ZERO
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Xan cowered lower in his seat as the ground vibrated beneath the tread of heavy feet. A mass of twisted metal obscured most of his viewscreen but beyond it he could see a wide corridor. At that moment, four of the MTs unofficially dubbed 'Big White' came marching by, each one holding a cannon as big as his Core. He could see their heads swinging right and left, and prayed that they wouldn't see him.
The first went by, and then the next. A few seconds passed, but the third hadn't appeared yet. Where was it? His eyes darted left, then right, but all that he could see was twisted metal. He couldn't stand the tension and sweat poured down his face as he prayed for the end to come quick. The third Big White passed by, no slower than the second, followed by the fourth. They hadn't seen him that time, just like the time before and the time before that. He could only hope that they (or was it a different group? He couldn't tell, they all looked the same) wouldn't see him when they passed by again in five minutes.
He'd shut down all of the Core's systems hours ago to keep it from being detected, and that included life support. The air in the cockpit was hot, moist, and stank of fear. He wasn't sure how long he'd been down there, and he didn't dare activate the light on his watch, on the paranoid fear that even that _tiny_ of an energy discharge would bring their collective wrath down upon his head. His fingers trembled, reaching out for the nub anyway. Dying would be a change. Anything different would be a break. His bowels were trying to tell him that he'd been down there a year and a half, and his bladder was screaming four.
What made it even worse was that this wasn't the first time he'd been trapped in a dark corner, and if he got out, he _knew_ that it wouldn't the be last. The one question in his mind was when he'd finally get his part of the farm, signed, sealed, and delivered with a big fat FUCK YOU stamped on the top. If he'd had clue-Mother-Trucking-Father-Scraping-One when Corpsemaker'd gone around looking for consorts, A-Ranked bad ass among bad ass Ravens or no, he would've told him EXACTLY where to shove it.
Sideways.
=========================================
Corpsemaker had swaggered into the Nerves Concord cantina. He swaggered everywhere he went, but loath as some people were to admit it, he'd earned that particular privilege. Humility wasn't his style. Neither was subtlety. "Alright you wannabes," his voice got a kick from a speak- easier, making sure it was heard by everyone. "I've got a contract from Global Cortex in my pocket and open slots for six consorts. Who wants to make history?"
The quiet was deafening. With the latest developments along the Silent Line, the cantina was packed with Ravens waiting for the word, much like this one, to come down before heading back into action. Specs, a notorious gear head with wire frame glasses, was the first to speak up. "Six? Global must've given you a seat on the Board if you wanna offer enough for people to want to take your crap."
"For 30K," that got everyone's attention, "I not only expect you to take it, but put it in a baggie and tie it with a pink ribbon," Corpsemaker replied with a pompous grin.
Xan gave a low wolf whistle. "Somebody must love you."
"Besides your mother?" Corpsemaker showed a bit more tooth. "All I had to do was ask them real low and sweet, and they," he made a rude spreading gesture, "just opened their coffers wide."
Janus, an ever-pragmatic tanker spoke out next. "Before we get in line to kiss your ass for a share of the pot, maybe you could enlighten us as to why Global Cortex is willing to hocka cupla kidneys over to you?"
Corpsemaker waited for people to start getting restless before answering. "You've all heard rumors about the Layered they found beyond the Silent Line?"
That set the room off hotter than a rocket to the face. "They're sending us there?!" Specs shouted eagerly, although his voice was lost in the tumult as all the other Ravens in the room shouted the same question.
Corpsemaker's mouth twisted down into an angry sneer. "Naw, they're giving that peach to one of their 'pets.'" No one needed to ask whom he meant. He'd been nursing a serious hate-on since getting his Core blown out from under him during an ambush gone wrong at the Archive Area. "For the price tag, GC is giving us the privilege of doing a little walking target, a little crash and burn. They've pinned down where all those attacks from behind the Line are coming from. We go in, provide a distraction while GC's 'caged' Raven penetrates the Layered. Since they've left precise interpretation of 'distraction' up to me, I'm interpreting it to mean we turn it into a smoking hole in the ground. That agreeable to anyone else?"
Xan's hand was the first up, although he was followed a moment later by most of the room. "Give me a slot. Fenris wants to sink his teeth into this one." The worst part of the contract would be taking orders from Corpsemaker, but at that price it was a drawback he was willing to live with.
Corpsemaker seemed to be showing a fond spot for the people who'd spoken up, because he gave a nod not only to him, but to Specs and Janus as well. The other three slots he ceded to Gimlet, Calamity and Epic. It was easy to see the reasoning behind his selections. All the consorts he'd chosen piloted heavy Cores, just what he'd need for consorts on a mission that'd probably involve taking a lot of shit, and then dishing out even more.
Corpsemaker didn't stick around to rub shoulders with his hires, or take crap from all the other Ravens who wanted a shot at convincing him they were a better choice. He slid his consorts a 5K advance and promised the other twenty-five after the mission, plus a divided parcel from the share of anyone who wasn't breathing enough to enjoy it. Then he told them to blow. He didn't give quite as short a shrift to any of the women who tried for his attention, and from the looks they were giving him, he was laying on the whole, 'pity we who are about to die,' line pretty thick. He must've been doing it pretty well, because he succeeded at getting a girl to brush off her current companions and look like she was leaving with him.
Twice.
Xan took it as a sign of divine favor and took a shot at it himself. He got a drink dumped on his head, a bowl of stew poured in his lap, and a gun shoved in his face. He took the hint and returned to his hangar alone.
=========================================
Twelve hours later, and the seven of them were carted out to the Line split between a Galaxy transport plane, and a Constellation carrier 'copter. Xan, and most of the other pilots had their eyes glued to the map screen, watching the icon representing them approach the Silent Line. Although none of them realized it, they all held their breaths as they passed into the red, letting them out when they came out the other side still alive.
Corpsemaker was sprawled out on the other side of the cargo hold, loudly proclaiming how little feeling he had in his legs. Xan ignored him, as did everyone else. No one had shared Corpsemaker's luck in eliciting 'sympathy.'
The Galaxy's hold was made even more crowded by two ammo trucks, with ungainly looking tanks bolted atop their cargo beds. It was those tanks that made Xan realize how seriously Mirage was taking the mission, because they were filled with cubonite gas in gel suspension. The armor plates that Cores used were made out of carbon-ceramic-steel, and when you mixed cubonite with oxygen, threw in a little hydrogen for zest, and sprayed it on a battered Core, the c2s armor would regenerate damaged segments like a salamander on a mutilation kick. It was also expensive as hell, but unlike armor plates, you could slap on cubonite in the field.
Xan felt the Galaxy tilt and drop, beginning to circle. "We're here," Corpsemaker announced, swaggering over to his Core and climbing into the cockpit. The map showed nothing but wasteland and ruins, but no one was inclined to disagree.
The ground was smooth enough for the Galaxy to touch down, and brake to a hard stop. The Galaxy dropped its ramp, Fenris, Corpsemaker, Calamity, and Janus stepping out, followed a moment later by the ammo trucks. The Constellation was a half hour slower, and as it arrived, it released the clamps holding the Cores to its frame, dropping Gimlet, Epic, and Specs. It touched down a moment later, its twin rotors kicking up a thick cloud of dust.
The only break in the ground was a few hundred meters away, a low, bunker- like structure sticking up from the dirt. "That it?" Gimlet asked, cycling up the ammo belts on his Core's arms.
The Galaxy taxied and took off, it's vertical booster straining to get it off the ground. The Constellation stayed put. It'd carry out the ammo trucks when they finished with them. "According to Mirage," Corpsemaker replied. "That there is the source of all those MTs and ACs that have been giving us so much trouble across the Line."
Mileage sniffed. "Doesn't look like much. Not much defense either."
"That's because all of its ready defense should be running full tilt towards the Layered, and now we're going to make them leave skid marks as they try and figure out whether to keep going or come back and try and stop us from burning down the house."
Specs had mounted an advanced scanning package on his Core, and had so many different sensors going that it was causing interference returns on Xan's radar. "There's heavy shielding, but I think I'm reading a pretty large complex below us. Looks like the right place to me. Nothing currently mobile."
"Let's get this party started," Janus said and headed to the bunker door. He tried to open it, but was repulsed by an angry blat. "My computer can't hack the lock. Someone else want to take a shot?"
"There's a reason I'm here, aside from keeping the average IQ out of the negative," Specs said, shouldering Janus aside. He spent almost a minute interfacing with the door, but then backed away with a curse. "Or... not. I might be able to break the encryption, in a decade or two. Don't lock your keys in this house, because you will _NEVER_ be getting back in."
"I didn't bring all you along just for your sterling personalities," Corpsemaker said, sounding impatient. "There are seven of us, and one of it. Give me a crescent formation, and on the count of three, we 'knock.'"
The heavy doors managed to stand up to the barrage for almost five seconds. However, Corpsemaker finally added a little encouragement with his Linear Gun, and the metal glowed, split and peeled back. Specs lead the way, stepping through the smoldering hole. "I've got a corridor going down at a sixty degree slope for a hundred and fifty meters, terminating in an elevator shaft. I read active security and outgoing transmissions. They know we're here."
As the last Core stepped into the bunker, turrets popped out of the walls and ceiling in ambush formation and swiveled to acquire targets. There were an equal number of ACs and turrets. Three seconds later, there were no turrets. Corpsemaker heard a click over the radio, but it wasn't repeated so he ignored it. "Specs, what do you see?"
"I've got a clear scan down one more floor. Looks like heavy production equipment, probably MT."
"Well ladies, let's let them know their dates are here."
All seven Cores crowded into the lift at the end of the corridor. While they went down, Specs hacked into system, giving a low whistle. "Damn, they really built this place to last. I'm not seeing any weak points. Looks like twelve floors, a couple square kilometers at least of floor space. We want to shut this place down, we're going to have to blow out everything ourselves."
"That's what the ammo trucks are here for!" Gimlet exclaimed, and as soon as the lift doors opened he boosted out. Four doors lead out of the room, and Gimlet headed straight for the west one. He went through, and they heard him give an eager shout, and start shooting.
"He dies, and I'll kill him," Corpsemaker said.
A couple seconds later the gunfire paused and Gimlet called out, "Hey you guys, you're going to miss all the fun!" The other Cores went into the room and found Gimlet standing over the smoking ruins of almost two dozen small MTs. "Who's bad!" Gimlet crowed. "Whose bad?"
