Coming Undone

Chapter 29

Runt had thought he might get to sleep in.

He was wrong.

"Wake up!"

Runt gasped, sitting bolt upright in bed as his eye shot open. Quixxa was beside him, her hand on his shoulder.

"Runt, get your suit on, now!" She said, tightening the flank straps on her newly donned bulletproof vest. "We're under attack."

Runt took a moment to process the announcement, but he was already throwing the covers off, scrabbling for his suit.

"Attack..."

His ears suddenly registered the sound of shouting from a floor below. He also heard a few sporadic pops of ion gunfire. He looked towards it.

One of the Human mercenaries, kneeling next to a window with a scoped rifle. Sand roared in through the broken window like a door opened into a blast furnace.

His hands found his armor.

"Who's attacking?" he asked, his heartrate suddenly jumping as he saw a streak of plasma shoot by the mercenary.

Quixxa pulled the slide back on her handgun.

"The MLA. I don't know how they found us. But they did."

Runt immediately felt sick.

Ok, stay calm Runt...

He slipped on the leg pieces of his suit, starting to pant and frantically glance towards the mercenary as he fired again.

A chest-bursting thud forced Runt forward, throwing him to his knees on the concrete. Shattered glass and sand pelted his back as a window behind him succumbed to a grenade burst.

No no no...

He slipped on his chest piece, and grabbed for the arms next.

Quixxa stalked by Runt, right to the window.

She shouted a few curses and fired blindly into the storm, backing away quickly as plasma replied to her insults.

C'mon...

He picked up his helmet and slammed it on.

"Ready!" he shouted to Quix.

His suit's heads up immediately started to scream. Weapons proximity alarms fired off one after the other, warning him that Quixxa held a gun behind him, and that there were traces of plasma fire in the atmosphere.

He disabled the alarms.

No crap, He thought, looking at the danger icon displayed in his upper right hand field of vision.

Quixxa grabbed his arm.

"Downstairs, to the van!" She said.

Runt's heart was thumping in his chest, trying to burst through his ribs as he ran for the stairs. A mercenary stopped him and shoved a weapon into his hands, shouting something about live fire, and rushing them down the stairs as he gathered the last of their gear.

The mercenaries' words hadn't meant anything to Runt. Panic rung in his ears, blotting out all his thoughts and the sounds around him. It was just him and his instincts, rocketing down flights of stairs beside Quix, his fists clutching a weapon he didn't know how to use.

The stairs spit them out on a concrete landing a few floors down.

A pair of mercenaries were waiting.

Or rather, providing cover fire.

The two humans were sheltered behind an overturned table, red-hot holes ripped through it in a half dozen places form incoming plasma. One of them had stripped off his armor and tossed it aside, where it was still burning from a plasma impact.