TS6 - Chapter 43

Kat opened her eyes to see Belle slumped in the chair next to her, the arm of her body armor and infiltration suit burned off and revealing scarred flesh beneath.  The older woman shifted as Kat sat up, hissing in pain as her movement caused the scraps of fabric to rub against the open wound.

“Rise and shine,” Belle said tightly, flashing her a pained smile.  “The bad news is that Millennium forces have pushed a lot deeper and a lot faster into the complex than your security chief found comfortable.  The worse news is that they found us and I managed to get shot.  The good news is that the alien pistol you’ve been using is absurd and I managed to take all three members of the patrol down before they were able to contact anyone.  I want one by the way.  My birthday is on June sixth.”

“Hopefully I can manage that,” Kat replied, sitting up and pulling her chair over toward Belle’s.  “My bad news is that I didn’t get a chance to talk to Dorrik and Kaleek.  The good news is that I managed to climb to the twenty fourth floor on my own and personally alert a representative of the Galactic Consensus.  They should be broadcasting a cease and desist order right now.  It’s just a question of how long it takes for the transmission to arrive.  If we can hold out until then, that should solve the immediate problem.”

Kat began casting Cure Wounds as Belle picked stray strands of fabric and armor from the burn, finally after about two seconds of casting her hands began glowing gold.  Mana flowed out of Kat and into Belle’s arm.  Once again the ugly ripples of melted flesh began to smooth out, leaving fresh pink skin behind.

“Holding out until then is a tall ask,” Belle said between quick hissing gasps of breath as she struggled to manage the pain from Kat’s spell.  “Heather had to abandon the command station.  Right now most of the facility is under Millennium control.  She’ll periodically radio out updates, but no one has been able to stop any of those tower things since you managed to knock one over.”

“Well,” the older woman amended.  “One team did managed to collapse a wall and bury one under rubble, but there were too many samurai around for them to finish the job.  You’ve been asleep for almost two hours, and your security has been fighting a delaying action that entire time.  Now?  Now we’re out of delays.”

Kat bit her lower lip, focusing her attention on healing Belle for the moment.  Two hours was a long time.  It didn’t feel like she had spent that long talking to Sikka after Valgreth woke up to call off the attack, but it wasn’t like Kat had a clock to keep track.

“How much of the facility is still under our control?”  She asked, finishing up her spell and cutting off the flow of mana once she noticed that there wasn’t any visible burn left on Belle’s arm.  

“I don’t know,” the older woman replied, extending her injured arm and flexing it.  “Heather’s reports are largely in code and unlike you, I haven’t managed to memorize the names for all the locations and floors.  I know she’s had to shift locations twice, and there have been several patrols that have passed this location.  The most recent one stopped and began searching so I had to deal with them.”

“How long ago was that?”  Kat asked, picking up the pulser from where Belle had left it on one of the consoles.  “If they lost a team in this area they might be sending reinforcements.”

“About five to ten minutes ago,” Belle replied with a helpless shrug as she drew her stolen plasma pistol.  “I will admit that I basically lost track of time after I got hit by a stray shot.  That armor is wonderful by the way.  I’ve seen these weapons blow holes in the walls and it managed to bleed off almost all of the damage.  Once again, my birthday is June Sixth.”

Kat couldn’t help but smile.  In the hallway outside she could hear the sound of five or six people jogging toward their location, but inside the hidden security room, Belle was still Belle.

“Bad news,” she said, with a quick shake of her head before sealing up the face covering on her infiltration suit.  “I think they know where we’re at and it sure sounds like we’re behind enemy lines.  We’re going to have to get out of here, break contact and start running.  With any luck that will draw the mercenaries away from Heather and buy the defenders a little extra time.”

“But it will do that by making us the center of attention,” Belle replied, checking the charge on her plasma weapon before stashing it in one of her holsters and unslinging the assault rifle that she’d picked up at the previous security station.  “Unfortunate.”

“It doesn’t have to be both of us,” Kat said softly.  “They’re only looking for me and you already said that you managed to bring down the first patrol before they could get a call off to their headquarters.  If I make a break for it, they wouldn’t even know to look for you.  You could stay safe in the security station Belle.  You’ve already been shot twice while helping me, there’s no reason to risk another encounter.”

“Tosh,” Belle responded dismissively before she sealed up her face covering as well.  “You know what they say Miss Debs.  Third time’s the charm.”

Shouting from outside marked the end of their conversation.  Evidently the search and destroy team had found the remainder of the patrol that Belle had taken down while she was asleep.

