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Again, probably needs a better title, and a bit more of a risky thing. But one of a couple of things that came out of my week long holiday. I've a definite 3-part structure in mind
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Operation Time: 36 Hours.
36 hours into a 12 hour mission, Jet crouched in a darkened corridor, taking the time to listen. Radio chatter flowed through her mind, sensor arrays picking up the sparks in the corridors around her. Two squad of five each. Heavy weapon troopers, armoured, augmented, almost a fair match.
The walls killed her long range radio. Maximum range, 100 metres. Usually much less. Beyound that, the rock absorbed everything. Something in the asteroid's metallicity. She didn't dare switch to active sensors. Better to keep the element of surprise.
Dozens of kilometres away, the second flank, supposedly pincering in their direction. The rest of the Engel Gruppe had scattered through the intervening kilometres, trying to make contact. Jet knew GJ had probably already written them off as dead, not worth rescuing.
Far behind, a half-kilometre's worth of collapsed tunnel. Only the fact that the Gruppe had outrun its support by so much had saved their lives. Since then, By her own order, they ran alone in radio silence. Escape. Evade. Stay Alive.
It occured to her that the Boskone might've pulled the same stunt on the other flank. Attim was quick... but that quick?
Jet banished the thought. Best not to worry about things she couldn't control. Focus on survival. Focus on the now. The pattern formed in her mind of the surroundings, tracking their squad and platoon interlinks. Without the codes, she couldn't listen in to scrambled transmissions directly. Still, she had options. THe Link offered far more information than just words for those who knew how to tease it out.
She'd watched and learned.
The more they talked, the more likely they'd drawn a bead on her, or another member of the Gruppe. Jet could watch them coordinate themselves, watch units act and respond to messages. She picked the leaders out - the ones that seemed to give the orders, and flagged them in her software for automatic monitoring.
Two more squads entered her range, closing in, sweeping towards her. A clear gap offered a way out.
Time to move?
No.
She waited, analysing, ignoring instincts. Her heart pulsed in her ears, blood roaring in her veins. Every muscle fizzed, ready to run. She mastered herself, letting training and experience take over.
Route map. Overlay with hunter squad movements. Plot previous hour's positions. Estimate direction.
Not hunters. Drivers. Beating the grass. Driving her somewhere.
A quick plan coalesced, a chance to get active, rather than reactive. Fighting Nach was the slow death. Max had taught her as much. Jet took a moment to check herself, running quick self-diagnostics. All systems still showed green. Her blades had gained a patina of dried blood. A bright slash cut across the shoulder where she'd been less than quick about getting out of the way of a bullet.
Voices chased down a nearby tunnel, shouting after her.
Fight, or Flight.
Jet flew, accelerating down the tunnel at sonic speeds, shockwaves peeling from her fingertips. One, two, three heartbeats and she reached the end of the tunnel. She flipped in midair, coasting feet-first with her drives in neutral.
An effective mass of micrograms hit the wall at Mach 1, richoteting off in a new direction down a side passage, trailing a solid shockwave in her wake. Overhead lights erupted in shower of glass shards, plunging the tunnels behind into darkness.
Another richochet, another tunnel, passed some form of trainsport rail, then down a side passage barely wide enough for her wingtips, crossing into another corridor before reaching a small atrium that looked to have been torn to pieces by an entire machinegun platoon. The distant rattle of gunfire mingled with the decaying reverberations of her own shockwaves. She took stock. Some of the platoon still lay on the ground - few in one piece. It brought a smile to her face - a friend still lived.
In each corner of the room, Four doors, three shattered, one riddled and hanging from its hinges. Craters pock-marked a mural that seemed to have been painted recently. Schoolchildren on a mountain, wearing dark uniforms. On one of them, a clearly painted crest.
Jet recognised it, even without the aid of the interwave.
Gryffindor.
Slashes of blood had sprayed across sky-blue of the ceiling. On the ground, burnt-brown pools had begun to seep into the concrete. Another body lay on the ground, different from the others - bulkier. Every single cell in her body went cold as she recognised who it belonged to.
At the centre of the mayhem.
Alex.
Face down.
She ran over, one, two, three steps, hoping. Jet crouched beside him, leaning in to hear his breath.
Silence.
Silver-iris'd eyes stared sightlessly back at her.
She checked how. A bullet to the neck. Worse, the luckiest of lucky shots. A richochet of the shoulder armour had gone up under the jaw. It would've been instantaneous. She placed two steel fingers on the polymer synthskin of his cheek, brushing slowly.
"I'm sorry," she said, swallowing. The first words she'd spoken in hours grated from her throat. In the back of her mind, the thought thrummed. 'My fault'.
