ShipCore - Book 4: Chapter 177: Track not included

USD: A moment later

Location: Meltisar, Groundside, Rogue Ertan NAI Target’s secret bunker

“Do you have some sort of phobia or something?” Thea asked sharply before pointing to a ladder in the corner of the shaft. Elis grunted and turned to look at the NAI with disbelief.

“You’re kidding, right?” Elis said.

Without waiting any longer, Elis moved to the edge of the shaft. “We fell further before.”

“It’ll be rock instead of trees and dirt.” Thea hissed at her.

“Do you want me to carry you down, princess?” Elis quipped.

“Wrong NAI for that. And I don’t need your help.” Thea shot back.

Elis turned away and jumped. Her suit headlights dug into the darkness as the slightly burnt air raced past her. Her suit once again flipped to free-fall mode and began to blink an alarmed negative altitude and crash warning.

Elis focused on the elevator doors as she flashed by them. The moment she reached the next to the last one, she reached out with her heavy gauntlets. Metal fingertips scraped into the metal and rock surrounding her. Sparks and screeching filled the air, but the effect was an appreciable breaking of her eight story fall.

Just as she reached the bottom, a heavy shove translated into a lateral surge of momentum, and she turned the crash into a roll forward.

Gunfire immediately erupted, small caliber bullets plinking off of her armor like a light rain. Her suit’s automatic defense suite flipped to anti-rocket mode, and a laser popped out to slice two anti-armor rockets in half before they reached her. The chamber was just as massive as had been indicated on the mini map.

Elis surged forward to duck behind a large piece of emplaced metal machinery just as a heavy caliber machine gun opened fire on her previous position. The heavy bullets left a stream of tracers and shrapnel ricocheting in every direction, but none of the debris was a danger to her suit’s armor.

Her suit had already determined the locations of the heavier emplacements, and she authorized a proper response. Eight holes on her suit’s backpack opened up at once, and a rapid series of pops launched eight small projectiles straight up into the air.

The small homing rockets gyroed toward their destination before their small engines flared to light with a flash of fire. A hostile point defense turret tried to bring a spray of tracers on target, but only managed to cut one rocket down the rest went into evasive spirals.

All six of the detected weapon emplacements, including the point defense turret, exploded at nearly the same time. Her suit’s acoustics picked up screams and shouts from the defenders, and Elis stepped out of her cover and back into a stream of small arms fire.

Accurate bursts from her assault rifle silenced the attempt at suppressive fire quickly. She spotted two women trying to set up a new machine gun emplacement, but a concentrated blast from her energy shotgun obliterated the position in an explosive display of heavy firepower.

Elis winced. It was unlikely the duo had any chance of surviving that. That all the NAI’s defenders were female lit a burning anger inside of her. She didn’t know the details, but her suspicions on what the NAI had been doing here were screaming at her. It was enough to make her question if what she was doing, helping Tia, was the right thing.

If NAIs could abuse their power like this, what could people do to restrain them?

“Stop daydreaming!” Thea screamed from just behind her. Caught in a pivot to turn toward her companion, a cloud of blue nanites flowed right around Elis’ suit before a railgun cracked, the sonic boom shaking the entire cavern.

A projectile drilled into the nanite cloud savagely, and dead metal particles spewed away in a spray of fire and sparks. The projectile’s energy dumped itself into the mass but was not forestalled. Nanites hardened just enough to change the trajectory slightly. The bolt of metal still glanced into her thigh armor, digging a deep gouge in the metal before passing by and burying itself into a wall.

“Shoot the fucking tank!” Thea shouted, pointing toward a far wall.

Elis blinked and turned toward the direction. Sure enough, there was an armored vehicle with a nasty-looking turret pointed directly at them. She popped two smoke cannisters reflexively; filling the surrounding area with two sensor defeating clouds. That cut off her sensor’s detection as well, but a second railgun crack from the tank went wide, proving that it was the right decision.

“I don’t have anti-tank.” Elis hissed on her radio comm. Thea walked up and grabbed her suit’s arm and suddenly the hard connection allowed a flurry of electronic information to be exchanged, restoring Elis’ suit sensor vision via external sources. Drones buzzed down the shaft and filled the chamber. Small arms fire continued to be exchanged between beleaguered defenders and the drones, but the drones had the advantage of numbers.

A large blue dot was free-falling down the shaft as well. “What the frack is that?” Elis muttered.

“Our backup.” Thea said with an evil grin.

The metal screech came to a stop with a heavy metal thud as Thea’s hover tank slammed into the elevator shaft’s bottom. It immediately sprang back up several feet into the air before lurching forward. Its sleek turret yawed slightly, then a large energy bolt sizzled out of the barrel, slamming into the enemy tank before it could bring its own weapon to bear.

The hostile vehicle’s top popped off in a brilliant explosion. Secondary magazine detonations sent ropes of smaller munitions popping through the air. No one bailed, and Elis realized no one would as the partially slagged outer shell melted into the insides of the vehicle. It had been melted from the inside out.

A few moments later, the chamber was silent as the last defender was taken out. Elis felt the growing knot of unease in her stomach tighten as she realized none of them had surrendered. The drones were woefully insufficient to tend to the wounded, and the orbital teams were still far off.

“The target is getting away through the tunnels.” Thea said flatly, looking at one of holes leading out of the chamber. It looked like it was one that had been used to feed back raw material into the foundries and fabrication area.

