Cyberpunk: I'm Not a Scavenger - Chapter 37: Centaur (Patreon)

ACPA stood for Assisted Combat Personal Armor. People also called it power armor, or a miniature Gundam. The ugly, crudely built suit before them had clearly been modified from a Centaur Exoskeleton. Strictly speaking, it wasn't true military-grade power armor.

Even so, a fully enclosed metal frame armed with a thermal laser, homemade missile pods, and a rotary machine gun was far beyond what an ordinary mercenary crew could handle. Weapons like this could dominate a battlefield. The major corporations strictly prohibited such heavy equipment in Night City.

Maine stared at the hulking war machine, unable to keep the gun in his hand from trembling. The sight brought back the terror of battlefields where power armor had ruled supreme. The others looked no less shaken. Even Rebecca, who was usually afraid of nothing, showed a rare flicker of panic.

“You wild dogs have been running rampant while I was away!”

Sergei's crazed voice boomed from inside the armor. Watching his closest comrades die one after another had already pushed his mind past its limits.

Sergei Temennon had grown up poor in the Soviet Union, one of eight children. He enlisted at sixteen just to get enough to eat, eventually becoming an ACPA pilot. At the border, he'd piloted a Boris 1 made by the Russian Arms Corporation and cut down enemy after enemy, only to be discarded like used toilet paper once the war was over. To survive and get ahead, he and several fellow veterans had come to Night City and joined Maelstrom.

With the killing skills they'd learned in war, they carved out a place for themselves in the City of Dreams. But Sergei wanted more. He'd brought his closest men to Heywood to claim a new territory.

“James! Curry!”

Sergei stared at the bodies, devastated. The massive cybernetic eye replacing much of his face had even robbed him of the ability to cry. Grief soon turned to rage. He would slaughter these insects to avenge his comrades.

“Die, you vermin!”

The Centaur's engine roared, and the three-meter colossus charged toward Pantheon. Pantheon sneered and kicked the corpse at his feet straight into Sergei's face. Sergei instinctively swatted it aside. The body burst into a mess of flesh with a sickening splat.

“Looks like your relationship wasn’t all that great, either.”

“Hiss!”

Everyone but Pantheon drew a sharp breath. Of all the times to provoke him, he chose now? Sergei's enormous eye had turned completely crimson. Its rapid flickering and overlapping afterimages betrayed the madness within.

“You’re all going to die.”

The chilling calm of his voice was somehow even more frightening than a scream. He had nothing left to lose. The missile pod on his back locked onto Pantheon.

“Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!”

The salvo turned the spot where Pantheon had been standing into rubble, flinging concrete and chunks of flesh through the air. The rotary machine gun spun up and sprayed everything nearby, even grinding the bodies of Sergei's own men into mincemeat.

“Pantheon, get out of the way!”

Lucy's frightened voice cut across the comms. In Cyberspace, Lucy, Sasha, and Kiwi were attacking the Centaur's ICE. The armor resembled a mobile fortress glowing an angry red. Every attack they launched sent ripples across its defenses.

But the machine's size and abundant power reserves allowed it to support a far more advanced military-grade ICE system. Even with the advantage in processing power, the netrunners would need at least three minutes to crack it.

“No, we’ll need more time to hack in.”

Lucy grunted, blood trickling from her nose. In her haste, she'd pushed her brain too hard, and the strain was taking its toll.

“Avoid his attack? Why would I?”

Instead of backing off, Pantheon charged straight in with a matching mad grin.

[Edgerunner]! Activate!

Heat surged up his spine. Both hearts stopped for an instant, then began pounding furiously.

“Thump-thump! Thump-thump! Thump-thump!”

His heartbeats sounded like war drums. His lungs expanded, his muscles tightened, and every nerve came alive. Body: 23. Reflexes: 18. He had surpassed this world's limits.

The world slowed in Pantheon's eyes. The rotary gun's muzzle flashes bloomed like orange-red flowers. He drove his feet into the ground, cracking it like a spiderweb, and shot toward the Centaur like an arrow from a bow.

Sergei was strangely calm. In the grip of cyberpsychosis, his reactions were faster than ever. The thermal laser began charging, its blinding red glow engulfing the path ahead of Pantheon.

“King! I’m here to help you.”

Jackie roared. With his Gorilla Arms, he tore a heavy machine gun from its automatic turret mount and poured fire into the power armor.

“Die, you ugly monster!”

Rebecca wasn't about to be outdone. She fired a shotgun in each hand, the tremendous recoil shaking her unaugmented legs. Maine and Dorio exchanged a look. Running would only get them killed.

“Pilar! Lay down suppressive fire! Cover King!”

Maine roared, hurling a grenade while firing his rifle at the Centaur's viewing port to draw its attention. Bullets and explosions engulfed the machine. They couldn't penetrate the armor, but the concentrated impacts disrupted its targeting system. Its laser charge interrupted, Sergei turned his gun toward the mercenaries, determined to crush the annoying pests first.

“You dare get distracted at a time like this?”

Pantheon flashed a savage grin. In the few seconds Sergei was distracted, Pantheon closed the distance like a ghost. Maybe the steel shell around him had given Sergei the illusion that he was invincible.

He barely acknowledged Pantheon beside him. How much damage could a little handgun do, anyway? Pantheon said nothing. He planted a straight kick into the Centaur. The enormous machine staggered twice, nearly losing its balance.

“Is that guy even human?”

Maine's sunglasses slipped down his nose, exposing his wide-eyed stare. Even the three netrunners in Cyberspace were stunned. Was this some new kind of virus that could make them hallucinate? Sergei's overheating brain finally registered what was happening, but too late.

Pantheon struck again, crushing one of the Centaur's joints under the force of his kick. The machine lost its balance and dropped to one knee, its alloy structure groaning under the strain. The missile pod on its back tried to swivel toward him. Pantheon smashed it apart with a backhanded punch.

With a bestial roar, Sergei propped the machine up on one arm and aimed the thermal laser at Pantheon. To Pantheon, the movement was painfully slow. He seized the emitter with one hand, forcing the hydraulic piston to compress until its pump gave a feeble whine.

The laser fired, piercing several cargo containers behind Pantheon and melting their metal walls without so much as touching him.

CREEEAK!

The ear-splitting scream of twisting metal made everyone's skin crawl. Pantheon was actually forcing the mechanical arm backward.

“Bastard! Then let’s die together!”

Sergei threw the machine forward with all the power it had left. Its rotary gun sprayed wildly, forcing the others to scatter. Jets of flame several meters long burst from the thrusters as the Centaur hurtled toward Pantheon like an out-of-control truck.

“Is that all you’ve got?”

Pantheon almost laughed. Charge, then self-destruct? What was this, a D.Va cosplay?

[Dead Eye]!

The time-slowing effects stacked, reducing the world to a series of still frames. Pantheon sprang lightly over the Centaur and landed behind it, pointing the Wingman straight at its power core.

“Don’t be a beast in your next life.”

He fired three shots in rapid succession. The armor-piercing rounds punched through the plating and into the core of the energy cell.

“BOOM!”

A dazzling, ghostly blue fireball erupted above the docks. The violent shockwave flung the surrounding shipping containers into the air. The Centaur was reduced to twisted scrap in the explosion. Sergei didn't even have time to scream before he and his metal behemoth vanished in smoke.