Turn 22
Map:
Room:
Alpha, Beta, and Gamma watch in dismay as the cyberarmored soldiers easily storm through the far side of the room, decimating the hordes of fysar that come spilling out of the side passages - and after the FMU attack them, they begin mowing down the FMU as well.
The REKT crew hunkers down. This shit is clearly well above their pay grade.
Caleb doesn't recognize the newcomers, but he's seen enough battle to know when to bug out. "Okay, listen up! We need to get out of here," he barks, raising his voice above the chaos. "Estelle, stasis the two hallways!"
"Leave it to me," Saoirse calls, and gets to work. Within a few moments, she successfully bubbles the first hallway, but holds off on the northern one for after the door breaks.
The ex-soldier turns. "Connelly, when we make a break for it, you'll zap one of the armored guys, and Estelle will stasis two more. That should disable most of them."
Brom reloads his pistol, looking a bit cross. "I'll play along with your little plan, but keep yourself and your people out of my way whenever possible. Something tells me that things are going to escalate quite a bit within the next few minutes, and you don't want to be in my line of fire when they do."
"That's the plan." Caleb points at Yuuji. "You, with the grenade launcher! Let us know when it's ready to fire again. When it is, blanket the room in plasma!"
"I'm not sure we should bomb the massacre over there," Yuuji reasons. "They seem to be quite content with killing each other, and outnumber us severely!
"Right," Caleb acknowledges, "but we've only barely cleared out this room and there's already more on the way. We can't hold out forever! I'd rather get our guns back and get out of here before we're overwhelmed."
Then Buck chimes in, shouting, "Who knows how many alien scumbags are comin' in through there, might be a whole army of these damn bugs!" Scanning the room, he spots a maintenance shaft in among the pipes and machinery on the left wall. "Look there! There's an exit, n' there ain't no aliens crawlin' out o' that one!"
Caleb follows Buck's pointing finger, but his hopes are dashed after he sees the jungle gym they'd have to climb through to get to it - and without cover the whole way, too. He shakes his head. "Look at that thing, we'd have to climb all the way up it - we'd get shot to pieces! We'd have a better chance if we just blitzed the bastards." Then, over the comms, to Frank, he says, "Sam! Hang in there! We're going to try to break through to you!"
"Good luck with that," Frank radios back, not sounding confident.
"I'll try to set something up on my side! I also have a bit of your stuff with me already."
For the first time in the mission, radio silence has been broken. If there was ever a sure sign that everything had gone to hell, this would be it.
The far side of the room is a blur of screaming aliens. Plasma, bullets, and lasers fly, charring the walls. The remaining supersoldiers leap from the balcony, half-crouching as they charge across the room, taking up positions as their golden-yellow plasma flashes over stacks of crates, finding their marks more often than not. More aliens leap from the catwalks above, shouting wild war cries, and soon find themselves locked in melee combat with the soldiers, who seem hellbent on carving through their ranks, leaving a bloody path in their wake. The melee doesn't last long.
A fysar hiding behind a pillar on the near side of the machinery stack fires a shot at Vynkor, nearly hitting her and drawing the ire of the rest of the inmates. Caleb and Vynkor fire back, both missing, and Sukava throws a knife, but she's not quick enough; the alien anticipates it and sidesteps it with ease. With a wild scream, Sukava charges out of cover at the bug, ignoring the weapons fire from Brom, Vynk, and Caleb as she rushes in and stabs the damn thing to death, relishing in the slimy green glory of the aftermath. Saoirse rushes forward after her and slams herself into cover behind the pillar, where the dead fysar stood only moments before.
At that moment, Vynkor gets shot in the side, a laser tracing a sizzling wound across her upper ribcage. She shouts, and the REKT crew leaps to defend her, redirecting their fire towards the fysar behind the far pillar. Caleb and Brom miss, but only barely, and following a powerful jolt of lightning from Saoirse that sends the monster tumbling out of cover, Brom nails it in the leg. It collapses, shrieking, and Caleb focuses fire on it with his little laser pistol until it stops moving.
Behind them, Buck is working hard on a hack. He's managed to hack his way into the local network, and from there he's trying to trace the nearest gravity generator. He just needs a little more time, but in a moment he's gonna turn the place into a zero-g funhouse... if he can
just find the correct accessways...
~~~
Frank swallows nervously as he retreats from the doorway, going back into the shadows on the stairwell. He's hoping against hope that everybody is too busy shooting each other in the central chamber to have noticed him.