Kat reached out with her mind, reversing gravity in the hallway in order to slam the entire team into the ceiling even as she jerked open the door to the outside.  She sprinted into the open, completely unaffected by her domain even as she accelerated the armored mercenaries back into the ground.

A quick glance was all it took for her to confirm that at least three of them were high level samurai.  One was glowing purple as he tried to activate some sort of psi ability while another was clad in a breastplate that flickered with red light as she used a skill to weather Kat’s attacks.  The third samurai looked like a rogue or an infiltrator, and unfortunately for him he didn’t appear to have any sort of ability that could handle Kat’s domain. 

Almost without thinking she threw all six of her enemies into the wall.  The three ordinary mercenaries were down for the count and the samurai without stamina or psi energy looked like he was concussed so Kat turned her attention to the other two.

Her first pulser shot punched through the armor of the woman using stamina, leaving a surprisingly small hole for a weapon of its power.  The warrior coughed up blood, her body shaking as Kat’s dart pounded her into the wall of the complex, but the red glow surrounding her persisted.  

Kat fired a second time just to be sure, and this time the woman went still even as the red glow faded.  Her feet shuffled across the ground, pushing her almost weightless body to the right as she strafed past the wreckage of her initial attack, drawing a bead on the man using psi energy.

Just as she pulled her trigger, the metal of the wall behind the samurai pulled itself free, wrapping it around the man’s torso like a blanket.  Her shot left a deep dent in the armor, failing to penetrate despite knocking the wind out of the man underneath.

She fired again, wrenching her target toward her and into his own barrier as she hammered another deep crater in the alloy.  Mana swelled inside Kat as she increased the power of her domain and cast Pseudopod simultaneously.

The samurai she was targeting grunted, and Kat could hear his bones creaking as he tried to pull himself free from the almost eleven gravities worth of force she was using to pin him in place.  A half second later there was a series of thumps as the remaining mercenaries slammed into the wall behind Kat, breaking bones and crushing organs on the unconscious fighters.

Beams of purple light began to pass through the cracks in the crumpled alloy, questing toward Kat like the fingers of a shriveled hand. She kicked off the floor, skating weightlessly across the room as she sidestepped the attacks only for her Pseudopod to lash out at the last second, snaking around armor to jam a knife into the struggling man’s armpit.

Quickly, Kat cast Overpressure, turning her victim’s axillary artery into a fountain.  He struggled against the weight of Kat’s domain, but between the beating his chest had taken and the rapid blood loss from his armpit, he faded quickly.  Barely two seconds later he was unconscious, his body already beginning to cool as it failed to circulate enough blood to keep all his extremities supplied.

She let her domain dissipate, turning to motion Belle forward only a shadow behind her to flash.  A hand jutted through a tiny portal, knife in its grip, as the final injured samurai swung at Kat’s throat.  She jerked her head back enough to dodge the initial blow, but before Kat could pull back completely, the knife flipped in the assassin’s hand, switching to a downward grip as the mercenary stabbed it deep into Kat’s shoulder.

Her sixth sense screamed inside Kat’s head as the blade easily parted the armor of her encounter suit, a red glow encompassing it as her attacker lodged it deep in her neck.  The cold burn of poison began pumping out of her wound as the assassin’s entire arm began to glow red from repeated skill use.

Kat hissed in pain, casting Dazzle on instinct and filling the hallway with enough light to dispel the effect.  Apparently, she wasn’t the only samurai that had managed to earn the Shadow Strike evolution to Shadow Step.

For a second, both parties were blind, but that second was more than enough.  Evidently her opponent relied heavily on darkness for movement and attacks, and between his injury and Kat’s spell, he was a sitting duck.

Kat’s Pseudopod darted forward, slashing back and forth a dozen times, and by the time that Kat’s Sensory Dampening kicked in, her target was slumped against the far wall, dead with a tic tac toe game’s worth of deep cuts carved into his chest.

Belle stepped out into the hallway just as Kat dropped down to one knee, a deep throbbing pain emanating from her shoulder.  She began casting Resist Poison as Belle walked over to her.  The older woman cocked her head to the side before unslinging her rifle and putting a three round burst into each of the downed mercenaries without any hesitation or emotion.

Once Kat finished casting the spell, the level of pain dropped from excruciating to merely debilitating.  She reached over, tapping the leg of Belle’s infiltration suit with a still bloody hand, wincing at the smear she left on the camouflaged armor.

“Would you mind?” she asked, voice still tight as she fought through the waves of agony.

Belle fired one last burst, shredding the assassin’s chest before slinging her rifle back over her shoulder and walking over to Kat’s injured side.

