RVR4|Chapter 12: First Salvo (Patreon)

A speaker on the TK-11's chest popped to life with a burst of static.

"INTRUDERS AT THE CITADEL GATES," it boomed across the chamber, in a deep baritone with a cheap theater echo on it. "YOU STAND BEFORE CAPTAIN VORTEX OF THE IRON ARMADA. KNEEL OR BE ANNIHILATED."

Nobody moved. The rotary barrels on its forearms hadn't even started spinning yet.

"Did it just..." Yuki started.

"Season six, episode fourteen," Bee said in their earpieces. "That is Commander Jax's speech on the bridge of the Vengeance. Word for word."

"Except his name wasn't Captain Vortex," Yuki said. "And he was the good guy."

"INCORRECT MEDIA INTERPRETATION, REBEL SCUM," the nine-foot machine roared. "ALL BATTERIES, FIRE AT WILL."

The forearm gatlings spun up with a shriek that vibrated in Tess's bones. Along its spine, the emitters went white.

"Shield!" Mikhail called. He was already stepping in front of Tess.

The MK-IX snapped around him a fraction of a second before a beam slammed into it.

It wasn't a bolt like the patrol drones fired. Instead, a solid bar of teal-white energy as thick as Mikhail's chest slammed into the envelope and shoved his boots back six inches across the floor. Molten light splashed across the walls.

Heat reached Tess's face anyway. The shield's power readout dropped in one gulp, and it whistled as it tried to stay in phase.

Then the beam cut off. Around the walls, cradle latches clicked open all at once.

"Drones!" Tess warned.

Asha grabbed Tess's chest plate and yanked her backward as the rotary guns opened up. Plasma chewed into the stone where they'd been standing.

"Back!" Asha yelled. "Everybody back."

Tess bolted. Cici streaked past her shins, and they piled around the corner together.

Mikhail came last, backing around the bend with his shield up. Bolts blew sparks off the corner until he cleared it, and then the firing cut off. He planted his boots in the middle of the hall between the team and the turn.

Tess pressed her back against the rib and let out a breath. The crystal hummed against her shoulder blades. This final dogleg of corridor ran right along the outside of the chamber. On Bee's map, only one wall stood between them and the TK-11.

The rotary barrels wound down. She listened for footsteps. Nine feet of armor had to make loud ones.

But nothing came around the corner.

"It's not following us," Yuki said.

"Perimeter," Mikhail said, eyes fixed on the turn. "It won't leave the Node."

"Oh, good," Yuki said. "So we just live in this hall now."

On the other side of the shared wall, the gatlings spun up again.

Plasma tore straight through at chest height and stitched down the hall toward them. Every foot or so another fist-sized hole blew open and spat molten crystal across the floor. Petra dropped flat. Teal haze poured through the breaches like smoke.

"It can't see us," Petra called over the roar. "How is it doing that?"

The first drones banked around the corner and swung their cameras down the hall.

"They can see us," Tess said.

"Tess," Bee said in her ear. "Could you look around the rib, please? I have gone blind again."

A stream of plasma punched through the wall and sheared a chunk off the crystal a foot from Tess's knee.

"You want me to get shot!?" Tess yelled back.

There was a brief pause on the line. "No. That would be counterproductive. However, I need to see the cradles. Can you get a better angle instead?"

"Working on it."

The last burst had blown a gap the size of a dinner plate down low where the wall met her rib. Tess dropped to one knee and peered through it, actively using [EVALUATE].

Thick teal Aether hazed the chamber, cut through by bright tracer lines from the rotary guns. Across the floor, the TK-11 stood planted over the Node with both forearms raised, and the emitters on its spine had cooled to a dull glow. All around the ring, cradles kept popping open. Wing after wing detached, locked into formation midair, and banked hard for the corridor mouth.

"That is much better," Bee said. "I now have a complete model of the room."

Up the hall, Mikhail held the center lane. The barrier around him flared white when the first wing banked around the corner, stacked floor to ceiling.

Eight turrets swung toward him. [EVALUATE] caught the formation and laid their network out across Tess's vision.

