Princess

Damn that's bright! I was still partially blinded when the lights regained power. The digital gremlins had moved onward and gunfire erupted from the far servers. Diaz broke from one hiding place, making himself obnoxiously visible while spraying an underbarrel salvo before he ran deeper into the server stacks. The WAR-Sub turned on him, dragging its left leg, both arms raised but only its right returning fire.

Diaz popped up with another snippet of rounds splattering and bouncing off the monster's scales while it limped two steps to face him. Its back square to me, hissing smoke grenades arced towards the monster, leaving high plumes in the still air. I tensed my legs, my heart throbbing as I let the smoke thicken.

I exploded forth, closing the gap as fast as my bruised muscles could manage. Optics were struggling in the fog. On instinct, I sprinted towards a shape no one else would see, eyes wide as smoke coiled past my pumping arms.

I could see it. Arcs of ultra-violet lightning race down the cabling of its arms, a beacon in the fog-lined clouds around me. Heat bleeds into the infra-reflective vapors, that monster burning its way clear of the vapors around it, one scorching ray at a time. The hammering pings of tracer fire soar overhead, bouncing wide off the monster's unpenetrated hide.

I dart behind a planted foot as big around as I am tall. My demo charge clutched in both hands, I reach high and stab it into place. It latches on. Beeps green. Three legs beneath me, I reverse and push off with a leap, speeding my flight back to the concealment I had struck out from.

Lasers lance into the clouds around me. First, the gentle off-greens of range finders, probing for something that doesn't belong. Second, the ultra-violet blasts of lidar, seeing the unseen with an echo of light. Third, the killing sub-red of death.

Smoke singes around me, swirling and changing the landscape into a riot of spasmodically throbbing light. I shift right, changing my angle of escape. Can't be predictable. One good bead on me meant death.

Ribbons of crimson stream around me, now joined by something new. More gunfire, two rifles were clacking away. Jhordan is trying to draw fire off me. The cracks of single shots shift into a buzzing swarm of angry lead drilling off a metal slab they can't even hope to penetrate. I'm finally forced to release the breath I'd been holding this entire time.

Agony blazes up my left shoulder before I can draw in a replacement. The tissue of my arm spasms. A flashbang falls from fingers thrown wide, pin long removed. The cooked fuze started its twelve-stage detonation before the casing hit the ground. Concussive waves slap my rear with just enough variety to let each blast feel like the first.

More sub-crimson death streaks past in the world turned white. An instant later, row upon row server towers are burned into my hyper-sensitive retinas and I run at them blindly. A trio of hot flashes register, two on my back and one on the head. My scorched arm smashed into something solid, stumbling me into another server stack. I grazed a third with my off-hand knuckles, my eyes finally starting to detect blurry outlines of darkness. Arm smarting, I tuck in behind cover and make myself small, sucking in stale air. There's not enough. I smother the urge to tear my helmet off. There's no clean air out there.

My mouth moves. Words might be coming out. My ears couldn't tell. The intoxicating ringing is already filling my head like a deep swig of liquor. I press my seared shell of borrowed gear against my cover. I couldn't hear Ghost. He might be gone. I couldn't hear gunfire either. Everyone might be gone.

Six breaths of doubt until the bang, the eternity of a ten-second fuse as bullets fly. What had gone wrong? Did the fuse fail? Were they already dead? With no comms and ears deafened, I only knew what I could see. I couldn't see jack shit. A rookie might have poked her head out to look around, but I was a demolitionist. I sat tight and waited for the bang.

The shock wave hits me. It was like being hit by a train and soaring through the air. It was like stepping out an airlock to walk on a star with my bare feet while my toes curled. It was like sailing up a waterfall feet first. The explosion cradled me like a lover to the unending forceful rhythm of ocean waves, filling me up along with every desire I'd ever had in the space of five seconds. I was brought to euphoric highs most women only dream of for a single beautiful moment.

