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.
Two stormed 'round the corner and opened fire. With the back at the corner, I used the shield of my armodillo, but the concentrated stacks of energy ate through my armor.
No way.
The plates melted apart and vomited sparks. The heat increased. So I rolled sideways, opened blind fire into the corridor and reloaded the Viper with a new set of bolts.
One more mag to go.
Just like with the robot floater, the shots bounced off the hostile's armor. Either the Technoid soldiers stood outside the Viper's effective range, or the bolts were plain useless.
The incoming fire battered my cover.
In the split-second of a blink, I shot up, gauged the enemy position and unleashed burst-fire bolts at the left Technoid's head. The projectiles pierced his insectoid face shield and blew it apart. The hostile staggered before he collapsed with a shiver.
The second Technoid seemed to call for backup and lay down a volley of fire. During the reloading phase, I ran from my cover and bolted shots that missed the target's head by an inch. So much for my trust-worthy ammo.
I barely avoided his next round of energetic javelins.
But with Technoid's current position, an idea sprang to mind. I discharged the dart of my grapple gun into the rifle arm of the hostile and pulled the sucker toward me. Aided by the power of my armordillo suit, the heavy-armored soldier flew toward my direction and received a right uppercut as a welcome.
My gloved hand grabbed the soldier, rammed him into the nearby wall till pieces flew. The Technoid spoke with a high-octave, digital voice.
"You can't kill me. My legacy's uploaded to the machine god."
I twisted the soldier's helmet 180 degrees and sent him into eternal slumber instead.
"Three down, not sure how many more to go."
"You're a beast," Ceedee said over the com.
"Wait till you see me in bed."
Yikes. I wished I could rewind the moment and slash out the sentence, but with my body high on adrenaline, the brain took a step back and let the primal power shine through. I ran up the stairs and entered the eighth floor where the majority of the shooting originated from. Found one Technoid body on the ground, probably taken down by Ceedee and her high caliber sniper rifle.
My senses stayed sharp.
Eyes locked on the motion sensor.
"I think we killed them all," I said over the com.
"Suppressive fire has stopped as well," Darwin said.
"Stay vigilant," Hecto said, "Technoids are tricky bastards."
Unfortunately, he was right.
Again.
The air around me heated up. I detected an anomaly which sizzled my surface.
What the—
A strange noise emanated from the nearby room.
No.
I jumped sideways and avoided the beam blasting through the wall. The glowing particle ray melted the hull with a boulder-sized hole.
Energy weapons sucked.
These Technoids owned a technology I had never seen before, but this wasn't the moment to stand back in awe. I took cover and slipped from spot to spot, looking for the shooter.
Where art thou?
My motion sensor picked up movement five rooms across the floor.
I stumbled over the rubble on the ground and felt the new ray strafing my ribcage. The shot felt like a scorching blade slicing my rear. I screamed and covered my wound, but tried to fight the urge to cringe. This was a death moment, and I didn't want to go down without taking the enemy with me. I ground my teeth, sprinted through the opened wall and spotted the shooter three wall holes down the floor. He carried a heavy armor that wrapped his body like the shell of an insect. Inside his carapace arms throned the energy weapon—it looked like an elongated sniper rifle with a squared barrel.
The shooter took a pause every time he unleashed a shot, which meant the energy weapon succumbed to some kind of reloading time. When I barely evaded the next beam, I primed the only EMP grenade Hector had given me. I jumped through the next wall hole, rolled on the ground and threw the grenade. The cylinder-shaped device flew through the wall holes in a ballistic curve and detonated in the shooter's room. He leaped aside when the electro-blast sparkled the air and devoured him with a thunder hug. Sparks flew from the chinks in his armor, causing him to shake uncontrollably. I had no idea whether the EMP would stun or kill him. Ignoring the biting pain, I staggered forward to his position with the grapple gun raised.
When I reached his room, the Technoid fell to his knees and hit the dank concrete with his face shield first. I stepped closer to him but kept a meter distance. He rolled around in slow-mo and turned his face shield at my direction. I saw my reflection in his dark visor, pointing the gun at him. I should have paid more attention to his left hand with the primed disc device.
"For the machine god."
Damn.
The grenade in his hand exploded. I barely reached the floor when the sonic shockwave blew me over the ground. With no wall-sized windows to stop my fall, I jerked through the air of the eighth floor and plunged into the abyss. In mid-flight, my left hand took out the grapple gun and aimed it at the protruding steel pillar from the facade. The dart attached to the surface, wound up the cable connected to my grapple gun and pulled me up. With one swing, I landed on top of the steel pillar and tried not to look down the seven floors below, where the vast plaza lingered, and the few Technoid corpses that Ceedee had sniped.
"What the hell are you doing up there?"
Good old Hecto.
Shouting at me while he enjoyed his safety on the ground floor of the opposite building.
"Doing pushups on a steel bar."
"Shove your jokes and tell me the status."
Voices echoed from the eighth floor, but these didn't sound like Technoid war screams.
"Hold on, Hecto."
I took a deep breath, climbed over the steel bar and swayed back inside the floor hall. Touched ground with my boots and released a sigh of satisfaction.
More action than the doctor recommended.
The adrenaline in my body kept me anxious.
When I cleared the area, I updated my status.
"I took down five Technoids. One of them carried superior armor and some kind of energy-beam rifle that penetrated four walls in a row."
"What about the prisoners?"
Ah, yeah. Forgot about them. Tended to happen when mechanized freaks and flying robots wanted to fry my body around every corner.
"I can't find them, yet. Let me check."
"Roger. We're joining your position."
Now, when it was sound and safe.
Thanks to me.
A high-pitch sound reverberated through the floor.
I jumped to the nearest cover spot and rotated around. A young man with dirty clothes stared at my direction. He looked afraid and curious at the same time.
"Are they gone?"
The smile returned to my face.
"Hecto."
"What is it?"
"I've found the survivors."