As he starts down the stairs, he's hit with an idea - to attach a cable reel bolt across the wall as a tripwire, hoping to trip up anyone that comes down. It would give him the opportunity to snipe them before they have a chance to recover. Putting his idea into motion immediately, he takes out a cable reel and attaches both ends of it to the wall at roughly shin height. He plucks it with his finger to make sure it's taut, and then retreats down the hallway, PDA in hand. He's unable to move too quickly without coughing, so he tries to take it slow.
Crouched in the darkness, holding his PDA, Frank probes the nearby network, hoping that with a little exploratory prodding he can find some weaknesses he might be able to exploit in the near future - specifically related to doors. It would be extremely handy to have some backdoors set up here and there...
~~~
"It's clear!
GO, GO, GO!" Caleb shouts, and as one, the REKT crew starts forward. Caleb hefts Kaquyu over his shoulder and leaps over the crates. Brom moves forwards as well, and Saoirse gets into position.
Seconds later, the door to the north crumbles, bent to the side as an explosion rocks its frame. Saoirse hastens to put a stasis bubble in its place, blocking the doorway, and the first fysar in line gets trapped coming through.
Buck, startled by the sudden sound, loses track of what he's doing. His hacking progress fizzles out with an onscreen alert that informs him his probing has been caught and isolated. "Damn it, no use!" he roars, spitting, "Fukc it, let's just kill everyone n' leave the hard way!" Slapping his PDA into its holster, he pulls out his baton and readies it, chasing after Caleb and taking cover under the catwalks above. Sneaking to the corner, he pokes his head around, and for the first time, gets a really good look at the heavies. "Damn," he gulps, "Robo-aliens?? Well, I ain't comin' nowhere near that secret alien passageway 'till those things are good'n dead!"
Caleb leans out around Buck to get a good look at the situation, followed closely by Adopan, who has even less idea than the REKT inmates do of what's happening.
Across the room, plasma flies; the three soldiers, under orders from their commander, split and take on different hallways, pushing back the hordes one step at a time. One at the far side of the room has some kind of flamethrower built into his hand; another one staggers through the floodlight's beam. He's under heavy fire, but pushes forward, one smoking corpse at a time, and attaches some kind of object to the hallway wall; it casts wild electrical arcs across the hallway, blocking the path. This done, the soldier retreats back a few paces.
The commander herself leaps over a stack of crates and throws herself into cover near the pillar-pipe to the south of the machinery. Then, glancing out, she quickly looks the REKT inmates over; her eyes almost immediately affix themselves to Kaquyu Adopan. She glances at the various REKT members: Caleb, hunkered behind cover - Saoirse, lightning arcing between her palms - Yuuji, plasma bomb launcher at the ready - Vynkor, wincing with pain - the Spiderbot, limping and unable to climb down off its perch, as it sprays a fusillade of plasma at the enemies in the northern hallway - and praise Odin that she doesn't see Sukava. Having swiftly surveyed them, the commander seems to shift gears. A voice sounds, loud enough to be unnatural: "IF YOU'RE WITH US, GET THE PRISONER AND
MOVE!" Saying this, she turns and fires a few rounds to her left, and a fysar comes tumbling off the catwalk, landing next to a stack of crates.
Enemies continue to pour into the room from all sides. On Yuuji's left, three - four - perhaps five or more are trying to break their way through Saoirse's stasis bubble, and even more can be heard approaching the catwalk's entrance to the room. To the south, there's sounds of gunfire coming from out of view - angry screams and wild cries of pain echo through the building. Even more frighteningly, from somewhere above there's the sound of a mighty explosion, far larger than a plasbomb, accompanied by the creaking scream of hundreds of tons of rending metal.
The floor and walls shake violently.
"
MOVE!" the commander roars again, as she begins helping the spiderbot take down the enemies in the northern corridor.
~~~
Frank hunkers down; he hears footsteps and angry voices. Listening, he tries to discern where the sound is coming from, and is horrified to find that it seems to be coming from all sides at once. Looking behind him, he can see shadows moving across the walls in the room where the rest of the weapons are, and there seem to be enemies coming down the passages on the right and left as well.
An explosion echoes through the walls; a tumultuous crash and the screech of metal sounds from far above. Someone is shouting loudly in the room to the north. He pays little attention; he doesn't even know what's being said.
Shadows - shadows on the walls to the south - to the north.
The enemies are coming.
Frank glances at the crossbow in his hands. One shot won't be enough to stem this tide, he knows; he pulls out his sword and readies it, clutching it tightly in his shaking hands. He's not ready to die - not here, not now. His friends, Saoirse and Caleb - they're on the way. Caleb said so.
He only hopes that they're in time.