Desperate Measures Chapter 21

Chapter Nineteen

Explosions outside rattled the building. Vincke must have thrown the

yaoguai

gates open for both squads, but the squad inside needed to handle their own problems.

Alpha Squad waited, their weapons trained at the tubes in the ceiling. Whatever was coming at them wouldn’t be as large as the demon rhinos, but the squad had already gone through a lot of ammo. Erik didn’t want it to come down to them getting out of their exos and using their backup rifles.

They wouldn’t last long.

New

yaoguai

erupted from the tubes, an unholy mix of a giant bee and tailless scorpion about the size of a large cat. They were fast, spiraling toward the squad before the first exo took a shot. The rife round penetrated two of the scorpion bees, splashing their nearby friends with dull green fluid.

At least these weren’t bulletproof.

The squad continued firing. Their combined targeting blasted the emerging scorpion bees into a fine paste, but the creatures continued boiling out of the tubes and flying toward the humans. Sheer quantity allowed some of the

yaoguai

to escape the initial onslaught and draw close, their pinchers snapping and eager for human flesh.

Without being told, Alpha Five took up Jia’s cleanup role from the dire wolf fight. He concentrated on downing any monsters that got closer than three meters. The other combatants directed their weapons fire at the different tubes. Less-concentrated fire didn’t produce spectacular kills, but it reduced the number of scorpion bees that made it close to the team and gave Alpha Five more time to line up shots.

Erik glanced at a side readout. If they’d come equipped with the standard ammo loadouts, they would have already run dry. Everyone but Jia had dropped below fifty percent rifle rounds, but they had preserved a good chunk of their explosives.

Monster parts dropped from the sky, wings, bodies, and pincers. The steady thump of the disgusting rain added a rhythmic counterpoint to the rifle fire echoing through the large room and the constant buzz of the

yaoguai

’s wings.

Erik adjusted the timer and launched a frag grenade. It exploded near the tubes, the shrapnel and blast taking down four scorpion bees at once—overkill on pest control.

“Mix in a frag every five or ten shots,” he bellowed. “Stagger them. Save all your plasmas in case there are more of those demon rhinos in this place.”

The team hadn’t bothered to bring stun grenades, but when Erik caught up with Dr. Vincke, he was going to take the bastard back for interrogation even if it meant shooting out his knees.

Jia launched a grenade next. It exploded at the top of its arc, killing a group of the scorpion bees and pushing the others into an unstable flight path that made it easier for the other soldiers to pick them off.

Erik’s conscious mind receded as the squad fell into a rhythm, firing bullets and occasional grenades. Jia and some of the soldiers tried to end the problem by getting a grenade into the tubes proper. The resulting explosions tore new holes in the tubes but didn’t staunch the flow of creatures.

Mounds of dead scorpion bees grew all around the room, some of the creatures twitching in the last seconds of their deaths.

For all the slaughter around them, Erik could only imagine what would have happened if the conspiracy had stuffed a couple hundred of the scorpion bees into a cargo flitter and released them in a city.

The conspiracy had already proven aiding terrorists was trivial. Their efforts in Neo SoCal, Chang’e City, and Parvati indicated no potential body count was too high.

The incessant buzzing quieted and the gush of monsters slowed to a trickle, now easy to pick off with careful shots. Erik’s squad’s gunfire died down as everyone waited for the final monster to appear.

When a minute had passed without another monster, Erik was confident they had won, but not that anything was over.

The explosions outside had also died down, but that could mean Beta Squad had been defeated. They had to do something about the jamming. If they couldn’t locate and blow up the equipment directly, they would have to rely on another form of electronic warfare.

Erik jogged forward, scorpion bees crunching under the feet of his exoskeleton on his way to the IO port. He kicked a couple out of the way. “The bastard was trying to stall us. It doesn’t matter if he’s got a plane or flitter because we’ve got external eyes on this place. If he goes anywhere, we’ll know, and I’m sure Adeyemi will shoot down anything that gets away.” He had to double back after a bad choice for a shortcut. “Or at least anything flying that’s not us.”

He rechecked the squad’s status. No significant vital sign disruptions to the exoskeletons, but they were down to twenty-five percent for the rifles and no frag grenades. The remaining grenades were plasmas. Queen Jia of the Kingdom of Ammo Efficiency was doing the best, with thirty-three percent of her original ammo remaining.

Erik stopped in front of the IO port, then pulled his arm out of the exoskeleton to remove Emma’s core matrix from the port in his exo and insert it into the wall.

Emma projected a hologram of her wearing the same white uniform as Vincke. “This security is incredibly sophisticated. It’ll take me some time to gain control.”

“What about the door from earlier?” Jia asked. “Can you at least open that?”

“Give me a moment,” Emma replied. “I’ll prioritize it.” She snickered. “Things are much easier when I don’t have to care about who knows or what I might break.”

“Should someone check on Beta Squad?” Jia asked.

“No.” Erik shook his head. “They have their job, and we have ours. Everything about this feels like a big stall, and I want to make sure someone is watching out for our LZ if we run dry and have to get the hell out of here.”

“Ah!” Emma curtsied. “Our good doctor was sloppy. In a sense, he left the door open electronically. Learn this, Dr. Vincke: I exceed the capabilities of mere fleshbags.”

Scorpion bee parts tumbled down as a large panel in the floor pulled back in near-silence. Erik had been expecting some small elevator. The opening revealed an angled ramp and a winding corridor. Scorpion bee bodies rolled down the gentle incline.

“Let’s go,” Erik ordered.

“Wait,” Jia replied.

“What?”

Jia nodded at the IO port. “Emma doesn’t have control. If we leave her alone here before she’s established control, she’ll be vulnerable.”

“Damn it. And they could be watching,” Erik growled. “Emma, how long is this going to take?”

“I’m unsure,” Emma replied, annoyance in her voice. “The system is sophisticated, and they obviously understood the potential threat of this type of attack. I’ll prioritize door, camera, and jammer control when I locate the relevant systems.”

“We could wait,” Jia suggested. “I think if they had more of those flying things to throw at us, they would have.”

“We can’t wait around. They might kill the informant if he’s still alive, or they could be opening other tanks to release crap like giant toads that explode in clouds of acid.”

Jia winced. “How many monsters could they possibly have here?”

“Enough. We need to make our move.” Erik turned his exo toward the tunnel. “Alpha Four and Five. You stay here and guard Emma. If you get overwhelmed, yank her out, run out the back, make for the front and throw up the flare. Understood? Alpha Three and Six, you’re with us.”

The soldier nodded. “Yes, sir. You think the four of us will be enough?”

“We still need to find the informant, capture or kill that bastard, and get out of here alive,” Erik replied. “If the conspiracy gets their hands on Emma, none of this will be worth it. She’s more valuable than ten informants.”

Erik stepped into the tunnel. “It’s time for these bastards to stop stalling.”