Chapter 11 up, just one more to go! Things really heat up from here, so drop me a line to let me know what you think!
As they rumbled down the ruined streets in the oversized tractor-trailer rig that had served the Knight Sabers as a mobile command center, they made their final preparations and pre-combat checks. From the driver's seat, Mackie conversed with the others inside the trailer section through the vehicle's integrated com system.
"About two minutes to objective rally point. You guys about ready back there?"
"Yeah, we're getting it together," Leon said, dogging down the helmet section of the heavy, borrowed battle suit he wore. "Huh! You weren't kidding when you said this thing was an antique, were you?"
Mackie chuckled, and said, "Yeah, well, nobody ever really intended for it to go into front line combat. It's just something I cobbled together and rebuilt so I'd be able to do more forward support. But at least I was able to replace that old recoilless rifle with a rail-action rig. Should pack a hell of a lot more punch, but make damn sure you're braced good before you use it. Recoil compensators can only do so much."
"Huh!" Leon said, "Glad you waited until now to tell me that. Any other surprises?"
"Not really," Mackie said. "Just don't expect too much out of it. Hell, it's just a lucky break that you senior ADP guys carry your biometric data around on a data stick. If not, we wouldn't have had time to do all the necessary measurements and calibrations. As is, I only hope the conversion program I used got all that crap right."
"It should be ok," Takashi said. "All tactical commanders and above carry that data around with them. Never know when you might have to jump into a k-suit, after all, and it's never the same one twice. This system works just fine with them."
"Yeah, well these aren't exactly k-suits we're wearing," Leon said, and then added, "Yours is kind of stylish, though."
"Well, shit," Ami said caustically, looking down at the garish blue and pink painted armor she wore. "It was the only damn thing there that fit! It's not my fault that all the Sabers except Nene were freakishly tall."
Leon snickered, and Mackie said, "You were just lucky there was anything left at all. I'd pretty much torn down all the other suits, old and new, for parts. There just wasn't anything on Nene's old suit that I really needed."
Rolling her eyes, Ami said, "Oh, great. Not only is it a hand-me-down, it's a hand-me-down that nobody else wanted. That's reassuring."
"It's better than hanging your ass out in the breeze without it." Leon said, and added slyly, "Besides, watching you board it was kind of interesting. Made me see you in a whole new light, if you know what I mean."
Ami shook her head slowly, and said, "Huh! Didn't think you'd notice, McNichol. I thought you were too busy with Wong for that kind of shit. But you can sure as hell tell these interface suits were designed by a lingerie store owner."
Their banter was interrupted by Mackie as he called, "Thirty seconds! You guys better get ready to go!"
Looking to Ami, not that she could tell through the suit, Leon said, "You ready?"
She nodded, slapping a mag of 'Scary Larry's Finest' into the anti-boomer heavy rifle she'd brought along and checking the old .357 in it's shoulder holster that she'd refused to leave behind. Finally, she said, "Yeah, about as ready as I'm likely to be."
"Ok," Leon said. "And how about you, Nene?"
Up on the roof of the trailer section, riding it like a surf board, the dark, brooding figure that was The Black Saber said, "Let's do it."
The Tin Man had descended from the heights, and now sat, in his sanctum, in the basement of the Hong building. He could feel the changes in him coming to a fever pitch, and knew that it wouldn't be long now. Already, he could perceive the geometries of some higher dimension dimly, but only as a sort of golden glow at the periphery of his new senses. Soon, though, he knew that it would all come clear to him, and when that occurred he'd be re-born yet again. And the world along with him.
Still, he reflected, it hadn't come to pass yet. And there were those who sought to thwart him in his aims.
As he slowly let his consciousness creep outward into the building around him, affecting it's physicality as it spread, he called out silently to his two most trusted servants, the two arch-angels he'd crafted to help him usher in the new era. After all, what was a god without angels?
'Samael. Lilith. I believe our guests are returning. Greet them for me if you will.'
"Go!" Leon yelled, leaping from the open side of the trailer as it ground to a halt. Before he hit the ground, he activated the suit's jets, setting them on ground-effect mode, and skimmed away toward the objective. He was glad he'd remembered how, considering the heavily abbreviated class he and Ami had received before moving out. He just hoped he'd be able to remember how to stop once he got there.
From the other side, Ami sprang out, hitting the hardsuit's jump jets immediately and heading for high ground. Per their hastily improvised plan, to start with at least, she'd be their recon and sniper support. Though she was fairly certain Nene had other means of intelligence gathering available to her.
