War Core 4, Chapter 15.

Chapter 15.

Hugh waited for another few hours, his security drones kept up their watch over the entrance while the maintenance drone worked on things inside. It finished repairs to the damaged turret and rebuilt the front door and windows of the security office. After that, Hugh had it repair the damaged security drone while the others cycled through to recharge their power supplies to full.

Occasionally, one of the drones would pick off an infected that made itself visible for too long. There were piles of ones his drones had destroyed outside and inside the security office. He was tempted to have the maintenance drone clear them out, but the risk of a living infected lurking somewhere in the piles was too great, and he only had one maintenance drone to work with.

When all the security drones were fully charged, and his expended magazines were full of power, Hugh decided it was time to move. He had to find a way off the station and had little information to work with. The console inside the security office had limited information on things other than this level of the station. There were docks for several vessels here, but none were showing as operational. There were no emergency life pods here either, all the ones on this level had long since been used in the initial panic the infected had caused.

He had no choice but to risk going to another level and checking things out there. The infected had overrun their team earlier, but now, he had more firepower for himself, and also had a dozen armed drones to provide support. While the security drones had limited capacity for complicated orders, Hugh was able to set them to protect an individual. Keying himself as the one to be escorted and the maintenance drone as secondary, Hugh worked out the quickest path toward the central lift. Once he made it to the lift, he would move down a level and find the nearest working console. With his access at the highest level, Hugh should be able to find what he was looking for.

With the last drone at a full charge, Hugh tested the waters. Walking out of the security office, he moved a dozen feet from the door, his action causing a small stampede of infected to charge from the nearby buildings. His drones snapped into action, gunning down his attackers before Hugh could fire more than a couple of shots of his own. It was a harrowing experience to have a bunch of those things howling and screeching while they charged, but they lacked the numbers to overwhelm him now.

With the immediate area clear, Hugh moved toward the central lift. The drones arranged themselves around Hugh, and the small maintenance unit stuck right on his heels. They moved from the dubious safety of the security office. Hugh was tempted to stay a bit longer, but he knew that even though the GCA hadn’t set a time limit for him getting off the station, they wouldn’t take kindly to him just loafing around. Eventually, something bad would happen if he stayed put. Hugh would rather risk the dangerous journey toward safety now rather than when he was forced to.

Things were calm enough for the first hundred yards or so. The walkway in this part of the level was fairly wide to accommodate the traffic to and from the main lift. Even if he couldn’t see them, Hugh could feel the infected shadowing his journey. The security drones matched Hugh’s pace and created a ring of firepower around him. When the area was wide enough, eight would form an outer circle while four kept close by Hugh as a second line of defense. Well-armed, Hugh figured he could more than hold his own against a few of the monsters.

With the lift in sight, the monsters made their move. The first warning that there was something wrong was when the lead drones started shooting in the air. Hugh followed their line of fire and saw several infected hurl themselves from the upper-story windows and roof of the nearby building. While the attack from above was going on, more infected rushed out onto the street and charged for Hugh, ignoring the drones and homing in on the only living member of the group.

Something slammed into Hugh, knocking him off his feet. He could feel the impact of the infected appendages as they sought to pierce his armor. The riot armor held up and Hugh was able to push the infected back far enough to get his carbine into action. A blast of plasma blew a hole in the monster’s chest, allowing Hugh to get to his knees, only to be hit by another infected dropping from above. This one was already dead, having been shot down by one of the drones before it landed on him. It was no threat, but it cost him time as he staggered back to his feet.

A quick check showed one of the security drones was swarmed under a mound of infected, and the others were all fighting for their lives. The central lift was only a hundred yards ahead, and Hugh began snapping off three round bursts to clear a path. Following his lead, the drones pushed with Hugh, burning through the mass of attackers as they inched their way toward the goal. Another drone went down, knocked off balance by one of the jumpers, and then swarmed under like the first one had been.

