Princess

Another hallway. To be fair, I get it. This was a space station after all, but still, it was getting absurd at this point. Half the habitable space on this damned station had to be empty hallways by this point. Most ended nowhere at all, and the one in ten that actually connected those few rooms the station did have, seemed no more traveled than the others.

The same black stone, the same long halls, the same empty rooms. We were treading familiar ground, repeating our initial route to the server room before branching out to explore the rest of the station on our manhunt. I carried on with the steady pace set earlier as we neared a branch. I closed in, listening. Jhordan barely came to a halt before she started walking over me. I heard footsteps shuffling closer.

Rather than risk a radio transmission for the communique, I signaled this info by hand now that I actually had Jhordan's attention. My mind flashed back to Helper-112 shifting to combat readiness at the threat of something being loose in the station. Unless those escapees had a particular weakness to optical weapons compared to kinetics, we should be fine. I hoped.

Drawing a flashbang from my bandoleer, I internally berated myself for not bringing more non-lethals. I still had two smokes, one flash and a tear gas grenade left. Overkill for a delivery run, but less than ideal for room clearance with potential friendlies in the blast. I thumbed the safety cover up and primed the grenade, silently palming the spoon clear of the fuze. I tossed my cooked flashbang around the corner with a sharp inhale, then squinted my eyes and hefted my shotgun.

BANG!

The sound battered its way through the muffling effect of my helmet. I felt the shockwave fly over me in a fluttering rush, diluted by distance and the geometrics of my cover. The polished black walls caught the explosion's light for one blinding instant, and through my squinted eyes and tinted visor the hall around me took on an otherworld visage.

Looking into the black mirrors all around me was akin to staring into the midnight heart of the void itself. It was beyond any simple black. It was a living, roiling darkness that almost looked alive and aware. I could have sworn there was something more, just on the cusp of my ultra-vision, but the flash faded as the second passed. Now was the time for action, not thinking.

There's never a guarantee that a flash and clear will go well. Combat doesn't have any guarantees. Something can always go wrong. At this point I was expecting it too. But despite the luck of the day, I rounded the corner and everything happened as intended. Right up to me pointing a gun at Shores while he lay on the ground caught between gasping for air and mewling in pain.

I didn't bother speaking to him yet. He wouldn't hear me. Instead, I looked him over and was slightly more relieved than I was mortified. He looked like a frayed rag used on too big a mess. His hair and beard were filled with blood he'd tried to wipe away but only smeared around. Most of his gear was missing, and what he had left was in tatters like he'd lost a fight with a polymer shredder. His skin was flayed to the muscle in places and in various shades of bruising everywhere else, his fingers halfway worn to the bloodied tips.

"Grab him and let's go." This to Jhordan, then over the squad net. "Diaz, Nye, Tony. If you can hear this, return to the ship now. We have Shores and are en route back to the Cat. Acknowledge if possible." Nothing was forthcoming but static. Not that I expected anything at this point. I wasn't looking forward to our second sortie to find them once we'd dropped Shores off.

A buzz of hyper-quick gunfire nearby forced me to duck on instinct before the sound registered. Our under barrels, more accurately Jhordan's and Diaz's. Jhordan had Shores in one bulky hand, her rifle toted in the other, but she wasn't shooting anything.

"Diaz this is Princess. I can hear your gunfire, moving to you now." A wave of distorted static assaulted me in a deafening cacophony before I lowered the gain enough to hear anything but shrieking white noise. More gunfire, then the pop-crackle of laser pulses hitting home too. Not enough to be a full-blown battle, too much to be an isolated skirmish.

The sound of combat echoed through the halls. A norm with their inferior eyes would have been lost at the first crossroads. I scanned each junction as I moved, peering into the infra-reflective vapors for the tell-tale signs of laser fire. Dull throbs of IR light gained force as I rushed deeper into the station until the intersection in front of me arced in lethal hues of sub-crimson light.

Skidding to a stop, I threw myself prone back the way I'd come, waiting for the struck stone walls to flash heat and explode outward into a shrapnel-filled killing ground. The sharp bites never came. I looked up to see the black stone dissipate the heat within seconds. It was a similar execution as the matte finish on our armor, but light years beyond in its efficiency. Again I could almost see something deep within the stone, incoherently writhing just below the surface.