Practicality won out over sentimentality. His body still held useful ammunition, a balisword she strapped to her back, two concussion grenades and one chocolate bomb.
No sense in letting them go to waste.
Jet took a moment to master her feelings, closing her eyes, taking long, conscious breaths. Inside a void of darkness, her mind stood alone, distinct, seperate. She grabbed the feeling at crushed it away, forcing it out of herself and into the void beyond. A hot, vicious anger ignited, filling the gap. She grabbed hold of it, channeing through the tips of her fingers and down to her heels. It reached out through her wings and thrummed through her drives.
First step. Scavange. Maybe something had been left in one of the rooms. She tossed one of the doors out of her way. Inside, she saw the room had been fitted out as a barracks, two rows of triple bunks along each wall, each with a footlocker at the base. All of it had been abandoned in a hurry, bedclothes and uniforms thrown around the floor.
Child Sizes.
Oh.
Jet understood.
More fuel.
Each room, the same. Segregated by House. Long gone. Nothing could be done for them. Not right now. She grabbed a spare pistol that'd been left behind and some cable that looked like it might be useful. Helmet cameras recorded everything.
An alert from her sensors sparked in the back of her mind - one of the tagged enemy fire-teams had entered range again. Followed by another, then another. They'd been running for hours - far longer than any human could have. Jet's own muscles complained. The cyber ignored them.
Again, they left a clear opening. Still herding.
Jet took it, pushing further and further into the maze of tunnels, entering a chamber filled by a tangle of steaming, stainless steel pipework. A factory. A brewery. Thionite. It'd been abandoned in a hurry, tools dropped as technicians ran for their lives. She found them a few minutes later.
Torn to pieces, ragged remains of clothes, lab coats and human being, scattered like a rag doll collection that'd been torn apart by a dog.
"Wha?" she whispered to herself. Why not just shoot them?
Shouts chased after her, racing behind her. Again, the fire-teams closed in. She checked her scanners. Two came from the black area - parts she hadn't mapped. Three came from behind. She watched them coordinate, bursts of data bouncing between teams.
An obvious opening guided her towards another black area.
The final destination
Jet decided to remind them that she wasn't just simple prey. They were hunting big cats. She ducked into the shadows, listening, sensing, watching, vanes on her back tasting the air. A team entered the brewery, sweeping through with active sensors.
A mirror the size of a one-cent coin allowed her to watch them spread through.
She stepped back inside her mind, taking the auto-scanned sensor map of the room and superimposing her own guess of their positions on top of it. Software estimated their progress through, based on the easiest paths. Jet traced her attack, picking targets, plotting routes, then triggering her data recorders.
Jet waited.
She waited until they'd committed.
With a turbine scream, she roared into the chamber. Bio-augmented reflexes tracked her as she pounced, Browning rounds crackling and fizzling around her, smashing through vats of half-brewed thionite. Puffballs of purple dust chased her, huffs of steam and jets of fluid bursting from ruptured pipes. A hallucinogenic rain chaised after her as she boosted towards the ceiling.
One of them held an RPG, slewing it after her.
She ricocheted off the roof, diving right towards the trooper, gaining energy. Power armour - black, ferrite paint. Taller than an average human. Curls of dark hair spilled from underneath a grotesque deaths-head helmet.
All of them made the same mistake.
She felt the missile lock. She saw it's motor trigger, grey smoke bursting through the back of the launcher. Cybernetic reflexes angled her down towards the ground, palms touching concrete. The shock of impact rattled her arms as she pirhouetted, turning her momentum into naked striking force. Vibration charged her joints, her mind and will charging to her fingertips.
The Hertza Haon destroyed both armour and the person inside it, shockwaves rippling through steel and flesh, interfering, reinforcing, exploding. The armour's backpack spalled free, seams cracking open. The body inside dropped, chest jellied. The missile launched over her shoulder, bursting through a vat filled with golden liquid. Boiling torrents spilled on the floor, filling the air with thick yellow vapour.
She carried her energy through the attack, pirhouetting on a heel to change direction. One, two, three steps, and a palm-first vault over a steel pipe then anouther pirhouette to rive the tip of a damascus blade through the armour of a pointman, before turning free.
A dance of death.
Then she ran, using her momentum to carry her back through the door she'd first entered, before diving into a side-room. Shockwaves of gunfire echoed through the tunnels, stray bullets rattling off rockwalls, flakes spalling off.
Another little victory. Another few minutes of life bought. Another radio burst announced the attack. It followed the same pattern as every other one she'd launched. Drop the heavy weapon user and pointman, then run.
