of them being quite so determined and tenacious as the humans firing on them right now. It was all he and Sparky could do to stop their opponents overrunning their position at the end of the corridor to buy Eris the time she needed.
But where the fuck was she?
He didn’t have time or chance to look over his shoulder the way she’d run. She had a plan. He had to trust that. She wouldn’t have cut and run, leaving them here to die… No, she wouldn’t have. She wasn’t built that way.
He might not have known her for long, and he might not know her as well as he wanted just yet, but he knew her. Knew the kind of person she was. Like him, she was a soldier through and through.
Which meant she wasn’t the kind of person to leave her comrades to die.
“Will you lot just fucking fuck off and fucking die?” Sparky bellowed as he and Zero fired in concert, laying down a lethal net of suppressive fire. But despite it, despite their combined training and experience, the black-armored humans were creeping closer. It was only a matter of time.
Odd noises sounded behind them—whirring and heavy clunking that sounded like footsteps. If there were eight feet instead of two, he could almost imagine a drakeen approaching to back them up. Gods, what he’d do for one of the heavy-duty combat bots right about now. It would easily cut a swathe through the humans in front of them, and they could use it as cover when they moved forward.
“Take cover!”
The voice was mechanized, female, and came from behind them. Zero and Sparky both hit cover at the same time, heads ducked as the air around them filled with bullets and energy fire the like of which he’d never seen before.
“What the fuck?” he murmured, turning just as Sparky whooped.
“Fuck me! She’s a tanker!”
His jaw dropped as he turned. A behemoth of a machine walked toward them, guns on its shoulders recoiling in their rails as it fired mechanically, cutting down the humans trying to kill them. His thoughts of a drakeen hadn’t been too far off the mark. Bipedal, it was a hulking brute and heavily armored. Bullets from the humans pinged off it in showers of sparks. He could just see Eris’s face through a screen on the thing’s chest.
“Get behind me!” she ordered, her voice strange and distorted as she walked toward them.
“Tanker?” he asked Sparky as the two of them ran low and fast, getting behind the bulk of the machine she drove. As they moved, he caught a glimpse of her name painted on the breastplate.
“Armored Infantry Unit!” Sparky yelled, falling in behind Eris’s leg and using the machine as cover as he started to fire back at the humans. He explained between bursts of firing, “Basically portable tanks. They were decommissioned about a decade ago. I didn’t think any were left. These things are antiques now!”
“Moving left!” she warned them. They adjusted their movement, staying behind her as she pushed the human forces up while backing into the corridor that would lead them toward the docks. Only a few humans were left now, and it took the work of a minute for Eris to pick them off.
“Okay, we need to move. Not much power left.”
They broke into a run, Zero and Sparky taking point as Eris covered the rear. With the increased firepower, the resistance they met along the way was minimal and quickly dealt with.
“There she is,” Sparky nodded toward the airlock as they emerged onto the docking arm. “The Aegis. You might wanna do your thing, big man. You’ll be quicker than me cracking her security systems.”
“Make it quick,” Eris advised, clunking to take a position in the center of the corridor while facing the central station. Her guns rotated and reset in their rails, covering the passage. “We got incoming!”
Without the need to check on the station security feeds, Zero instead dove into the system. Freezing in place, he concentrated on racing through cyberspace. Data flowed past him in its rawest form, constructs for different departments, routines, and subroutines blooming like flowers in a garden. He ignored them all, searching for what he needed. He raced along the data stream like it was a highway until the construct that was the Aegis rose up in front of him like a mountain rising from the deep.
Skidding as he changed direction, he raced for it, his data-self already analyzing the shape and