Whump! she was on the ground inside.
“This way!”
She stumbled forward, following Satori’s voice and heading off behind a set of buildings as the guns continued their barrage inside the walls. At that point stopping the Skull Boys seemed to be their number one objective.
On she ran, staying just ahead of the pounding impacts as the high-caliber guns blistered the buildings around her, breaking off large fragments and chunks. In seconds she was deep inside the maze of streets and out of their line of sight.
“Up ahead!” Satori called. Jess found her and caught up, pulling her gun. Satori’s was already out.
“He’s in that one!” Jess pointed to the control building near the center of the compound. On her display she marked it with commands. Satori acknowledged.
“Let’s go!”
Though they’d never trained together Jess found herself falling into complimentary step with the young commander. Maybe Satori was just adjusting to her. Whatever the reason, it was working. Well. She easily shadowed the red-headed demon girl, popping off shots to the left when Satori shot right and vice-versa; finding targets high, picking off snipers in her range finder before they could shoot; warning of threats as Satori did the same. Together they worked their way through the maze to the control building, finding no significant resistance beyond simple foot soldiers, and by the time they reached their objective Jess was totally in the zone. Feeling like a trained Marine or something, clearing the streets of Baghdad.
“The Shogun was at the top,” she said as they sprinted to a halt at the base of the building and looked up, scanning the windows twelve floors above. “Willet should be a few floors below.” Not long ago she was up there on that same roof, high above the compound, just her in the tunic, vulnerable, so vulnerable, looking for a way out. Now she was on the ground, once more in a suit of Skull Boy armor, rail gun in hand and looking for a way back in.
Now she was the threat.
She gauged the height; spotted the still-open window she’d climbed out of earlier. An easy mark for where they had to go.
Could the suits make the leap? And if they got inside, could the Skull Boy armor make it through the halls? There wouldn’t be much room to maneuver.
“I think we can make that floor,” Satori pointed as she fed telemetry data to Jessica’s suit. Jess read the jump arc, plotted to impact the tenth floor.
“We punch in there, enter and make our way up. What was up there?”
“It was all open,” Jess remembered the space, “with offices on this side.”
Satori turned to face the building and took a few steps away from the base, locking her cannon at her back.
Jess moved to position, watched as Satori crouched and … sprang high, hitting the jets and zooming like a rocket into the clear blue sky, a hundred feet, up, arcing toward the wall high above …
Smash! the suit impacted the metal window frames, knocking them inward, shattering glass in a shower of sparkling fragments. Seconds later Jess listened as the shards pinged against her helmet cap, raining down, squinting reflexively as the crystal-clear shrapnel fell in her video feeds against the Skull Boy’s face. High above Satori held on and fought her way in.
Jess holstered her own cannon, crouched and followed, grunting with the surge, leaping with all her might, kicking on the jets at just the right moment, following the same arc and hitting alongside Satori’s messy entry hole. The rigid wall beams stopped her forward progress with a solid yank, as expected, but the heavy impact punched most of the way through and she ripped away the remaining framework, clawing her way in, shattering more glass and tearing metal as she entered.
She was in an office. Her Skull Boy helmet nearly touched the ceiling but they were in.
“You lead,” Satori stepped aside, drawing her gun. Jess drew hers and went ahead.
Before them was a door and a wall. Debris from their entry lay scattered around the room, blasted inward. Her first thought was that there was no way through for the oversized armor, but she realized at once these internal walls were not load bearing and, even if they were, they were no barrier.
Finding it a bit satisfying, under the circumstances, she stepped forward and tossed aside what was probably a hundred-pound desk like it was nothing. The effort didn’t even register on the suit’s metrics. Directly in front of the door was another, bigger desk, made of heavy wood with full drawers and everything. Probably belonged to someone important. Rather than step around it, however, wasting three or four unneeded steps, she simply kicked through it, using one step instead. The desk shattered and flew to the sides in pieces, contents of the drawers fluttering in the air. She stomped a chair, crunching it under her armored footfall like an aluminum can. At the door she simply knocked it outward into the hall, pushing her way past the metal frame, the surrounding walls buckling to the sides as plaster ruptured into the hall in a haze of dust.
