Scene 28
After Xan Kriegor appeared in the arena, the situation for the remainder of the Dark Phalanx began to deteriorate from bad to worse.
He was translocated in unarmed, and after uttering his dramatic proposal, Anna decided she might as well answer him while they had the chance. She calmly tossed her rocket launcher down in front of her and pulled the sniper rifle out of her pack, shouldering it and aiming carefully at Xan. ¨You want me to run, you rusty bucket of bolts? Why don't you pick up that rocket launcher and get to it, then?¨ Without hesitation, he strode towards the weapon, his very gait somehow arrogant. Anna let him take two steps and then nailed him directly in his visual sensors, his head snapping back and helmet partially flying off with the force of the high-caliber bullet. Xan's forward motion pulled him to his knees with a crash of metal, his upper body sagging backwards and then beginning to topple over to the side before it disappeared.
¨Had to,¨ Anna explained apologetically. ¨He'd have gone looking for a gun either way.¨
¨I… Yeah, I suppose so,¨ Ivana said, finding her voice. ¨I guess he must be Corrupt, too. These odds just keep getting worse. Have either of you faced Xan before? Because I sure haven't.¨ Anna just shook her head.
¨I did once,¨ replied Gorn over the comm. ¨We had an exhibition duel back in the days when I was considered one of the better 1v1 players around. The surprising thing about Xan for me was that, considering his fame, he was a pretty predictable player. Generally stuck to the same tactics and routes. I was even winning for the first part of the match, but then something happened… it was like he suddenly turned on all those mechanical and chemical enhancements he uses. He pretty much stopped missing me with his sniper, shock, and minigun. Wherever I was in the map, no matter how dark or far away, he'd see me. I thought I was sneaking up on him a couple times, but he always knew where I was. Like many other Gladiators have commented, he's inhuman. He can't be beaten by skill alone.¨
¨So what the hell do we do?¨ wondered Anna.
¨Like I said, he's predictable. Maybe we can avoid him long enough to think of something.¨
¨Great.¨
The Corrupt stayed hidden in the bowels of Phobos for about a couple minutes afterwards, giving Gorn time to pick up more health vials and heal himself completely, and also replenish his body armor. Anna was preparing to head out on one of the narrow side ledges to get the next shield belt as it spawned when the Corrupt made their move. It started with the hiss of jump boots. All three Dark Phalanx members heard the sound and turned to look at the shock ledge side of the central shaft. At first, nobody saw anything. Had their attacker failed his jump? But a burst of minigun fire in Gorn's direction told them differently, coming apparently from thin air near the central shaft.
¨Invisible enemy!¨ yelled Anna.
¨Shit,¨ swore Ivana, realizing that it had been a mistake to stay completely out of the bottom part of the map. They'd handed over two pairs of jump boots and the invisibility powerup to their enemies, not to mention a shock rifle, minigun, and probably sniper rifle. ¨Concentrate on taking out the invis!¨
Gorn fearlessly charged in the general direction of his attacker, spraying his own barrage of minigun bullets in response. Some of them probably hit, but he was coming under much heavier fire, bullets slamming into his armored chestplate. Ivana, sprinting to circle around behind Gorn's attacker, caught a glimpse of the invisible figure's shimmering outline and planted herself, firing a shock bubble directly towards it, figuring that even if he moved, part of the combo would still catch him. Through the echoing thunder of her combo, she heard the faint crash of an armored body being thrown to the ground a few yards to the left. She held down the secondary trigger of the shock rifle, advancing as she spammed a barrage of bubbles towards the fallen enemy. One of the bubbles suddenly stopped in midair, its energy dissipating as it popped against an invisible barrier.
Gorn saw where the shock bubble had impacted, and drew a bead on that spot with his minigun. The enemy, knocked around and stunned by Ivana's shock rifle, was caught directly in his stream of fire for fully a second and finally crumpled, its armored body appearing a second before it was translocated away to respawn. Jesus, these things were tough.
¨Gorn!¨ yelled Ivana, ¨you all right?¨
He took another step and said, ¨Yeah, I'm…¨ then stumbled, glancing down at his rent chestplate, blood pouring from dozens of holes. He looked up at Ivana with an expression of simple curiosity and wonder, and fell flat on his face.
¨Gorn! No!¨
¨Incoming!¨ screamed Anna, from somewhere over by the flak cannon. ¨Multiple enemies!¨
Ivana spun around and saw Anna frantically trying to stay alive in a rocket dogfight with Xan, while another Corrupt nearby ran towards her, shouldering a ripper and beginning to unleash a barrage of fire at Ivana. Dodging the ripper blades, Ivana stowed her shock rifle and pulled out the sniper rifle, struggling to draw a bead on the distant enemy while instinctively moving to avoid his fire. Two blades sunk into her energy shield, disrupting her aim, before she managed to get a decent shot off, seeing her attacker twitch as the bullet took him in the chest plate. He shrugged it off and continued to fire as if nothing had happened, but the moment of hesitation had allowed Ivana to plant herself and take careful aim at his head. That was when she heard the harsh voice from close behind her.
¨Who's the Champion now, betrayer?¨
She instinctively flung her body sideways, shoulder first, tucking and rolling back up to face in the direction of the speaker. Coming to her feet, she saw a man stood by the small lift's exit, bereft of the full-body armor she expected to see, holding a shock rifle. It was Malcom.
Before she could think more about his strange words and presence here, she was bumped forward by another ripper blade that slammed into her back, temporarily knocking her off balance. As she struggled to regain it, she saw Malcom shoot a shock bubble towards her, just to the right. With the relatively short range between the two of them, there was no time to dodge again to avoid the combo. It caught her with its full force, destroying the rest of her shield belt's energy armor and then some, throwing her body towards the edge of Phobos's platform. Stunned, she landed heavily on her back and rolled off the edge.
Slowly, Ivana began to fall through space away from the platform, no longer constrained by its artificial gravity field. She knew that in a few seconds she would be dead. Strangely, she felt neither anger nor self-pity, just a kind of detached disappointment that the bad guys were going to win. Gorn would have been disappointed in her too. Where was Gorn anyways? Hadn't he fallen right there, near the edge of the platform?
As she drifted helplessly towards the ion shield surrounding the station, her comm came to life with Anna's frantic voice saying ¨Help, Ivana, retreat to the…¨ A burst of static cut her off, in the same instant that Ivana felt the deadly ionic energy cut into her back.