Mai switched one of the SMGs for a light machine gun. Despite having used one during the DOMINATION EVENT at the waterpark, she was shocked at how much it weighed when it wasn’t resting on its bipod. There wasn’t a chance she was going to be able to fire it one handed.

But if she got rid of the shield, both she and the girl would be easy targets. Only her shield stood between them and being turned into a pile of shredded flesh and bloody rags. She was going to have to up her game if she wanted to keep Li alive.

Damn! Where did that thought come from? She shook her head, trying to clear it of the thought. More bullets struck her shield.

SHIELD SOAK 20%

PINNED!

“Let go for a second, I’m going to have to generate a suit!” She tugged free from the girl’s grip and selected the suit of armour she’d used with Johnny back at the supply drop. Even now, despite his betrayal she felt a lump in her throat at the thought of him at the oddest of times. Yet more emotion she didn’t need. Creating the suit would mean she would be able to wield weapons far heavier than she would if she was relying on her own muscle strength to do so.

Another drone appeared, scanning the area like the first one had, before deploying its own weapon.

The mission counter hadn’t dropped, so Mai deduced that the number indicated how many drones she had to destroy in order to complete the mission of protecting the girl.

Unleashing another burst with the SMGs she forced the first drone to dodge away, long enough to blink click and form the suit of armour.

BIOMASS – 51%

Armour complete, she made her other arm into a light machine gun, paying another ten per cent BIOMASS for a mixed load. Laying the sights of both onto the first drone she let rip.

BIOMASS – 41%

The muzzle flash leapt at least a pace from the barrel, its strobing light casting an orange hue over the space they were in and the noise. Oh gods the noise! Thought Mai as the weapons boomed.

Tracer zipped through the air quickly followed by a mix of incendiary and explosive rounds.

CRITICAL HIT! 75%

Wobbling, the drone wavered from side-to-side, smoke belching out of the holes she had punched into it. With no warning at all, it exploded.

WRECKED!

NEW SKILL!

DRONE KILLER – RANK 1

DRONE KILLERS ARE A BREED APART. ONLY THOSE BRAVE – OR STUPID – ENOUGH TO TAKE ON SUCH FEARSOME MACHINES CAN ACHIEVE SUCH A TITLE.

The blast knocked Mai onto her heels, as shrapnel rained down onto her, the little girl screaming in fear or pain. The counter dropped to nine, confirming her suspicion about the mission objective.

Emperor’s fifth nipple! This is not going to be easy!

More bullets cracked into her armour.

DAMAGE! 1% ARMOUR

She laughed as she saw how little damage was being done. It was clear that the drones were only designed to hunt unarmoured prey.

Feeling bold, she pressed the girl back into the recess as far as she could go, and stepped out of cover, yelling at the second drone, drawing it away from where the girl was hiding, its laser tracking her every movement.

It fired a stream of tracer so thick that there was barely a break in the line, looking more like an energy beam than a stream of kinetic projectiles. Mai was forced to throw herself around like an acrobat to avoid the shots.

Even though the damage done to her suit wasn’t as much as that done to the shield, she didn’t want to take too much damage as she didn’t know what she might be facing next. That, and letting something drill her with bullets completely went against her natural instincts.

And not liking being hit with bullets meant that she was more than happy to dish out the punishment in return.

HIT! 5%

HIT! 7%

HIT! 9%

Zipping to her right, the drone fired a burst in return.

DAMAGE! ARMOUR 2%

Tenacious little bastards, she thought as she tracked the drone. Zipping up, down, left and right, it made aiming hard. Splitting her sights, she opened fire and started moving her light machine guns randomly.

HIT! 5%

As soon as the notification popped up, she took immediate advantage of the momentary pause in the drone’s movement it caused.

CRITICAL HIT! 65%

HIT! 5%

HIT! 5%

WRECKED!

DRONE KILLER

Mai barely had time to metaphorically wipe the sweat from her brow before she heard the girl shout a warning. Too late. Bullets hammered into her from behind. So many hits, that she actually staggered forward a couple of paces before righting herself. The noise was like corn popping, but slightly muted by all of the armour and padding separating her from where the bullets were impacting.