Shores was dumped beside me in a heap as Jhordan brought her rifle to bear and added its weight to the firefight just around the corner. Diaz ducked out as she pushed in. His awareness of the tactical situation was impressive to me, it was second nature to him in a way I envied but hoped to never match. How many battles had he fought?

He finished reloading his rifle's primary and secondary feeds, then leaned back out, covering Nye while she took her turn and retreated. Her armor hissing as the ablative finish boiled off dozens of scorch marks. She had the wrong shield for this fight and it showed, pocks of charred finish popping off her superheated plate. The shooting stopped. I hadn't even seen the enemy.

"Sound off," I called hesitantly over my speakers. Everyone answered; even Shores drunkenly gave it a try. "Everyone's here. Fall back to the ship so we can finally leave." And I can get out of this nightmare called command.

"There was another bot nearby. We could hear it moving." Tony said from the rear, loading a fresh power cell. His repeater's charge indicator shimmering fae colors through the protection of his spectral-blocker shield. His darkened plates were untouched by the killing light of the conflict.

"That's not our priority right now. We didn't come here to fight the client's bots. They want us out of here and so do I. Let's get gone." I said while looking over to the husk of their assailant.

Same chassis as Helper, same armament too— exclusively laser weapons. Seeing how effectively the walls could resist the heat spikes seemed like a sound choice for station defense. It still left most of my squad at a disadvantage due to improper shielding.

"Jhordan, take point and backtrack to the hanger. Tony, you're are rearguard." I ordered. Defensively, they were both well equipped to counter more helper bots, assuming they were all armed the same. "The one we saw earlier had a shield. Did this one?"

"None that I could tell of. My rifle and Nye's had no issues either way. Well sloped armor though. Tony's GPMG didn't have the punch for it, and my sub-munitions couldn't shatter any of the emitters or optics. These things aren't relics. They're well designed and well maintained." Diaz spouted off the facts like he had just read them in the manual instead of gleaning it from a 15-second life and death struggle. I waited for his other tone—the arrogant, condescending one—but it wasn't forthcoming.

Dammit, first Shores, then Jhordan and now Diaz. Was everyone acting weird just to screw with me? Whatever, we were homebound now so I could ignore it until later.

Jhordan led on, all vigor from combat lost now as she cast frequent glances to Shores. Nye was behind her, carrying Shores in the least comfortable way possible— belly down on her shoulder. I jogged in the center of the squad, trying to match the intense pace my armored companion had set just by walking with a purpose. I contemplated shedding some volatile weight to slow any pursuers, but my moral decency won out, aided by the uncertainty of whether or not collapsing a hallway would depressurize this chunk of the station. If Shores was airtight, I might have done it. We'd already scrapped a few bots. What were a couple of high-yield, directional proximity mines and shaped charges between client and contractor?

Instead, I tossed a pair of long-fuze frag grenades behind us as we rounded a corner into yet another unbroken stretch of straight hall. A deterrent like that would have convinced most fleshy pursuers that we weren't worth their time, but bots didn't care about silly things like gruesome maiming or death. They'd keep coming until they couldn't anymore.

The metallic pings of shrapnel striking plates were rewarding but altogether unsatisfying since I knew they wouldn't penetrate anything critical— unless I was extremely lucky. Based on the job so far, I felt that wouldn't be the case. What rounded the corner fifty meters behind us proved I wasn't.

"That's botshit!" I cried instead of actual useful info.

Tony glanced back and provided the tactical situation very neatly.

"We're so fucked! Run!"

More shooting erupted. This time with no cover, no halls to duck into, and a much more dangerous adversary. It was larger than 'showing off big' or 'compensating for something big.' The mechanical monstrosity behind us was the largest combat suit I'd ever seen, and I'd seen more than most military procurement officers.

It was a beast of metal and raw power that must have stood over five meters tall because it filled the hall from floor to ceiling. I could only see glimpses of it through the hail of tracer and laser fire, but it was clearly meant to operate with impunity in open fields, not cramped hallways. Its legs had the standard stumpy look of most power armor, its haunches hidden behind the draped metal spade-shaped tassets.

