Chương 132: Chapter 131 – Light Show

Fire began to pour into the compartment as the maintenance bots stripped away another section of bulkhead. A silvery figure mantled the breach, trying to climb through. Cole put a burst of rounds into it, causing the automaton to slump over halfway through, and the other automatons pulled it back to make room. The lights flickered overhead and a screeching whine of garbled noise emitted from a grille in the corner of the room." Tremble, mortals! I am Dreadnaught Elliot! Ah, ha, ha!""

In case it wasn't obvious," said Elliot from the laptop, " I'm in the ship's systems. It's still fighting me, but we've got local HBL control for the bots!" Roxy took a heavy round against her shield. She twisted her head back.

"Someone forgot to tell these assholes!" she shouted." Their receivers are cooked. I'm sending guys to fight them, but I can't stop them myself." A deafening clang came from the bulkhead, and clockwork Elliot exploded. Alexa doubled over in pain.

"Fuck!" shouted Cole.

"Alexa! Elliot!"

"Archie's gone," she shouted through grit teeth. Blood dripped from her nose and ears. The backlash from her ability was massive. The woman struggled to even hold her rifle steady.

"I can't make a new familiar body here!" Cole moved to a more aggressive position to cover the expanding gap. Three skitterers scrabbled through and he took down each one with a single shot each before taking the head off a marksman angling its gun through the gap. Roxy had her shield pressed up directly against the other gap, where incoming fire seemed to keep her shotgun completely topped off with spirit shells.

"We got bigger problems!" said Deadlight." Hold on, everyone!" said Dreadnaught Elliot." Help is on the way!" Cole looked to where Deadlight was pointing at a glowing hole in the wall the size of two fists. Even as he watched, another thundering sound of something impacting steel blasted another hole, and a steel desk crumpled in on itself. Cole could see something moving through the hole, something big. One of the walking tanks. If any of them, even Deadlight, took a hit from that…

Deadlight must have got the same impression, because he sent his three golden orbs through the holes, and bright yellow flashes lit up as the orbs wreaked havoc on the other side. But even they went silent, and two massive hooks penetrated and expanded through the holes. The ear-wrenching shriek of stressed metal filled the control room as the two plates of bulkhead peeled back like the lid of a can of spam. In the next compartment, a pair of massive silhouettes in the smoke moved forward.

Deadlight opened up on one with his machine gun, spitting enough bullets to take down a tank. The massive automaton slumped down to one knee, struggling to right itself. But the tanks weren't what Cole was focused on. A smaller silhouette waddled closer in the smoke on stubby legs. Red Reaper. Cole twisted around, no longer caring if he took a shot in the back. He raised his rifle, centering his crosshair on the silhouette of the red reaper, only for his trigger to do nothing. The gun sent him a pang of hunger.

"Deadlight!" he shouted, fumbling a new magazine out of his rig.

"Kill that fuckin' trash can! Now!"

"The little R2-D2 lookin' fuck?" asked Deadlight, shifting his aim to the second tank.

"Bro, we got bigger problems." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. The red reaper paused, a red light at its top starting to grow brighter.

"Deadlight!" Whether at Cole's insistence or his own sense of preservation, Deadlight leveled his muzzle down at the squat automaton. But as he opened fire, dozens of small, red lasers began to intercept his bullets mid-air, cutting them down like insects halfway between the gun and the bot. The red reaper continued waddling into the control room.

"What the fuck?!" shouted Deadlight. Cole added on his own fire, but it was no use. The interception point of the lasers drew closer to Deadlight, then sheared through his feed chute and took off the front three inches of his barrel. His gun barked out a few final impotent rounds before going silent. Freed from the burden of point-defense, the red reaper's beams instead swept across the senior Kicker. Deadlight didn't scream or cry out. There wasn't time.

He just simply slid apart, reduced to so many fleshy cross-sections. The remaining ammo in his pack started to cook off from the heat of the lasers, filling the compartment with a hail of ricochets." What the fuck was that?" shouted Roxy.

"Deadlight is down!" Cole yelled back, covering himself from the bladed rounds behind a steel desk. Red flashes illuminated the compartment as the red reaper continued swatting down the random shots. The thing was practically immune to bullets. Would it cut right through Roxy's shield just as easily? The only other weapon Cole had was even more primitive, but it was better than firing an entire magazine and hitting nothing.

Pulling the spear from his belt, Cole extended it to the length of a javelin and activated its ability. Then he burned Meteoric Leap and touched off the ground only long enough to feed his momentum into the spear. The lens on the red reaper locked onto him immediately as he hurled the spear down. Multiple lasers lanced into the vorpal speartip, reflecting off its mirror finish and carving into the ceiling and walls and through other bots. Given more time and distance, maybe it could have done the job.

But powered up by his accretion wraps and empowered by his ability, the spear cut through the distance in the blink of an eye. The blade sunk into the body of the red reaper, momentum bowling it ass over helmet. Several panels blew out from its sides from the kinetic shockwave. Electrical arcs began to reach up toward the top of the control room, and a thunderous crack accompanied a brilliant white bolt of lightning from the ceiling that finished the job of frying the automaton that had killed Deadlight.

But the red reaper hadn't been alone. The remaining automaton tank strode forward, crushing the little robotic body underfoot as the two rotary cannons on its back started to spin up.

"Cover!" shouted Cole, ducking down behind the row of steel desks. Alexa and Roxy dropped as well, and a line of tracers cut across the compartment, every bit as lethal as any laser. They stitched a pair of lines across the opposite bulkhead. But before Cole could even think about what to do next, a massive impact rumbled through the deck, and the automaton tank dropped like a two-ton sack of shit.

More gunfire and bursts sounded at the close bulkhead, and the automatons on the other side stopped trying to climb through the holes in the wall. Cole and the others hunkered down, listening to the deafened automatons exchange fire with the ones under Dreadnaught Elliot's control for a few more seconds until an uncomfortable calm overtook the compartment. Cole peeked around the side of the row of desks.

The second tank was down, replaced by yet a third with a smoking barrel that made no effort to cross into the compartment." It's safe to stand up," said Dreadnaught Elliot. Cole pulled himself to his feet, slowly, leaning against the desk for support. He swallowed, mouth dryer than a desert, waiting for the automaton tank to lower that muzzle toward him. But it never did. Nor did any more bots try to storm through the gaps in the close bulkhead. Roxy moved across the compartment.

"Where's… oh my god." She put a hand over her mouth as she looked down at Deadlight's remains.

"I'm gonna be sick," she said, stumbling away. Alexa looked as well, going pale and looking away just as quickly. She met Cole's eyes. Cole looked back at her.

"I don't fucking get it. He was so strong. High-level. And that thing just…"

"That's all it takes, Airborne," she said. She grabbed the strap of his plate carrier and pulled him close. Tears were starting to well up in her eyes.

"Just one moment of hubris. Of thinking you're invincible." She let him go and looked away, face twisting in a cocktail of anger, regret, and pain.

"Don't ever fucking forget it." Cole watched her leave and then stumbled over to the messy pile that had once rescued him from Kevlesh. DOR protocol was clear, here. In cases where the body couldn't be recovered, dog tags and helmet cam memory cards. Bile rose in his throat as he reached down with a shaking hand. He turned away and heaved, retching what little acid his stomach had in it onto the deck plates. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't fucking do it. He'd seen people die in Syria. Seen them die badly.

But nothing like this. He flinched as hands touched his shoulders and looked up to see Roxy leaning down.

"Cole…" she said, her own lip trembling. She pulled him into her shoulder.

"Breathe, Cole. You're okay." Her hand rubbed the back of his head and neck.

"It's okay."