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[RFC]Jusenkyou Cat Hunt
 
#2
Probably nudging the genre directive - or not so much crossing the line as the Universe. But, Jusenkyou was supposed to be hellish. And I have an angle.

First scene comes courtesy of Cobalt Greywalker.

-----
A.C. hated this fucking rock cloud. Hated it with the fury of a million burning suns. Sure, the whole operation for Boskone Four sucked balls harder than Space. An asteroid family brought together as a flight school, more than half of the rocks were big enough to hold facilities. All of them had to be checked, while the main fleet had to englobe it from outside as the other less-than-half made navigation so hard and sensors so confused the enemy could have completely left and they wouldn’t have known a thing.

She still smarted from the deep strike on Alpha rock in the middle of this swarm of Nargles. If she hadn’t had some of the EOD teams up front they’d have suffered the same as the other team.

The Engel’s probably made it, but that meant they’d been cut off for near two days now. She’d be in line to kill them again if they hadn’t.

Still, here she was again. Armed to the eye teeth as the sapper teams carved a new way in. Most of her frustration had been burned off in Beta rock, two and a half berserkers, one and a third squads of chaos marines, and a fucking warbeast (plus sundry others) ago.

A quick check of her weapons showed she’d have to go shopping after this was all over, plus there was the fact she’d been tapped as clean up commander once the fighting was done. Honestly? Helping fix people up would be like playing with kittens after all this.

The sappers finished their drilling and moved the rush-built laser drill back as the EOD guys moved forward. The boys with the bang wanted payback as much as the Gruppe heavies waiting behind her.

Sergeant Marrs of the EOD team.

A.C. smiled grimly, switching to the strike force net. A quick check of her Tacorder showed the squads tagging in.

Kasumi put a hand on A.C.’s shoulder momentarily. The armoured pauldron prevented actual touch, but the gesture was welcome. A.C. tagged into the tac-net and switched to the command net.

Command replied.

The expression on A.C.’s face wasn’t a smile that anyone would like directed at them.

She switched back to the strike force net.

-----
10 more hours. Another dead friend, pinned between two fire-teams and an isolation door. One cracked blade, the other scratched where it'd cut a burst of .50bmg in half. A visor that'd gone the way of Captain Kirk's shirt. Three more dead berserker-things - one already destroyed before she found it. The smell of blood and gunsmoke clung to the inside of her nostrils, intruding on her mind. Fatigue hung from her limbs, bruised muscles being dragged painfully by creaking cybernetics.

Wrecked remnants of another pair of autocannon turrets hung from the ceiling, filling out the smouldering remnants of a drone-mob that'd chased her for four hours.

Her conscious mind had gone to sleep, rational thought taking a rest-break while the body adopted the routine it'd learnt. Escape. Evade. Ambush. Raw speed kept her ahead of foot soldiers. They could track, but they just couldn't keep up to close the circle. Aviator goggles covered her eyes, stolen from an equipment locker. Her respirator had once belonged to Marine, strapped tight to her helmet using lengths of surgical tubing. Chunks of another cyber's armour padded out her own, strapped on by stolen belts and hastily tied webbing. An extra pistol, some ammunition, food, a brick of explosives and two grenades finished the picture.

Covered in soot, dirt, dried blood, and a dozen or more cuts and scrapes, she could almost be mistaken for her own Mad Max twin. It kept her alive. That's what mattered.

Her goal remained. Closer now. Only a few kilometres of warren left.

A sweep of a blade disarmed a boskone trooper. Thionite kept the poor bastard running, screaming like a demented Black-Knight after her with both stumps trailing blood. His friends had learned not to chase. They'd learned to squabble with the squad leader as he tried to hand off the bloodied heavy weapon to a new target, or force a new redshirt onto point. It took a cortex bomb going off to make an example. Given the choice between certain death and probable death, they came into line.

Tactics kept her alive.

Divert down a side tunnel. Avoid a signal that looked too much like a Berserker. Trap. Five in knockoff Marine armour running in radio silence, decked up in ghoulish skulls and demon horns. More intimidating than useful against the Kunst.

She aimed for the pointman. A storm of bullets erupted, tracers whipping through the space she'd occupied an instant before, shells crackling across cut-stone walls. One shell through the armour would finish her. Jet drove on anyway.

