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Post by JesterJoker on Apr 13, 2009 23:06:41 GMT -5
He had read the books from the political journalists, the single documentary that had escaped the borders and watched the reports as the situation became ever more hazardous to the people trapped within the country. Most of the rebellion against the occupation had been anarchy and bombers, and that was precisely why he had joined the struggle and set his feet in a place where they mattered.
Lepi Avenos had been surprised by the sheer destruction.
While he waited in an alley for a contact, he lit a cigarette with his lighter. The runes on it, edgy and pointed like they wanted to draw and quarter an opponent, told anyone who peered upon it precisely the teachings he followed, and the job he obtained through a series of events that even such a time after the fact it made his mind reel at what he had sacrificed and what he had achieved.
At least the boots on his feet and the gloves on his hands hid the visual aspects of the monster he had become.
Lepi Avenos was not a pleasant man, if he had been long ago. Now he was intense, driven and often the type of person who made people into monsters. But in this world, in this country, few people were quite as human as they had been. Continual war between men built of steel and men of flayed flesh had changed anyone who dared challenge them.
While he stood in the alley, waiting for his contact, Lepi kept his eyes looking around at the street. It seemed calm, and the slight information had said this place hadn't attracted much trouble from the occupiers. Then he saw his contact complaining loudly with a woman, breathed deep on the cigarette, and stomped out to see them.
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Post by TravelerOfTheWays on Apr 22, 2009 0:16:38 GMT -5
It was sometimes thought that Illunova was a forgiving, accommodating sort of person, but it wasn't true. She just didn't care much of the time about the little follies that irritated most people. If her bunkmates in training did not clean up after themselves, she took five extra minutes out of her day to straighten up. It was nothing to her.
When she did care, she was anything but forgiving.
Right now, she cared about avoiding attention, and the two incompetent humans in her sight would soon make her goal much more difficult than it had to be. Her lips twitched in a frown, but her face smoothed again in an instant. Neutralizing the threat would not be a moment's work, but his reaction... that would be the challenge, and forgiving though she was sometimes thought to be, no one would ever call Illunova a people person.
She dropped down to land less than a foot from the gesticulating pair, whose voices were growing louder with every passing second. The shock of her arrival stunned them into silence, and her fingers worked quickly enough to release the two capsules she had withdrawn from her belt as she fell that they had no time to make a further sound before collapsing amid twin puffs of dust.
Aware that she was as near death now as she had ever been, Nova turned slowly and kept her hands outstretched. "I came for you," she said in the gentlest tone she knew. What she think of as gentle was merely flat, lacking the slightest hint of pitch or intonation.
Even lacking in sophisticated social skills as she was, Nova knew instantly that her choice of words could have been better. Her body wanted to tense, but she fought to keep her muscles loose. "To meet you," she continued. "I don't advise you kill me just yet."
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Post by JesterJoker on Apr 29, 2009 23:08:49 GMT -5
Lepi exhaled a plume of smoke into the vaguely lit street of the city. The lights in this place flickered, barely holding the power to keep going. The government had chosen to forget about it, for the time being, and Lepi, unusually in his life, might have minded a little more activity here. He had not thought he might met her, not here, right now.
He should have known who she was, from her profile, and been more wary. But he had to play with the cards he held.
"Miss Infernati? You have no need of holding your hands up. This is no simple robbery, but please do not reach for a weapon or any such movement." Lepi held a hand toward her and pointed. The brown leather glove covered the tiny pocket gun and portable camera, he hoped, but the steel hand was too giant to ignore. He had the curious feeling it wouldn't dismay this danger.
"I have heard of your illustrious career, and find it admirable if the methods are a bit brutal," Lepi said. "I wouldn't eliminate you if I could, which I doubt I can." Lepi laughed gently at the idea. "Why might you want to meet me?"
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Post by TravelerOfTheWays on May 4, 2009 0:17:00 GMT -5
Illunova's brow furrowed slightly as Avenos spoke. He'd heard of her? The idea of herself as a sort of intergalactic celebrity assassin was such an alien notion that the speech she had rehearsed faltered and fell silent in her mouth. If this man had heard of her, who else had? In spite of herself, her eyes flicked around to her surroundings. She repressed a frisson of paranoia as a sudden burst of light illuminated their dingy surroundings.
