Ormond dropped to the floor of the processing hall as if he had just jumped down the last two steps in a stairwell.
This equipment is pretty cool, he thought.
With this kind of tech, his knowledge, and a body twenty years younger, he was a force to be reckoned with. His tactical display showed him the aliens moving around, the dangerous pipes highlighted with icons to signify their contents.
He gave it all a quick assessment and then disarmed his weapon.
The P90 replica folded up on itself, back into the metal rectangle that it stored itself in.
Ormond flipped it over his shoulder, where it stuck snugly to his right shoulder blade without a sound. This area wasn’t one where his skills were suited to a rifle; this was space clearing at its best, and for that, he needed his arms free.
The handgun folded out of its inert shape and into the palm of his hand, unsticking from his hip with ease.
Weapon at the ready held low and in front of him, Ormond set out to stalk the targets.
* *
Ormond entered the convoluted landscape of pipes.
From above, Lekiso could track him with a marker in her display. Overlapping what she could see, the display could change to highlight objects as an overlay rather than the intrusive boxy interface.
Each to their own, though, she thought.
Ormond disappeared behind a grouping of pipes that ran up out of the floor before arching over into a more extensive pipe configuration. Checking the map, she could see he was headed for where two groups of the aliens were going to meet up.
Judging by their movements, at any rate.
Looking ahead, Lekiso overlaid the markers for the living beings on the ground floor and upper gantry to her display. Immediately, it was clear that the dozen or so opponents on the upper walkways were either lacking tactics or didn’t know where their compatriots were.
They communicated through handheld devices.
Keeping track of each other would take more attention than they were willing to give—all the better for Lekiso and Ormond if the aliens were disorganized.
So we could assume they do not have an interface overlay on their eyes?
Already moving along the gantry suspended from the ceiling, she moved at a tangent to Ormond, towards a crossway that would take her back to him later. On the way, she had marked two opponents she could deal with.
The only obstacle was the gap between the gantries of about forty feet.
With the equipment she had, though, that shouldn’t be a problem, apparently.
A low hop over the side rail brought her onto the edge of the one suspended walkway, a green painted metal structure allowing access to various pipes that went up to the ceiling in whatever configuration the refinery used. She kept the specifics out of her thoughts even as technical details bubbled through her mind.
The aliens weren’t keeping the place running at full power, as shown by the low lighting conditions.
Accessing the options in her display, she selected the augmentation for the jump she planned. Without the technology, she would never have considered a seventy-five foot jump over this height. A fall of thirty feet could be fatal.
A quick glance down sent her stomach churning.
Her military training hadn’t gotten to aerial jumps yet, although she suspected Ormond had a lot of training in that area, especially if he came from the British SAS.
The option selected added an arch to her display, illustrating the jump. Most of her momentum was going to be driven forwards so that she avoided the ceiling, so it had a low arch from this walkway to the next.
Taking a deep breath, she flipped the weapon into its inert position on her shoulder and gripped the rail behind her back with both hands.
She knew she was taking too long, but it took a certain kind of mindset to just accept the technology would carry her safely over. She bent her knees and gave a test bounce or two, feeling her own body weight as it settled into her stretched out arms. Would this really work?
Her display popped up the question: “Would you like a countdown?”
She accepted, and the countdown started at five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Jump! Her display marked the word in the center of her vision as a prompt, and the tone and color spurred her into it.
She jumped.
Violet vapor fell away from her as she left the walkway with far more force than she would have been able to provide for herself, even with the enhanced body supplied to her.
It was surreal to watch the floor flow past beneath her as she rose up to the top of the arc, violet light still forming a mist around her body and draining away like she was some kind of comet traveling through space herself.
At the top of the arc, she just kept going, not up but forwards. Without any drop in height, she found she could only move forwards, steadily, with her body at the slight angle she had held since leaving the previous walkway.
She was flying!
Her display read steady, no change in altitude and all systems functioning. It was amazing. The far walkway got closer and closer to her as she just concentrated on going over the railing and then dropping down on the other side.
Just like that, a few seconds, and she had flown over the gap.
What remarkable capability this tech gave them! Except for the visual cue, the violet light faded away as she let go of the flight, the intuitive technology interface dropping whatever it had used to allow her to soar like that.
Her display still marked her two targets.
Lekiso reached up to her shoulder, where the AK slipped into her hand neatly. Less than a second, and it was up against her shoulder, her enhanced sights already bracketing the first target with its back to her.
* *
One of the Lanillans was having some kind of seizure, rattling against the floor next to the doorway into the refinery complex. The Domum officer who had stunned him did a quick read of the man’s vital signs and determined that he would survive.
Corpus Mentis was not a requirement, only alive.
With a gesture to continue, four other armored Domums entered the passage beyond the door.