“Dear,” She said, quietly tut-tutting Kat as she put one hand on the side of her neck to steady her grip, “you look like Hell.”

Then, Belle yanked the blade free.  Kat could feel blood at hit points flowing out of her as she frantically began casting Cure Wounds.  The spell, after months of practice and experience, only took a second for her to finish, but by that point, her vision was already beginning to narrow.

Gold light seemed to stream up Kat’s arm, encompassing her injured shoulder as the wound sealed itself.  She exhaled a pent up breath, letting the stale air leave her lungs even as she tried to manage the itching sensation that followed in the wake of the poison being expelled and her flesh being healed.

“Got careless there for a second,” Kat said, blinking as she tried to steady herself despite the strange sensation.  “I thought I had all of them down for the count but I didn’t confirm the situation before I let down my guard.”

“And it wasn’t like they were from the first or second level of the Tower,” Belle replied.  “I can’t name either of those abilities I just saw, but that wasn’t the level of power I would expect from a new player.”

Kat stood up, shifting her side to either side to work out the residual kinks while her spell finished healing the damage.  In the distance she could hear the thunder of more feet on metal as another team ran toward their position.  Evidently, she hadn’t managed to take out that team as quietly as she had thought.

“They’re at least at the sixth level,” Kat replied.  “Probably closer to eight or ten.  I honestly didn’t know that Millennium had more than a couple people on that level.  I’d bet you thousand credits against ten that Mr. Jackson found some help power leveling his forces.”

“Dear,” Belle responded, shaking her head.  “I’m not going to take a losing bet, even if it is only ten credits.  Plus, even if I win, what am I going to do with a thousand credits?  Have half a manicure?”

Kat smiled.  Despite the tension and her recent brush with death, she couldn’t help herself.  There was something exhilarating about the entire situation.  As dry as Belle could be, killing people with her was… fun.

Fun.  That wasn’t a word she expected to use for the ice cold shareholder.  Still, being surprised by the moment didn’t change the truth of it.

“Come on,” Kat said.  “We need to keep moving.  I can hear another search and destroy team trying to track us down.  I can probably take them, but if I do the next team will have one of those tank things.  I’d like to avoid tangling with another one of those if I can help it, at least until I can get my hands on another shield.”

“Well,” Belle responded, turning to follow Kat as he took off at a jog, “I can’t handle a search and destroy team or a floating obelisk so I will defer to your judgement.  Especially if your judgment involves running away from further encounters.  I have been shot two more times today than I had planned for.  I would prefer to avoid a third instance.”

The building shook again, the amber emergency lighting flickering off for a full second before returning, even dimmer than before.  Kat glanced at Bell only for a second explosion, this one much closer, to shake the building.

She could still hear the footsteps of the mercenaries chasing her and Belle, but the rattle of gunfire to the north drowned them out for a second.  Kat cocked her head to the side while they ran.  The north was where Millennium had blown a hole in the complex’s defenses.  If there was anywhere that was fully under Mr. Jackson’s control, it should’ve been the north.

A third explosion shook the building.  This time the lights didn’t flicker back on.  Apparently, after hours of abuse the facility’s emergency power had reached its limit.

“Belle,” Kat whispered, gently grasping the other woman’s wrist and leading her down a side hallway.  “That explosion came from the north.  Do you know if Heather has any security forces deployed up there?”

The older woman shook her head.  Kat could barely make out the movement in the dark.  Between the light gathering on her infiltration suit and her Nightvision, Kat’s sight was starting to return to her, but the absolute darkness was settling around the two of them like a heavy blanket.

In the distance, the Millennium mercenary team that was looking for them had slowed to a crawl.  Kat could hear them frantically whispering together as one of their number called for help.  She didn’t have any way of knowing whether they would regain their senses before she did, but at the very minimum it would help buy her some more time.

“No idea,” Belle whispered back, letting Kat guide her toward a stairwell.  “Again, I don’t know any of the coded phrases the two of you were using to discuss various areas on the map.  Heather was calling out orders until about ten minutes ago, but for all I know she was calling for an invasion of the moon.”

More explosions echoed through the halls.  This time the mercenaries behind them started shouting.  Kat could only make out bits and pieces of their conversation, but it didn’t sound like things were going their way.

Good.  It was about time that she caught a break.

The walkie talkie chirped once before squawking to life, spitting static in between Heather’s garbled words.

“Attackers are falling back.  Do not pursue.  I don’t know if it is a full retreat, but they aren’t pushing any further.  Mouse, do you think that you can scout out the situation?  I want to see if we can reclaim the command center, over.”

