Chapter 14: Out of the Frying Pan

They moved away from the stairwell, heading down another small corridor. This one opened up into a massive space, Xipa craning her neck to get a look at the high ceiling above their heads. The room was as wide and almost as long as the factory floor they had just left, but it extended far higher, maybe two storeys up. There were tall windows that spanned from the floor to the ceiling. They were covered in grime now, but they would once have let natural light flood in, and they would have provided a wonderful view of the city.

The floor space was taken up by curving office tables, no two exactly alike. The chairs were no more uniform, some of them styled as padded stools, while others had back supports and a slot for the occupant’s tail. Old holographic projectors and touch displays lay long dormant, coated with layers of dust, and there were still PDAs and personal belongings strewn about. Her eyes wandered to a cup that was sitting beside a touch panel, the mold that had sprouted inside it so overgrown that it overflowed the container’s bounds. They must have been working when the invasion had happened. This was another time capsule, frozen in place as though some all-powerful deity had hit the pause button.

Great pains had been taken to make the environment more welcoming, as Valbara’nay architectural styles tended to do, and someone had used dividing walls that only rose about five feet high to break up the sightlines. They were organic in their design, placed strategically to provide privacy without being overbearing, leaving the space above them open like the sky. There were recesses in the floor that were filled with piles of cushions where the flocks who had once worked here could relax, and there were raised platforms like balconies that jutted from the walls between the windows, linked by walkways that passed over the workspace like bridges.

There were planters, too, spread out all over the place. She could see boxes where shrubs and ferns would have grown, and some of the walls were covered in racks of living vegetation. What had once been carefully tended decorations were now either long-dead or running wild, a few of the hardy creepers that had once adorned the walls now scaling the dirt-caked windows in search of sunlight.

At the far end of the room was a large water feature, an artificial waterfall housed in a massive, semi-circular pool. A facsimile of a rock cliff face rose almost to the ceiling, now overgrown with plant life. It looked as though water had probably cascaded down its face when it was in working order, but the pool was stagnant now that the pumps were no longer running, the weeds that were growing there coloring it a murky red that made it look like blood.

“The folks who designed this place sure had a hatred of straight lines and sharp edges,” Bluejay muttered as they made their way inside. The scouts fanned out, stalking between the desks, the features that would have once put them at ease now having the opposite effect as they created blind spots and hiding places. “What was this, some kind of fancy office?”

“Looks like it,” she mused, passing by an old vending machine. “Maybe some kind of administrative or marketing wing of the factory.”

“What’s with the catwalks?” he added, nodding to one of the snaking walkways that was suspended above their heads.

“My people are more at ease when we’re off the ground,” she explained, pausing to check behind a dividing wall that was overgrown with red creepers. “I suppose it’s a throwback to our early history, when we would climb trees to escape predators.”

“And, why are there no guard rails anywhere?”

“Why would you assume that they would lose their footing?” she replied.

As they ventured deeper into the room, signs of combat began to leap out at them. They passed a wall that had a trail of dark spots melted into it by plasma fire, and there was a large burn mark where a grenade had gone off, reducing the nearby planters to ash and tossing one of the tables onto its side. Some of the desks had been purposefully overturned to be used as makeshift cover, their surfaces blackened and warped by heat.

A glint of red carapace made Xipa flinch, and she aimed her XMR at it, but Bluejay lowered her barrel with a gentle hand.

“Relax, it’s dead,” he said.

As they approached the body, Xipa saw that it was lying on its face on the floor, one of its arms draped over a chair that had toppled over with it. The cause of death was obvious, its shell peppered with scorch marks.

“There are more,” Ruza added, pointing to a nearby recess in the floor with a clawed finger. There was most of a Bug’s torso lying in the dugout, along with pieces that might belong to one or two more, their ichor soaking into the cushions. It looked like someone had scored a lucky hit with some kind of improvised fragmentation grenade. The insects must have been using it as a stand-in for a foxhole.

“One hell of a fight went down in here,” Bluejay muttered, stepping down into the recess to give one of the bodies a tentative kick. “The question is, who won, and where did they go?”