Her blade caught him in the throat. She didn't even hit the ground, aiming both heels straight through the stomach of the one with the rpg. He broke in half in a shower of gore and metal. Jet's heels hit the ground in unison, springing her back airborn. She flipped, looking back at the rest of the fireteam. Three still tried to aim at her, jaws hanging wide open. She looked right through one - who might once had been a woman before getting her augmentations. Glass eyes stared back.

The leader's head hung in mid air, his body still trying to raise its rifle.

Jet left the other three alive, daring them to shoot at her back as she boosted away. Shells chased. None caught. An isolation door began to close, dropping shut ahead of her, trying to pin her in. Boltgun shells burst across the steel surface of the door, spalling metal off. Snap decision. Dive under, or turn and fight.

Jet dived under it, trailing hot sparks behind her.

Hit. Run. Hit. Run. Keep moving. Keep ahead. Speed meant life. Getting pinned down meant death. They may have been able to see her on their sensors, but that didn't mean they could catch her.

Another lab complex. Another horror. Powered. Sterile. Two scientists, engineers maybe. Man and woman. One reached for something on a tray in a flurry of panic. She shot both rather than take the risk. Mads in their own lab could be dangerous. More scavenging. Another pistol, some more ammunition. Booklets of notes that looked to be some sort of mechanism for an arm, then a lifesupport system. It looked like things she'd seen on the tech side of the cyber's list - familiar, but not intimately so. Maybe Daisuke would know them better. Nothing useful to her now.

Maybe useful to someone else. It took a few moments to snaffle them to a jumpdrive. Her sensors remained clear - she had a minute, maybe two at most.

Time enough to look around.Time enough to recognise more of the hardware that surrounded her. Somebody's cybernetics lab. Nobody became a Kunstler without being touched by at least some of this equipment. The next room beyond. freaky Frankenstein biotech shit. Bubbling glass jars. Shards of meat supported by cables. Things that looked vaguely like they'd once been a part of someone. All arranged neatly more like a cheap horrorshow than a laboratory.

In the centre, something that looked like a surgical bed, surrounded by monitors, equipment trays and instruments still in sterile wrappings.

Fucking spare parts?

She moved forward, pushing into the back room. Benches. Restraints. Sedatives. The eye-watering sent of chlorine in the air. Another door. Maglocked shut. Someone had hacked it to be powered from the inside only, but hadn't thought it through enough. She pulled the cable. The door opened with a wild spray of bullets, rattling through glassware, raining shards of pyrex onto the floor chased by a terrified scream.

She jumped back, waiting for the charge.

Nothing.

Strange.

Wary, she stepped forward, readying a concussion grenade in case whatever in there decided to object again. Something in the back of her mind discouraged her from just tossing it in and letting whoever shot at her worry about it, a feeling that she'd regret it.

More gunfire. A bullet split on the edge of her blade. Then silence.

Children. Teenagers, most of them. Some in uniforms. One racking the slide of a rifle, furiously trying the clear a jam caused by an empty magazine. One, two, three steps, marching towards him. He raised it and squeezed the trigger anyway, getting only the sound of the bolt snapping home as a reward. Jet grabbed it in one hand, jerking it out of his grip with irresistible force. The boy fell flat on his face with a slap of flesh on tile floor and a grunt of pain.

Whispers raced through the crowd, terrified murmurs reaching her ears. They might try and mob her.

"I'm one of the good guys," she managed to say, her voice coming out as a smoker's croak.

"You look like one of them," a girl said.

"I've marked your position on my map. Barricade the door. Help'll be on its way."

She hoped. She took the rifle, stepped back, then slid the door shut before reconnecting the power. A coil of cable jammed in the mechanism and some blue lightning across the backup battery made sure not even love or money could open it. So long as the ventilation held out, they'd probably be safe.

A locker behind her held some spare ammo for the rifle. Jet wasted four full magazines of ammunition banishing the lab from existence. The gun-barrel glowed cherry-red, plastic furniture smouldering. The only thing that kept her from just burning it all were the children taking shelter in the back.

The subconscious knew. The subconscious understood. It sat there, guarding the realisation from her conscious mind, letting it get on with the business of staying alive. It'd hit later, and hard. Only a lack of tear ducts kept her eyes dry, her whole body shaking as she grabbed the drive from the laptop, then smashed the computer against a wall. Jet left, mind still churning with thoughtless fury.