For her part, The Black Saber spread her wings and ascended on a column of blue-white fire. Reaching altitude and cruising speed, she cut out the afterburners and leaned into a jet-assisted glide. Avionics programs, borrowed from Sylia's old suit, came to life, projecting virtual instruments onto her helmet's HUD. But she barely needed them, hardly paid them any attention. Somehow, some part of her seemed very comfortable with flying, and she maneuvered instinctively. Ahead of her, the crow flew as well, all that it's eyes and ears perceived playing across her mind's eye.
Ami went for broke, finding a narrow ledge high up, near the rim of the Canyon wall. From there, nearly fifty meters up, she had an overview of the entire target area. Cursing briefly, she finally remembered the correct sub-vocal commands, and activated the HUD's zoom and targeting functions. Narrowing in on the Hong building, she scanned in multi-spectral mode from the top down, having remembered how to do that as well, finding the suit's sensor suite impressive to say the least. She gave a low whistle at what she saw.
"Hey, guys! Heads up!" She said into the suit's com, connected to the others by secure tactical LAN.
"What've you got?" Mackie said.
Ami frowned, and said, "I'm not sure. Shit! If I could remember how, I'd pipe the video over to you."
"Uh, don't worry about it." Mackie replied. "I can do it from here." There was a pause, and then a small green telltale came on in the lower left of the HUD. "Huh!" Mackie said then. "I don't know what the hell to make of that either. Nene?"
Concern evident in her tone, Nene said, "Not good, guys. Thermal and electromagnetic profiles are changing, building wide. Reflective profiles all over the spectrum too."
"Ok," Leon said in exasperation. "So what the hell does all that mean?"
"It means that the entire structure of building is changing," Nene said. "How, or into what, I don't know. But some of those readings look an awful lot like the ones I got that night at Aqua City. You remember that, don't you?"
"Ah, shit," Leon resignedly, "It figures."
"Company!" Ami said suddenly. "The two shiny bastards from earlier. Huh! They're just standing there at the door, like they're waiting for somebody. I guess the element of surprise is shot to hell."
"It figures," Nene said.
"I've got eyes on!" Leon yelled as he came into visual range of the two advanced cyberdroids. "You got the shot or what, Ami?"
Up on her precarious perch, Ami smiled inside her suit, and using the HUD's superior targeting system rather than her cybereye's, she lined up and slowly squeezed the trigger. "Oh, yeah, I got it," she said lazily.
They heard the thunderous report of the greatly over-charged cartridge through the com system before the actual sound reached them below. But the effects were immediate and devastating.
The round, traveling at muzzle velocities never intended even for a sniper rifle, slammed into the female boomer's head. The depleted uranium penetrator first stage ripped through the boomer's adamantine armor, clearing the way for the explosive second stage to detonate inside the comparatively delicate tissues within.
The female model was smashed to the ground by the impact and the ensuing explosion, and a significant chunk of her head disappeared in a flash of yellow and scarlet. Despite this, she immediately pushed herself up to her knees, trying to rise.
Seeing that she wasn't out of the fight, Ami fired another round, scoring another hit in almost exactly the same spot. This time, the boomer's head disintegrated entirely, and she pitched back to the pavement, convulsing wildly. Unfortunately, Ami had overstayed her welcome; there was a reason for the old sniper motto of 'One shot, one kill.'
The male model, tracing the bullets' trajectory, spun around and swept a hand in Ami's direction. A gravitational shockwave expanded out toward her, distorting the air between them. Ami had just enough time for a sarcastic "Ah, shit," before it struck.
"Takashi!" Leon yelled as he saw the rock face where she'd been shatter and rain down on the ruined buildings below it.
Focusing on the perpetrator, who pivoted to face Leon as he skimmed toward him, Leon gunned the flight jets and yelled, "You son of a bitch!" as he slammed into the boomer at over a hundred kph.
The impact was jarring even through the heavy battle suit, and though Leon suspected that the supped-up boomer was far stronger than the suit's ancient servos, sheer mass and momentum were on his side. The boomer was knocked off it's feet, and Leon carried it back into the building like a nose-guard breaking through to sack the quarterback. Not that it seemed very impressed.
As they slammed into the concrete wall, shattering a large section of it, the boomer struck back with a swift kick to the battle suit's mid-section. Leon was thrown back, and landed on his back, skidding to a halt. The suit's armor had held, but just barely, and Leon could feel the fresh bruises on his ribs.
"Well, shit!" He exclaimed, "I can see where this is going!"