“We got a body over here!” one of the scouts yelled, leaning over an upturned table. “It’s one of ours! Indigo team!”

Xipa hurried over to her, rounding the table to see another scout slumped against it. The dead woman was lying in a pool of dried blood, the front of her clothes soaked with it. There was yet another Drone beside her, a hand-crafted war pick jutting from its sternum.

“Looks like a series of stab wounds,” Ruza commented, leaning in to examine the body more closely. “They must have been overrun.”

“They were fighting something that was coming from our end of the room,” Miqi said, turning to look back the way they had come. “The tables they flipped over are all facing in that direction.”

“There’s not that much building left,” Bluejay mused, glancing up at the waterfall. “Surely we should be coming up on the signal soon? We’re running out of places to look.”

It was hard to see what lay at the other end of the room with all of the dividing walls and insipid decorations blocking Xipa’s view, only the water feature rising above them, but there must be an exit on the other side. One thing that she could see was a raised platform off to the left of the artificial rock face. Unlike the others, there was a door on top of it, as well as a long window that looked out over the office. As she used the zoom function on her visor to get a closer look, she realized that there were plasma burns on the nearby wall, and holes had been melted in the glass.

“Look,” she said, gesturing to it. “There’s some kind of room up there. An executive suite or a supervisor’s office, maybe?”

“You reckon they might be up there?” Bluejay asked.

“It would make sense for them to retreat somewhere high,” she replied. “Those narrow catwalks would make for one hell of a bottleneck, too. The Bugs would have to climb up there to reach them.”

“Either way, we need to get across the office,” Miqi added after a quick translation. “Keep your wits about you – this whole situation stinks. I’d bet my feathers that we didn’t kill the last of the mealworms in the factory.”

As they stalked their way across the cavernous room, more evidence of what had transpired there jumped out at them. There had been a running gunfight throughout the office, the scars of battle etched onto every wall, spent plasma canisters littering the floor. There were half a dozen bodies, maybe more, but they were all Drones.

“Damn it, another one...”

Xipa turned her head to see Miqi reaching down to check the pulse of a second Valbara’nay, who was slumped over a planter. This one had succumbed to plasma fire, the bolts burning straight through her clothes to leave nasty burns on the scales beneath.

“Another one from Indigo,” she added with a hiss. “That’s half the flock...”

“There’s been no sign of Cyan yet,” Xipa said, speaking English for the benefit of her companions. “Cyan was Miqi’s flock – her family. She must still be holding out hope that they somehow survived all this.”

“If they had won this fight, they would not still be here,” Ruza replied.

“It’s not impossible,” Bluejay protested, the feline’s lack of faith seeming to irritate him. “They could still be holed up somewhere, or maybe they have injured and they’re not able to move them.”

A sudden flash of color drew Xipa’s attention, and she looked up to see a woman standing on the platform beside the waterfall. She had dragged open the sliding door just enough that she could get her head through the opening, her headdress flaring in a bright red warning display.

“It’s an ambush!” she shouted, her voice echoing through the office. No sooner had the words left her lips than a hail of plasma fire answered her, the stranger ducking back inside as the bolts splashed against the door, heating the metal until it glowed. More gunfire sailed through the window, the melted glass running like liquid.

The team threw themselves into cover as a crowd of Drones poured out from behind the dividing walls at the far end of the room, laying down a hail of suppressive fire as they took up position behind tables and inside dugouts. There was just enough time to get to safety, Xipa feeling the heat of a plasma bolt as it sailed past the spot where she had been standing only moments before.

“I fucking knew it!” Bluejay snarled, putting his back to one of the curving walls. The red foliage from a vertical planter cascaded over his shoulders, his painted carapace making him blend into it. “The bastards sent one group down to meet us while the other set a trap!”

“I grow tired of these insects!” Ruza growled, rising to fire over the wall. At five feet, it barely reached the eight-foot Borealan’s chest, and his stature seemed to take the Bugs by surprise. His XMR rocked against his shoulder as he turned one of them into bloody confetti, ducking back out of view as they responded in kind. “I miss when they were too dull to catch us in a snare!”

