/Team Exterminator/
The four Mercenaries stayed quiet as they approached the entrance to the Canterbury Access Hatch. Leon knew that the key to their success would be to move swiftly, silently and with purpose to take out the queen. Once the Antagonizer was taken care of, the ants would be in disarray with the loss of their Queen and (or at least Leon hoped) would take to attacking each other. In terms of combat he felt more secure than Vincent had to be: Sledge was several hundred pounds of barely galvanized fury, and with her infiltration skills Leon was almost surprised Vincent hadn't sent her to assassinate The Antagonizer on her own. Nate on the other hand….
"What happens if one of those big ants comes along? You know, the giant ones with the legs and the pincers…?" Nate asked, a mixture of caution and hesitation in his voice.
"We kill it." Sledge answered simply. To date, Leon realized that this was the first time he had heard Sledge speak. His basso voice would have made Palmer seem a soprano.
"But… close quarters combat doesn't seem to be a good environment for this sort of thing, right? I mean, it's a giant ant that could crush us."
"Precisely, so it can't move as well in a tunnel. I know Vincent wanted you hear for practice and fire support Turchin, but if you are going to be a thorn in my ass I'm sending you back to town. You don't even have a proper gun." Leon scoffed. He was losing patience with the boy and their mission hadn't even started.
Anais stopped assessing the door and turned back to Leon. "Ants live in these tunnels, practically form them over years of digging and dredging. Do you really think that worker ants make them too small for the larger soldiers to use? No, they do not. They will come upon us in droves and immobilize us, so that their young may feed on us later. Fascinating behaviors really."
"And if we come across these ants?" Nate asked, nearly sheet white.
"We kill them." Sledge looked at Nate briefly before snorting. "I give you ten minutes." Sledge lumbered over to the door and tried the handle. Finding it locked, he ripped the door from its metal frame and gingerly placed it to the side. The three mercenaries regarded the pure act of strength with slight hesitation before following behind the giant. As they travailed through the maintenance corridor they reviewed their objectives: Find the colony, locate the Antagonizer, kill any ants in their way, eliminate the Antagonizer and bring back any supplies/loot for the team. While Canterbury was paying them significant caps to take care of their problem, the team could always use more supplies for… well everything really.
"Wait, stop!" Nate yelled at Sledge who was about to step down the staircase at the end of the corridor. Sledge froze every muscle in his body, balancing himself quite comically on the precipice of the corridor. " . .man?" Sledge spoke through gritted teeth. Leon could imagine Sledge's reply to whatever Nate's complaint was: Two crushing hands wrapped around the Russian Queer's throat.
Nate neatly sidestepped Leon and tapped Sledge to take a step back. He then produced a pair of wire cutters from his jumpsuit. He scanned the top step for several seconds before murmuring something in what Leon believed was Russian. Leon couldn't see much from his angle and with what limited lighting they had, but he knew the sound of a wire snapping from anywhere. Nate steadied himself back up and looked along the walls along the staircase.
He tentatively took one step down on the topmost step, audibly breathing out when nothing happened. He then tore a poster located to the left of the step to reveal a combat shotgun rigged with an energy cell. A few seconds of tinkering and he had removed the shotgun from the wall and pumped it once.
"I can't tell at the moment, but anyone who puts that much trouble into a singular trap surely has more set up. I'll lead and disarm them, and who knows: I may even rack up the first kill."
Sledge retained his perma-frown, whilst Anais smirked at the boy in front of her. He would have made a good outcast. Nate wasn't looking at his two comrades however, he was staring straight at Leon. Leon merely stared back, indifference in his dark blue eyes.
/Team Terminator/
"We are NOT being called Team Terminator!" Palmer shouted as he bull rushed a protectron with his shoulder, knocking it to the ground and firing a shot into its faceplate.
"Oh hell yes we are old man! Nate isn't the only one who gets to have fun!" Siobhan yelled, hurling herself at a Mister Gutsy that had floated into the main room of the Robot Repair Center.
