Somnus V - Chapter 36

Kat only got a fraction of a second before the explosion reached her. There wasn’t enough time for a spell, so she did the next best thing. Gravity twisted around her, upending the heavy wooden table that she was sitting at and flipping it over as she ducked behind it.

 All of that only took an eyeblink. Then the blastwave hit.

 Luckily, Kat’s table was crafted from genuine wood. It was thick and sturdy enough to survive the wall of light, sound, and fire that slammed into it. What it wasn’t was bolted to the ground.

 The table was thrown backward by the force of the blast, hitting Kat and sending her skidding across the marble floor of the arbitration chamber. Her head snapped backward, bouncing off the floor and filling her vision with stars.

 She blinked, trying to clear the fog from her head and the sounds of screams and gunfire. Kat began muttering the words to Arcane Armor. The spell wasn’t strong enough to stop a bullet on its own, but at least it would prevent her from instantly dying if someone shot her with an ordinary weapon.

 More shots and yelling echoed as chaos overwhelmed the room. Chips of marble sprayed into the air next to Kat’s head as submachine gun fire stitched across the floor a pace or two to her right.

 Kat rolled over onto her hands and knees, blinking against the smoke as she popped her head over the edge of the table that had shielded her from the explosion. The bulletproof glass separating the observer’s gallery from the ground floor of the arbitration chamber hadn’t lived up to its name.

 At least two dozen ragged holes, each about twice the size of a person, were ripped out of its surface making room for masked gunmen that were raining lead down on the hearing floor. About ten security guards working for the arbitration agency were returning fire as they tried to crowd into the scant cover provided by the tables and dollies used for transporting exhibits to and from the hearing.

 Another half dozen guards were dead or dying on the floor. Kat had only been out of the fight for a couple seconds, but already the attackers had managed to use the distraction caused by the explosion to gun down a good portion of the arbitration hall’s security staff.

 Kat reached down for her knife only for her fingers to touch blank fabric. No weapons. No pockets. She wasn’t sure which offended her more.

 Another rattle of gunfire drilled a jagged line in the desk used by the arbitration panel. A quick glance confirmed that Tenney was down, gasping for breath and clawing at his chest as a red stain grew around his gut. One of the other arbitrators wasn’t moving at all. Kat didn’t know if it was ‘her’ representative or VodCom’s, but he had at least three bullet holes in his upper chest.

“Get backup now!” Kat easily picked out Heather’s voice amongst the pop of pistols, chatter of submachine gun fire, and crackle of flames. “Terrorist attack. Both shareholders are under fire. It doesn’t look like local security will be able to handle the assault.”

Kat shook her head, vision swimming slightly. Heather was in the VIP observation area, sheltering Whippoorwill with one of her metal arms as she periodically took unnamed shots upward at their attackers. A half dozen paces away, the body of the guard she’d stolen the gun from was staining the marble floor red.

She let out a half sigh of relief. Whippoorwill didn’t look injured beyond a couple scrapes from being forced to the ground by Heather. That didn’t mean that she was actually safe. None of them were at the moment, but at least for now Whip hadn’t taken a bullet.

“Go!” A female voice shouted from above. “She can’t have gotten far and I refuse to believe that a single bomb managed to bring her down. Bring me Erinyes!”

Kat felt her gut run cold. She ducked back under her upended table but not before confirming her suspicions. Ice Cobra stood in one of the holes of the spectators’ gallery, a submachine gun hanging from a sling at her side.

A pace to her left was an overweight bald man. Kat wasn’t sure what it was about him, but something seemed off. It was like looking at a bad computer animation. He looked normal, but there was something about his proportions and skin that just triggered her fight or flight reflexes on a primal level.

Frantically, Kat began looking around for a weapon, but other than splinters of wood and a couple smashed personal electronic devices, there really wasn’t anything nearby. Pretty much the entire arbitration proceeding was handled electronically meaning that she didn’t even have access to pens or paper clips to fashion something improvised.

With a grunt, she grabbed hold of one of the table’s legs, planting a foot on its base before pulling with all her might. Kat wasn’t terribly strong for a player, but compared to an ordinary human without any chrome she was borderline superhuman.

The wood cracked and Kat pushed harder, surpassing what until a second ago she had thought of as her maximum effort. With a sound that rivaled the constant gunshots, she broke the leg free. It wasn’t balanced terribly well, its edges cut into her hand, and the only thing that kept her from filling her palms with splinters was the precarious layer of lacquer covering the wood, but it was better than nothing.

