This will end Act One. I know it's longer than I usually have Act One of a story last, but I wanted to get clear how the CC thing worked before I started, ummmm, messing with it. And yay, urban combat. Wait, already said that.
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3.
No fight this time. Three aimed his weapon up around the turn of the stairwell. “Any grenades or other suspicious things,” Barricade cautioned, “you jump DOWN. Not up. Let them isolate themselves. Don’t get cut off.”
They glided up the stairwell with the kind of speed that spoke more how vulnerable they felt in the narrow funnel of the stairwell than if they’d sung a song about it. As each hit the top, he fanned them out in order of priority vector.
Three spotted the first charge. “CC?” he called. “What’s this?” Barricade pulled up Three’s optics. A dirty looking lump of…lumpiness, really. Greyish beige blob like some plaster had slagged off the walls. Would have been convincing if there were any other signs of heat slag. And the finger-marks, also. Amateurish. Must have been assembled in haste.
“Three,” he said, ‘Withdraw. Back the way you came. Do NOT turn your back on primary target door.” Three backpedaled.
Four found two more charges, these up higher in the walls. And spaced far enough apart to hit the interior support beams. “Good spotting,” Barricade said. “Whole second’s wired to blow. Still have two of their registry on this floor so they’re not quite set to blow it. Nonetheless, get yourselves by a window, and punch it out if need be. I signal you, you jump.”
“Jump?” One again. Seems Two had tagged out with him as Most Annoying.
“Tuck and roll at the end. You want some distance between you and the building. Especially if they blow the support beams.” He saw them rearrange themselves, backs to windows. “Step one to the left, each. Just in case they have a sniper across the road.” Paranoia sometimes paid off. He could feel Four’s pulse drop even more. Apparently, Barricade’s paranoia soothed him. Made him feel he was really being looked after. Great.
He felt, through his hack, everyone else’s tension. Like he didn’t have enough of his own. It wasn’t entirely unlikely that the Autobot insurgents would blow the charges with one of their own caught in it. All about the greatest good—sometimes, Barricade had discovered, that meant suck-all for the individual. Nothing. The registers on his screen seemed to amble about. Waiting. Were they drones? Fakes? If so, more than enough time to blow the second floor.
It hit him. Three’s door—the one he had been heading to. Must have the trigger. Right in the center of the building. If they’d gone in using the textbook tactics, the whole team would have lined up, one big happy group, to get blown back to the Pit. Good thing CC had thrown the textbook out. “Three,” Barricade said. “range weapon, please, and step back to the doorway where you found that charge.”
He heard/felt Three swallow. “What’s up, CC?”
“They’re waiting for us to trigger it. Behind that door. Can you blast it open with your range weapon?” Three looked down at the door at the end of the hall, his eyes lingering on the charge. “Pretty sure.”
“Wouldn’t be unusual, according to The Book, to blow the door with a projectile blast.”
“Gotcha.” Three altered the magazine of his range weapon to metal slugs.
“Hold for a second. You’re going to have to run like hell.”
“Figured.”
“Drop secondary firewalls.”
“Why?”
“Want to run like hell?”
Three was confused, but dropped his walls. Barricade clicked off the force governors in Three’s legs. “Now go.”
Three blasted the door. As soon as the others heard the noise, like a beautiful synchronized piece, they threw themselves out of the windows. Three spun, and, with his legs boosted by the removal of the force governors, pounded down the hall hard enough to dent the floor. The blast caught him just as he reached a window, blasting him flat out. Barricade’s program reached in, bending his head down into a protective roll. His primary weapon got torn from his hands in the landing, and his legs were shaking when he got up, and bits of his back plating were scored, but he was otherwise uninjured. Three turned to stare at the building.
The second floor blew straight out in a blast of white heat, slamming the third floor hard enough to collapse parts of the building to the foundation. “Frag…..” Three breathed.
4.
“What now, CC?”
“Normally, I’d say roach-stomping, but even Autobots aren’t stupid enough to blow the building up while they’re in it. Unless they have some safety. We might have to go back in. If you need a hobby, you might lob a few grenades at anything that moves.”
“On it,” Six said. He moved up to crouch behind a wall across the street. Took cover, Barricade noted, without needing to be reminded.
“Wait and see?” One said.
“Wait just a little while.”
“Why couldn’t we blow the whole building ourselves?” Two asked. Barricade felt his brow crease in irritation, but not at Two. That was a damn good question.
