TS6 - Chapter 40

Kat bit back a groan of frustration as she jogged through the hallways of the complex toward a concealed security station.  She would’ve preferred to move faster, but Belle was struggling to keep up even at the current rate.  As much as Kat wanted to break into a run to put some distance between herself and the battle in the cafeteria, she forced herself to move at a more measured pace.

More gunshots and zapping sounds of the plasma weapons used by Millennium echoed down the hallway.  Kat could all but pinpoint another three gunfights, and in one direction she heard the whirring actuators of an APEX suit as well as a hissing crackle that she couldn’t quite place, likely either a new weapon or an unknown player ability.  

She ignored them.  Her security wasn’t winning its fights, but it wasn’t being routed entirely, and that was about all she could hope for.  At this point she could only focus on the upcoming security station and regaining her connection with the rest of the defensive teams.

The amber lights flickered overhead a half second away from the rumble of a distant explosion.  Kat didn’t bother to slow down, they were only a couple hundred paces away from the false supply closet that hid the security station.

About thirty seconds later, she held the door open for Belle, leading the struggling woman into the five pace by five pace chamber.  The older woman slipped past her and slumped down into one of the two seats in front of a large console attached to a blank smartpanel.

“What is all of this?”  Belle asked, unsealing her face mask once again before motioning toward the smartpanel.  “I’m sure we passed something like three security checkpoints and armories on our way here.  Why of all places are we stopping here for a rest?  It’s not like the rest of your command staff is on hand.”

“Emma and Heather are probably at the main command center,” Kat replied, reaching under the console to tap in a key code on a hidden panel.  “Technically, with all digital systems down there’s no way for us to communicate with them without running all the way to the center of the base and abandoning the front.”

“As for where we are?” Kat continued with a listless shrug.  “Emma made sure that we had a couple dozen of these places.  All of them are off the books.  They were originally designed so that a second layer of security teams could monitor the official security.  That still happens a bit, but we’ve repurposed them once the battle lines with Millennium began to grow clearer.”

The console beeped and metal slid back revealing an old fashioned walkie talkie.  Kat pulled it out and turned it on, fiddling with the channel knob on the side for a second before speaking up.

“Say,” she asked, “what time is it again?  The frequency is supposed to jump once a minute but I need to know what frequency to start with or the automatic system will never be able to kick in.”

“Four twenty two in the afternoon,” Belle replied.  “Out of curiosity, is there a reason why you didn’t build an automatic clock into your little communicators?  That would make it a lot easier for someone to use, especially in a high stress situation like this.”

Kat shrugged as she fiddled with the frequency knob, adjusting it to the setting to the channel that corresponded with four twenty two.

“Most modern clocks aren’t actually clocks,” Kat said, “They run off of realtime links to the atomic clocks in either Zurich or Neo Tokyo.  A link like that could easily be hacked by whoever it is Mr. Jackson has handling his electronic security.  At minimum that would mean that the frequency scrambling would become worthless.  At worst, it would let them tap directly into our radio network.”

“Emma considered putting an old fashioned electronic clock in each of the walkie talkies,” Kat continued, “but we didn’t know how long we would need to keep them dormant.  If the clocks were even off by a little bit, there would be issues with frequencies switching out of sync and commands could get garbled.  This way it only has to keep time from the point when a user first enters a frequency”

“Plus,” she finished, tapping one of her temples, “It’s hard for someone to break into the communications network without knowing the pattern and a starting channel, and the only place those are all strictly analogue.  Either written down on good old fashioned paper or committed to memory.”

Kat brought the walkie talkie up to her mouth and depressed the push to talk button.

“This is Erinyes.  I am at security Alpha Nine Obscura.  Please advise as to status, over.”

There was as almost five seconds of static in reply, and Kat was beginning to worry that she’d forgotten the correct frequency starting channel when the walkie talkie chirped in reply.

“This is Aegis One.”  Heather’s voice was unmistakable even through the electronic interference and garble.  “Please confirm that this is Erinyes over.”

Kat felt a smile grow on her face as she replied with her long practiced pass phrase.

“Please stop letting the lizard write Chrome Cowboys fanfiction.”

Belle shot Kat a meaningful look.  Apparently the older shareholder was going to need answers once the immediate concerts were addressed.

