《Above the Fog》007

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"That's a Class A suit," Nyz commented when he appeared in the van.

Upon arrival, the first thing he noticed was a dark gray combat suit sitting where the ones he used for most visible and registered missions would sit.

"Why is there a Class A suit in here?" Nyz asked.

"Because you're going to attack the Asterox facility," Kal told him. "They're increasing their security due to the bombing a few minutes ago, but it's the perfect time to attack. To make this even better, it'll be reported that the attack was by Gairal, and that the towers, the suits, and the mech were all a distraction."

Nyz was glad that the military would take Gairal more serious, even if Kal had to do something to prompt it. Their beliefs were much more extreme than he wanted to leave around.

"Why am I attacking Asterox right now?" Nyz asked as he began removing his armor. "And where did you get the Class A?"

"I made it in my lab, as usual," Kal answered. "And you're attacking them because they have a secret vault."

"You think it's in there?"

"It's worth a shot," Kal told him. "The trail did take us back to Valeros, after all, and we'd suspected they were hiding it here. I just didn't imagine they'd keep it in their main building."

"So you doubt it," Nyz said as he hung up the bodysuit.

"I do doubt it," Kal confirmed. "But if there's a chance, we need to take it. With the events going on, they'll think you're Gairal."

"You can't view the vault's inventory logs?" Nyz asked as he pulled on the Class A body suit.

"No," Kal answered. "It seems to be on a different system. I only even found the vault because of an oddity I noticed in their files for when they added on to the complex."

"They added in another wing after Troak fell, right?" Nyz asked.

"Right," Kal confirmed. "Now that I'm in their closed system, I was looking through everything, then noticed the oddity. Did some digging, and eventually figured out they have a vault. It's on its own closed system, meaning I'm not inside of it. However, you should be able to upload me to it while inside. I've set up that suit to automatically sync in, and it should be faster than the upload from before, since it'll happen directly to the targeted system. If it's not there and they move it in secretly after the attack, I'll know."

"Got it," Nyz began pulling on the Class A combat suit. "And the blame for this attack will go to Gairal. What if Asterox has Class A suits illegally?"

"They do, just not there," Kal told him. "It has to do with the secret military base in the city."

"You've never told me about that."

"It's never been necessary," Kal said. "They did have to bring the mech in, but they do have some other cool tech. Their servers were easy to hack into and copy."

Nyz rolled his eyes as he continued equipping himself.

"What's my mission?" Nyz asked once he finished preparing.

"I'm going to drop you a couple of streets away" Kal told him. "That's the closest I can send you where they won't have a visual on your arrival, meaning they won't link you to, well, yourself. Follow the map on your glasses. Your suit already has the authorization necessary to access anything in the building, and I've already overwritten their security protocols to ensure they can't do a reset while you're in there. Expect them to try to stop you, but you'll be fine."

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"Enough Class B's can take out a Class A."

"Are you actually worried about being hurt?" Kal asked.

"No," Nyz answered. "I trust your gear and my abilities."

"Good," Kal said. "Also, because we're using Gairal's attack as as cover, make sure to be swift, so that it looks like you rushed in when things went south elsewhere."

"Got it."

"Transferring in three… two… one!"

Nyz found himself in an alley and promptly tapped his right foot against his left, activating the wheels on the boots of his suit. He bent his knees and began rolling forward onto the street, then leaned his body to the right to turn before shooting off down the road.

Following the route mapped out in his suit's glasses, Nyz reached the Asterox facility in only a couple of minutes. Without stopping, he lifted up one of his bulkier guns and fired at the entrance, releasing multiple blasts of magical force.

The first blast appeared to bounce off the glass, the second blast rattled the doors, and the third shattered them. Nyz passed through a moment later, returning the gun to its hook on his pack. He grabbed the automatic magic rifle from the other side of his pack and immediately shot the four guards in the lobby as they fired at him.

Their bullets bounced off the barrier projected by his suit, a thin, blue field that appeared as a light coating over the suit anywhere the bullets impacted. Nyz's bullets bounced off a similar barrier on the guards' suits, though theirs were paler and faded under only a couple of seconds of assault.

When the receptionist who had hidden under the desk when the firefight began brought up a gun, Nyz shot her as well, then reached the doorway indicated by his map. He pressed his hand against the scanner and the light above it turned from red to green, then he opened the door and passed through, shooting the guards running towards him.

Anytime guards appeared in his path to block him off, Nyz shot at them, stopping only long enough for the kill, then wove between the corpses, jumping over them when that wasn't possible. Otherwise, he stopped only when he reached doors in order to unlock them.

