High above the battlefield, Ishikawa listened to the initial confusion. Deep Six Solutions had been taken by surprise; only on final approach had there been an auditory warning that the assault force was attacking the estate.
Whomever selected the unit's equipment had to invest in better thermoptic 'flage detector gear, the cyber support specialist decided. The approach signature had been far too minute; what anomalies and thus detection flags remained, the Section 9 hackers had smoothly erased from the system, intercepting and deleting the data even as it was generated. And the reaction to Heliades going loud had been… subdued. They had intercepted and cut out the com traffic quite successfully, it seemed. And now, the command center was no longer up, and the channels were filling with confused reports and screams. Often, Muse-generated Snap reports were fired off instead of MindComs. They had achieved total confusion… for the time being.
A mental tug for attention caused Ishikawa to draw up surveillance feed windows in his primary perception, moving the overview feeds back, where they prickled against the secondary perception means of his mindscape. [Well, hello, who are you?] Ishikawa watched a single guard in light covert attire spring through a corridor on the ground floor, passing through an employ passage within the private quarters; the transhuman was sprinting as fast as he could, doors opening and closing around him. An entoptic ID overlaid itself, fed from Athena; it was one of the guards from Overwatch-14. [Everyone, take note: They use code phrase checks. Got a runner heading for command. Neutralizing him now.]
He assessed his options, decided on one, and sent a short encrypted trigger code.
The guard stormed through another door - and was promptly gunned down by a combat robot beyond, the machine mindlessly, or rather, mind-possessed, cutting him down. The guard took a dozen shots in the chest which sent him flopping around, revealing his synthetic rib cage and internal organs under biomimetic skin. Then he dropped, Shell power disabled, white blood pooling around his body. The face was still frozen in shock, artificial eyes on distributed reserve power flickering around.
Ishikawa made the robot step forward, and fire another burst into the man's skull, until his brain's contents were thoroughly mulched and spread out over the torn-up flooring.
"The fuck is wrong with that bot?!", he heard someone ask on his audio pick-ups.
Ishikawa's reply was to engage every single combat drone around the two guards on them. Three combat robots each pounced on the two guards, immediately switching to CQC. The guards, to their credit, reacted with the boosted cognition of properly augmented fighters, and the superiority of quality augmentations. The leftmost deflected the punch-and-grab and broke the arm in a single strong pull before suplexing the robot, breaking the hip assembly in the process. Another left punch staggered the bot and forced it to step back to compensate, and in that moment a pre-fabricated anti-robot pile was driven into its chest, where it detonated with a dull thump. Dark hydraulic fluid, white "blood", diamond splitters and ceramic blew out from the gaps in the unit's armor, and spilled onto the floor.
The next boot took the guard from behind, and grabbed him by the shoulders. The response was a powerful kick from the right leg, along with an elbow strike, then the guard whirled around before punching the robot in the chest, his fist flaring orange as omni-plating formed itself into an explosive cuff over the armored gloves. The robot was smashed into a wall, and white smart matter as well as carbon-fibre structural sinter fragments splattered everywhere. A storm of fault warnings and error reports flooded into Ishikawa's datafeeds.
The other guard similarly wrecked the first bot by cutting off an arm at the shoulder using a monomolecular HF blade that snap-extended from the right gauntlet; the attack from behind was blocked by sudden kick, staggering the machine back and giving the woman enough time to pummel the first robot attacking her with several fast punches into the chest area, followed by a throw. The robot went flying, and crashed into a wall. This time, plaster and rubber-ceramic sinter sprayed about the place, and exposed cable conduits snapped out of the wall.
Time to change tactics. CQC evidently was not working.
The guards had figured out the same, and drew sidearms; the man produced two N7 Eagles, the woman a heavy Sarkovky Automatic and a handheld shot pistol, and they knew what to shoot. A rapid flurry of semi-automatic APHE shots wrecked the two downed robots, then blasted the leg of a third one apart. In the meantime, the auto-pistol mowed down the airborne drones which had eaten away at the guards' shields, but unfortunately not broken them, precise shots into the rotors taking the bots out of the game.
Ishikawa cursed the nature of combat bots as ablative armor. D6S had Boston-Akamashu models, but an older line and not the cutting-edge he was used to; their performance against people with cutting-edge augmentations and modern weaponry was appropriately subpar, leaving aside their general nature as ablative combat forces on whom attrition took a hard toll. With no shields and only heavy armor, the robots fell easily to high-powered weapons.
Voto'Leelas preempted any further action when the quarian popped in and fired off an Anti-Armor Attack VI at both guards, locking down their hardsuits mid-move; the guards immediately sent out flushing software and began resetting and re-formatting the DCE of their hardsuits, but the moment was enough for two bots to pull out their guns and run forward.