Just then, the boomer roared in indignation as it's face was seared by a high-powered laser pulse from above. Looking up, it saw, black upon the black backdrop of night, the silhouette of a great dark bird.
"Ah, hell, Romanova!" Leon yelled. "Don't waste your time with this thing! Get the hell in there and nail Largo's ass! I'll be fine!"
Wordlessly, she heeded Leon's advice, realizing that time was short. If she stayed to help Leon, they might very well end up with something far worse than an over-powered boomer to deal with.
The boomer swiveled to track as she dove past and into the building's shattered and gutted lobby, the burnt out Cadillac still sitting in the center like a grotesque modern art sculpture. But as it's jaws gaped and the high-output mouth laser, apparently healed since it's run-in with a rail-gun round, prepared to fire, Leon took action.
Swinging the massive barrel of the rail-action canon around, Leon stepped back with his right leg, bracing himself, and fired. The thirty-centimeter spike of tungsten and depleted uranium screamed from the weapon's muzzle at meteoric speeds and ripped into the boomer's shoulder before it could fire. The round first liquefied and then became an expanding ball of incandescent plasma as the kinetic energy of it's impact was converted to heat. The secondary explosion from this along with the impact itself spun the boomer around and knocked it from it's feet. From where he stood, Leon could see that the boomer's left arm hung by a thread, nearly torn from it's body by the blast. But that didn't seem to deter it as it rose up again to fight.
Shaking his head, Leon said, "Just don't know when to quit, do you?"
The boomer's only reply was to extend it's good hand with a metallic roar and send a wave of tortured space-time in Leon's direction. He tried to dodge, but between the less-than-perfect calibrations, the overall clunkiness of the suit, and Leon's relative inexperience with it, he just wasn't able to move in time.
The gravitational distortion struck him dead center in the chest, like an oaken club swung by a giant. Leon heard and felt the battle suit's heavy chest plating crack and give, and was hit by a scarlet wave of agony as his ribs followed suit. The battle suit flew back under the impact, slamming into an adjacent building hard enough to smash Leon almost into unconsciousness. In front of him, the suit's HUD flickered and dimmed, and for a moment Leon wasn't sure if it was the electronics or his own vision that was failing.
"Shit, that brings back memories," he muttered weakly around a mouthful of blood, thinking of his fight with the D.D. Battlemover in the Kanto Dump a lifetime or two ago. "Hope this one doesn't turn out so one-sided."
But as his vision and the HUD cleared, he saw the boomer, standing again now, warming up it's mouth laser for what he knew would be a finishing shot. Of course he refused to just give up, and did his best to bring the gauss canon back to bear, but the suit's systems responded only sluggishly. There was no way he'd get the shot off in time.
Just as Leon knew the boomer was about to fire, there was a sharp crack off to it's left, and the high-pitched whine of a round ricocheting from it's armored hide. Momentarily distracted, the boomer turned it's head toward the source of the annoyance.
Leaning against a broken wall for support, battered, bleeding and clad only in her tattered and blood-stained inner-wear soft suit, Ami stood, Jeena Malso's old .357 smoking in her hand. "Hey, asshole!" She yelled mockingly. "You forget about me?"
With a growl, the boomer prepared to unleash it's pent-up mouth laser blast on this minor irritation, but Leon had other ideas. Ami had bought him just enough time to force the unresponsive gauss gun on target and fire.
Again the hypervelocity round shot out, this time scoring a hit center mass on the boomer's torso. Once more the impact and secondary explosion drove the boomer back, a gaping, fist-sized hole driven through it. After skidding to a halt on it's back on the pavement, the boomer rolled weakly to it's front and tried to force itself up to it's knees, but Leon was having none of that. As soon as the gun's capacitor cycled back up, he fired again, converting the boomer's skull into incandescent fragments that peppered the walls around them.
As the boomer finally sagged, lifeless at last, to the pavement, Leon sagged as well. Through a red veil of pain, he saw Takashi limp toward him, her stocking feet cut and bleeding from her passage over the debris-strewn streets.
As she reached him, Leon heard her distantly over the roaring and pounding in his head. "You still alive in there, McNichol?" In answer, he gave her a weak thumbs-up with one of the sluggish manipulators, and managed to hit the tongue switch that popped the helmet section loose.
"Shit, Takashi, you're a mess." He said wryly. "For a minute, I thought that bastard managed to take you out."
She shook her head and, leaning on the prone battle suit for support, carefully lowered herself to sit beside Leon. "Huh! You know my luck," she replied in the same tone. "It'll take more than a couple of super boomers to nail either of us." And then, suddenly coughing up a mouthful of blood, she added weakly, "But not much more."