She could already hear them squabbling behind her, arguing over who would get the dubious honour of picking up the launcher. Jet waited until someone made the mistake of picking up the bazooka, before putting an armour-piercing bullet through the back of their helmet. A fleeting smirk crossed her face, amused at her own little piece of havoc.
Jet didn't play the game, Jet played the metagame.
Just killing them all got dangerous quick. The less shots they took, the less chances they had. Hit, then run. Maintain momentum. Maximise the force of each blow. The Panzer Kunst, not just in body, but in mind. Max had taught her. The same effect on people, as it had on armour. She sent shockwaves through their mind.
She moved, taking momentary cover in a distressingly ordinary apartment. Television. Couch. Computer. Kitchen. Bedroom. Rega RP6 still playing the runout groove of Frank Sinatra. A child's pictures on the wall. The sheer human simplicity of it staggered her - a person's home, rather than an enemy's. A statue of Santa Muerte jeered from a small altar, surrounded by incense.
Remember, even you can die.
A stack of ledgers sat on a coffee table. One lay spread opened, chemical formulae sketched in meticulous handwriting. She saved a snapshot for someone else to worry about. She paced around, dragged out of the war by the unashamed banality of it all. Anyone's living room, complete with cozy couches, vistamatic windows and nik-naks from a dozen exotic holidays, transported deep into the middle of a Boskone hellhole.
She took a few steps inside, solid heals sinking into plush carpet before meeting polished marble tile.
A luxury kitchen, outfitted with the latest in modern appliances in stainless steel. A fridge, well stocked with the latest wholefoods, fresh from Earth. She'd only carried snacks for 12 hours. Her visor popped open. Insense tickled her nostrils, mingling with the scents of coffee, spice, blood and gunsmoke. Jet grabbed whatever wouldn't mush through her fingers, wolfing mouthfuls down. Blood tainted the food, but hunger made her forget.
A few protein bars found a home in her hip-pack, along with a pack of crackers and a quick dessert that took far too much willpower to save for later.
Jet tore through the other drawers, grabbing anything which lookied like it might be useful. Ceramic Sushi Knife. Batteries. Flashlight with Strobe. 'Onboarding' orientation map.
The map made the entire search worthwhile.
It merged with her own inertial data, coalescing into a solid picture that placed her deep inside the rock.
She turned around, coming face to face with herself in a mirror. The image stopped her dead; blood spattered, scorched, blades shining and lethal, glacier eyes gazing a thousand kilometres into the distance. A part of her mind refused to believe that he had become something like that. Somewhere in there, he remembered blasting across England in a black Mazda to catch a ferry, with the first sample of wave in the boot, two exits ahead of Barnstorm and the North Wales Constabulary.
And now it'd carried him all the way out here.
The thought echoed wordlessly in the back of the cyber's mind, more an impulse than something given voice.
Jet stood and stared. An armoured body, more like a living weapon than anything that'd once been human, supporting a soft-featured face formed from sweat-sheened biopolymer skin, framed by stray tresses of scarlet hair leaking from the helmet foam.
A warning sparked in the back of her mind. The hunters closed in.
The map loaded into her mind, offering a clear picture of their approach. One clear way out. At least, at first glance. Three teams could turn the passage into a killzone in a heartbeat. No way out?
She looked up.
The thermal camera on her helmet offered her an escape.
Jet pressed a ceiling tile out of her way, took a featherlight hold of the mounting rail, and used her own drives to vault herself through the gap, into the machine spaces beyond. Ductworks and cabling closed in, steam hissing from gunbarrel pipes running to the apartment's hot water tanks. Carefully, she slid the tile back into place, sealing herself in darkness.
The cyber's eyes adjusted to the gloom, hard edges shining up. Her whole body fizzed, muscles screaming to break out, to run, to burst free of this rock and steel Fixed rigid on the steel grate of the ceiling, wordlessly praying that it'd take her weight.
Footsteps from below. Her body stretch taught. Voices
"She was in here...."
A man.
"Bloody white devil."
Woman. Australian?
"I'm not going in. No fucking way..."
Another man.
"Do it or I cut you off..."
Woman again. Right below her.
"I'm not going in there to die."
Man again. He gave a gasp of pain, like he'd sat on a sparkplug. She registered a burst of data from the team leader. One of them, the pointman, went dark.
"How does that feel.... you go in there and I turn them back on."
"Jaret.... please."
"Do it. Or die."
"It hurts.... my mind."
"Do it man... just do it."
