Stormblood, стр. 139

Dread tightened in my stomach. Please let everyone survive this. Please let everyone just survive this.

Kowalski wore gunmetal-grey armour, bulky and razor-trimmed; she’d swapped out her helmet visor for sulphur-coloured magnifying optic lenses that completely obscured her face.

‘You’d think we were on a deserted station or something,’ said Kuen. He had hawk wings carved into his helmet, and he peered around with interest as we walked in lockstep. Vanto, a huge brute of a man in bright-red armour, took no such notice and stomped down the silent corridors, his heavy assault slugrifle angled around every corner.

‘Eyes open,’ Saren muttered. ‘The Suns could be lying in ambush.’

‘Oh, I hope they are. Let them try and get past me,’ Jasken drawled. The spacedecking trembled under his ungainly footsteps, the skullface etching on his helmet turning him into an armoured ghoul in the dark. He wore a harness pimped out with bizarre grenades and experimental-looking explosives.

We couldn’t pinpoint the House of Suns’ exact location, but probe scanners placed them in the vicinity of the asteroid’s pinnacle, deep in the Void Zones. Our forces were represented as clusters of red dots in the half-completed blueprint of the Void Zones, slowly expanding across my HUD as we headed towards our agreed rendezvous. Jae expected another assault. I doubted she’d anticipate the stealthy approach we were taking.

The massive lifts around us were rigged to transport chainships up to the most damaged Void Zones. I shifted impatiently as we climbed in and activated for the top floor, the age-old mechanisms groaning. Suddenly, the stormtech hammered inside me, frantic and fast. I frowned, but the sensation grew as we inched upwards, until it felt like I was attached to an electrical charge.

Then I knew.

‘Jae’s starting it,’ I snapped into my commslink, swapping to the all-units channel. ‘She’s activating the Surge now!’

Kowalski swore. We’d all known it was going to happen, but had hoped for more time, maybe even to get there before she started.

The lift shuddered to a halt. The lights spluttering and dying as the ancient mechanism groaned and conked out.

Our armour lights winked in the dark. The stormtech was beating inside me, but didn’t feel like it was growing now. Jae had pumped me full of the enhanced stormtech she was using for her own men, not the Surge-stormtech she was spreading through Compass civilians. I was in the clear, but my body could still feel the ripple effect, like a ghostly transmission on some untapped radio frequency.

‘Out, out, out!’ I engaged the armour’s hydraulics and used the boost to spring the whole four metres to punch through a hatch on the elevator roof. We were in a deep, echoing shaft, simulated wind howling down. My armour lent me the strength to wrench open the rusted door and slip through. I stabbed the emergency override button and the elevator started grinding up again.

I tapped into Compass’ frequency as it rose, getting a feed from Starkland’s main square. There were two dozen skinnies and Reapers convulsing on the ground. Another dozen were stumbling along the street, eyes turning blue as they threw themselves at people, broke windows, and set themselves to destroying everything in their path. One stumbled into the path of an autocar and went flying, crashing down on the pavement in a blue smear. Someone screamed as a skinnie dragged an old woman by her hair across the street.

‘Saren, we have to move!’ I said as the others arrived, already moving ahead down the dim hall plastered with more Suns symbols.

‘I hear you,’ Saren said. Similar affirmatives echoed down the commslink.

I was about halfway down the hall when my body pulsed a warning. I dropped as a dark muzzle aimed towards me and spat three-round burst, crackling past my head and thudding into the wall. The figure poked out of cover, training her rifle on me again, but I’d already bounded forward and driven my slingshiv into her heart. She collapsed at my feet with a thud, yells ricocheting down the halls.

We’d arrived.

My fireteam scrambled around me, weapons primed and readied. The familiar rhythm of sliding into formation, dissecting the battlefield, working alongside my squad, buzzed through me like a long-lost memory as we burst together into an area clustered with a jungle of scaffolding. Two or three fireteams’ worth of cultists stared at us down the barrel of their weapons.

The room erupted into chaos. Streams of gunfire shredded wooden beams to splinters, smashed metal into hot red chunks and crumpled scaffolds into gnarled scrap. Multicoloured bursts of gunfire crisscrossed the room in rapid streaks. We slammed into our positions, Arya, Vanto and Katherine performing a wide flank, issuing bursts of suppressing fire and drawing the Suns’ attention. The rest split in two: Saren and Kuen, and me and Jasken, each mini-division covering each other. Jasken was roaring insults and taunts, throwing micronades, the room heaving with violent shockwaves and detonating with fiery explosions, frying optic nerves and photoreceptors. Supercharged projectiles sliced past my head, tearing a mouthful of metal from the walls. My armour’s shielding rippled in bright blue clouds, a Harvester leaning over a banister and pouring small-arms fire into my chest. I angled my high-calibre autorifle upwards and returned a salvo of superheated rounds, tearing through the scaffolding and through the shooter’s face like wet bark. A hailstorm of gunfire clattered on the metal around me, cultists already swinging around to target me. Vanto let rip a burst of covering fire, sending the assailants scrambling for cover, giving me time to tear up through the scaffolding to the next floor. My visor flashing urgent warnings. I ducked into cover, blind firing to give Jasken the time to reach me. A round sparked off Jasken’s helmet, knocking him sideways with a grunt. I slammed my shoulder into the cultist who’d done the deed, sending her flailing backwards, before blasting her twice in the head. She tumbled from the scaffold and went smashing to the floor. Panting, I helped Jasken to his