“Oh crap!” Frazier shouted, his posture broadcasting his surprise.
A pressure wave slammed into the offending soldier, fracturing the armor and sending her into a rag-doll tumbling flight against a wall across the street. She hit the building with a wet smack that trailed blood and a greenish fluid as she slid to the carcrete.
Ajax hauled the downed lancer to his feet. “Head on a swivel. Their armor has nanotechnology that can adapt to traditional weapons. You'll have to punch harder.”
With that, the mechanized horse man left in a trail of ash.
“That is so cool.” Williams whispered as he watched the equine warrior plunge into the battle.
LaGarron was quick to reform his squad. “Can it, Will! Get your head and that rifle back in the fight! Marshal! We're up! Clear to advance!”
“Marshal Sorrin. I sense they're pulling back. I don't like it. It doesn't seem like the way they do business,” Beth reported.
“Understood. Ajax, coordinate with our simigon friends working the buildings to get them behind the line. Brand, send two squads in to replace them, and keep one back so we have shooters of our own. Make sure we have at least one SAGA with us. I have a bad feeling.”
The platoon pushed to act on Marco's orders. The simigons leapt from high overhead, landing on the street in tumbling crashes. They vaulted into the line to augment the remaining squad of lancers behind the shield wall. They pulled heavy blaster rifles from their backs to assume various shooting stances with the discipline of a Force Majeure infantry squad.
“Oh, I like this.” Williams said, fist bumping the simigon next to him.
Various factions of human, Tyth, and alien races continued to emerge from the hole. They took up firing positions vacated by the advancing lancers, fielding an array of weapons from Tyth fashioned Targen bows to sluggers.
Frazier scoffed into the mic. “I hope these guys don't shoot us in the back.”
Vale admonished his trooper. “We're here to help them, not the other way around. This is the fight for their city. We were just the knock to get them in the door. We have to get these folks past whatever's coming so they can support that Targen Cavalry that took off up ahead.”
Crashing impacts brought their attention past the shields. Two full conversion combat cyborgs, towering at over three meters, swung around the corner. There was no time to take in the fear-inducing movements of the demonic faced titans as they tossed a salvo of mini missiles from the back of their armor. Following in their wake was a medium class robot fighting vehicle. It sailed through the cross street on a repulsor glide while firing mortar rounds over the buildings into the lancer assault line.
Lance Sergeant D'Marco was on the roll to push his men into the right tactical head space. “Press the attack! Air burst out!”
Team leaders primed the forearms on their under-slung grenade launchers. Several pops flared into the air overhead, blowing into a mushroom cloud of scintillating flares. The mortar rounds impacted the glittering shield, blowing with enough force overhead to fracture building tops.
“D'Marco! Drop shields to cover everyone. Ajax and I are on the heavies. Beth! Take out that thumper!” Marco roared as he jumped ahead of the barrier.
Beth primed her muscles in the Way, forcing the searing energies of the Crucible to catapult her to the front of Latisha's squad. “Follow me!”
The ultra-frame lancers crashed through buildings like a wrecking ball, not bothering to use traditional means of negotiating a street. They were attacking in a straight line with everything between their target being given a fresh new hole. Beth was first through the calamity of ruined carbodex covered carcrete. She flashed the power of the Crucible to shield herself from an energy beam shot from the Thumper, using the last bit of her reserves to pull Latisha out of the way. Croix took the rest of the attack, the high energy laser slicing him apart from hip to shoulder.
Daniella brought Cooper and Sloan with her on an ultra-frame powered jump to the midsection of the robotic fighting vehicle. She slapped bandoleers of grenades to the hip actuator of the bot, her two privates hanging on as overwatch.
Two Exo Commandos jumped from the building behind the mech. Their vaults carried them straight at the two strap hangers protecting their team leader. Blaster fire from the ground took them out of the sky as well as out of the fight, their corpses still being shot until they lay motionless on the ground.
