The Power Of Ten: Sama Rantha 308 Far Future, Ch. 18 – The Verdict Is Death

"Agent Rantha, no need to engage. We will be there shortly," the sergeant's voice sounded in my head with a crackle of interference.

"You're too loud. Don't worry about it. This is what I do for a living." I drew down with Paten, aiming carefully for a One Shot, and unloaded the Sun Strike on a hapless man-sized spideroid crawling slowly up the opposite wall, nailing it right through the brain cl.u.s.ter.

Paten hummed, Karma clicked over, a Slot opened, energized, resonated with the other Rather Impressive Soulbound Weapon I was holding, and kicked up and open as harmonious power ignited on him.

My Vajra clicked the indicator. Tats glowed under the skin of my hands as the Lightning Gauntlets lit up and began to throw power directly into the power cell in the back of his Compressed stock.

Hot Hard Light began to pulse out twenty times a second, girt in Bane and Vivic fires, the equal of a heavy blaster built into the support of Paten's autobow. Ice-aligned crystals neutralized the waste heat. Actually, Paten got colder the more I shot him.

Pouring the energy of the Lightning Gauntlets into him greatly extended his firing period, from five seconds to almost twenty seconds of autofire. I only had to make sure to spread the shots out as much as possible, as consecutive auto-hits with banefire would be treated as one hit within a six-second time frame. Hit one spider, then another, and go back to the first, however...

I dove through the wall, holding the trigger on full auto, and Whirlwinded.

The medium spider directly above the door got its head split as I leapt into the room spinning, somersaulted, and came down hard on two spiders on the narrow stairs, sliced through another couple on the walls... and Paten's pulses of HHL painted the room in streaks of golden laser light surrounded in multi-colored flames.

Each pulse was aiming for a smaller spider. 1-10 + 18 +2-12 +6d6 Sneak Attack blew them apart as the unwhite fires cut through the gloaming and the HHL scored a wound... and the bonus damage did the rest.

Golden swathes of force blurred in all directions as I kept spinning, moving, reaching. My Dexterity was in excess of 30 even now, and everything moved in arrow time, slow motion, while my Trembling Domain gave me a 360-no scope shooting.

I hosed down everything, although one shot often wasn't enough to kill the big ones unless it landed perfectly, but that was fine.

They didn't get a chance to swarm me, as all the smaller spiders were exploding around me as I spun, and I was the one charging the bigger ones, cutting, sliding, skipping, bouncing, working the angles to target all of them, holding the trigger down. HHL bounced off durasteel and lightly scored the plascrete, doing basically nothing as I wrought my havoc.

I ended six seconds of gravity-mocking acrobatics by coming down on the lid in the middle of the room, shooting down into hole and the half-dozen spideroids clinging there, while the big one hanging under the durasteel lid slowly fell off Chalice, where she'd punched through the fused metal join and plunged into its brain.

I scanned the room once more, didn't find anything sitting in the corners, and vivic fire was already fast at work.

I had a lot of nexals to pick up quickly. "Room is ready for you," I told them, quirking a smile at what they were probably saying on their private channel. I shook out my hair to its full length, and strands of auburn-turned-gold began to snake in every direction as I made a quick tour of the room. I kept the sight of them out of my eyes as my locks plunged into dead spiders, wound about nexals, pulled them out, and deposited them into my Ma.s.s.p.a.ck, flinging off the gore as they did.

And bounty money for each of these things, too! This was going to be profitable for me. I was Visual File counting and sizing each of them, of course...

"Going down," I said, as I heard their quiet, but not silent, arrival. They would have to open the door, anyways. I stepped into the opening on the plate in the middle of the floor, and dropped down.

----

Soulclaws on my feet cleared the way, burning through the shadowy webs, sliding down the wall to the side, dragging my weight and allowing me to hit the floor in something resembling quiet and no vibrations.

The nearest spideroids outside the room were beyond my Tremble for the moment. I eyed the burning corpses tangled in the webs being set afire above, sighed, pulled out my Disk, and began to bounce and ascend back up the shaft, cutting the bodies free before they fell so as to land on the Disk, and not disturb anything below.

Wap, wap, wap, wap, fat spideroid corpses landed atop one another, balanced precariously. The smell of death was being eaten away by the vivus, so that wouldn't betray us for now, and I cemented them all with the biggest one that had been clinging under the lotus lock, before descending quickly.

Might have taken out all their nexals while doing that, too, shhhhh...

Once on the ground, I shoved all the corpses off to a dark corner to burn away unwhite, and as the lads up top reached the half-door and worked on opening it, I peeked out at the spideroids beyond.