A quick glance over the table revealed ropes being thrown down from the gallery with operatives sliding down from above. One of the shooters on the ground managed to hit a descending samurai only for intersecting lines of return fire to shred the woman for her trouble.

“We need that backup to hurry!” Even a person with normal senses could hear Heather shouting over the chaos. To Kat, the panic in her security chief’s voice was as plain as the cybernetic arms bolted into her shoulders. “We are being overwhelmed! I do not care what rules you break or what fines you wrack up. Crash a hover tank through the wall if you have to. We need extraction NOW!”

Ice crystals materialized in the air above Heather and Whippoorwill. Kat’s breath caught in her throat as they transformed into razor sharp shards and blasted downward, shredding the seats around them.

Heather dove toward Whip and it was like the entire room went silent. Kat’s enhanced hearing could clearly make out the meaty ‘thwap’ of magic hitting flesh followed by her security chief grunting in pain.

Then Whippoorwill and Heather tumbled out the other side of the attack. Whip was more or less fine, but Heather’s left arm was nothing more than crushed metal and a half pace long sliver of ice was stabbed through her right side, just above the hip.

Another cloud of ice began to form above the two of them, and any sense of self-preservation Kat had left disappeared in a white hot flash of anger and desperation.

Without thinking, she triggered Dehydrate, sucking the moisture out of the air in a sphere around Ice Cobra’s head. The other woman let out a strangled gasp and staggered backward, but Kat was already in motion.

Dehydrate didn’t have enough force behind it to kill an ordinary person, let alone a player, but it was intensely painful and did damage to the eyes. It would be at least a couple of seconds before Cobra managed to return to the fight.

Bullets whipped back and forth as she vaulted her table and began running toward Whip and Heather, club in hand. She lightened her body with her Gravity Domain even as she slammed a Gravity Plane into place.

A security guard popped from cover two paces in front of her only for the back of his head to immediately explode from an unlucky shot. Kat pushed a sliver of mana into Psuedopod, summoning the tentacle of water to snag the falling man’s handgun without breaking stride.

More shots zipped past her as Kat sprinted toward Whippoorwill, missing through a combination of twisted gravity and luck.

She transferred her club to her left hand, grabbing the guard’s pistol with her right even as she squeezed off a shot at one of the samurai that had successfully made it to the floor of the arbitration hall.

The first shot missed entirely as the man dove for cover. The second hit his arm and the third bullet was wasted against the bench he was hiding behind.

Kat changed targets as she ran, firing off another two shots at a second samurai before the gun’s chamber locked open, magazine empty. Only one of her bullets hit, and the wound didn’t look fatal, but that was more than enough to keep her assailant’s head down.

She tossed the empty pistol aside before jumping over the last set of benches and landing next to Heather and Whippoorwill.

Whip had pushed Heather over onto her back and was putting pressure on the wound in her stomach. Heather winced as Kat arrived, hissing in pain as she shifted slightly.

“They’ve got us surrounded boss,” Heather said apologetically. “It sounds like there are at least fifty more attackers in the rest of the building. I have not idea how they managed to slip weapons past arbitration security, but small arms aren’t going to cut it and the attackers probably have control of the weapons locker right now.”

“If we can manage to hold them off for another five to ten minutes,” she continued, sweat beading on her forehead despite the frozen spike jammed through her body, “backup should arrive, but I just don’t know if that’s possible. There’s nowhere to hide, and we’re so heavily outnumbered that it would’ve been impossible for all of us to escape together even if I hadn’t been wounded. Right now, your only option is to leave Whip and I beh-”

“No,” Kat said firmly, peeking over the edge of the bench only to duck back under cover an eyeblink before a rattle of gunfire tore the wood into splinters. “The three of us are getting out of here together or not at all. I’m not leaving the two of you to get torn apart by mercenaries.”

“Miss Kat,” Dorrik’s mental voice was slightly strained. “I regret not familiarizing myself with your world’s weapons. I have managed to disable a pair of your attackers, but I must say that this is much more difficult without my swords. As for these firearms, I’m afraid that they are inaccurate trash. I can shoot them, but I am quite sure that I cannot manage to hit anything. Please let me know if I can be of assistance.”

“I don’t suppose you could clear out the attackers around us?” Kat asked hopefully. “Heather is down and we could use any reprieve you can buy us.”