“How are we going to catch up?” Elis asked.

Thea grinned at her, little indication that the surrounding carnage bothered her. Elis frowned; normally it wouldn’t have bothered her either. Was she losing her edge? When had she stopped thinking of anything but the mission at hand? Doing that would get her killed; had almost gotten her killed, if it wasn’t for Thea’s intervention.

The hover tank floated over to them quickly, and Thea jumped up onto the chassis before a hatch popped open. “With this, obviously. Sorry, you won’t fit, but you can catch a ride?”

Elis nodded. “I could get used to having a girl with a nice ride picking me up.”

Thea’s twittering laugh died as Elis jumped up onto the vehicle. The entire tank sagged for a second from the sudden additional weight. It righted itself as she climbed to the center just beside the turret.

“You need to lose some weight.” Thea quipped.

“Look who is talking. I’m half as dense as you, you know,” Elis shot back.

“I’m not sure that’s true when you’re in that pile of scrap metal.” Thea’s words trailed off as the vehicle shot forward. Elis had to wrap an arm around the turret for support. Her magnetized attachment points in her suit’s legs had busted when she’d been hit by the railgun.

Taking the time to run through her suit’s status schematics, various areas flashed yellow and orange, indicating where systems had been damaged or degraded. A red line showed the gouge in the armor compromising the protection there as well. Hundreds of small yellow pockmarks showed where she’d been hit by small arms, and each scrape or ding would require a repainting at the very least.

The tunnel ahead disappeared into darkness after a short distance from the main chamber. There were no lights or signage, and old digging machines and equipment had been stacked along one side of the passage. Elis’ suit headlights joined the tank’s at lighting up the area ahead of them. Thea wasted no time as zipping them past everything at a slightly alarming speed, but there was plenty of room for them in the tunnel.

That didn’t last long. The tunnel split into a Y, and Thea chose a direction for them. Elis had no indication of how she was choosing, and after two more of those, the tunnel size had narrowed considerably.

“How do you know we aren’t just getting lost?” Elis asked.

Thea’s reply crackled over her helmet comm. “I’m tracking him through a NAI signal!”

“That’s terribly convenient.” Elis muttered.

“Every NAI gives off a signal, and it’s generally detectable unless the NAI is a much higher rank than the one listening for it. I’m a Chi now, so I can even hear Big Blue, now.”

Elis filed away the tidbit for later consideration. All she really needed to know was that Thea had them going in the right direction. The tunnel’s height shrunk with its width at each branch and a low hanging rock nearly clipped her on the head.

“This is getting a bit tight!” Elis complained.

Before Thea could reply, a second low overhang came into view; this one she wouldn’t pass under. Elis jumped up and moved back, sliding off the top of the tank to barely snag the rear of the vehicle. Hanging on the back of it like a tick, Elis grappled with staying attached without her magnetization.

“Thea, this ride is not fun anymore!” Elis shouted.

“We’re gaining on them.” Thea said flatly. “Not much I can do to help you right now.”

Ahead of them, light spilled from a larger chamber. There was no time for Elis to feel relief or move back on top of the vehicle, because the ceiling explodes from a chain of pre-set explosives. Chunks of rock began to fall towards their path. The hover tank’s engine revved up higher, and Elis could feel her dangling legs angle upward as she maintained her clamp on the tank’s rear shock bar.

“If we are buried alive, I will hold you personally responsible!” Elis yelled.

Thea laughed, “I’ll dig you out, don’t worry.”

Little red dots appeared on Elis’ HUD. She couldn’t let go of the tank to aim with her rifle or shotgun, but dozens of little blue dots buzzed overhead, and she didn’t need to. A miniature storm of dogfighting drones engaged above them, dancing between falling rocks and letting off streams of small caliber bullets at each other.

Several hostile drones made attack runs on her and the vehicle, but the small rounds ricocheted off harmlessly. Elis cursed as a rocket motor suddenly lit off and sent its warhead straight toward them from behind.

Her shoulder mounted laser popped up, levering itself to aim over her back and sliced the missile in half, sending an explosive spray of shrapnel flying forward to pepper her and the back of the hover tank. The point defense weapon sliced the drone that had launched it in half just in case, then held fire. She didn’t want to waste her heat sink capacity on the regular drones; it was only the rockets that were a real threat.

Small turrets on the tank had no compelling reason to do the same. The small caliber pop-up turrets began blaring out a staccato of tracers to join the dogfighting drones above.

Suddenly the tank yawed, threatening Elis’ grip; her feet dragged across rock as they narrowly avoided being crushed by a cave-in twice the size of the vehicle. Rock shards pelted their vehicle and her suit, adding to a plinking rain.

“Did I mention this mission is FUBAR!” Elis shouted.

“Twice!” Thea shot back before sending them into another strafing dodge, avoiding another collapsing rock. The safe area for the drones to dog-fight in shrunk and the hostile drones finally lost out completely. The gunfire ceased, but their wild zig and zagging continued as they rushed for the exit on the other side of the chamber.

Elis half expected the tunnel to explode, instead they were greeted by a large boulder falling towards the entrance. That was almost comical; until the tank’s turret opened fire and the energy bolt slagged the rock and caused it to super-heat fast enough that it simply exploded into a massive cloud. They ploughed through the rocky mess and into the tunnel.

“Did you say we were close?” Elis asked.

“Should be just around one of these corners!” Thea huffed, obviously annoyed by the chase as well.