“You’re going to have to watch out for more of them turrets,” Baker said, leaning against a wall of the elevator. In the depths of their hood, the end of a cigarette glowed cherry red.

“None of us know where all of them are,” they continued, pausing briefly to inhale. The cigarette hissed merrily, flaring to life. “There must be some sort of central control that the corpos use to disable the so that we can drive forklifts around, but it beats me as to where it is. The rest of the place is wired up pretty tight to stop espionage, so we’ll have to be on our toes.”

“Do you have any advice that’s more useful than ‘there will be a lot of guns, try not to get shot?” Davis asked dryly from his corner of the elevator.

Baker shuffled slightly, their head bobbing up and down as they eyed up Davis’ heavily armored form. A thin hand popped out from one of their sleeves, fetching the cigarette from the recesses of their hood. A second later, a cloud of smoke that smelled vaguely of apples filled the elevator.

“For you big guy?” Baker asked rhetorically. “I’d suggest checking out section D-3 of the warehouse. That’s where they have us loading up battle suits. I figure someone like you could do a fair amount of damage in one of those things. Maybe even enough to keep most of us alive after the NeoSyne goons figure out what we’re up to.”

“Battle suits?” Kat could almost see a single eyebrow going up on Davis’ face as he regarded the much smaller individual.

“Yeah,” Baker replied, nodding their hooded head. “Some asshole in a suit came up with a fun acronym for them and everything. She calls ‘em Armored Personal Exosekeletons so now the dumb things are being branded as APEX. We have an entire crew tasked with spraypainting a logo on them.”

“Do you happen to know any of the specifications on these new suits?” Davis asked carefully, leaning slightly toward Baker.

“Nothing written down,” they responded dismissively. “I just know that the things are covered in a lot of this new battle armor the stallesp helped ‘em develop but they move like dancers. Well, that and they’ve got a power cell on the back that they can hook up to these big rifles they made for the suits. Heard a couple of the guards shooting the shit about it a month or so ago. Apparently the rifle is a rail gun or something. They said it packs enough of a punch to to core a battle tank in a single shot.”

“How many APEX suits do you think there are in the warehouse?” Emma questioned, finally speaking up from where she was lounging in the other corner of the elevator.

“A hundred?” Baker shrugged. “Two hundred? There’s probably twice that many suits on standby, but they need to be hooked up to the reactor to juice up. The scientists claim they’ll hold a charge for something like ten years of continuous combat, but whatever they’re piping into the suits is some dirty stuff. I’ve lost at least a couple of friends just charging the things up.”

“Enough,” Whippoorwill cut them off. “I’m holding the door right now, but we’re here. Remember, I have no control over the internal security systems. If you can find me a network connection, I’d love to change that. Until then, my drones are armed with crossbows, but that’s all the help I’ll be able to give you.”

Davis stepped to the front of the elevator, shouldering his cannon. Electronics whined as he lifted it into a firing position. He nodded to Whippoorwill before speaking, his voice grave. “Open it Chiffon.”

The doors parted silently to reveal the warehouse. It was massive, at least four stories of concrete and steel, complete with row after row of metal shelves, each level at least a floor high. To their right was a massive fleet of forklifts, all parked in electronic charging ports with green indicators blinking their readiness. To Kat’s right, was a bunker, panes of bulletproof glass all that separated her from a pair of gaping guards.

On top of the emplacement, a 20 mm cannon hummed to life, swiveling to face their party only to meet a blast from Davis’ weapon, cracking the turret’s housing. Frantically, one of the guards smashed a button on the table in front of him. The lighting for the entire floor turned red, and a siren began to wail.

Kat exploded into motion, taking note of the four other turrets that popped up from armored hatches in the warehouse floor even as the one atop the bunker sparked and fizzled impotently. Overhead, canisters began to rain down around the elevator, gas already hissing from them.

“Send the elevator up for the rest of the refugees, Chiffon!” Kat shouted. “We’re going to have company soon and our only real chance is to get as many of them armed as possible.”

She reached out with one hand, using Dehydrate on the guard manning the console while the other gaped at her in disbelief. The spell didn’t kill the man, but Kat suspected that he wished he was dead. She knew from prior use that the spell would dry and harden any exposed mucus membranes.

In short, she thought as she jammed her Penetrate enhanced dagger into one of the doors hinges, for the moment, the guard was blind and afflicted by both splitting headaches and vertigo. Given enough time he would recover, but that wasn’t a luxury that Kat planned to afford him.

Her knife sheared through the second set of hinges just as Davis began exchanging fire with the turrets. The great booming blast drowned out all of the other sounds of combat as Kat stepped backward and kicked.

The door thumped inward with a clang. It’s impact with the ground was followed a fraction of a second later by Kat casting Dazzle and sliding into the main room of the bunker.