Hugh burned through the rest of his mag, firing as fast as he could put sights on a target and pull the trigger. While they were durable, the infected just couldn’t stand up to a three-round burst of plasma. Reloading, the distance to the lift was only twenty-five yards now, and the enemy in front of them had been mostly cleared out. Reaching the lift, Hugh hit the access button. The doors whooshed open, and he was bowled over as a trio of infected that had been waiting inside the car jumped out. He gunned one down, but the other two knocked him off his feet.

One of the drones swiveled around and put well-aimed shots through Hugh’s assailants, freeing him from their clutches. Sacrificing themselves, three of the drones waded into the attacking infected, gunning them down and giving Hugh and the other surviving drones time to make it into the lift. As the doors to the lift closed, Hugh could see something even larger approaching from behind the crowd of infected. This one was a true behemoth and looked to be an amalgamation of several infected joined together like a foul science experiment gone wrong.

The oversized infected used a whiplike arm to crush the drones holding back the tide. His brave security drones had done their job and the reinforced doors of the lift closed before the huge monster could reach them. The doors to the lift shook as the monster-sized infected began to beat on them. Hugh wasted no time and hit the descend button, more than a little annoyed that nothing happened, and the system required him to select a level.

The next two rings were showing as inaccessible due to “maintenance issues”. Not wanting to leave the lift here until the giant monster broke its way in, Hugh chose the next available level that could be accessed. The lift gave a soft hum as it began to descend. It only took a few seconds for it to move several levels lower, and Hugh held down the door close button before it automatically opened. The last thing he needed was for the doors to open on a swarm of infected ready to pounce.

He tried to interact with the controls, his position as station administrator granting him full access. The interface was limited, and he still needed to locate an admin console to truly dig into the station’s situation, but for now, he was happy enough to access a link to the external cameras. This level was like a giant cargo hold, not something normally accessed by station visitors, so it had a lower population at the time the infection began. It had spread to this level and there were several infected of various species wearing station jumpsuits that would indicate they were construction workers.

Only a few of the infected meandered around the lift, and none seemed to give Hugh’s car any attention. That would change once he opened the door and the infected spotted him, but the lack of enemies pounding on the door gave him a few minutes to peruse the camera system and scope out the rest of this level. Most of the level was empty and had been severely damaged before the outbreak had ever begun. A temporary patch had been installed over the huge holes that had been blasted into the structure. It held atmosphere, but it wasn’t armored like the normal station skin, and he would have to be careful not to breach it.

On second thought, Hugh figured that venting the atmosphere might be a good way to deal with the infected. He didn’t know if those things needed atmosphere to survive, but it might be worth a chance. His drones could operate without any problem and his riot armor was sealed with an internal scrubber that would give him over twelve hours of breathable air in an emergency. It would be his last resort, though, as there didn’t seem to be that many infected here.

Some of the cameras were down, either from the prior battle or the infected. There was a smaller warehouse set up as a main office for the workers rebuilding this level, but there wasn’t a security office. He didn’t see any docks on this level, but two escape pods were showing as functional. The pods were at the far end of the station, away from where the repairs were being done, which is probably why none of the workers had used them to escape, they were attacked and infected long before they made the trek to where the escape pods were located.

His first stop would be the construction office, where he hoped there might be a console with more access than the one in the lift. He had seven of the security drones and one maintenance drone still in the fight. With the limited numbers of infected, Hugh believed that he had enough firepower to cut through them. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door to the lift. His drones beat him to the punch by gunning down all the infected in sight. None of the infected managed to let out the piercing shriek that sounded the dinner bell for all their nearby kin, which made things a bit easier as they moved across the warehouse level toward the construction office.

Twice, the infected stumbled into view, but they were taken down before they could give any warning. A few maintenance drones and larger, heavy construction versions went about their pre-programmed tasks, but the infected seemed to ignore them. Hugh figured that unless the drones injured or attacked the infected, they wouldn’t be seen as threats or prey, since they needed living hosts for their strange infection to take hold. This would change when they were riled up, and the infected had gone after his maintenance drones earlier when they tried to move through the horde.

