Saints of the Void: Atypical (8 page)

“This is it, then,” said Trenna. “I’ll show you where
we spent time in this area, then we can look around for clues I
guess. I’m not really sure how you want…”

“Stop, Trenna,” commanded Dastou when he saw the girl
starting to walk forward again. Nes grabbed the girl’s right arm
tight to make sure she didn’t go anywhere.

“Ow! What’s going on?” She held fast and turned her
head just enough to see the others staring at the same spot.

She looked that way herself, towards a very faint
blue glow reflected on the stainless steel handrail of the
pedestrian bridge near the spotlight; it was the glow of an
active-but-not-on indicator. A shadow shifted, and the sheet draped
over the spotlight on the bridge was pulled off. The ruffling noise
of the fabric was almost instantly followed by a loud
klak-klak
that echoed throughout the boarding area. That
sound signaled the thirty-six small but powerful diode bulbs of the
construction light being turned on full blast, forcing Dastou’s
group to instinctively shield their eyes. Four other sets of
ruffling-cloth-and-
klak-klak
noise combinations made it a
safe assumption, even with eyes closed, that the other lights were
coming on, too.

Dastou’s intuition made him rush to the left, blindly
aiming to get to those nice, useful, probably incredibly hard
concrete steps. He pushed Trenna as he moved and hoped Nes, since
he still had his hand on her arm, pulled her with him. Then came an
onslaught of a near-deafening, instantly recognizable noise:
automatic gunfire.

Well, that’s settled, thought Nes. He always had
doubts about the “cognitive suture” training Dastou put all DSF
agents through during their time at the Ornadais Academy. As a
rookie, he simply stuck to his guns, literally, and became
proficient with firearms, figuring that was the way to go.
Veterans, a funny term considering that the organization was not
even a decade old, would tell him “trust us, you’ll be amazed” or
“don’t worry about it until your life is at risk.” He never fully
bought into it, not until a few seconds ago. Bullets flew overhead,
he was safely in cover, but his mind was occupied by a single
amazing fact: when it came time to act or die, he was as fast as a
Saint.

Alright, enough chest pounding and back to the
current situation. The concrete maintenance steps that served as
cover did their job, and Nes was not in any danger. He had made
sure to land slightly on his side to avoid damaging the assault
rifle buckled to his back. Trenna was right next to him, lying
closer to the ground thanks to her size. She didn’t take the
landing too well, getting her breath knocked out from the impact
and hitting her hip hard against the edge of a step, but she was
alright for now.

The consistent
whizzes
and
pews
of
ammunition flying around, hitting everything but their targets,
made Trenna keep a hand over her head instinctively while the other
was on her injured hip. She shook with fear, a cry escaping her
whenever a bullet hit something near their cover. At least she kept
the bare minimum amount of composure needed to keep from running
screaming back down the tunnel, getting riddled with bullets along
the way.

Looking across the left side gap, the Saint was in an
identical position to the corporal, keeping his bald head down. A
slip of adhesive-backed wax paper was on the gravel where the trio
stood a moment before. The paper held a set of four intricate
symbols that created a hypnotic suggestion – “ignore” to be
specific. Looking up to the balcony above Dastou, three men were
changing positions to fire on them from somewhere besides directly
above; it was a life-saving difference in enemy location. When had
Dastou put that Stitch on the gravel? The corporal’s temporarily
inflated ego lost some of its pressure upon realizing how amazingly
cunning his friend was in the heat of combat.

Nes also became aware that he was getting used to the
ambient brightness. The five sets of lights being on at the same
time washed almost all the detail out of the world, even when
looking down and away from them. He checked one of the pockets on
his supply belt and felt for a small sphere, found it, then held it
in his palm. Before acting, he needed to check with Dastou. Nes’
throat mic was active, so he just turned up the receiver volume by
thumbing a knob on the transceiver on his belt, and spoke at a
normal volume.

“So... this is a trap then?” Nes asked.

“Jackass,” responded Dastou, his own mic allowing for
easy conversation.

“Says you while hiding the same way I am.”

