4 CHAPTER SIX: THE FIGHT AND ITS AFTERMATH

Considering that Shaitan had made for himself quite a strong character, and he had a lot of armor, his body completely covered me. He just weighed quite a lot, so I could not keep his body from falling. I had to pull it over myself and, falling on my back, practically cover myself with his dead body in order to have at least some kind of protection. Well, at least my actions were quite unexpected for the Centurions, and the commander's quick death was a little shock for them. But if you are an experienced fighter, you shouldn't take off your helmet, talking to a potential opponent. He wanted to show off, old jerk, and so he died from two critical hits. The first, oddly enough, did not kill him, leaving ten percent of his life. It can be seen, the length of the blade was not enough to damage the brain through the eye orbit. Even though I did a second strike exclusively on reflexes just in case, it was the decisive blow.

When I fell with my back on the concrete floor and the body pressed the air out of my lungs, I heard a powerful explosion a little further down the corridor. If I had not heard it, I would clearly have felt it, because everything was trembling, even the floor, on which I was now lying. I managed to only pull out both of my pistols, without getting out from under the body, as the first bullets began to crash into my shelter. But from the door of the room where a powerful explosion occurred, a very large grenade flew. Most of the enemy fighters immediately fell to the floor, fleeing from the fragments that were not followed. Instead, after a clap, the grenade scattered around in many small elements throughout the corridor. In the meantime, I tried to crawl on my back to the nearest room and firing back at the soldiers who considered me the primary goal. Literally two seconds later, Sargos's voice came to me through the earpiece.

"Close your eyes!"

And each element, scattered along the corridor, flashed like a miniature sun. I barely managed to turn away my head and close my eyes, but it partially blinded my right eye. Why couldn't Sargos, damn it, warn half a second earlier. And the effect is weak. It seems that the enemy has light filters in their helmets, they moved like they were unaffected. I didn't have time to think more, because pain pierced my left arm just above the elbow. At the same time, I noticed two harpoons slam into the wall. And after them Castra slid her feet forward, using the coils in the bracelets, like a high-speed winch. Bursting into the middle of one of the large clusters of the enemy, she shot the harpoons and, after snapping energy in the boots, began to kill everyone. It's was a pleasure to see it, especially considering that the enemy could do nothing in full contact.

Behind her, like a ball for a bowling alley, Tilorn burst in, setting up his energy shield, ramming with it everyone who got in his way. Leaning out of the room from two sides, Quartz and Sargos covered him, firing mostly at those who tried to break in the distance from Tilorn. I finally got to the door of another room, getting out from under the body that was covering me, rolled into the room. Quickly re-armed and dragging the machine gun forward, throwing it up and wincing at the pain in my left hand, I popped out of the doorway and poured a long line opposite from my guys to take on the opponents running from there, immediately giving the order:

"In the shelter! Take defense."

I nearly shot a man who dropped in on me, but I almost tried to shoot, but then realized at the last moment that it was Castra. But the fighter thrusting behind her, I fed him with lead bullets, simply squeezing him with an automatic burst back into the corridor.

"Report!"

"A plus"

"OK"

"A plus"

"I'm three hundred light."

It means not only did the shots hit me, but also Quartz. Ok, now I'll make it hot for them, since they like it hot and spicy, so they will get what they crave for, and they are waiting for their share in the corridor.

"Grenades! Plasma! Throw them into the corridor," I continued to give orders, simultaneously releasing the machine gun and pulling the grenade out of my pouch. But the sudden movement gives back pain in my left hand, and I take my right hand with the grenade clamped back, adding. "Castra, the ring!"

She immediately understood what was required of her and, jumping up to me, clutched her fingers into the ring of the grenade. With a sharp movement I threw the grenade into the corridor, leaving the ring in the hands of Castra, and immediately moved to the right, hiding behind the wall from the wave. Oh my God, if I had a one second delay, and I would have roasted myself in the heat exhaust, it looks like I threw the last grenade that I had.

"Repeat! Fragmentation shell!"

Again, I give orders to the headset, saving every fraction of a second, chewing the endings of the words. This time Castra immediately reached out to me and with a quick movement pulled the ring out. I just had to put my hand behind the doorjamb, throwing out a metal blank of an offensive grenade. One, two, three – there's an explosion. Well done, judging by the number of messages flashing in the logs. But I cannot stop. Changing the magazine case, I shouted into the microphone:

"Tilorn, come to me! The others - take control."