She watched his cigarette burn slowly toward his fingers. His biological fingers, not the metallic digits extended toward her. The flattery in his words discomfited her even more than his recognition of her. But he was not going to try to kill her, which meant she had achieved her central object.
"I want to speak with you." She paused, thinking back to the words she had practiced. She was not accustomed to conversations with civilians, though Avenos might not fall conveniently into the usual military/civilian dichotomy.
Carefully, so as not to startle him, Nova raised a hand to gesture toward the city, appearing to smolder in the dim crimson glow that eternally enveloped the place. "You've chosen your side, and my superiors respect that." They had told her to say that, about respect. Personally, she found the word overused.
"There is information you are unaware of, however. We discovered it recently after much work." She almost smiled. "Brutal work, you might say. This war, it is not what it appears. It is being orchestrated, with extraordinary meticulousness and extraordinary daring, and the source of this manipulation remains hidden to us despite this."
As she prepared to deliver the final line of her opening missive, something tickled in her throat. A smoky scratch sizzled up and down her trachea, and she broke off speaking to peer into the sullen shadows of the alley. Something glinted redly, and she reacted instinctively. Hoping that he would not misinterpret her sudden movement, Nova shoved Avenos as hard as she could around the nearest corner, pulled her collar up in order to breathe through the mesh fabric, and dashed blindly away from the canister.
If Avenos did not keep up with her, her mission might end before the hour was over.
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Post by JesterJoker on May 9, 2009 0:59:06 GMT -5
Shoving Lepi right then had not been the greatest idea. The little gun situated on top of his hand whistled softly and made a green streak in the distance between them. For whatever reason, Nova bent her head out of the weapon's path, and expressions flickered on Lepi's face. Firstly, of course, his face showed anger, then disappointment and surprise.
The flame of the cigarette burning from one corner of his mouth, Lepi spun Nova around to face him. "You saw the gun! What were you doing?" He noticed that, different than before, she had lifted her coat, and saw the small wound on her throat. Lepi peered at the wound, up at Nova's face, and nodded sharply.
Howls in the alley heightened in volume, and Lepi, alongside Nova, walked in the same direction that she had been angling in the first place. Plumes trailed them, unusually distinct in the darkness. They didn't bother Lepi. Howlers, whoever they were, had found their scent, and they wouldn't be about to let them be alone.
"I don't think," Lepi added a particular importance on the think, "that anyone I know has hired them. Enemies I know typically like to be... direct. If this war is truly engineered by someone powerful, yours appear to be different. But for now, it's just theory." He peered down the street. "If we can escape the howlers, I know a free apartment some blocks from here where we can hole up."
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Post by TravelerOfTheWays on May 12, 2009 10:39:56 GMT -5
Nova kept her face smooth as Avenos railed at her. Being fired upon by somebody nominally on her side was nothing new, and this time it was even reasonable on his part. The blast had missed her, after all. If she had not supposed this might happen and narrowly ducked out of its way, well, then she might have become annoyed.
It occurred to her to be relieved that he knew of a place in this wretched, war-torn city where they could speak in safety. She could have kept running and dodging and weaving all the way back to her craft, and he might even have been able to keep up, but this way she could tell him a little bit more about the true nature of this conflict while they were still in the city.
Howlers were devilish devices, or so the generals liked to call them. Nova would not have chosen that particular turn of phrase, but they were ingenious and ingeniously simple. Worst of all, a human being like Nova had no way to detect them until it was too late, which was why the generals had engineered her with a sort of allergy to the chemical sniffers they used to track their quarries. When one came within sniffing range of her - which howlers only did when they were approaching their target - a treated patch of skin broke out into hives. The idea of deliberately weakening herself had repelled Nova at first, but eventually the generals had convinced her that there was no other way for her to avoid the deadly machines.
She cast a sidelong glance at Avenos as they strode away from their meeting place. He was far from an ordinary human being, so it should not have surprised her that he had picked up on the howler's existence so quickly.
As far as she knew, there were no clever tricks to avoid a howler. No splashing through water, no disguise of one's unique pheromonal cocktail, no walking through crowds would dissuade them. When they reached the manhole cover she remembered from her voyage up here, she stopped and bent over to tug the heavy metal disk from its place in the street.
