"Stay on 'em!" I shouted at my teammates.
There was a double-decker ramp with a walled banister at the end of our path which went up and connected with the catwalk. To our left as we ran was a massive wall of ten-meter thick shatter-proof glass that spanned to the ceiling, out of which we could see us approaching the terrestrial planet Mars, along with its uniquely layered, sulfur and olivine rich atmosphere.
They wish to die on the planet of warriors? So be it.
Sithandra shouted, "Moving!", took two long, bouncing strides, then jumped and flapped her huge, rosy wings and flew up to the catwalk. There, she opened up with her rifle. Alvin and I continued the chase from down below. I was heavier, slower, and he got to the stairs before me. But I was still close behind. We raced up the stairs three at a time in tandem, pulling on the banister to propel ourselves forward. An explosion boomed somewhere on the landing above us and cut the peppering staccato of Sithandra's Model 5 short.
Over the COMs, we heard her irritated cry,"Rrha! I'm down!" When we reached the top landing, Sithandra was on the ground. She was sitting up, unloading deadly concentrated energy into an unseen enemy via Panther.
"He's reloading!" she warned.
Alvin Roy went for Sithandra. I went for her attacker. When I swung around the corner with my own Model 5 raised, I was confronted by the Reptilian that had been trailing Feezmo, standing there in the middle of the hallway that the catwalk narrowed into. He was fumbling to load another string of flak canisters into his M814 and I squeezed the trigger all the way back, intending to hold it until I saw him standing there no more. This lead henchman gave up on the reload, dropped his weapon, and turned his back to shield himself from the hailstorm of phaser beams. One of his hands came up a second later holding a primed dart grenade and let it fly.
It was a wild, desperate throw. I could clearly tell it was going to miss well before it even left his hand. But I worried about it flying over me and sinking into one of my teammates, so I dashed forward and swatted the grenade out of the air with my trusty Model 5 like a tennis racket. The grenade's superheated spiked end impaled clean through the slide and whined like a creaky floorboard. I chucked the whole gun at this interloper getting between us and his bosses and equipped my third lockdown module. I reminded myself that I had to save the last one for the right occasion.
The weapon exploded midway between us. I crashed my fists together and went rigid as my armor locked up, and red hot darts and pieces of debris from my destroyed Model 5 bounced harmlessly off of my metal frame just seconds later. My opponent wasn't nearly as protected; all those flying deadly fragments hit him at such a high velocity that afterwards, his scales closely resembled a cheese grater. I felt two solid taps on my shoulder, waited a second, then released my grip on the module.
I returned to the realm of mortality with the usual waking rush of sound, of life. I'd given whichever teammate had tapped me with the all clear enough time to get back before the module shorted out. In addition to granting the user complete invincibility, each armor lock module also charged a short range electromagnetic pulse. This EMP was activated once the shielding phase was complete, and was powerful enough to knock out energy shielding, dissipate incoming phasers, and knock out all power to any vehicles within range. I was shaking my head and trying to regain my senses, when someone grabbed my arm.
It was Alvin. I vaguely heard him tell me to pull myself together, and opened my eyes to see him release me and approach the moaning Reptilian mercenary. I closed my eyes once more. I felt hungover, sick to my stomach. I told myself that I would try to find an alternative piece of armor equipment, but knew before I thought it that I was lying. At any rate, the merc really started howling once Alvin got his hands on him. Normally one of us would step in and end it before he took things too far (even for Enforcers, there's a blurred line between unhealthy coping mechanisms and one's losing touch with sanity) like he had a tendency to do. This time I'd let him. We had a score to settle.