“Look on the bright side – at least we know that we didn’t come all this way for nothing!” Xipa chirped. “I can’t believe they held the Bugs off for this long.”

She glanced over at the scouts, seeing that they had made it to safety too. They were scattered around the office, a couple of them taking refuge behind the wall on the opposite side of the room while the rest took whatever they could get, hiding behind tables and planters as the bolts sailed over their heads.

“Looks like there’s one squad on the left side and one on the right,” Bluejay grunted, leaning his XMR around the wall to get a better look through its scope. “They were gonna catch us in a pincer move, and we’d have no idea they were even there until they started shooting.”

“Miqi!” Xipa yelled across the room, struggling to be heard over the gunfire. “Do you have any more of those pheromone grenades?”

“We used the last of them in the factory!” she shouted in reply, flinching away from the corner of the wall she was hiding behind as one of the Bugs fired a volley at her.

“We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way, then,” Xipa grumbled in English. “We’re out of pheromone grenades.”

“Stick to cover,” Bluejay replied. “Make them come to us.”

The Bugs were little more than fifty meters away, advancing rapidly now, vaulting over the desks as they covered one another in a staggered formation. One group would stop to lay down fire while the other advanced through the ruined office, then they would take up position, allowing the next group to leapfrog past them. These were advanced tactics for Bugs. The scouts were firing back at them, but they could scarcely peek out of cover before they were met with a coordinated barrage of plasma that pushed them back.

Bluejay leaned his XMR around the dividing wall they were hiding behind, letting off a couple of bursts, but he was forced to withdraw when half a dozen bolts impacted the other side.

“We can’t let them force us back out of the room!” Xipa exclaimed.

“I have an idea,” Ruza added, popping over the barrier to take another pot shot with his rifle. He ducked back down, crouching to keep his head out of view. “These walls are made from some kind of metal, correct?”

“I ... I dunno,” Xipa stammered. “Why?”

“They seem to stop plasma bolts, but I wonder if they are thick enough to stop a slug? If the alloy is analogous to steel, they will not penetrate an obstacle this thick, but anything less...”

“Look at this guy, earning his doctorate over here,” Bluejay chuckled as he slapped the feline’s thigh. “Sync your targeting systems!”

Xipa let her XMR hang from its sling, bringing up the display on her wrist, fumbling with the menus. This was a hell of a lot harder to do under fire. Maybe she should petition the Consensus to introduce voice commands. She set her helmet to share targeting data over the ad-hoc connection they were already using for their comms, her teammates doing the same.

Bluejay leaned out again, letting off a few shots. As his helmet highlighted targets, they appeared on Xipa’s HUD too, showing their red outlines moving through the wall. She hit the touch panel on the side of her helmet, opening up an in-picture view from Bluejay’s feed.

“I can’t keep this up forever!” Bluejay complained, his XMR chattering.

Xipa and Ruza stepped away from the wall, leveling their rifles at the rack of overgrown foliage in front of them. Xipa moved her sights over the insects that were situated towards the middle of the room, using the feed from Bluejay’s camera to verify that there were no other obstacles between her and them. The pair began to fire, their slugs punching molten holes through the material, traversing the wall like it was made of paper. The projectiles deformed and tumbled, spraying sparks, but they were still able to find their marks at this range. Xipa watched on Bluejay’s feed as two of the Bugs were torn apart. One of them was thrown off its feet, fragments of tungsten hitting it like buckshot, sending it crashing into the table behind it. The second lost one of its arms, the slug severing it with a shower of broken carapace and ichor, a follow-up shot tearing an inch-wide entry wound in its chest that sent it stumbling to the floor.

The scouts saw what they were doing, taking advantage of the confusion, a pair of them tipping over another of the long desks. They dove behind it, popping out to melt another of the insects with their plasma fire, boiling it inside its shell.

That was enough to force the remainder to reconsider, and they formed a parallel defensive line, keeping up their harrowing fire. From the far end of the room, more of them emerged into view, hurrying to reinforce their companions. Xipa only got a few scant glances at them as they weaved between the planters and the strategically placed walls, but they weren’t carrying rifles.