Its torso was a smattering of jerry-rigged armor slabs, point defense emitters and optics. Its flanks were jutting outwards, reminding me of flared ribs on a starved ape, while two twinned-turreted cupolas nested atop its hulking shoulders. An amalgamation of exposed pistons, servos and cables composed the overly broad arms, both of which bore tumorous semi-spheric laser arrays and ended at the elbows in underslung miniguns. I could barely see the monster's head through the firestorm, but it seemed comically small and featureless, save for the triclopic optics that favored the right side.

I took all this in over a second. We couldn't fight that thing. I snapped my head forward and kicked my jog into a full sprint just as a bolt of energy struck me square in the back.

The flash sear of my body armor was an electric rush up my spine as energy rippled across my backplate. Then the heat reached me. It was like having boiling water dumped on my hand while inside a rubber glove, brutally painful yet short-lived without much real damage. I couldn't feel it, but I knew my voidsuit's ablative finish was flash-boiled. A second hit would cook me alive.

The only reason we didn't become the epicenter of a kiloton explosion was because I'd already started bringing out my heavy ordinance as soon as I saw that monster. My demolitions pack being half swung forward instead of square on my back was the difference between a swift death and the seconds we used to keep running. There was no room to maneuver, no tactical strategy to apply, no orders I could give. The only answer was force.

Diaz and Tony began applying it with indiscretion at a full sprint. If they weren't trailing so far behind initially, they would have overtaken me in seconds. I ran for all I had while lead and lasers scorched the air, filling the corridor with ashy smoke.

I dropped my shotgun, letting it dangle from my sling before it mag-locked up behind my shoulder and stopped slapping my legs. I swung my pack further, searching for the smallest charge in my demo kit.

I stomped into an impact crater that hadn't been there a second ago, losing my tenuous balance and pitching forward. A bullet struck my helmet at a glance, snapping my chin to my breastplate and shoving my body lower still. My legs tangled.

I failed to catch myself and toppled forward. The dark ground rushed to meet me as a black blur hooked under my arm and slammed me face first into a solid wall with the force of an orbital crash landing. The air burst from me, my ribs creaking.

"I got you." Tony said, clutching me high and hard into his angle-plated torso. Too tight! He was crushing me. I gasped in a half breath, the most I could manage. I forced my helmet to his plates and switched off my suit's speakers.

"Walls!" I scream the word, letting it reverberate inside my helmet while my ribs popped under straining muscles.

I pass the cylinder from my pinned left hand to my marginally less restricted right. Tony is beaten into a low hunch, the hammering blows of solid rounds reverberating to me through his plate. He clutches me tighter and what little air I had left escapes me.

Tony shifts his flight so close to the wall his pauldrons could have scraped a thick coat of paint. I wedge the cylinder between my shoulder meat and his rigid plates, holding it fast while adjusting its fuse setting one handed.

Tony stumbles from another burst, holding me closer. My vision's starting to swim. The cylinder lodges against my collarbone. The bones in my chest grind together, on the verge of breaking. My pinned arm gives way before the metal does. Damn, that hurts!

I rip the cylinder free and stab the face of it into the wall. It blinks from green to red. Two less a quarter seconds pass, and I take in my surroundings.

Nye far ahead, Shores carried to shelter him from the onslaught with her armored body. Good.

Jhordan, right beside her acting as a living shield, arm outstretched towards their next turn. Good.

Diaz must be behind me. I could hear his high-caliber rifle cracking rapidly and the pings of disappointing impacts. I couldn't lift my head far enough to see how close he was. He may get hit with the blast. That wouldn't be ideal.

Then the world was a concussive wave of rock debris and darkness as I was thrown away from Tony's crushing embrace. My mind was withdrawing. I'd pass out in a few seconds. I was sailing through the air, riding a beautiful explosion against partial gravity. I blindly groped for my shotgun as I flew. But I hit the ground before I could grab it.

* * *

Diaz

"Sound off if you're dead." Nye said. She was employing the standard measuring tactic for determining if someone was a corpse, which was by kicking them with her boot caps repeatedly. Diaz strongly considered remaining silent as his turn in the roll came, but there was work to do.