Jet waited. Footsteps shuffled beneath. Another burst of data and a sigh of heroin satisfaction. They kicked over tables, tore through couches, shattered glasses in the kitchen. Jet waited, mind locked, watching them with her sensors.
"Up."
Gunfire burst around her, shafts of light pentrating the soft foam tiles. Bullet rattled off the ceiling and steel pipework around her.
Then Silence.
She waited. The idea occured to her to just drop in an take them out, but it seemed to risky, too much like a trap. Eyes stared, rigid.
More gunfire, sweeping closer.
Fragments of bullet pattered off her back, her chest, her helmet. One solid impact to the shoulder sent a hard shock through her body, stabbing deep. Her body shook, the urge to scream rising in her through. Every single nerve fired at once, begging for her to crouch down and cover her head. Jet's nerves frayed, fingers gripping tight on the aluminium track.
Three behind. One below. One in front. Wait until they move.
Another burst, pecking at her legs. Rattling against the metal.
With a crash, she felt herself drop prematurely. A moment's panic shocked through her mind as she tumbled, snagged on metal. Instinct took over, firing her engines, driving through the wreckage. Gunfire boomed around her, bullets shrieking and snapping through the space she'd occupied moments before. She landed palm first, cartwheeling herself over to put one of them between her and the rest of the team.
He stopped a splash of bullets that probably would've killed her, toppling slowly backwards. Fratricide. Something clipped her wing, disabling a tip-jet. Sparks fizzed in her body as wires shorted, before finally fusing themselves.
Chaos rolled around her, blades strobing as they picked out each and every muzzle flash. She danced through the storm, moving one step ahead of their aim. A missile shrieked past, exploding inside the apartment behind her, collapsing the ceiling and bursting the water mains. Streams of tracers chased as she carthweeled into the pointman, driving a blade through the neck of his armour, turning herself free, dragging a crimson slash behind. Jet thought she could hear screaming, she realised it was herself.
One, two, three steps ahead and accelerating, riding a wave of naked, burning terror. She could see where they were aimed, tracking, tracing, avoiding. They all made the same mistake - they all tried to shoot at her, leaving her an entire corridor to use. Humans thought in human terms, up and down, left and right. She went high, then low, using all three dimensions. Rock walls shattered around her, pelting her with pebbles. Something clipped her neck, slapping off the chin-guard of her helmet. Even so, on a confimed space they could almost be fast enough to pull it off.
Almost.
One, two, strokes with her blades dropped two, finishing the team leader with a driving Hertz Nadel that shattered her armour. Wreckage dropped to ground, bleeding.
The final one ran, throwing his rifle away. Jet didn't chase. She stood, panting, dripping, struggling to catch up with herself. More warnings sounded in her mind, more teams accelerating towards her, pinning her in place.
Her mind understood one thing.
Run.
Just Run.
Jet bulletted towards the opening, tearing through corridors at full speed. Steel heels hammered on concret floors, shards spalling off as she ran. A left, a right, another garden-like atrium, guided her towards what seemed to be a storeroom. She crashed through the door in a bland panic, still trying to grab hold of herself. Something bit at her neck, hot and stinging. Cold steel fingers touched at it.
Blood, bright, scarlet. A long trail had already started to run down her chest.
Her body went cold.
Too close.
Far too close.
She stood there shaking, surrounded by shelves stacked with labelled crates, trying to grab hold of her mind. It squeezed through her fingers, leaving her standing thoughtless, mindless and terrified. Noise and screaming whirled around, a haze of colour mingling with the digital precision of her instruments.
"Jet," a voice whispered. Her mind locked up
"Max?" She spun around.
Nothing but empty corridor. A hand settled on her shoulder, heavy and metal. It pressed down through her armour, weighing cool on what felt like bare skin. She recognised it for what it was, sensing the energy of his geist flowing through its fingertips.
"Are you alright, Jet?"
She turned. Even though she knew it couldn't be him, she still hoped. Emptiness. The hand dissapeared. She stood, taking a shaking breath, not sure if her mind'd finally popped off the deep end or not. A warm haze passed through her body, caressing each fibre of her being before leaving her.
Alone again. She knew. She'd never tell a living soul, but she knew.
"I'm sorry Max," she breathed, closing her eyes.
Spirit.
Freedom.
Sword.
Scabbard.
Gun.
Dream.
Mind and body found harmony once more, elevating herself above the chaos around. Data flowed through her mind, software still dutifully reporting its information, rebuilding its maps. Her mind grasped hold of her body, awareness filtering through synaptic gates and out into the thrumming metal. Power filled her joints, energy rolling through linear actuators, charging from her core to her fingertips.