"Here," she said as she wrenched the cover from the asphalt. "The tracker will know where we disappeared, and it will report the information soon enough to its masters. They will be able to guess where we've gone, but we may be able to move more quickly than they." The hives on her throat itched and throbbed, reminding her of the howler's dogged persistence in following them.
A bitter odor wafted up from the shadowed passage at their feet. During the war, all pieces of metal not actually welded into the ground had been torn up and sold for bare handfuls of food, and the latter leading into the subterranean warren of tunnels was no exception. She crouched beside the edge of the hole, readied the weapon at her belt, and dropped into the acrid darkness. She hoped Avenos was not afraid of the dark.
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Post by JesterJoker on May 19, 2009 22:52:46 GMT -5
The sound waves behind them brushed against Lepi's sensitive ears. The howlers, bizarre creatures on their own, charged up on the edge of pure nightmare when they started their work on people. Their limbs, while humanoid, segmented. Sharp points poked out from the tips of most of them. Lepi hadn't ever seen one up close, and wondered if anyone had escaped and told about it.
Lepi lifted his eyes and peered at Illunova. He hoped that she would creep down first, but she held the cover and awaited his move. She didn't seem to wait for him. He sighed and ripped a little flashlight from his belt, perhaps the size of a VCR control.
"I really don't like the dark," Lepi rumbled.
The resistance leader crept in nonetheless. He liked a little bit of light from the sky, but he certainly preferred the darkness as opposed to a glimpse of those demonic machines. Lepi roamed down the ladder quickly, so Illunova could follow him in. He swept the bottom and saw nothing but sewer and the walkway on either side.
"Looks tame," Lepi said. "You sure they won't follow us?"
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Post by TravelerOfTheWays on Jun 2, 2009 22:40:06 GMT -5
She shook her head, wondering if he could even see the gesture in the darkness under the streets. "I am not sure," she replied, "I know little of the Howlers, but I know enough to avoid them as thoroughly as I am able." Once the manhole cover clanged shut above her head, the only available light streamed from Avenos's light. The hollow, rounded structure of the sewers made sound echo strangely around corners, and if she did not know better, she would have sworn they were not the only ones here.
But she knew the phantom footsteps and whispers she heard were the products of her confused ears suddenly trying to compensate for the very poor visual cues available. In the beam of the light, she thought she saw Avenos looking a bit pale, but he would not have come as far as he had in this strange war if he were not made of sterner stuff than that.
"This way," she said curtly. Her voice bounded off the curved walls of the sewers, skittering off in both directions until it finally faded. She winced, but if someone was here - and odds were very good that this place was empty besides them - they would have a difficult time tracking the sounds she and Avenos made.
"My instinct is to head for the nearest gate," she continued, "but if your safe house lies in another direction, please lead the way. Eventually we must leave the city. If he has not got himself killed yet, I will introduce you to someone who can explain better than I the reason I was sent to you." A note of irritation ruffled her voice at the idea. Miyen had taken such an intense dislike to her, she would not have been surprised if he did get himself killed just to spite her.
She was breathing shallowly, hoping to avoid contaminating her lungs with too much of whatever filth lay accumulating in these sewers. War, she had learned very early on, was a very unsanitary business.
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Post by JesterJoker on Jun 13, 2009 14:29:58 GMT -5
Lepi only slightly heard Nova's words, more intent on the sewers around them. The length of the sewer's walkway gave him room for a back and forth march that appeared a little drunk. The noise of the howlers had somehow escaped the soundproof steel, interfering with his ability to think straight. With a finger he trailed the position of the horrors, almost above their heads.
The noise roared within his skull and resembled a tracking gadget that the Yermanes military had used when he had fought as a resistance leader. Different than many of Lepi's fighters, he had never installed a subverted implant. He preferred to rely on his own senses about any danger around him. It seemed especially bizarre that he would be sensing something like that at the moment, but he barely was able to think about why.
He squinted, and the ache against his cranium forced him to his knees. He grabbed his temples and although he wasn't quite sure he probably moaned weakly against the pain. He peered at Nova, and her dangerous personality surged his mind into action. Weakness around Nova would lead to a negative, if not murderous, result, and he had to obtain his own mind again. Lepi, squinting against the pain, reached toward his right ear, where the pain felt the strongest.
