Chapter 16

  Beyond the doorway to the woman’s apartment, the hallway, every inch of it within an eight foot radius including the floor, the ceiling, the air all became the site of a miniature hurricane of flying metal balls, shattered polymer armor, blood, and bits of bone. My drones crouched so that their centers of gravity were nice and low then spewed clouds purple Volatility propulsion juice, launching their cannonballs at or close to the speed of sound. I’d become pretty good at telling what my high velocity stuff looked like, and this, while not the fastest ammunition I’d made, was definitely near the sound barrier, at least.

  The projectiles smashed into the guards thighs, shins, and knees at nearly point blank range. Their armor was tough. I’ll give it that. Only the two guards that got hit with straight shots had their thigh pads fail them, but when they failed, they failed hard. The plates split into two and sort of unspooled with threads of polymer material shooting out from the kinetic energy they’d tried and failed to absorb. The luckier guards got shot in the knees and shins, glancing blows but enough to knock them over or make them stumble.

  I shot to my feet before the pained screaming started. My sword left its sheath, and I slashed at the nearest, most intact guard’s weapon with a good dose of Willing Edge. The atomically sharp cutting edge bit deep into the weapon’s optics and even got half way through the metal tube at the center before its momentum was stopped. The guard wrenched the weapon away, either out of reflex at having a sword in close proximity or in an attempt to disarm me, but I had a better grip and much better footing. I pulled my sword, which in turn pulled the las-rifle, which in turn pulled the guard toward me and over one of his downed friends, tripping him. A quick left hook to the back of the head helped him fall a bit faster to the ground.

  *WHAM*

  His head bounced off the floor hard enough to shatter his faceplate.

  *BLAP*

  A laser ionized the air so close to my ear, I felt the tiny hair follicles in proximity to it curl up and die.

  Holy hell! These guys aren’t messing around!

  We appeared to have different rules of engagement here. I’d specifically tried not to kill these guys, and here they were going for headshots. Would my HP protect me if I took a laser to the face? I wasn’t in a hurry to test it.

  I brought my sword around and swung at the guardswoman that had just almost killed me.

  *WHAM*

  The previous guard’s laser rifle that was still stuck firmly to my blade collided butt first into the woman’s upper chest like a warhammer. The force of the blow flipped her end over end, almost entirely, and she came down on the back of her head.

  More las-fire, fully automatic sprayed wildly from the ground, flashing in front of my face and burning black scorch marks in the ceiling as one of the maimed guards opened up with wild abandon. I jumped back only to stumble over the unconscious guard I’d just flattened. The las-fire tracked me, right up until I ran, once again, into the woman with the baseball bat, my momentum making me slam into her.

  I grabbed her before she could fall down.

  “Why are you still here? Run!” I screamed above the high pitched barks of the las-rifle. She stood there, frozen, eyes wide and limbs trembling, the baseball bat forgotten in her shaking hands.

  Burning, freezing, paralyzing pain raked up my lower back and up to my shoulder blade. I’d been shot with a las-type weapon once before, when I was fully human. I remember feeling like this when it happened too, like something had just drilled a hole in me and sandpapered my insides before they left.

  The automatic laser fire lanced my back, and I stumbled forward into the woman, who I grabbed in a bear hug, cradling her so that my armor protected us both. Meanwhile, the damage notifications scrolled by.

  You take 18 damage. (fire, piercing)

  You take 21 damage. (fire, piercing)

  You take 21 damage. (fire, piercing)

  You take 15 damage. (fire, piercing)

  I had the presence of mind to activate Hardened Defense just at the nape of my neck where the breastplate couldn’t cover, but the coverage was so small.

  The weapon or the guard must have run out of juice by that point, because the angry red beams, and the sparks that flew off of my stolen armor ceased just a few seconds in. The woman in my arms, now a little more cognizant, squirmed to get away, so I let her go, choosing, instead, to grab my side where my muscles were doing their best to tie themselves into knots post trauma.