Gunfire stitched across the wall above her head as the standing guard shot wildly, eyes blinking ineffectually. Kat’s first shot took him in the face, spraying the back wall of the bunker with blood and bone.

She jumped to her feet, firing a single round into the man struggling on the bunker floor before slamming her fist down on a large red button labeled ‘Alert.’

The warehouse’s lights switched from red to yellow and the turrets stopped firing. Kat looked out through the thick bulletproof glass. Davis’ armor was glowing red, some skill obviously in effect. Despite his defensive measures, his armor’s left arm hung limp, its pauldron shot off and a double handful of hydraulics and electronics scooped out underneath.

Whippoorwill was shepherding the handful of refugees they’d taken down to the warehouse floor in the big cargo lift out of the line of fire. Even Emma was making herself useful, wielding her batons like baseball bats to smack away the canisters before they could deliver more than a token amount of their payload.

Still, it hadn’t been quite enough. Two of the refugees hadn’t reacted fast enough, and now they were just outside the elevator doors, convulsing and foaming at the mouth. For a second, Kat was tempted to go out there and see if she could treat them with Heal I, but ultimately she gave up on the thought. Her spell was simply too low level to deal with whatever the gas was.

Ultimately, the only thing that had saved her team from more casualties was that she had sprung for the air tight option on their infiltration suits. Not many defense systems used gas, it was notoriously hard to control and clean up once used, but the addon only cost a couple of credits, and Xander had claimed that it had saved his life, so Kat had paid the extra without thinking.

“Red alert terminated,” the pleasant voice from their upstairs encounter with the turrets jolted Kat from her grim thoughts. “Switching to yellow alert. Please enter your passcode within one minute or this floor will be considered compromised and purged with neurotoxins.”

“Chiffon!” She shouted, grabbing a shunt from her belt and slamming it onto the console’s port. “You’re on the clock!”

Whippoorwill froze, standing motionless in the open air between the four gun turrets. Seconds ticked by in silence as the weapons glowered at Kat’s friends. They weren’t shooting, but by the same token, the gun emplacements hadn’t withdrawn into their armored housings.

At Kat’s feet, the injured guard groaned, rolling over onto his back. Apparently, her attempt to finish him off hadn’t been as accurate as she’d hoped. She wasn’t sure if the bullet had missed his vitals entirely, or if it had hit some sort of combat weave that prevented it from penetrating fully.

She fired a second shot, this one into the officer’s head. If he had armor implanted under his skin, Kat was too close for it to matter.

A glance out onto the warehouse floor confirmed that the yellow lights were still flashing and the gun turrets were still trained on her friends. Kat shifted her attention to the console in front of her, just in case there were something that could help Whip out.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t lucky enough to find a sticky note with a password on it. The bank of computers itself was incredibly complex, more akin to what Kat would expect from a shuttle launch than a more simple security station.

How long was it now? Had they been waiting 20 seconds? 30? Kat knew Whip was good but even for her, a minute was probably cutting it close. After all, it wasn’t like they were hacking into a strip mall, they were in a secure NeoSyne Facility with-

“Ten seconds remaining,” the mechanical voice informed her pleasantly. “If you are a NeoSyne employee, please enter your password now. If you do not, your death will be ruled a suicide and your next of kin will be denied survivor benefits.”

Kat opened her mouth to say something, but caught herself. Whippoorwill knew what was happening. Harassment would only distract her and put everyone at risk.

Still, she glanced up at the ceiling where about a quarter of the tiles were sliding away to reveal metal tubes. They were cutting it awfully close. Infiltration suits would protect Emma, Whip and her from atmospheric toxins for thirty seconds to a minute, but none of them had an air reservoir.

If the NeoSyne system actually flooded the warehouse floor with nerve gas, they were all dead. Maybe it would take Kat and Davis a little longer than the others, but the minute gas canisters started dropping, they were all as good as dead.

“Five seconds.” Kat almost jumped as the system gave the entire warehouse another pleasant reminder.

Above, the tubes whirred into place, gas canisters locking into the barrels of the tubes as they prepared to rain death down upon everyone in the room. Kat took a deep breath, triggering the seal on her suit. In the long run, it might not help, but if it bought her a handful of extra seconds to figure something out, then-

Then the yellow lighting disappeared. Three of the four turrets lowered into their housings with a quiet whine while the final turret spat out a cloud of dark black smoke. Evidently one of Davis’ shots had damaged something important.

Kat let out a sigh of relief, eyes tracking the ceiling panels as they slid back into place, hiding the huge numbers of gas dispensers that had just menaced all of them. Both Emma and Whippoorwill jogged over to the bunker, stepping over the door and into the blood spattered interior.

Emma whistled, eyeing up the damage before giving Kat a giant thumbs up.

“Nice Erinyes!” She exclaimed appreciatively. “One shot, one kill. Just like an action flick on one of the entertainment channels.”

“I was aiming for his chest,” Kat replied dryly. “I was on my side shooting at an upward angle and accidentally shot too high. I guess I just got lucky.”