The response came barely a second later.

“Artists will create art, no matter how horrifying.  It’s good to hear from you ma’am.  I lost track of you for a bit there and Emma was starting to get worried, over”

“I’m more or less fine,” Kat said glibly.  “I only got shot once, over”

“Stop that,” Heather replied.  “I swear that I’ll tell Chiffon if you keep letting people shoot you.  I know you know how she feels about that, over.”

Kat rolled her eyes, smiling one more time before she erased the expression, pushing emotion aside to focus solely on business.

“What does the battlefield look like?”  She asked.  “I’ve been trying to do hit and run operations to disrupt the Millennium attack forces, but I don’t know enough about what we’re fighting to aim myself properly.”

“Honestly?”  The last half of the word disappeared in a squeal of static as both frequencies changed at the same time.  “It’s hard to know for sure.  Only Lieutenants and up have walkie talkies so I’m only hearing from major conflicts.  Details are spotty and I feel like tearing my hair out any time I try to get actual precise positions and numbers, but it’s pretty clear that we’re on the losing end of all this.  Right now we’ve been able to stop any major breakthroughs, but more and more security staff are going down for the count, and we’re being pushed back room by room.  Millennium showed up with too many high level players and too much absurdly advanced technology for us to have a real shot at winning all of this.”

Kat winced.  It was what she expected to hear, but that didn’t make it sting any less.  She was sure now that Mr. Jackson had planned out this entire attack months ahead of time.  The timing to draw off her forces and to take advantage of a shareholder meeting was just too coincidental for it to be anything like luck or an accident.

Once again the elusive samurai was one step ahead of her.  The danger and financial loss presented by the attack were certainly awful, but a part of Kat was more upset that he had managed to outmaneuver her once again.  It was beyond frustrating, and maybe it was her extensive time spent with Kaleek, but Kat was ready to vent.

“Are there any hot spots where I can help out?”  Kat asked.  “The least I can do is take out some strategically important attacking elements to buy the security teams a little bit of breathing room, over.”

“No,” Heather replied crankily.  “The least you can do is to find someplace safe to hole up and wait this storm out, but I’m not even going to seriously suggest that because I will lose the argument immediately and we both know it.”

There was a second of angry silence before the other woman finished.  “Over.”

Kat smiled.  It was good to know that the stress of the attack hadn’t changed Heather.  Even six months ago there was almost a zero percent chance that she would’ve gotten backtalk from her security chief.  Progress.

“Try Tango-Delta Four,” Heather said after about fifteen seconds of silence.  “Staff on scene are claiming that there is some sort of hovering pillar that’s firing massive blue balls of light.  Apparently it can cut through blast doors pretty quickly and we’ve already lost something like two defensive positions to it.  It’s supported by at least three samurai.  We’ve got at least two APEX teams on site but they’re barely managing to slow that thing down.  If anything manages to fight its way through our defenses quickly, that’s going to be the breakthrough point, over.”

Kat stepped past where Belle was resting to open a nearby locker.  Next to a futuristic looking mag rifle and a set of advanced body armor with a built in gas mask was an old fashioned paper map of the facility.  She pulled it out and spread the map out on the console.

Tango Delta was on the northern side of the complex, slightly to the east.  Level four would be a machine lab.  Not anything designed for industrial production but where the scientists produced a lot of their low level prototypes for testing and field research.

“Got it,” Kat said.  “Let me know if the hot spot shifts.  We are leaving to assist now, over.”

She clipped the walkie talkie to her belt and glanced at Belle.  The other woman stood up and slid past Kat to grab the body armor and rifle out of the locker.  Kat cocked her head to the side, drawing a low chuckle out of the other shareholder.

“You have super powers and an alien pistol that does more damage than anything I’ve seen outside of an actual honest to God heavy autocannon.  I’m not built for this sort of thing.  If I am to support you, this is the least I’ll need.  Hopefully it will prevent me from getting cooked alive the next time someone tries to disintegrate me with some sort of science fiction weapon.”

Kat chuckled, conceding the point as she folded the map back up and stuffed it into one of her suit’s thigh pouches.  

“Fine, you can take the armor.  Are you ready to go or do you need a minute?”

