my attention to the crates, sliding the three of them together in the center of the floor.
While most of the dirt and schmutz wasn’t too thick, these plastic and steel containers, each roughly the size of a laundry bin, were positively coated with dust. Seriously, I had to wonder if these hadn’t been left here untouched for fifty years or more. Thankful that our force helmets were still up, and the atmosphere filters running, I scraped away the inches-thick crap with my gauntlet. After a few moments of clearing off enough of the markings to get an idea of what I was actually looking at.
There was some technical information, power outputs, and other jargon that I had no reference for, being based on super alien technology, but what stood out was the designation.
ATS-210 Power Frame, Defense Type
That didn’t sound like anything from the game or remotely like anything I’ve seen since joining the Resistance. Whatever it was, though, it was worth investigating further. Maybe if I could get a direct look at it, my suit’s internal computer could identify it like every other bit of weaponry and armor I’d run across. Feeling through the grime, I found the latches for the crate and unlocked the thing. Muscling the surprisingly thick lid open, I took a good look at what was inside.
It reminded me of an incredibly advanced exoskeleton, like any number of the military prototypes I’d seen in the news right before I left home, broken down into component parts. Obviously, it seemed to be a hell of a lot fancier than anything humanity had invented, but compared to the nanomachine powered suit I was wearing, it was a Tinker Toy. After a long moment of Accessing Archives messages and a load bar that made old Windows versions look like they were speed demons, information finally filled my HUD.
Star Conqueror: Recompense: An Epic Space Harem Adventure Page 7