  Suddenly, the air changed, taking on that weird, tense quality I’d come to associate with Abilities.

  Oh, shit.

  Suddenly, I was flung upward, pulled by the back of my stolen breastplate, and my momentum carried me all the way to the ceiling. I hit hard, and the impact stole my breath.

  Below me, his hands glowing an oddly cheerful hue of pink, the weird guard that liked to pluck at the mana in the air, whom I’d somehow missed during the chaos, grinned as his fingers curled into a fist, and the pull on my torso slammed me into the ceiling again, this time rocking my head into the metal violently enough to have me seeing stars.

  *WHAM**WHAM*

  Again. Again.

  Status gained: Stunned

  My sword dropped from my numb fingers.

  The guard’s smug grin widened as he reached down for his rifle, keeping his other, spell wreathed hand extended. The muzzle of his rifle came around, aimed directly between my eyes.

  *PAF* *PAF**PAF*

  Three of the drones that had been able to retrieve their bullets unloaded on the backs of the guy’s calves at point blank range, and the guard’s smug grin turned into a look of horror as his legs turned to jelly. The spell he’d been holding fizzled and died, and I came crashing down to the floor, once again losing all the air in my lungs.

  I coughed and rammed my fist into my stomach in an attempt to get my diaphragm working again, only just getting a partial pull of breath before I got to my hands and knees.

  Not done. Not down. Go. Now. Don’t stop.

  I pounced, using what oxygen I had. I scrambled on top of the weird mage guy, yanked off his helmet and delivered a metal fist of justice directly into his face. Twice. It was only then that I got the defeat notification from the System.

  Unarmed Combat is now level 9.

  You have defeated Security Specialist.

  You have been awarded 10 experience points. (50 capped for non-lethal, -40 non-combat class)

  Experience rate 220/min.

  Then I moved on to the next one, the screaming one using his broken rifle as a club to fend off the drone that was trying to crawl over his body.

  By the time I got all five of them, I was huffing and puffing. It spiked my experience rate, but not enough to reach the level threshold.

  Experience rate 440/min.

  Killing them all at once might do the trick…

  I shook my head. No. We were not going down that route. People were people, and if I was strong enough to do this without outright bloodshed, that’s what I was going to do.

  “What is happening? Who are you?” the semi-naked woman asked. Her eyes were still wide as saucers, and her bat was held slightly above her head again. She cast manic glances from me to the unconscious guards and back.

  I straightened up, only to regret it immediately. “Ow. I’m really sorry, miss. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  She focused on me, her face contorting into anger again now that she had a target to focus on instead of a whole bloody scene. “You were in my apartment,” she accused.

  “Yeah. I know,” I grunted, taking my hand away from my oozing side to check how bad the damage was. My HP was at 250/334, so it couldn’t have been life threatening.

  “Sorry,” I repeated. “It was a mistake. I was trying to leave when you hit me.”

  “Are you some kind of criminal?” she asked.

  I scratched my head at that. “Probably?” I replied. “At least on Proxis I am. I’m new here. Listen, I feel bad for bringing this to your doorstep. Do you have a safe place to go? I kind of made a mess of things.” I gestured at the blood splattered doorway and the five bodies.

  The woman lowered the bat and peered at me intently. The air shifted again, and I felt a tingle on my skin.

  “You’re… being genuine,” she breathed. “And you saved my life.”

  She’s an Exotic. I didn’t get a curse notification or anything, though. Is she psychic?

  I wobbled my head back and forth. “I kind of put it in danger in the first place, so let’s put that aside.”

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  “But you did save me,” she repeated then and let her gaze drop to the bodies on the floor. “And they’re all still alive too.”

  “Uh. Yeah. Sure. I guess. Again, I’m really sorry. All this for a chance to go to school,” I winced, taking my hand off my wound to undo the melted armor plate on my torso. It made a wet, sucking sound as the blood seeping from my wounds let go of the smooth surface. Then I set about hunting for a replacement in my size from the guards on the floor.