Belle slipped the armor on, hissing in pain as she pushed her arms through its sleeves.  She stretched down, touching her right foot with her left hand and then her left food with her right before standing up again. 

“I’m still a bit sore,” she replied.  “I know you gave me an emergency patch up in the cafeteria, but would you mind healing me a bit more?  I could probably fight if I needed to, but I’m pretty sure that I would be slowing you down.  If we’re going to be blowing up some sort of flying pillar, we’re going to want me at my best, if only so that I can stay out of its line of fire while you do all of your samurai super star stuff.”

Kat smiled and began mouthing the incantation for Cure Wounds.  Belle was an acquired taste, but there was no question that she was growing on Kat.  About fifteen seconds later, Belle stepped away and sealed up the face covering on her suit.

“Good enough,” the older woman said easily.  “I’m still tired and I bet that I’ll have bruises in the morning, but it doesn’t feel like I’m missing any range of motion.  For better or worse, I’m ready to go.”

“For better or worse it is,” Kat replied, opening the door that led into the supply closet a crack and listening for a second.  After hearing nothing she ushered Belle out and closed the door behind her, transferring the closet into nothing more than another cubby filled with mops, buckets and racks of cleaning solvent.

She stepped out into the hallway, her pulser in her hand as she closed her eyes and listened to her surroundings.  Almost immediately, Kat tuned in to the sound of a half dozen scuffles. Gunfire, groans of pain, the electric zap of the plasma weapons.  Everywhere north of her, security officers were fighting to keep the mercenaries back.  If she concentrated a little more, Kat could even hear the heavy breathing and tired shuffles of the stations where her employees were resting after repelling an attack.

They were doing their part, and now it was time for Kat to do hers.  She quickly led her way toward the manufacturing center, avoiding unnecessary combat or contact with Millennium forces.  The entire process took almost twenty minutes of jogging with occasional pauses to let fights burn themselves out around her, and as she observed the momentum of the battle, Kat was left with no choice but to agree with Heather.

Her forces were losing at almost every site.  They weren’t being overrun and they weren’t dying alone.  Every aggressive push by Millennium would be met with booby traps or a quick counter attack that quickly taught the invaders to keep their advance slow and methodical, but it was clear as day that unless something major changed, at some point Millennium’s superior numbers and samurai were going to win out.

Finally, they reached the battle site.  By the time Kat arrived, the actual manufacturing center was lost.  Instead the defenders had fallen back, defending a loading ramp that led out of the fabrication unit.  The doorway created a choke point, one that already had at least five or so dead mercenaries littering the ground.  As Kat jogged up with Belle puffing behind her, a figure in an APEX suit stepped into the open firing a shoulder mounted heavy mag cannon that looked like it belonged on an armored vehicle through the doorway.

Almost immediately, Kat’s gravity domain went wild.  She peaked around the corner and immediately saw the cause of her distress.  A giant rectangle was floating in the open just inside the manufacturing unit.  It was about three paces long and three paces wide, a little smaller than the footprint of the average hover tank, but the structure was almost eight paces tall, much bigger than the hallways of the facility.

Ripples of energy surrounded the pillar, marking the outside edge of a forcefield that evidently was strong enough to deflect the mag cannon round that the armored soldier had just shot at it.

The vehicle returned fire, aiming not at the hallway but at the door itself, rapid fire balls of plasma exploding as they struck home, drilling their way through the door frame as it began widening the opening so that it could fit.

Another security officer stepped into the open, tossing a grenade at the pillar.  A mercenary wearing what looked suspiciously like plate mail threw a spear at him.  The weapon easily passed through the war machine’s defensive field before skewering the security guard and pinning him to the wall of the facility.

A second later, the grenade detonated without leaving a mark on the pillar.  The plate mail clad samurai clenched their hand into a fist and the spear disappeared from the corpse, reappearing in the samuari’s grasp.

Kat cursed under her breath.  That was the plan apparently.  The flying rectangle was the Millennium equivalent of a tank, and without hover tanks of their own, there really wasn’t anything that the security guards had on hand that could do serious damage to it.  It might not be able to move quickly through the facility’s hallways, but absent some real firepower it was unstoppable.  It might not conquer the entire laboratory on its own quickly, but it would happen eventually unless Kat could do something.