"I wish I was, then I'd be free of your ugly mug." He moved to rise but felt the static mass of his suit against his heaving muscles. His speakers were working at least. "My suit's torqued. I'll need to repair and reboot. Drag me clear. How are we looking?"

"Princess is out cold and roughed up. Shores is worse off. Tony looks like a steel plate at a shooting range. My rear's about medium well and seared black. Jhordan's suit is fine but that girl is checked out. Tony's poking fun at her, but not mean like, trying to get her to snap at him."

Diaz could hear that now, his suit's 'ears' having shifted back into a normal range of human hearing after the firefight. Jhordan wasn't biting at any of the open-ended, poorly worded insults or complaints. He wasn't sure which was more surprising; Tony putting in the effort for someone other than himself or the fact that he'd seen this song and dance dozens of times without realizing what it was.

The number of times he'd told Tony off for antagonizing a shell-shocked Merc were beyond counting. How many times had he made it worse? But that never stopped Tony from trying again. He was a determined little arse-wipe like that.

He gave his head a shake. That explosion must have hit him harder than he thought if he was considering complementing Tony. That fixed a grim smile on him as he set about troubleshooting his suit.

Diaz loosened his internal harness and feedback sensors before toggling the master release. He dropped a half foot closer to the ground Nye was dragging him over, and he started twisting his head from its cradle. The soft red lights within his suit winked on and he tucked in on himself. Working with inches on any side, he ran through field repairs that had long since become second nature to him. He'd used this suit pattern long before he'd signed on with the company, longer than he cared to remember. Around another star to fight in another woman's war. Scars itched while he ran through his maintenance routine. They usually itched when he was working on a suit.

This armor wasn't his original issue—it wasn't even his tenth—but still, he wouldn't rush. Wouldn't submit to the frustration that came whenever he was lain helpless on mission. He'd known plenty of brawlers who'd rage and fight with their suits, trying to be the metal's master instead of two partners fighting for survival amongst the worst conflicts of the modern age. He couldn't find it within himself to rage outward, instead turning it all inward.

Frustration was refined into a more workable emotion. Grey-tinted anger got recycled into purpose and energy. Both were thrown to the task at hand. He'd been doing it for years before he ever learned the term 'militant decency.' Even now, he didn't fully grasp the subtleties of the concept, but what he did understand were violence and grit.

His armor's wounds tended; next came the reboot. He flew through procedures, drilled and practiced to the point where actively focusing on what he was doing would have thrown off his working rhythm. His mind often wandered back to That City when he worked like this; it was hard not to remember where he'd honed these skills. Where his former outfit had been torn apart. He rolled his neck and shoulders, shifted his joints within these narrow confines and forced a fruity meal bar into his mouth for the first time in hours. That wiped the morose smile from him as he choked down to tart sludge.

The power coursed and reluctantly stabilized. Sensors quested out and reported in, all that remained was to stretch their muscles. His suit wakened into life around him, the buzz and beeps its greetings to a friend roused from a soft bed. One who would need considerable persuasion to get up and moving.

"Morning to you too buddy. We've got places to be, so I need you up quick. Okay?"

Diaz positioned himself and toggled his flesh into his armor's tender embrace, tightening the remaining play from himself. Then locked his eyes upon the outside world. Without any meaningful tactile feedback, he had to visually check that his synthetic limbs were in working order. Spasming wrists and unsteady arms, minor annoyances but there was nothing he could do about it right now. He'd taken enough time just getting mobile again. Detailed repairs would have to wait.

The hallway was still choked with smoke and dust. The swirling mass limited his vision and highlighted cones of illumination from the powertech's suit and rifle lights. Without ventilation, it just hung in the faux air until pushed aside by a passing object. The spin gravity seemed roughly normal— lighter than he liked, but it was still there. The reduced visibility improved the rubble-strewn corridor in his eyes. The dead-end so recently created was impressive, in a sense. A single piece of metal ruined the natural ascetic Princess had achieved, thrust forth from the stone like a skeletal hand reaching from an exposed grave.

"Where the hell'd they get a weapons platform like this?" He asked to no one in particular. Nye surprised him with another question.

"How are they able to run it? I thought WAR-Subs were just a fake unit." While she spoke, she ripped the barrel clear of the rubble and examined it. Large caliber, internal drum retrofitted with an external ammo feed, severed from the arm at the gimbal elbow. That's a start. If the big bot was still kicking, it'd be out for blood. At least it was down a claw.