That terrible addiction sets my head buzzing in my deafened state. Every sense was heightened in the ringing half quiet that follows. My eyes showed me the beauty of smoke rushing out then imploding back. I could feel every single centimeter of my body and the way my voidsuit pressed against me during my blissful release. I loved the force of the explosion— the raw power of it in an enclosed space. I should have been afraid of the blast but being this close… I could spend years trying to feel this good again without ever getting close.

The server I was hunkering behind erupted at head height at the same time my hands started drifting between my thighs. I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood and drag myself away from the pleasure. My shotgun falls from numb hands as I fail to draw. I fumble it again, cursing before I manage to get it up against my good shoulder. It was a glorified pea shooter against the monster, but it was my best option left now.

More shrapnel rains through the air around me. I could feel the reverberations running up my spine like a shiver every time a good chunk struck home. Secondary explosions were popping off behind me. Something massive pounded the ground in a clatter that thrummed into my lower body. I needed someone to take me like never before, to go into my deepest parts and fill me; my hands wouldn't get the job done. I bit down harder and tried to focus on anything other than my burning body.

The worst of the shrapnel had settled now. I got my ass off the ground, darting deeper and sidelong in the server stacks. The ventilation started up again, tugging the hanging clouds left of me. Fighting the heavy sway of my muzzle with unsteady arms, I peer into the thinning smoke.

"Did we get it?" Someone asked. I think that's what I think they said anyway.

"It's down, moving to confirm kill." Another said, even if I could barely hear, I knew it would be Diaz.

I inch forward, breathing harder now than I was while running. The smoke was still too obstructive for my optics, my meta-human faring somewhat better, cutting through the dancing mist underlying everything. It sounded like nothing was moving out there, though that could mean anything given my current state. It was hard to focus on the smoke, though in a different way from the mists earlier. They had seemed to hypnotically draw me in. This smoke was simply featureless.

I caught sight of my arm in my periphery. It was scorched raw. The suit had barely held up under the half-slagged exo-skeletal strut of the tech suite, which had absorbed the worst of the damage. I recalled the bolts from my flight; my helmet and the tech suite's shell case wouldn't be in much better shape.

"Ghost, you still with me?" I could distantly hear myself speaking now. That was a good start. Something spoke back to me, probably a long-winded yes.

No time to worry about that now. I kept moving sidelong, boots slipping and skidding on the shattered remains of several server towers seared black from laser impacts. I guess the monster didn't care about collateral. I'd been hoping it wouldn't want to ruin the neighborhood. Maybe the operator just didn't watch his aim. I certainly hadn't.

I stepped over a chunk of armor plating nearly a half meter long. It had felled three towers before bouncing off the fourth. I saw blasted fragments of the monster's hull buried in the stone floor during my advance; my demolitionist's eye subconsciously analyzed the shrapnel. It must have turned bodily to gun me down, and this is what my demo charge spat out his front. A particularly jagged shard the length of my shin catches my eyes, fixing them at hip height to a server stack it was lodged in. My shield wouldn't turn one of those. Focusing on that helped to clear my mind. I should be dead.

No fear comes with the realization. My body was indifferent this time and being that close to such a potent blast made my apathy seem trivial. Annoyance surges in the void it left vacant. Damn inconsistent hormones, I reach back for the pleasure but it's already fled, though the longing ache remains. Dull throbbing pain protested throughout the rest of my being— at least the pain was consistent.

I could see some of our felled giant now. It was face down, its squat head twisted towards me at an unsettling angle of death. The optics were still, the bland metal skull adopting the gentle repose of its operator. Both shoulder mounts and arms were splayed out in an awkward display of overly muscled tension.

Clearly, the suit wasn't designed to lie prone. All that weight on two legs and it couldn't even right itself when it fell over, that was a terrible design. No wonder we'd never seen one before. Only a moron would field them like this. It was like rolling armor in a city without infantry to screen its sides and rear.

A dark blob with a cone of light was stalking through the smoke and mist nearby, deliberately keeping its distance and speed. That must be Diaz, always the professional. His rifle raised not with murderous intent but playing its mounted light over the downed goliath before him. He finished his circle, then another and moved closer for his third.

