Prophet of ConFree (The Prophet of ConFree) (64 page)

The Demons squirmed below, awaiting us.

Δ

"Tacmods say they're blues – civs," Saka said. We were frozen, all our phantom senses focused on a disorderly pile of metal dropboxes. Honey told me there were three civilians there – inside or behind the dropboxes.

"I'll check it out," I said. I crept up to the sweating metal boxes, E extended. Honey revealed three humans inside one of the boxes. I may have been invisible, but I was expecting a Demon to pop up out of nowhere and start shooting at me.

I touched the lock and the top rose open slowly. My E was pointed at three females, naked, tightly wrapped around each other, squeezed into the box. When the top opened they began whimpering, gasping and trembling and crying. When I touched one of them she shrieked and went into a full-body fit, shaking all over.

"Quiet down," I said. "We're Legion soldiers, and you're being rescued. Come on, let's get out of the dropbox."

We got them out of the box but they were terrified, maybe because it was totally dark and they could not see us. I wasn't about to drop my cloaking. They lay there grasping each other, totally terrified. They were in bad shape, covered with welts, cuts and bruises. They looked like teens. Their faces and lips were swollen and cut.

"Bees, Prophet. We've got three girls here, please come and get them."

"Will do, Prophet."

One of the girls couldn't have been older than about twelve. She lay there in the dark, holding on to the other two like life preservers, her entire body trembling all over – head, torso, arms, legs. The other two were a few years older, whimpering and groaning in pain and terror. I did not want to even imagine what hell the Demons had put them through.

"What were you doing in the box?" I asked.

"We – we were hiding from the Demons," one of the girls answered shakily. "They – they…" she couldn't go on.

"Give her a painkiller," Saka suggested.

"No time for that. Let Bees do it, we've got to get going," I said. And Bees appeared, shining in her silver armor just like an angel. The teens gaped at her in awe. She was accompanied by Bird, but they couldn't see him.

"Come with me," she said, soothingly, touching them gently with her armored fingers. They got up slowly, never taking their eyes from her.

Δ

"We've got D's," Doggie said, pulling Blackie tightly along. He had Blackie on leash cloaking so Blackie was invisible as long as Doggie held onto the leash. Doggie and Smiley paused on the ramp. It led down to the next level.

"Where are they?" Smiley asked. The tacmap showed no D's.

"See that giant pile of junk off to the left – old filing cabinets, safes, looks like discarded machinery? It's a good ambush position. They’re right in there."

"How do you know?"

"Blackie is alerting." Blackie was bristling, glaring at a huge disposal area packed with junk. We could see Blackie on the tacmod image, which revealed friendly units, cloaked or not. He snarled, showing his teeth, nose pointed right at the junk site. It was pitch black but the situation was clear to him.

"They're in ambush, not shielded," Doggie said. "They're somehow enclosed by metal, which is why the tacmod is not picking up on them. It means we're going to have to blast them out and alert the rest of them."

"Well, let's do it," Smiley said. "I'm tired of standing here in their sights."

"Do it."

Smiley let loose with a tacstar micronuke and the junk pile blew apart in a titanic blast, dazzling white hot core, a million glowing tracers spitting shrapnel. Doggie and Smiley then both fired auto xmax, spraying the position non-stop, flash flash flash, xmax ripping and dancing over the glowing riddled junk, revealing one armored Demon who had been off to one side and missed the tacstar party, shields still down, dark blue armor blistered and glowing and smoking, his fearsome weapon falling from his hands. He reached out his arms, croaking, and fell forward but Doggie and Smiley kept firing at him until his armor was chopped to pieces and his blood was spraying like a garden hose. The rubble pile was full of pulverized Demon armor. There must have been several of them, waiting in ambush. But you can't ambush what you can't see.

"Die, you bastard."

"All right," Doggie said. "Advance." Blackie was enraged, barking frantically, and Doggie had to forcibly pull him away from the dead Demon.

Δ

"Delta, Scout. Nitro and I are entering Arena C."

"Gotcha, Scout. Arena C. What do you see?"

"I see exactly what's on the tacmap. It's full of Demons and human females and kids." Arena C was the first major target, a large arena that the D used for stashing their female captives and, probably, amusing themselves with them.