“Eh.” Emma shrugged cheerfully. “You know what they say, if life hands you a horseshoe, brain someone with it and steal their research data while they’re unconscious.”

“I’m not sure anyone actually says that,” Kat replied, stepping away from the console to let Whippoorwill have direct access to it. Outside the bunker the remaining refugees were starting up the forklifts as the elevator went back up to pick up more of their companions now that the warehouse’s security had been neutralized.

“Fuck!” Whip’s shout interrupted the two of them. She stepped away from the console and started pacing back and forth, muttering a steady stream of curses that would rust the chrome off of the most hard-bitten street samurai.

“Chiffon,” Kat began, trying not to look at the woman’s cat ears as they flopped back and forth unceremoniously in time to Whip’s jerky and upset movements. “What’s happ-”

“That alert woke the entire facility up, Erinyes,” Whippoorwill spat out, her voice dripping with tension. “I have another fifty or so refugees coming down, but after that I don’t know if I’ll be able to maintain control of the elevator. There are at least two other people in the system with me fighting over it. I’m better than both of them combined, but they know the network better than me. It’s only a matter of time before they regain control.”

“And when that happens,” Kat responded slowly, frowning under her suit's mask.

“Exactly.” Whip slapped her hand against the bunker wall in exasperation. “We’ll be swarmed with NeoSyne goons. The only good news is that they won’t be able to remotely grab hold of the warehouse security network. For once, their decentralized system is working in our favor.”

“But we’re going to have to hold this building,” Kat said, nodding thoughtfully as she waved a hand in the general direction of the security console. “Do you think you’ll be able to program the turrets to shoot at NeoSyne security?”

“Not specifically,” Whippoorwill replied with a grunt. “I should be able to take off the limiters so that they will fire at anything in front of them. That means that we should be fine so long as we stay out of the kill zone, but I can’t promise that there won’t be friendly fire.”

“You.” Kat patted Emma on the shoulder on her way out of the bunker. “Keep Chiffon safe. I’ll let Merrimac know that time is our enemy. It looks like he needs to swap out that armor for one of the newer models Baker mentioned as soon as possible.”

Outside, all of the refugees but Baker were scurrying about the huge racks of stored goods, unboxing pallets of advanced body armor and rifles that looked like something out of a science fiction flick. Even as she jogged up to where Davis and the heavily jacketed Baker stood, chatting quietly about something or another, a tank hummed down one of the warehouse’s aisles, hovering just above the concrete floor.

Kat whistled to herself as she took in the vehicle’s knife like prow. It looked for all the world like a matte black triangle topped with a circular gun turret. The alien armor drank in the warehouse’s light, heavily angled to help deflect and disperse kinetic strikes outside of the four smaller anti-personnel gun ports built into its sides.

“She’s a beut aint she?” Baker asked, calling out to Kat as she approached. “Most of the tanks are in deep storage. It’ll take us at least a half hour to pull ‘em out. Still Jorge and Britt remembered working on one yesterday and they were able to get it working pretty quickly. We still don’t have any rounds for the main cannon, but the point defense lasers will work just fine on light armor if the range is close enough.”

“About that,” Kat said, eyeing up the sleek hover tank. “You should probably expedite the search for ammunition. Chiffon says that we’re only a matter of minutes away from being swarmed by NeoSyne security. She should have another load of your people down here shortly, but they’re going to need to be ready to stay behind the turrets and fight off a couple waves of samurai and stallesp.”

“Well fuck, I was afraid of that,” Baker replied laconically. They took a final puff from their cigarette before blowing out another cloud of smoke and removing it from their mouth. Almost absently, they clicked the back of the white cylinder, and the cherry red ashes on the end went out with a quiet ‘beep.’

Their spare hand went to their mouth. A moment later, Baker let loose a piercing whistle, drawing the attention of the people working on the storage racks. A hatch popped open on the tank, revealing a young woman, dark grease covering her face and auburn hair.

“3445!” Baker shouted. The handful of people that had still been working stopped, instead focusing their attention on the slight person standing next to Kat. “It sounds like the corpos know what we’re up to. Shift your focus to unboxing weaponry that we’ll be able to use in the next five to ten minutes and then get into position behind the turret line.”

“Britt,” they continued, pointing a slim almost albino white hand at the woman whose head was sticking out of the tank. “Help the big guy here find one of them APEX suits. We don’t have anyone trained to use heavy armor left, and I’d prefer to not lose people to friendly fire.”

“This is it ladies, gentlemen and people of all ages,” Baker finished, clapping their hands together, their cigarette having disappeared into the recesses of their jacket at some indeterminate point in time. “The 3445 gets one last chance today. Either we burn our way out of here and climb out of this deathtrap atop a pile of corpo bodies, or we go out in a blaze of glory. Either way, let’s make it a night worth remembering.”