A wave of frigid air swept across the fire fight, marking Ice Cobra’s return to the fight. Kat didn’t even bother to peek out from cover. She didn’t have a firearm and her enemies had the high ground and access to magic. Right now, the only chance she had was remaining hidden until Belle and her rapid reaction teams managed to fight their way through the cordon of attackers that were laying siege to the arbitration hall.

Kat willed Shadow into existence, stretching the layer of darkness thin like a blanket as she draped it over Whip, Heather and herself.

If an enemy looked closely at the illusion, they’d probably be able to see a body hidden in its depths, but with most of the samurai patrolling the now mostly empty upper levels, hopefully no one would come close enough to check.

Hopefully.

She reached out and grabbed hold of Whippoorwill’s hand. Kat squeezed it once, as if to let her know that everything was going to be alright. After all, it wasn’t lying if you never said it out loud. Whip squeezed back, and despite everything Kat felt like things were going to work out.

 To her left, one of the last security guards jumped up from where they had been hiding and made a mad dash toward the exit. Kat didn’t even have to look up. At least three different submachine guns rattled simultaneously as the attackers cut the guard down before he even managed to make it a dozen paces.

Well, that was one option out. Kat might be able to make it through the gauntlet of samurai on her own if she ran all of her abilities at their most mana intensive settings, but there was no way she could escape with Whip or Heather in tow.

“I found one!” The shout almost made her jump out of her skin. Kat rolled over onto her side, wooden table leg at the ready.

There wasn’t anything above her but the building’s gaudy ceiling.

If one of the attackers hadn’t found Kat then why were they-

“Protect the Mistress!” The shout came from the VIP viewing benches near where the GroCorp contingent had been sitting.

 Belle.

 Kat’s thoughts screeched to a halt. There was an explosion as someone cast a spell followed by an exchange of gunfire.

 “Stay put,” Kat whispered urgently to Whippoorwill before switching to her telepathic bond with Dorrik. “Cover me for a couple of seconds, you don’t have to hit anything but I need you to make a lot of noise.”

 “Miss Kat,” he replied hesitantly. “I do not think I have heard Mister Ashforth’s mind in some time. I fear that he might have perished.”

 A twinge of anxiety ran through her body. She didn’t know the lawyer well, but he had started to grow on her. Not so much in the way that an acquaintance would grow into a friend, but more in the way that fuzzy blue stuff would appear on fruit that you left out in the sun too long. Still, she didn’t want the man hurt or dead.

“He might’ve been knocked out by the explosion,” Kat mentally shouted back as another exchange of bullets was cut short by a man grunting in pain. “We don’t have time. I need to get Belle out of here as soon as possible. Whippoorwill is hiding, but Donnst doesn’t have any cover. I need you to open fire NOW!”

She put a bit of extra emphasis on the final word and it seemed to do the trick. Gunfire erupted as the lokkel jumped into the open.Unlike the short measured bursts of the trained samurai, Dorrik didn’t know the first thing about restraining himself. He made up for that by having two sets of arms and the coordination to use both of them at once.

Kat hurdled the bench behind her, breaking into the open as she sprinted toward the nearest samurai, a man almost a half pace taller than her and practically bursting out of the suit that he’d stuffed himself into in order to infiltrate the arbitration proceedings.

By the entrance to the main hall, Dorrik was glowing a brilliant purple as he zig zagged toward the exit, a pair of stolen submachine guns spitting bullets with seemingly zero accuracy as he raked them back and forth across the battlefield. He didn’t manage to hit anything, but no one with a sound mind would hold still while a giant glowing lizard ran past them while a pair of blazing machineguns.

The samurai in front of Kat flinched backward away from Dorrik and right into a double handed swing from her club.

Splinters bit into her hand as the table leg shattered under the force of the impact, half crushing the side of the man’s head. He dropped to the ground bonelessly and Kat grabbed the weapon from his hands, slipping its sling over her shoulder as she jumped over another bench and landed in a crouch next to Belle.

The shareholder was down on one knee, a smear of blood on her face accenting a grim expression. Her hand, knuckles white and bloodless, was clutching a pistol stolen from one of security guards.

“Are you alright?” Kat hissed, straining her enhanced hearing to try and locate the incoming samurai by sound alone. “Heather took an injury saving Whippoorwill, and she says that all of our forces in the building are pinned down with backup being about five to ten minutes out.”

A shoe crunched to Kat’s left, crushing wood and shattered stone. Without waiting for a response from Belle, she poked her head above cover, firing a quick three round burst into a woman. Only the first round hit, and that didn’t do much more than punch a hole in her target’s dress before plinking off some sort of armor she’d smuggled in.