[Floor 2 Combat Drone Wing — HOSTILE]
Camera Coordination: Synchronized
Latency: 366ms
Firing Sequence Calculating: Unit 1 -> Unit 4 -> Unit 2 -> Unit 7

"Well, good to know they still have the lag," Tess muttered. She raised her voice. "Mikhail, unit one first, then four, then two."

Four plasma bolts slammed into the front of his shield before she finished the sentence. The MK-IX emitter on Mikhail's harness gave an ugly whine, and his boots scraped back an inch.

"They don't have numbers on them, Tess," Mikhail said.

"Right. Sorry."

Even if they did, she couldn't talk that fast. She checked the next wing forming up through the blast hole, then looked back at the hall. Every group stepped through the exact same firing loop.

"Forget the numbers," Tess called. "The whole row fires in a sweep, left to right!"

Mikhail shifted his stance. On his harness, the MK-IX's new modules woke up.

[Personal Shield MK-IX — Operational]
Threat Prioritization: Active
Adaptive Frequency: Online

The barrier thickened over his left shoulder just before the top four drones fired. The bolts hit with a dull thump. That dense patch slid across his chest, then dropped to his right hip to catch the last pair.

The impacts didn't budge his boots, and the power bar barely twitched.

"Oh," Mikhail said. Another volley fizzled into sparks across his forearm. "That's... almost unfair."

"Don't jinx it," Yuki said.

She leaned out past the rib with a pistol in her good hand and unloaded a magazine into the lead drone's optic cluster. Blinded, the hull slammed sideways into the wall, ground twenty feet in a shower of sparks, and broke apart. She holstered the pistol and drew a machine pistol off her thigh. Brass bounced off Tess's shoulder. When the magazine clicked dry, she snapped it back onto her thigh and drew the first pistol again, freshly loaded.

Another drone skimmed in low along the floor. Yuki's rounds sparked off its front plating and whined into the ceiling.

The slide locked back on an empty chamber. She holstered the gun and reached for the shoulder rig under her right arm, but her fingers only got as far as her own ribs. She tried again, and her elbow clipped the crystal.

"Dammit," Yuki muttered. She looked down. "Tess. Armpit. Now."

"What?"

"Under my arm." Yuki angled her torso toward Tess and kept her eyes up the hall. Two pistols hung there, clipped upside down. "Two full guns, and I'm burning AP to reload these."

"Why would you put them there?" Tess reached up under Yuki's elbow with one hand and kept her eye at the blast hole.

"Where else was I gonna put them?" Yuki said. "Just get the guns!"

Tess unsnapped the thumb-break, yanked the pistol free, and slapped the grip into Yuki's palm. "Mikhail, next set of drones. From the center, like a ripple!"

The barrier thickened across Mikhail's chest. Yuki spun back to the rib. When the low drone tilted up to clear a floor ridge, she put four rounds through its bottom repulsor ring. It crashed into the stone, skidded up to Mikhail's boot, and dissolved.

"Thanks," Yuki said. "Remind me to move that rig."

Past Mikhail, Petra had the front stretch of hall to herself. She ducked under a turret and sheared a drone through its rear drive mount. The pieces were still falling when her blade split the next unit in line. She danced back behind Mikhail, and her breathing hadn't even picked up.

"[AETHER SHEAR] is three AP," Petra said. She bounced on her toes. "It's only three AP down here. Let me hit the big one."

"Save it, Princess," Asha called over Tess's head. "You jump out there now, those guns chew you up into paste."

Those rotary guns were still working along the shared wall. Between Mikhail and the corner, the wall had more holes than stone, and several meters had been blasted down to knee-high teeth. Teal mist spilled in over the jagged rim, filling the hall with Aether.

"Spoilsport," Petra said.

Four more drones banked around the corner and climbed toward the ceiling to get an angle over Mikhail's shield.

"Fine," Petra grinned up at them. "Just the little ones."

She took three hard steps and ran straight up the crystal wall.