"What do you mean a fake unit? What do you know about it?"

"It's a top-tier unit for the Synth Technocracy on Dusk of War 4." It took a moment for the name to click. Of course she knew about it from a game. It wasn't surprising in hindsight. Nye was easily the biggest gamer on the Shadow.

"Anything useful from this game carry over? Armor, weapons, weaknesses?" He took the barrel from Nye and tried to better gauge its capabilities to little avail. Tony had taken a few dozen rounds without getting holed, though his backplate was definitely worse for wear because of it. That was moderately helpful info. An expensive bot like that, and they'd cheaped out on the ammo. Stupid of them, lucky for him.

"Unless we have a spare armored column or void wing to throw at it, then no. Their gimmick in-game is they're classified as super-heavy armor while acting like plated infantry."

"After what just happened, I'd believe that," He said somberly. "It's probably battered but ultimately functional. If they swap out the operator for one with half a brain, we'll be neck-deep pretty damned quick. We need to assume if that thing gets the drop on us again, we're dead. Let's get back to the ship before it finds another way around. You and Tony get our littles carried nice and gentle; don't want to make them worse by shaking them around more than we have to."

Diaz shifted their conversation from the collapse over to Jhordan and Tony. He rapt his gauntlet on Tony's dented backplate and stood square in front of Jhordan as Nye pulled Tony away. Princess didn't look bad, but he didn't spare enough time for a proper examination. Her bodysuit could hide a lot. Jhordan was effectively walking wounded as far as he was concerned. Their fights and the subsequent flight had pulled them off his known route leading back to the ship. He needed her to get them pointed in the right direction.

His former go-to for bringing stunned troops back to partial functionality was usually a short spiel about duty and honoring those who've come before you. It had worked marvelously in his past career. Towards the tail end of his service, his presence alone could rally flagging spirits and bolster resolve. But this wasn't that war, and he wasn't the bloody bastard he used to be. Since his switch to mercenary, it was usually a lot of yelling followed by a boot to the arse, a tactic that hadn't won him many friends.

He didn't need her as a personal friend, but right now, she was armed and might have a hard time figuring out ally from enemy, especially if he came across as hostile. So he needed calm and precision, no time for do-overs. Any wrong turns could leave them face to waist with something a lot meaner than they were. Perfection was needed, and that's what he strived to deliver. Always.

"Jhordan, look at me." She did within the usual delay for these things, but he had to suppress the urge to slap her. "You need to show me how to get back to the ship."

"We're going back to the ship?" She asked distantly.

"Yeah, good. Now you just need to show us the way. I'll handle the rest."

He felt the weight of her stare settle upon him. Next to a lifetime of doubt and regret, it was a bearable weight, if an uncomfortably familiar one. Jhordan tried to look over him to Shores. Diaz shifted to block her vision while repeating. "I'll handle everything else. Just get us to the ship."

Her first steps were halting. She tried to turn back and found him waiting for this. A few more steps, then she started echoing the mantra he offered. Their progress was slow, but it was as steady as his dubious pathfinder could manage. She never questioned which turns to take or which way was right. She kept on plodding forward while chanting those same six words. If she was wrong, at least she was confident about it.

He gave a passing once over to Shores and Princess while they walked. Neither looked well, but he could do nothing for them save to encourage Jhordan onward and hope they made good time. Outwardly Princess seemed as well as could be expected, her helmet was dented and her back scorched down to the steely plate. Tony had taken the worst of it for her, but she was still out cold. If she stayed that way, he might be able to salvage this botched job.

The whole point of giving her a job so easy it was supposed to be idiot-proof was so she could handle it. Yet here he was, the buck thoroughly passed until he was left holding it, as always. Naturally, this was all his fault for not working under the assumption that she was wildly incompetent. It's not like a milk run should at any point require trading shots, yet here he was swapping out a magazine with only two bullets left.

Princess mumbled something, still unresponsive. Must be dreaming. Rifle loaded and a rictus grin entrenched across his face, a broken laugh filled his plate and nothing more. He'd finally had a chance to play to his strengths, and now they were all screwed.