Chapter 5

Another Avatar slid across the ground beside Yeshua-Herald and Amad-Solarian. It got up.

“It seems I was late to the party,” said Hannah-Cowboy, with some pouting in their voice, as if they wanted to bust some heads and didn’t get the chance. Well, Hannah was definitely pouting. Cowboy was probably rolling his metaphorical eyes after being roped and hogtied into this whole spiel.

“Yeshua almost single-handedly tore apart a large enemy army,” said Amad-Solarian, “although, as you can see, his Avatar is almost destroyed.”

Yeshua-Herald was on fire and all their armor plates had fallen off in the fight.

“I would recommend ejecting out of your Avatar, Yeshua. Doomed Avatars are easy kills and the time it takes for you to respawn might be the difference between victory and defeat,” advised Amad.

“Okay.”

Yeshua reached to the side and pressed the self-destruct button. He inputted the passcode, which by default was simply 1-2-3, and pulled the eject lever between his legs. Yeshua was immediately ejected out of the Avatar straight up. He had a decent look over the industrial complex as he slowed and started to fall.

Yeshua and the other Spirits in this squad were deployed to the facility’s entrance, grid mark B3 of the three by three facility grid limits A to C left to right and 1 to 3 back to front. There was a vast junkyard to their right which flanked the side of the facility at grid marks C1, C2, and C3. The junkyard had many salvaging machines picking apart old machines for resources and would be fed into the facility.

To their left was the hydro-system at A3, a series of pipes and corridors that brought in water for cooling purposes and expelled it across the facility.

A2 was where the power station was located. Despite being exposed on one of the facility’s sides, the power station was extremely durable and resisted orbital bombardment. They would need to shut it down from the inside.

A1 appeared to be an armory or security station. From orbit, the soldiers could see that A1 was crisscrossed by landing pads and take off runways. As they came around for their initial pass before dropping off, the dropships were attacked by anti-aircraft fire coming mostly from A1.

B2 and B3 were the meat of the facility. They were the factory parts of the factory complex. They were the overall goal of the soldiers. To secure the facility and shut down the factory process.

Yeshua fell to the ground. His gear took the entire fall without incident. Spirit gear enabled them to be deployed from extreme heights although typically a dropship came within a hundred feet of the ground before offloading Spirits. The reason was that marines lacked the same gear and would perish upon hitting the ground if dropped from too high.

“Where’s Sandy?” asked Hannah-Cowboy.

“Dunno,” replied Amad-Solarian, “She must be outside comms range or we’re being interfered with by some sort of jammer. She’s a tough old boot, though. She can handle herself.”

“What’s the deal now?” continued Hannah-Cowboy.

“Our, and by our I mean Charlie squad, objective is to secure the entrance of this complex. Alpha squad is securing the pipes leading into the underground section of the facility. Bravo was assigned to the scrapyard to our right. Delta went for the enemy airbase in the upper left corner of the facility. So far, we’ve effectively secured the entrance. But we’re missing Sandy. We can’t confirm to Command that our side of the equation is fulfilled without her.

“We’re also missing two squads of marines. I know the rough location of one of them. They’re sweeping the back left side of the entrance. Don’t know where the other one went.”

“They’re in the back right,” piped up Yeshua. They were with me when I first encountered that metal man. They did, however, get wasted when the metal man attacked. They should have respawned somewhere in the area.”

“Okay, then. Hannah, you go left. Find our boys and bring them home. I’m going to go right and look for the other squad. Yeshua, since you’re the only one without an Avatar deployed or ready, you sit back here and watch the door. Engage anything that attempts to dig you out but don’t be a hero and try to engage enemy armor or air support on foot.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two Spirit-Avatars left to complete their objectives.

Yeshua sat on a wall in the back of the front entrance area he was supposed to watch. There were small structures to his left at a direct ninety-degrees. There were a patch of level ground to his right before dropping down via a slope towards the junkyards to the far right.

He was bored. There was nothing to do while Hannah and Amad went to recover their missing marine squads. Being a watchman stunk. No action. But Yeshua did as he was told.

The minutes ticked by.