Immediately after that, I jerked from my room into the corridor, grimacing at the pain in my hand and clenching his teeth at the realization that life was leaving me drop by drop. The damage was slight, the impulse charge went tangentially, but the skin and the flesh broke off quite well, hanging at the same time a bleeding point. Now, unfortunately, there was no time to treat wounds, I had to quickly suppress the resistance of the enemy, until they morally regained consciousness and were grouped for a full-fledged rebuff. Having jumped out into the corridor, I immediately turned in the opposite direction from the mess that we had arranged, and, kneeling on my knee, took aim at the passage. A moment later, Tilorn ran up with an activated shield and, crouching in front of me, formed a shelter for me.

We did it literally at the last moment, because the first fighters left behind the corner who was in the cover and who was now rushing to help. In a few short bursts, I made them disperse into rooms or move beyond the bend of the wall that would cover them. Having seized the moment, I quickly looked around to see how the others were doing. While Sargos with the revolvers was finishing off those in whom life still glimmered, Quartz with his shotgun controlled the doors to the rooms where the survivors could hide. It was gratifying that he had time to bandage, as I could see the bandage on the right thigh. But Castra, pulling off her helmet, stood on all fours almost immediately behind me and tried to suppress her gagging urges. Here, of course, there is no such unpleasant functional, but the psyche doesn't care deeply about it, which is not surprising, considering that there are now a dozen and a half partially burned, and partially turned into a bloody mess of bodies.

"Quartz, replace me! Sargos, clear the rooms! First comes the grenade, then you, and do not spare them!"

When Quartz ran to me and replaced me behind cover, I finished off the rest of the case, slightly damaging several opponents. As soon as Quartz took my place, I immediately pulled back and, taking Castra, who had already curled up like a fetus and she was weeping, so I pulled her into the nearest vacant room. I mentally cursed myself in every way. I'm the old idiot, because I know very well how the killing spree influences unprepared psyche. This is not the mobs to kill. Consciousness associates humanoids with real living people. Well, at least only Castra was out of order, and after all, I could remain alone in the ranks after such a colorful battle. Although Tilorn, most likely, would not even pay attention to this massacre, with doctors in this matter it is much easier. Dragging the poor girl to the shelter, hugging her, I tried to calm her down.

"Don't cry, my girl, everything is going to be alright, calm down. It's just a game," I said softly, stroking her hair with my healthy hand. "Everything is over; they will revive in twelve hours..."

For about thirty seconds, I tried to calm her down with a soft voice, convincing me that everything was okay. When she almost stopped sobbing, I called Irala.

"Irala, sit with her a little bit and talk. She cannot be left alone now."

The artificial intelligence silently nodded to me without a hint of a smile and sat down near Castra, having started a conversation, and I was no longer listening, as I was heading for the door to join the still-going fight. Having reloaded the machine gun, I caught a glimpse of the doorjamb. Quartz coped with his task so far, driving away the enemy, but here a couple of dents and scratches on his armor appeared - it is clear that he was hooked on a tangent. It means that I have time to bandage myself, and then in less than a minute I already had half of my health. Having finished with the dressing up and quickly analyzing our situation, I came to a sad conclusion that defense is fraught with failure.

"Tilorn, Quartz, moving up by steps. Yours is left side, I will go to the right. It is necessary to squeeze them to the surprises of Sargos."

"A plus!" bringing to me the double response of Tilorn and Quartz.

"Cover me up," I added.

Immediately I was running through the entire width of the corridor to the opposite wall, but rather to the doorway, which is slightly closer to the enemy than the position of the guys. When I reached the planned point, I immediately leaned out of the doorway and, activating the "Doublet line" and cut two fighters.

"I am doing them," I notified my guys of my readiness.

Tilorn, slightly raising the shield so that the lower edge of the energy frame did not cling to the floor, with a quick, mincing step, moved even closer to the enemy, covering himself and Quartz, who did not lag behind him by a single step. So, gradually changing positions and periodically throwing grenades at the enemy, for about ten minutes we squeezed the remaining fighters into the traps of Sargos. And when the demolisher himself jumped out at their backs, starting to thrust large bullets from their revolvers, the issue of forcefulness became already resolved. We finished off the enemy literally in a couple of minutes, completely ignoring the fact that initially there were six times more of them. Returning to the scene of the massacre and carefully inspecting the results, I grunted satisfactorily and said quite loudly:

"No, these are not centurions, they are fucking morons."