Ferreting around within it, reminding himself of Uiasan, a truly powerful front line fighter, but the most obnoxious arsch Avenos had ever met, Lepi smiled tightly. He ripped out a small black implant, aimed his steel hand at the lights, and glimpsed a series of limbs falling from the ceiling. Lepi shoved the implant in a nook of his brown canvas coat, hunched, and raced forward, toward Nova.
"I suppose you got a glimpse of that?" Lepi said. "They found us."
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Post by TravelerOfTheWays on Jun 25, 2009 22:06:04 GMT -5
If she were the sort to become annoyed easily, Nova would have been very annoyed at this point. Avenos had picked up something her normally-keen - but unenhanced, at least by the standards of these people - senses had failed to notice; he had then proceeded to fall to his knees in a startlingly vulnerable display; and now he was pointing out to her that they were not alone. As her brain processed this influx of information, she wondered idly what should have annoyed her the most out of that list. Not important.
She flattened herself against the disturbingly slippery wall of the sewer and peered through the darkness, to little effect. While odds were good that these people had followed the Howler's information, she could not discount the possibility that these were people on her side. To approach like this would make them monumentally stupid people on her side, but that was unfortunately all too possible.
To run or to confront their hangers-on? Had she been alone, she would have made the decision in a split second and dealt with the consequences at the appropriate juncture, but she suspected that Avenos - like most people, especially people with his reputation for solitary action - would not appreciate such decisive action without the courtesy of a consult.
But if these were people following the Howler, she thought it would be slightly preferable to deal with Avenos's anger than the result of indecision at this crucial juncture. With something like a sigh at human (or close enough) nature, she took off running in the same direction they had come from. When she had a choice, she preferred to deal with as few people at a time as possible. She loosed her gun from her belt as she ran, keeping one arm outstretched to maintain her balance in the treacherous goop that trickled near their feet.
"Wait!" one of their followers shouted. It was a familiar voice, but Nova was not about to stop.
Unable to communicate her intentions through sign-language this time, she turned toward Avenos, running along beside her, and spoke as low as she could. "She's either switched sides," as if there were only two, she thought wryly, "or she's just very stupid. Either way, I'm in no mood to chat."
Somewhere nearby, the sound of rushing water suddenly grew very loud, and the smell that rose from the gunk at their feet become almost overpoweringly nauseating. Nova did not spare a glance backward because she knew she wouldn't be able to see anything, but she wanted to. This was threatening to get ugly.
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Post by JesterJoker on Jul 10, 2009 23:02:59 GMT -5
Though Nova faced their ambush, Avenos faced the other direction. He didn't bother bringing out his own gun, and just ran with as high a pace as he could handle. The level of panic that had opened onto his system made his insides squirm with discomfort, and he wondered how long he could keep it up. When Nova told him that they were people and not, in fact, the howlers, he slowed his run.
The people who had found them splashed through the wet about as much as he and Nova. Obviously, they had the trail and didn't intend for it to leave. "Should I know her?" he asked. "Sounds like three, or maybe four, following us, from the noise. But I can't be sure."
He knew it really didn't make a difference, because he was looking for the route to the safe house, an opening to the streets, or a branching path within the tunnels, but the need to have any answers whenever he could get them always had to be achieved. Then he saw another path, and ducked underneath a stray shot to clamber into it.
As he entered the new tunnel, Avenos saw a series of interesting aspects. The floor did not have the same level of the wet material, the tunnel was slightly more narrow, and a flimsy steel fence shadowed a small room away from the other parts of the tunnel. Flickering lights, and a message from a tongue he didn't know, buzzed above it. Avenos raced toward it and yanked on its lock with his metal hand.
The fence made a shrill noise. It curled away. Avenos peered inside it and saw pipes, most of them appearing good and useful, if not really fresh, and a couple levers.
"I got a suspicion about this," Avenos angled himself around the fence. "Keep them out of our tunnel."
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Post by TravelerOfTheWays on Jul 23, 2009 22:45:00 GMT -5
She peered into the room that had caught Avenos's attention, and she was glad to have somebody local to interpret that mass of twisted metal. Keep them away, that she could do no matter where she was. Without a word in response because she had nothing especially helpful to offer, she turned around and readied her weapon. Leaving him to his devices and trusting that he would realize she was not abandoning him, Nova leapt into the darkness to confront their attackers.
