Enemy : Amazon Survivor, Roselyn Carter

The water drones circled like wolves. The first one to get close enough, she cleaved her micro-blade through, only for the machine to slide out of her path. The water splattered apart, dumping back to the ground, only for it to reform a moment later. “Tsk.”

The marines didn’t stay out of the fight either. They fired directly into the mess, letting their mag-rifle rounds punch straight through the water and fly at Iris. Their aim was only human however. Of the dozens to hundreds of rounds they blasted at her, she only had to cut down a few. Those few were enough. The water drones blasted her with water, hammering her like fire hoses. Enough to stagger her for a moment. Then, Roselyn’s weapon flung forward. It touched the water.

Electricity blasted through her, enough to make her scream in pain. Her internals surged, heating up and assaulting her with damage reports. Each alert hit her like a shot of agony. They didn’t cripple her though.

Iris hacked through the body of the water drone, breaking its uptake and cutting the current. Roselyn pulled her weapon back, more of a conducting whip, and twirled it once more. The damage had been bad, direct through her armor and to her combat systems. Too much and her life support would overheat. Iris guessed she could take ten of those shocks maximum. She also figured that she had Roselyn’s tricks figured out.

Someone barked a command for them to resume fire. Iris spun, whipping her sword through the nearest water drones and knocking them back. Then she leapt. High, vaulted, well over the tops of the water drones. Any machine could have sniped her with ease, but the marines were only human. Their bullets raced through the air without even nicking her. It was Roselyn’s whip she had to twist and bat away.

Then she landed and charged the nearest group. The first marine fell back, putting up his hands. She kicked him in the chest hard enough to break his body armor. He flew back, bowling over his squad. She chopped their rifles in half before one of the water drones bodied into her. Roselyn’s whip lashed out, but not before Iris grabbed hold of the drone’s real body. The magnet clamps in her hand found purchase with something in its guts, and it stuck to her. The electricity hit just as she stabbed through the metal ball.

The battery pack exploded, detonating in her hand and stripping the synthetic skin off. It broke the electric connection too. “One down.”

Roselyn whistled and twirled her whip again. “This must be what they call combat experience, huh?”

Iris shook her hand out. The marines were shouting about medics and injuries. “You gunna surrender?”

“Now where would be the fun in that?”

Everything attacked at once. Bullets caught Iris in the chest. The reactive fluid dribbled out of her combat suit, getting washed away whenever one of the water drones caught up to her. She kept her focus on the marines, sprinting away from Roselyn as fast as she could. She cut through their weapons, sometimes taking off fingers, hands, opening their chests. Nothing lethal.

She hoped.

Captain Verne shook his head on the screen, watching on. “You’re embarrassing yourself, Miss Carter. You think this is some practice dummy? Some training drone? Iris Haber was fighting with the pros before she was even old enough to drink.”

The mercenary turned to the captain and asked, “You saying she was some kind of child soldier?”

Verne laughed as Iris sprinted across the submarine bay, cutting down the hail of bullets. “She was a VR gamer before she got drafted. The world champion of Call of Honor even, and that was before her entire military career, before she signed on with Blumhagen as a HAB unit.”

“Call of Honor? That game’s like a decade old!”

“And that’s ten years of fighting everything from blighted, to sepratist terrorists, to corporate PMC machines. Quit taking her lightly. This woman sacrificed her arm to take down Leilani Blake.”

“Oh come on, give me a break. I’m not going to lose,” Roselyn said, finally turning back to Iris as she dropped the last remaining marine. The only working mag-rifle in the bay was hers. She grinned. “Just me and you now.”

“Excuse me, but Call of Honor is not a decade old. The last game came out…” She checked her internal memory. The last installment has come out twelve years ago, shortly before the development studio was destroyed in an arson attack. She gritted her teeth and tried to keep it in. She couldn’t. “God damn it, stop making me feel old. Literally worse than your stupid cattleprod thing.”

Roselyn huffed and gestured with her free hand. The water drones took the signal. They spread out evenly, forming a wall around rather than a hunting pack. One by one, they linked up with their neighbors and grew taller, surrounding her as Roselyn’s whip spun faster and faster. The liquid barrier shrank carefully, waiting for the woman’s signal.