They assaulted the corridor as if it had been full of hostiles, as per protocol, right arms raised in front of them with the interfaces running scans from the equipment on the right shoulder, searching for threats.
The right forearm held variable shield emitters that would react to the first threat detected and modify the shield emitted from their back pieces to its most efficient countering frequency and energy output.
Their left arms were held at a forty-five-degree angle to the right arm, pointed slightly at the floor but ready to be raised at a moment’s notice.
The weapons’ enrichments embedded in the left arms had variable response options as well.
Ahead of the lead Domum, one of the Lanillans of House Lopokin stepped from a doorway with an ion rifle readied at his hip. The leading Domum’s left arm twitched up to let off a green beam of stun energy that dropped the yellow alien in spasms.
From further ahead, two more Lanillans attempted to take on the perceived opening in the Domum’s vigilance and stepped out firing. The Domum energy shield adapted to a greenish tinge, immediately visible as the plasma projectiles struck and flowed over the protective field.
Without a single twitch, the left shoulder’s black ovoid opened four small apertures from which issued micro-missile projectiles. Their hard outer coating slewed off the plasma seeping down the green protective field as the projectiles shot through it.
They then popped off their outer casings, and the faster insides accelerated, two each, to impact the Lanillans.
Each projectile contained a tranquilizer sufficient to render a Lanillan unconscious for days. Two were fired per target to avoid any potential loss of a projectile for whatever reason, as per protocol.
Both Lanillans were hit by the needle tips
and pumped full of the solution. Immediately sedated, they drooped to the floor while the four Domums behind the first passed him and swept along the passage.
That Domum followed the others as his protective field dissolved and rendered the plasma inert. His turn to take the lead would come again if those now assaulting before him were rendered incapacitated or otherwise had to take a pause while adapting to the weaponry in play.
These tactics had served the Domums of Manor Vax for centuries.
* *
The first Lanillan to come around the corner found a human calf doubling him over at the midsection.
The force of the blow also pushed him back half a foot, and he could barely lift his head to meet the muzzle of the strange-looking weapon that flashed green and rendered him unconscious.
Ormond followed the kick through with a spin that brought his elbow into the nose of the next Lanillan in line.
Even as he stunned the first with a shot to the head, the European man struck out with his left foot at the knee of the third Lanillan. The handgun was a substantial weight in his grip, as balanced and stable as any firearm he had ever carried, but when it fired, it didn’t give that lurch he was used to.
It only threw him off a little, though.
Usually, he’d use the force of shots to add momentum to his movements, but he could adapt. The second Lanillan was shot in the head, and the third got a knee to the solar plexus, or equivalent for a Lanillan, and while Ormond twisted to give a straight kick into the fourth Lanillan, he shot the third as well.
It was close-quarters combat, one of his specialties, taught for counterterrorism and terrifying on the receiving end as well. His wife and daughter hadn’t enjoyed his work, and he had thought that he could be different, could have a family and a life outside the missions.
For that arrogance, he had paid in full.
The fifth Lanillan reeled back when he got stunned, while the sixth tried to get a shot past his allies.
In his display, Ormond idly counted five other aliens just about to meet up with this little scuffle. Not that it worried him much; they would come out of the gap in the pipes only eighteen feet away.
Usually, this would be a lethal distance, but then, they didn’t know that Ormond wasn’t alone.
A jab around the stunned fifth Lanillan to the throat and the sixth was choking—good to know the move worked—and Ormond shot him in the head with a stun round while he turned to face the oncoming threat.
A quick thought and flick of his eye changed the ammunition, or energy rounds, or whatever they were in the hand weapon. The first alien that popped through the passage was a Jascalian. The short, furry creature already had the ion pistol up and ready; it looked like a child playing soldier.
Ormond shot the pipe right next to its head, and it suddenly jetted out a column of steam. His weapon changed from the high-energy round, slipping back into the stun setting.
The Jascalian flinched, buying Ormond a second.
With the invisibility of the screen of steam blowing across their vision, the other aliens weren’t any better off. Ormond was four feet away when they shoved past and came into full view.
Before any of them got a shot off, Lekiso had already started firing.
Three of them dropped in less than a second as the rifle fired on fully automatic, fifteen rounds a second, and she didn’t need to be precise in her aim—although she was anyway, Ormond noted in passing.
Then Ormond was between the last two, both Jascalians. The one who had been first had a welt across the side of its face from the heat.
One stun round to that one and a hook of his arm to deflect the weapon of the second allowed Ormond to stun it as well.
* *
Meriam, Marc, and Connor left the doorway in a burst to get in among the pipes.
None of them had ever been able to move so fast in their lives. The enhanced bodies they were in, although their own, were the best versions they could possibly be. As such, their sprint was Olympian in its speed, not that it wasn’t tiring, of course.