Raw Aether was venting through the blast holes beneath her boots, and her steps threw her much further than she anticipated. She tore sideways along the wall right over Mikhail's ducked head and sheared the turret off the lead drone where she'd meant to kick back down.

But her momentum carried her four strides farther. On the fourth step, there wasn't any wall left.

"Whoa—shit!"

Her boot met empty air where the gatlings had shot the stone away. She fell into the breach on one knee, skidded across a heap of slag-hot crystal that slid out from under her, and spilled onto her side with the open chamber at her back.

Tess looked through her peek-hole. Across the chamber floor, the TK-11's forearms were already swinging around.

"Petra! Guns!"

The MK-VII on Petra's harness was good for a hit or two at most. Mikhail looked at her once. He didn't have time to run, and he didn't try.

He threw his shield.

The glowing envelope tore free of the emitter on his harness, shot five meters down the hall, and snapped shut around Petra—just as both rotary barrels found her.

It wasn't anything like the drone repeaters. There was no lag between shots to read, and no sweep vector for the MK-IX to anticipate. Continuous plasma hammered the thrown shield in a solid stream. The top face caved inward and shoved Petra backward across the loose crystal inside the bubble. The barrier flared an overloaded orange and shrieked while the emitter on Mikhail's chest fought to hold phase from five meters out. His power bar wasn't ticking down. It was dropping in chunks, and Petra's boots couldn't find purchase on the sliding rubble.

Mikhail stood in the middle of the hall with no barrier on him at all. The two remaining ceiling drones dove straight at his head.

"Yuki, high pair," Tess called.

Yuki clipped one and missed the second. Asha stepped out past the rib and put down the other without hurrying. Pop-pop. Its chassis broke apart at Mikhail's heels.

"I can't hold it!" Mikhail shouted. It was the loudest Tess had ever heard him. "Petra, move."

Petra lunged forward. She dove flat over the broken rim and hit the hall floor rolling as the crystal where she'd been lying blew apart. The shield snapped back across the five meters and locked around Mikhail with a long, unhappy whine. Petra scrambled the rest of the way behind the nearest rib.

The gatlings chewed the breach a little wider and moved on.

Through the peek-hole, the next drone wing was already forming up. "Bee, how long?"

"Thirty-one seconds," Bee said.

"Back," Asha ordered. "Down the hall, where the wall's still whole. Go."

Nobody argued this time. Asha hauled Tess up by her chest plate, and Cici pressed close to Tess's knee. Mikhail backed down the corridor behind them with his eyes on the turn until the blown-out stretch of wall shrank past his shoulder.

"All the extra Aether from the walls," Petra said. She jogged beside Tess, breathing hard now. "I feel like I could punch through concrete."

"Five meters," Mikhail said. He wasn't looking at her; he was watching his power readout. "That was all of it. One more step and you'd be dead. Took over half my charge."

"Why didn't the shield bounce the shots like it did with the drones?" Petra asked. She winced and flexed her bruised knee.

"Because the emitter retunes between hits," Tess said. "Rotary guns don't have a between."

"So I can't do that twice," Mikhail said.

They reached an intact stretch of hall where the ribs were clean and the wall had no holes in it. Asha shoved Tess behind a rib and slapped a fresh magazine into her pistol.

"Remember the plan, Princess?" she said. "Right next to each other. Yeah? Five meters tops. No fancy moves."

Petra opened her mouth, then closed it. "Yeah."

"You stay where he can reach you. On the floor. Yuki, next time you stop, that holster goes on your hip. Mikhail, you don't throw that shield unless someone's dying." She looked around at all of them. "Get your shit together, yeah? We've got ten seconds."

"Eight," Bee said. "Also, I have gone blind again."

"And me?" Tess asked.

"You keep calling those shots."

Down by Tess's knee, Cici sat on her haunches behind the rib, ears forward while her tail beat a fast rhythm against the stone.

"Cici?" Tess asked. "Are you okay? You're being really quiet."

"I am being very good," Cici said. "I am staying in the back like Asha said. I really want to start shooting. Can I?"