In the hall she quick-checked both directions, gun high. Satori followed close.
“This way,” Jess tried to remember the direction of the stairwell. The suit’s scanners penetrated the unshielded walls of the interior in all directions, giving her a view of what lay beyond, but much of it looked the same. One of the stairwells ahead looked like the one she was brought up the day before to meet the Shogun. “I think I can find my way from there.” She illuminated her objective for Satori.
Battle klaxons still blared, strobe lights flashing at every corner. Oddly the automated warnings hadn’t been shut off, though it was clear by now the entire compound was under siege.
Then, as they drew up on the stairwell, a heat signature.
“Got one,” Jess cautioned. “One level up.” After everything they’d been through to that point, one soldier seemed almost meaningless.
She crowded down the hallway, the Skull Boy’s shoulders spanning nearly its entire width; hunched so the skull cap didn’t drag the ceiling. At the corner to the stairs she brought the gun up and activated the suit’s PA.
“External comm,” she said. Blurp. The speaker was active.
“Come down to the landing,” she ordered, hearing her own voice reverberate harshly outside in the hall.
Nothing. The person just stayed there. She double-checked what biometrics were available. The target up there was alive, though not by much. Maybe they couldn’t move.
“I’m going to check it out,” she informed Satori and stepped the rest of the way into view of the stairs. There was a man up there, curled into a ball, not moving.
It was the Shogun.
Jessica gasped.
It’s him! He sat on the stairs, one flight up, leaning against the railing. Looking down with a vacant gaze. Colorful robes a mess, face covered in dried blood that looked like a Halloween mask. Barely hanging on.
Jessica’s heart went to ice. Conflicting emotions raced through her. It was like seeing a ghost. He’s alive! She wasn’t a murderer after all. But he deserved to die! He should be dead!
“Unbelievable,” Satori summed up the situation as she stepped heavily into the landing behind her. Jess kept her cannon trained on the old man.
Slowly the Shogun came to life, struggling to find focus. He looked down at the two Skull Boys. Digested the fact that they were there, cannons aimed right at him.
And began to cackle. It ended quickly in a fit of coughing, bringing up fresh blood, but he wrestled with that, gained strength and was soon laughing again, with a gusto that belied his deathly condition. He pointed, coughing harder, and this time he looked like he might keel over. Jess resisted the urge to shoot him, wondering what kind of racket the heavy Skull Boy cannon would make in the tight, enclosed space. Ricochets alone would be deadly from the mighty rail gun.
“What do we do?” she asked Satori on their closed channel. “I thought I killed him.”
The Shogun got control of his coughing and was soon smiling again. Effed up big time but finding great humor in all this.
“You’re inside
the compound!” he relished the fact that they were there. Fed off of it. “Good!”
“I’m not sure yet,” Satori admitted.
“How many?” he asked them, oblivious to their private conversation. Then: “No matter. I bring it all to an end! And all of you with it!”
And he rose shakily and began making his way back up the stairs, away from them to the upper room. A little faster, and Jess began to worry.
“We should stop him,” she said.
Satori agreed. “Go get him.”
Jess started up the stairs. The steps were different than the hall and were, for a moment, a challenge for the large footprint of the armor. She adjusted her footing, grabbed reflexively for the metal handrail and let go when it pulled free under the massive grip of the Skull Boy. She steadied herself against the wall, shifted the gun to her free hand and made her way awkwardly up. It was like walking up a bumpy ramp. At the next landing she paused.
The Shogun was nowhere to be seen.
She used the scanners to search again for his heat signature. It was higher than expected. Was he picking up speed? He couldn’t be. The guy was nearly dead. She lumbered the rest of the way, quickly, heavy metallic footfalls sending small tremors through the reinforced concrete of the stairs and she hoped they wouldn’t collapse.
