The Dark Edge Chronicles - Clan War

Safehouse

Pop, pop, pop, three dropped before they could even react. He managed to get two more before the rest dropped their heads and hunched their shoulders to return fire, pounding the window frame with everything they had as they tactically crabbed sideways to change the angle of attack.

Already moving away from the window, Lash let another small smile of satisfaction touch his lips. Then he twisted around and hammered nearly a full clip into the front room where Truk was about to be overwhelmed.

While the nestari was good, he was no Qos Viran. The White Flames had pushed so many of their troopers into the window, all the while protecting their vulnerabilities, Truk couldn't bring them all down. And now he was using his rifle as a club as at least four were in the room, grappling with him.

Even as Lash's eyes fell onto him, there was a muted flash of a muzzle discharge as a human, handgun up and against Truk's body, fired close range. At that distance, the bullet had enough power to punch through the nestari's body armor, both the neural armor and the physical plating. Lash felt tension ripple along his jaw when he saw Truk jerk in reaction, the bullet obviously biting deep. Then he stopped firing and threw himself forward, pulling out the combat knife as he did.

The human with the handgun he dropped first, a quick swing arcing the blade through the man's neck and sending a spurt of blood splashing onto Truk. Pulling the first human out of the way, he put the next strike into a hard stab deep into the side of the next human's neck, striking his spine. Then he too was getting pulled out of the way before Lash's massive hands were taking the third by the head and snapping his neck with a surge of strength.

As he turned to block a knife attack from the last human in the room, Lash yanked out one of his few remaining kickstarts and hammered it into Truk's leg. Then, twisting his wrist, he pulled the human out of position and forward to catch him by the head. A hard twist later, the White Flame was dropping limp to the ground.

"You okay?" he spit out, bringing his rifle back up to pound at the handful of shapes he could see through the smoke beyond the shattered window's frame. He quickly emptied the magazine he had, ejected it, and had another hammered into place and his rifle cocked and firing again before Truk was able to answer.

"I think so," he grunted. "The bullet went right through but it shredded my intestines. The jumpstart took the edge off, but I'm still hurting."

"Fall back," Lash tersely directed. "The back of the house for the moment is secure. Check on Narcist. We need to start thinking of extracting ourselves out of this situation ASAP."

"Agreed. To Narcist, then." And with that, he staggered back towards the security closet.

Lash's magazine went dry a second or two later. Now, with smoke swirling heavily through the space, he felt much more comfortable about leveraging the Shanzi without the enemy catching sight of it. Not to mention, they absolutely needed the firepower to cut themselves out of this.

His rifle went over his shoulder on its ready strap. Then his hand was in the middle of his back to pull the futuristic machine pistol out of its holster.

"Rapid fire, targets of opportunity," he said in English.

"Rapid fire," the pistol's AI replied almost too quietly for him to hear. Then it was firing, throwing hundreds of ceramic rounds through space in less than a second with a soft 'chitter' of discharge.

Invented and built by Brotherhood psionics from hundreds of years into the future with the sole purpose of killing other psionics. Firing flattened ceramic rounds fast enough to chew through telekinetic shielding, they were deadly against even the most powerful psionics, like Lone Gunmen hardwires. So, leveraging such a weapon against cutting edge body armor, while resistant to regular high velocity rounds, was almost unfair.