Chereads / Harem Hero / Chapter 15 - The Quick and the Cloned - Part 3

Chapter 15 - The Quick and the Cloned - Part 3

BEEP!

A loud alarm blares through the underground kill house as you finally reach across the red line. You collapse down onto your hands and knees, sweat dripping down onto the floor below. You finally did it. You managed to clear the entire course in time without killing anything you weren't supposed to!

Motoko was bursting at the seams with praise as usual, "Hm. You're a pretty quick study when you want to be."

"But?"

She rolls her eyes, "You're good enough to be a cop, but not in Section 9."

"If that's the standard we're using, I don't think I'm ever going to get there," you pat your chest, "I'm all flesh. No cyberbrain here."

Motoko checks her sports watch, "That's enough for today. I have to get back-"

But before Motoko can make plans to return home, your bracelet rings out.

Mitsuru's voice is emitted from the internal speaker, "Hey, you two – the invaders are attacking a local area. It looks pretty bad."

You grunt, "Damn it."

Motoko flashes the pistol held in the holster against her left side, "I'll give you a hand with this one."

You hurry back to the elevator and ascend back onto the main floor of the garage, Lala and Mitsuru are watching the news with a worried look on their faces. "Of all the days to do this," Mitsuru complains, "We were just about to finish it too."

You stop by the couch and ask, "Finish what?"

"I'll show you later. Get down there and destroy that drone."

You press the button on your bracelet and summon the armour, "Alright. Let's go kick some ass."

When you and Motoko finally arrive on the scene (by foot) it's clear that all hell has broken loose beyond the police cordon. A huge crowd of people have gathered and are trying to push and shove to get a look at what's happening beyond. Looks like you aren't getting through that way. Motoko pulls you into a nearby alleyway and leaps up the fire escape. You do the same using the hydraulic system in your legs.

You continue to climb up the rooftops of several other buildings until you pass the police blockade and get a clear view of the area below. It's a public park. The green space is protected on all sides by tall stone walls. A new type of enemy soldier guards the main gate – a mechanical biped body wielding a gun and utilizing body armour. They have strange, thin rectangle shaped heads and a red visor running down the front.

Motoko peers through a pair of collapsible binoculars and scouts the area, "Robotic soldiers, and they're armed. I'm counting twelve and that's only what I can see from here. We should assume that they have three or four times that number to cover this area."

"What's the plan?"

Motoko doesn't answer right away, she continues to observe the area. You press a button on the side of your helmet and zoom in using the built-in telescopic visor. In the tree in one corner of the park, an unseen family of four cowers away from the gunmen.

"Hostages."

"That's right. They've brought the fight to a populated area to make things more difficult for us – it shows a callous disregard for their lives." Motoko's mind is working at its maximum capacity to come up with a plan, she points to the two gunmen by the front gates. "Those two are likely on watch, if we destroy them, they'll know we're here."

"And everyone will come running."

"From unpredictable positions," she explains, "We can easily scale the walls without any additional equipment. It would be better for us to enter the park without destroying them first, there's only one angle they can come at us from afterwards."

"So by leaving them, we make them more predictable?"

"Yes. The rest will have to be instinct. We don't have command, control or intelligence. We can split the park in half and take one each. We need to move quickly and eliminate as many threats as possible. Hopefully that armour holds up under enemy fire."

You tap the composite panel running across your chest with your thumb, "It will. Mitsuru made it."

"Let's move."

Motoko leaps from the roof down to the street below, out of sight of the two drones by the front gate. You follow after her. You sneak over to the wall that surrounds the park and look up, there's nothing atop the wall to stop people from clambering over it. With another mighty leap, you clear it in one bound and find yourself on the other side behind enemy lines.

There's a long path that winds through this side of the park. There's an intersection in front of you that splits into multiple directions. Your vision is blocked by the sudden appearance of an overhead map in the HUD. Three dozen red dots appear in various locations. "If you need intelligence, all you need to do is ask," Mitsuru titters. You look up above and spy a pair of commercial, four rotor drones sweeping the park. "I'm patching this to the Major too."

You really wish Mitsuru would tell you about these things right away…

Motoko doesn't complain, "This is good. You take the back half of the park – it looks like the easier of the two to clear. I'll worry about this side."

With something that can roughly be described as a plan decided, you split up and creep towards the back-left corner of the park's area. You dip behind a bush as a pair of robotic soldiers watch for outside interference. They clunk and whir, their heads turning at sharp, abrupt angles to try and catch people off guard.

You hear a gunshot in the distance.

The two soldiers turn to face the disturbance, which you take as your chance to get rid of them. You square your feet and march forwards with the sledgehammer held in a proper two-handed shooting stance. Take your time, take a deep breath, the first shot is the most important. You make sure that your crosshair is locked on and let loose with two shots. The thumping bass of the gun's mechanism firing fills your ears as one of the robots explodes into a fiery shower of sparks and metal, before collapsing onto the ground.