Corpsemaker's left arm flashed out in a vicious backhand, knocking Gimlet's Core off his feet and into the pile of destroyed MTs. "Not you, you dumbass. Who's the primary on this 'tract? Who did Global Cortex come to and ask, 'Oh pretty please, could you save our asses from being pounded raw by the big, mean, MTs?' Who is ever so kindly not only letting you bullet blockers accompany him, but paying _YOU_ for the privilege?"
"You," Gimlet said in a small voice.
"So who goes first?"
"You," Gimlet said even more quietly.
"Damn right me. We've got twelve floors that we have to burn through and clear out, otherwise none of us gets credit: one. If I get screwed out of my pot because you guys had to be morons, I swear to God and sunny Jesus that I will personally pay GC to figure out how to bring you back to life so that I can kill you again. Specs, you and Fenris are the least stupid people here, you're with me. The rest of you pair up and clear out the other rooms then we'll go on down to the next floor."
Corpsemaker lead the way into the south room. More deactivated MTs stood in rows before them, and the three stood abreast as they opened fire. Xan had a grin stretching from ear to ear. He'd fought this model on several previous occasions and they had never given him an easy time of it. It felt goooood, mowing them down. He flipped the GNL over his shoulder and took out the last half dozen in a single shot. "South clear," Corpsemaker called out, hearing similar responses from the other rooms. He heard the clicking again, repeatedly this time. "What the hell is that?"
"I'm counting kills," Xan replied. "I don't want to lose track of how many I've gotten."
Corpsemaker stared at the radio in dumbfoundment. "You don't count deactivated MTs!"
"Hey, if I blow up something real good so it won't ever be a problem again, it counts as a kill in my book," Xan said, raising his AC's right arm to show a large number of hash marks cut into the armor. "And then I cut it in there."
"And how many 'kills' have you got?"
"Seventy-eight."
"I've got fifty-three, and each of them was doing their best to _kill me_ when I greased them. If your AC steps on a car, do you count that as a 'kill' too?"
"Maybe."
"Forget what I said about being least stupid," Corpsemaker said in disgust. "Next floor you're in the rear running cleanup."
He ignored Xan's protests and headed back towards the elevator, meeting up with the rest of the ACs. They hadn't run into any active targets and cleared out all the rooms pretty quickly. Epic had found a transport lift that both ran to the surface, and deeper into the facility and wrecked it, ensuring that no one would be able to come up on them from behind. The only access now was the central lift, which they controlled.
The next floor down had six more doors. Specs read two production facilities, but the other four were too heavily shielded for him to get a return on.
Forgetting the lesson he was supposed to have learned, Gimlet headed straight for the northern door. Corpsemaker was talking to Specs, and didn't notice until Gimlet was already opening it.
"I've got active returns!" shouted Specs. "I'm reading multiple ACs.!"
Gimlet gave a shout of terror, and everyone else could hear cannon fire, not coming from him.
"Out of my way!" Corpsemaker shouted, going into overboost. Instead, Gimlet began shooting and backing up, staying directly in Corpsemaker's path. The ACs collided, and Corpsemaker pushed Gimlet _into_ the room. There was more gunfire, followed by a series of explosions, and then Gimlet boosted back out of the room, looking a great deal more battered than when he went in.
With a final rumble that caused plates to shake loose of the ceiling and fall clattering to the floor, the room fell quiet. Smoke belched from between the doors, and interference turned Xan's scope into a mass of shifting static.
"I've got nothing!" Specs shouted sounding worried. "Corpsemaker, you still there?"
Something moved within the roiling clouds, and they all fell back a step, aiming their weapons. Wisps of smoke rose from Corpsemaker's armor as it strode out of the room, and if the Core had a mouth, Xan was sure it would've blown on the barrel of its gun. "Who's bad?" Corpsemaker demanded.
"You are," was the lackluster reply.
"Damn straight I am, and don't you ladies forget it."
"You're going to get us all killed." Xan grumbled.
"What's my name?" he demanded.
Xan stared at the radio. "Corpsemaker," he finally grumbled.
"And what's yours?"
"Fe-"
"Wrong! Your name is Bitch! Now either shut up or puss out and let the _men_ take care of things. We've got three more rooms to take care of on this floor. Let's get started."
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They lost two Cores on the trip down. Janus was able to walk away from the ruin of his, and got to catch an early ride back with the Constellation. Epic wasn't so lucky. A bazooka barrage breached his cockpit, but he survived that. It was the Titan missile that acted as follow up that his luck failed him on.
After Epic bought it, they were finally able to convince Corpsemaker to head back topside to get their ammo stores topped and armor patched. Janus rode back with Specs. Epic was left where he lay.
It took almost a third of the tank of cubonite to patch up all the holes in Fenris, and it had taken enough damage to the superstructure that even when done, it's defensive value was a full third below its max.
Specs watched the Constellation's carrying clamps close on the ammo trucks as it prepared to lift off. "I don't think we're going to be able to pull this off," he said slowly. "We've got four more floors to go, and it looks like everything below is heavy AC production, and we're down a third of our fighting strength."
Xan listened intently, slowly depressing the button on his counter so that the clicks weren't audible over the radio.
"Contract says we take the place out. Unless you've been keeping a fusion bomb up your ass that you neglected to tell me about, we're going to be fighting our way through this one. You're already getting an extra 6K for this job. We keep pushing on, all it can do is go up."
Xan seriously wanted to cold cock Corpsemaker for his callousness, but decided he liked breathing too much to have his share added to the pot like that. "I didn't bring one, but I could probably make one..." Specs said slowly.
"What the hell else do you have on that Core," asked Gimlet incredulously.
"A place this big, I'd expect it had it's own power plant. I haven't seen any signs of steam vents, or reaction channels, so I don't think this place runs on a standard fission plant. I'm going to assume that buried down there somewhere is a fusion reactor. Probably the bottom floor. We disrupt the containment system so that it overloads instead of sputtering out, we're not going to have to worry about clearing those floors. Everything from the basement to three hundred meters above ground will be glowing slag."
"It just means going down with four floors of increasingly active hostiles above our heads."
"We control all the means of access. There's nothing they can do about it. We blow the reactor, they burn, we can go home and have a beer."
Corpsemaker chewed it over. Xan nervously fidgeted for a few minutes, then pulled out a ham sandwich he'd stowed along. "Alright," Corpsemaker said finally. "That sounds like a better deal then fighting through the whole thing." He sounded almost reluctant as the lift began descending towards the bottom of the installation.
It stopped one floor up from the bottom. Specs spent several minutes trying to over ride the computer and then gave a sigh of disgust. "Access is locked unless we hit the release lever on this floor, and it looks like there are at least a dozen ACs between us and it."
Corpsemaker laughed. "You make that sound like a bad thing," he said, activating his Linear Gun and striding through the lift doors. He was firing before he even got out of the shaft. "You girls all ready to go?"
The other four paused for a moment of despairing silence, and then followed. Xan swallowed and took another bite of his sandwich. "I've got extra mustard. Bring it on!"
=========================================
"Bottom floor," Specs declared. He sounded relieved. "Housewares, home improvements and fusion reactors."
The lift doors opened on the east side of a cavernous room, empty except for a door in the south and west walls, and a series of massive conduits and pipes that wove in and out of the walls. "This is the place," Specs announced. "Those are the cooling and energy lines for the magnetic containment system. The reactor must be close by."
Specs spun his core in a slow circle, getting a reading on everything in their vicinity. The gain on his active scanners was cranked up so high that Xan's radar scope began fuzzing out. "If I can't have kids because of you, my LG is going to have a date with your nuts." Corpsemaker threatened.
Specs ignored him. "I'm reading a large energy signature to the south. Must be the fusion reactor. I can't think of anything else that big."
Without waiting for Specs to finish, Corpsemaker headed for the door, the other Cores quickly following. "Lots of big stuff down here," Specs went on. "Looks like waste reclamation, and... more production machinery?" He was silent for a couple minutes, studying his scans more closely.
An empty corridor waited for them beyond the door, a door in the east wall hallway down before it made a sharp turn to the left. "Energy signature is behind that door," Specs said then went back to his scans. "That doesn't make sense. What the hell do you need that much equipment to make?" He asked to no one in particular as Corpsemaker opened the door. The room was dark, but he didn't even wait for them too fully open before pushing through, the others a step behind him.
Xan's gut clenched, and he almost lost control of his bladder as the overhead lights flickered on. Standing before them, rank upon rank, filling the room from wall to wall, were Big Whites. "Holy-" Corpsemaker began, and then as one, every MT turned to face them, raising their cannons, "-Mother of-!"
"SHIT!" shrieked Xan.
Roaring, Corpsemaker strafed to the side, his Linear Gun blazing. The other Cores were stock still, until some of the Big Whites started turning their way. Then everyone was screaming, shooting, and boosting every which way at once. Xan didn't even pause. He turned and shot back out the door. The blue flare of plasma was so bright that even turned away, his screen had gone completely black to keep him from being blinded.
He stopped and pivoted, waiting to see who was next out of the room. Surprisingly, it was Corpsemaker, who came flying out, striking the wall headfirst. That was the only first he could have hit with, because Corpsemaker seemed to have forgotten to bring the lower half of his Core with him.
Xan turned and bolted at as fast as he could. The only problem was that he'd gone in the wrong direction, fleeing away from the lift. It only took him a few seconds to realize his mistake, but he could already feel the floor shaking as all those MTs began to move, so many signatures appearing on his radar scope that it turned solid red. He fled even deeper, taking refuge in the guts of a machine that was slowly assembling even more Big Whites, powering down and praying that it would mask his signature.
It seemed to work, because nothing killed him, but the same machinery that hid him also blinded his passive sensors. He had no idea what was going on out there. As far as he knew, Big Whites were coming off the assembly line and immediately turning around, just waiting for him to stick his head out before slagging him into component chunks.
He didn't want to think of how many hours he spent huddled there, with nothing to do except watch the seconds tick off on the chronometer. He wondered how the Raven who'd been sent to the Layered was doing. He hoped this was enough of a distraction for him. He called back the sensor recordings of the production room. The computer told him there were precisely one hundred and three Big White units in there. He didn't believe it. There would have been so many energy signatures in there that it must've have gotten confused. He froze the image and counted himself. Four times, not counting the restarts when he lost count. One hundred and three Big Whites. The computer estimated that between the four of them, the other Ravens had probably destroyed or disabled three.