As opposed to Leon's "Team Exterminator" as Siobhan had dubbed them, Vincent's team met resistance at the front entrance. The five Mercenaries found themselves steadily pushing their way through the buildings defenses, killing wave after wave of robots. All five Mercenaries had been expecting a strong fight, and their gambit to go in guns blazing had payed off: They were almost ready to move into the central room, no thanks in part to their mad antics.
Palmer had transformed into some kind of jacked up football player, tackling robots and using his sheer bulk and strength to smash them into every surface he could find, be it floor, wall or furniture; Siobhan had actually taken to shooting the weak points of the Protectrons and Mister Gutsys that came to defend their master.
Teo and Mirza spent the whole of their time playing marksmen while occasionally hacking terminals, shooting things from behind cover, generally not having an iota of fun and bitching about lasers and the like. Teo was at least battle hardened, so his complaints were more towards Palmer not getting the robots coming around on his flank. Vincent was more than happy to pick up the slack. As always, he was calm and focused in combat killing robots with relative ease. More amazing was the coordination he was giving in the process.
"Mirza, unlock that damn door!" Vincent bellowed while simultaneously ramming his combat knife into an unfortunate Protectron's arm socket, severing the joint and disabling it altogether.
"Working on it, the terminal is very hard Vincent please stop yelling!"
"Dios mio, you can't work worth shit Shammas. Just keep hacking." Teo cursed at Mirza while unloading a full clip into a Sentry Bot, barely deterring it. "A little help!"
"HAAAAAAAAAYEEEAAAAHHH!" Siobhan jumped onto the back of the Sentry Bot, forcing it to spin around in 360 degree arcs in a vain attempt to dislodge her. Giving the robot no mercy, Siobhan used her Power Fist to smash the top of the Sentry Bot's head in, eventually caving the small dome in and causing the robot to begin to power down.
"Not so fast you piece of shit!" Siobhan cackled, using her free hand to rearrange the wires on the back of the robot.
"The hell are you doing?!" Palmer grunted, fighting off a Mister Gutsy as if it were a giant pre-war octopus.
Siobhan grunted a reply, still frantically rearranging the wires. "Come on, auxillary power coupled with-" A bullet nicked the side of the Sentry Bot. "-the central core and the firing system is... POWERED ON! FUCK YEAH!" The Sentry bot ponderously fired back to life. Siobhan hopped off the back of the robot as it began to unload its minigun into the hallway, mowing down several Protectrons.
"Teo, man the robot!" Siobhan shouted as she pressed a fresh clip into her N99 Pistol.
"Man the- The robot?! Wait… how?!" The bewildered scribe shouted back in confusion.
"Back panel, set up for-" Siobhan began to shout as several lasers bounced against the frame of the doorway. "-JUST DO IT CACERES!"
The Scribe climbed over a desk and behind the robot. After a moment of recalibrating the back control panel, Teo took complete control of the robot's aim precisely targeting the enemy drones while using the Sentry Bot's bulk as a cover.
Teo readjusted another wire, and with one hand controlling the Sentry bot's wheels, the other still operating the robot's gun. Within seconds a portable turret-wall had been created, allowing the remaining Mercenaries to move behind Teo.
"Nice improvisation Teo, all right! Let's push onwards!
/Team Exterminator/
"MORE ANTS!" Sledge bellowed as another half dozen Ant Warriors scurried towards the group. Leon's team had accessed the caverns an hour after Nate had uncovered the first trap. Since then it had been an enemy free (If trap ridden) crawl to the entrance of the stone passages of the Antagonizer's Hive.
The moment they set foot inside the caverns however, the group was set upon by the Antagonizer's Horde. Fighting as a singular cluster, the group managed to work their way through the tunnels, inch by inch and carapace by shattered carapace.