The other tries to react, but you're too quick. You adjust slightly to the right and unleash a precise shot into its chest, ripping a hole clean through the body armour and felling it in one go. Aiming for the main body of the target makes things easier. No time to celebrate, you move the overhead map into the corner of your HUD and move on to the next group. The red dots on Motoko's side are disappearing at a frankly frightening rate. She lives up to her reputation, that's for sure.

You methodically move through the twisting bends and looming treelines of the nature trail, eliminating any single robots that you come across. Motoko's kill house training still rings fresh in your mind, so you check every corner methodically and carefully. There could be foes lurking in wait not detected by Mitsuru's surveillance.

The red dots begin to move eventually in reaction to the attack, grouping up and moving towards both of you. You press the brakes and find a position behind an abandoned café. Several more robots emerge through the path opposite you and begin to sweep the area. You steady your arms again and fire, blowing one head clean off.

This time they display more than a small amount of intelligence. Three of them run to cover and begin using suppressive fire to keep you pinned behind the brick wall. The other peel away to the left, out of your line of sight. "Mitsuru, need some help here!" you call. The drone moves away and begins flying overhead, giving you a more precise map of where they're moving.

They've split up into groups of three, one team going around the left side and the other the right. You're being pincered from two directions. Time to be decisive. You rush to the left flank and flip around the corner, unleashing a full burst from the sledgehammer before the three robots can react. You don't stop firing until you're damn sure that they're all dead. By moving to flank you, they left the field of view of the suppressing gunmen. Their loss, your gain.

You know it's coming before the shot is even fired, you fall back as a bullet whizzes past your visor and shatters one of the bricks into pieces. The air leaves your lungs as your back meets the floor, you roll over and fire back, using the suit's targeting computer to make quick and messy hits. It's an impressive stunt, though Motoko would probably have a very dim view of your Matrix-like theatrics.

There's something immensely gratifying about blowing a robot to pieces. Shards of metal and sparks fly everywhere as you rip them apart with each shot. You get back onto your feet and leap up onto the roof of the café. Not expecting the change in verticality, they're sitting ducks as you rain down a series of accurate blows.

Your heart is pounding really bad right now.

But your side of the park is clear. You open the comms channel, "Major, there's only one group of enemies remaining. That must be where the leader is."

"Meet me there, we'll attack from two angles and trap them."

You make sure that none of the people have stayed behind like the family you spotted before first. It seems that everyone has fled now that the robots have been dealt with. What it means for the area the enemy still controls is a mystery. You suspect that there are more civilians trapped over there too.

You dash through the park to reach the rendezvous point. When you arrive, Motoko is taking care of a pair of final stragglers. Even though Motoko is proficient in guns, she doesn't hesitate to get her hands dirty. One of the androids rushes up and attempts to swing at her, but she deftly ducks under the blow and wraps her arms around its neck.

With a mighty heave, she rips the rounded dome clean off the body, wires and pistons hanging free from the decapitated skull. She draws her gun and uses the decapitated corpse to deflect several bullets from the other, before returning fire and blowing it away.

Note to self, do not mess with the Major.

The area that the enemy commander has parked itself up in is the park's natural history museum slash botanical garden. It's a popular tourist attraction. "There must be hundreds of people inside," you conclude. Motoko bites her lip.

"Hmph."

Mitsuru returns with another reveal, "There's no need to guess. I've updated your operating system with a new helmet function, and calibrated it to match the heat signatures being emitted by the robots. Look towards the building, if you'd please."

From her remote location back at the garage, Mitsuru enables the thermal scope on your visor. The world turns black, blue and orange as the bodies inside become visible through the walls. "If I combine this thermal imaging with the audio and wavelength data being released by the enemy, I can do this!"

Suddenly, the blobby figures come into sharp focus. A wave passes over the screen – as it travels each individual body is tagged red or blue. Did Mitsuru manage to automatically detect the layout of every person in the building with nothing but that?!

"And compiling this with the floorplan of the building, we can do this!"

A three-dimensional model of the museum appears in your HUD, once again displaying the precise locations of every hostage and enemy robot. One figure stands alone in the middle of the main lobby area, guarded on all sides by four gunmen. Dozens of hostages are being kept under his watchful eye, huddled together at the bottom of the stairs.

You grunt, "That must be our man. And look at how many people he has!"

The other hostages are spread throughout the building, placed in prominent locations. Motoko isn't pleased, "He's placed the hostages in locations where they'll be easy to hit with a stray bullet. He's trying to tie our hands down."

"So what do we do?"

"We have to dismantle his little game, bit by bit. I've already got a plan, so listen closely and follow my orders…"