"Are you alright, Jet?" the voice came back, stopping her dead in her tracks. Her mind locked, more like a circuit breaker tripping under load. It slammed shut, leaving her standing there panting on stale air.

Silence echoed in the tunnel around her

Push past. Worry about it tomorrow. What now?

Vacant of thought her mind grabbed hold of the map. Finally, she saw it for what it was.

It looked more like an obstacle course, then anything designed to be a laboratory. One giant videogame level, funneling invaders through harder and harder challenges to the boss right at the centre.

What the hell?

Looking it like that, She'd skimmed the edge of level one for most of a day, dropped to the second, third, then fourth about an hour ago. It explained a lot.

The thought vanished as a sensor burst sparked through Jet's systems, announcing itself for a brief flaring instant in the picture in the back of her mind before vanishing, leaving only an afterglow that made pinpointing it all the harder, like a flashbulb in a dark room.

Jet switched to internal life support, feeling her own systems spin to life, pressurising her body. Distant gunfire resonated, miles away.

Another radio burst. High information content. Short duration. She recognised it immediately. LPI data transmission. Too quick to pinpoint it. Another one. Only a microsecond - too fast to pinpoint, but near.

Jet edged forward down the corridor, trying to listen.

Another pulse, closer, more energetic. More LPI transmissions. Something nearby. Something she couldn't detect. Jet radiated a sensor pulse. No echo. Nothing.

More bursts. Almost frantic. They seemed to scream THERE! THERE! THERE! Closer, closer each time. But still invisible. A rat crawled up her spine as she crept forward, aware of being hunted, but unaware of the hunter. Jet rotated the thermal camera mounted to her helmet to face backwards. Her mind adapted, software agents reforming her picture of the world around her to account for the 360 degree vision.

The world behind her shone in lurid multicoloured hues of black, purple, blue, orange red and white, heat traces of conduits, cables and framing behind bulkhead walls shining bright.

On the floor. A faint heat-trace trail. Only a degree or two above background, for only a moment. Slow footsteps fading fast down to background.

Jet stopped. So did the footsteps, gauging whether they'd been spotted or not.

Options? Chocolate bomb? Concussion Grenade? Charge and fight? Fighting an enemy she couldn't see would be stupid. Quick plan, time to turn things on their head. Jet pinged another sensor pulse, then listened. Nothing come back. She took three more steps, watching behind her for the heat-trace.

There, 20 meters behind. Hotter than the last. Her hunter'd stood still, gauging whether Jet'd spotted her or not. Her hunter still thought she had the advantage of surprise. Another LPI burst radiated from a point barely a meter in front of the fading footprint.

Jet didn't need to crack the encryption to know it said 'Got her'.

Jet used the nine-millimetre pistol she'd scavenged to blow the heads off a sprinkler run, drenching the corridor in rain.

The image appeared, flickering into view as its thermoptics overloaded, already running.

Sleekly armoured, with a stealth-grey finish around the curve of the chest, invisible on sensors. Gynoid. No, definitely former human, her stride gave her away. Moving quieter than a ghost's whisper as she darted forward, drawing a black-carbon sword. Beyond-human augmentations, hair-trigger reflexes and machine precision formed a whirlwind of razor-edge'd death, a true Razorgirl in every sensor of the world, face hidden by a visor of opaque glass.

She made the same mistake they all made.

Cybernetic body. Human fighting style. For all the shiny chrome she'd fitted herself with, she lacked the harmony, the integration. Her body jerked from form to form, always outrunning her own mind, fighting against it's own turbulent energy.

Jet's first blow severed the razorgirl's sword-arm mid strike, sending the blade whirling free. The razorgirl stumbled forward, off-balance, finding herself falling past Jet's followup. Jet caught herself, pivoting the energy through her toes into a whirling open palmed strike that send a hard shockwave through the razorgirl's body. She spasmed, then dropped lifelessly onto the ground, landing with a rattle like a collection of parts, rather than a solid thump.

Pink blood seeped through a crack in the mask.

All the gear. No idea. Probably technical a match on paper, at least. But straight-Kendo forms and cybernetics just didn't work together.