She listened through her sensors. Emptiness. The enemy hung back. Only a single contact..
"Be careful, Jet"
It thrilled up her spine and whispered in her ear.
She stopped dead, listening.
In a moment's blind panic, she'd jumped right into their trap.
If she'd had hair, it might've stood on end. She glanced around, rapidly orienting herself. An atrium, set in the centre of a cluster darkened labs. Dead heaps of torn rags lay scattered on a sterile green floor. Red standby-lights picked out the outlines of machinery beyond her comprehension. A compressor-motor whined to life.
Massacring their researchers. Why?
She felt it through her feet first, rising up from the floor, the whole asteroid moving. Explosions? Too regular. More like footsteps. One single radio contact moved towards her. She braced, turning to face a concrete partition door, ready to meet it.
The door crumbled, a grey blanket of dust swirling in the coriolis forces towards her. The silhouette of something vaguely humanoid, but far larger than human, lurched forwards. Each footstep send a hard, thumping shock up through the ground.
Lenses zoomed. At least six, analysing her.
"What the fuck?"
Machine. Motoroid-sized. Fast. The trap sprang towards her, bloodied claws shrieking. It howled as it charged, propelled by mindless fury, steel feet thudding on the floor. Two deep slashes gouged its armour, bright and fresh where someone had gone at it with a panzer kunst blade - Jet recognised the moves. Jet recognised the fighting style of a friend, cutting at the hydraulic lines.
It'd killed Lena.
Somehow.
Two dead friends.
Her decision to split up, had killed at least two friends.
She dodged on instinct, spinning out of the way. Faster than anything human, it reached out with a drilling blow. She caught it, using the kinetic energy to propel herself across the room, touching the far wall. Tiles shattered under her feet, springing her back toward the monster. Its camera-eyes sparked, both mishapen arms reaching for her. She aborted with a blast from her engines, using the ceiling to put metres between herself. The low ceiling pinned her down, keeping her for using her strengths.
It chased, propelled by thumping fury. Again, she dodged. It lashed out. She vaulted back. It bellowed, struggling to stop, crashing into a wall, before staggering drunkenly.
Standing for a heartbeat, Jet struggled to get a read on it. Not entirely machine. It had an energy to it, a flow that definitely had the shadow of some sort of mind behind it.Kinesthetic senses honed by years of training analysed and identitifed, reading the flow of it's body, building mental maps of it's capabilities, of the energy flow through it's frame. It lurched on its feet. Imprecise, unmechanical. A ragged breath inhaled through harmonica gills made a chilling siren sound.
Razor-claws licked out from stubby fingers, rust-stained. Glass lenses focused on her image, standing there with one blade up in a guard. It rushed, accelerating far faster than anything that heavy had a right to. She dodged, boosting clear. It turned, she reversed, driving both her heels through its shoulder.
It's arm broke clean off in a spray of blood-red oil. The second followed up far faster than mechanically possible with a driving punch to her back, propelling her forward with the breath knocked from her lungs. A hand to the floor allowed her to recover, pirhouetting in the air to land on her feet. Already, it'd turned, accelerating again.
How, she wondered.
Coils on the arm. Hot on thermals. Charged with power.
A risky ping from active sensors confirmed it. Active drives. The thing used a speed drive.
Worse. It had the mind to lure her into a trap.
She dodged with a jet-pulse from both all three drives. It turned, moving like something half it's weight. Again, it reached, claws on its remaining hand flickering. Jet stepped under it, staying in the shadow of it's body. A cut with a blade severed a hydraulic line. An open-palmed strike send a shackwave reverberating through it's body, another, then another. It kicked, lunged. A blade strike through the shoulder severed power cables to one of the drive coils. It thrashed out, stumbling off balance as the mind struggled to compensate for the shifting inertias. She found her rhythm, staying in it's shadow, picking her moment, watching the waves of energy she pushed into its frame build towards a single core point.
A hard-knuckled Hertz-Fahrer punched straight through the armour of its chest, into the mechanisms and meat beyond.
Its armoured body shattered, bursting apart as if the taught elastic bands holding it together had suddenly snapped free. What was left behind slumped to the floor, wheezing, dying, moaning through an electronic voicebox.
Jet stood, mouth hinging open. It took only moments for her to understand what she was looking it. It would take years for the nightmares to go away.
She staggered on her feet, overwhelmed, aching through her body. Anger boiled, impotent fury leaving her shaking. Alone. Barely able to do much more than survive, and these things were out there along with the people who made them.
To hell with them.
Jet called up the map she'd found, overlaying it with her own records.
Change of plan.
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TBC.....
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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