Chapter 365
Metal shrieked and something slammed down onto the ground in front of us. The impact sent up shards of concrete. The plating of the thing creaked under the pressure, and servos screamed in protest. It didn’t hesitate and snapped forward with long, angular limbs. Mechanical fingers sharpened into claws bit into the ground as it lunged.
”Contact!” Hope shouted and fired a shot with her shotgun. The spray slammed into the robot, though failed to penetrate since it was just gel-rounds. It did, however, throw off the initial lunge.
Time slowed across the platform thanks to Dexterity. That is, for everyone except Garrick. He flashed forward quickly even in my eyes and flicked his sword. The staggered robot froze, and then another strike cut it into four sparking chunks of metal.
Another climbed up over the edge of the platform just ahead of us. Three more followed from below, and seven dropped from above. A wall of sharply angled forms appeared in front of us.
The robots were tall and painfully thin, with their frames stretched far beyond any human resemblance. Lights on their bodies flashed with dull amber glows, though it was just residual sparks from where the light was smashed.
I fired the first shot. A sparking round slammed into the half-dome shaped head of the closest one. The round detonated on impact, and the fiery explosion punched a dent into the plating. The robot slowed and then kept coming.
”Aim anywhere else, Zuku!” Hope fired off several more shots to keep them back.
”Chek.” Right, based on the shape of their heads, they were probably reinforced to keep up with industrial accidents and spillage. Almost like an umbrella. I was wasting ammo.
I fired several more times on one a bit further back. Sparks and a thermite-like effect erupted across its body, but I found the most effect on its limbs. A shot slammed into its knee, and the robot crashed as the thin limb took way more force than it was designed to.
“Watch your back!” Hope threw her shotgun at the closest one to distract it and pulled her knives. The bot swung forward, cleaving the shotgun into two chunks.
The Inquisitor moved at the exact same moment it did and cleanly cut off its arm. The other one followed a moment after, and she tore into its chest. Several stab wounds later, the robot went still as something important was shredded.
”I-I’m watching. Y-you aren’t on cams, though.” Luna called and started to highlight shapes across the factory with red markers. They popped up onto my HUD—damn, just how many were there? “B-bike’s here.”
Garrick moved up behind her. I shifted my aim—and then went right back to firing at the robots while the man protected her from a lunging bot. His sword flashed forward, cleanly cutting off its limbs.
I tried to take out the knees of another one. The industrial robot staggered and sloppily charged me with barely working limbs. I stepped just past its limb and ducked under a randomly swinging limb. My fist slammed into its torso in passing.
Electricity flowed through my shock gauntlet, and I empowered it with my Kinetic ability. The robot dropped into a twitching mess as its systems overloaded. Its hoof shaped feet kicked one last time and stilled.
Although my Blinder module made it so they couldn’t see me, and by extension weren’t attacking me much, they still had some level of intelligence beyond swarm tactics. Another tracked me based off the trajectory of my bullets, though was likewise taken out.
Garrick and Hope cleaned up half a dozen more in short order, but the bots just kept coming. First it was just a few, and then dozens, and soon hundreds of bots poured in from all over the chemical production facility.
Hope slashed forward, decapitated a bot, and tossed its head like a frisbee at another to force it back. She took a strike to an exposed spot of her arm, and first blood was drawn. “We need to push through! We don’t have the weaponry to hold so many off.”
”No shit!” Garrick momentarily sped up and sliced the attacker in half. He jumped and kicked the halves before they could hit the ground, knocking over three bots approaching from the side. Another tried to attack him while he was distracted, but the blow failed to do much damage against his chrome arm. “Ideas?”
I fired a dozen rounds into the wave of robots. Aim stopped mattering as much. If I just aimed in their general direction, I was bound to hit one of them. “Luna. In my saddlebags, there’s a new type of drone.”
”I—I got it.” The tracking on my HUD cut out for a moment while she was distracted. “Wh-what are these things?”
“Fireflies.” I briefly described their function while reloading. ”Come fly them in, and scorch us a path.”
“O-okay… it’ll t-take a few m-minutes.”
”That’s fine,” I whispered, moved closer to the other two Crusaders, and started to adjust my coil-pistol to fire grenades instead. “By me a couple minutes! I have a plan!”
“You heard her!” Hope was immediately on board, and swapped to a more defensive posture. With two against three, Garrick didn’t have much of a choice and likewise fell back.
I pulled a grenade from my bag. For once, it wasn’t the thermite one I went for. Instead, I opted for a new variant that I experimented briefly with—an electric grenade. It used crystallized electricity instead of fire. Ideally, it’d be more effective against the machines.
The first grenade slammed into a cluster of seven, and exploded with the vibrant purple glow of electricity. The scattered crystallized shards acted like conduits for the electricity, creating a net that electrocuted the cluster. They dropped into steaming messes.
Hope and Garrick took advantage of the gap, creating even more space. We backed up to one of the vats. A catwalk above protected us from a drop attack, and with our backs to a wall we only had to worry about attacks from three directions.
We defended through dozens of attacks. My swap to grenades, while not necessarily as effective at killing the bots, controlled the crowds a whole lot better. It wasn’t long until I heard the faint buzzing of drones and saw my HUD’s minimap light up with blue dots. “Get ready!”