There were two burst of fire and blood, brain matter, cybernetics and multi-layer armor fragments sprayed about the room.
"This is so bloody stupid!" Togusa burst out as he fell towards the glass roof of the Mansion's public floor.
Batou just laughed. [C'mon, on what day is such a dynamic entry part of the actual battle plan?]
[Not. Fun-] Togusa cut out as his jetpack howled and slowed him down, combat implants kicked back in and forcing his mind into a colder, more dispassionate shape. Below, the ScatterBugs initiated, and the diamond pane burst into dust a second later. He felt more than heard the "pop" of the grenade dispensers on his hip firing, and then they were through, and in.
Under combat boosting, the next two seconds unfolded very slowly. They were falling in through the roof, with him, Batou and Paz leading the drop. Below, the crowd recoiled as the second assault front on the house revealed itself with the shrill whine of ScatterBugs and the snarl of yet more jetpacks. More screams, and people tried to get away before the cluster nine-banger, configured to stun baseline sophonts, detonated. Then the nanosmoke pellets followed, and the room filled with more glittering grey.
Togusa's entoptics switched to vision impairment compensation, and he smoothly made for the cover of a couch. Some wide-placed shots tracked after him as he slid behind the furniture, their ablative trails brighter as they caused the reflective particles in the smoke to combust, and 'Mites failed in flashes of their power cells.
Togusa raised the heavy Type-90 "Gorgon" carbine, and fired at the red outline of a bodyguard, covering behind a chair. The shots punched straight through the furniture, and into the woman. After firing a burst, he rose and began repositioning, keeping his aim on the bodyguard, firing a second burst. Halfway through the hit indicator turned blue, and Togusa noticed the short stutter as the Type-90 switched from Disruptor to ShreddX rounds.
He saw a group of transhuman through the smoke, inside the range where the system could render full color. They were clearly concussed; a few were bleeding from their ears, red blood dripping out between fingers, often hardening even as it flowed over the hands. The smart hemocytes were reacting. Others had reddish skin where the stimulation from the crowd-control micros had caused complications; Togusa caught sight of a waitress whose skin was completely reddish, the girl cowering in place. He wanted to reach out and help her - and bit himself back as his implants sent a remaining buzz down his neurons. Instead, he dropped a control exception and neurovocalized: [We have employees with geo-conditioning. Check for NCC exceptions.]
[Copy.]
His muse came in: [HVT, three O'clock at 50 meters.] He looked that way, careful to keep his assault rifle pointed down. Three of the orange shapes were clustered together not far him his position; two kneeling around a third fallen one. They had been positioned to cover the doors to the outside, where the green ghosts of Ares-2 still battled with the bodyguards, and one of them had just rotated to face the second front. Enhanced vision using the recon mites in the smoke sketched sharper details out of the smoke-obscured face, details reduced by the jamming the transhuman put out: a male face with a brown, stylishly grown beard around the chin and mouth, piercing blue eyes and black hair, with an asian-hispanic trend in the overall features. "Oh shit! Get up!" His hand tugged at the fallen figure.
Togusa snapped his rifle up and activated the mounted laser sight, blue targeting laser stabbing out from underneath the primary accelerator barrel, activating his voice box.
"Don't move." The voice was purged of emotions, androgynous, and robotic, and sounded menacing enough to make him afraid of himself.
"Fuck you!" the re-shelled OFIF spat out and raised a light hold-out pistol.
On litteral autopilot, Togusa raised his rifle and fired a precision burst into the hand. The shots impacted without meeting the resistance of a barrier, and there was a ripping and tearing sound as the cybernetic hand was shredded into pieces, spraying red blood, skin, synthetical innards and white fluid onto the man's jacket and face. He raised the stump in abject shock, thrown aback by the sudden gesture. He had either gone soft, or forgotten what his Shell was now.
The other transhuman reacted by standing up, his own pistol pointed down towards the head and neck of the downed HVT.
[ Analysis… Attempt of Ego Capture Denial ]
[ Success chance… Medium ]
[ Success chance too high in correlation with Mission parameters ]
[ Supressive fire, close to protect ]
The carbine snapped to a new position, and Togusa's finger pulled the trigger. Five shots spurted out and slammed into the second transhuman, making him whirl about as he tried to evade the fire, before the wounded transhuman charged Togusa with a scream. Surprise flared in his mind for a moment. What crétin is crazy enough to charge a Power Armor Hardsuit?
He whacked the charging man across the face with the muzzle of his Gorgon, drawing blood and scraping away skin, then dropped the gun and grabbed the man with his left hand by the right shoulder. A quick right foot hooked around the leg, and Togusa pulled the legs out from under the HVT, putting weight onto his arm and dropping him to the ground. The transhuman slammed into the ground, and Togusa felt things in his shoulder and pelvis give way, though not break, as the weight and momentum of the ETOPA-80 transferred onto the shell.