Yeshua began to daydream about he got here.

He was a clerk in a small city on the outskirts of Order space when mechanical enemies rained from the heavens. He was forced to pick up a weapon and help defend civilians. Yeshua earned two kills there. When the Order military rolled through, they recognized Yeshua’s potential and drafted him into the Spirit Corps, training and equipping him for war.

Yeshua left that old life behind, ending a promising relationship and a potential career down the road. The Order needed him. He stepped up to the plate.

Yeshua was jerked awake by sounds of scraping metal.

The complex was dominated by a central building that had an extension off to one side that almost wrapped around a smaller building in front of it. There was a vehicle track that wound around the entire entrance leading to different parts of the main building and entranceways leading to different parts of the overall facility.

Compartments on the main building extension extended and lifted up via hydraulic pistons. Several squads of robotic infantry stepped out and dropped down to the ground. Additional compartments with more robotic infantry opened on the main exterior wall off to Yeshua’s far left.

A pair of squat mecha dropped to the ground from openings in the ceiling beyond the second set of robotic infantry squads. Yeshua heard a second set of objects fall from the ceiling beyond his vision and around the corner. Likely two more squat mecha.

The robotic infantry started to march towards his position.

“Break time’s over,” Yeshua said to himself.

Yeshua pressed a holographic button left of his lower body, somewhere near the level of hip-thigh joint. He pulled up a holographic menu and quickly thumbed through it with his left hand and fingers. Yeshua pulled up Avatar selection and quickly found what he was looking for.

The user-interface acknowledged his choice.

“Typhon Avatar selected.”

Yeshua put away the interface and readied his weapon, sliding in a fresh magazine and pulling back the charging handle.

“Time to disappoint Amad. I need to hold this position for them.”

Yeshua pulled out the syringe and jammed it into his chest, inserting the contents into his heart. After emptying it, he yanked it out, wincing slightly and discarding the tactical to the ground. Then he started to move.

Yeshua catapulted himself off the wall and across the air, jet boosting to keep momentum going. He hit the ground running. The first wave of robotic soldiers didn’t know what hit them. Yeshua came in like a human-shaped wrecking ball. He tore apart the first soldier with his weapon, —all body shots, though. Yeshua hopped into the air, up and over the second line of infantry. He jet boosted past them, the third line, and the fourth line, landing beyond their backsides. Yeshua immediately pivoted and twisted to face the backline. Yeshua’s body kept going, of course, but he emptied the rest of the clip into a robotic soldier, taking it down.

Yeshua’s back came to a wall, about ten feet tall. He turned back to start a wall run at the five feet height although he left the back line of this wave of robotic soldiers with a little fragmentation grenade present. This time, the robotic soldiers attempted to dodge away, suggesting this was an updated or upgraded version. Nevertheless, the grenade caught three robots and took them down.

He reloaded as he wall-ran.

Yeshua got a glimpse of the far complex corridor. There was indeed a second wave of squat mechas down there. There was also robotic soldier wave number three in front of the second squat mecha group. There was also a fourth soldier wave and a further two more squat mechas way down the corridor. He would need to eventually deploy his Avatar for this defense. Hopefully Hannah or Amad come back soon.

Yeshua rebounded off the wall at the last second, flying perpendicular between the first two soldier waves. He hit the ground and slid, pumping his magazine into two more soldiers.

He was up to twenty percent charge. He needed to chew through the infantry before the mecha could start to assail his position. To this endeavor, Yeshua swapped to his heavy weapon, something that would normally be used for anti-armor, but because Yeshua was a new Spirit, he picked up the Corsair heavy machine gun for the heavy slot. Veteran Sprits used dedicated anti-armor weapons for their heavy slot. Newer ones often picked up heavy machine guns.

The Corsair could still be used to bite into armor, though, but the Corsair didn’t do as much damage as a proper anti-tank weapon. It would require the operator to be exposed for a long time as they ran through the drum magazine. The final disadvantage of a HMG in the heavy slot was that it didn’t come with infinite ammunition. Primary weapons did. Anti-armor weapons didn’t. Spirits started with two magazines.