Frowning, Leon said, "You gonna make it, Takashi?"
Smiling raggedly, she said, "I could ask you the same. Tell you what. I'll make you a deal, McNichol. First one of us who dies owes the other one a six-pack. Ok?"
Leon snorted, grimacing at the pain this sparked, and said, "Deal." And then, abruptly changing the topic, he said, "So I guess there was a reason to hang onto that damn .357 after all."
Glancing down at the revolver held limply in her lap, Ami said, "Yeah. Just one more thing I owe Jeena for, I guess."
And then both of them were silent, conserving their strength and hoping that their efforts hadn't been in vain.
Inside the Hong building, things were rapidly becoming very strange. As Nene strode past the elevators, certainly not trustworthy at this point, toward the stairs, she noticed a number of oddities. The floor seemed soft, spongy somehow, almost as though it were coated in rubber, and the walls seemed to flex or crawl in her peripheral vision. And, far more disturbing, there were the corpses.
No one had bothered to clean up after her earlier visit, it seemed, and the bodies of the Triad enforcers lay where they'd fallen. Or nearly so. As she passed them by, she was vaguely horrified to see that all of them seemed almost to be dissolving, slowly spreading out over the floor to form the spongy layer she'd already noticed. And then one of the 'corpses' had reached out to snag her leg.
Nene gasped in shock, and looking down, recognized one of those whom she'd only wounded, now half-absorbed by the ravenous building like the others. "Help me," he whispered piteously. Nene shuddered, and yanked her ankle free. "Help me," he repeated, more insistent this time.
Nene shook her head, and, sighting in, fired a pulse of laser energy into the miserable creature, ending his suffering. "I'm afraid that's the best I can do," she said regretfully. And then, angrily, she kicked open the stairwell door. The crow, perched on her shoulder until now, hopped off and flew downward, toward the basement, alighting on the rail at the next landing. Looking up at her, it cawed loudly.
"Down there, huh?" She said resignedly. "It figures. Where else would you find a monster but in a dungeon?"
Sighing, she descended the stairs, the crow hopping back to her shoulder as she passed.
Outside, Mackie brought the tractor-trailer rig rolling to a stop in front of the building. After losing contact with everyone, including Nene once she'd entered the building, he figured he had little to loose by bringing the rig in.
Seeing the two figures huddled together next to an adjacent building, unable to tell at a glance if they were alive or dead, he jumped from the cab with a muttered, "Oh, shit."
Takashi raised her head as Mackie rushed up, confirming that at least one of them had made it, and then Leon stirred as well.
"Christ!" Mackie exclaimed, "What the hell happened? The damn LAN fell apart right in the middle of everything!"
Leon coughed weakly, and said, "Take a look around, kid. What the hell does it look like happened?"
Mackie nodded, and said, "Yeah, I can see you took care of Largo's little helpers. Where's Nene?"
"Inside," Takashi said. "Or at least that's what Leon told me."
Leon nodded, and said, "Yeah, she flew in there a few minutes ago. Hell only knows what's going on now."
Mackie shook his head, and said, "Somebody needs to find out what's happening in there. She could be in trouble."
Ami snorted, regretting it immediately, and said, "Shit, Stingray, I'd have to say we're all in trouble right now. She's the best equipped to handle whatever the hell's in there, and the rest of us are in no shape to back her up at the moment. In fact, we need to get Leon out of this damn suit, and get some first aid started. He's tough, but not as tough as he thinks."
Mackie bit his lip, and, reaching into the appropriate concealed slot on the suit's torso, manipulated the right combination of tiny switches to initiate the suit's emergency release system without triggering the explosive ejection sub-system. With multiple hisses and pops, the suit opened up, allowing Mackie and Takashi, barely able to move herself, but unwilling to rest until Leon was taken care of, to lever him up and out. From there, Mackie helped get the two of them to the trailer, and briefly explained the auto-doc system to Takashi. Then, grabbing Muramasa, the hand-canon, and a couple of pistol grenades from where Nene had dropped them, he turned back toward the Hong building.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Leon said weakly from the trauma station where Takashi was hooking him up.
Shaking his head, Mackie said, "What does it look like, Leon? I'm going in to help Nene."
"You're out of your friggin' mind, Stingray," he said in a tone that told Mackie that if he could have, Leon would've joined him.
"Maybe," he agreed as he trotted away. "But all things considered, that may not be a bad thing right now."