An explosive discharge from the same building blew out all the windows on that floor. The round that followed burst through Cooper with enough force to catapult him from the mech into the wall of the building they were closest to. Blood sprayed the two hanging from the bot, causing them to slip from its surface. They landed on the street in an all out run.
“Fire on the hip!” Daniella called as she held up a string of actuator pins like a victory flag. Whatever cybernetic demon lurked in the far building behind the mech, it made her pay for her revelry by putting another round through her.
The impact shattered her somewhere near her own hip, bending the frame's rig into a crippling cage. She slid across the street to come to a sharp halt in a pile of garbage under a window. The refuse did nothing to slow her momentum into the wall as the glass above her shattered from the impact.
Beth took Sergeant Volley and his team into the building with a Crucible-fueled leap. The sounds of combat lingered for several moments. During the scuffle, the mech opened its mortar launchers to fire another salvo.
The grenades detonated, taking the robot vehicle into a stumbling plummet toward the building closest to them. Latisha shielded Daniella with her body until the rain of debris subsided. She jumped up, tagging Cabrerra and his team in her HUD. The four lancers worked a tactical withdrawal back toward the primary avenue, firing a mix of blaster bolts and high powered grenades into the metal giant, while providing cover so Lancer Sloan could drag his broken team leader to safety.
“Hit it!” Latisha screamed into the Battle-Net.
Cabrerra leaned around the corner long enough to engage the tracking system in the SAGA missile launcher over his shoulder. “Back blast area clear!”
“Send it, Lancer!” Latisha was struggling with the storm of command decisions working through her head. Had she made the right calls? Had Beth's run through the building been the best way to assault the mech? Still, with the chaotic thoughts sloshing through her mind, giving Cabrerra that order made her feel a hundred meters tall.
The missile flashed from the launcher on track to decimate the enemy mech. A sheave of prismatic light bisected its path. The projectile came apart in two pieces, clattering harmlessly into the street.
“Oh, that's just not fair,” Cabrerra said in his typical straight man delivery.
The mech straightened itself as best it could on a ruined joint. Pulling the largest rifle Latisha had ever seen from its back, it brought it to bear at the corner of the building to her direction.
An Exo Commando jumped from the top floor of the building Beth had crashed into, taking an arcing jump against the wall of the opposite structure, landing to the carcrete below. Beth landed behind him. Her plasma sword was thrumming over the sounds of combat, its red corona failing to distract from her being covered in ash and impact burns.
“Which one do we take?” Cabrera asked.
Sergeant Volley jumped from the window with one of his troopers, Hickson in tow. They landed on the shoulders of the mech, using the forearm mounted vibro blades to cut through the hull. The machine tried smashing itself into buildings to pulverize them. Every time it impacted, they jumped from the chassis to the building, rebounded back to the bot, and continued their assault.
Latisha marked the commando in her HUD as their target priority. “Heh. I love that guy! Let's back up our mini-marshal!”
Beth heard the reference to either her size or her position in the Templar hierarchy, spurring her to furiously chase the enemy Exile. She slashed her plasma sword across his path, chasing the cyborg into the charging la
ncer team. The soldier ignited an energy shield, pulling a machete-styled phase weapon into the fight. The commando whirled between Beth and her troopers, splashing his blade against the plasma sword or their armor in explosive cracks. Above them, the dance of a giant trying to swat away the venomous lancers crawling across its skin dominated the skyline.
The commando surged, grabbing Cab by his armor's harness. He slapped him into his other trooper, finishing his spin with a vicious backhand to Latisha's chest. The impact throttled her into the building, cracking the carcrete wall. He pulled a pistol from a chest rig, dropping it in line with Beth's eyes as she rushed in.
Crucible-fueled muscles twitched her centimeters out from the business end of the Exile weapon. He pulled the trigger, staggering the young marshal from the phased explosion setting off the round. The rupturing of her eardrum unbalanced her into defiant crawling along the street, cutting furrows into the pavement with her plasma sword dragging behind.