DAMAGE! 5% ARMOUR

Okay you little shits, you’re starting to piss me off.

Spinning, she laid her sights onto the centre of the three drones which had flanked her. With no little satisfaction she opened fire, aiming for the one in the centre. It was slightly closer, meaning it would have less time to attempt to avoid her fire.

HIT! 68%

Unable to dodge her first burst it tried to avoid her fire, whilst the other two zipped around and strafed her. Ignoring the SOAK notifications which popped up, she kept both of her own guns firing, snarling as she tracked the first drone.

Such was the weight of her fire that the drone was completely incapable of returning fire. Pieces of armour, sparks, and gouts of flame erupted from the battered drone as it tried to avoid her fire.

HIT! 10%

HIT! 5%

HIT! 7%

HIT! 8%

HIT! 5%

There was a sudden gout of flame from the target drone’s hull and then it exploded, showering the area with shrapnel and burning plastic.

WRECKED!

DRONE KILLER

HIT! 86%

EXPLOSIVE DAMAGE!

HIT! 92%

EXPLOSIVE DAMAGE!

Both of the other drones skewed their way through the air, one with its gun pointing uselessly downward whilst the other appeared to be blinded, spraying bullets in all directions, blowing chunks from the walls of the hab blocks surrounding them. Screams rang out as the heavy bullets punched through the flimsy walls, striking unseen inhabitants.

Cursing at the chaos she’d inadvertently caused and laying her sights on the one with the still-functioning weapon, she opened fire. Unable to avoid her fire, its critical hit boxes were far easier to attack.

WRECKED!

DRONE KILLER

It blew apart, its remains killing its already damaged companions.

WRECKED!

DRONE KILLER

WRECKED!

DRONE KILLER

DAMAGE! 10% ARMOUR

This time the explosions were so quick, one after the other, that it seemed as though the drones had exploded simultaneously. A particularly large piece of shrapnel, something which looked rather like a bent gun barrel flew through the air to hit Mai’s armour.

Looking at her retinal monitor, she saw that not only was the mission counter down to six, but that her bio-mass was going to be severely depleted if she had to fix the suit and create a way of protecting the girl other than just hiding her in the shadows.

Activating her REPAIR ARMOUR skill, she created another shield and placed it in front of the girl.

ARMOUR FULLY REPAIRED – [email protected]%

“Stay here. Don’t move. Okay?” adrenaline coursing through her veins, she could only think in simple sentences. Whilst the drones had been relatively easy to kill, especially when it came to the emotional cost of killing humans, their alien nature and the way that they swarmed had unsettled her.

One of her greatest dislikes – not fear as such – was insects. She didn’t know why, but they just unsettled her. It didn’t matter if they were Jackers, nasty stinging creatures which seemed to have been born angry, or Milk Spiders – so named because of the milk they produced in farms – she hated them. And the drones were definitely insect-like in appearance and behaviour. She hadn’t had time to process that during the initial seconds of combat but looking at the wreckage she was struck by the similarities.

“Okay. You won’t let them get me, will you?”

“Not a fucking chance,” she snarled the words out, Li would never forgive her if she Mai had failed to save a girl who needed her help.

Another flight of three drones attacked, muzzle flash strobing as they tried to cut her down in a volley of fire.

Throwing herself to one side, she engaged two simultaneously, sweeping her fire through the air so that as they tried to dodge the initial stream of bullets, they crossed into the next.

All of the time she watched as her armours’ durability was worn down by hit after hit. It seemed that drones had learned from her killing of their fellows.

Bastards are damned tough! Activating her FREE RUNNING skill she ran at a wall, then straight up it for a few strides and then backflipped over the drones as they chased after her.

All the time she kept her finger pressed on the trigger, burning through her ammunition and bio-mass faster than she would have liked as she tried to keep the magazine continually full.

HIT! 5%

HIT! 7%

CRITICAL HIT! 88%

WRECKED!

DRONE KILLER!