The construction office was a large temporary structure near where most of the work was being done. It was a bit out of his way from the escape pods, but the threat here was low enough that Hugh figured the chance of accessing more information and perhaps more help from the drones was worth it. One infected stood in the open doorway to the office and when Hugh shot it down, several screeches were heard from inside. Two of his combat drones moved into the structure, taking out the few infected inside. The damage had already been done, though, and responding shrieks echoed in the distance.

There wasn’t the deafening sound of a horde approaching, and Hugh’s drones should be able to hold the entrance while he accessed the console inside. The office was sparsely furnished, not surprising given its temporary nature. Hugh found the manager's cubicle easy enough, it was the largest one in the building. His access level unlocked everything he wanted on the console. Most of the information was simple work orders, but those were a bit interesting to Hugh. The station had a high-value captive that escaped on a huge warship that blasted apart much of the station in the process.

This level was a warehouse, but the exterior had several missile batteries for station defense mounted on it, making it a target for the ship’s main guns, which tore apart the defenses and blasted open most of the level. Repairs were ongoing, but station finances weren’t in a good place, making the process of getting resources needed for repairs a slow one. Hugh was able to access nearly a dozen more of the small maintenance drones as well as ten of the larger heavy construction models. There wasn’t much he could do with them; Hugh wasn’t exactly concerned about repairing this place, only with escaping.

A little tinkering with the system gave him a bit of a workaround. Hugh found that he could designate the infected as dangerous refuse that had to be compacted down into a smaller package for disposal. With those instructions, the ten heavy construction drones began to hunt down the infected, crushing them when they got within reach. Gunfire from the drones outside was sporadic, and between them and the heavy construction drones going to work, the level would be cleared of infected before long, giving Hugh time to plan his next step.

It took about an hour for the drones to mop up the last of the infected. There were likely still a few lurking about, but once they showed themselves, the construction drones would take care of them. The infected had started to respond to and attack the construction drones. Built with heavy outer shells designed for hard and dangerous work, they were well protected from the infected who lacked the numbers to swarm over them.

With the path clear, Hugh gathered his security drones and the large group of maintenance units. They moved toward the far end of the level where the escape pods were housed. Hugh wasn’t sure if an escape pod counted as leaving the station, but he didn’t think the GCA would be too strict on the subject. They wanted a good show and forcing a single person to find a starship he couldn’t possibly hope to crew didn’t make for much viewer excitement. Sadly, the viewers the GCA tried to entertain were no longer living, but that didn’t stop them from following their programming.

As he reached the escape pods, a crash was heard in the distance. Hugh ignored it, for now, using his access level to activate the nearest escape pod. It was a good-sized vehicle, designed to carry several hundred station personnel. There was more than enough room for Hugh, the security drones, and the maintenance drones. He felt bad leaving the construction drones behind. He might need them if this stage of the challenge wasn’t truly over, but they were too big to fit inside the hatchway to the escape pods. As the hatches closed. Hugh caught sight of the monstrous-sized infected he had escaped from on the previous level. It was tearing apart the heavy construction drones that were trying to reprocess it as salvage.

Please find a species-appropriate seat and activate the restraint system. This escape pod will eject in ten seconds.

Hugh followed the announcement’s instructions, finding a reasonably human-sized seat, and was glad to see it was designed to accommodate the armor he was wearing. It made sense given that if there was an emergency bad enough to force an evacuation, the people fleeing would likely be in at least some kind of emergency survival suit. Outside, the infected behemoth was tearing apart the last of the heavy construction drones, but before it could reach the escape pod, the countdown hit zero. Hugh felt the pod eject from the station, and some sort of internal damping kept him reasonably comfortable through the experience. Looking at the viewport, Hugh could see the station began to shrink as the escape pod flew further away.

Congratulations! You have made your way off the station and will now join the other survivors to participate in the final stage of your trial. Please stand by as you are linked with our war core.