The Real Wave Begins
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud. Clank. Clank. Clank. The skitter of small things racing across the ventilation ducts overhead, mixed with the distant, heavy footfalls of Slaughter Robots, wound every nerve in our bodies tight.
"Hoo... wouldn't we be better off just running, even now?"
"Run where? A Wave in the Dark Zone doesn't let go until you either dump the aggro on somebody else or smash the Wave itself. There's no shaking it until you're out."
There were a few exceptions, of course, but most of those needed special items or gimmicks, which made them worthless to us right now.
"But if we really committed to hiding in this darkness, I don't believe they could find us."
"No. They will find us, no question. Those Native Species aren't just riding the Slaughter Robots."
I lifted the shotgun's muzzle and slowly tracked my gaze along the source of the noise in the vents.
A heartbeat later — crunch, clunk — something smashed through a ceiling panel, trying to burst out. The instant I caught the tell, my body was already pulling the trigger on reflex.
BOOM. BOOM.
A heavy report rolled through the corridor, nothing like the suppressed shots from before, and even faster than the sound, the slug punched through the vent panel and impaled the writhing something in the dark.
A wet crack, a grinding shriek — and whatever the slug had torn apart went silent in an instant. A very brief stillness followed.
It lasted only a moment. Then a noise erupted from vents all across the ceiling, like hundreds of rats stampeding through at once. A rapid-fire skittering filled the dark above our heads.
"It's not the gunshots — those goddamn things are going to make me go deaf!"
"They're nothing special on their own, but there's a hell of a lot of them, so stay sharp. Slip up and they'll swarm you and take you apart while you're still breathing."
"...And you're telling us this now?"
"Keeps the heart rate up."
I left Lee Duho muttering that I was a lunatic and pulled out a flashbang, stuffing it through the gap in the nearly destroyed vent panel. This wasn't some outdated charge that just scattered noise and light to blind and deafen. It was proper military-grade AAA Corp merchandise I'd picked up at the flea market.
It was still called a flashbang, but it was closer to a disablement round. As for why it had that name...
A short blast, and a massive cloud of iron filings billowed out through the gaps in the vent. The filings carried a faint current. On detonation they threw out a pseudo-electromagnetic field while driving themselves into targets as fine metal fragments — functional failure plus actual physical damage. Against the trash currently running around over our heads, it was an outstanding conversation starter.
"Good. Now we punch a path while they're down!"
The things that had been gathering in the vents to drop straight onto our heads were neutralized. Time to smash through the Slaughter Robot legion and crush the Wave.
"Lee Duho, you take point with Lee Doo-sik. If those implants and that muscle aren't just for show, you can handle that much, right? Lee Doo-pal and I have guns, so we'll cover left and right. Ahn Moon-ho holds the center, watches our rear, and we move fast."
Up to now they'd been responding by the seat of their pants with no real positions at all, so Lee Duho's group looked startled by the sudden orders — but they moved as told, more or less.
Lee Duho took up his heavy hammer, Lee Doo-sik his chainsword, and they stepped to the front. Almost immediately the Slaughter Robots appeared at the far end of the corridor, scattering red optic glow.
If there was one silver lining in this Dark Zone, it was that those robots didn't carry guns. They hadn't been designed for lethal purposes in the first place, apparently — all they packed was a single shock baton capable of caving in a human skull in one hit.
Still have to be careful. Take one of those the wrong way and you're actually dead.
How many ragtag convict teams had underestimated Slaughter Robots, charged in, and gotten turned to pulp? How many more had been reduced to bio-fuel?
"They've got a burst of charging power up close. If they get within five meters, don't lunge first — start with the dodge!"
"We know that much... already!"
No. Knowing it as information and knowing it by instinct are two different things. I almost pointed that out, then shut my mouth in case steam started coming out of Lee Duho's head.
Instead, the moment Lee Duho slipped a Slaughter Robot's horizontal baton slash and drove his hammer up from below, I squeezed the trigger at the robot whose neck was now wide open from the uppercut.
BOOM.
"Nice!"
Whether Lee Duho tossed out that half-hearted compliment or not, my muzzle and my eyes were moving faster than the two men brawling up front. Finishing the Machine Spirits that burst out of downed robots on surprise was the shooter's job too.
A high metallic whine, then a vicious tearing roar — Lee Doo-sik had jammed his chainsword into a Slaughter Robot's arm joint and revved the chain hard. That chainsword looked like a modified unit originally used on construction sites to cut through thick load-bearing walls. For a homemade job, the performance wasn't bad.
But it lacked finishing power. Even if you severed a Slaughter Robot's limbs, you couldn't put it down completely. And just going straight for that thick neck would be a lot to ask of Lee Doo-sik, even privately. The reason I'd set the positions this way was precisely to cover that gap. No need to spell it out.
I put a slug through the enemy's temple so the head snapped back, making the nape an easy target. Some of the neck components popped in a series of sharp snaps and hung loose. Lee Doo-pal didn't miss the opening. He jammed the muzzle of his double-barrel shotgun in and mashed the trigger.
A report like a cannon going off, buckshot at zero range, and the robot's head came clean off. A Machine Spirit that had been hiding in that robot burst out too — and the shotgun's remaining barrel popped it clean.
