Machine God: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Final Draft)

Pinned down

I stormed down the stairs, rushed over the lobby floor and returned to the plaza. Heavy gun fire exchanged between the target building and my fireteam.

"Another one down," Ceedee said from her heightened position.

This time, I saw it.

An armored humanoid fell from the tenth floor of the skyscraper ruin and smashed onto the plaza ground.

Good riddance.

But more opened fire from the various floors. The energy shots rained down on the cover position of Hecto and Darwin. The blue-ish stacks penetrated the walls and blew them apart. I had to admit—it was sick technology. So much better than our bullet-based ammo.

"Ceedee, we need cover."

"Doing my best here, Hecto, but I'm severely outgunned."

Darwin coughed through the intercom.

"Pinned down."

It looked bad. The Technoids unleashed volley after volley from their barricaded floors in the target building.

They hadn't yet detected my position, which granted me the surprise element. I flanked the building and entered one of the side exits. Watched my motion sensor which didn't pick up movement, so I kicked open the steel door and stormed inside.

Time for Technoid blasting.

"I'm inside the building," I said over the connection.

Hecto shouted.

"Goddamn it, are you planning to take them out single-handedly?"

"Do you have a better suggestion?"

The silence that followed confirmed me. A bad plan was better than no plan, and with Ceedee being the only one providing cover fire, I had to infiltrate the target building and distract the shooters, so Hecto and Darwin could come to my assistance. I rushed up the stairs with my Dust Viper ready. An armored soldier awaited me in the staircase on the third floor. He ran down from the fourth floor and had his back to my direction. When I entered his field of vision, I grabbed his rifle-holding arm, wanted to snap it off but realized he wasn't actually holding the firearm.

It was his arm.

What?

The fully-armored Technoid used my nano-second of confusion to ram his other gloved fist into my abdomen. His hit unleashed an electric charge and brought me down. I almost rolled down the stairs but caught the railing in mid-fall.

"Silent, heretic," he said through his helmet. The face shield looked like the grimace of a spider, or some other insect. But his scary appearance didn't lower my battle readiness. I tried to push myself up from the ground. He followed up with a kick of his metallic boot which I caught with my arms. I twisted it around and brought the armored sucker to fall. My left fist cracked his face shield, followed up with a right jab.

And then another one.

Brute force at its best.

Punch after punch, the helmet cracked and spat shreds. The Technoid tried one last move with his rifle-arm, but I grabbed it midway and pulled it like a berserk.

With all my strength, I yanked the armored underarm from his torso and ripped the attached rifle apart. Disgusting, but this was a life or death situation. And I wasn't taking any chances now.

My comrades down in the ruins were on the receiving end. I needed to distract more of these metal freaks.

My silent prayers were answered.