“Go!” Kat yelled, planting a hand that was still bleeding from her previous attack with the table leg on the back of a nearby bench and vaulting over it out into the open.

The samurai’s eyes widened as Kat soared into the air. Her gaze flicked about the room, cataloging her enemies in the barest of instants. Two left on the ground. Four more in the viewing gallery. No arbitration security left.

Internally, Kat cursed a lot of things. That she didn’t have a knife. That her opponents had somehow managed to smuggle both weapons and armor into what should have been a weapon free zone. That Whip was helpless as she tried to staunch Heather’s bleeding. Mostly? Mostly she cursed how weak and foolish she was.

Of course the entire arbitration was a farce. Of course VodCom wasn’t the actual force behind the entire thing. She’d known that Millennium was still around, that she was in a race against time to level before Mr. Jackson could make it to twenty four, yet he’d managed to fade into the background, hiding behind the more ‘real’ threats posed by a rival megacorporation.

She triggered her submachine gun, not bothering to conserve ammunition in light of her target’s body armor. The weapon bucked and chattered in her hands even as Kat pulled and twisted gravity to turn her flight path into a convoluted zig zag that would hopefully throw off her enemies.

Bullets tore up the ground and benches around her target. Two or three hit the samurai, but all of them seemed to deflect off of the metallic armor that she had concealed under her dress.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, but was only probably a full second of weaving through the air, one of her shots struck the other woman in the face. Blood sprayed everywhere and the samurai flopped bonelessly to the ground.

Then it was Kat’s turn. Good luck and magic could only take a samurai so far. Eventually, the mana and luck ran out.

In a way, Kat was still fairly lucky. The second she had taken to the air, basically every samurai left in the building had opened fire on her. With five people firing at the same time, it was a miracle that she was only hit once.

It felt like a baseball bat hit her leg followed a half second later by searing pain that took her breath away as she tumbled through the air, upended by the sudden blow.

Kat kept her finger on her stolen gun’s trigger, sending bullets in every direction before the weapon clicked dry. She didn’t hit anything, but at least her wild attacks made the enemy samurai duck back long enough for Kat to get a handle on the agony that was suddenly coursing through her system.

She Threw her gun at the remaining groundside opponent, her skill and gravity domain accelerating the attack from an ineffective tantrum into a deadly blur of metal that hit the man in the chest and lifted him off his feet.

There wasn’t any time to see if her hasty attack had killed or crippled the man. Kat had too many people still shooting at her to worry about only one of her opponents. Out of the corner of her eye, Kat watched Belle finish her flight from the room, darting out into the exit to join Dorrik.

A push of her will shifted the field of gravity around her, curving Kat toward the area where her mana was still maintaining a blanket of darkness over Whippoorwill and Heather. It looked like Whip had stopped Heather’s bleeding, but the security chief wasn’t in much condition to fight, and neither of them had any sort of weapons that they could use to turn the tide of the battle.

Grim realization trickled through her veins. Not even a minute had passed since the start of the fight, but already everyone was injured other than Whippoorwill. She didn’t have a knife. She didn’t have a firearm. The enemy had the high ground.

Backup wasn’t going to come in time. This was it. Kat was the calvary.

Mana built up in her body, focusing itself into a Gravity Spike. She didn’t bother trying to aim the spell at one of the samurai that were shooting at her. It would be wasted on something as soft and light as a human target.

Instead, Kat tore a hole into the underside of the raised gallery itself. Concrete, steel, and marble twisted in itself- pushing and pulling simultaneously as the magic ravaged a structural support. The entire structure groaned, and with a crunch of metal twisting far beyond its design parameters, the outer edge of the viewing gallery dropped a pace or so, sending samurai tumbling and skidding as they tried to regain their balance.

Kat landed about five paces from Whippoorwill, and it felt like someone was jamming a handful of glass shards into her leg. Almost immediately, she fell to the ground, unable to think or sustain her own weight through the injury.

Distantly she heard voices shouting from above.

“Cobra, she is using abilities that are outside of parameters. You must stop playing with your food or we will have no choice but to alert Mr. Jackson.”

Of course. Millennium. The VodCom shareholder’s outburst was enough evidence for Kat, but listening to her enemy confirming her suspicion just sealed the deal. For whatever that was worth. She doubted that the entities guarding the gates to the underworld cared all that much about who it was that finished her off.