As the hours piled up, he asked it what the probability was that he'd gotten really lucky and they'd managed to destroy all the Big Whites.
Zero.
He'd never seen a computer give that answer before. No matter how unlikely, no matter how many decimal places it had to go, there was always a one buried in there somewhere, always the tiniest possible chance that maybe, _maybe_ it could happen. He asked it again.
Zero.
He recounted the Big Whites, decided that maybe he'd underestimated Corpsemaker, and asked for the odds on them taking out ninety big whites.
After watching a string of zeroes pour out from the decimal point for eight seconds he told the computer to cancel the calculation. He asked the computer what his chances were of taking them out. The computer didn't laugh at him, but he was sure that it was thinking about it. What it did instead was paste a damage readout on his screen. He'd lost about half his armor, most of the barrel off his GNL, and his entire rocket pack. His Moonlight and machine gun were doing peachy though. Then it presented his chance versus one Big White: 32.1%. Then it showed two: 2.3%. Three: .03. Four: .000001. It didn't bother showing him any more beyond that.
The waiting was starting to get to him. He kept hearing voices on the radio, saw flashes on his passive sensors out of the corners of his eyes, thought he felt vibrations indicating that all the Big Whites were coming for him.
He heard a voice on the radio. They were begging him for help. Pleading. He was there only hope. He tried to ignore it, but it kept getting louder. Sweat started beading on his forehead, stinging as it dripped into his eyes. With a sound that was halfway between a scream of terror and a battlecry, Xan charged out of his hiding spot, ready to go out in a blaze of glory.
The room was empty. His eyes went to his radar. No blips. The radio was quiet. He could feel his heart climbing up into his throat as he crept towards the door. He opened it, his radar staying clear. Then he almost stepped on Gimlet. The burned and broken Core was scattered in pieces almost half the length of the hall. He swallowed, and took a step back. Then he felt the vibrations running through the floor. It wasn't in his head this time. His computer chose that moment to flash the words, 'Radar error: reinitializing system' on his screen. His scope flickered, and when it came back on, it looked like it'd been hit with a case of the measles. He panicked, and hit the boosters, taking off for the end of the hall. He realized that once again he was heading the wrong way when the door opened ahead of him, and a Big White lowered its gun as he stepped through.
There wasn't enough time for Xan to stop, and he slammed directly into the larger mech. It was only the fact that he had a quad design that Fernis kept to its feet. The impact knocked the Big White's cannon aside, and pushed the larger MT back a step. In a panic, Xan hit the overboosters, ramming back into the Big White, and actually pushing it back further. He pushed it through the doors before he could finally get control back, but the overboost refused to cut out.and pushed it back even further. The door began to close, and he frantically tried to turn Fenris around. The AC bounced off a wall, back off the Big White, and then back through the doors just before they shut, rocketing down the hall. His overboost didn't cut out until he hit the wreck of Gimlet, the boosters shutting out and Fenris tumbling to a stop.
His radar was working only intermittently, but when it did function, it showed red dots moving in on him from all directions, including straight ahead. His eyes went to the automap. He wasn't that far from the lift, and there weren't too many Big Whites in the way. He laugher nervously. How hard could it be?
Xan kicked Fenris back into overboost as he turned a corner. The door at the end of the corridor opened to the corridor that lead to the lift. Problem being it was open because six Big Whites had just stepped through. Fenris shot up, it's cranial armor sparking as it bounced off the ceiling, shooting over the Big Whites. It's legs didn't quite clear them, and it almost lost three as their feet smacked straight into the Big Whites' faces. Xan had to drop suddenly to duck the door jamb, and didn't quite make it, the radar mast tearing off in a squeal of angry electronics and ripping metal.
He sucked a charge from the Mallum, to keep the Fenris overboosting down the corridor, bouncing off the walls, only to see a very solid looking blast door dropping down in front of him. It had already dropped half its height. There was no way for the Fenris to fit underneath.
The Core rocketed down the corridor, an unstoppable force headed for a high speed rendezvous with an immovable object. At the last second Xan cut the overbooster, closed his eyes, and shut off the power for the magnetic locks in the Fenris' knees. The Core hit the floor, and it's legs shot out from beneath it. With a horrendous screeching, and a fountain of sparks, Fenris skidded just under the blast door, its head clearing the bottom of the door by millimeters, its armor making the most god awful shriek as it scraped over the floor plates. The Core turned as it slid, so that he was facing back the way he came when he came to a stop. Xan restored power to the legs, and as the Core stood he sprayed the door mechanism with machine gun fire. Nothing was going to be able to get through there now.
He turned around, and found the rest of the Big Whites waiting for him.
The only reason he didn't die right then was because there were so many of them that they had to hold their fire to keep from hitting each other. The front rank was barely ten meters away, and it only took them a couple seconds to adjust their tactics to the crowd. A stream of shells etched a puckered line up Fenris' chest and tore what we left of his GNL off its shoulder. Xan hit the boosters for all they were worth. He had the vertical clearance now to keep from kicking the MTs in the face, and shot towards the lift at full speed. He saw that someone must've already tried that, because where the doors had been was now a charred and twisted vaguely door shaped hole in the wall.
He watched with sick fascination at the progressive wave of movement as the ranks of Big Whites turned after him as he passed over head. He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and jinked left, away from the lift, getting out of the path of a plasma burst. A grenade shot came close enough to jolt his temp guage a good fifty degrees. His capacitor gauge started trilling to get his attention. He was almost out of juice, and barely two thirds of the way across room, a sea of hostile MTs right below him.
Xan crossed his fingers, and cut the boosters.
If there were three terms that categorized the Big Whites, it was big, broad, and heavy. Xan had sunk some serious credits into getting the best quad link navigational control system on the market, and now was the time to put it to the test. Fenris shuddered as the computer tried to position its legs mid drop. Three legs came down squarely on top of a Big White, while the fourth kicked in empty air before managing to plant itself square on an MT's head. Fenris wobbled, and then stood tall above the crowd.
The Big Whites were pissed. He was too low for the ones on the edge to draw a bead on him, and the middle of the crowd was too dense for them to easily bring their guns to bear, or pull too far apart to stand on. The entire mass began moving, trying to make enough room to dump him on the floor so they could tear him apart. It was a subtle assessment of the past few hours to declare that this as the best shape he'd been in all day.
Xan tried to push the Fenris to move forward. The computer balked, and he could almost hear the calculations burning through the wires as tentatively, Fenris put one leg forward, onto the shoulders of another Big White, then rapidly leapt forward with the other three. The MTs, with their flat heads and broad shoulders proved to be surprisingly suitable, if overwhelmingly hostile, stepping stones. Although trying to maintain balance on the shifting, uneven surface made the Fenris convulse like a spastic in a grand mal, Xan was able to slowly work his way towards the lift. Halfway there he started giggling, and almost lost it completely. He was probably the first person ever to make his Core boogie like that. Tears were streaming from his eye, and he'd almost made it to the edge of the crowd when his capacitors topped out, and without hesitating he threw the Core into overboost.
Fenris shot through the lift doors, slamming into what was left of Spec's Core. The last of his giggles died fast. It'd been slagged so hard that it'd actually melted into the rear wall of the shaft. Xan stared at it in horror almost a second too long. As he hit the boosters, leaping into the air, a maelstrom of plasma poured into the shaft. Fenris took a beating, as what was left of Specs, the lift and the base of the shaft were obliterated in a flare of blue fire. Fenris boosted as high as the doors to the next floor, but the capacitors didn't have enough charge to get him to the one above that. There wasn't any room to land, and he wasn't sure how to trigger the doors with the lift still a floor down. He hovered for a moment, then activated the overboost. He led with Fenris' right shoulder, and at the last second realized that put his machine gun in line to hit the door first, but it was too late to change course. The doors dented as the gun struck them, and then the rest of Fenris hit them, and they burst outward.
Xan opened his Core's right hand, dropping the shattered grip of his machine gun. That'd been his last weapon, save for the Moonlight. At least he was safe, for the moment. The Big Whites had destroyed the lift, and he knew that they couldn't boost. He just had to somehow make it up the rest of the shaft without the help of the elev-.
He saw something flash up through the lift shaft out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw nothing, but before he could pass it off as nerves he saw something else flash by the open doors, something big and white. As a third shape flashed by, and with a ground rattling clang the first Big White landed on the lip of the open doors, and as it stepped forward another landed behind it, and then another. They might not have been able to boost, but they sure could jump.
Xan didn't wait for them to bring their weapons to bear. He boosted backwards, slamming through another door, a tremendous clang accompanying the arrival of each additional Big White. It sounded like ALL of them were coming up after him. He had to slow as soon as he was through the door to keep from tangling up in wreckage. They'd really done a number on this floor, and the corridor was cluttered with debris and broken MTs. He also hoped that the clutter would foul up whatever sensors the Big White's were using. He glanced back behind him when he reached the end of the corridor, just in time to see the Big Whites come through the door. The first one stopped, stymied by the wreckage in it's path, and then raised its gun and started blasting through. Xan didn't stick around to what it's follow up act would be.
He darted around the corner and into the maze of corridors beyond. He overlayed the map on his view screen, looking for one destination in particular. He found it, four hundred meters and three turns to the left later on. It'd been a storage room until Corpsemaker had done a real tap dance on it. Wreckage was scattered everywhere, in tangles big enough to hide a Core in, nothing to distinguish it except for it's energy signature, and their were ways to deal with that. He positioned his Core behind some twisted support spars, leaving just enough of Fenris exposed for the passive sensors to look out into the corridor beyond. Then he powered down everything. As every light in the cockpit, save for the dim image on the screen in front of them, faded out, he felt a manical grin cross his face. He felt giddy from the rush of fear and adrenaline that his near escape had filled him with, and it suffused him with a strange sort of confidence. If he'd been able to escape from a room wall to wall with Big Whites, then slipping past a few more than getting up the shaft should be no problem. He'd just have to sit for a few minutes and think up a plan.
It'd only take a couple minutes.
=========================================
It'd just take a couple of hours. A couple of hours more and he'd have a plan. He repeated the mantra to himself. One moonlight, one badly damaged AC, one hundred undamaged opponents. One him. One hundred them. He wished that he'd been a mathematician. Then he would've known how to make the odds better.