Triumphantly, the Exo walked up to end her with his machete. She weakly swung her sword at him, barely able to target where he was through her vertigo. He clutched the blade in his hand, letting the furious plasma field burn at his armored glove, exposing the horror of a fully bionic hand underneath. He raised the short, shimmering blade, ready to plunge the young warrior into darkness.
Daniella crashed against him, her ultra-frame whirring in protest amid its smoking ruin. She rammed his body repeatedly with her vibro weapon, sending greenish fluid across the ground in heaving spurts. He did the same, plunging his phase sword through her torso with speed reminiscent of a sewing machine. When she refused to fall, he pulled his pistol, emptying the magazine in terrifying gouts through the back of her armor. She switched targets, plunging her arm mounted blade into the cyber ghoul's helmet, spilling what was left of his humanity into the street amid a sea of red and green ichor.
The light in Corporal Daniella Harlan's eyes held long enough for Sergeant Volley and his trooper to smash the mech into the ground with a concentrated application of directed explosives and hostile intent. The last thing she saw in this life was her friends rushing to her side.
Latisha crawled past Beth, pulling off her friends helmet to touch her face. She flopped over, laying beside her young commander.
“I'm sorry for your team, Teesh,” Beth said, probably louder than she intended.
“We lost Coop, Croix and...” Her voice caught in her throat. She slammed her helmet onto the pavement beneath her. “...and Daniella Harlan. HUD says Delacruz is upstairs with his bell rung.”
“What?” Beth asked, struggling to hear through a wrecked ear drum.
Latisha brought Lance Sergeant D'Marco's image into her HUD. “If you're not dead, we could really use a medic.”
Twenty-Seven
Russo approached the command dais, taking in the myriad holograms surrounding his superior. “You look busy.”
“Any news?” Anaxis asked.
“I was just about to ask you how your meeting with the Shepherd went.”
Vidar grimaced. “He was less than pleased that I was leading our effort to reassemble the Phalanx. He was also concerned that we hadn't found the Baroness, yet.”
Russo tossed his helmet onto one of the portable system's cases projecting the screen. “It won't matter once we have the Baroness. Still, he couldn't have been too worried about you if he gave you those.”
Hovering on both sides of the room were metallic spheres. They appeared to be drones, with a large central camera for an eye. Their smooth black resicarbon plating was shined to a glossy finish, making them a stark contrast to the hastily constructed nature of the war-torn room.
“I believe they're here to protect me so I may complete the search rather than a true concern for my safety.”
“Fair enough. Vidar, the reason I'm here is that we have a lead. A strike leader from Third Commando says that she's found strange readings that might lead to...”
Vidar held up a finger, halting Russo's description of events. He pushed both hands outward, commanding some unseen force to take hold of the spherical bots. They struggled to regain control from whatever had subdued them, flinching one way or the other in an attempt to free themselves. They both stopped moving, hitting the ground with a short bounce before rolling across the floor.
“Now we can speak. We wouldn’t want to give the Shepherd any help to find our Baroness before we do.”
“Wouldn't want that,” Russo said, sarcastically. “Speaking of help, we have a commando that says she might've found the Baroness. There are readings coming from below the sports stadium at the other end of the city that are consistent with our suspension chambers.”
A holo hovering to Anaxis' side whirled through several sectors before stopping on the area Russo described. “Is there anything there?”
“Underground chamber used for storing sports equipment with a designation for use as a bunker in citywide emergencies like quakes or tornadoes and such. I'll need to requisition some special assets to check.” Russo hovered over the idea for a moment before voicing his concern. “Still, something about this particular commando is giving me a bad feeling in my gut.”
Vidar patted the front of his armor. “Are you sure it's not all the powdered sugar you ate?”
“Wasn't that. Her whole unit came in scuffed up, like they'd been in a major fight. To my knowledge, only the troops from Fourth had any contact with Lasher and his grunts. When I asked her about it, she said that some cavalry unit got the drop on them. You know anything about that?”