Before Tess could answer, the gatlings spun up on the other side of the wall. Fresh holes erupted down the hall toward them, one after another, and stopped. The last one blew open a foot from Tess's head.

She looked through it. Across the chamber floor, the TK-11 had turned its head, and its red optics locked onto her.

"THERE YOU ARE, ROGUE CORE," it boomed, and the crystal wall carried the cheap theater echo into the hall. "FESTER IN THE SHADOWS NO LONGER, PARASITE. CAPTAIN VORTEX SHALL PURGE YOUR REBEL SIGNAL FROM THIS SECTOR AND HANG YOUR SERVANT'S BONES FROM THE REACTOR SPIRES."

"A parasite?" Bee said in their earpieces. "He's literally inside my dungeon."

"Plus that's from Brood Queen," Yuki called over a burst. "It's not even the same show!"

"SILENCE, FLESH-PUPPETS," the TK-11 roared. "CAPTAIN VORTEX WILL HEAR NO MORE SPOILERS."

It took one heavy step off the Node.

The floor shook under Tess's knees all the way out in the hall. So much for its perimeter. That single step lined both rotary barrels straight up with her hole, and eight drones peeled off the upper ring behind it to dive into a far corridor.

"Those eight are going around," Bee warned. "They will come up behind you."

The crystal rib in front of Tess blew apart into slag. She threw herself backward and landed hard on her tailbone.

At the far end of the hall, repulsors flared low along the floor.

"Cici," Tess said. "Go."

"Yay!"

Cici's forelegs lengthened. Armor plates lifted along her spine as the twin coilgun housings rolled out of her flanks and locked forward. When her rear paws split into wheels, small gimbal rings clicked into place around her ankles.

The rubber tires bit into the stone. A fast, grinding electric guitar riff blasted from her speaker, and she rocketed down the hall in a clean rear-wheel drift. In the corner of Tess's vision, Cici's runtime estimate came up at 15:00 and started ticking down.

Then Cici cranked her speaker past the guitars, past the TK-11's chest rig, and put a deep, booming echo on it.

"I AM ALSO A MOBILE WEAPONS PLATFORM!" Cici roared, and loose crystal rattled out of the wall.

Both coilguns opened up.

Iron slugs tore down the hall from knee height. The lead drone never got a shot off; a slug punched through its camera, out its thruster, and cracked the unit behind it in half. Cici hit the far bend too fast and rode straight up the wall. The ankle gimbals tipped her sideways so her tires gripped the crystal, and she fired a six-round burst through the rest of the pack.

She braked hard to come back around. The recoil swung her rear wheels into a rib with a loud clang before the gimbals snapped her upright.

"The gimbals worked!" Cici reported over the ringing metal. "Braking distance remains under review!"

"Wow..." Petra said. They had all stopped to watch the carnage Cici had just laid down.

On the other side of the wall, the TK-11 stopped firing and Cici's guitar riff wound down.

"IMPRESSIVE, REBELS," the TK-11 boomed. "YOU HAVE SURVIVED PHASE ONE. INITIATING SIEGE PROTOCOL."

"Why does it have phases!?" Petra yelled.

A klaxon went off in the chamber. Crimson warning strobes flashed across every cradle around the walls, and red light pulsed through every blast hole in the hall.

Tess crawled back to the hole. Across the chamber, the TK-11's knee joints reversed with a hydraulic bang and dropped its nine-foot frame low and wide in front of the Node. Heavy siege plates unfolded from its torso and drove anchor spikes into the floor as armored treads rolled out of its lower legs. It had locked down into a tank.

[EVALUATE] flinched in Tess's head as a massive signal blasted out through the ceiling.

"Tess," Bee said over the klaxon. "It just boosted its broadcast to maximum power and dropped the encryption completely. Every patrol I was holding in Sections Two, Three, and Four has broken off and turned east. Even the wild ones are answering it."

"How many?" Asha demanded.

"All of them," Bee said. "And the remaining cradles in that chamber are cycling to continuous release."

"Hey Bee... If it dropped encryption," Tess said. "Can we use it?"