He started doing math in his head to keep from flipping out. Five minutes between groups. If he waited a two and a half minutes, that would mean it would be at its farthest point from him. The optimal time to sneak out. Unless it wasn't the same group he kept seeing, which would mean at a two and a half minutes, he would be equally distant from both of them, which was good, but it would mean he had one group in front, one group behind, which was very, very bad. If he could get them all in once place, and then cut them off from the shaft, that would be very very good. If-. Xan had an idea. He accessed his auto map, and overlaid the diagrams of the floors. His idea solidified into a plan. Now he just needed to get out of the storage room.
At precisely five minutes, another group of MTs came marching past, their guns held menacingly out in front of them. He watched the first three march past, but then his eyes lit up. He had his way out.
As the last Big White stomped by, he threw Fenris into emergency start up, not waiting for any of the weapon systems to cycle up before sliding out of his hiding place. Those big, fat, nasty cannons, those were what were going to even the odds for him. Maybe. Everything they shot was nasty, but the plasma was the worst. You couldn't just say, 'as you please,' and whip up a batch of that stuff on the spot, you had to carry it around with you and let out a little at a time whenever you came across some asshole stupid enough to stand in front of you. When plasma's visible wavelength shifted to the blue end of things, you weren't just cooking with fire, you were cooking with the shit that made fire dump in its pants, and leave a ripe brown trail running home to momma. Cooking with that kind of power had its own set of risks.
The last Big White detected him, and was turning, it's cannon pointed up in order to clear the wall as it pivoted. The others began to spin too, but the corridor would be too narrow for them to fire unless they shot through the MTs in front of them.
Xan could see the plasma containment unit, a fat, squat cylinder two thirds of the way down the triple barreled cannon. His FCS still hadn't cycled up yet. He would have to hope that luck and skill were with him.
The Fenris' arm shot out, the Moonlight scoring the wall as it powered up, then flashed across in a horizontal slash. The Big White made no move to defend itself, sure in the knowledge that it's armor would protect it, but Xan wasn't aiming for the Big White.
The laser sword sliced easily through cannon, making a shallow cut across the plasma cylinder, and up into the stock. Too deep and it would've breached the containment, obliterating him in a conflagration of superheated matter. Too shallow and all he would've done was ruin the polish on a nice gun. Xan began backing up as electricity began sparking from the gash in the canister. He didn't dare take the time to turn around. The Big White lowered its gun, took a moment to consider the damage he'd inflicted on it, and then fired.
His screen polarized dead black, so he didn't actually see the firestorm, but he felt it as it kicked Fenris down the hallway bouncing it off the walls, but at least that was the direction he wanted to go. He knew when he reached the door when his Core slammed to a stop. His screen gradually lightened to a transparent enough gray for him to see that the bare metal walls were burning. There was no sign of the MTs that had been at the heart of the inferno. He didn't wait around to be sure of what happened to them, barely waiting for the door to clear Fenris' head and then darting down the hall back towards the elevator.
He had the computer overlay the map of this room, and the one below it, looking for a specific spot. He powered up the Moonlight, and then stabbed it down, into the floor, locking it on. He felt the generator kick up at the continuous drain, but ignored it, slicing a square almost twice the width of his Core into the floor, and then slashing an X through the middle. The floor held. At this depth it was too thick to cut completely through, but he'd been counting on that.
He dashed for the shaft, reaching it just as the Big Whites made it through the door, grenade blasts gouging holes in the walls around him. He leapt into the shaft, and then dropped down. He'd never be able to make it, boosting straight up. It would only take one Big White firing straight up to cook his ass. He would have to deal with all hundred of them first before he could make his chance to escape.
Sure thing, no problem.
He was halfway across the room when he heard the first Big White hit the bottom of the shaft, but he kept on moving. He saw two of the doors opening, and Big Whites come through, but he ignored those two. Just before running into the far wall, Xan cut his boosters, swung his Core around, and stopped. The Big Whites all averted their cannons.
Xan had stopped Fenris right in front of the biggest tangle of conduits and pipes. If they missed him, they could kiss the fusion reactor good bye.
It was a hell of a stand off. Big Whites kept arriving, dropping down the lift shaft, or entering through the door on the other side of the room. With most of his scanners offline, he couldn't get a count, but it looked like they were all coming in. They started pushing around him, and he extended Fenris' left arm, putting the Moonlight right in line with a conduit. They tried extra hard to give him room after that.
As the minutes stretched on, Xan tried very hard to keep his cool. At least he wasn't hiding in a corner this time. Big Whites stopped pushing out of the lift shaft, which he hoped meant that all the ones above him were now down there. He programmed a set of commands into the computer, because he knew there was no way he'd be able to pull them off himself. He closed his eyes, prayed, and then hit the execute button.
All the lights in the cockpit dimmed as the capacitor directed its full ouput to Fenris' left arm. The Moonlight leapt out almost twice it's usual length, it's surface blazing the same shade as the Big Whites' plasma. The Core's arm dropped, slicing through a magnetic control line, and then further, the overloaded Moonlight cutting deeply into the plasma containment line.
The lower half of Fenris' left arm simply vanished, vaporized. Pressurized plasma tore open the ruptured line, shooting straight out across the room, cutting a line clean through the ranks of Big Whites, straight to the lift shaft. The next part of the program kicked in, and Fenris' overboost activated, throwing the Core forward and up, slamming it at full speed into the ceiling.
The weakened plates gave way, bursting upwards exactly along the lines that Xan had cut, making a hole big enough to fit an AC, but hopefully to small for the Big Whites to follow. He raced towards the lift, the doors helpfully blown open by the pressure wave of the plasma blast. The burst was already beginning to drop off, but the walls of the shaft were glowing bright red. His temperature gauge warned him not to go in there. Like a lot of other things that day, he ignored it.
He could feel the entire facility begin to shake as the fusion reaction continued unabated, but the magnetic containment began breaking down. A small sun was about to go nova in the basement, which would be cool, if he wasn't still just one floor above it. He leapt into the shaft and then boosted upwards. pumping the Mallum for all they were worth, draining the remaining charges in a matter of seconds.
Halfway up and the force of the pressure wave had decreased enough so that the lift doors were only buckled outwards. His capacitors had almost completely drained their charge, and started chiming warningly. He didn't want to stop, but the thought of draining them completely, and dropping all the way back to the bottom almost made him wet himself. He plowed through the doors and dropped to the floor, watching his capacitor charge rebuild with agonizing slowness.
The floor was shaking so hard that Fenris almost couldn't keep it's feet, and Xan was getting bounced around the cockpit like a bean in a rattle. He couldn't make himself wait for the capacitors to get back up to full before leaping back into the shaft. He only made it up three floors that time. He almost started to cry, but he forced himself to wait for the charge to build to full before boosting again. He gave another sob, this time of relief, as he reached the top floor, and threw Fenris against the lift doors.
They held.
Xan stared at the metal in disbelief as his energy gauge began to chime. He threw Fenris against them again, but they till didn't budge. In desperation he hit the overboost, and his computer screamed at him as the charge dropped straight to empty, but before the boosters sputtered out, they gave him enough momentum to slam through the doors.
Almost.
Fenris got stuck halfway through, three of its legs scrabbling in air for purchase. Its remaining arm was on the outside of the door, but there was nothing to grab onto. He felt something deep below him give a massive rumble, and he heard metal screaming as another pressure wave came belching up the shaft. It slammed into Fenris, and the doors were torn out of the wall as the AC was thrown across the room. Fenris staggered back to its feet, still wearing the doors. It staggered towards the corridor out, but then jolted to a halt, the doors making it to wide to fit out.
"This is not happening to me!" Xan screamed, slamming into the wall repeatedly. He glanced at the energy gauge; the capacitors were still redlined, but had almost finished rebuilding their operating charge. One final slam tore the doors away, along with most of his dorsal armor, and the Core drunkenly bounced off the walls as it tried for the exit.
The corridor's floor sloped upwards sharply, and Fenris' over worked drive system simply didn't want to take it. "Damn it, move!" Xan shouted, hitting the boosters. Fenris shot straight into the air, slamming against the ceiling, the impact shutting off the boosters. It slammed back into the ground, shattering the knee on its rear, right leg.
"Argh!" Xan shouted. "Move! Movemovemovemovemove!" The corridor was shaking so hard that Xan's head was ricocheting around the inside of his helmet. Fenris' remaining legs found purchase and it lurched forward. Xan hit the boosters again, angling them this time, and the Core shot forward and up, towards the distant exit.
The ground gave a massive shudder, and the rumbling behind him grew louder than everything. The temperature gauge shot up and he didn't dare look back, because he knew that the fire was coming for him. "Pleasebabyc'monbabydothis-formebabymove!"
The pressure wave, focused by its ascent up the elevator shaft, and compressed even more as it raced up the narrow corridor caught up with the Core and picked it up, whirling it around like a leaf. The sudden Gs of acceleration made Xan's world go momentarily dark as the Fenris shot out between the twisted doors and into daylight like a watermelon seed.
Xan came back to his sense as the Fenris hit the top of its arc, and he could see the world, bright and glittering in the midday sun, laid beneath him. Then the Core began to fall.
The earth came rushing up towards his screen, and he could see individual pebbles as his Core hit the ground with a bone rattling _crash!_ Then he was staring up at sky as it bounced, still tumbling, into the air. Fenris hit the ground, again, slamming him against the seat restraints so hard that he expected to feel bruises from the chest buckle on his back, and then begin to roll arm over arm. It finally came to a stop on its back, the screen half-heartedly polarizing as the sun glared right into his face. He tried to take off his helmet and then realized that he wasn't wearing it: it had split in half.
He had to kick the cockpit hatch to get it open, and the descent ladder was missing completely. He tried sliding out, but the surface was too smooth to keep a grip on, and he slipped, shooting out the hatch, bouncing off of the Core's hip, and getting a mouthful of grit as he landed face first in the loose soil.
He painfully staggered to his feet spitting gravel, blood streaming from his smashed nose. He looked back from where he'd come. A column of black smoke stretched up towards the sky. Flames hundreds of meters tall belched from the ground. He spun around and laughed like a madman. The entire facility, and every Big White in it was so much molten metal. He'd done it. He would've done cartwheels if he hadn't been in so much pain. "Yeah!" Xan shouted, pumping his fist in the air, then coughed as blood streamed into his mouth. "Who's bad!" he shouted at the wreckage. "Who's bad! I'm bad, that's who!"
Fenris' remaining arm was helpfully resting upon the soil. Xan hobbled over to it, took the microwelder out of his pocket, fired it up, and gleefully began to score the metal. "One, two, three..."
