Stormfall - Chapter 8

”…six, seven.” Better turnout than I expected. It could’ve just been me and Fleff, and he didn’t get a 

The count was split between the two squads. Four of them were from Pike-Two, and three from Iron-Four. Johnson, the Grenadier, Fleff of course, a lanky woman with antiarmor heavy weapons, and a rifleman. The other squad just had three riflemen show up. 

“You—“ I pointed toward the rifleman from Pike-Two. 

“Collins, Ma’am!” The rifleman popped a salute. 

“Right, Collins, stay here for guard duty.” I could’ve kept him, but it was bad form to cherry-pick just one person and isolate them from their squad. Especially when everyone was already twitchy. “One of you also stay behind. We need a small strike team.”

“Roger, ma’am.” Collins' shoulders slumped in and he left the group. 

The three broke into a quiet conversation, and then one of them split off with a huff, leaving just the two. “Names?”

The woman, a lady with extremely broad shoulders, spoke up and lifted her fist to her chest, “Ivanova.”

”Francis. Ma’am.” The other rifleman tacked on just a little too late. His visor dipped down to Black Dog for the briefest of moments and his hand tightened on his loosely hanging rifle.

“Johnson.” The stocky grenadier sipped from another metal tin he’d scrounged up from who knew where.

”Fleff.” The radioman had his helmet back on now. The vizor of it was cracked, though. 

“Kozlova.” The lanky lady with enough firepower to down a Titan shifted her LMG. She was weirdly thin for how much gear she had. Probably running some kind of strength-boost nanite strain just to haul it all.

I took a breath and channeled my inner Cyra. She always nailed giving orders. I just had to imitate her. It wouldn’t be the first time I had to fake something till I made it. “This is a lightning strike, not a parade. If you can’t move fast, stay here.”

No one walked away. That was a good start already. See? This whole thing would go fine…

I nodded to my radioman. “Fleff, how far up do we need?”

He scratched at the side of his helmet, right near where the bullet had hit him. ”Two or three floors.”

”Right, once we get up there, he’s going to find the interference.” I waved a hand up toward the ceiling. “We find the source, scout it out, and if we can, kill it. If not, we run back here and wait for heavier guns.” 

“What are we expecting, ma’am?” Kozlova leaned against a vending machine, and the rocket launcher strapped to her back clanked against it noisily.

”Good question. I have it on good authority there are at least three of these things. Francis, Ivanova?” Iron-Four was actually attacked by whatever stalked the dark halls of this place. They were the best source of info.

“Something with active camo, and they move quickly.” Ivanova sighed. “We only saw one of them, but it took out two of us before anyone realized what was happening.”

Invisible ambushers… I already knew, of course, but it just hit me that was what I was about to face. I didn’t have the naninte advantage like the rest of the shock troopers either. I was only at a lowly 140 NLC compared to most of their 500. Black Dog gave me a slight edge. I’d have to hope that was enough to keep kicking. 

“Shoot any movement. Ammo’s cheaper than a funeral.” They already knew we were here, anyway. No point in playing stealth. 

I looked around the group and waited for questions. Just when I thought nobody would ask, Ivanova nodded to Black Dog. “What about that thing?”

“He’s with me. The mutt’s smart enough to talk, and dumb enough to hold a grudge. Try not to piss him off.” Black Dog flared with fire next to me as if to prove my words. “Questions?”

This time, the group fell and stayed silent. I watched each of them for a moment and tried to put off the decision to move for as long as possible. Odds were someone wasn’t making it back. Maybe even all of us. I’d rather roll the dice than sit around and do nothing, though. And, honestly, the odds weren’t that bad. 

I pushed off from the arcade machine and lifted my rifle from its sling. “Let’s move.”

The stairs to the next floor weren’t too far from the arcade. They were, however, pitch black. There weren’t auxiliary lights, or emergency glow strips, or ambient neon ghosts like the rest of this arcology. It was just sheer concreted, rusted railings, and the sound of boots crunching over debris and dust. Protected from the black rain, there were even vines growing up along the walls here.

Black Dog was the first up. As long as I lived, he had practical immortality. It only made sense to have him go first. Although I hated putting him in danger, he insisted it was better for him to take the first strike than anyone else in the squad.

I followed just behind the shaggy black wolfhound, and the rest of the small recon squad filed in behind me. Even though stealth wasn’t a goal, each clank of their gear set me on edge. Especially Kozlova with her rocket tubes clattering around noisily. 

“They’ve been through here recently, Joy.” Black Dog glanced back toward me. Faint wisps of light sparked off his fur, and died just as fast as they came. 

The third floor opened into a corridor choked with ruin. A half-collapsed security checkpoint marked the entrance. Riot barricades had been thrown up at some point, and each of them cast deep shadows as our lights flashed across them.