Thrumming vibrations rolled through the floor and up through her body. Jet glanced around, scanning for the source. Overhead lights rattled in their cradles. The whole rock seemed to ring like a bell, as if it'd been struck by the fist of the gods. Another ring, then a third, shaking the dust loose from the cracks in the ceiling.

The lights flickered once, twice, three times, then died for good, leaving only a dim grey glow from the emergency systems.

Something made it to the power grid. Something big.

Jet set a software watch for any other footprint traces, before checking the body on the floor. Microcharges. Some sort of medical or nutrient pack with a proprietary fitting matching a socket in the side of her chest. Strapped to her back, wired through a standard access interface - her thermoptic camouflage pack. Jet removed it, putting practicality ahead of squeamishness.

Jet had a data cable in her pack. It slotted neatly home, bridging her mind with the body.

Join Pin 1 and 5 and it'd allow a root diagnostic check of the hunter's systems, jumping them into afterlife. Jet interrogated her hardware. No signal through synaptic gateways. SP Alarm. No feedback signal through pin 10. A dozen system failures associated with the right arm being missing. Gyrostabilisers out of limit. Multiple major component failures, but her core systems were still there. Her radio systems still pinged.

Hardware type? Sirius Cybernetic Corporation. Probably from the stolen shipment. Good. Jet knew a little about it. She knew where to look for the encryption keys. They loaded into her own system.

"... Izrall. Respond."

Jet waited. It smacked her in the face.

"Izrall. Status?"

They couldn't see her anymore. It took a moment to reconfigure her own systems for LPI mode. Only one way to test.

"I got the bitch. She's dead."

"About bloody time. Redeploy to Rally Point Bravo 2. Code Nemesis Red."

"Copy. Rally Point Bravo 2."

Jet cut the channel, wearing a vulpine smirk. Text comms could be so impersonal.

Something had changed. Something big. The radio traffic had shifted. A change in timbre. Scrambling. More urgent What had been barely ordered chaos had started to descend into outright panic. More rapid fire messsage. Chaotic responses. Something the looked like a full blown argument. Staccato excitement. A full squad of marines thumped by, completely ignoring her, running full pelt.

They couldn't see her.

Their entire sensor grid had to be down.

They must've bought her half-assed ruse.

An electric thrill shot through her body, charged by the idea that, for the first time in nearly two days, she might just have a chance of getting the upper hand. Things might have a chance of ending. She allowed herself three clear breaths, re-centering the mind. Time to act again.

She tested the thermoptics. They worked. The whole world cloaked around her, hidden by a shimmering veil. Shite thermoptics. The enemy couldn't see in. She couldn't see out. That explained the sensor bursts.

She deactivated them, grabbed the sword from where it'd embedded itself to the hilt in concrete, then strapped it to her back.

Jet pushed on, driving deeper in, picking up speed. Another fire-team. This one she evaded. Faster again, picking up speed. Finding her stride. Another residential block, this one evacuated. A body lay in the centre, burned beyond recognition. Another example. The Boskone loved example. This is what happens when you fight back, when you don't do as you're told. This is the price you pay. You die screaming or worse.

Jet helped herself to food, batteries and JB-Weld.

Another cross-passage. An arboretum. A rail transfer tunnel that'd been demolished. She ricocheted around another corner, accelerating towards something marked X13 on the map. Signals flared on her sensors, the same low humm of data exchange that accompanied all the Boskone teams.

Dead still.

Checkpoint?

The corridor in front of them made a perfect kill zone. Marine kill-team. Probably more autoturrets. Challenging her to attack. Guarding the next level. One more gauntlet run.

No other way forward.

Charging into the teeth of that seemed like a good way to die quickly. Too far for a grenade - too easy for them to shoot. Too risky to try walk past with shite thermoptics. A vent might give a human being a route around, but nothing her size. Ping them, lure them into an ambush? Too dangerous.

Jet listened.

Control signal for gun turrets. Comm links. 1. 2. 3. 4. Armaflex wireless smartgun system. Jet chose to trust her own sensor map. In her hand, a block of semtex and a grenade detonator.

No choice. Time to try something.

The pin dropped, along with the handle. The thermoptic veil closed around her as she launched herself to the ceiling, accelerating towards them. Of course they heard her. Staccato orders flashed through her mind, bursts of radio energy pinpointing each target in turn. APEX rounds popped behind her, thudding autocannon tracking the thermal signature of her exhaust. Shrapnel pattered off her armour, the remains of nearby shellbursts. Danger close and then some.