She rolled over onto her back, tweaking the gravity around her through gritted teeth. Slowly Kat began to hover a half pace above the ground, sliding through the air toward where Whippoorwill was covering Heather.

Kat’s danger sense crackled as mana condensed above her, turning into a blanket of sickly green gas that began to descend on the battlefield. Adrenaline overwhelmed her pain, and Kat mentally grabbed hold of the gravity around her and yanked on it for all that she was worth.

She pressed a hand to the breast pocket of her shirt, withdrawing a thin film of plastic. Emma and Heather had been right. The single-use gas masks they had insisted that everyone take to the trial could end up saving all of their lives.

The poisonous mist seemed to descend in slow motion as she accelerated toward Whippoorwill and Heather, her shoulder slamming into the bench next to them with teeth rattling force.

Whip was slipping Heather’s mask over her face as the security chief struggled against the pain from her injuries.

Kat propped herself up, mask still in her hand as she focused her mana up above. Somewhere on the viewing gallery the Millennium samurai were preparing another attack. Unless she could drive them back, surviving the poison would be meaningless.

Gravity Spike surged and another structural support twisted in on itself. Metal and stone rained down into the benches as a segment of the balcony collapsed entirely. The spell was rewarded by shouts of alarm from above, but Kat didn’t hear any signs of pain, just panic and distress.

“No. No no no,” Whippoorwill whispered, yanking Kat’s attention away.

Whip’s gas mask was in her hands, the thin clear strip of stallesp inspired polymer torn down the center and completely unusable.

Kat’s mind exploded into static. There wasn’t any conscious thought left. There wasn’t even any pain from her leg.

Gravity lurched her toward Whippoorwill, and she pinned her girlfriend to the bench behind her with one hand while sliding the translucent mask into place over her mouth and nose with the other. Whip struggled, but Kat’s adrenaline and Tower boosted strength was more than enough to overpower her.

Rational thought returned as Whip grew still. She reached, wrapping her hand around Kat’s wrist even as the sound of more samurai repelling down the ropes from the viewing gallery filled her ears.

 “Kat,” Whippoorwill whispered, tears glittering in her eyes.

 “I have Resist Poison maxed out,” she said back, forcing a pained smile onto her face as she tracked the descending green fog. “Plus, I can draw them away from the two of you. If Millennium ends up chasing me, you might have a chance to escape.”

 “But-” Whip began, but Kat didn’t give her a chance. She could already feel her willpower waning, and she didn’t want a burst of sentiment to put Whippoorwill at risk.

 Muttering the word to Resist Poison, Kat shifted gravity and fell up toward the ceiling. Once again, her hand clawed fruitlessly at her side, looking for a knife that wasn’t there. A part of her wondered how her attackers managed to smuggle their weapons past multiple security checkpoints, but that concern felt hollow.

 It didn’t matter how they got the guns. They had them.

 Silently, she reached out to Dorrik through her mental link.

 “Help Whippoorwill and Heather. I’m going to try to draw the samurai off. If I make it, we’ll meet up in the Tower. I’ll need help. A lot of it.”

 There wasn’t any time to wait for a response.

 Kat burst into the open. Mana swelled inside her as she cast Dehydrate on the first samurai, a man in a full gas mask, that came into view.

 He stumbled back with a muffled yelp as the spell robbed his face and eyes of moisture. She rotated in the air, ever so slowly to find her next target only to lock eyes with Ice Cobra. Mana burned through Kat’s veins as she began to cast Gravity Spike.

 Cobra smiled at her, blue eyes as hard and lifeless as their frozen namesake.

 Four spheres of ice, each the size of a bowling ball, whipped through the air toward her. Kat dropped her in progress spell, instead focusing on reinforcing the Gravity Plane that she’d been using to supplement Arcane Armor since the fight began.

 Two of the balls were pulled low by the wall of intense gravity, missing Kat entirely. Another one zipped just past her waist, guided wide by Kat’s gravity domain as she frantically yanked at it with every erg of mental fortitude she could muster. The fourth almost missed. Between her domain and Gravity Plane, it was almost a pace and a half off course when it slammed into her uninjured shin, sending a spike of pain deep into Kat’s already overloaded nervous system.

A whistle of wind and the faintest ripple of gravity as it passed through her domain was her only warning as the fifth ball hit her from behind. The silver light of Arcane Armor flashed into existence around her face as the spell sought to dampen the attack’s impact slightly, but the last thing Kat felt was a massive sharp blow to the back of her head.

Then everything went black.
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