=========================================
=========================================
Xan cowered lower in his seat as the ground vibrated beneath the tread of heavy feet. A mass of twisted metal obscured most of his viewscreen but beyond it he could see a wide corridor. At that moment, four of the MTs unofficially dubbed 'Big White' came marching by, each one holding a cannon as big as his Core. He could see their heads swinging right and left, and prayed that they wouldn't see him.
The first went by, and then the next. A few seconds passed, but the third hadn't appeared yet. Where was it? His eyes darted left, then right, but all that he could see was twisted metal. He couldn't stand the tension and sweat poured down his face as he prayed for the end to come quick. The third Big White passed by, no slower than the second, followed by the fourth. They hadn't seen him that time, just like the time before and the time before that. He could only hope that they (or was it a different group? He couldn't tell, they all looked the same) wouldn't see him when they passed by again in five minutes.
He'd shut down all of the Core's systems hours ago to keep it from being detected, and that included life support. The air in the cockpit was hot, moist, and stank of fear. He wasn't sure how long he'd been down there, and he didn't dare activate the light on his watch, on the paranoid fear that even that _tiny_ of an energy discharge would bring their collective wrath down upon his head. His fingers trembled, reaching out for the nub anyway. Dying would be a change. Anything different would be a break. His bowels were trying to tell him that he'd been down there a year and a half, and his bladder was screaming four.
What made it even worse was that this wasn't the first time he'd been trapped in a dark corner, and if he got out, he _knew_ that it wouldn't the be last. The one question in his mind was when he'd finally get his part of the farm, signed, sealed, and delivered with a big fat FUCK YOU stamped on the top. If he'd had clue-Mother-Trucking-Father-Scraping-One when Corpsemaker'd gone around looking for consorts, A-Ranked bad ass among bad ass Ravens or no, he would've told him EXACTLY where to shove it.
Sideways.
=========================================
Corpsemaker had swaggered into the Nerves Concord cantina. He swaggered everywhere he went, but loath as some people were to admit it, he'd earned that particular privilege. Humility wasn't his style. Neither was subtlety. "Alright you wannabes," his voice got a kick from a speak- easier, making sure it was heard by everyone. "I've got a contract from Global Cortex in my pocket and open slots for six consorts. Who wants to make history?"
The quiet was deafening. With the latest developments along the Silent Line, the cantina was packed with Ravens waiting for the word, much like this one, to come down before heading back into action. Specs, a notorious gear head with wire frame glasses, was the first to speak up. "Six? Global must've given you a seat on the Board if you wanna offer enough for people to want to take your crap."
"For 30K," that got everyone's attention, "I not only expect you to take it, but put it in a baggie and tie it with a pink ribbon," Corpsemaker replied with a pompous grin.
Xan gave a low wolf whistle. "Somebody must love you."
"Besides your mother?" Corpsemaker showed a bit more tooth. "All I had to do was ask them real low and sweet, and they," he made a rude spreading gesture, "just opened their coffers wide."
Janus, an ever-pragmatic tanker spoke out next. "Before we get in line to kiss your ass for a share of the pot, maybe you could enlighten us as to why Global Cortex is willing to hocka cupla kidneys over to you?"
Corpsemaker waited for people to start getting restless before answering. "You've all heard rumors about the Layered they found beyond the Silent Line?"
That set the room off hotter than a rocket to the face. "They're sending us there?!" Specs shouted eagerly, although his voice was lost in the tumult as all the other Ravens in the room shouted the same question.
Corpsemaker's mouth twisted down into an angry sneer. "Naw, they're giving that peach to one of their 'pets.'" No one needed to ask whom he meant. He'd been nursing a serious hate-on since getting his Core blown out from under him during an ambush gone wrong at the Archive Area. "For the price tag, GC is giving us the privilege of doing a little walking target, a little crash and burn. They've pinned down where all those attacks from behind the Line are coming from. We go in, provide a distraction while GC's 'caged' Raven penetrates the Layered. Since they've left precise interpretation of 'distraction' up to me, I'm interpreting it to mean we turn it into a smoking hole in the ground. That agreeable to anyone else?"
Xan's hand was the first up, although he was followed a moment later by most of the room. "Give me a slot. Fenris wants to sink his teeth into this one." The worst part of the contract would be taking orders from Corpsemaker, but at that price it was a drawback he was willing to live with.
Corpsemaker seemed to be showing a fond spot for the people who'd spoken up, because he gave a nod not only to him, but to Specs and Janus as well. The other three slots he ceded to Gimlet, Calamity and Epic. It was easy to see the reasoning behind his selections. All the consorts he'd chosen piloted heavy Cores, just what he'd need for consorts on a mission that'd probably involve taking a lot of shit, and then dishing out even more.
Corpsemaker didn't stick around to rub shoulders with his hires, or take crap from all the other Ravens who wanted a shot at convincing him they were a better choice. He slid his consorts a 5K advance and promised the other twenty-five after the mission, plus a divided parcel from the share of anyone who wasn't breathing enough to enjoy it. Then he told them to blow. He didn't give quite as short a shrift to any of the women who tried for his attention, and from the looks they were giving him, he was laying on the whole, 'pity we who are about to die,' line pretty thick. He must've been doing it pretty well, because he succeeded at getting a girl to brush off her current companions and look like she was leaving with him.
Twice.
Xan took it as a sign of divine favor and took a shot at it himself. He got a drink dumped on his head, a bowl of stew poured in his lap, and a gun shoved in his face. He took the hint and returned to his hangar alone.
=========================================
Twelve hours later, and the seven of them were carted out to the Line split between a Galaxy transport plane, and a Constellation carrier 'copter. Xan, and most of the other pilots had their eyes glued to the map screen, watching the icon representing them approach the Silent Line. Although none of them realized it, they all held their breaths as they passed into the red, letting them out when they came out the other side still alive.
Corpsemaker was sprawled out on the other side of the cargo hold, loudly proclaiming how little feeling he had in his legs. Xan ignored him, as did everyone else. No one had shared Corpsemaker's luck in eliciting 'sympathy.'
The Galaxy's hold was made even more crowded by two ammo trucks, with ungainly looking tanks bolted atop their cargo beds. It was those tanks that made Xan realize how seriously Mirage was taking the mission, because they were filled with cubonite gas in gel suspension. The armor plates that Cores used were made out of carbon-ceramic-steel, and when you mixed cubonite with oxygen, threw in a little hydrogen for zest, and sprayed it on a battered Core, the c2s armor would regenerate damaged segments like a salamander on a mutilation kick. It was also expensive as hell, but unlike armor plates, you could slap on cubonite in the field.
Xan felt the Galaxy tilt and drop, beginning to circle. "We're here," Corpsemaker announced, swaggering over to his Core and climbing into the cockpit. The map showed nothing but wasteland and ruins, but no one was inclined to disagree.
The ground was smooth enough for the Galaxy to touch down, and brake to a hard stop. The Galaxy dropped its ramp, Fenris, Corpsemaker, Calamity, and Janus stepping out, followed a moment later by the ammo trucks. The Constellation was a half hour slower, and as it arrived, it released the clamps holding the Cores to its frame, dropping Gimlet, Epic, and Specs. It touched down a moment later, its twin rotors kicking up a thick cloud of dust.
The only break in the ground was a few hundred meters away, a low, bunker- like structure sticking up from the dirt. "That it?" Gimlet asked, cycling up the ammo belts on his Core's arms.
The Galaxy taxied and took off, it's vertical booster straining to get it off the ground. The Constellation stayed put. It'd carry out the ammo trucks when they finished with them. "According to Mirage," Corpsemaker replied. "That there is the source of all those MTs and ACs that have been giving us so much trouble across the Line."
Mileage sniffed. "Doesn't look like much. Not much defense either."
"That's because all of its ready defense should be running full tilt towards the Layered, and now we're going to make them leave skid marks as they try and figure out whether to keep going or come back and try and stop us from burning down the house."
Specs had mounted an advanced scanning package on his Core, and had so many different sensors going that it was causing interference returns on Xan's radar. "There's heavy shielding, but I think I'm reading a pretty large complex below us. Looks like the right place to me. Nothing currently mobile."
"Let's get this party started," Janus said and headed to the bunker door. He tried to open it, but was repulsed by an angry blat. "My computer can't hack the lock. Someone else want to take a shot?"
"There's a reason I'm here, aside from keeping the average IQ out of the negative," Specs said, shouldering Janus aside. He spent almost a minute interfacing with the door, but then backed away with a curse. "Or... not. I might be able to break the encryption, in a decade or two. Don't lock your keys in this house, because you will _NEVER_ be getting back in."
"I didn't bring all you along just for your sterling personalities," Corpsemaker said, sounding impatient. "There are seven of us, and one of it. Give me a crescent formation, and on the count of three, we 'knock.'"
The heavy doors managed to stand up to the barrage for almost five seconds. However, Corpsemaker finally added a little encouragement with his Linear Gun, and the metal glowed, split and peeled back. Specs lead the way, stepping through the smoldering hole. "I've got a corridor going down at a sixty degree slope for a hundred and fifty meters, terminating in an elevator shaft. I read active security and outgoing transmissions. They know we're here."
As the last Core stepped into the bunker, turrets popped out of the walls and ceiling in ambush formation and swiveled to acquire targets. There were an equal number of ACs and turrets. Three seconds later, there were no turrets. Corpsemaker heard a click over the radio, but it wasn't repeated so he ignored it. "Specs, what do you see?"
"I've got a clear scan down one more floor. Looks like heavy production equipment, probably MT."
"Well ladies, let's let them know their dates are here."
All seven Cores crowded into the lift at the end of the corridor. While they went down, Specs hacked into system, giving a low whistle. "Damn, they really built this place to last. I'm not seeing any weak points. Looks like twelve floors, a couple square kilometers at least of floor space. We want to shut this place down, we're going to have to blow out everything ourselves."
"That's what the ammo trucks are here for!" Gimlet exclaimed, and as soon as the lift doors opened he boosted out. Four doors lead out of the room, and Gimlet headed straight for the west one. He went through, and they heard him give an eager shout, and start shooting.
"He dies, and I'll kill him," Corpsemaker said.
A couple seconds later the gunfire paused and Gimlet called out, "Hey you guys, you're going to miss all the fun!" The other Cores went into the room and found Gimlet standing over the smoking ruins of almost two dozen small MTs. "Who's bad!" Gimlet crowed. "Whose bad?"