BIOMASS – 23%

As soon as she landed, she switched one of the light machine guns for a long blade. Being behind the drones conferred her a twenty five per cent better chance to hit, and because she had the DRONE KILLER skill at Rank 1, she got an additional five per cent chance at a critical hit.

Thrusting with all of her body weight, which had been at least tripled by the armour she was now wearing, she drove her sword into the belly of the drone, ignoring the bullets smacking into her armour.

With barely any resistance, the blade punched through the drone’s armour, tip exploding from its back in a shower of sparks and an ear-piercing electronic squeal from the drone.

WRECKED!

DRONE KILLER

Sweeping her blade across at the final drone in this wing she swatted it out of the sky with its dead companion still impaled on her sword.

HIT! 94%

CRUSHING DAMAGE

The force of her blow sent the drone spiralling away to slam into a hab block. For once this drone didn’t explode, merely gave a completely underwhelming puff of smoke and then dropped to the ground.

WRECKED!

DRONE KILLER

There was only one drone left according to the counter but try as she might she couldn’t spot it.

“You’ve got to fight the momma drone now,” warned the girl.

“What the hells is a momma drone?” Mai whispered back. Her skin crawled as she tried to spot the final drone.

“It’s the big one where they take all the bits and pieces.”

Mai’s stomach flipped at that. Just how big is this?

A low rumble approached, as if a passenger jet was approaching from a distance. The ground itself trembled.

Oh. Bugger.

Just in time Mai threw herself to the ground as a rocket whooshed out of the mist above and ploughed into a nearby shop.

There was a pause, long enough to allow Mai to think that the rocket had been a dud before the entire shop front exploded.

DAMAGE! 27%

STAGGERED

INTIMIDATED

Staggering, Mai set off at a run, desperate to put as much distance between her and the girl. She couldn’t afford to let another rocket like that kill the one person she was supposed to be protecting.

Jet engines roared, and laser sight beams probed the ground. Heart thudding fit to burst, she quickly absorbed her blade and threw herself to her knees, sliding into cover behind a rusting ground car.

Snatching her pack off her back, she grabbed a bottle of bio-mass boost and drank heavily from it, drinking more than she ever had before. Her bio-mass level grew until it hit one hundred and seventy-five per cent and then stopped, no matter how much more she drank.

Wiping her lips, she dropped the bottle back into her pack. All the time the ‘momma drone’ had been hovering over the scene, lasers probing.

Opening her menu, Mai selected a rocket launcher of her own. It had a magazine which could hold six rockets, all of which were fire and forget.

Thirty per cent for the launcher and another five per cent per rocket is going to cost! She thought with a mental shrug. There was nothing else she could do if she wanted to defeat such a large opponent.

Before she formed it, she placed the bottle’s nipple in her mouth. As soon as she formed it she tipped her head back and sucked in the last of its contents, bringing her bio-mass back up to one hundred per cent.

BIOMASS 100%

The momma drone came powering out of the sky, rubbish flying around in mini tornadoes as the power of its engines blasted them from the ground.

Moving towards where the girl was still hiding behind her shield, the drone scanning the area with tighter and tighter beams.

“Leave her alone you bitch!” screamed Mai as she stepped out of cover. Activating her DIRTY BOXING and UNARMED COMBAT skills in a desperate attempt to gain some sort of advantage, she painted the momma drone with her own laser sight, firing as soon as her weapon chimed that it had a lock.

Mai didn’t have the time to be subtle, or to pick her shots. Every fibre of her body screamed at the thought of losing the girl to such a monstrous creation.

Emptying her magazine in under three seconds, Mai was charging forward, adding the fire power of her light machine guns to her rocket attack.

HIT! – BLAST 8%

HIT! – NO PENETRATION

HIT! – RICOCHET

HIT! BLAST 5%

HIT! – RICOCHET

HIT! BOUNCE

HIT! BOUNCE

HIT! BLAST 5%

HIT! BLAST 4%

HIT! BLAST 1%

“Shit!” she’d done a measly twenty-three percent of damage to the drone. There was a pause as the drone spun around to face her. And then a myriad of weapons popped out of its body “Oh, bollocks.”