Kat tried to share a meaningful glance with Belle only to realize that the other woman was still blinded by the lack of light.

“Acknowledge, over” a different female voice came through the walkie talkie.

Further up the hall, the shouting from the Millennium operatives’ shouting transformed into the hiss and zap of plasma fire, followed a second later by the chatter of gunfire.  Kat pulled Belle to the side, forcing open the door to an office block and slipping inside.

She pressed her back against the wall, pulser at the ready as she whispered an update to Belle over the sound of the ongoing firefight.

“Someone has engaged our pursuers.  No idea what’s going on but they’re using rifles so I doubt that it’s Millennium infighting.  Heather ordered the surviving security to hold back, so-”

“So it probably isn’t reinforcements from your defensive forces,” Belle whispered back.  “Do you think it might be your alien friends?”

From the hallway, a spurt of gunfire silenced the sound of plasma once and for all.  A couple seconds later, a male voice called out an all clear.

Kat pursed her lips.  The speaker was human and their voice wasn’t one that she recognized.  Maybe it was a new hire she hadn’t spoken with yet, but Kat wasn’t willing to bet on it.  Quietly, she reached down, turning the walkie talkie off so that it wouldn’t give them away.

She flipped the safety on her pulser off, closing her eyes so that she could focus on sounds of the almost twenty approaching footsteps.  Kat took a deep breath, willing her heartbeat to slow as she tracked the newcomers.

They paused at the intersection where Kat had veered off from the main walkway.  After a couple seconds of whispered conversation, the entire team turned toward them.

Kat stiffened.  There wasn’t anything important down the hallway she’d dragged Belle.  That was half the reason she’d done it.  The new team had no reason to make that turn.

Unless they were looking for something.

The steps grew closer and Kat tightened her grip on the hilt of her pulser.  Belle was silent at her side.  Even if the other shareholder couldn’t see what was happening, she could read the tension in the room well enough to know that someone was coming.

They passed one door after another without slowing down until finally the entire group came to a stop just outside Kat’s door.

“Are you sure this is it?”  A hushed male voice asked.  “There’s nothing here.”

Before anyone could respond, Kat kicked open the door, her gravity domain flaring to life as she threw the entire team into the far wall.  Force fields flared to life around all of them as they hit, bleeding off the worst of the impact even as Kat brought her pulser up and squeezed off a round at a man wearing chainmail and wielding an axe and a shield.

Once again, his shield flared to life only for the dart to overload it in a second.  He shrouded in pain as one of his bracers flashed and sizzled, filling the narrow hallway with the smell of burning oil.

Two of the samurai recovered, pointing rifles at Kat just in time for her to burn more mana, sending them hurtling into the ceiling and dragging them across until the rammed into the wall behind her.

Then, Kat was in the midst of her enemies, knife drawn and with a rapidly forming Pseudopod darting toward the secondary sheath at her hip.

“Erinyes!”  Whippoorwill’s shout hit her like a bowling ball between the eyes, her swift and practiced thrusts disappearing as she missed a step.

One of the armored figures along the far wall turned on a head lamp, revealing Whip’s face and pink hair.  Kat released her gravity domain, ignoring the sound of samurai sliding down the walls where she had been pinning them.

“Chiffon?”  She asked, doubting the evidence in front of her eyes as the samurai around her began groaning and climbing to their feet.  “What happened?  Why are you here?”

Whippoorwill leapt on Kat, wrapping her arms around her neck.  Warmth seeped through her damaged and half shredded infiltration suit.  It took a second for her to process the moment.

Kat’s pulser hit the ground with a clatter.  She wrapped her arms around Whip and for a couple of seconds, the world faded away and it was just the two of them.

A man coughed, dragging Kat back to reality.  She turned, and the ax wielder was shaking his injured arm gingerly.

“Excuse me ladies.  I’m glad that we found the VIP and all that, but we still have the rest of the facility to clear.  The other teams are reporting stiff resistance, and they’ll probably need our help.  If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back into it.”

Whippoorwill nodded at him, clearly still not entirely able to talk.  One by one the samurai dusted themselves off and turned to re-enter the main hallway where Kat had fought off the first mercenary team.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Whippoorwill whispered.  “Nina was able to put together a relief team pretty quickly, but it still took hours for me to make it to her and get back.  I expected Heather to have held out longer, but by the time we arrived most of the facility had been half destroyed and no one had heard from you.  I was afraid-”

“Ssh,” Kat replied, kissing Whip’s forehead to silence her.  “You made it in time.  Don’t worry.  It’s all going to work out.”

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