Scout and Arie had slipped in the open doorway, stealthily tiptoeing past two armed, shielded Demon guards and taking widely separated positions against one wall. The Demon guards' crackling green shielding echoed around the hall, which was bustling with activity. Arie was back to the wall, grasping his E in ready position, almost trembling in anticipation of the mass murder he was about to commit. Icy sweat was trickling down his face, but that wasn't the kind of sweat that his tacmod could handle. Scout was further along the wall to his left. He had entered first. Scout must have blood made of ice water, Arie thought. The man is totally fearless. We're both going to die here – shit, there's nineteen of them in this room and only two of us.

"Scout, Doggie. Stand by, we're coming to reinforce you, then we'll take them on."

"Negative, Doggie," Scout replied. "They're sending a squad out the door, A & A, shielding up, looks like – six of them. That leaves thirteen here. We'll handle them. We don’t want a big firefight here, the captives will get damaged."

"Got that, Scout, we'll terminate those six, then come for you if we can," Doggie replied.

A mere thirteen of them, Arie thought. Great! Ten of the D's were armored, only three were not. After the armored squad passed out the doorway, the other D's bustled around taking up positions to cover the doorway, as if they expected an intrusion. However, they did not activate their shielding. That would probably be done just before battle. Only the two door guards had shielding up. The three unarmored D's swaggered around, covered in stinking wet fur, terrorizing the captives. The girls huddled in groups around the room. Some were naked, some were clad in dirty shorts and tees. Total of fourteen girls, according to the tacmod. One of the D's snatched a naked subteeen girl from one group and tossed her through the air to another D who caught her none too gently. A female from the group – maybe her mother – shrieked and leaped up. She was hammered to the ground by the D who had taken the girl from her. The Demon who had possession of the subteen forced her to the ground and straddled her. Inter-species sex was evidently a form of recreation for the D's.

"Nitro," Scout said, calmly. "I'll use autodarts on the two shielded guards by the door to take down the shields, then auto x to blast the armor and finish them off. You start with the eight others in armor, bursts of xmax, try not to hit the girls, I'll be joining you on those targets soon as I get the door guards. When they're all down, we go after the three unarmored D's. We use auto darts for that. Just shred them."

"Say when," Arie said.

"When." The two of them opened up. Arie's tacmod had labeled the targets and would guide the rounds to the most vulnerable area, between helmet and chestplate. Target 1, xmax on upper chestplate, flash, tearing a hole in the armor; Target 2, xmax in the faceplate, shredding the helmet open; Target 3, looking around frantically for the hostiles, raising a plasma battle rifle, staggering from auto xmax hitting his faceplate and chestplate, falling to the deck; Target 4, firing his battle rifle, a glittering sheet of plasma blasting into the wall and the wall erupting with giant plasmastar hits all around Arie, who slid lower against the wall as he fired, auto xmax to the helmet/chestplate area; Scout was now firing on the other targets as well; Target 5 going down from Scout's xmax; Arie firing into Target 6, who fired back, now laying down a wild burst of plasma, slicing it around in a frantic search for the invisible enemy. Target 8 ran for another door and Scout chased him down with xmax, gunning him down. Target 7 stood there frozen, as if unsure what to do. Scout shot him in the faceplate with autodarts, a hot hail of hypersonic darts that buzzed like killer bees as they sliced open the faceplate and turned the Demon's head to mush.

"You all right?" Scout asked.

"I'm fine," Arie replied. "Some shrapnel hits, all under repair."

Three of the Demons were unarmored. During the firefight, they had been crawling around on the deck, hiding among the girls. Now they cringed as Scout and Arie stood over them. Scout and Arie had disengaged their cloaking, just so the D's could see who had done this to them. The D's glared at them, sputtering with rage. Scout took out his hot knife, reached down to the Demon who had earlier been in the process of raping the subteen, and castrated him with the knife, slicing off his genitals in a frac. The Demon screeched in agony, spurting a fountain of black blood. Scout tossed the bloody trophy aside in contempt and shot the Demon in the face with a short burst of autodarts. Arie finished off the other two with darts as well. The room was littered with smoking Demon armor and corpses and the walls were splattered with blood and gore and burning from the plasmastars. The girls hardly dared move, huddled on the deck clutching each other for protection, twitching and crying.