Pinned to the ground, Togusa raised his Gorgon and shot the second OFIF fighter, who has struggled back to his feet, in the upper torso and twice in the head. Brain matter sprayed, and the man dropped dead.
[I need containment!] Togusa shouted.
[Coming Sir, coming!] Clarke-903 appeared through the door, his armor scratched and an indent marring his tactical vest, but otherwise the bioroid was alright. His omnitool was lit, and he had stowed his rifle by quickly attaching it to the side SmartPack surface of his jetpack, pulling a Colt 2230 from his hip holster.
"Ready?" Togusa asked, glancing at his combat compass. Someone was moving above them, some the guards that had watched the crashed festivities most likely.
"Ready!" Clarke confirmed. The OFIF struggled more, guessing what was about to happen. "You… won't…" Togusa whacked him with a fist to the side of the head, and stood up. Clarke took over immediately, placing a knee on the man's chest, followed by the 2230 being pointed at the man's face together with the bulky transopter elements on the wristguard of the integrated omnitool.
[Countermeasure clean. Neutralizing.]
He pulled the trigger, firing a single 5mm ShreddX round into the braincase. [Neutralized.]
Togusa looked away, and instead scanned the walkway. "Contact!" He opened fire on a single DS6 merc that had tried to crawl into a better position. The shell flopped as it was hit, barrier system down, and white blood started dripping from the holes in the wood.
Behind him, there was a high-pitched servo whir as Clarke activated the Stack extractor, and turned the now-body dead Cyborg shell around to reach the implant site at the neck. With a set of clicks, the extractor primed, and Clarke pressed it against the spine. With a faint sound, the scalpel parted the surface flesh; then a tiny HF blade followed, cutting appart the skin anchoring layer. At its side, pincers advanced, forcing the cut open. The blade began working on the cover over the stack, and white blood spurted from underneath the cuts. Then, the extractor located the stack, and began extending its tendrils, infiltrating the cradle and preparing the stack for disconnect.
Five seconds after Clarke had deployed the device, the grape-sized implant of ultra-dense data storage encapsulated in its diamond shell extracted, encapsulated in an armored shell, and the package ejected from the device.
[Ares advise all, we have one, repeat one HVT Alpha group individual in stack-custody.]
[Incoming!] The turian party goers finally had a target, and apparently a few had decided they would stay and fight.
"Fuck!"
[Ares-1, be advised we have a netcrash in progress; enemy forces are locking us out of the network. Counterattack likely incoming on your position.]
[Just great] Togusa cursed and snap-fired concussion rounds from the launcher on his left arm, right hand reaching for the collapsed Kalip Plasma Impulse Gun locked to his backpack. That broke the charge up somewhat, but a few turians barreled through. [FBCs!] Clarke grabbed the empty, stand-by extractor and threw it at the head of one charging turian, where it bounced off with a dry sound. The head flung back on reflex, but there was a distinct lack of concussion or serious pain.
"I hate transspecies cyborgs!", Clarke cursed and punched the first turian in the head. The alien dodged the punch and grabbed the arm for a counter; Clarke reacted by slamming his arm to the right, smacking the turian in the head before bringing a foot around for a swinging undercut of the legs; the turian toppled forward, and Clarke's left hand grabbed him by the head, slamming the turian into the floor. There was a crack, and blue blood flooded the cracked parquet. Pinning the cyborg with a knee, Clarke drew his 2230 and shot him in the braincase.
Another two used that opportunity to bum rush him, piling down atop of him. [Clarke!], Togusa "shouted", ducking underneath a clawed swipe and replying by firing a burst of stunning plasma impulses into the turians chest. The impulses scorched the clothing and send shockwaves through the stiff material as they impacted. A kinetic pulse from his left omnitool effectors pushed the turian back, and Togusa pulled the secondary trigger for the electro-laser stunner.
[I am…] four shots barked out in rapid succession, and blood, bone plate and shredded white-blue biomimetic organs spilled from the back of one turian, [fine!] There was an audible whine and sound of compression as Clarke threw both turians off him with augmented and armor-assisted strength.
[ Threat Warning: 6 O'clock High ]
Counterattack likely incoming, it echoed in Togusa's mind.
[Boosters!] Clarke ordered, activating one of the ready-use sacrificial capacitors stored in his backpack, shields flaring and humming as they went into their boosted configuration, and ducked around, left hand reaching for the left-slung Crossfire while the right holstered the 2230.
Shots slammed into their shields as hardwired combat robots linked to three guards opened fire from the second floor. [Underneath the walkway!], Togusa suggested, sprinting for the western side of the room. [Batou, do something!]
[Copy that], came the easy reply, and Batou stomped through the door, casualty handling his assigned M65 LMG and coilgun combination. At the breach, the ARgraphic symbol for armor-piercing rounds appeared.