Nyz reached the stairs and unlocked the door to them, then opened them and jumped down the stairs, landing at their base without issue. He leapt down the second set of steps, then, unlocked another door and passed through, shooting at the two dozen guards which stood in his path.

His barrier continued to flare up as their attacks struck it, and the moment his gun stopped releasing its magic bullets, he swapped the magazine for a new one, the blue of the crystal within the old one faded. Returning to his assault, Nyz shot at a grenade thrown at him, detonating it halfway between him and the guards.

A frosty blast filled the air, and the front of Nyz's suit flared up as its barrier fended off the grenade's attack. A second grenade landed on the ground at Nyz's feet a second later and burst, releasing an electromagical charge as he continued shooting at the guards.

The charge sparked over his suit and Nyz noticed in his suit's readings it was unusually strong.

"That's interesting," Kal said.

"Ya think?" Nyz muttered as he unclipped a grenade from his belt and tossed it to the guards.

They shot it out of the air, missing that Nyz used the same trick they did and had tossed a second grenade, which flew through the blast of flames before releasing its own electromagical charge. Their barriers flickered out of existence as the sparks danced over them, and Nyz finished off the guards before passing through, breaking the ice on the ground as he rolled through.

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"That was a Class A grenade," Nyz said as he passed the corpses.

"Yeah," Kal responded. "Their inventory doesn't list any Class-A gear, and all of their suits are Class B, as listed. Ah, found it. They have 'extended-range Class B grenades'. Those are most likely what they're calling their Class A grenades, in order to get away with it. Since they do produce most of the magitech the military uses, it's not surprising they've tried to get away with this. It won't hold up to an actual inspection, but there's a chance they'd have actual extended-range grenades for the inspection. Or something they can play off as them. Don't worry about it too hard, they don't have enough soldiers there to force you to act without the combat suit, even if all of their weapons were Class A, which they aren't based on how little they're doing against the barrier."

"Got it," Nyz pressed his hand against a scanner, and the door opened, then he continued down the hall, entering into another firefight with more guards.

This set of guards used ballistic shields that protected them from head-to-toe, occasionally opening a gap to fire at Nyz, throwing grenades over the shields as well. Any grenades Nyz launched back, they shot on the way.

"I've disabled all security views from that hallway," Kal told Nyz. "Including their helms. Unleash yourself."

Nyz put his gun away, and the soldiers ceased their shooting.

"Do you surrender?" One of them called.

Nyz tapped his right boot against his left, disabling the wheels, then bent his knees as he moved one foot back, compacting his form. Then, he sprung forward, the movement of his speed so great, the guards were unable to pull their triggers before he was on them.

He crashed into the ballistic shields, breaking the formation, and immediately drew two handguns, firing at point-blank range into each of the twenty guards as he charged through them. From the moment he leapt forward to the moment the last guard fell, only one managed to pull the trigger of their gun, shooting only a single bullet that missed Nyz, who watched it go by the same way someone sitting at a park might watch someone walking a turtle pass by.

Nyz returned his guns to his hips, tapped his right boot to his left, and began rolling again.

"Slow folk," he muttered.

"It's not their fault they can't match your speed," Kal said. "Though you did damage the suit a bit using that much force to move around."

"They're using equipment better than they should have," Nyz stated. "I should be using my normal gear. That can handle me moving that fast. I think I ripped this bodysuit."

"The combat suit's reading confirm that," Kal told him. "You also dented a few parts of the suit."

"Dammit," Nyz muttered as he turned a corner. "I can feel the fucking dent in some of the leg plates as I turn."

"It's just until the job is over," Kal stated. "The only reason it's Class A is because we can't go with the Class S, or it'd be linked back to the person who helped them, and we don't want that. Not yet, anyway."

"So we're going to reveal it?" Nyz asked as he stopped at the section of wall his glasses indicated.

"Yes," Kal answered as Nyz placed his hand against a panel, and the section of wall sank into the floor. "Later, when we aren't using Gairal as a cover anymore."

"Okay," Nyz said as he rolled into the hall and towards the large, dark green metal door at the end of it, drawing his rifle and unleashing a hail of bullets into the two guards until they went down. "An adamant vault door? Really?"

"Really," Kal said. "Open it up. By the way, chances are good my visual will go down once you enter, based on what I'm reading of the enchantment. I'll still be able to communicate, but not see what you're seeing."

