For Blood Or Ash - Chapter 2

Combat engineers slammed seismic probes into rock to sound the asteroid, clamped acoustic and electrical sensors to frayed steel to map the mechanical infrastructure, and set gravimetric sensors sniffing for artificial curvature. Yhzmal did not wait for the data, however, before setting his cutters to breaching blast doors. Wherever they were going afterword, first, they were going in. Firefights erupted immediately in multiple corridors.

The centurio sent the bulk of his units into the fiercest resistance. That would prove incorrect, he knew; but the enemy could take false comfort in his error. That should buy time to find pod hatches. Escape routes would confirm the target. Yhzmal selected a squad of assault strikers. Much more compact than the gargantuan centurio, their bodies resembled cubical amalgamations of sinew, polymer, and steel. Laced with artificially cooled nervous systems, they were boxed lightning. “Jumping” down to the entrance of a freight corridor, the small force held back as a front of MTACs and marines advanced on processing areas. Yhzmal’s intuition had warmed to this direction, but he would wait on Other Rabbit – a twitchy Caldari tube boy who was not the famous pirate – before making a final decision.

Beneath a brassy mop, behind glazed green eyes, Other Rabbit “listened” to every signal that reached him: telemetry of advancing units, engineers reporting, a downlink from the Drake, even the enemy’s encrypted transmissions. He didn’t need to understand, only perceive. When his wide eyes finally blinked clear, the centurio received an impression of a “significant chamber.” From it, three chutes – just this side of not quite imperceptible amid the noise – led to the asteroid’s surface. Yhzmal nodded to Other Rabbit’s twin kameiras. Little demon securely clamped between, they blasted for space. The Lady did not like her cherished prodigy in harm’s way long.

Demolitionists raced to each camouflaged exit. Certainly, agile pods could have slipped people out already. But some layer of command remained to direct defenses, and those would not escape. Taking position cautiously, the combat engineers scanned for signs of use. Two reported negative; thermal maps suggested the third had either been used, or misfired. The Drake’s crew identified no pods in scanner logs, but asteroids could conceivably have provided cover long enough to orient and warp. Yhzmal ordered the hatches mined with bursters. If a pod tried to get out now, its electronics would fry into uselessness: no drive, no soul flash. The kameira did consider charging in the out doors. Leaving some hope alive, however, could keep the enemy from ritual suicide before EMPs blanked nervous systems.

Rapidly, Yhzmal planned his route through the structure. It started with the freight corridor. Firing boosters, the assault squad closed on the nearest fray, crashing into a factory’s artificial gravity and rolling to cover. The fight here was not large: scattered defenders pinned amid heavy equipment by two infantry fronts. The heavy fighting raged far above, amid warrens of catwalks and tunnels. Yhzmal directed his squad’s personal rail guns into the windows of an elevated supervisory deck. The thick glass did not shatter easily, but the guns could penetrate. Once irregularities existed, rockets did the rest. On powered leaps, the squad crashed over control panels, smashed through doors, and barreled into an access corridor; gunfire, grenades, quick duck to the side – charge.

Yhzmal exulted in close combat.

He swung an impossibly thick, broad single-edge blade with inhuman strength, stabbing, slicing - crushing armor and bone. Feeling his opposition through a web of sensory feeds, processing impossibly fast, the giant knew exactly where to move. Men with guns usually tried to aim, and rarely had the time they imagined. Nearly teleporting around a corner, Yhzmal’s hand crushed a throat, slammed the corpse down, dropped on top of it as shots hissed through empty air. Slashing up, the centurio’s blow threw his next opponent against the steel lattice ceiling. A hurled “knife,” detatched from a pseudo-magnetic sub-dermal mount, pinned the body up. Spinning a slash to make others leap back, the kameira smashed into an adjacent chamber through its wall. As defenders rushed to keep him in sight, they forgot the rest of his squad. Rail guns cut them to ribbons.

So it went around a circle of functional constructs, storage chambers, and processing facilities. Most of the enemy had been drawn to the intense fighting – falling for their own trap by baiting it. A series of short, vertical spines flickered through Yhzmal’s mind. Those enabled rapid movement between decks. The centurio raced to cut down reinforcements in a torrent of piercing rounds. End game: shift down, fight; hustle to center, slash around a staging area – fire through catwalks. Down, in, around again. Rush to a bulkhead door, two defenders – one decapitated, the other’s chest crushed through by a giant palm.

“Cutters!”

The centurio didn’t need to say it. Beams smoked, flickering through frequencies to find greatest effect. Within moments, Yhzmal pulled the heavy door into the corridor to reveal a shaft. Rungs ran into darkness above and below. Behind, kameiras ripped more doors from sockets, tore out panels, built a pile of trash. Most, they hurled down the chute. Down, down artificial gravity pulled it. Lower turret, neutralized; the upper would hurt.

Yhzmal wrapped a chestplate from one of his men to his own neck and hefted the remaining debris onto his back. One arm forward to clasp a rung, he rushed the chute. Heavy fire pounded down. Two men ducked under him and scrambled halfway to the bottom. Squeezing into position, they began cutting. A third entered the chute with a large case in grasp. The rest of the squad ran like hell. Shots from above cut deeper and deeper into the centurio’s shell. Yes, ut, cut! They didn’t need to open the door, just breach the pillbox’s insulation. Molten metal seeped into Yhzmal’s back. He disabled pain throughputs: no longer “need-to-know.”

At last, the door gave, a little, a little more… Now!

The cutters dropped as the third man slammed his case into the small breach and released. Although the centurio’s nervous system was extremely well shielded, such a powerful device overwhelmed even that. Blinded instantly, his massive body sagged between corridor floor and rung. Only staggering will kept strength in his hands. Losing that grip meant plunging head first into darkness, heated scrap chasing after – not good, and the burst was already bad enough. At least the fire from above had stopped.

Feebly, Yhzmal moved his free arm toward the wall, taking as much care as he could not to disturb the debris on his back. He did not feel the wall so much determine that his arm could move no further. Shaking, he slid his thumb up the wall toward the next rung. Eventually, “something” stopped his motion again and he closed his grip. As he pulled into a more vertical position, the metal on his back scraped down into the corridor and away from the men below. Pain circuits he never realized existed lit up. The giant wanted to slide away, too, but all he could do was hang in place, blind and nearly paralyzed. If those who ran put enough distance and crap between themselves and the blast, they would return soon enough. Those below, suffocating without pulses, would die soon without attention. Everyone knew what to do.

The centurio had faith they would do it.