She quickly went through her options.  In all likelihood, the tower would block her water and light based abilities.  Unless Kat missed her guess, it wasn’t a ‘recreation’ of a stallesp war machine.  Millennium was on the run and hiding.  In all likelihood they didn’t have the resources to make cutting edge human technology.

No, Kat was willing to bet a reasonably sized subsidiary that she was looking at an honest to God stallesp tank.  That would explain the strength of its shields, its ability to hover seamlessly and the power of the rapid fire plasma cannons on it.  The walls of her facility were made with an alloy synthesized from the stallesp battle cruiser.  It was nowhere near as strong as the spaceship, but the armor was supposed to be borderline immune to any kinetic or electrical weapon developed on Earth and the pillar was treating it like wet cardboard.  Only the sheer volume of material that it needed to remove was working in Kat’s favor.

When all else failed, there was always gravity.

Kat activated Shadow, cloaking herself in darkness as she broke into a sprint toward the floating rectangle.  The pulser in her hand bucked twice, her shots not aimed at the vehicle itself but at one of the samurai lurking behind it and using it as cover.

The dart didn’t penetrate the tank’s shield.  That wasn’t terribly surprising.  What did interest Kat was the way the vehicle’s rapid fire plasma bolts suddenly couldn’t pass through the shield either.  It was only for the fraction of a second when Kat’s second shot struck the field, but an entire hemisphere of the shield seemed to harden, becoming impenetrable.

Plasma exploded inside of the shield, shrouding the pillar in blue white light.  Kat couldn’t see the vehicle well enough to determine if the blast of heat had managed to damage it, but that was almost beside the point.

She slipped past it, using Shadow Step and a hefty dollop of stamina to blur through the crack between the tower and the edges of the doorway.  Already balls of plasma were exploding on the floor in the hallway where she’d been standing.  Evidently her attack had been enough to alarm pillar and change its focus to her.

Good.

Improved Laser sparked to life, tracing a figure eight of pulsing energy across the back of the tank as Kat sprinted toward the nearest samurai.  All three of her opponents were surprised.  A snap shot at one blew off an arm.  Whoever her target was, the woman had reflexes like a striking cobra hopped up on amphetamines.  That dart should’ve hit center of gravity and erased her.

Still, the woman was out of the fight giving Kat enough time to close on her startled companions.  Gravity snatched the two samurai, tossing one into the ceiling with enough force to snap bones and pulp flesh.  Despite the blow, the man didn’t seem too much worse for the wear.  The impact stunned him, but a combination of chrome and Tower granted endurance was enough to keep it from killing him outright.

The other samurai was jerked toward her.  Kat planted her feet, grasping her knife in a double handed grip and thrusting it out in front of her like a pike.  Red energy glowed along its length as she activated Penetrate.

He slammed into her with enough force to jar Kat off her feet, but she quickly used her control of gravity to cushion the blow, slowing herself and hovering into the air.  Then man dropped to one knee, Kat’s knife stuck deep in his chest, ignoring a metal chestplate that would’ve stopped most small arms fire.

She swooped downward, drawing a second knife as she rapidly approached her injured opponent.  He looked up just in time for Kat to bring her blade across his throat in a gurgle and a spray of crimson.

Then, her second opponent thumped to the ground.  He groaned, rolling to his hands and knees in order to stand up, but Kat didn’t let him get any farther.  She aimed her pulser at her more or less immobile foe and pulled the trigger.

It bucked in her hand, and the dart knocked her enemy over.

Kat blinked.  The man was glowing red as he burned an absurd amount of stamina, but some ability of his apparently was strong enough to stop the alien pistol.

A second shot sent him skittering across the floor, his aura of red flickering wildly.  Kat broke into a serpentine run toward him, teleporting from shadow to shadow as she lined up a third shot.

Plasma pistols whined and zapped, sending balls of blue light flying around the manufacturing center as rank and file mercenaries tried to keep up with her rapid movements.  The tank was slowly backing out of the doorway, its plasma cannon seemingly tracking Kat with distressing ease, but the constant pressure from Kat’s Improved Laser seemed to be enough to prevent its attacks from escaping the oval of shimmering power that protected the hovering pillar.