  “School? You’re a student? Oh. Don’t take the helmets,” the woman cautioned, her wide eyes now emanating more curiosity than fear. “They have a rudimentary neural interface.”

  My mouth worked back and forth as I figured out what to say. “Okay. I figured they had something like that. Lots of electronics inside. Listen, I have no idea what these guys’ deal is or who they’re willing to go after. Seriously, do you have a place to go? I’d feel better if you were safe and tucked away until this is over.”

  She reached up and put a finger in her hair, twirling it around as she thought, and her features softened noticeably. “Um. My mom lives down the hall, but I’ll have to-” It was at that point she looked down at herself and seemed to realize how she was dressed. She gasped and suddenly felt compelled to cross her arms over her exposed stomach.

  For my part, I tried to focus on removing the breastplate from the biggest of the guards. “Okay, then,” I said. “Stay there tonight and don’t come out for anyone. Hopefully, this will all blow over by morning.”

  “What happens in the morning?” she asked, her eyebrows furrowing ever so slightly.

  *PAF*

  High pitched, panicked wailing came from one of the guards I thought I’d knocked out as he took another round to the kneecap from close range. My drones did not have any sort of mercy programmed into them.

  The woman looked on in something like horror mixed with fascination. “So like… you’re not controlling those things, except you are too.” she observed cryptically.

  I shook my head. “No. I mean, yes, but not anymore. I made them to do a thing. Now they’re doing the thing. Uh. I really need to get going or that’s going to keep happening.” I pointed a thumb over at the drone as it used its pincers and hooked legs to… dig into the guard’s flesh to remove the bullet it had just put there. The wounds in my back protested as I slipped my new breastplate over my head and buckled it into place. Then I was moving. “Again, I’m really sorry,” I called over my shoulder.

  “Mina,” the woman said.

  I stopped and turned, confused.

  “My name is Mina,” she repeated. “Sorry I- uh- beat you.” She shook the bat in her hand, still wet with my blood.

  “No problem,” I told her with a quick wink. “Most normal part of my night so far.”

  She actually almost laughed at that. I could tell. But, in the end, she only allowed herself a smirk while one of her fingers twirled a lock of her hair.

  Then I was off and down the hall toward the rest of Brightside.

  —------------------

  If the object was to make it to the Academy however many levels it was higher in this Constance damned cylinder, I was doing a terrible job. It was slow going. The living quarters where I’d met Mina were part of a big, multi-deck block of them with small lifts and stairwells that carried you between them all. Only I wasn’t using those.

  No. The stairs I was using were completely exposed to laser fire, which my pursuers took advantage of at every opportunity, doing their best to pin me down and create opportunities for backup to arrive. The safety glass above my head and to my side was riddled with black, smoldering holes. The little shield I’d constructed out of a stack of replacement panelling I’d found and a garbage lid wasn’t looking much better. It did more to hide where my vitals were than to stop las-fire.

  Unfortunately, I was simply unwilling to duck back inside the actual living quarters for cover. After what almost happened to Mina, I wasn’t willing to put anyone else in a position to be hurt by my little stunt. There was also my drones to consider.

  Fourty-something spider drones were following me now, their little legs ticking on the metal stairs behind me, their shiny steel bodies forming a sea of skittering, bobbing weirdness that liked to crowd in around my feet when I stopped and didn’t have the sense to get out of the way before they tripped me. They had their uses, though. They wouldn’t return fire at the snipers anytime soon, but if anyone got within thirty feet of me wearing that plastic security armor, they were a collective battering ram… right to the knees.

  And they just kept coming. The factory was producing them in batches of six now, sometimes eight, not that they all arrived in neat groups like that. They had a bit of a commute before they were on the job.