After that I stopped the recording in the neural interface. It remains now to edit the video, delete the unnecessary scenes and find someone who will upload it on the forums in real life. Well, no one has banned the informational battlefield yet. Let's see how they get out of the situation when their gangs were wiped out by only five people, and despite the fact that no one has the combat profession at the moment. Turning to the others, I came across Tilorn's questioning glance.

"Quartz, go quickly to Castra, you are much needed near her."

Maybe it seemed to me, but he even exhaled with relief. And then I did not see how he constantly looks into that direction and is worried.

"Tilorn," I continued wearily, turning to our doc, "let me answer all your questions when get back to the base, since we still need to clean up the laboratory."

"OK. And what should we do with these?" He looked at the dead bodies.

"Now we will take them into rooms, and then let trophy seekers deal with them. We still give Carefire his share, don't we?"

While Quartz was sitting in the room with Castra, the three of us began to clear the corridor. The most annoying in this situation was that we spoiled so many good trophies. When we removed about half of the bodies, our girl came out of the room.

"Sorry," she began, being embarrassed. "I just did not expect all of this, so I broke down..."

Everybody rushed to reassure her, assuring that everything is ok and it happens to everyone. And I just stood and smiled like a jerk, I was just insanely happy that she had moved away from the shock, and that everyone was so worried about her.

"By the way," I remembered the question that had been tormenting me for quite a long time. "And how did you figure out where to undermine the wall? We did not plan this in advance."

"Irala helped us," Tilorn told me. "It is also connected to local video surveillance systems, so I was able to indicate the place where to blow up so that they could go to the rear."

"Damn, I could have guessed. Castra, and what did you slide on your ass into the crowd?" I continued the empty chatter, looking at Castra. Given that Tilorn looked at me and winked, he seemed to understand my idea.

"I didn't slide on my ass, but slid with my legs forward," she began to resent. "And in general, what was I supposed to do: crawl on my belly? I almost flipped over after the harpoons, their power is enormous ..."

Oh my, there are no brakes on the rape train, as they say. Sargos approached and defiantly brushed her ass. To which she started chatting even more, finally blushing. Tilorn also added add fuel to the controversy, replying to her; only the poor Quartz tried to support Castra. In general, we laughed for about five minutes. Let it be better to be distracted from what we saw, if only he would not become isolated. After removing part of the tension in this way, we began to prepare for a further raid on the laboratory. Tilorn treated my wounds very professionally, as well those of Quartz and restored our health with the use of his serums. While the others were checking equipment and weapons, I had to dig into the remains of Shaitan, until I found an access card. Coming out of the room into which we had dragged all the bodies, I found that the others are already ready and are just waiting for me.

"So, I think that everyone is already familiar with Irala?" In response, everyone affirmatively nodded his head, even Irala, whose hologram stood next to the others. "We came to rescue her from here, for this we need to go to the central laboratory. Given our previous battle and your unexpected appearance even for me, the question arises: will we have enough explosives to get there directly, through the walls?"

"It will be almost enough, but not sufficient," Irala replied to me, looking first at Sargos. "The remains of explosives may not be enough for the last wall. We have already calculated this option."

"Ok, then the next question. If we disable defensive artificial intelligence, will the defense system shut down or is it autonomous?"

"Only traps are autonomous, but the mechanoids and turrets are controlled directly by the artificial intelligence "Citadel", without it they will not even move."

"Then we will try, there is every chance to get mechanoid as a pet for Quartz."

Quartz, hearing about the pet, behaved just like a hunting dog, and made a stand, and his eyes lit up like two lights. Having made a promotion plan, we began to implement it. We had to go through three walls to get to the central laboratory. There were no problems with the first one; it was easy enough to overcome it and carefully removing the defenses in this sector, we moved on. The second wall and the defense sector were a little harder for us, but we managed to do it there as well. But before the last wall, we had to wait a little while working on a plan of action. According to Irala, the central laboratory was guarded by a fighting robot approximately two meters high, armed with large-caliber machine guns, located on both sides, in the manner of retractable turrets. The artificial intelligence "Citadel" was located in a massive system unit, which was built into the wall. But the carrier with Irala was almost in the opposite direction. It was necessary to divide the squad into three groups. The only problem that arose was with Tilorn's shield. When I tried to replace one of the batteries in it, my fingers became dumb, and a warning sign popped up in front of my eyes:

You cannot perform this action. Insufficient skill level!