“Incoming!” she warned, cutting down another Bug through the wall. “They were holding some in reserve!”

“Fuck, how many of them are there?” Bluejay grunted as he fired at one of the tables. His rounds punched through it, catching the Bug that was taking refuge behind it. The creature fell to the ground, then began to drag itself away, apparently having lost the use of its lower extremities. Its companions paid it no mind, ignoring it as it clawed its way along the floor. These creatures had no medics, no hospitals. They were expended like ammunition, and when they died, they were simply replaced like faulty hardware. “This doesn’t look good,” he added, Xipa watching through his feed as the reinforcements arrived.

There were three of them, the aliens lining up shoulder to shoulder, the rest of the line covering them as they ignited handheld energy shields. The wrist-mounted devices flared to life, projecting an ovular magnetic field that quickly filled with superheated gas, creating a wavering barrier of plasma. They moved in lockstep, weaving between the obstacles, several of the other Drones advancing behind them in a line formation.

“Fuck, I was starting to wonder why we hadn’t seen any shields yet!” Bluejay snarled as he ducked back into cover to reload. He cursed again, checking his rig frantically with his lower pair of hands. “That’s it, I’m out!”

“Here,” Xipa said, handing him her second-to-last magazine. He gripped it in one of his lower hands, holding his rifle with the upper pair as he reloaded.

“Thanks,” he said with a sigh of relief, drawing his sidearm again with one of his lower hands. “We’re gonna be throwing office supplies at them if we don’t end this soon.”

Ruza took another shot, punching a perfectly round hole in the wall, its edges glowing red-hot. The tungsten slug hit one of the shields, melting on contact, showering its bearer with harmless sparks. Well, harmless wasn’t exactly the right word. Flecks of molten metal were cooling on the thing’s carapace, binding with its shell, but whatever pain it might be feeling wasn’t enough to deter it.

“Miqi!” Xipa yelled across the room, signaling her counterpart with a flash of the color panels on her suit. “You have to overload their shields with plasma!”

“We know!” she replied, putting her back to the vending machine that she was hiding behind as she popped a fresh plasma canister into her rifle. “We’ve seen these shields before! We’ll deal with them!” She signaled to her team, her feathers flashing red, and they began to focus their fire on the trio. They were only fifteen meters away now, close enough that Xipa could see their twitching mandibles.

The scouts managed to collapse one of the shields, the bolts of plasma overloading the magnetic field, melting through its wielder. As it fell back, its body riddled with smoking wounds, those that had been advancing behind it saw their opening. They returned fire as they made for cover, another of them dropping as Bluejay cut it down. Still, they got a lucky shot in, catching one of the scouts in the shoulder. Xipa heard her wail through her mask as she fell back behind her table, one of her companions gripping her by the sleeve as she dragged her back to safety behind one of the walls.

“Cover me,” Ruza grunted, dropping into a low sprint before Xipa could even respond. She did as he asked, spraying tungsten through the wall, forcing the aliens back as he shot across the office like a furry bullet. He leapt over desks, weaving around the planters, moving far faster than a creature of his size should have been able to. By the time the Bugs had regrouped, he was already on the far side of the room, rummaging in one of his pouches as he propped the injured woman up against the divider. She screamed again as he applied some kind of gel pack to her shoulder, but he took her tiny hand in his, making her hold the salve in place while he continued his work.

Another of the shields fell, then the final one, but the phalanx had accomplished its goal of getting closer to the enemy line. As the shield bearers fell under the hail of plasma and tungsten, their companions flooded into the surrounding area, the exchange of gunfire resuming.

“Up top!” Bluejay warned, raising his XMR to fire into the catwalks above them.

Xipa lifted her gaze, cursing into her helmet as she saw some of the insects climbing up towards the elevated platforms. They were scaling the furniture like simians, holding their weapons in their upper pair of hands while they used the lower to help them scramble their way up onto the catwalks.

One of them leapt up onto a snaking walkway, allowing it to get a view over their cover, Xipa cutting it down before it could raise its weapon. It toppled to the floor, falling a good three meters, bouncing off one of the metal tables with a sickening thud before lying still.