At the top she barged through the closed door into the upper control room, bringing the door frame and part of the wall with her. Inside the room was exactly as she remembered it, only now the sun shown brightly through the bank of windows. The Shogun was across the room, at a console tugging frantically at something, and there, on the floor between them, lay the senior officer. The one she’d killed that morning with the punch to the throat.
I am a murderer.
She brushed that aside, turning to the Shogun and what he was up to.
“There!” he stood, wavering, triumphant with whatever he’d just done. And the timbre of the warning klaxons changed, switching to a grinding blurp—even more urgent than the last.
Deadly urgent.
Jess came closer, moving across the wide open floor, gun steady on the old man. Satori arrived and moved in behind her.
“I’m dead,” the Shogun coughed. “And soon you will be too. None of this will be yours. None of it!” He laughed again, the laugh of a madman. But the coughing was now so bad it became a spastic, pathetic retching, blood spewing, head jerking back and forth, hands flailing as he tried desperately to steady his regal bearing—as if remaining erect could somehow preserve his dignity. He was utterly repulsive.
Satori spared them all.
BRRRIIIP! her cannon went off, shredding him and blowing him across the room, causing Jess to jerk.
“Should’ve done that earlier,” she went immediately to the console where the Shogun had been standing. Jess looked away from the carnage but it was already too late to avoid the image: flying entrails, blood and gore wrapped in the colorful packaging of his silk Shogun robes. Like an invisible wood chipper grabbed him and shot him suddenly against the far wall.
She didn’t know how much of that sort of thing she ever wanted to see again. Taking a deep breath she swallowed down her disgust and followed Satori, who was already poring over the console functions.
“Damn.” Satori paused.
“What?”
“Damn.”
“What?”
“We’ve got to find Willet.” Satori turned and headed for the door. “The bastard activated a self destruct.”
Jess rushed after her, scrambling to understand.
“Self destruct?!” But Satori was already leaving the room. “I thought those were only in the movies!” Satori motioned her back into the lead and Jess ran ahead, hitting the stairs and looking back. “Why would they have a self destruct?!”
Satori hurried her along. “I don’t know if it’s real but we can’t take any chances. Whether it blows up this building, the whole compound, or just shoots off candy streamers we have to evacuate. Where’s Willet?”
“This way.” And Jess led them down, feeling a sudden urgency to get the hell out of there. The klaxons screamed their warning.
After two flights of stairs Satori reported: “I just relayed the info.” On a secure link, Jess imagined, as Satori had said nothing over their closed channel. “Command intelligence reports there is an inverter on the fusion reactor. Alters the burn coefficient to near zero, releasing all stored energy at once.”
Jessica tried not to stumble as she hurried down the stairs. “You mean this place is going to go up like …” she made the mental connection, “like a hydrogen bomb?”
“Essentially, yes.”
Jess swallowed; nearly froze, but kept charging downward, comparing details of each landing with those she remembered, desperate not to waste a second.
“How long do we have?” She stopped at what she thought was the right floor, wavered, then headed down the hall.
“Soon.”
At the door she believed was the one where Willet and she had been taken she stopped. Praying.
But Satori wasted no time. She pushed her way up.
“This it?”
Jess nodded, then remembered the suit didn’t nod. “Yes.”
And without further ado Satori ripped the door off its hinges.
Willet was inside.
Willet!
Sitting in the corner, still in his ribbed operator suit. He jerked alert at the violent entry and Jess rejoiced.
His eyes were like saucers. “What the …” After a solid day in the cell, probably with no information at all, sitting there listening to those damn alarms wondering what the hell was going on, and now to have the door ripped away and two giant Skull Boys standing there looking at him …
Satori’s PA activated. “Get moving, soldier.”