Corpsemaker's left arm flashed out in a vicious backhand, knocking Gimlet's Core off his feet and into the pile of destroyed MTs. "Not you, you dumbass. Who's the primary on this 'tract? Who did Global Cortex come to and ask, 'Oh pretty please, could you save our asses from being pounded raw by the big, mean, MTs?' Who is ever so kindly not only letting you bullet blockers accompany him, but paying _YOU_ for the privilege?"
"You," Gimlet said in a small voice.
"So who goes first?"
"You," Gimlet said even more quietly.
"Damn right me. We've got twelve floors that we have to burn through and clear out, otherwise none of us gets credit: one. If I get screwed out of my pot because you guys had to be morons, I swear to God and sunny Jesus that I will personally pay GC to figure out how to bring you back to life so that I can kill you again. Specs, you and Fenris are the least stupid people here, you're with me. The rest of you pair up and clear out the other rooms then we'll go on down to the next floor."
Corpsemaker lead the way into the south room. More deactivated MTs stood in rows before them, and the three stood abreast as they opened fire. Xan had a grin stretching from ear to ear. He'd fought this model on several previous occasions and they had never given him an easy time of it. It felt goooood, mowing them down. He flipped the GNL over his shoulder and took out the last half dozen in a single shot. "South clear," Corpsemaker called out, hearing similar responses from the other rooms. He heard the clicking again, repeatedly this time. "What the hell is that?"
"I'm counting kills," Xan replied. "I don't want to lose track of how many I've gotten."
Corpsemaker stared at the radio in dumbfoundment. "You don't count deactivated MTs!"
"Hey, if I blow up something real good so it won't ever be a problem again, it counts as a kill in my book," Xan said, raising his AC's right arm to show a large number of hash marks cut into the armor. "And then I cut it in there."
"And how many 'kills' have you got?"
"Seventy-eight."
"I've got fifty-three, and each of them was doing their best to _kill me_ when I greased them. If your AC steps on a car, do you count that as a 'kill' too?"
"Maybe."
"Forget what I said about being least stupid," Corpsemaker said in disgust. "Next floor you're in the rear running cleanup."
He ignored Xan's protests and headed back towards the elevator, meeting up with the rest of the ACs. They hadn't run into any active targets and cleared out all the rooms pretty quickly. Epic had found a transport lift that both ran to the surface, and deeper into the facility and wrecked it, ensuring that no one would be able to come up on them from behind. The only access now was the central lift, which they controlled.
The next floor down had six more doors. Specs read two production facilities, but the other four were too heavily shielded for him to get a return on.
Forgetting the lesson he was supposed to have learned, Gimlet headed straight for the northern door. Corpsemaker was talking to Specs, and didn't notice until Gimlet was already opening it.
"I've got active returns!" shouted Specs. "I'm reading multiple ACs.!"
Gimlet gave a shout of terror, and everyone else could hear cannon fire, not coming from him.
"Out of my way!" Corpsemaker shouted, going into overboost. Instead, Gimlet began shooting and backing up, staying directly in Corpsemaker's path. The ACs collided, and Corpsemaker pushed Gimlet _into_ the room. There was more gunfire, followed by a series of explosions, and then Gimlet boosted back out of the room, looking a great deal more battered than when he went in.
With a final rumble that caused plates to shake loose of the ceiling and fall clattering to the floor, the room fell quiet. Smoke belched from between the doors, and interference turned Xan's scope into a mass of shifting static.
"I've got nothing!" Specs shouted sounding worried. "Corpsemaker, you still there?"
Something moved within the roiling clouds, and they all fell back a step, aiming their weapons. Wisps of smoke rose from Corpsemaker's armor as it strode out of the room, and if the Core had a mouth, Xan was sure it would've blown on the barrel of its gun. "Who's bad?" Corpsemaker demanded.
"You are," was the lackluster reply.
"Damn straight I am, and don't you ladies forget it."
"You're going to get us all killed." Xan grumbled.
"What's my name?" he demanded.
Xan stared at the radio. "Corpsemaker," he finally grumbled.
"And what's yours?"
"Fe-"
"Wrong! Your name is Bitch! Now either shut up or puss out and let the _men_ take care of things. We've got three more rooms to take care of on this floor. Let's get started."
=========================================
They lost two Cores on the trip down. Janus was able to walk away from the ruin of his, and got to catch an early ride back with the Constellation. Epic wasn't so lucky. A bazooka barrage breached his cockpit, but he survived that. It was the Titan missile that acted as follow up that his luck failed him on.
After Epic bought it, they were finally able to convince Corpsemaker to head back topside to get their ammo stores topped and armor patched. Janus rode back with Specs. Epic was left where he lay.
It took almost a third of the tank of cubonite to patch up all the holes in Fenris, and it had taken enough damage to the superstructure that even when done, it's defensive value was a full third below its max.
Specs watched the Constellation's carrying clamps close on the ammo trucks as it prepared to lift off. "I don't think we're going to be able to pull this off," he said slowly. "We've got four more floors to go, and it looks like everything below is heavy AC production, and we're down a third of our fighting strength."
Xan listened intently, slowly depressing the button on his counter so that the clicks weren't audible over the radio.
"Contract says we take the place out. Unless you've been keeping a fusion bomb up your ass that you neglected to tell me about, we're going to be fighting our way through this one. You're already getting an extra 6K for this job. We keep pushing on, all it can do is go up."
Xan seriously wanted to cold cock Corpsemaker for his callousness, but decided he liked breathing too much to have his share added to the pot like that. "I didn't bring one, but I could probably make one..." Specs said slowly.
"What the hell else do you have on that Core," asked Gimlet incredulously.
"A place this big, I'd expect it had it's own power plant. I haven't seen any signs of steam vents, or reaction channels, so I don't think this place runs on a standard fission plant. I'm going to assume that buried down there somewhere is a fusion reactor. Probably the bottom floor. We disrupt the containment system so that it overloads instead of sputtering out, we're not going to have to worry about clearing those floors. Everything from the basement to three hundred meters above ground will be glowing slag."
"It just means going down with four floors of increasingly active hostiles above our heads."
"We control all the means of access. There's nothing they can do about it. We blow the reactor, they burn, we can go home and have a beer."
Corpsemaker chewed it over. Xan nervously fidgeted for a few minutes, then pulled out a ham sandwich he'd stowed along. "Alright," Corpsemaker said finally. "That sounds like a better deal then fighting through the whole thing." He sounded almost reluctant as the lift began descending towards the bottom of the installation.
It stopped one floor up from the bottom. Specs spent several minutes trying to over ride the computer and then gave a sigh of disgust. "Access is locked unless we hit the release lever on this floor, and it looks like there are at least a dozen ACs between us and it."
Corpsemaker laughed. "You make that sound like a bad thing," he said, activating his Linear Gun and striding through the lift doors. He was firing before he even got out of the shaft. "You girls all ready to go?"
The other four paused for a moment of despairing silence, and then followed. Xan swallowed and took another bite of his sandwich. "I've got extra mustard. Bring it on!"
=========================================
"Bottom floor," Specs declared. He sounded relieved. "Housewares, home improvements and fusion reactors."
The lift doors opened on the east side of a cavernous room, empty except for a door in the south and west walls, and a series of massive conduits and pipes that wove in and out of the walls. "This is the place," Specs announced. "Those are the cooling and energy lines for the magnetic containment system. The reactor must be close by."
Specs spun his core in a slow circle, getting a reading on everything in their vicinity. The gain on his active scanners was cranked up so high that Xan's radar scope began fuzzing out. "If I can't have kids because of you, my LG is going to have a date with your nuts." Corpsemaker threatened.
Specs ignored him. "I'm reading a large energy signature to the south. Must be the fusion reactor. I can't think of anything else that big."
Without waiting for Specs to finish, Corpsemaker headed for the door, the other Cores quickly following. "Lots of big stuff down here," Specs went on. "Looks like waste reclamation, and... more production machinery?" He was silent for a couple minutes, studying his scans more closely.
An empty corridor waited for them beyond the door, a door in the east wall hallway down before it made a sharp turn to the left. "Energy signature is behind that door," Specs said then went back to his scans. "That doesn't make sense. What the hell do you need that much equipment to make?" He asked to no one in particular as Corpsemaker opened the door. The room was dark, but he didn't even wait for them too fully open before pushing through, the others a step behind him.
Xan's gut clenched, and he almost lost control of his bladder as the overhead lights flickered on. Standing before them, rank upon rank, filling the room from wall to wall, were Big Whites. "Holy-" Corpsemaker began, and then as one, every MT turned to face them, raising their cannons, "-Mother of-!"
"SHIT!" shrieked Xan.
Roaring, Corpsemaker strafed to the side, his Linear Gun blazing. The other Cores were stock still, until some of the Big Whites started turning their way. Then everyone was screaming, shooting, and boosting every which way at once. Xan didn't even pause. He turned and shot back out the door. The blue flare of plasma was so bright that even turned away, his screen had gone completely black to keep him from being blinded.
He stopped and pivoted, waiting to see who was next out of the room. Surprisingly, it was Corpsemaker, who came flying out, striking the wall headfirst. That was the only first he could have hit with, because Corpsemaker seemed to have forgotten to bring the lower half of his Core with him.
Xan turned and bolted at as fast as he could. The only problem was that he'd gone in the wrong direction, fleeing away from the lift. It only took him a few seconds to realize his mistake, but he could already feel the floor shaking as all those MTs began to move, so many signatures appearing on his radar scope that it turned solid red. He fled even deeper, taking refuge in the guts of a machine that was slowly assembling even more Big Whites, powering down and praying that it would mask his signature.
It seemed to work, because nothing killed him, but the same machinery that hid him also blinded his passive sensors. He had no idea what was going on out there. As far as he knew, Big Whites were coming off the assembly line and immediately turning around, just waiting for him to stick his head out before slagging him into component chunks.
He didn't want to think of how many hours he spent huddled there, with nothing to do except watch the seconds tick off on the chronometer. He wondered how the Raven who'd been sent to the Layered was doing. He hoped this was enough of a distraction for him. He called back the sensor recordings of the production room. The computer told him there were precisely one hundred and three Big White units in there. He didn't believe it. There would have been so many energy signatures in there that it must've have gotten confused. He froze the image and counted himself. Four times, not counting the restarts when he lost count. One hundred and three Big Whites. The computer estimated that between the four of them, the other Ravens had probably destroyed or disabled three.