Nyz placed a hand on the scanner, then input the passcode that appeared on his glasses. A series of thumps sounded, then the vault door slid inward. Nyz rolled inside and looked at the shelves of boxes and crates filling the space.

"Yeah, my visuals are down," Kal told him. "Go to the nearest computer and-did you just shoot someone?"

"No," Nyz stated. "I shot next to him. "Is this vault's inventory solely in those files?"

"Files?" Kal asked. "They're using files?"

"N-no," the clerk at the desk answered the question as he pointed at the tablet he had been playing chess on. "We also input them into this tablet. It's a closed connection, only on itself."

"Give it to me," Nyz ordered, taking the tablet from the man, then inspecting it before placing his hand on the screen, but nothing happened. "There's no access ports on here. Is it wireless?"

The clerk hesitated for a moment, and Nyz shot into the back of the chair, causing the clerk to jump.

"Answer the question," Nyz ordered. "How do you use this?"

"It has no wireless function," the clerk told him. "It scans the tag on the item and registers it, then I manually input the code for who brought it in or took it out. That's all it's used for, to track which items are out of the room and which items are inside. The details of the items are in the files."

"Pull up the log of everything brought here within the last twelve months," Nyz tossed the tablet onto the clerk's lap. "Comply with me, and I'll leave you the use of your legs."

"I've sealed the door to the hall," Kal told him. "But expect a fight when you go to leave. They've requested military assistance."

"And hurry up!" Nyz pointed his gun at the clerk's left leg. "Or I'm going to start shooting."

The clerk fumbled with the tablet, pulling up the log, then Nyz took it and inspected it, before tapping on it and pulling up the full list of items stored in the vault.

"They have it," Nyz stated, tapping on an item, then frowning. "Hey, asshole. Where are items EWMG-193, and EWMG-193-A-dash-one through ten located in here?"

"Th-th-that! No!" The clerk exclaimed, so Nyz shot him in the leg.

"Where is it?" He asked as the man screamed.

"Damn," Kal sighed. "They don't have it."

"I-In the back," the clerk answered. "Row 17. The crates are labeled."

"Thank you," Nyz shot him in the other leg, then tossed the tablet onto the desk and rolled to the back.

He located Row 17, then the ten crates. EWMG-193 was in a crate eight feet in height and just as wide. Nyz grabbed the crate and broke it open, then pulled out the padding as he stared at the item in front of him.

"Oh," he said. "'MG' didn't mean 'Mini-Gun'."

"What did it mean?" Kal snorted.

The device within consisted of a platform six feet in diameter with four legs, the platform with short walls on it and a circular hole in the center, where a large gun was fixed.

"'Mobile Gun'," Nyz answered, before opening up the other crates, grabbing the ammo packs and loading them onto the mobile gun. "What does 'EW' mean?"

"Probably 'Experimental Weaponry'," Kal answered. "Fucking hell. They didn't store it in their secret vault?"

"This is definitely in the secret vault."

"The item we're really after-you're taking it, aren't you?"

"Gotta make 'em think we were here for something that's actually here."

"Well," Kal said. "For once, you're actually grabbing something logical. They'll think Gairal was after that the entire time, and then start to wonder how the fuck they knew about it. Yeah, it's Experimental Weaponry Mobile Gun 193. It's, heh, it's been there for only three days, being stored until they can deliver it to the military covertly. It's already been tested and everything. Just load the ammo in-that's the clicking, isn't it?"

"Yep," Nyz slid another ammo pack into a slot. "It has a lot of slots."

"It's designed to hold both bullets and crystal cartridges," Nyz told him. "You are putting them in the indicated slots, aren't you?"

"Bullets are in rolls, crystals are raw," Nyz said. "The slots are different. Easy to tell the difference."

He finished loading the EWMG's ammo, then sat on the back of it.

"Why use this instead of a mech?" Nyz asked as he turned it on.

"I can't find a report on it," Kal told him. "So it was probably discussed in-person or is only on-paper. It could be meant as a prototype for something else."

"Got it," Nyz said, then began navigating the EWMG.

"Oh, it's also got an automated function," Kal told him. "All you have to do is set it to shoot and it'll attack anyone not wearing the types of suit input into its system as 'friendlies' while following either the navigator's directions or an automated path based on where friendlies are going. Right now, it doesn't have any input in."

"Found that function," Nyz said. "Let's give them the test run they were wanting."

He drove the EWMG out of the vault and to the door to the hall, which he shot with his force blaster to break it open, revealing several squads of Asterox soldiers waiting for him.

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