  I hadn’t even had to fight the last group of security forces that tried to block my way. They’d confronted me on the landing to a new deck with a firing line, batons, and a weird caster that made the whole world dark then tried to stab me. Unfortunately for them, I didn’t need my eyes to see a guy with a dagger sneaking up behind me, and my drones certainly didn’t use anything like eyes. The leg trauma from that little dustup was a thing to behold, and I didn’t stick around for when the drones got busy trying to retrieve their bullets that didn’t go all the way through flesh. I got a sweet new dagger from the encounter, still slick with a little of my blood, which silenced some of the guilty voices in my head. Most of them.

  The strange thing was, with the exception of Mina, I’d not seen any civilians in Brightside, and I’d had to invade the woman’s apartment to catch a glimpse of her.

  No. No. Don’t think about that right now. We’re getting shot at. No glimpses.

  Still… Where was everyone? The other side of the station was brimming with people, and I saw at least fifty folks going through the checkpoint to get here before this whole thing kicked off. Where were the janitors? The techs? The drunks? The people on their way to somewhere?

  It was weird, and it was starting to bug me. The Marshals were certainly enjoying their free, unobstructed shot at me. Maybe that was the answer. They locked the place down to get at me.

  A glancing hit from one of the rifles overhead singed my armor, bringing my mind back to the immediate issue. I peeked over my shield, now with another hole right between my prosthetic fingers, Then I took aim with my pistol, allowing Death Eye to highlight the important bits on my attacker’s body.

  *BRRRRRRRT*

  The bars of the metal railing where the guard had braced his rifle splintered and broke, and he was forced to make a tactical dive down the stairs to his left.

  You hit Security Officer for 11 damage. (piercing)(10 mitigated)

  You hit Security Officer for 8 damage. (piercing) (15 mitigated)

  Security Officer is bleeding.

  Pistols is now level 9.

  Two more guards were there to take his place, pelting my stairwell with laser fire and forcing me to duck back behind my shield. Another direct hit burned a hole through the bottom of the plate and still had enough power to puncture the flesh on my thigh.

  “Constance, damnit!” I bellowed. There were too many of them, and my HP wasn’t going to last. They were wearing me down, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  Okay. Can’t stop here. Keep going and don’t stop until you’re stopped.

  My legs pumped, and my lungs worked like bellows. Up. Up the stairs. The las-fire tracked me with every step. One, two, three landings. My shield was swiss cheese, and my body wasn’t doing much better.

  Then, like a switch had been flipped, the incoming fire stopped.

  I risked a peak around my shield again.

  Oh. Okay. This is different.

  I’d come out on an open, circular platform that probably used to be a miniature park with small, flowering trees growing from big planters arranged in lines around benches and tables meant for people to lounge around. Now, though, there were guards, twelve of them, and the benches and tables that used to be scattered around the place were overturned and stacked together to form a miniature barricade.

  I threw my slagged shield to the side and silently thanked it for its service.

  You’ll be remembered, garbage shield, if only as a glorified umbrella.

  Only one of the guards wasn’t hunkered down behind the barricade and aiming a rifle barrel at me. He stood tall in front of the others, about as tall as I was, with a massive wooden tower shield in one hand and a silver spear in the other.

  “Fugitive Ryan Kotes!” He called to me. “You will come with us, or we will force you to comply.” The guy sounded young, and the exposed part of his face reinforced that impression. He didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of them, not as uniform or… I didn’t know… hard as the rest of them.

  Also: Talking. We were talking now. I was okay with that.

  “None of your other guys asked me nicely,” I said. “I’ve been beaten, cursed, shot, stabbed, and blinded, but no one has bothered to talk to me.”

  “You’re wanted on our homeworld, Kotes, and the amount of violence you’ve committed tonight should make you a fugitive from every colony in human space,” he replied.

  “I gave as good as I got,” I argued with a shrug.

  “What you ‘got’ was a bunch of people hurt, and all because you didn’t want to face justice.”

  My rapidly growing pool of drones chose that moment to catch up to me and gather around my feet. I glanced down at them then rolled my shoulder in preparation for a fight.

  “Your Family never had a right to hold me,” I said. “And they still don’t.”