Another closed into stabbing range, scurrying over a table on all-fours like an animal, holding a pair of chitin blades in its upper hands as it went. It rounded the wall at a breakneck pace, its many eyes fixing on Xipa, but Bluejay was ready for it. He stepped into its path, discharging his sidearm into its helmet, putting two more slugs into its twitching body even as it tumbled headfirst into a planter.

Some of the Bugs had made it up onto the higher platforms now, pouring fire on the targets below from refuges that would once have served to help the workers unwind. They kicked over old coffee tables and shoved padded chairs out of their way, sending them crashing into the office below. They forced the defenders deeper into cover, the scouts having no choice but to give ground, retreating back towards the stairwell. Still, the enemy numbers were starting to thin, and these new perches exposed them to return fire.

There was a loud crack from Ruza’s XMR, the round passing straight through one of the Drones, shattering the window behind it before sending it tumbling down to the street some two hundred meters below. Cracks traveled up through the tall pane of glass, jagged shards raining down on the nearby Bugs as it broke. The wind at these heights was intense, and it flooded through the opening, sending the pieces whipping through the air like shrapnel. One of the Bugs was impaled by a sliver of glass as long as Xipa’s arm, but even that didn’t stop the thing, the alien righting itself as it continued to shoot with the shard jutting from its shoulder.

“That’s it, I’m dry!” Bluejay exclaimed as he darted back behind their wall to avoid a barrage of plasma bolts. The coils on his barrel were glowing red, and he hit the mag release, dropping the empty magazine into a lower hand. He slung the now useless rifle over his shoulder, passing his sidearm to his upper hands, checking the ammo counter.

“I’m on my last mag,” Xipa replied breathlessly. She leaned around Bluejay as a Drone pounced over a table to their left, scattering office supplies, its claw-like toes scratching against the filthy floor. It wheeled around to face them, the conducting rails of its rifle brought to bear, but she put three slugs into its sternum before it could pull the trigger.

“Thanks,” Bluejay added, giving her an appreciative nod. “There can’t be many more of these things left, surely?”

Xipa peeked out of cover to get a look. The expansive office had been turned into a war zone. There were upturned tables and chairs all over the place, planters filled with burning foliage, and now shards of broken glass scattered around the room. Every wall and surface seemed to be marked with burns and slug holes. There were dead Bugs everywhere, charred and dismembered, their mucous-colored fluids staining the floor. There were maybe a dozen left alive that she could see, slowly advancing as they traded sporadic fire with the scouts, who were losing ground on the right side of the office. Ruza was still guarding the injured woman, popping out of cover to fire over the divider again, painting an unfortunate Drone’s brains on the wall behind it.

There was another sound of shattering glass from the far end of the room, Xipa peering over the dividing walls to see the long window beside the artificial waterfall start to break. Someone was smashing through it from the inside. As she watched, she caught a glimpse of two Valbara’nay – members of the lost scout teams – punching holes in the window with the butts of their rifles. They quickly shouldered the weapons, firing down into the unsuspecting Bugs through the jagged breaches, the flashes of emerald light illuminating their snarling faces.

They had opened up a second front, dividing the enemy’s attention. Two more Drones fell under their withering fire as the aliens scrambled to get clear, reduced to smoking husks, their counterparts starting to shoot at the window. They melted holes in the glass that was still intact, some of the bolts splashing against the wall as they went wide, leaving blackened marks. It was enough to force the shooters back out of view, but the opening was just what was needed to break the stalemate.

“They’re distracted!” Miqi yelled, waving her people on as she hopped deftly over a mushroom-riddled couch. She raised her plasma rifle, the rails crackling as she sent another of the creatures scrambling for safety. “Push up!”

Xipa and Bluejay followed, moving up the left side of the room. As Xipa advanced, she noticed something rising into view above the dividing walls at the far end of the office. There was a trio of Drones climbing up the waterfall, scaling the artificial rock with their four arms. They leapt up onto the platform beside it, smashing their way through the broken glass, disappearing into the shadowy interior.