A couple of big pebbles of concrete bounced onto the
Saint’s head after being shot off from the top of the maintenance
steps, distracting him for a moment. Nes noticed a change in the
consistency of the gunfire.

Dastou spoke after a surge and subsequent downturn of
bullets flying. “It sounds like they’re trying to conserve ammo,
firing in bursts. They probably wanted us closer and with nowhere
to hide.”

“Thanks for explaining ambushes to me, Your
Lordship,” said Nes. He paused during a short eruption of fire near
his own skull. “Now, what the fuck are we going to do about
this?”

“I’ll go up the nearby escalator, you go the other
way. If a prisoner can be taken, I’ll handle it. You, though… you
do what needs doing, Nes.”

The order was clear, but Nes had never killed before.
He barely got his next words out without his voice cracking. “Yeah.
Yeah, I got it.”

Nes turned down the volume of his earpiece using
another knob on the transceiver. He changed his tone of voice to
carry over the gunfire, and moved a little closer to the girl so
she could hear.

“Trenna, we're going to be moving soon. Can you
handle that?” he asked.

She looked at the injured side of her hip, then
looked up at Nes and gave a pained, unsure nod. Nes' mind would
have to be as focused on combat as keeping the girl alive, so he
took her not-quite-ideal agreement as the best he’d get out of a
civvie.

Nes now put his attention on the mini-flashbang
marble in his palm. He pressed two buttons on the surface of the
small ordinance, then threw it straight into the air. He covered
Trenna’s face as soon as the device was airborne, careful not to
break her glasses. He couldn’t be sure if she’d be confused by an
order to protect her eyes with so much craziness happening around
her, and opted to take care of it himself. He closed his own eyes
as tight as possible, and preemptively grimaced.

The marble exploded after a little over a second in
the air, just long enough to reach the second tier. On detonation,
it created a light that was damn near like the sun. The cranked-up
brightness of the construction equipment diodes washed things out,
made it impossible to do much without half-closing your eyes, but
they were not weapons. The flash grenade, however, emitted a
sudden, painful, headache inducing brightness, evidenced by the
abrupt halt in gunfire. Even those members of the ambush group
whose eyes were not in the direct line of sight of the blast would
be blinded by reflected luminescence. That was only the first of
two functions for the marble.

Almost immediately following the flash was the bang:
a powerful, short range sonic pulse. It felt like too-close thunder
but without the full breadth of noise, and Nes’ whole body
vibrated. The distinctive sound of glass shattering took over,
which would be from the construction lights and the very closest
storefront windows on the second floor. Eyes still closed, the
corporal felt bits of glass landing on him and heard it become dead
quiet, telling him it was time to counter. He got away from Trenna,
opened his eyes, and deftly unbuckled the assault rifle on his
back.

He popped up from cover with substantial speed,
especially considering the awkward position he forced himself into
for the steps to protect him. Three attackers were still visible
from their chests up in the middle of the walkway near the center
spotlight, making themselves easy targets as they rubbed their
eyes. Nes’ vision was still a bit fuzzy, but he was able to see
enough to start shooting, barely putting pressure on the
trigger.

A single short, sharp
pop-pew
from the DSF
weapon echoed through the now quiet hub, and a bullet to the chest
took down the one on the middle. Two more trigger pulls, the next
bullets from the corporal’s gun hit a woman left of the first
victim in the shoulder and sternum, a mist of blood filling the air
near her for a moment as she went down. Nes heard the wet noises of
blood splattering on the walkway, and forced his breathing to stay
calm.

Right of the first target was someone who, despite
the swiftness and accuracy of the counter-attack, realized what was
happening and tried to duck below the retaining wall of the bridge.
That was an unfortunate decision, since now the only spot to aim
for was his head.
Pop-pew
, and a bullet entered his temple
and came out of the other side, neither happening cleanly or
quietly.

Wet, gross noises. Still breathing calmly.