Just as she had thought, the party had their guns held out in front of them, prepared to shoot anything living in their field of vision. Not really the way to greet one's allies. The acoustics of the tunnel were such that it was impossible to approach them silently; her only hope was to confuse them about the direction she was coming from. If she remembered correctly, there was an adjoining tunnel that joined the route she had taken just a few yards ahead. Was it ahead of the group? Or behind it?
A moment's indecision would kill her, so she decided quickly. Bending into the slime at her feet and swallowing hard to suppress her gag reflex at the smell and the tactile sensations, Nova scooped up a halfway solid mass of something and threw it into the tunnel as closely as she could remember. It glooped and slid noisily down the wall.
"Fan out!" the woman's voice barked. "It may be a ruse, but she has to be nearby." Then, in a sweeter voice, she addressed Nova. "Illunova, hold still, we're looking for you. You're in danger."
That's right, she thought, please do keep speaking. The sounds bounced crazily off the walls, and she took a few agonizingly careful steps in time with the woman's honeyed words. Suddenly, she heard somebody directly in front of her, and worse, she smelled him. Biting down hard on the bile that rose in her throat, Nova slapped one hand across the man's mouth and sat down hard in the goop. Disgusted and disoriented as he was, he wasn't able to cry out.
"Avenos!" she cried, risking her voice, "hurry with whatever it is you're doing! They're almost on top of me!" She hoped it sounded sincere, and in a way, it was true.
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Post by JesterJoker on Aug 11, 2009 1:43:49 GMT -5
The idea about the wheel had become a bust, apparently. She certainly didn't appear to be the type of woman to yell without a good reason. Once he had thought about it, it actually deeply disturbed him.
Lepi growled, "Fukkit," and yanked back the glove from his robotic hand. He didn't like violence if it wasn't necessary, but he didn't have a whole bunch of choice right now. One glance at the wheel first, because it appeared such a simple answer. Why had he had to work so light this time? He glanced at the display, and noticed that its charge had enough juice for quite a while.
He leaned against the wall for a second, listening for the space between Nova, her old friend and the other people after them. They didn't sound very far from each other, and if Nova had been messing with him, she knew something he didn't. With a lack of other choices, he sent a barrage of shots toward the people. One of them made a grunt.
"They're in different places!" said one of the voices.
"Hush," said the leader, "when you're noisy, they can hear you."
Her follower said something Lepi wasn't able to quite hear. Lepi wondered if ripping out his earpiece wasn't perhaps the brightest thing. The sewer became eerie and quiet, then, and Lepi shot another blast into the tunnel. Many gunshots rang across the tunnel, more than he had thought, and he waited until the tunnel became quiet again.
"Would you say this is a stalemate?" asked the leader. "Nova, please come out and make this simpler. We know you're in there."
Splashes made a path toward Lepi, and he wasn't quite sure what he would do about that. Then an insight came to him, and he ran to the wheel. He had to spin it further, so much that his muscles hurt. The sewer had begun flushing a surge through it before, though he had been vaguely aware. That would mean, hopefully, that the wheel would have a different use.
He lifted his robotic hand, aimed at the fence, and opened a barrage while the woman's followers walked into his line of sight, their appearance as morbid as anything else in the sewer. They blasted at him, also, but realised that their weapons bounced against the force field built onto the fence.
He glanced toward the ceiling, and like he had thought, he saw a manhole. "Nova!" Lepi yelled. "Get in here!"
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Post by TravelerOfTheWays on Sept 1, 2009 0:36:47 GMT -5
Avenos's plan became clear in a flash of insight. Nova took a deep breath and plunged into the noxious muck. Gunshots ricocheted around her, bouncing off the metallic tunnel and skittering along the surface of the water. The sludge absorbed much of the impact, leaving Nova unharmed as she skimmed toward Avenos. When she finally surfaced, an azure flash filled her vision.
"I'm astounded that that forcefield still functions," she commented as they took a moment to watch bullets and energy beams slide harmlessly off the softly glowing blue shield. "With all the destruction wrought on this world, I would have assumed that machinery with such a mundane purpose would have been looted for parts months ago."