“Bluejay!” Xipa hissed into her radio, the Jarilan following her gaze. “If we don’t get up there right now, there won’t be anyone left to save! When we were outside the city wall, you said that you should be able to carry me, right?”

He got the picture right away, holstering his sidearm as he moved behind her, shrugging off his pack. She felt him grip her rucksack with all four of his hands, taking a firm hold of the straps.

“I’m gonna need some cover,” he warned. “We’ll be sitting ducks up there. How much ammo do you have left?”

“Ten slugs,” she replied, checking the counter on her HUD. “It’ll have to be enough. Miqi!” she yelled, getting the scout’s attention. “We need suppressive fire!”

Miqi didn’t bother to ask why, directing her people to start firing with a flash of feathers, the air filling with a barrage of plasma. There was a flutter as Bluejay extended his gossamer wings, their protective covers opening up, the powerful muscles beneath them flexing as he prepared to take flight. They became a blur, the buzzing sound filling Xipa’s helmet, her feet leaving the floor. He lifted her up into the air, the straps of her pack digging into her shoulders, Xipa swinging as he began to accelerate. She felt like she should have been afraid, but she trusted Bluejay implicitly, and her people had never been shy of heights.

From this vantage point, she had a bird’s-eye view of the Bugs as they exchanged plasma fire with the scouts. A couple of them raised their rifles towards her, but she reacted quickly, firing down between her legs with her XMR to force them to scatter. She could barely hold the weapon straight, the recoil making it jump in her hands with nothing to brace it against, but it had the desired effect all the same. They sailed over the office, Bluejay flying them through the already broken window like a missile, Xipa crunching broken glass underfoot as he deposited her on the carpeted floor. He set down behind her, his wings folding back beneath their casings as he drew his handgun.

They found themselves in what had once been a lavish lounge that overlooked the office beyond. This was probably where the executives and higher-ups in the company would have come to unwind and hold meetings. The tables here were made from polished stone rather than spartan metal and polymer, and the chairs were more like those one might find in a lounge, covered in plush padding that had succumbed to mold. There were potted plants in the corners of the room, as well as a couple of vending machines that would have dispensed drinks and snacks, too dirty now to make out what was inside them. The only battle damage in here had come from Bugs firing into the room from outside, leaving the ceiling and the far wall burned in places.

A cry of alarm echoed from an open door to their left, Xipa and Bluejay hurrying out into a narrow corridor in search of its source. At the end of a short, carpeted hallway was another door, and the trio of Drones that Xipa had seen climbing the waterfall were trying to break through it. One of them fired a plasma rifle at the obstacle, but the metal absorbed the heat of the bolt, the creature lashing out with a kick in an attempt to break it down. When that didn’t work, it scrambled to push its fingers into the groove between the door and the wall, trying to pull the sliding panel back.

They soon noticed the newcomers, turning to face them. Bluejay raised his XMH, but Xipa pulled him back into the conference room before he could fire, the pair narrowly avoiding a hail of plasma.

“Your slugs will go straight through that door!” she protested. “That’s got to be where the survivors are hiding!”

“Even if I turn down the voltage?” he asked.

“I don’t know what that door is made of or how thick it is!” Xipa replied. “We can’t risk it!”

“Okay, okay,” he conceded. “Idea – give me your sidearm.”

“What, why?”

“Just trust me!”

She did as he asked, handing him her XMH. Bluejay held one in his upper pair and the second in his lower, putting his back to the wall beside the open door that led into the little room, readying himself. Xipa began to ask what his plan was, but he shushed her, going quiet as he concentrated on something. Suddenly, he spun around, unloading both handguns into the wall. Dust sprayed as the slugs punched through the thin material, the sound of gunfire dampened by Xipa’s helmet. Bluejay moved closer to the door, then leaned out, letting off a couple more shots that were angled down towards the floor.

“Clear!” he announced, tossing Xipa’s handgun back to her. “Here. Mine’s empty.”

She followed him out into the hallway, seeing a pile of dead Bugs, their ichor splattered on the far wall. The holes where the slugs had passed through were still smoking.