“I'll upload current events to your CYCAS to give you some context to what she meant. Needless to say we have worse than a cavalry problem.” The storm of images faded at Vidar's command, leaving a single snapshot hovering between the two men.
“Is this real?” Russo said, not bothering to hide the awe in his voice.
“It is. Marco Sorrin and his brother, the transformed Jackson Sorrin.”
“Ajax. Seven Hells.” Russo cursed.
“Exactly. If you still have misgivings that this trooper didn't report to me about her battle, send in drone assets to confirm the reading,” Anaxis said. “Also, have the trooper do a consciousness download to confirm her story.”
“I guess that's why you're in charge,” Russo acknowledged. “You always run the numbers against the odds.”
“Let's hope that luck factors into our equation as well.”
The image of the Marshals Templar morphed, displaying the scene outside the city where a creature larger than the tallest skyscrapers in the settlement, attacked their defensive line. Green fire exploded through the TRACO safeguards, with the creature angling to pulverize what was left. The expression on Russo's face told Vidar everything he needed to know about the alarming state of their situation.
“A slaughterhouse?” Zakan asked Kat.
“Can you think of a better place to hide a princess?” Kat asked.
“You want this question answered? If so, I have a list,” The Dreadmarr answered.
“Save the list,” Kat said, gesturing to parts of the room. “Have your people spread out. Be careful, though. Norris was a top operator for Triton. If she’s here, he’ll have her well hidden and probably heavily defended.”
The lights in the room flashed on with a digital ping preceding the hum that followed. Illumination in a corner of the room flickered as the fixture struggled to get enough power to remain on.
“Give it a minute. It’s got a loose relay. It’ll stay on, eventually,” said a husky voice in the doorway.
Kat and the Dreadmarr team flashed their rifles toward a middle-aged man with his hand over the switch. He was carrying a few extra pounds on him, but his impressive height distributed it much better than it would have on a shorter person. He was wearing a bloody apron around a zip up cover suit, that was equally stained.
“Pardon me for saying, but you folks don’t look like the type to come lookin’ for choice cuts of meat during a city wide siege. Something I
can help you with or were you just looking to rob the place?” the man asked.
“It is strange that we did not...”
Kat stopped Zakan from following his line of thought. “You’ll have to forgive my friend. They’re from out of town. Language barrier and all.”
The caretaker nodded in agreement. “’Course.”
“My name’s Kat. We think someone looking to cause a whole load of problems for the city hid something here we might use to dial down some of the chaos. If we promise to be respectful, would it be okay if we looked around?”
“Name’s Ronnie. So you’re sayin’ that someone came up in my place and hid somethin’ that could stop all the fightin’?”
“That’s the long and short of it, yes.” Kat said.
“And what’s that worth to you?”
The question took Kat by surprise. “I’d think that everyone would want to put an end to the fighting. Get things back to normal?”
There was a ping in Kat’s ear from Zakan. “My soldier has the swarm of blaster bugs waiting to strike the fat man. We are ready.”
Ronnie shrugged. “Lady, this is the stacks of Kabran City. No one cares who’s in power as long as they make due. You say you have something here. I say it’s okay to look for it if there’s something in it for me.”
Kat nodded. “Sure. I can transfer some credits to you. What’s the going rate for hide and seek?”
Zakan broadcast to her again. “There’s a team of men moving at us in the alley outside. The drones tell us they are armed. Staggered column like military people.”
Kat cooed, slinking away from her Dreadmarr allies. “Ronnie. Did you call someone to tell them we were here or is it local security because you thought someone broke into your place?”
“Lady, you did break into my place.”
“We entered without permission. We didn’t break anything,” Zakan said.
“Semantics.”
Kat leaned onto a counter, taking hold of a meat grinder. She ripped it from the tabletop, rebounding it off of Ronnie’s head. The heavy metal kitchen aid knocked him out cold.
The Sentinel: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 3) Page 33