Leon swore as he emptied his reloaded his last 5.56 clip into his Chinese Assault Rifle. Nate was firing wildly into the passage, hitting but rarely wounding the oncoming ants. Anais was far more conservative with her plasma shots, crippling legs and antennae with surgical skill. For every soldier killed by the three ranged Mercenaries, three made their way to Sledge…
"C'MON!" Sledge swung his eponymous hammer down in a savage arc, splattering the brains of an unfortunate Ant Soldier. With his other hand he slashed at an approaching ant with a hand-held Hatchet. A third ant attempted to rush Sledge but was put down by a burst of fire from Leon's rifle.
"We need to get to the Antagonizer before we run out of ammo and get overwhelmed. Turchin, how do we find her?!"
Nate turned to Leon incredulously, mouth slightly agape. "Why on earth would you think I would know that?!"
"You're the Specialist! You know this kind of shit!"
"I'm a Gunsmith, not an entomologist!" Nate fired back, unloading rounds into a nearby Ant.
Anais drew her sword and lunged at the offending Ant, beheading it with a single slash. Facing the Ants, Anais pulled two plasma grenades from her belt and hurled them at the oncoming horde, decimating their numbers. With their rush stalled the Ants began to pull back, allowing the group some respite.
Anais moved over to a wall and held her hand to the smooth stone. "The Antagonizer does not have a Queen, otherwise we would have encountered footsoldiers the moment we entered the maintenance tunnels. Most likely she keeps a combination of pheromones on her person to control the colony."
"How do you know she lacks a Queen?" Leon asked.
"I had extensive time to study the Ants of the southern wastes while with the Outcasts. The point is, if The Antagonizer had a queen, she would not only possess an army ten times the size of everything we have seen, but also be incapable of controlling the soldiers. Queens are the top of the hierarchy, and the Antagonizer would not be able to order the ants about if she was in possession of one."
"And that retreat we just saw? How do we find her then?" Nate asked curiously, holstering his pistol and drawing the combat shotgun he had scavenged earlier.
Anais put her hand against the wall for a long minute, then began walking down the tunnel. "The soldiers are following their queen's call. We follow the skittering, then we can put her down."
/Team Terminator/
The main repository of the Repair center was massive.
And filled with turrets.
"Shit, shit shit shit shit GOD DAMNIT!" Mirza cried out, nursing a wounded leg as Palmer covered him, trying to simultaneously bring down the turret opposite from him and not be vaporized.
Teo's Sentry Bot had burst into flames shortly after entering the repository, and he had since taken to ducking behind every surface available to try and disable the turrets. It was going as well as Siobhan expected it to.
"Merde, Vincent I'm out of SECs!"
Vincent, sporting a gash across his forehead, was trying to find a way to bring down the turrets via shotgun. It was equally ineffective.
"Last canister, then I'm out of shells. Siobhan, you got anything left?"
The Irish girl grunted as another volley of lasers ate away at the desk she was crouched behind. "Yeah, My arse-kicking abilities! COVER ME!" Siobhan rolled to the side of the desk and began zig-zagging down the walkway. Vincent fired round after round at the turrets, managing to bring down one of the three in their path. One down.
Palmer rolled adjacent to his cover and fired at the second turret, managing to hit its sensor and effectively crippling it. Two down.
Siobhan moved from cover to cover, trying to dodge the third and final turret's blasts. Eventually the turret's main gun cooled down, allowing Siobhan to spring from cover and leap towards the turret…
The red light of the turret's sensor began to shine as Siobhan closed the gap between the two. She reared her fist back and drove it forward into the barrel of the turret, metal crunching underneath the sheer force of the blow. As the turret attempted to fire from its now defunct barrel, the device exploded. Three Down.
Siobhan was thrown backwards from the blast, body limply hitting the wall.
A/N: CLIFFHANGER! HAHA! Sorry about the wait between updates, I am trying to juggle multiple stories on top of the rest of my very busy life. Once I take my finals in a few weeks and enter the summer I should be able to update far more frequently. Until then enjoy this and I will work my hardest to bring you the gripping conclusion of this story arc :P
Thanks for reading, please rate and review!
Blue-Jaye signing off ;)