Chapter 2

Hannah immediately discharged her pistols into two lead robots and chucked the empty guns into robots standing behind the first ones when they crumpled to the ground after eating lead. She threw herself into movement to the right towards a mess of containers as the robots attempted to return fire. Being dozens of robots, she was clipped a few times by the army in front of her as she slid into cover. Hannah took out her primary weapon, an automatic rifle, and got up to return fire as robots marched towards her position.

Hannah rounded one of the containers, using it for cover. She peeked to fire back as she could. Roughly half of the robots were moving towards her. The other half of the force marched into the facility, followed by squat mecha. She couldn’t see the two skeletal mechs for her position but assumed they were moving.

The ground shuddered. One of the skeletal mechs walked past the containers where she took cover, oblivious to her presence.

“Maybe they’re there purely for anti-armor purposes,” she thought. Hannah participated in the Bastion Campaign where Yeshua and a Paladin-class Avatar held a bridge but the way they were used was more of siege weapons than anti-armor. The squad worked with several other squads to hold a fortress city and its spaceport from encroaching Metal People forces.

Hannah kept firing into the crowd of robotic infantry, who were attempting to dislodge her with inaccurate small arms fire. They were ineffective and Hannah was taking them down, although being robots, she was taking time doing so.

After three more robots on the ground, Hannah reloaded. She chucked her spent magazine to the void and snapped a fresh one before jamming it into her gun in one fluid motion. She pulled back on the charging handle and went back to work.

Hannah was shot in the back. Shots came from her rear. More shots from the flank, though these missed. Inaccurate robots and all. Hannah tossed a grenade at the feet of the robots directly ahead of her and turned to face her new adversaries. She narrowly missed getting stabbed by a bayonet attached to the rifle of one of the robots from behind. The sword stuck in the metal container and the robot attempted to pull it out. Hannah took the opportunity to shove her combat knife down the throat of the robot’s buddy before pulling it back out and slashing the bayonet guy in the neck. It went down with a thud beside its buddy.

The grenade went off when two more robots, the ones from her original flank, barreled in on her. Hannah registered three kills from the grenade while letting the two bots deflect their charge off her gear. She shoved them to each side as they came in and they crashed into another container. Hannah turned and popped their heads with half of her magazine. She reloaded as she took stock of the situation. More robots were closing in but they weren’t particularly effective, inaccurate small arms fire and no armor. No specialized versions either. Back at the dragon world, named such because it was within dragon territory, and those flying lizards didn’t mess around and were the size of skyscrapers, the squad encountered robot infantry with shotguns and sniper rifles. Back at the factory, there were snipers here and there, too.

But here, no such luck. Only basic infantry. Hannah mused there might be special robots in their enemy’s back pocket but she wasn’t fighting them right now.

Her flank and rear dealt-with, Hannah focused on the remaining robots still marching into her frontal field of view. She aimed for the head of the lead robots, popping them off in a few shots. She continued to lay into them, grinding them down with seven-point-six-two bullets. Hannah felt movement to her rear and sidestepped to the left. A robot came crashing down on top of where Hannah once stood. She snapped the gun down and put it out of its misery before continuing her killing spree.

One last robot and she was done with this lot. Hannah tossed her knife into its face and it went down with a thud. She walked over to it and casually placed it back in its sheath.

All in all, Hannah registered a little over twenty kills. About halfway to Avatar drop. She climbed the containers to the roof of the facility and took stock of the mess. Robots all over the place. Squat mechs running rampant through the facility. And two skeletal super mechs off in the distance. As she looked over the battlefield, one of the two skeletal mechs took a beam of blue electrical energy to the face and came crashing down. That was obviously a Herald-class Avatar with its soul-link active. Likely Alpha Squad.

Hannah thought about moving in their direction to provide addition support.

“Demon of the Night!”

Oh no. Here we go again.

“You will die for what you did at Factory Reborn! I will avenge my comrades! I will have your...”

Hannah was already moving. She knew her setup was not equipped to deal with these metal people so she was slipping off the roof and back into the facility.

“Hey, I wasn’t done! Come back!

“Ohhhhh, you gone and done it!

Hannah left that loser behind as she dropped off the roof and onto a container. She ran into a slide and dropped off that one to the ground. Before she could make it into any form of proper cover, an energy bolt hit the ground a few feet from her position.

“Galitilde Desilda!”

Then more bolts came in.

“Saquu! Saquu! Saquu!”

Hannah rushed into a slide and carried her slide into the nearest building. She slammed her palm onto a nearby console and the door closed. Unintelligible screaming was heard from beyond the doorway.

Hannah and her people had encountered these metal people before. They were a kind of super soldier deployed by their enemy and acted as noncommissioned field officers, having some control over the robotic soldiers and mecha. These super soldiers even had a super mecha suit, which they used like Hannah’s people’s Avatars, though these were much rarer.

