Chapter 46 - Breach at the Salt Refinery
The corridor erupted into a hell of white-hot tracers and screaming tungsten.
The first automated combat drone leaped onto the corridor wall, running horizontally along the vertical surface while its rotary cannon chewed through the concrete pillars sheltering our team. Chunks of masonry exploded in blinding clouds of dust, the muzzle blast filling the narrow subterranean passage with an ear-shattering, continuous roar.
"Vance, right flank! Take its sensor suite!" I yelled, dropping to one knee and firing a controlled four-round burst into the drone's primary optical dome.
The tempered glass shattered, and the machine spasmed, its rounds wilding out into the ceiling and severing an overhead freon line. A cloud of super-chilled gas hissed into the corridor, blinding our thermals.
From within the mist, the second drone lunged.
It struck one of our Vanguard operators, slamming him against the floor with crushing mechanical weight. The operator screamed as the drone's hydraulic manipulator pinned his shoulder, the rotary barrel swinging down to execute him at point-blank range.
Without thinking, I dropped my rifle, drew the combat knife from my chest rig, and lunged.
I drove the six-inch reinforced steel blade directly into the exposed wiring harness beneath the drone's armored neck joint, twisting the blade with all the leverage in my body. Sparks cascaded over my tactical gloves, shocking my forearms with an agonizing surge of voltage. The drone shrieked—a high-pitched mechanical whine of protesting servos—and shuddered violently.
"Get off him!" Vance roared, sliding in from the left and jamming an anti-armor breaching slug directly into the drone's primary battery compartment, pulling the trigger.
The battery ruptured with a dull, concussive bang. The machine collapsed into a smoking heap of dead carbon fiber and hydraulic fluid.
I hauled the downed operator to his feet. His shoulder armor was crushed, but his ballistic vest had held. "Can you walk?" I demanded.
"I can fight, Major," he grunted, slamming a fresh magazine into his rifle.
"Move! We have thirty-two minutes before those orbital rods release!"
We advanced through the smoke, clearing room after room with brutal, methodical violence. David's automated defenses were formidable, but they lacked the intuitive adaptability of human operators who had spent their entire lives surviving in combat zones. We used EMP charges, breaching foam, and concentrated crossfire to turn his multi-million-dollar drone security grid into smoking scrap metal.
Finally, we reached the blast doors of the central command hub.
The door was eight inches of solid bank-vault steel, sealed by electronic magnetic locks and biometric scanners. Mounted above the door was an intercom speaker.
A soft, amused chuckle crackled through the speaker.
"You always were remarkably stubborn, Elena," David's voice echoed through the empty corridor. "Father always said you had the brains of an infantry mule. He was wrong, of course. You have the tenacity of a cornered badger. But you're too late."
"Open the door, David," I said, stepping up to the speaker, keeping my weapon aimed at the biometric scanner.
"Why would I do that?" he replied smoothly. "In twenty-eight minutes, the world as you know it ceases to exist. The corrupt, bloated institutions that you bleed for—the ones that discarded you, that treated you like an expendable piece of meat while paying politicians millions—they will be reduced to smoking craters. I am not destroying the world, sister. I am performing an amputation."
"You're murdering tens of millions of people to settle an inferiority complex," I said coldly.
"Inferiority?" David laughed, the sound sharp and manic. "Look where I am, Elena! Look what I built while you were crawling through ditches in the Middle East, obeying the orders of senile generals! I built an empire from Father's arrogance and your absence! Come inside, sister. Let me show you what true power looks like."
May you like
With a deep, pneumatic hiss, the heavy magnetic locks disengaged. The massive steel doors slid back into the walls, revealing the inner sanctum of the Obsidian complex.
***