As the hours piled up, he asked it what the probability was that he'd gotten really lucky and they'd managed to destroy all the Big Whites.
Zero.
He'd never seen a computer give that answer before. No matter how unlikely, no matter how many decimal places it had to go, there was always a one buried in there somewhere, always the tiniest possible chance that maybe, _maybe_ it could happen. He asked it again.
Zero.
He recounted the Big Whites, decided that maybe he'd underestimated Corpsemaker, and asked for the odds on them taking out ninety big whites.
After watching a string of zeroes pour out from the decimal point for eight seconds he told the computer to cancel the calculation. He asked the computer what his chances were of taking them out. The computer didn't laugh at him, but he was sure that it was thinking about it. What it did instead was paste a damage readout on his screen. He'd lost about half his armor, most of the barrel off his GNL, and his entire rocket pack. His Moonlight and machine gun were doing peachy though. Then it presented his chance versus one Big White: 32.1%. Then it showed two: 2.3%. Three: .03. Four: .000001. It didn't bother showing him any more beyond that.
The waiting was starting to get to him. He kept hearing voices on the radio, saw flashes on his passive sensors out of the corners of his eyes, thought he felt vibrations indicating that all the Big Whites were coming for him.
He heard a voice on the radio. They were begging him for help. Pleading. He was there only hope. He tried to ignore it, but it kept getting louder. Sweat started beading on his forehead, stinging as it dripped into his eyes. With a sound that was halfway between a scream of terror and a battlecry, Xan charged out of his hiding spot, ready to go out in a blaze of glory.
The room was empty. His eyes went to his radar. No blips. The radio was quiet. He could feel his heart climbing up into his throat as he crept towards the door. He opened it, his radar staying clear. Then he almost stepped on Gimlet. The burned and broken Core was scattered in pieces almost half the length of the hall. He swallowed, and took a step back. Then he felt the vibrations running through the floor. It wasn't in his head this time. His computer chose that moment to flash the words, 'Radar error: reinitializing system' on his screen. His scope flickered, and when it came back on, it looked like it'd been hit with a case of the measles. He panicked, and hit the boosters, taking off for the end of the hall. He realized that once again he was heading the wrong way when the door opened ahead of him, and a Big White lowered its gun as he stepped through.
There wasn't enough time for Xan to stop, and he slammed directly into the larger mech. It was only the fact that he had a quad design that Fernis kept to its feet. The impact knocked the Big White's cannon aside, and pushed the larger MT back a step. In a panic, Xan hit the overboosters, ramming back into the Big White, and actually pushing it back further. He pushed it through the doors before he could finally get control back, but the overboost refused to cut out.and pushed it back even further. The door began to close, and he frantically tried to turn Fenris around. The AC bounced off a wall, back off the Big White, and then back through the doors just before they shut, rocketing down the hall. His overboost didn't cut out until he hit the wreck of Gimlet, the boosters shutting out and Fenris tumbling to a stop.
His radar was working only intermittently, but when it did function, it showed red dots moving in on him from all directions, including straight ahead. His eyes went to the automap. He wasn't that far from the lift, and there weren't too many Big Whites in the way. He laugher nervously. How hard could it be?
Xan kicked Fenris back into overboost as he turned a corner. The door at the end of the corridor opened to the corridor that lead to the lift. Problem being it was open because six Big Whites had just stepped through. Fenris shot up, it's cranial armor sparking as it bounced off the ceiling, shooting over the Big Whites. It's legs didn't quite clear them, and it almost lost three as their feet smacked straight into the Big Whites' faces. Xan had to drop suddenly to duck the door jamb, and didn't quite make it, the radar mast tearing off in a squeal of angry electronics and ripping metal.
He sucked a charge from the Mallum, to keep the Fenris overboosting down the corridor, bouncing off the walls, only to see a very solid looking blast door dropping down in front of him. It had already dropped half its height. There was no way for the Fenris to fit underneath.
The Core rocketed down the corridor, an unstoppable force headed for a high speed rendezvous with an immovable object. At the last second Xan cut the overbooster, closed his eyes, and shut off the power for the magnetic locks in the Fenris' knees. The Core hit the floor, and it's legs shot out from beneath it. With a horrendous screeching, and a fountain of sparks, Fenris skidded just under the blast door, its head clearing the bottom of the door by millimeters, its armor making the most god awful shriek as it scraped over the floor plates. The Core turned as it slid, so that he was facing back the way he came when he came to a stop. Xan restored power to the legs, and as the Core stood he sprayed the door mechanism with machine gun fire. Nothing was going to be able to get through there now.
He turned around, and found the rest of the Big Whites waiting for him.
The only reason he didn't die right then was because there were so many of them that they had to hold their fire to keep from hitting each other. The front rank was barely ten meters away, and it only took them a couple seconds to adjust their tactics to the crowd. A stream of shells etched a puckered line up Fenris' chest and tore what we left of his GNL off its shoulder. Xan hit the boosters for all they were worth. He had the vertical clearance now to keep from kicking the MTs in the face, and shot towards the lift at full speed. He saw that someone must've already tried that, because where the doors had been was now a charred and twisted vaguely door shaped hole in the wall.
He watched with sick fascination at the progressive wave of movement as the ranks of Big Whites turned after him as he passed over head. He caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and jinked left, away from the lift, getting out of the path of a plasma burst. A grenade shot came close enough to jolt his temp guage a good fifty degrees. His capacitor gauge started trilling to get his attention. He was almost out of juice, and barely two thirds of the way across room, a sea of hostile MTs right below him.
Xan crossed his fingers, and cut the boosters.
If there were three terms that categorized the Big Whites, it was big, broad, and heavy. Xan had sunk some serious credits into getting the best quad link navigational control system on the market, and now was the time to put it to the test. Fenris shuddered as the computer tried to position its legs mid drop. Three legs came down squarely on top of a Big White, while the fourth kicked in empty air before managing to plant itself square on an MT's head. Fenris wobbled, and then stood tall above the crowd.
The Big Whites were pissed. He was too low for the ones on the edge to draw a bead on him, and the middle of the crowd was too dense for them to easily bring their guns to bear, or pull too far apart to stand on. The entire mass began moving, trying to make enough room to dump him on the floor so they could tear him apart. It was a subtle assessment of the past few hours to declare that this as the best shape he'd been in all day.
Xan tried to push the Fenris to move forward. The computer balked, and he could almost hear the calculations burning through the wires as tentatively, Fenris put one leg forward, onto the shoulders of another Big White, then rapidly leapt forward with the other three. The MTs, with their flat heads and broad shoulders proved to be surprisingly suitable, if overwhelmingly hostile, stepping stones. Although trying to maintain balance on the shifting, uneven surface made the Fenris convulse like a spastic in a grand mal, Xan was able to slowly work his way towards the lift. Halfway there he started giggling, and almost lost it completely. He was probably the first person ever to make his Core boogie like that. Tears were streaming from his eye, and he'd almost made it to the edge of the crowd when his capacitors topped out, and without hesitating he threw the Core into overboost.
Fenris shot through the lift doors, slamming into what was left of Spec's Core. The last of his giggles died fast. It'd been slagged so hard that it'd actually melted into the rear wall of the shaft. Xan stared at it in horror almost a second too long. As he hit the boosters, leaping into the air, a maelstrom of plasma poured into the shaft. Fenris took a beating, as what was left of Specs, the lift and the base of the shaft were obliterated in a flare of blue fire. Fenris boosted as high as the doors to the next floor, but the capacitors didn't have enough charge to get him to the one above that. There wasn't any room to land, and he wasn't sure how to trigger the doors with the lift still a floor down. He hovered for a moment, then activated the overboost. He led with Fenris' right shoulder, and at the last second realized that put his machine gun in line to hit the door first, but it was too late to change course. The doors dented as the gun struck them, and then the rest of Fenris hit them, and they burst outward.
Xan opened his Core's right hand, dropping the shattered grip of his machine gun. That'd been his last weapon, save for the Moonlight. At least he was safe, for the moment. The Big Whites had destroyed the lift, and he knew that they couldn't boost. He just had to somehow make it up the rest of the shaft without the help of the elev-.
He saw something flash up through the lift shaft out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw nothing, but before he could pass it off as nerves he saw something else flash by the open doors, something big and white. As a third shape flashed by, and with a ground rattling clang the first Big White landed on the lip of the open doors, and as it stepped forward another landed behind it, and then another. They might not have been able to boost, but they sure could jump.
Xan didn't wait for them to bring their weapons to bear. He boosted backwards, slamming through another door, a tremendous clang accompanying the arrival of each additional Big White. It sounded like ALL of them were coming up after him. He had to slow as soon as he was through the door to keep from tangling up in wreckage. They'd really done a number on this floor, and the corridor was cluttered with debris and broken MTs. He also hoped that the clutter would foul up whatever sensors the Big White's were using. He glanced back behind him when he reached the end of the corridor, just in time to see the Big Whites come through the door. The first one stopped, stymied by the wreckage in it's path, and then raised its gun and started blasting through. Xan didn't stick around to what it's follow up act would be.
He darted around the corner and into the maze of corridors beyond. He overlayed the map on his view screen, looking for one destination in particular. He found it, four hundred meters and three turns to the left later on. It'd been a storage room until Corpsemaker had done a real tap dance on it. Wreckage was scattered everywhere, in tangles big enough to hide a Core in, nothing to distinguish it except for it's energy signature, and their were ways to deal with that. He positioned his Core behind some twisted support spars, leaving just enough of Fenris exposed for the passive sensors to look out into the corridor beyond. Then he powered down everything. As every light in the cockpit, save for the dim image on the screen in front of them, faded out, he felt a manical grin cross his face. He felt giddy from the rush of fear and adrenaline that his near escape had filled him with, and it suffused him with a strange sort of confidence. If he'd been able to escape from a room wall to wall with Big Whites, then slipping past a few more than getting up the shaft should be no problem. He'd just have to sit for a few minutes and think up a plan.
It'd only take a couple minutes.
=========================================
It'd just take a couple of hours. A couple of hours more and he'd have a plan. He repeated the mantra to himself. One moonlight, one badly damaged AC, one hundred undamaged opponents. One him. One hundred them. He wished that he'd been a mathematician. Then he would've known how to make the odds better.