Iris squatted down, broadened her stance, and darted forward. She swung her sword the the blade angled, slashing through the water and spraying it away as she strode through it, only for the drones to all collapse in on her. The pods themselves hammered her and linked to one another, driving her to one knee and weighing her sword arm down. Magnetic as well as acoustic, apparently. Her combat suit hardened in response to the impacts. The fluid took an electric charge to align the microfilaments within, locking the mesh like a protective cage around her, but the pressure didn’t let up. Every one of the drones was using its vibrations to pump water out from her like a fountain, pushing her down with the jets.

Roselyn flung the whip forward, cutting it into the water enveloping Iris like a flail. The electricity blasted through her once more. She screamed, the voice garbling out through bubbles in the water. The sensation compounded as her muscles locked up, nearly rapping her in a prison of her own body. Even with the digital filter, it burned through her.

Until she managed to grab hold of the conducting head. Then she activated her own acoustic weapon. The Gawain Sub-Dermal Acoustic fought through the surging electricity and went from inert to full blast before Roselyn could do more than raise her eyebrows. The shockwave blasted out, rippling through the water and through the drones covering her, frying their internal speakers. The water crashed away, flooding across the bay floor as Iris hacked her micro-blade through the whip wire.

The pain abated. It left a shadow of an ache through her body as she heaved fresh breath and pointed her sword at the other HAB unit.

“Shit,” Roselyn said. “I guess old dogs can have new tricks.”

“Oh my God, that line was cliche two centuries ago.” She should have gotten some kind of enhanced surge protection, some way to flush old lubricant for new. Every movement felt like wading through mud. It wasn’t getting better quickly either.

Roselyn clicked her tongue and discarded the wire handle. Then the face of Captain Verne was replaced with another. Not quite a human face, but that of a digital avatar mimicking a human. All polygons and no life. Black abyss for faces, white lines like spiderweb for edges. “Miss Haber,” the new presence said. “I would like to make a proposal for you. I believe that after you hear the details, you will come around to our way of seeing things, but that information is on a need to know basis. It is something you have to earn. Do so by proving your strength. The defenses of the Leviathan will allow your duel to continue.”

“Join you? I don’t even know who the fuck you are!”

The avatar grinned, baring a smile at her larger than any human could have. “Like I said, a need to know basis. Let me ask you something…”

Iris could feel something was wrong. Something in her instincts warned her. She looked down just as something got tossed out of the submersible Roselyn had come in from. It hit the wet ground and skidded over to her. Roselyn dashed for it. Iris nearly did as well, but there was no way for her to get to it first. Judging by the size, it was a weapon.

The avatar asked, “What is the most important resource in the world? Is it oil? Electricity? Nuclear weapons?”

Roselyn turned back to face Iris, holding a graphene edged ax. It looked heavy, thick enough to break through any piece of armor. That meant it would be slow, so there had to be some other trick. Then she heard the keening tone as the edge vibrated.

“It’s people,” Iris said.

Bells went off like she was on a game show. “Correct! It is people alone that can control the future, and that’s of course what we all care about. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives there, afterall. So, next question. What is the second most important resource? Here’s a hint, what’s the most important resource that humans need?”

“Oh, shut up, will you?” Roselyn asked as she strode towards Iris. “And you, are you really going to try and use a mag-rifle against me? You look ridiculous.”

The woman could obviously cut down any shot fired from more than a few meters away. Any closer and she may as well be using her micro-blade. Iris dumped the gun and gripped her blade with both hands. “Do you even know how to use a HAB unit properly?” Roselyn was taking her steps casually, almost sauntering. She didn’t have her reflexes cranked up, or maybe the new control software she had retained that.

“Listen here, Haber. The world is falling apart, and the only reason we haven’t admitted we’re at war with UAAF is because it’s too ridiculous to think the other superpower is a bigger threat than Earth herself dying on us. The name of the game is survival, and when your life is on the line, anything goes.”

“Is that why you’re smuggling farm chemicals to middle of nowhere Siberia?”

Roselyn laughed. “Nah, that was just where we were keeping the little reject monster. Did you have fun being Fauxnir’s chewtoy?”

“Reject? You have more?”

“Ladies!” the avatar shouted, his voice amplified from every wall. “I’ll let you two go at it till you’re both little bits and pieces for all I care. Putting you back together is just money. I was asking my questions in a specific order though, so I would appreciate you not jumping ahead. I ask again, what is the most important resource for humans? What do you have to have to keep civilization from falling apart and everyone killing each other, like you two are trying to do right now.”

Iris hesitated, and said, “Food.”

Again, the bells, the whistles, the game show applause.

Roselyn sprinted at her.