She fired again, and whatever temporary invulnerability the samurai had ran out.  The man disappeared in a cloud of red mist as the high speed dart plunged through him and unleashed its kinetic energy into the hardened alloy of the armored floor.

Finally, Kat turned her attention back to the tank.  It was about a third of the way back into the manufacturing center and ignoring the defensive emplacements set up by Kat’s security team.

Mana trickled out of Kat, infusing her domain with energy as she grabbed hold of a half dozen mercenaries and the high end 3D printers that they were hiding behind.  With a throwing motion she tossed all of them at the pillar, doing her best to clog its sight lines as she tried to clear out the area and think of some way to deal with the borderline invulnerable war machine.

It rocked backward, the impact from the gravity empowered machinery rocked the pillar backward as it slammed into its force field.  A hint of a frown crossed Kat’s face.  That shouldn’t have happened unless-

Rather than release her hold, Kat invested even more mana into her domain, pulling the hardest on the two mercenaries that were stuck, screaming and flailing, to the top of the tower’s force field.

Beneath the tank, its anti gravity engines began to whine in protest as the mercenaries were reduced into paste even as Kat used their grisly remains to slowly tip the floating rectangle on its side.  It still remained off the ground, the underside of its force field pressing against the room’s armored floor even as Kat pushed down on it from above.

She reached out with her mind, touching the gravitational disruption created by the high tech coils nestled into the vehicle’s underside.  The field was unnatural.  A knot in the otherwise smooth fabric that represented the natural flow of gravity.  One that she could untie given enough time and energy.

More mana flowed out of Kat and her domain swelled with power as she began wrestling with the engine.  It fought back, the technology and magic built into the tank struggling to reassert itself even as the twisted remains of the fabrication machinery pressed it down into the ground.

Kat’s laser remained trained on it, forcing the pillar’s force field to stay in place.  She was sure that the second it turned off, the kinetic force of the detritus she’d tossed on her target would stop affecting it, only by keeping the defensive field hardened and in place could Kat properly trap the vehicle.

A plasma pistol hit her, sending a wave of heat through her shield that stung her skin and made her eyes water.  Kat began to move faster, jumping from shadow to shadow as her stamina began to run low.  She couldn’t actually jump behind cover without interrupting her assault on the war machine, so her only option was to try and leverage her agility against the twenty or so mercenaries that were firing wildly at her flickering form.

Then the anti gravity engines on the tower coughed and its shield flickered.  It slammed into the ground, unable to resist the weight of Kat’s domain for a fraction of a second.

The engine and shield flickered back into being, but they were a shadow of their former selves.  The forcefield burned a hot oval into the floor, slowly melting the alien alloy as as the defensive field sought to establish itself through solid metal.  Meanwhile, its engine struggled, clearly damaged by whatever overload Kat’s gravity had already focused onto it.

Machinery whined angrily, flickers of white hot electricity and magic sparking from the bottom of the menacing rectangle.  The plasma cannon built into the top of the pillar had stopped firing.  Evidently the pilot had refocused all of their energy into the tank’s engine and shields in an effort to pull themselves out of the predicament.

It wasn’t enough.  Another ball of plasma hit Kat, the burst of heat sufficient to overload her shield and fry the air conditioner on her infiltration suit.  Kat didn’t bother to look away, instead ripping off the half molten slag that had been her cutting edge gauntlet and tossing it aside.

With a crunch, the pillar’s engines gave out and it sank a half pace into the partially molten metal of the factory floor.  Its shield disappeared, unable to accommodate the strain of trying to generate a force field through solid matter.

Almost immediately, a fusilade of weapon fire erupted from the doorway as the defenders took their revenge on their downed foe.  Heavy cannons, recoilless rifles, grenades, and even a couple plasma bolts from Belle’s stolen pistol battered the vehicles armor leaving craters and cracks that quickly began to threaten its structural integrity.

Just as Kat returned her attention to the mercenaries, one of them shouted in alarm and the assault force began to withdraw.  She managed to kill one with her pulser and cut down another two with her Improved Laser, but most of the attackers managed to make it out of the room before the security forces were able to reclaim their positions.