He started doing math in his head to keep from flipping out. Five minutes between groups. If he waited a two and a half minutes, that would mean it would be at its farthest point from him. The optimal time to sneak out. Unless it wasn't the same group he kept seeing, which would mean at a two and a half minutes, he would be equally distant from both of them, which was good, but it would mean he had one group in front, one group behind, which was very, very bad. If he could get them all in once place, and then cut them off from the shaft, that would be very very good. If-. Xan had an idea. He accessed his auto map, and overlaid the diagrams of the floors. His idea solidified into a plan. Now he just needed to get out of the storage room.
At precisely five minutes, another group of MTs came marching past, their guns held menacingly out in front of them. He watched the first three march past, but then his eyes lit up. He had his way out.
As the last Big White stomped by, he threw Fenris into emergency start up, not waiting for any of the weapon systems to cycle up before sliding out of his hiding place. Those big, fat, nasty cannons, those were what were going to even the odds for him. Maybe. Everything they shot was nasty, but the plasma was the worst. You couldn't just say, 'as you please,' and whip up a batch of that stuff on the spot, you had to carry it around with you and let out a little at a time whenever you came across some asshole stupid enough to stand in front of you. When plasma's visible wavelength shifted to the blue end of things, you weren't just cooking with fire, you were cooking with the shit that made fire dump in its pants, and leave a ripe brown trail running home to momma. Cooking with that kind of power had its own set of risks.
The last Big White detected him, and was turning, it's cannon pointed up in order to clear the wall as it pivoted. The others began to spin too, but the corridor would be too narrow for them to fire unless they shot through the MTs in front of them.
Xan could see the plasma containment unit, a fat, squat cylinder two thirds of the way down the triple barreled cannon. His FCS still hadn't cycled up yet. He would have to hope that luck and skill were with him.
The Fenris' arm shot out, the Moonlight scoring the wall as it powered up, then flashed across in a horizontal slash. The Big White made no move to defend itself, sure in the knowledge that it's armor would protect it, but Xan wasn't aiming for the Big White.
The laser sword sliced easily through cannon, making a shallow cut across the plasma cylinder, and up into the stock. Too deep and it would've breached the containment, obliterating him in a conflagration of superheated matter. Too shallow and all he would've done was ruin the polish on a nice gun. Xan began backing up as electricity began sparking from the gash in the canister. He didn't dare take the time to turn around. The Big White lowered its gun, took a moment to consider the damage he'd inflicted on it, and then fired.
His screen polarized dead black, so he didn't actually see the firestorm, but he felt it as it kicked Fenris down the hallway bouncing it off the walls, but at least that was the direction he wanted to go. He knew when he reached the door when his Core slammed to a stop. His screen gradually lightened to a transparent enough gray for him to see that the bare metal walls were burning. There was no sign of the MTs that had been at the heart of the inferno. He didn't wait around to be sure of what happened to them, barely waiting for the door to clear Fenris' head and then darting down the hall back towards the elevator.
He had the computer overlay the map of this room, and the one below it, looking for a specific spot. He powered up the Moonlight, and then stabbed it down, into the floor, locking it on. He felt the generator kick up at the continuous drain, but ignored it, slicing a square almost twice the width of his Core into the floor, and then slashing an X through the middle. The floor held. At this depth it was too thick to cut completely through, but he'd been counting on that.
He dashed for the shaft, reaching it just as the Big Whites made it through the door, grenade blasts gouging holes in the walls around him. He leapt into the shaft, and then dropped down. He'd never be able to make it, boosting straight up. It would only take one Big White firing straight up to cook his ass. He would have to deal with all hundred of them first before he could make his chance to escape.
Sure thing, no problem.
He was halfway across the room when he heard the first Big White hit the bottom of the shaft, but he kept on moving. He saw two of the doors opening, and Big Whites come through, but he ignored those two. Just before running into the far wall, Xan cut his boosters, swung his Core around, and stopped. The Big Whites all averted their cannons.
Xan had stopped Fenris right in front of the biggest tangle of conduits and pipes. If they missed him, they could kiss the fusion reactor good bye.
It was a hell of a stand off. Big Whites kept arriving, dropping down the lift shaft, or entering through the door on the other side of the room. With most of his scanners offline, he couldn't get a count, but it looked like they were all coming in. They started pushing around him, and he extended Fenris' left arm, putting the Moonlight right in line with a conduit. They tried extra hard to give him room after that.
As the minutes stretched on, Xan tried very hard to keep his cool. At least he wasn't hiding in a corner this time. Big Whites stopped pushing out of the lift shaft, which he hoped meant that all the ones above him were now down there. He programmed a set of commands into the computer, because he knew there was no way he'd be able to pull them off himself. He closed his eyes, prayed, and then hit the execute button.
All the lights in the cockpit dimmed as the capacitor directed its full ouput to Fenris' left arm. The Moonlight leapt out almost twice it's usual length, it's surface blazing the same shade as the Big Whites' plasma. The Core's arm dropped, slicing through a magnetic control line, and then further, the overloaded Moonlight cutting deeply into the plasma containment line.
The lower half of Fenris' left arm simply vanished, vaporized. Pressurized plasma tore open the ruptured line, shooting straight out across the room, cutting a line clean through the ranks of Big Whites, straight to the lift shaft. The next part of the program kicked in, and Fenris' overboost activated, throwing the Core forward and up, slamming it at full speed into the ceiling.
The weakened plates gave way, bursting upwards exactly along the lines that Xan had cut, making a hole big enough to fit an AC, but hopefully to small for the Big Whites to follow. He raced towards the lift, the doors helpfully blown open by the pressure wave of the plasma blast. The burst was already beginning to drop off, but the walls of the shaft were glowing bright red. His temperature gauge warned him not to go in there. Like a lot of other things that day, he ignored it.
He could feel the entire facility begin to shake as the fusion reaction continued unabated, but the magnetic containment began breaking down. A small sun was about to go nova in the basement, which would be cool, if he wasn't still just one floor above it. He leapt into the shaft and then boosted upwards. pumping the Mallum for all they were worth, draining the remaining charges in a matter of seconds.
Halfway up and the force of the pressure wave had decreased enough so that the lift doors were only buckled outwards. His capacitors had almost completely drained their charge, and started chiming warningly. He didn't want to stop, but the thought of draining them completely, and dropping all the way back to the bottom almost made him wet himself. He plowed through the doors and dropped to the floor, watching his capacitor charge rebuild with agonizing slowness.
The floor was shaking so hard that Fenris almost couldn't keep it's feet, and Xan was getting bounced around the cockpit like a bean in a rattle. He couldn't make himself wait for the capacitors to get back up to full before leaping back into the shaft. He only made it up three floors that time. He almost started to cry, but he forced himself to wait for the charge to build to full before boosting again. He gave another sob, this time of relief, as he reached the top floor, and threw Fenris against the lift doors.
They held.
Xan stared at the metal in disbelief as his energy gauge began to chime. He threw Fenris against them again, but they till didn't budge. In desperation he hit the overboost, and his computer screamed at him as the charge dropped straight to empty, but before the boosters sputtered out, they gave him enough momentum to slam through the doors.
Almost.
Fenris got stuck halfway through, three of its legs scrabbling in air for purchase. Its remaining arm was on the outside of the door, but there was nothing to grab onto. He felt something deep below him give a massive rumble, and he heard metal screaming as another pressure wave came belching up the shaft. It slammed into Fenris, and the doors were torn out of the wall as the AC was thrown across the room. Fenris staggered back to its feet, still wearing the doors. It staggered towards the corridor out, but then jolted to a halt, the doors making it to wide to fit out.
"This is not happening to me!" Xan screamed, slamming into the wall repeatedly. He glanced at the energy gauge; the capacitors were still redlined, but had almost finished rebuilding their operating charge. One final slam tore the doors away, along with most of his dorsal armor, and the Core drunkenly bounced off the walls as it tried for the exit.
The corridor's floor sloped upwards sharply, and Fenris' over worked drive system simply didn't want to take it. "Damn it, move!" Xan shouted, hitting the boosters. Fenris shot straight into the air, slamming against the ceiling, the impact shutting off the boosters. It slammed back into the ground, shattering the knee on its rear, right leg.
"Argh!" Xan shouted. "Move! Movemovemovemovemove!" The corridor was shaking so hard that Xan's head was ricocheting around the inside of his helmet. Fenris' remaining legs found purchase and it lurched forward. Xan hit the boosters again, angling them this time, and the Core shot forward and up, towards the distant exit.
The ground gave a massive shudder, and the rumbling behind him grew louder than everything. The temperature gauge shot up and he didn't dare look back, because he knew that the fire was coming for him. "Pleasebabyc'monbabydothis-formebabymove!"
The pressure wave, focused by its ascent up the elevator shaft, and compressed even more as it raced up the narrow corridor caught up with the Core and picked it up, whirling it around like a leaf. The sudden Gs of acceleration made Xan's world go momentarily dark as the Fenris shot out between the twisted doors and into daylight like a watermelon seed.
Xan came back to his sense as the Fenris hit the top of its arc, and he could see the world, bright and glittering in the midday sun, laid beneath him. Then the Core began to fall.
The earth came rushing up towards his screen, and he could see individual pebbles as his Core hit the ground with a bone rattling _crash!_ Then he was staring up at sky as it bounced, still tumbling, into the air. Fenris hit the ground, again, slamming him against the seat restraints so hard that he expected to feel bruises from the chest buckle on his back, and then begin to roll arm over arm. It finally came to a stop on its back, the screen half-heartedly polarizing as the sun glared right into his face. He tried to take off his helmet and then realized that he wasn't wearing it: it had split in half.
He had to kick the cockpit hatch to get it open, and the descent ladder was missing completely. He tried sliding out, but the surface was too smooth to keep a grip on, and he slipped, shooting out the hatch, bouncing off of the Core's hip, and getting a mouthful of grit as he landed face first in the loose soil.
He painfully staggered to his feet spitting gravel, blood streaming from his smashed nose. He looked back from where he'd come. A column of black smoke stretched up towards the sky. Flames hundreds of meters tall belched from the ground. He spun around and laughed like a madman. The entire facility, and every Big White in it was so much molten metal. He'd done it. He would've done cartwheels if he hadn't been in so much pain. "Yeah!" Xan shouted, pumping his fist in the air, then coughed as blood streamed into his mouth. "Who's bad!" he shouted at the wreckage. "Who's bad! I'm bad, that's who!"
Fenris' remaining arm was helpfully resting upon the soil. Xan hobbled over to it, took the microwelder out of his pocket, fired it up, and gleefully began to score the metal. "One, two, three..."
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