2 seconds.

Jet dived. Catching herself on her palms, she pivoted towards one wall, then the other. Spalling rock told them where to aim. It still bought her time. The sprinklers triggered. Her heart raced. Jet dropped the bomb.

1 second

She passed them, killing the camo. They took deadly aim at her. They never realised. The blastwave chased her to the other end of the passage, slamming her to the ground as she tried to change directions. Dizzy, ears ringing, she picked herself up, staggering drunk against the wall as accelerometers came back within limits. Even the emergency lights had died. Blue lighting arc'd between dangling cables. Dust rolled through the air around her, chased by the smell of burning plastic and ozone, and the taste of blood in her mouth.

If 2 kilograms of semtex didn't kill them, the entire tunnel roof coming down probably did.

Her comm system sparked to life, catching her by surprise.

"Izrall. Redeploy X13 Emergency Expedite. Unknown target. "

"Copy. Redeploy X13."

Shit. They could track the origin of the broadcast.

Jet edged forward. Something new. Something different. Cables ran in tracks hung from the ceiling. She followed them. That team had to be guarding something. What? Another complex of doors. One open to something that looked like a server room. One a small canteen. One a toilet. One labelled Master Exercise Control. Locked, barricaded and steel-reinforced.

Jet shattered it.

Panic. Screams. Shouts. One single voice.

"Don't shoot."

More like a request, than a plea. a woman pushed back from her console, her colleagues doing the same. Fire-red eyes stared up at Jet's pistol, rusty hair framing a pale-skinned face glistening with sweat. Both hands raised in surrender, exposing a faded DefCON t-shirt. 6 more operators sat and watched. None of them armed. All dressed more like an IT helpdesk than a Boskone trooper. What were they doing?

A single attack drone on a workbench gave her an answer.

Each one sat at the controls to a mob of war machines. Each one ready to be taken prisoner after 2 days without sleep.

Every natural instinct told her to turn and walk. If she turned and left, they'd keep fighting. She couldn't take prisoners. She couldn't leave them. Destroy the equipment. They might repair it. Tech staff would find away. Each console told her a little about its operator - their fandoms, their hobbies, their loved ones. Calanders. Motivators. A copy of The Far Side[i]. A window into a life. A hint that these weren't prisoners, but willing part of all this hell-spawned shit around her, just as important as that Marine, or bio-augment or whatever. And just as dangerous if given the chance.

That made her decision.

"Please. You don't have to do this."

Jet's blood ran cold. She squeezed the trigger.

Gunshots. Screams. Silence.

Only the humm of the electric monitors remained, dutifully reporting the status of automated units. Yeah, I did, she thought, moving one of the bodies out of the way. All systems on Lockdown. Type 666 Firewall. Local Control only. She tapped through the various screens not sure what she was looking at. A map. Green dots. Red dots penetrating through. A readout in green text of active drones. Red text, dead drones. She tried another; Target Nemesis Red(Active). Target Alphonse Black(Active). Target Devil White(Dead). Target Mirror Blue(Dead). Target Gypsy Green(Dead).

A single screen caught her eye.

IFF Codes. She had full access. They'd died before logging off. Motherload.
Delete.

Copy.

Commit.

She tried to imagine how whatever remained of GJ must've felt, when every single drone defected as one. Destroying the keyboards and monitors made the change permanent. Someone had to be cheering, somewhere. Friends might live because of what she'd done. That's what mattered.

Jet stood in a small, darkened room surrounded by 7 bodies and smouldering electronics. Despite appearance, they were still enemy combatants. Not prisoners. Not coerced. Not an execution. Not a murder. Just a necessity. She couldn't leave them alive. It still felt like crossing a line. Different somehow. Some small thing had broken inside, for good.

She drew a long, slow breath, pushing it to the back of her mind. No time to worry about it.

Three teams entered her range, barreling towards her.

Somebody must've realised what'd happened.

They left her only one way to go.

Deeper. Towards the final level.

--
[/i]
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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Messages In This Thread
[RFC]Jusenkyou Cat Hunt - by Dartz - 08-27-2015, 12:15 AM
[No subject] - by Dartz - 08-31-2015, 12:05 AM
[No subject] - by Dartz - 09-03-2015, 01:24 AM

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