They still exerted a lot of energy to cover the hundred feet that brought them in among the confluence of pipes.
But they did it in record time.
Meriam considered the elevation of her physique to be very appealing. With this kind of performance, she could outdo just about anyone she had previously had to rely on during her jobs.
The team structure that required various skills was usually skewed towards a few with the brains and the plan and several more with the more physical aspects.
Not in my line of work though, where we needed those rare few with both. More skill with more brains and beefed up was a bonus.
Of course, those thoughts were out of place right now, so she pushed them from her mind to focus on the task at hand. Her display had already highlighted the two Lanillans and one Jascalian they were about to run into.
Turning the corner, and with pipes in a spaghetti mix above their heads to block the view from above, Meriam and Connor took the three aliens out with some well-placed blows and quick stun shots from their hand weapons.
The big man could move.
She recognized a fighter, having had experience hiring them when needed. Connor was a fighter and a good one at that. She wasn’t sure that she could take him if the situation required it. Marc, on the other hand, was no fighter at all, but then, she figured he had been chosen for his brains and not his brawn.
She led the way deeper into the hall, tracking the direction of the Lanillan with the Devourer they wanted.
* *
Lekiso soared over the tangled machinery, her body almost horizontal and hurtling towards the next walkway.
She was getting better at controlling the flight function.
Now on her fourth “jump” from one walkway to the next, she was able to speed up and maneuver in the air quite well. It was undoubtedly throwing the aliens off. Of the dozen who had started out on the walkways, there were only six left.
She dropped soundlessly onto the metal grid that made up the green painted floor of the walkway.
Controlling her descent was becoming easier as well. The low lighting in the hall hadn’t helped the aliens as much as they might have thought. Using the darkened areas to her advantage, Lekiso was able to flit from one place to the next.
Maintaining silence helped her to stealthily approach her targets. They did see the violet light, but it seemed they ignored it as some strange effect and hadn’t associated it with her…yet. Not that she gave any of them a chance to communicate.
The two on this walkway had their backs to her. One was focused on the floor level, pointing an ion rifle down and swinging it back and forth, looking for a target.
Lekiso had her own rifle in hand.
With the power of flight, she didn’t need to put it away, so it was always ready. Two quick shots and the aliens were down and out. She poked her head and gun over the side railing to get a group of the aliens in her sight on the floor below.
Connor had just highlighted them for her and marked them on her map.
In her display, they were outlines running under the pipes network. Her tactical software put lines down showing their projected route. The nearest gap that would appear above them was only seconds away.
She traced their outlines as they moved, watching and waiting for the moment when they appeared.
Several precise shots and the group was down, with green flares running over their bodies. Her next targets were chosen for Lekiso: two more Lanillans shooting at the source of the green bolts they had just seen lance down from her position and into the field of machinery below.
Their shots struck the walkway and Lekiso, whose protective field flared around her in response.
The next thing the pair knew, a human came flying over towards them, green bolts striking out from the darkened ceiling where she was hard to see.
Three shots and two more down, not bad for shooting on the fly, she thought.
“Uh, hey, Connor?”
“Yes, Marc?” The redhaired man had just grabbed a Lanillan and thrown him over his shoulder, so he sounded distracted.
Not that Marc blamed him; he hadn’t looked to see what was going on, and he was absorbed by the new markers on their map. That was what he wanted to talk to Connor about.
“Uh, the Domum security forces have arrived. They are coming through the passages behind us.”
“Well, that’s good. It should help at any rate. Contact them and let them know the situation, please.”
“Uh, sure thing.”
Meriam was gunning down another Jascalian with stun rounds while Connor rounded on a second Lanillan after stunning the one on the floor. Marc had his hand weapon out—as in, it was detached from his hip and in his hand.
But more than that, he didn’t know what to do really, so he had been monitoring things and following after the other two.
While they were busy, he connected to the Puzzle Box network and requested communication with the Domum officers. They were obviously communicating with each other over the station network, but he didn’t want to just break into that; it would probably be impolite at best and illegal at worst.
The command center took his call and rerouted him to the local officer in charge, all while Connor led Meriam and him through the maze of pipes.
“Yes,” the Domum officer said abruptly as soon as the connection was established.
“Uh, hi, sir. This is Marc, one of the humans in the refinery you have entered. I sent the distress message earlier.”
“Yes, human Marc. We have responded. Please update me on your current status. We are in the refinery and proceeding to nullify any resistance from the criminals.”
He sounds capable, in a regimented kind of way, Marc thought.
“Uh, sure, let me see if I can explain this quickly.”
Marc began to detail the events, starting with the jettison of the magnetic carriage from the refinery platform earlier. It seemed like so long ago with the speed of events since, but according to his timer, it really wasn’t.
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