Chapter 6
They checked each hut one by one. Most were empty apart from a few Spartan furnishings. In a couple, a few scared inhabitants cowered in the corner, frightened by the great noise.
But one hut had different contents. Shadow kicked down the door. It took a considerable effort to break it down, as it turned out it was a metal door. The insides were also metal – definitely the base. There was a circular chamber in the centre of the room. A lift by the looks of it. He pressed some buttons in the hope of opening it. An irate beep. Dammit, if only Tails wasn't playing with the radio. He got frustrated and hit the panel. It smashed. Oops. Rouge prised his hand out of the hole. She pushed a button higher up on the lift. The doors opened. Shadow got even more frustrated. He put his fist through a table. Rouge couldn't help but laugh.
Sonic entered the room.
"This way!" He called.
"Just a sec!" Tails called back. "Just need to tighten a few screws… and… there!" He hurried to the lift. Everyone was getting inside, and Shadow even brought a small piece of table with him. He turned it the radio on as the doors closed, careful not to catch either of his tails in them. There was just static.
"Aagh, Tails, you broke it!"
"Wait, let me change the bandwidth…" He pressed a button.
"C…n y… he…r m… now?" Cream's voice was still a broken mess of static.
"Now adjust the frequency…" He pushed a slider.
"How about now?" Her voice was crystal clear.
"Perfect, Cream," Amy responded.
"Right. Where are you now?"
"Going down an elevator in the middle of the village."
"Who found it?"
"Shadow,"
"That explains it."
"Explains what?" Shadow turned to the radio, now very concerned.
"Get ready to kill things."
"All I needed to hear." Shadow pulled out his weapons. He nearly cut everyone with the way he took out his machete. Everyone else took out their weapons in a safer manner. Knuckles punched his fists against each other.
The doors opened. A robot turned to look. It performed a double take as no less than seven guns and three mêlée weapons now pointed out of the elevator door, and sounded a very loud alarm. Everybody poured out of the lift. Those with guns opened fire. Amy, Knuckles and Storm stayed in cover and made their way towards the gathering robots. The pile of scrap metal grew ever larger as round after round was pumped into the defence bots. Sonic, Rouge and Jet stashed their pistols and started to advance. Tails, Shadow and Wave kept shooting. As sentry robots were slowly replaced with human armoured guards, Amy jumped out of her cover and stuck her sword in someone's neck with a gush of blood. It stained her trousers. She swung her hammer into the head of a robot. Storm tackled two guards to the ground and proceeded to pummel anyone he could grab senseless. Knuckles confronted a group of soldiers. He gestured to them, with a raised eyebrow and a flick of the hand, to 'bring it on'. Each one attacked him in turn. He dealt with each one nonchalantly. The last one fired his gun at him. It hit him on his lower left chest, in his bullet-proof coat. He spun, but didn't fall over. He used the spin to land a punch to the side of the last soldier's face, who promptly fell to the ground.
Rouge had some fun playing with a couple of soldiers with her whip, until Amy threw a couple of daggers into their necks, as if saying 'Stop messing around'. Rouge snapped her whip sideways and flicked a soldier in the face who was about to attack Amy, as if saying 'You look at what you're doing'.
Jet hopped on to his airboard and began shooting from the air. Sonic pressed a button on his gun and a blade popped out of the handle. Fortunately he was holding the barrel. He stabbed an advancing soldier in the stomach and used his gun to take out some more. The magazine ran out and Sonic dropped him.
Shadow decided to save some ammunition for later and burst forth with his machete. He hacked a few limbs off and stabbed someone in the chest. He surged forth and took out everyone he could.
"He might be a little dim when it comes to buttons, but he sure is a psycho in combat," Wave said between shots.
"What?" Tails replied as he carried on shooting.
As he backed up against the far wall, three massive robots descended from the ceiling. These were much bigger combat robots. Shadow could read the serial number on the back: SIPR 6020 series. And to think that they got bigger?
He jumped on the back of one of them. He drove the machete deep into its back. Using it as a foothold, he took out his gun and peppered bullets into the eyes of the other two. The other two turned to him and pointed their machine guns at him. He pulled the machete out of the robots back and jumped up on its head just in time to avoid getting shot. He dropped down in front and the robot got shot in the head by the other two. He ran forward and ducked, hoping for Tails to do what he hoped he would do. A whoosh passing above him followed by a deafening explosion relieved him. He looked up to see Tails holding a smoking rocket launcher.
"I can't hear a damn thing!" Tails shouted to himself and anyone who would listen.
After cleaning up a bit, retrieving thrown daggers and discarded weapons and regaining hearing, they discussed their next move.
"They're probably trenched up by now." Shadow took the pessimistic view.
"Would it be worth blowing the place up now?" Tails said excitedly.
"There could be prisoners," Amy still had a slight tinge of blood on her face.
"They would all have been killed or roboticised by now." Cream said over the radio.
"And all the treasure is kept in Robotropolis," Rouge added.
"No sign of finding the Master Emerald then?" Knuckles inquired.
"So just blow it?" Wave asked hopefully.
An arriving troop of soldiers answered the question for them.
"Okay, blow it!" Sonic said as he ran for cover. Tails and Wave hi-fived and ran for cover with everyone else.
They searched through their various explosives while everyone kept the besieging force at bay using Tails' many guns.
"You need to hold here while we get the buggy. Here's all the ammo…" Tails emptied the pack of its many clips and magazines. "…we need the bag for the explosives." At that, Tails and Wave jumped into the elevator.
A few tense minutes later, a revving was heard from the elevator. The doors opened and the buggy lurched forth.
"GO!" Tails screamed at the others. He slammed his foot to the floor again as the others rushed back into the lift. He ran down any soldiers he could, and Wave shot some more from the back. Speeding away, they continued to the centre of the complex. As it turns out, they were just above it, but they had to take the long way round. The centre was a large room with a supercomputer. It had a lot of scientists and guards wandering around, even with all the commotion upstairs. Staying on a tight course, he drove the buggy down the spiralling walkways at the circumference. Occupants struggled to get out of the way. Once he reached the bottom, he pushed a button, and the bomb fell out of the buggy's left side. Wave covered Tails as he set the last few timers.
"Two minutes, that should give us just enough time to get out." He said as he accelerated up the spiral walkway.
"Cutting a little tight, don't you think?" Wave said as she polished off the remaining occupants of the room.
"Nah, we'll be fine…"
Racing back to the lift, Wave pressed the button as Tails slammed the front of the buggy against the inside of the lift. It escalated slowly. As it reached the top, they could hear the distant rumble of the bomb going off. The doors opened slowly. As soon as they were wide enough to let the buggy through, Tails slammed down on the accelerator. As they speeded out of the hut, the explosion reached the elevator. A shot of flames followed them as they drove away. Wave, sitting in the back, could feel the heat blasting on her face as it came millimetres from reaching them. Tails slid the buggy to a stop next to an awestruck Sonic.
"Now, who needs to jump away from explosions?"