While we were working this hard to punch a path up front, Ahn Moon-ho kept scanning the rear and the ceiling in the gaps, scooping AI chips and compact power cells off the floor into his pack.
Even so, there was a limit to how far a human body could push through a legion of iron. The moment Lee Duho wound up for a big hammer swing, three or four robots suddenly rushed him at once. They didn't just eat the attack head-on — they grabbed on and started hanging off him.
"You goddamn Can bastards!"
"Bleed their strength first! Don't pick a stupid power struggle with a robot!"
No matter how mountain-sized you were, even with implants, a human was still a human. Unless you were an augmented human slathered in cutting-edge implants and boosters with full Mega Corp backing, trying to win a contest of strength against a machine was idiotic.
"Damn it!"
Forced to abandon his weapon, Lee Duho swung his fists in steel-cored gloves. A clear, ringing sound of metal on metal — but the power was a far cry from a weapon that hit like a truck in one swing.
Of course, I had no intention of leaving our construction-site ace as the weakest link.
"Catch! Position swap!"
"What! Wha—?!"
I grabbed Lee Duho's shoulder, shoved him back, and tossed him the shotgun in the same motion. Then I drew Pretty from inside my coat and swung it hard at the Cans that were creaking at us like they were laughing.
CLANG. A burst of voltage. CLANG. Another.
Raw power was nowhere near Lee Duho's hammer, but Pretty discharged a shockwave plus high-voltage current with every hit. It was practically a natural predator to the Cans. Better yet, the Slaughter Robot broke down and the Machine Spirit inside got fried crisp before it could even jump out. Two birds, one stone.
There was just one fatal downside to this fighting style.
A sputtering crack — then a pop.
"Aagh! My AI chips! My compact power cells! My money!!"
Was this what it felt like to light a wad of bills on fire, or dust your food with gold leaf just to eat it? Watching money vanish in real time right in front of my eyes, I felt like my insides were burning along with it. Who knew I was this sensitive.
Anyway, I didn't want to keep torching cash with my own hands, so I snatched Lee Duho's stolen hammer back.
"Gimme that, you idiot."
"You lunatic! Watch yourself!"
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
While I was briefly reclaiming Lee Duho's heavy hammer and resetting my stance, he covered me with surprisingly decent shooting.
Wait. If this guy can shoot this well, why the hell was he swinging a dumb hammer around?
Every last bastard locked up in this prison was impossible to figure out. At this point I couldn't tell if prison ruined people, or if people who'd already trashed their life build were the ones who ended up here.
I pulled the spare drum mag off my belt, tossed it to Lee Duho, then took a much more comfortable grip on the hammer and swung it with everything I had. Whoosh. Whoosh. A grinding crash of collapsing metal. I became a human power plant — no, a human wind turbine — and put on a gorgeous swing exhibition.
The satisfying impact that settled into my hands made me want to pull off a textbook bat flip, but I was a man who understood sportsmanship. Instead of the finishing bat flip, I brought the hammer I'd heaved up over my shoulder crashing back down in front of me.
"Here comes the hammer!"
There was no earth-shattering sound effect like the heavens splitting open, but the Slaughter Robot charging me crumpled from skull to chassis, took what amounted to a sixteen-week critical injury, and hit the dirt.
Ah! I'd even held back my lust for a bat flip in the name of sportsmanship, and this Dark Zone was openly encouraging flopping! I didn't want to spend another second in this cesspit of biased officiating and unsportsmanlike conduct.
I slipped another Slaughter Robot's baton swing with room to spare, jammed the hammer handle into the gap at its joint, and twisted hard. Then I picked up the dangling-armed thing's baton, cheerfully took its head off, and kicked the massive body aside to clear the path.
A Machine Spirit writhed out and tried to dive into another intact robot. Bad call.
I stomped the Machine Spirit flat, then used the brief window to scrape together whatever Slaughter Robot parts looked halfway useful. Why was I grabbing parts that weren't even particularly valuable, unlike AI chips or compact power cells? Because what we really needed to worry about was coiled right over our heads.
A tick. A double tick. Then that rapid-fire skittering again.
They're moving again, just like I thought.
The things that had been disabled in the ceiling were coming out of stun and resuming activity. I started feeling the clock. Partly because I knew what was crawling through those vents — and partly because, unlike the Slaughter Robots you could handle if you just faced them head-on, those things were a pain to deal with.
"Almost... done!"
I scraped together exactly five portions of smashed parts and finished a sci-fi edition "ghillie suit." Then I tossed one jury-rigged suit — cobbled together with trap wire — to each of my bewildered party members.
"No time. Throw these on!"
"W-what the hell is this?!"
"What did I say the third precaution was?!"
"Damn it!"
I'd sweated bullets making XXXL ghillie suits for the three lugs in the middle of this mess. I didn't say another word — just hurried to pull on my own.
Amazingly, the Machine Spirit Wave still wasn't over.
No. This was where it really began.
The moment we barely managed to pull the Slaughter Robot shells over ourselves — the ceiling panels came crashing down, and a nauseating black waterfall poured over us.