Another two ambushers on the bridge decided that it
was time to blindly fire down at the targets of their failed trap,
forcing Nes to bend down again. Looking to his left at the other
set of low concrete steps, Dastou was gone, as expected. From the
initial sounds of gunfire, the space available to the enemy, and
locations of the five construction lights, there were at most eight
more of the assailants for to him take down. Dastou’s side didn’t
count, as the Saint would tear through anyone there like with an
unstoppable ferocity.

Looking toward the far right, where the Saint said
Nes should get to, the corporal saw two men running down the
ascending side of the escalator. Those two must have only been hit
by reflected light from the marble, so their vision was good enough
that they decided to rush down. They weren’t trying to hide their
advance, though, making the idiots just a notch above target
practice. Staying half-ducked, Nes pulled the trigger
confidently.

He fired just twice, in rapid succession, and aimed
perfectly. The shots came with so little time between them that the
second man shot didn’t even react when the first was hit, a single
bullet to the heart for each of them.

The dead men tumbled down the ascending side of
escalator stairs, the clattering of their guns making more noise
than their bodies as they fell. They crumpled on top of each other
at the bottom. The flashbang marble’s blinding effect should be
wearing away completely soon, so Nes would have to move to a safer
position. He squeezed Trenna’s shoulder to get her attention.

When she looked up, eyes a little red behind her
glasses but apparently seeing clearly, he spoke. “Wait a bit, keep
looking in my direction, and follow the wall to the boarding area
when I give you a signal. Stop, then, come to me I say it’s
safe.”

He wasn’t sure if the compound instructions were too
much, but he had to trust her. The corporal first made his way up
the short set of steps they hid behind and onto the middle boarding
platform. He used the wall on his right to naturally lower the
number of his sides open to attack from four, not including above
thanks to Dastou’s hypnotic Stitch, to three, whatever good that
would do. He descended the other side of the middle platform’s
maintenance steps in one leap, swiftly crossing the track gap
beyond and passing another tunnel opening on his right in this
symmetrical hub. He used two jumps to get up the stone steps
leading to the northbound boarding platform, getting down on one
knee in a firing stance as soon as he could.

He was on the exact opposite side of the room where
Dastou would have gone up, and had a good view of the first level.
He shifted his weapon along with his eye line in swift motions,
trying to find targets. There were no observable threats, so he got
up ran in a half-crouch to the escalator’s descending side, making
sure to do a visual check on the two bodies at the bottom of the
ascending end. They were pretty dead, barely any blood pooling at
their location since their hearts stopped instantly.

He was momentarily distracted by the fact that these
bodies were so close. He’d not only never killed anyone before
today, he’d never even been in real combat. The metallic smell of
blood, as little of it as there was thanks to direct shots to the
heart, gave him the beginnings of a painful headache along with the
sudden need to vomit. He forced himself to again attention to what
he was doing, and his food to stay where it was. He didn’t want his
burgeoning DSF Badass persona to go completely to waste if Trenna
slipped on his thrown-up lunch.

Nes held the rifle at the ready and looked at the
girl. It had stayed quiet since the flashbang, the only sounds
being the corporal’s gunfire, blood spatters, or bodies hitting the
ground, so she was able to slip her head out of cover just enough
to see him. He nodded deeply at her, the signal he told her to wait
on. Trenna got up and started to jog with a limp, using the wall as
a crutch to help with her injured hip.

When Nes touched her shoulder for attention earlier,
he had attached an “ignore” Stitch to it after having already
removed a corner of the adhesive backing. It flapped a bit as she
limped along, but at least it was staying on. Anyone looking down
would see her for only a second, and then their minds would
disregard her entirely.

Trenna crossed the gap and tunnel on her right, going
the exact same way Nes did moments earlier. She reached the
boarding platform by climbing the concrete steps on this side of
the room, and Nes put his palm up toward her, an easily
recognizable signal to stop. He scanned around for targets again,
and then waved permission for her to come to him. Trenna walked as
quickly as she could, clearly in pain. Nes’ headache was getting
worse by the second, though he had quelled the need to barf well
enough to do his duty. When Trenna reached him at the escalator,
she practically collapsed to her knees, but he caught her and set
her down more gently. When she looked at the raggedly-dressed
bodies on the rise near her, she couldn’t help but say
something.