  The man nodded and set his jaw. “Fine. You had your chance.” He spun the spear in his hand until it was in an overhead position, resting on the top of the tower shield, his feet spread far apart and his chin tucked. The silvery metal of his weapon started to glow an incandescent white. Meanwhile, his posse tightened their trigger fingers on their las-rifles.

  “Hey! Hey!” the spear guy called after me, flustered.

  I’d already turned around and had a foot on the safety railing. Nope. I was not up to this particular encounter, and I wasn’t too proud to admit it. I activated Tension Step.

  “He’s- Damnit! Open fire!

  Las-fire filled the air with angry red daggers.

  My foot made contact with the air just hard enough to give me the distance to put a single metal finger on the bottom of the support structure of the deck overhead. Anchor dutifully got back to work reducing gravity and all other forces acted upon my body by 30%. I had no time to feel nauseous, however.

  Iron Grip [0.1mp/sec]

  Iron Grip is now level 5.

  Upgrade paths available:

  …

  My back got the worst of it, laser fire stippling neat lines of heat over my skin. The armor took some of the bite out of it, but the unarmored parts of me were injected with burning hot fun. I did what I could to mitigate the damage, only it was a guessing game as to where I was going to be struck. I focused on as big a spot on my spine as I could, just below the breastplate. I strained to make the area Hardened Defense could cover as wide as possible.

  Hardened Defense is now level 3.

  Hardened Defense is now level 4.

  It wasn’t enough.

  I came down from the ledge full of holes, my body slapping wetly onto the tiled floor, but I used the momentum my fall had given me to flop just a bit further, not toward the ledge but toward my attackers.

  Then, a brick wall slammed down on my torso. My armor cracked like an eggshell, and my breath left me. A glowing white speartip was suddenly in my face, almost in my eye. The heat from it was intense, like I was a nanometer from a blowtorch.

  “Pointless,” the young man said with a shake of his head. “And here I was hoping for a-”

  *PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF**PAF*

  The cavalry, following along behind me like good little drones, had finally caught up… and had valid targets. My body was just inside the thirty foot activation radius

  I was only able to see the man’s face contort briefly in pain and surprise before he was forcibly removed from my line of sight. Of course, there was the requisite screaming and the shouting and the cursing, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I’d lost too much blood, and my MP was down. Crystalized Channels was ravaging my insides while Engine was fighting to catch up. Plus, I was just tired. I’d done my best. I’d shown that I wouldn’t come quietly.

  I was just feeling comfortable enough to pass out when something slammed into my chest and rolled onto my face, brand hot and smoking. It was one of my drones, or part of one, sliced down the middle, the metal still red hot from whatever had done the deed. I grabbed the little guy and thanked him for his service too. He’d done considerably better than my shield.

  The man with the spear strode into view again. He had a slight limp to his steps now, his tower shield grinding along on the floor rhythmically while his otherwise white armor was slick with his own blood. He gritted his teeth and stared balefully down at me. His glowing spear hovered close to my metal heart.

  “Are you done?” He asked. He reached up and threw off his helmet to reveal a head of close cropped hair, an aquiline nose, and a wide mouth that put him just on the interesting-looking side of the interesting/attractive scale.

  I took a rasping breath, but all I could produce was a cough.

  He shook his head. “You look done. Proxis will celebrate tonight.”

  I let the now Volatility charged drone husk gently roll out of my hand to come to a wobbling stop between the young man’s feet.

  I allowed myself a victorious grin as his eyes widened in realization and the tip of his spear quivered ever so slightly. Well, that wasn’t fair. I wasn’t exactly victorious here. The explosion from this move had a solid chance of killing me. My HP was that low. Let’s call it a consolation prize grin. The point was that if I didn’t want to go back to Proxis, I wouldn't. I wanted him to know that.

  “For goodness sake, Matt. Just-” an angry but familiar voice scolded. Then something slammed into my temple, and the world went black.

  Hey. Thanks for giving In my Defense a chance. New chapters will be posted Tuesdays and Thursdays, eventually ramping up depending on the amount of interest we can generate here.

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