”We found Saber-Three just ahead.” Francis’s voice came out barely above a whisper. “What was left of them, anyway.”

A high pitched keening noise came from the middle of the squad. Fleff tapped the radio slung across his chest and adjusted a dial. The noise quieted to a constant whisper. “I’m getting feedback from something over there. Probably whatever’s left of their radio.”

I flicked my flashlight across the shattered window of a shopfront. The shifting shadows looked like figures darting across the dark. “B, you have anything?”

”Scent trail cuts down to just one.” The hound lowered his head to the ground. “One might still be here.”

”Eye’s up.” I took a breath and stalked forward between the cover of the barricades.

Francis moved past me and took the guiding position. After cutting across a few more halls, we stumbled across a small atrium like space with shuddered shopfronts. One of the stores had its shudders blown off its hinges though, creating a natural choke point. 

“In there.” Francis pointed toward the jewelry store.

We moved in slowly. Drag marks covered the ground, only outdone by splattered blood and spent casings. Saber-Three hadn’t gone down without a fight.

My flashlight swept across the shattered visor of a Stormfall helmet. Beside it, half a leg lay detached with no sign of a body. A dozen dead flares lay scattered around like they’d tried to make the place as bright as possible. 

The squad fanned out as soon as we entered the store. I made quick motions back to the squad. I wasn’t good at the silent form of communication yet, but thankfully the group got my meaning. Ivanova and Johnson stayed back and took positions on either side of the door while the rest of us cleared the room. 

Black Dog passed a shattered display table and neared the drag marks. “Weren’t there supposed to be eight of them left?”

”Yup.” The enemy had returned sometime after Iron-Four came through here and scavenged the bodies… food, maybe? Or something else?

I crouched down next to one of three remaining corpses and inspected his wounds. The soldier had been cut open by something, with his entrails dangling out like a mess of gory spaghetti someone had left in meat sauce.

The scent made my nose scrunch up even through the filtering of my mask. It smelled worse than it looked, which was really saying something. 

I took a breath and then pulled on the dead man’s chest plate to get a better look at it. The armor was scratched, but not cut. Whatever attacked hadn’t been able to get through it, though it had easily cut through the unarmored bits.

”Fleff—“

”Over here.” Fleff picked up a radio similar to his own and set it on one of the display tables. It’d been nearly sliced in two, with exposed cables sparking as he lifted the device. “Just need a minute.”

”Make it quick, radiohead. The clock's ticking.”

”No promises.” He let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and pulled out a knife.

“Right. Scatter and resupply.” I checked out the rest of the bodies. They were even more damaged than the first one I checked. One of them was missing an arm, and the other’s head had disappeared. The discarded helmet suggested it’d been taken alongside the other five corpses.

”Think they saw it coming?” Kozlova dropped her LMG into a sling and picked up a discarded launcher to extract the rocket from it. The launcher itself was slashed beyond repair.

”Doubt it.” I picked up a discarded shell casing and looked around the room. Bullet holes covered nearly every surface, mostly clustered toward the back of the shop. Blood splatters were also concentrated on the back, and then scattered through the rest of the place.

We moved quickly while Fleff worked on what was left of Saber-Three’s radio. Mags were pulled, bullets refilled, and supplies claimed from the dead. I gathered the tags of the fallen while moving around to pick up discarded magazines and dropped flares. I only found four of eight. 

Fleff extracted the power cell from the radio and the entire thing died. His own radio quieted down, and the feedback loop abruptly stopped. “Got it—“

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

“Contact ceiling!” Gunfire erupted from the entrance, and the world froze for the briefest of seconds. Then the squad scattered and covered Ivanova and Johnson as they pulled back further into the store to create a choke point. Ivanova fired a few more bursts and then ducked behind a counter.

”Where is the bastard?” Kozlova kicked over a display stand and mounted her LMG on it. 

“Topside somewhere—I lost it!” 

Everything went quiet and an unsettling silence filled the air. Tension spiked throughout the squad and settled on my shoulders. I eyed the sight of my rifle and carefully watched the entrance for even the slightest hint of movement. 

Active camo was good—in specific situations. It usually had difficulties while moving. It was just the nature of the camo having adjustment times, which was doubly true for a creature’s natural camo abilities. That slight distortion of wrongness while the camo adjusted was what I watched for. 

“I’ll check it out.” Black Dog left my side and prowled forward to the blown apart door into the jewelry store. White fire trailed off of him, casting light brilliantly like some kind of flare. It flared even brighter once he stepped beyond the store, lighting up the entire area.

HIs light somehow made it better and worse at the same time. Debris turned into looming shapes, and shadows arced away like frightened animals. My eyes darted across every corner as I watched for any sign of our attacker. Nothing.