I had to wait for twenty minutes, while Quartz from scrap materials designed an adapter for it and added batteries, given that he had good technical skills, although they were well developed in him, but they were still not sufficient. The loss of energy in additional power sources reached forty-two percent. But we still managed to increase the energy intensity of the shield almost three times. The explosion made a rather small opening in the wall, but with difficulty we could squeeze through one by one. Before the dust fell off after the explosion, Tilorn burst into the room, immediately activating the shield, covering the passage in the wall. I rushed into the room after him, immediately began to shoot lead bullets in order to activate the robot. This scrap metal on the four bearing paws-supports turned out to have a power shield, but now I had to inflict no damage, but to accumulate an aggression on myself so that it would not start chasing the others.

Having shot half the magazine case, I gave the command to the others so that they could move. Castra skipped right behind me, moving at maximum speed along the left wall. Her task was now the simplest: she needed to get to the carrier of Irala and remove it from the premises. And if we are destroyed, by any means deliver it to the base. Quartz with Sargos rushed in the other direction, also clinging to the wall. Now the main hope is Quartz. If he can remove the processor, the robot will shut down, as will most of the defensive systems. The robot, having completely gone into combat mode, opened fire alternately from two turrets, releasing small lines for a dozen rounds of ammunition. I managed to make only a couple of shots in meager breaks, while one turret fell silent and gained the second started.

"Ninety. Eighty-five. Eighty…"

Tilorn's report was how much energy was left, shielding me from unplanned holes in my body. With such a furious expenditure of energy we would not last long. Yeah and for Tilorn it is extremely hard, large bullets hit his shield so hard digging on the shield that he gradually drove back, leaving large scratches on the floor by his shoes. At a value of seventy-five percent of the remaining energy, both groups reached their destination. And if Castra just grabbed the carrier and immediately rushed back, then as soon as Quartz, after a little digging, he opened the protective plate, opening access to the insides of the defense lawn, the robot immediately left Tilorn and me alone and began to turn around to them.

"Hide quickly! Attracting attention and causing aggression failed!" I shouted loudly, realizing that we don't have time to do anything.

No one imagined that the robot would change the target, in theory it should have continued to shoot Tilorn's shield, trying to get to me, completely ignoring everyone else as being less dangerous targets. But it seems he didn't care about all our plans, and Quartz or Sargos became its priority target. Further events happened so quickly, being completely uncontrollable. Even in the middle of the rotation, the robot began to spin the right machine-gun turret, releasing the first ammunition exactly ten centimeters before the guys, completely crossing the line with Sargos, who jumped forward, covering Quartz with his body, immediately painting his icon gray. But large-caliber bullets, if they noticed his attempt, didn't get much, reaching Quartz, splashing part of the wall and the technical hatch with his blood.

"IGOOOR!!!" came a desperate cry from the left side.

I managed to turn my head just to notice how Castra, in jumping onto the robot, broke into its power shield and flew back with a stunning debuff. The robot, on the other hand, completely ignored it, turning to us, clearly with the intention of completing its intentions. Gathering to command Tilorn's departure and quickly sorting through the options for picking up Castra while doing so, I heard a low voice in my earpiece.

"Fuck you *****, I will not fail the task for the second time!" Quartz whispered with difficulty.

The middle part of his body resembled one big hole; the upper and lower halves were connected with only a few patches of skin and muscles. But life in his health bar was still on the very bottom. And he, clinging to the edge of the technical hatch, one hand stretched to the processor, which he did not have time to extract literally for a second. Squeezing his fingers, he jerked out the processor, after which his icon also turned gray, sending him for replication. The robot, having lost control of the artificial intelligence, slightly twisted to the right and to the left, having picked up limbs for itself, switched to the standby mode, becoming absolutely safe for us.

"Hmm ... VolPer, if I did not know that in twelve hours they would be revived, honestly, I would have killed you."

"Believe me; I probably would have shot myself. I'm strongly attached to them. Okay, enough to talk this over. You'd better check what's up with Castra, and I will call trophy players. Yes, and we need to see how much damage we did to the robot, I want to make Quartz a gift of it for his heroism."

"And are they going to be alright?" interrupted me Irala, who was nearby.

"Do not worry, in twelve hours they will come out of the replication capsule completely healthy. But if you want to see them, you will have to wait, the body is not ready for you yet, but I was promised to be given it in a couple of days." I reassured her.

"OK. And you know, I probably will continue to help you."

"Why?"

"I like them: so many emotions, feelings, and a whole range of new emotional colors."

Smiling at her, I began to type a message to the commander of the trophy team.

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