"Bees, Scout. We've got fourteen girls here, some wounded but none too badly. Come and get 'em but check with Doggie about that squad of six D's heading your way."

"Delta, Doggie. Check your tacmaps. The D's are on the move, splitting up and heading for topsides. Believe they may be attempting to break out and escape. Scout and Nitro set up ambush to block Gate Two. Saka and Prophet set up ambush to block Gate Three. Smiley and I are closing on the squad of six that is almost on us. Bees, Bird, General, defend the civilians."

"Doggie, Scout, Bees. We've only got three girls and it looks like some of these D's are headed our way. We're going to have to do an ambush and delay evacing those girls from your site, Scout."

"That's fine, Bees," Doggie said. "Everybody react to the D's that head your way and kill 'em all. That first element is almost on us."

Δ

"Delta alert," Dolly said. "Total of thirty D's now present within the installation. They have divided into five squads of six D's each, heading topsides via ramps, all armored and armed and all shields up, safeties off and scanning for the enemy. Please see the tacmap, recommend cloaked ambushes with initial auto hyperdart fire to take out shielding followed by autoxmax to penetrate armor. Remember if you get hit by plasma, run immediately to escape the blast." Good summary, Dolly, I thought. Now there are thirty of them and still only nine of us, not counting Blackie. Not good odds for us, even if we are invisible. Once we start firing, they'll see where we are.

"Let's get moving, Prophet," Saka said. "We're going to block the primary approach ramp to Gate Three. I'll bet at least one of those squads is going to use that route." We hustled, anxious to get in place. It was pitch black, but our phantom senses cleared it up perfectly for us. We knew the D's could see in the dark as well, with a little help – but they couldn't see fully cloaked Legion troopers, waiting in ambush to slice them to bloody pieces. I blessed our techs. They kept us alive.

We set up on each side of the ramp, well dispersed but perfectly covering the ramp at a narrow section where the D's might bunch up while approaching.

"How's this?" I asked.

"Perfect," Saka said. "Make sure you know where to run if you get caught in the plasma – and fire back as soon as you get out of the plasma burst radius."

"Will do. Here they come." Six of them all right – six! They looked to be one hundred percent alert. So were we. Honey was already labeling and numbering them for me. My adrenalin was at max. I swear I could taste it on my tongue. I was so hyper I started to shake – just a little twitching, nothing I couldn't handle.

"All right, Prophet. That's all six of them." The D's were almost on us, sneaking cautiously up the ramp, dirty blue armor glowing with crackling green force field shielding, yellow faceplates, ugly plasma battle rifles pointing almost right at us.

"Fire on three, one two three." Saka was a man of few words. We fired.

Δ

"They're coming right at us," Bird said. "Six of them."

"They're walking right into our field of fire," the general said.

"The tacmod is giving us each two targets," Bees said. "So we only have to worry about two each. God, make my aim true and grant us victory."

The Demons approached warily. It was a fairly open area on the second level that Bees had chosen for her medunit and civilian rally point. Bees was off to one side, further in the rear, away from the others. She did not have cloaking so the D's probably already had her on scope, but were trying to get just a bit closer. If they recognized her Bright armor, they must have been very, very worried.

Bird and the general fired simultaneously as Bees fired at Target Five, darts, and everything suddenly became slow motion but fast motion at the same time, the darts buzzing and the flickering green force field going down, Bees switching to xmax, the rounds erupting just below the D's helmet, cutting into the armor and a giant horrific burst of plasma knocked Bees right off her feet. She hit the deck and skidded along on her back helplessly, out of the burst radius, scrambled up with her E, tacmap; Target 6 firing plasma, another huge burst and Bees fired autodarts, the plasma hit her a glancing blow and she fell but scrambled up right next to a falling torrent of glittering orange plasma, Target 6, the shield is down, Bees fired auto xmax at the target and her tacmod guided the xmax rounds to the vulnerable point, flashing popping bursting just where the D's helmet met the chestplate. Target 6 staggered and fell.