Willet jumped at the loud sound, then recognized the voice. “… Satori?” Slowly he got to his feet, growing happier by the second. “Satori?!” he rushed her, losing touch with reality as he hugged the powered armor, only to step back at the awkwardness of hugging a giant metal machine.
“No time for reunions,” Satori accelerated the moment. “This place is going to blow. We’re getting you out of here.”
Willet was immediately frantic. “We have to find Jessica.”
Jess called on her own PA. “I’m right here.”
And Willet actually took a step back. Staggered a little. He stared at the other Skull Boy, eyes going wide—if it was possible for them to get any wider.
“Jessica?”
She nodded. Then, again remembering the suit, called for the PA: “It’s me.”
Willet stuttered: “How did … Where were …” Then:
“Wait, what?”
“It’s a long story,” Jess smiled at his reaction.
So glad they’d found him.
“I don’t know the details yet either,” Satori told him. “Now climb on and hang on. We’ll have time for all that later.”
And soon they were in an elevator shaft dropping in controlled fashion the rest of the way to the bottom. Willet rode Satori’s back, hanging on for dear life even as she kept checking with him to confirm he was still there. Confirming he was okay; that her man was alive and she had him. Even as Willet kept looking at the both of them, especially Jess, amazed and confused and happy and worried all at the same time.
Poor guy was really having a time of it.
Back outside in the compound the klaxons blared louder and Jess wondered what signals had been sent to the Dominion troops fighting outside, now that the self-destruct had been activated. Were they in retreat?
“Come on!” Satori got them headed toward an escape. She moved to cover behind a building and paused.
“We’ve got to make it to an open area,” she said.
“I’ll take point,” Jess looked at Willet, so frail holding onto Satori’s armored back.
“Let’s go,” she got them moving again.
Jess stepped out ahead and … right into t
he path of one of the samurai powered armor units. An Astake, running full tilt on another objective altogether, just a few feet between them, impact inevitable. In that instant the Astake pulled back in shock, no room for guns and—to Jessica’s own surprise—she surged full bore into it.
Her reaction was to attack.
Wham! she drove a shoulder into the chest of the startled enemy unit. Dropping her own gun she threw her arms around its torso, taking it all the way to the ground, seizing the initiative. She gripped the other unit tighter and hauled it over. There were tactile feedbacks in the Skull Boy, enough to let her feel the form of the Astake as she rolled, but it was clear the designers of the suit never had wrestling in mind.
The Astake got itself together beneath her, even as she knocked away its plasma cannon and maneuvered to pass its guard. This was a fight. Metal-on-metal clanged loudly in the confines of the narrow street, grinding and banging as she twisted past its legs and onto its mid-section, pinning its shoulder with one hand. Holding the Astake there she rained down a series of punches with all the speed she could muster.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
It was a ground-and-pound for the ages. Speed and technique were all that mattered in the suits, not the operator’s raw strength—a fact that worked to her advantage. The guy in the Astake armor might’ve been a beast, but if she was faster and more skilled she could win.
CLANG! he interrupted her barrage with a forearm thrown up in defense, then grabbed her punching arm and twisted to the side. The Skull Boy and Astake were fairly evenly matched, it seemed, but he was able to pull her off and begin to rise.
No you don’t, she redirected his attack, got her feet, smacked his arm away with a metallic BONG! and pushed him back down, going in under his shoulder and taking his back, stretching for a lock. This guy might’ve been one of the Dominion’s elite warriors but it was clear he didn’t know Jiu Jitsu.
The Astake flailed as she drove the hold, breath rasping hard within the confines of her helmet. She managed his efforts to resist, getting the position she wanted as they continued their armor-to-armor dance, then pulled him over, rolling with him on top, arm hooked through her own in pretzel fashion. Positional indicators kept trying to tell her the suit’s orientation was all wrong but she silenced them and overrode the heavy gyros that sought to compensate.
Star Angel: Awakening (Star Angel Book 1) Page 38