“What was it?” I finally asked. I didn’t see anything, but the air felt wrong. It was that familiar feeling of a fight about to break out at any movement.

“Something hanging from up there.” Ivanova jerked her rifle up toward the raised ceiling of the space and took the opportunity to reload. “It vanished before I could get a good look.”

As if things couldn’t get worse. Fast, highly mobile, and capable of climbing sheer surfaces without leaving a mark. They could get up and down throughout the entire building through the atrium, elevator, and stairs. Tracking them just got a whole lot harder. 

“Was it on the ceiling last time too?” 

“No.” Francis’s voice cut through the stillness. “It hit us as we crossed a hall intersection.”

We waited five more minutes with nothing happening before I finally made the decision to keep moving. I whistled for Black Dog and shifted away from my cover. “Stay on full blast.”

”Right.” The flames sparking off him churned even brighter. Not quite enough to be blinding, but he easily displaced the dark gloom that’d been settling across the space.

With any luck, we’d be able to see it before it was coming. Although the thing itself would be invisible, it’d still cast a shadow. It was common sense, and the scattered flares from Saber-Three reminded me of that fact. Even in death, they were still helping us. 

 Active camo was hard to fight against, but the main advantage came from the initial strike. With us more prepared, it didn’t pose as much of a threat as it did to Saber-Three. Or, at least, that's what I told myself.

I fingered the trigger of my rifle and approached the door. “Form back up. We’re moving back up the stairs.”

The squad gathered behind me into a loose wedge—maybe. I was never good with formations. They didn’t matter much to Titans, so Cyra had mostly skipped them. It was the triangle looking one, though.

We stepped out of the jewelry store guided by Black Dog’s light. That feeling of being watched started to fade, but that didn’t stop me from checking and double-checking every shadow.

I wasn’t the only one on edge either. Ivanova and Johnson watched the ceiling with their rifles half raised toward it. The others were equally charged and ready to open fire at the slightest twitch.

I flexed my finger and lightly rubbed the trigger guard. Part one down. They knew we were coming, and we knew they were watching. Now it was just a game of cat and mouse until they struck.

— - —

AN: I just realized I never gave tags or genre stuffs. Going off how RR does there stuff, the four genres are Adventure, Sci-Fi, Mystery, and Action.

Tags: Mecha, Cyberpunk(‘course), Female Lead, Progression, Space Opera, Technologically Engineered, Magic, LitRPG(kinda. I think it’s actually game lit, though), Dystopia, War and Military, Local Protagonist, and Soft Sci-Fi

A bit about the direction too—I do intend to really focus in on the mecha stuffs alongside progression. I’ve always wanted to write a mecha story. Mainly because there are just very few mecha web novels out there that I would actually want to read. And, most of the time, mecha is tagged and it’s only in the story for a tiny bit. Seriously annoying.

It’ll mostly take place all in one star sector, but I have an entire galaxy planned out that I might get into. I dunno. Even just a star sector is so massively big that it’s hard to wrap your head around. Without getting too far into stellar density and math stuffs, there’s upwards of 15 million systems in just a thousand light year cube. Seriously crazy. And, at least with my very limited understanding of space since school failed me and barely taught anything cool, that means there’s about 150 million planets spread across that, with potentially way more. Rogue planets, exo planets, planet sized moons, moon sized planets—space is truly just mind boggling. Even just looking at planets in our own solar system, like Jupiter, is crazy. Jupiter has the largest ocean in the entire solar system, and it’s made out of metallic hydrogen. Isn’t that just so cool? Not even water, but a gas pressured into being a Liquid Metal kinda like how mercury is a Liquid Metal here on earth. Not to mention the deeper layers where the pressure and heat gets higher and higher. And then all that metal hydrogen is conductive, so the planets core itself acts like a massive stator/rotor combo and generates astronomical magnetic fields and electrical currents through the ocean. It’s so freaking cool I can’t even write down how cool I think it is, and it’s part of my job to describe and put stuff into digestible sentences and paragraphs. Or like Saturn which has wind speeds of over 1000 MPH. Can you even imagine what it’d be like being whipped by a 1000 MPH wind? Or, better yet, sail racing in a 1000 MPH? Wouldn’t that be a wild sport for an advanced civilization? Or like Io, the moon of Jupiter. It’s under immense stress caused by the other moons around it and Jupiter, causing it to constantly erupt with volcanoes. Also, its the namesake of Aylin from Myth//OS… honestly, that was the only reason it made it on here. And then, besides the planets, there’s all the other cool stuff like stellar nurseries and black holes that we barely even have a grasp on from very limited observations. And then there’s the more fictitious things I want to add and bring into the setting. So much to do, so little time.

I, uh, sorry about that… I’m excited to write space though, basically. And mecha, but I’ve done enough ranting for one year.