"If there was someone in here, I'm not seeing a body. Might be pink mist now. That or a remote. Suit's still got juice but the bottom half of its guts are blown out. It'd crumple if it could stand. Weapons are all still powered, so watch yourselves for random discharges. No rattling or hissing. Doesn't look like it's gonna cook off."

"Does that mean we win?" Nye shouted from a distance.

"I'll shove the last of my blasting cord in its gut wound. That should do it. Close in and once I've scrapped this, we'll finish up in the control hub and get out of here."

A chorus of acknowledgment prattled through the clouds in reply while I unspooled the semi-circular explosive polymer. Without a blasting cap, I'd have to leave enough lead to ignite it a safe distance away. I took a second to berate myself but stopped short. It had taken all of my and most of Boomer's supplies to secure the hanger, so there was nothing to be done for it. We'd both packed light for an easy job. I closed on Diaz and heard Nye's first good look at the monster of a suit.

"That can is huge! It must have cost twice what the station does and then some."

"If we could get this back to the Cat then the Shadow to hawk somewhere, a girl could live the high life for years." Jhordan said. She almost sounded halfway normal again, anger still colored her words but it was subdued.

"You two, watch the sides!" Diaz already covered his arc near its stumpy head. His silent professionalism carried on through my brief treacherous climb onto the monster's back, just above its skirted waistline. "If you'd actually looked at it, we can't move it. Not even in pieces. Besides, we'd be better off adding it to our own arsenal. With an asset like this, we could hit even higher above our weight class."

"I bet this can costs a fortune in upkeep," Nye said. "We'd need a factory for parts and ammo."

"More like an entire station." Jhordan agreed. "I thought that'd be harder."

"You shut your whore mouth, amazon she-devil!" Nye snapped.

The background noise of their conversation carried on while I assessed structural damage and plotted my demo. I'd have to settle for deep packing the entry hole and using my shard grenades and the last of my putty for some extra umph. I unscrewed the grenades' fuzes, fed a spliced line of det cord into each, then plugged both with some putty and made one very dangerous ball around them with the rest. I worked out the length and how much lead I'd need, wrapping my ghetto bomb in as much cord as I could spare, then buried my arm to the shoulder, planting the reactive rope in a lazily loosening spiral back to the wound's mouth.

Sparks played along my hand, and every one of them made my guts knot. Blasting cord, grenades and plastic explosives were stable—as far as explosive reactives go anyways—but freak explosions happen every day in my line of work. The idea caused a black grin to light my face, we've killed you and you'd still love to get the last laugh on me, wouldn't you? An arc below flashed my work in reply while I withdrew my arm.

"Take your stills now. They'll last longer." I'd left myself less lead than I'd wanted, but it wouldn't matter in a few seconds anyway. I threw the lead aside and stood. Diaz was there— one arm hesitantly rising his side. I stepped away from him and it felt like the world beneath me quaked in response.

My boots lost traction on the unfamiliar angled plates and I pitched forward into his upraised arms. He caught me around the chest as gently as four tons of war plate could manage, in a way that was almost as undignified as it was painful. Heat reached my face before I was unceremoniously dumped on the ground. I worked my mouth in a fluster but couldn't make any understandable noises come out. I'd bet even Ghost would have had his work cut out for it trying to read my lips.

"Sorry I di-." His head twisted. He grabbed me again and savagely threw me aside.

I trailed a blaze of sparks through the whirling clouds. The tech suite abused further as it scraped along the floor instead of my own armor. My momentum abandoned me after my helmet slammed off a server stack. The lights pivoted about around me, suddenly fixing on something half-seen. Through the thinning fog, I saw the outline of a monstrously massive creature rising from its deathbed.

"Contaaarrgh!"

There was a horrendous metallic crash. A blob of darkness and a cone of light had soared through the distant stars in my vision. More server towers exploded into polymer splinters as Diaz went through them, stray rounds fired from fingers locked in a death grip on his rifle. Kinetic fire popped up along with the peculiar noise of rapid laser fire. I heard the distinct ringing of fruitless impacts too. Then the twisted creaking of an ancient steel building rising to its feet while the metal screams against itself. The squad net erupted and loudspeakers bellowed.