”H-here it comes, Shiro.” A tidal wave of drones dropped from the sky, dodged the umbrella-like heads of the drones, and then precisely arced up into the important circuitry below the protective armor.
“Nova!” I only had about fifty or so packed into my saddlebags. It was more than enough to clear out a swathe of bots and create an open path right to the bunker.
“Go!” Hope didn’t waste a moment and charged forward, slicing three bots in her path apart as she went. Garrick accelerated thanks to whatever chrome he had and moved even quicker than her.
I immediately used Burst Step to keep up with them before the gap could close. A robot slammed down from above without warning. I skidded to a stop and slammed an electrically charged fist into its arm. The momentum carried it forward anyway and slammed into me like a truck. Thanks to Insight, I barely managed to twist around clawing fingers that gouged marks into the concrete.
Hope dashed back to me and her dagger flashed forward, burying itself into the bot’s back. Garrick followed a beat later with a brutal cleave that split the bot’s torso open.
Hope grabbed my hand and dragged me to my feet. “Keep moving!”
I didn’t need to be told twice and dashed toward our rapidly closing path. We reached the final stretch to the command room. The space around it was clear, stripped of vats and machinery. There was nothing but warning lines of paint and bare concrete.
The bots froze at the edges of the paint. They clustered around, though made no move to step over the marked line. I bent over my knees and took a ragged gasp of breath. “They stopped.”
“M-might be some kind of overwrite or restraint bolt.” Luna helpfully piped up into my head.
Our mad dash slowed to a halt just in front of the bunker doors. Hope eyed the robots for a moment and then sheathed her daggers. She pulled out a can from a pouch and sprayed hemostatic foam on her arm. “At least we have a moment.”
Garrick moved up to the edge of the paint. He causally dodged a limb that crossed the limb and retaliated with his sword. “I think we’re safe—“
A chunk of bot slammed into the ground right next to him. One of the robots picked up another limb and threw it over the crowd at him. That seemed to spur the rest into motion, and they scattered to pick up projectiles.
”Why the hell would you say that?!” Hope let out an enraged shout and moved for the door.
I followed just behind her. “I got it—“
Hope slammed her dagger into the control panel. It sparked violently, and the door started to open with a grinding roar. “What was that?”
”Nothing…” I dodged to the side as a bolt of Insight hit me. A beat later, a robotic head slammed into the door. The door ground to a halt just wide enough for one person to slip through.
Hope shoved me through the gap. I stumbled, caught myself, and rolled through into the command room. She followed immediately after, blade flashing to cut apart another metal projectile. Garrick was last. He ducked through just as a whole robot slammed into the door, blocking the way out.
“Here.” Their flashlights scanned the large command room. I broke off from them and found a light switch. The flights flickered on, and then stabilized.
“Nova.” Hope clicked her light off and shuffled over to one of the walls. A large screen filled with data streams, encrypted files, and censored schematics blinked weakly. “Would you look at that? Someone’s already logged in for us.”
“S-Shiro, do you still have one of my pyramids?” Luna asked.
”Uh—no.” I kept the leftovers in the Aether. I just figured I wouldn’t really need them… maybe I should start carrying one around. “Can I patch you in another way?”
Luna sighed. ”U-use your deck. I’ll piggyback off a connection.”
I pulled out my deck and hooked up to the main console. Hope moved up behind me. “What are you doing?”
“I have a, um, autohacking program. Might be able to get through the files.” It wasn' t a complete lie. “Maybe we can deactivate the bots from here.”
”Good thinking.” Hope moved off to another of the consoles to look around. She paused at a half eaten sandwich laying on the table. “Someone’s been here. Recently.”
“Probably Lavender.” I ran a few commands, and then my deck’s screen glitched out and Lina took over.
”Lavender?” Garrick asked. “That’s the guy we’re here for?”
”Roger.” Hope eyed him.
“G-got it, Shiro.” A moment later, the encrypted files started to shatter open one after another—and then the entire screen froze.“S-shit!”
”What?” I tapped several buttons on my deck, but nothing worked.
”So not helping!” Luna called—and then smoke emitted from my deck in waves. “Fuck! I-I’m too far. The delay—he got in. S-sorry, I had to download a backup and fry your deck to keep him from accessing anything.”
Before I could mourn the loss of my deck, the screen on the main terminal abruptly shifted to a chat window.
>Took you long enough.
My stomach dropped. “Luna?”
”I-it’s lavender. He’s routing through half a dozen dead relays… if I was there—I-I can’t trace it from here.” The white-haired runner sounded particularly depressed.
“It’s fine.” She was on the other side of the city inside of Medtech. They no doubt had their own jammers and stuff active. She’d already done more than I hoped she could. “Hope! Garrick!”
>Don’t bother. You won’t be able to catch me now.
The other two Crusaders gathered around the central console. Hope rested a hand on it. “Lavender?”
>In the flesh—or not quite. We have so much to talk about.
I could practically see the mocking grin on the bastard’s face. Him messaging us like this, though? It confirmed at least one thing in my mind. This guy was narcissistic to a fault. The chat scrolled as dozens of files popped up one after another.