“Short answer? What? And spare us all this fun and manly bonding? Long answer: probably something or someone in there they want verified dead. Better with a chance of ‘taken alive’.” Mission specs were silent on this, but that meant nothing. Intel was a mess right now after the Autobots had had that huge ‘victory’ (also known as a massacre) over at Bindir Hub. That’s where Damage had been.
“Something’s moving,” Four reported. “Either two bots or one big hunched over one.”
Smoke and chemical blowback from the explosion was foxing Barricade’s birdseye. He could register a hit, but nothing more. “Can you verify, Four?”
“No.”
“Assume armed. Better yet, assumed bomb with legs, especially if it comes near you.”
“Blow it now?”
“Wait. See if we can get visual.” Barricade reached for the metadata. If they could get a visual, he could match it against any known high-value targets. That would give him a start figuring out how to react.
“CC,” one of them said, his voice anxious. “It’s stopped moving.”
“As in dead?”
“No. Just…stopped.”
Barricade hit all comms. “Everyone’s near cover. Prepare to duck if it blows. Can anyone give me angle visual?”
“I can,” Two said. “Optical separator.” Two unscrewed one of his optics and fed it out along its cable on the top of the wall he crouched behind.
“Let me worry about this, warbots. The rest of you, watch the rubble. This could be a distraction and we don’t want the rats slipping away.” He cut his comm down to Two. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Can adjust for any discomfort.”
“Can you give me my fraggin’ arm back? Right now I have 12% mobility.”
“Repairable.”
“Doesn’t help us now.” Two was mad. Not even really at Barricade. More like mad at himself for having been so slag-stupid in the first place. Barricade was used to being the scapegoat. Unfortunately.
“Can boost targeting and dexterity in your remaining arm.”
“Can you?”
“Need access to secondary.”
“None of the other CCs do this.”
“None of the other CCs have my success rating.” A long hesitation, and Two dropped his secondary firewalls. Barricade’s programs rushed in, shifting the targeting and power protocols to the useable arm. He felt Two’s dislike for him and a residual throb of pain from Two’s chest-wound. No amount of him letting Two blow giant holes in something was going to make Two not hate him. Especially when Two blamed him for the giant hole blown in himself. This was a palpable presence, like a choking fog. That, Barricade thought, is gratitude from these warriors. Do not allow yourself to forget that.
Plenty of time to dwell on the petty interpersonal failings of the warrior class later. Right now, “Three and Five, mark that Two is at Alpha Bravo. Need some coverage around back—head to Charlie Delta.” He watched the team-spread as the two mechs bounced behind rubble to the far corner. Quick, quiet, professional. Pointless to ask for much more, really.
“CC,” Two said, impatient, “He’s just waiting there.”
“Exactly it. Waiting for something. Just haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
“CC,” Two said, excitedly, “He’s looking up. Could they have air support?”
Barricade pulled out the larger view. “Nothing within range currently to help.”
Barricade pulled the entire team’s optics, giving him a near 360 of the rubble pile. Most of the building had collapsed, except, strangely, the fourth floor, CD corner. As if it had been protected by a magical hand. It hung at an angle, but it was suspiciously intact. Reinforced. Whatever they wanted—whatever the Autobots wanted to protect—was in there.
“Three, Five, action’s going to come your way, at CD corner. Six and One, don’t change position but see if you can get an angle of fire on that corner.”
“I hate waiting,” Two muttered.
“Well, you can always spark things off like before,” Barricade snapped.
“Fraggin’ CC,” Two muttered, as if CC were the vilest name he could think of to call someone.
The reinforced box wobbled. “Movement,” Three said. Barricade could sense the uptic in five capacitors. Four was…pathologically calm. He was covering the AB corner with Two. Good enough.
A mech boiled out of the corner of the CD room, scrambling down two stories of rubble, assisted by gravity. Too fast and too unsteady to get a clear shot, though Primus bless Three for trying. Another mech rose up, blasting a heavy grenade straight at Three’s cover. Three screeched. Direct hit. Barricade cursed. “Three, I’m shutting down your alarm systems. Stay calm.” He shunted Three’s pain signals and warnings into a junk-code processor. Three tried to take a look down at himself, see the damage. Barricade locked his neck. “Relax and lay back,” he ordered. Mechs got bothered when they saw half their torso missing. He supposed he would too. But he didn’t need Three’s panic on top of everything else, just as it got hot. Feeling his alarm systems was bad enough.