The super soldiers wielded magic from their forearm blaster tool and could fly using jet boosters on their backs. Their magic required them to utter an incantation before firing so there was some delay to their attacks.

Individual super soldiers had a habit of grand standing and soapboxing and it wasn’t uncommon for them to stand still long enough monologuing to put sniper rifle rounds or anti-armor weapons into them.

They just couldn’t resist the opportunity to talk about how they will win and how they would crush their opponents while winning.

It was like an obsession.

A massive thud sounded on the door.

“You can’t escape us that easily, Fassy!”

That was the voice of a different metal person. Hannah didn’t know what a ‘Fassy’ was but it was likely some crude insult.

Another thud.

Then the door started to give way. It started to bend.

Then the door contorted. There was no mistaking the shape of that contortion. It was a fist.

Hannah backed away from the door and fled deeper into the facility. She ran across a squad of marines hacking away at several squads of robot soldiers. Hannah surprised them by dropping in and popping three robots’ heads off their shoulders, smashing one’s face with her fist (“Not the best move,” Hannah thought to herself), shoving her knife into the face of another, and finishing off the last two of the first squad with a sidearm.

As the sidearms were part of Hannah’s spirit kit, they materialized a minute after Hannah chucked them at the robots outside.

“Whoa, a Spirit!” said one of the marines over close quarters comms.

“Now the odds are in our favor!” went another.

“Shut up, you two. Still got a job to do. Spirit, lend us a hand?” The squad’s leader, presumably.

“Yeah, we keep running into more and more robots. This is our eighth squad,” the fourth one, female.

Hannah nodded towards the direction of the leader and got to work. She dove into the corridor, striking everything with her knife, rifle butt, and unloading her sidearm into robots left and right.

In a matter of seconds, Hannah finished off another squad. She was a lethal flurry of blade and bullets.

“Hooah!”

The marines were cutting down a second squad. One more to go.

“Demon of the Night! We have found you! Your doors mean nothing! Oof!” IT was male, different from the one that attempted to monologue to Hannah earlier, and with a deeper voice. Hannah didn’t catch a glimpse of him to confirm visuals, though.

The marines had turned around and put a pair of anti-tank missiles into the male super soldier.

“That’s for shelling my homeworld!”

“And that’s for burning my hometown to the ground!”

“Go, Spirit, we’ve got this. I’ve got a bone to pick with them myself. Marines! Keep it up!” the leader said.

Hannah hopped to it, rushing deeper into the facility, popping bursts at robotic soldiers as she went. She didn’t have an objective beyond kill whatever came into view. Hannah heard a low thudding sound from outside. She paused at a window just enough to see an Avatar drop to the ground on the other side of the facility. She paid it no heed and kept pushing into the building.

Down another corridor, past a locked door, down some stairs, and she was in a basement room. There was an open door to the outside so it wasn’t really a basement but it was below the main floor so basement it was. Hannah was intending to leave the building and link up with her comrades.

Then a super soldier dropped to the ground just beyond the doorway.

“Demon of the Night!”

“Not again,” thought Hannah. She steeled herself for the confrontation.

This one was different. He, she, whatever, was a person wearing a flowing black robe. They had a hood that obscured their face. Granted, other super soldiers had helmets that prevented Hannah’s people from identifying them, but this one was obscured by the shadow of the hood as well. Hannah could just make out the helmet, though.

One thing she noticed, the magic wand thing that other metal people had was on this one’s left hand ... arm, side. The right hand was exposed. It was still in an armored glove, though.

“You have done well, dispatching the robots we sent ahead but you are but a rat crawling through the sewer.”

Hannah said nothing. She gripped her rifle a bit tighter. She didn’t raise it, though.

“However, your journey has come to an end. Your fellow people are dead. Paladin Brutus has your rear. There is no way out. We, the Good People, will be victorious over you Demons.”

Hannah turned around. There was another super soldier at the end of the hallway, slowly advancing on her. Hannah started to sweat. It was covered in a more prominent armored suit. The marines were likely dead.

She turned back to the one guarding the door.

“What’s the matter, Little Rat? Scared? You should be. We’ll cleanse this land and all lands.”

Hannah turned around again. The armored super soldier was getting closer.

“Ganahdinovich.”

The super soldier pulled a hammer made of flame or plasma from the void. They kept slowly advancing on Hannah.

Hannah turned one more time.

The super soldier in the doorway positioned their hand to the side downward at a forty-five-degree angle. They opened their palm.

“Galooss,” the robed super soldier said.

A small cylinder of plasma flew out from the void into their palm, which immediately closed around it.

“Atislav.”

The super soldier activated the cylinder and it ignited a beam of plasma. The plasma had a red base interior and black flames.