"It's getting up!"

"Big can moving!"

"Fecking Bastard!"

I struggled to rise, the metal shell on my back leaving me vulnerable for precious seconds as hell unleashed above me. I stayed low, sitting and emptied a magazine high on reflex. Every shot bounces in a clatter of sparks.

I was gone in a low roadie run when return fire cratered the ground and magazine I had left behind. The weight of my helmet was straining my cranked neck. I gritted my bloodied teeth and pressed on. I fumbled my reload from deadened fingers, losing it behind me, then slamming my third and final mag of slugs home.

Jhordan was the zig to my zag, running clockwise and drawing fire from both shoulder-mounted heavy pulse lasers; neither had an issue following her now. Every time the monster shifted its fire, she'd dart in and drive her fist like a meteor, sinking her wrist blade into the gaps in its knee or thigh armor.

Crimson fire rained upon Jhordan like a vengeful star trying to burn a planet. The lethal light breaks against her spectral blocker, painting rainbow hues across her plate. I slam-fired slug after slug into the monster's head, vainly trying to blind it. Shoulder turrets gimbaled, ignoring me to track Jhordan's movement, determined to force an overload. Both were lost in the oily black smoke the monster was spewing out now.

"Nye, get to its back and cook off the damn cord!" I saw it whip wide of the WAR-Sub like an angered beast's tail as it stomped after larger prey— its limp now forgotten. Both arms swiveled, sending more lances and a single stream of tracer fire into the smog. "The big bastard played us! Bring it down!"

I lobbed a gas grenade, hoping it would knock out the operator inside. The riot gas should rob some small measure of the lasers' potency, if nothing else. I darted around it, looking for an opening to fire into without drawing the beast's ire. My hand reached for my depleted lethal grenades. I couldn't use them blindly in this smoke and motion. My legs were screaming for rest. I pushed on and ran faster. The pain was proof of life.

A wide, sweeping blow from the monster's injured arm set Jhordan sprawling. Laser fire burst to life from a new angle, striking the beast's back, wide of the moving tail. The beast twisted at the hip, a complete one-eighty and I heard Nye draw in a sharp breath to curse. She didn't have time to utter a single syllable.

My trigger finger faltered as I watched an avatar of destruction smite her down. Lasers on both ends of my enhanced visual spectrum slagged her plate in a display of murderous radiance. Directional explosives—customarily used to shoot down incoming missiles—blasted her like the galaxy's biggest shotgun. Air-bursting grenades solidified the wall of flak that flew into her warped plates. The minigun was the cherry atop Nye's overkill sonntag.

Nye's suit fell, a broken mess of reddened, shrapnel-embedded deformed plates and boiling underlay. I barely saw the server towers behind her evaporate, save for the single tower directly behind her.

Jhordan thundered back into the fight. She landed a hammer blow to the back of the monster's knee, buckling its leg in a shower of mixed fluids and arcing cables. The stream of fire shifted off Nye. Solid shots hammered Jhordan's plates, turning her agile serpentine to a halting withdrawal.

Diaz surged into the torrent of fire, rounds turned and tumbled against his shields dying gasps while the lasers scorched through to his plates with impunity. He closes in, firing one-handed. The point-blank shots shattering laser emitters with every hit, at this range Diaz couldn't miss.

His other hand flashes out with something in a reverse grip. The monster rears back to kick at him, its mass enough to prove lethal, even without weapons. Against an unarmored person, it would have worked. Even armored, an average merc might have died. But this was Diaz. We didn't call him mister perfect because of his gruesome good looks.

Four tons of battered metal bobbed and weaved in a way that much weight was never meant to. Diaz ducked low, stepping inside the monster's kick while lining up the perfect shot at its down-turned face. The beast's tricloptic eye shatters at the same time the left arm of Diaz's suit torn from its socket, rifle locked in a death grip. In a move I couldn't fully follow Diaz spun between the monster's legs, stabbing upward with his remaining arm.