Another volley of shots erupted from the doorway.  The downed pillar shuddered, bits of armor cracking and falling off as some of the heavier weaponry began penetrating its weakened defenses and wreaking havoc on its interior.  Evidently, whoever had designed the vehicle had focused more on its energy shields than its more physical mundane defenses.

A hatch on its side popped open and the furry form of a stallesp staggered out only gunfire to practically cut the alien in half.

Her expression tightened.  There weren’t supposed to be any stallesp on Earth.  Mr. Jackson had a couple hybrids left over from the initial invasion, but Dorrik’s monitoring had confirmed that there were no full-blooded aliens left.  If there was one here and now it confirmed her fears.  Dringbek had officially thrown in with Mr. Jackson and the rules were being fully ignored once again.

Kat took a couple steps to the side, slumping against one of the still standing 3D printers as Belle and the APEX suit clad officer hurried over to her.  The APEX suit slowed for a second next to the critically injured samurai that Kat had first injured when she had begun her attack and pointed its arm at the crippled woman.  A single gunshot put an end to her suffering.

“It is a shame that Heather was not here to see this battle,” Belle said cheerfully.  “I would so have loved to hear her yelling at your for your risky and irresponsible behavior.  Today has been rather terrible and I think that her ire would have been a welcome distraction.  So long as it was directed at you of course.”

“Of course,” Kat said with a smile as she reached up and unsealed her face covering.  Her entire body was sore and she was almost out of stamina.  Kat’s mana was doing a little bit better, after all she had an absurd amount of the resource, but it was still running much lower than she would like.

“Ma’am,” the soldier in the APEX suit said respectfully before his faceplate popped up, revealing a younger male face.  “Lieutenant Turner from asset protection and management.  It’s good to see you.  We were getting hammered there.”

“I can see that,” Kat replied, her eyes flickering over the wrecking of the fabrication hall.  There were almost as many bodies from each side, a fairly remarkable achievement given that the stallesp were using what amounted to an invulnerable tank supported by a fully equipped samurai team.  Still, Kat could see where the doorway into the room had been shredded by repeated plasma fire.  The tank might not have been able to move quickly through the comparatively narrow hallways of the facility, but they could not stop it.

“Honestly,” she continued, “I’m surprised you managed to slow it down as much as you did.  “That pillar thing seemed pretty much invulnerable to any man portable weaponry.”

The lieutenant deflated slightly

“We managed to damage it once.  Corporal Dragov managed to land a grenade in front of it while it was advancing.  The pillar was completely on top of it when the explosive went off.  I don’t think it managed to pierce its shield, but the grenade managed to force it a couple paces off the down and its engines couldn’t compensate when it fell back down.  It smacked the ground pretty hard with its undercarriage.  Not enough to disable anything, but it made the pillar a lot more cautious.”

“So if we encounter more, we should focus on mines,” Belle mused.  Both Kat and Lieutenant Turner looked at her quizzically.

“What?”  Belle asked.  “I’m not terribly useful in a firefight because my reflexes and aim are sub optimal.  That doesn’t degrade my abilities as an analyst.”

“Fair enough,” Kat said after a prolonged moment of silence.  “Either mines or we find a way to replicate what I did and use a direct energy weapon on it to force it to keep its shield up constantly.  That stops it from shooting at us and lets defenders use kinetic weaponry to knock it around a bit.  I don’t know if it will be enough to actually destroy one without finding a way to drive it into the ground the way I just did, but-”

“It certainly gives us a fighting chance,” Lieutenant Turner said eagerly.  “Still, I’ve been monitoring communications with HQ.  The attackers are using a lot of mercenaries that appear to be players with unique abilities, but that one seemed to be the only pillar.  It will be an uphill climb, but now that you’ve taken it down, we have a fighting chance to actually start pushing these maniacs back.”

Before Kat could respond with any sort of wholesome or uplifting speech, her walkie talkie squawked.  Both Kat and Lieutenant Turner brought similar looking radios to their ears at the same time.

“This is Aegis One,” Heathers voice crackled from the receiver.  “Whatever you just did, it seems to have pissed them off.  I have a couple scouts located around the outside of the facility and they are reporting that hovering ships have begun to show up and surround the compound.  One of them is dropping off more of the pillars.  It sounds like there are already four or five more inside the facility.”

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