It was very clear what this was. An elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

The robed super soldier started to slowly advance towards Hannah, walking into the doorway proper. Hannah backed up and felt her back hit a wall. She raised the rifle to shoulder height and prepared to make her stand.

The other super soldier had also entered the room.

“Now or never,” thought Hannah. Behind her helmet, Hannah furrowed her brow.

“Ye shall, die. Finally,” said the robed super soldier.

Hannah pointed her gun at the robed super soldier and fired off a burst of seven-point-six-two-millimeter bullets and in one fluid motion jumped towards the super warrior with the hammer. The warrior flinched, not expecting Hannah to go after him. She wasn’t, actually; it just looked like that to him. Hannah aimed her lunge at the wall to his right her left. She fired at the warrior for effect, which made him put up a hand to guard his face.

Hannah hit the wall and ran to the right, dropping a grenade at the feet of the warrior.

“Saquu! Saquu!”

The robed super soldier fired a couple of bolts at Hannah but she was too quick. Hannah hit the wall corner and kept going at the perpendicular turn. She jumped on the robed super soldier, sending their light sword flying and proceeded to beat their face in with her fist, the second time today she did this not-so-smart action. It did little but it did make the robed fighter attempt to claw her off their face.

“Ow, my body!” The grenade had gone off in the metal warrior’s face.

She got up and emptied her sidearm into the robed fighter before jumping off and hopping to the side, through the doorway, and to the outside, where a large battle between marines and robots was taking place. Two squads; eight troopers, were engaged in a firefight against maybe a hundred soldiers. The soldiers were dug in on the other side of the area near the edge of the cliff behind a series of low barriers. They were slowly losing ground to the robot soldiers. Hannah could see a few barriers ahead of them, closer to her, that they had to retreat from. The robots were going to push the troopers off the ledge.

Hannah got to it. Leaving behind the two losers in the room, Hannah slid down a small decline into the line of battle while chucking a pair of grenades deep into their lines. She put her knife into one robot and gunned two more down with her sidearm, which reloaded automatically while it was stowed. She put the handle section of the sidearm into the back of the head of the fourth robot and holstered it as she slammed the handle of the dagger into that robot. It went down in a heap.

The robots started to respond to the enemy at their backs. Several robotic soldiers turned to face her. She gunned them down with her rifle. The grenades went off in the distance, taking a dozen more robots out with their explosions.

Hannah was carving a path of death, destruction, and destroyed electronics towards those marines. Seeing an ally making their way to them, the marines redoubled their efforts, focusing down robots closer to Hannah’s position to help get a path for her.

More and robots fell to Hannah and the marines. She was up to thirty kills. And then...

“Demon of the Night!”

“The Night has come to an end!”

Those two were back.

Hannah paid them no heed and continued to carve into the robotic soldiers. She knew that being with the marines was a lot safer than having to deal with two super soldiers alone. She pulled out a tactical, a special knife that emitted sonic pulses, specifically for detecting nearby enemies, but was still a knife, and flung it into a robot soldier’s head, earning herself another kill.

“Hey, we weren’t finished!”

“No Demon gets to escape!”

She continued to ignore them. A burst into two last robots and the path was clear. Hannah wasted no time in running up to the marines and hopping the barricade they were providing fire from.

“Nice to see some good news,” said a marine, one of the squad leaders.

“How’s it hanging, Marines?” replied Hannah.

“Army of robots, some metal superheroes, couple of monster skeletons. The usual. Boring stuff, really. Yawn.” The squad leader made an exaggerated hand movement as if he was really yawning.

Hannah smiled behind her visor.

“The one with the hammer is new. So is the one with the plasma sword.”

“Noted, Spirit. Any insight?”

“Besides the hammer, he seems to have heavier armor. Still squeals when a grenade goes off at his feet, though. The other one seems to be the broody edgy type with their fancy fire sword.”

In the distance, the two metal-people were soapboxing about how they would finish Hannah and the marines off. Hannah saw an Avatar drop to the ground in the distance, off to her and the marines’ left. Either her squad or Alpha group.

“We will drive you off our planet!”

“The galaxy will be ours, Demons!”

Hannah and the marines paid them no mind.

The robots initially marching into the marines’ position continued to march so. Hannah emptied a mag into them. The other marines did their duty holding ground against the onslaught. Another dozen down but the robots seemed endless.

“Got any heavy weapons?”

“Some missiles. We were saving them for the big mechs.”

“Instead of doing that, put Hammer Bro down.”

“Will do.” Turning to the other marines, the squad leader said, “Marines, Anti-Armor weapons!”

Seven marines switched to their missile and electrobolt launchers.

“Aim at the big dude in the back.”

Seven sets of ADS sights activated.