Light and heat rupture the beast's leg and Diaz steps clear just in time to catch a backhand that sent him soaring back into the server banks trailing scraps of metal. The monster's shank buckles fiercely but won't crumple; the beast is too proud to take a knee. I hear but don't see servers being crashed through somewhere in the smoke.

Jhordan throws herself at the damaged leg, attacking in a flurry of blade and shot like a woman possessed. The monster wards her off with weak kicks and flailing blows from its arms, its torso squealing every time it twists.

I rush to Nye's downed suit, my useless shotgun falls from limp hands. She's out of the fight. That's all I need to know right now. I grab her massive repeater, staggering under its weight.

Diaz charges the monster once again. Breastplate caved, one arm missing, he pushes on roaring defiance over loudspeakers and the net. The beast tries to backstep, to put some distance between Diaz and itself but Jhordan lashes at every opening. I drop prone, the rifle too heavy to raise unassisted.

Diaz baits out the twist I need, sinking another shaped explosive into the monster's thigh. It sags further. I squeeze the trigger and hold. Ruby beams flash and the repeater unloads its feeble charge, the volume of fire making up for my lack of accuracy. The cord ignites.

Diaz was shielding himself and Jhordan was body-blocking for Nye. While both were clearing the blast, I watched like a slack-jawed rookie. It was one of the best explosions I've ever seen. It wasn't a fireball or a shockwave. Not even one of those weird plasma bang-crackles the Eldritch liked to use on us. It wasn't the intoxicating wham of a demolition charge that I've grown to love, the fizzing whoosh of incendiaries or the rising crescendo pops of cluster munitions.

My ghetto bomb reacted just like I'd planned. The plastic took first. Its shockwave following the path of least resistance. The initial entry and exit wounds expanded, blown open from the overpressure within. Then the twinned grenades popped, their explosive yield was secondary to their shrapnel, but they worked in a pinch. Matching counter-detonations occurred, redirecting all that explosive energy and jagged metal back inward, creating a working girl's implosion.

Spaced armor wasn't designed for internal attacks. The monster didn't come with blow-out compartments to release all that energy. Rubberized non-exploding reactive armor swelled and did what it was intended to do; it bounced and deflected the attacks battering it from within. I could have watched the monster dying by inches, killing itself with its own defenses, for days instead of the single second it took. It was exhilaratingly euphoric.

My visor reactively tinted after the first flash, and decades of training overtook my fetishization. Jhordan was dragging Nye away and I was lying in the open with no cover to get behind. It was too late to run, so I ducked my head and made myself as small as possible.

Trying to fight all that power was pointless. Compared to it, everything else seemed so fragile. It was unadulterated strength, unfiltered potency; it was raw like nothing else. It sent me to bliss and left me on the ground, completely soaked and panting. I could have died a happy woman as I basked in the afterglow of my own fleeting creation.

My kinetic shield died turning the shrapnel. The blasts had ripped through the monster's weakened structure. Pieces were strewn everywhere, metal clothes shed in the heat of passion. I wish I could have watched it all. I knew I'd be chasing this one for some time.

Stressed to the breaking point and well beyond, the monster finally went to its knees. It teetered, still so damned proud and defiant, then twisted and broke apart. Sundered in two big pieces and thousands of smaller ones, the beast collapsed for good. When it was over, I rose on weak legs and unsteady feet.

"Sound off." I hesitantly ordered.

"I am damaged but functional." Ghost said for my ears only. My face flushed as I realized he'd been with me the whole time.

"Jhordan, suit breached, shield low, ammo gone."

"Diaz, suit… crippled, walking wounded, shield gone, literally disarmed and ammo spent."

There was a deafening silence where Nye should have spoken.

"Who's got eyes on her?" I asked, the dread audible in my voice.

"I've got her," Jhordan said, then a pause. "She's barely alive in there. The suit's doing what it can, but they're both pretty rough."

"She'll have to hold out until we get back to the Cat. The control center is over here. Let's end this lockdown and get the hell off this rock."