She enjoyed the opportunity to breathe, albeit a bit shallowly, considering the muck that continued to drip slowly out of her hair and clothes, and hoped that Avenos's many cybernetic updates had not included improved olfactory senses. In order to feel somewhat productive, she extracted her favorite sidearm from her belt and began cleaning it.
"Stalemate is not the word I would choose," she shouted after the weapons fire from their pursuers had slowed and ceased. "In fact, we seem to be at a distinct advantage. Not only do we possess control over this forcefield, but I now have more insight into the corruption of our employer. I thank you for that." Her voice held not a trace of sarcasm; she truly did appreciate the information provided by this episode.
The woman stepped out of the shadows, presenting such a stark contrast to Nova that even she had to smile. Short and blonde and fair, not to mention pristine in a silvery material that repelled water and stains, she tilted her head and widened her ice blue eyes.
"Nova," she called in the high-pitched, girlish voice Nova recognized so well. "I'm so glad you've decided to talk. There's a been a terrible misunderstanding."
During their business association, Nova had never understood what people found so appealing about this doll-like human being with her childish, airy voice. She admired Merove for concealing her true competence, of course, because she personally had little talent for deception, but she fundamentally did not understand why it worked so well. If she batted her eyelashes and breathed every word, she doubted it would have had the same effect.
"This war has been fueled by terrible misunderstandings," Nova replied across the barrier, "but I do not believe this to be one of them. You know what lies in store for you, Merove," she finished by way of farewell.
The stench lessened behind the forcefield, which led her to hope that an exit was near at hand. If not, she might be able to demolish something close to the surface. Or even better, she could convince one of the war 'bots to demolish it for them. With that in mind, she strode away from the forcefield, leaving Merove shouting in her wake.
"Avenos, we're going to have to find shelter in about thirty seconds," she warned him. "I'm going to deactivate the forcefield in order to call down the city defender 'bots, and they're going to seek out Merove and her companions. If we move very quickly, I estimate that we can leave this sewer while the 'bots are seeking them."
She checked the gun she'd been cleaning once more and began firing at the forcefield generator. Avenos looked a little pale, probably annoyed that he had expended so much effort on the thing only to have her blow it up. She hoped he understood.
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Post by JesterJoker on Sept 27, 2009 0:32:19 GMT -5
Avenos stared at Nova, feeling a mixture of emotions boiling around in his mind. Was Nova really underestimating the powers she would unleash upon their unwitting enemies? Would the war 'bots work at all, if they had been torn down like most of the other technology in this city? Even more than that, he wondered if they would even have thirty seconds to escape.
His olfactory senses had been indeed strengthened, though not anywhere to the scope of someone altered with animal DNA. He thanked the heavens for that, because he had seen what people with canine or vulpine DNA acted like. The electricity connected to his nerves sometimes made him snap and go manic, but he didn't usually obtain a pure, terrifying rage.
Coils of flame erupted from the fence, and it fell to the ground. Avenos lifted one hand high and brought it down, signaling that she should stop shooting. With his other hand he lifted a finger to his lips and listened warily. If the war 'bots functioned, they should be coming right about then.
A sharp, grating scream of steel and steel echoed from a distant tunnel in the sewers, approaching quickly. Avenos appeared more pale, now, his ears picking up the sound quite easily. Bare seconds after that, the war 'bots crawled into their view. Bricks and rock fell from the ceiling, from their bulk and their heavy footsteps. And the red atmosphere of the city showed some distance away.
"Might be four, five," Avenos said. "We have to get out of here. You first."
While Nova raced to the open exit, if she did without complaining, Avenos watched the war 'bots with fascination. They were smaller than the usual, torn down to their skeletal cores. Even in such a state, their sharp, hulking frames dominated most of the tunnel, and the spiked maces attached to their shoulders snaked across the tunnel with an almost blinding speed.
One of the eight targeted Avenos, and he knocked it aside with a shot. The squad yelled, and ran for cover, and the Merove, a voice that Avenos recognized now, instructed them to stand their ground. Avenos thought they probably would, and that, if the Merove was really all that good, the woman's squad would all get away.
But they were war 'bots, and playing games with them was never a good idea.
Avenos raced after Nova. She stood a few feet from the opening, and she appeared irritated. He didn't know the reason, but had thought she might get feisty. After all, neither of them liked being bossed around.
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