“One, Six, divert to rear angle of that corner. Get that box, but watch your crossfire.” Aiming up, it shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but still—mechs got excited in the heat of battle.
The AB corner mech started firing, pinning Two and Four down. “We’re good,” Four said. “We can wait.” Six and One blasted at the box’s structure itself—not even trying to hit any of the mechs who clambered out. Destroy the hive. Good. Five fired wildly at the mechs, drilling the one who had hit Three. Another round from a grenade landed near Three, blasting away the remains of his cover.
“Five,” Barricade said. “Let’s get Three.”
Five collapsed against the wall he was taking cover behind. His ventilation bordered on over-rapid, his capacitor red-lining. “I can’t!” he gasped. Barricade did a quick check.
“You’re uninjured, Five. Three needs you.”
“I can’t!” he wailed.
“Scared? I can help you.”
Five made a hiccuping noise. Trying not to cry. Poor thing. Probably first blooded combat, and he’d seen two up close.
“I can help you,” Barricade repeated, readying his shells. “You want to save Three. Three needs your help. You can help him. I can help you help him.”
Three’s breath, ragged. “O—okay.”
“Lower your firewalls.”
“What level?”
Barricade checked Five’s status. And Three’s. He needed to get Three under cover, quick. “All of them.”
“All?” Five squeaked, but he dropped them. Barricade was in. He moved quickly. No time to be gentle. Blown most of that trying to sweet talk Five into doing this. Barricade cut Five’s control. “You want to come along for the ride or take a nap?”
“Uhhh,” Five didn’t know what he was asking.
“You’re coming along. Relax and try to enjoy the ride.” Barricade hijacked control of Five’s entire system. First step, slow ventilation and capacitor. Second, cut pain. Third, move.
Five bolted from behind his cover as Barricade snapped off his force governors. Five’s personality watched in horror as a round shot at him, piercing one arm. Barricade felt Five’s mind flinch against his own, waiting for the pain. And when it didn’t come, a kind of horror. Barricade boosted a chemical mix to calm Five down. Didn’t need him going even slightly shocky on him and fouling Barricade’s control.
Five’s ungovernored legs launched him into a long sailing jump. Barricade snapped Five’s main weapons open, his higher-speed processors calculating each shot. Five watched in an awestruck numbness as each round hit its mark. Barricade tucked Five’s body into a roll, landing him by Three. Five caught another long look at his injured arm—yellow lubricant and blue fluid pooling green and sickish looking in his joints.
“You’re fine,” Barricade snapped. “Three needs you.” He had Five scoop Three up with both arms, and turn and run a careful zigzag back to cover, his boosted reflexes dodging the rounds the enemy sent at him easily. He released control of Five just as Five collapsed behind the wall again, dropping Three on the ground beside him.
“Control back to you,” Barricade said. “Patch him and wait here. You’re rally for the medevac.”
One and Six were pounding the reinforced room. Plascrete had almost entirely been shot away, revealing a metal boxlike structure. Which Six was working at with his rocket launcher. “Good work,” Barricade said. Two and Four had kept the AB mech occupied. “Ready to finish him?”
“Damn right.” Two. Of course.
“Love to hear your plan, Two.”
“Why ruin it by explaining?” Two knelt down, daisy chaining the fuses of two grenades clumsily with one hand. “Time to see if your little voodoo worked, CC,” he muttered, and lobbed them over the wall. The first one blew at the mech’s feet, the second, lifted by the blast, closer to the mech’s abdomen. Minus one leg, the mech collapsed to the ground, arms flailing, firing wildly.
“Nice.” Barricade admitted. “You do like explosions, don’t you?”
Four said, “Two’s demolitions.” Four hesitated, then rose up from behind his cover and blasted at the fallen mech. Still a little slow to take initiative, Barricade decided.
“Nice and nice,” Barricade said. “Let’s mop up.”
He directed the functional mechs closer to the metal box, diverting the more injured Two to replace injured Five pulling security on the very injured Three. The rest was almost easy, if one counted brutality as easy. But they discovered, in the end, what the Autobots had been trying to hide. A Councillor. Taking refuge or collaborating? Didn’t much matter now, after six different rounds went through him. Just…one less enemy. Barricade cursed the Intelligence failure. If he’d known they had a high value person there, he’d’ve been more careful. Still, mission objectives as listed, another success. Three casualties, no fatalities, though Three would be sketchy for a long time. He called in Medevac and Transport, and with only a grudging sense of relief, logged himself out of the CC console.