Batou turned to the right, sighted in the transparent outlines of the enemies above him, and started firing through the walkway.
"Below us!" someone shouted there.
"Fuc-" the curse cut out mid-call and was replaced by a gurgle as blood flooded into lungs. The robots reacted, and shifted their own guns, starting to fire back. Batou snapped the M65 over to its coilgun, and fired on the first robot. The armor-piercing high-explosive projectile rammed itself into the chest of the robot from below and detonated. The machine's head and hydraulic fluid sprayed to the ceiling in a fountain of sparks and electric arcs from destroyed cap-cells, painting the plaster in colors and shrapnel craters.
"Are we holding this position?", Togusa asked, rotating in place as he searched for possible dangers.
"Fall back to the- urgh!" Batou said, recoiling as shots slammed into his chest plate, "-to the entrance. We will hold there. Salas, stickies on the walkway! We're demolishing it!" The offending robot caught two coilgun projectiles into the legs and chest.
"Copy. We're… ah fuck, we have to get the second HVT!" The bioroid's eyes fell on the downed shape of the second OFIF fighter they had secured, a female, all the while pulling small round grenades from a belt on his right side.
[Right!] Togusa and Clarke stood up to get back to her, when servos wired above them. Clarke saw the jumping and falling combat robot that charged over the railing of the second floor, and how it fell - ready to embrace something. Someone. And the large belt of robot-issue grenades, simple and bulky with low-grade explosives, strapped to its chest.
[Get away Sir!] He pushed Togusa out of the way as the machine fell almost directly onto their second HVT.
A moment later, the machine exploded.
The shockwave threw Togusa through the air. Not again, it flared up in his mind. His vision came back from the protective interlocks, and he found that blood and tissue had been sprayed over his faceplate; a massive bloody crater had been blown into the flooring of the house, supporting service conduits and the flexible induction power/data backbone mats worked into the floor.
Clarke's squad uplink squealed with the sound of a "Friendly terminated"; the massive detonation and close proximity had completely overloaded his shields and broken open his armor, also breaching the anti-explosion ICS. The shockwave and shrapnell had done the rest. Dutiful to this end.
Togusa shook his head, before a hand grabbed him by the sling on his jetpack and pulled him back towards the door. [Are you alright?!]
[Definitely better than last time. Get the… get the stacks.]
Salas-122 stormed forward and looked over Clarke's fallen shell, lOCATED the stack in its container, and plugged it from the pocket. The thick casing had deflected the blast; none of the red "content damaged" smart stickers on the outside had gone off. [I have it!] He turned Clarke's corpe around, nonplussed by the grizzly damage done to the ETOPA-80 and the body underneath, and plugged a data jack into the dummy interface on the suits neck. There was a pop of explosions, and the neck exoskeleton disintegrated, revealing the hardened synthetic skin of a combat bioroid artificial spine and its Stack-Slot. The stack popped free on its own, encapsulated by a moulded plug, as soon as Salas had removed the ETOPA's exoskeleton. [Clarke's stack is secure. Self-destruct is activated.]
[Fall back, then blow!] Naomi commanded, helmet a hard black contrast against the light of day shining in from the outside, breaking on the dissipating smoke. Togusa was dragged through the blown-open doorway, and onto the terrace. Uncermonicaly, Batou dropped him, and stormed back in.
[Ares-1, status?] Bau came in.
[Togusa here... One HVT still secure… one CTIA, enemy suicide bot. Ares-2-2 is KIA, stack recovered. We're holding the terrace entrances.]
"Fire in the hole!" Inside, explosives detonated, and wood and metal crashed to the floor as the walkway was destroyed. Togusa also saw a bright white flash - Created when modern power cells lost containment.
[Understood Ares-1. Good job.]
Why the fuck did this just happen?
Glossary:
CTIA: Confirmed Terminated In Action; refers to the destruction of the cortical stack, and with this, the loss of the instance. In the case of attempted Ego capture, CITA is the worst-case scenario.
FBC: Full-Body Cyborg
Geo-conditioning: A form of psychosurgical compulsion engineering that keeps a sophont "anchored" to a certain location that they do not or cannot leave willingly.
HVT: High-Value Target
Netcrash: A form of targeted or indiscriminate, multi-vector attack on Extranet and Mesh backbone infrastructure, making it impossible to transfer data or perform computations on distributed computing environments. Often employed as part of "flash and re-format" cyberwarfare strategies to burn a network clean of enemy software for re-acquisition, and deny use of the same to the enemy party.
NCC: Nano-Robotic Crowd Control; "intelligent tear gas" that can be used to effect directed crowd removal from a location by way of direction- and action-slaved stimulation of the skin, eyes and trachea by way of aeromotile Nanomachines spread aboard a carrier aersol.