The view really hadn't changed yet, still spideroids everywhere, still lots of webs, going on and on and on into the distance. Nothing was really creeping in this direction, so I hadn't been noticed, and could just sit in the shadows and watch what was going on, better than a drone camera.

The boys got the door open manually, squeezed on through, looked at all the burning spideroids around up there, and made their way down the steps as quietly as possible to the slidelock up above. Peering over the edge, they could see me at the corner down below, watching everything.

"Are you going to be safe down there, Agent Rantha?" the sergeant asked in coms.

"Oh, I sure hope not. I'd urge you to come down here, but that's in direct opposition to your mission directive. I can use my Disk to bring two of you down, but evacuation protocols mean bringing down more is unwise. The only way you could do more is if that cover was open, which would be a security no-no.

"I gather you were expecting the lid to be completely off when you came down?"

"Yes," he admitted, as they gathered around the hole. There would be no problem holding this gap, they could just fill it with fire and slaughter everything. "Are you going to have problems getting back up here?" he inquired.

"I can slide personal gravity down to one-fifth and directly jump up through the hole, so no." They shuffled a bit up top... wasn't much different from flying, really. They could do it with jump jets, but they weren't wearing any down here. "I'm just here to watch the show, and if they start coming this way, to get in a lot of free kills and bounty money." I had to laugh subvocally despite myself. "By the way, just to be on the safe side... if you've got some explosives you want me to plant, I can do that, too."

There was some discussion up top. "Have you handled munitions before?" the sergeant had to ask.

"No, but I've got some very qualified people looking right out my eyes, so I rather doubt it's going to be an issue." They rather agreed with that...

----

A few minutes later I scuttled up the wall, retrieved a bunch of fist-sized things of various types, and some other book-sized things of other types. They didn't have glowy timers, and they didn't beep. They were on remote detonation from up top, and I began to place them as directed, bouncing from place to place, including one on the slipcover. I also scattered them around the entrance to the shaft, and the demo guy up top was just itching to use them.

I did advise them to limit the number of people on the breach to three or four, and the rest should be on that stairwell leading out. They could hold that door as easily as any other, and if something was going to blow the lid, it was going to do it violently, and they would not have time to withdraw.

Sergeant Charlz sent down another drone to perch on the wall and give extra vid, as well as serve as a straight-line relay to any incoming forces in the line of approach, although my Band could actually do the same.

A distant rumble came through the floor, and all the spideroids seemed to freeze. In the distance, miles away, I saw a flare of flame, and more vibrations began singing through the metal and stone, playing a melody of violence and death... and it was coming from both directions.

Spideroids began to move. They came out of everywhere and anywhere, and I sure didn't want to count them. It was a black river flowing into the distance, climbing over one another, ceilings, walls, and floors covered with a stream of ten-legged black bodies... and all in what should be utter darkness, save for the fact I was ignoring the lack of illumination.

I was pretty sure my view point was getting sent on into their tactical feed, as the drone likely couldn't see much beyond blurry heat signatures. d.a.m.n, this was a lot of spideroids-
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I was sure someone s.h.i.+t a pink Twinkie somewhere when the Great Empress suddenly surged out of what looked to have been a vehicle garage less than a hundred yards away. She was moving way too fast for something her size, and her body was a good forty feet long, with legs that long again on both sides. She looked big and bad and old and strong, and none of the other spideroids around here were even half her size. She looked like a semi among a flood of go-carts, tri-cycles, small cars, and pick-up trucks, all surging past and around her.

Well, I certainly hadn't expected the big mama to actually be that close. The main sewer feed was a good quarter-mile further down, and the webs were thicker there. Huh...

I also didn't want her to see me here, so I didn't move, very carefully. "So, you lads up top got anything that could put a real crimp into her?" I asked of the very quiet Juris up above, who were suddenly quite happy not to be down there with me. "Because we really don't want her getting away, right?"

One of the heavy weapons guys broke in, "I've got a gyro cannon for backup use if stuff gets through here. Would that work?"

"It would immediately shatter their hive structure down to the subordinate Empresses." I wrapped shadows around myself and pulled away from the edge of the view, knowing they were sending that image out to the fighting starting at the far ends of the colony. "Coming up. I've got a Disk you can stand on to come down."

"You think we all should deploy?" the sergeant asked.

"Nope. We're gonna hit the b.i.t.c.h hard and then book as they come for us. Should be a c.r.a.pshoot then as they come up. BUT... you better be ready on them explosives!"

The demo-guy's response was a flat, "Ready."

---

I bounced up the shaft, pulling out my Disk again, which unstacked lotus-style and spun itself into a nice grey slightly concave carrying device at floor level. The heavy weapons guy stepped on board, put up the muzzle of his launcher, and I scampered back down as the Disk followed me silently.

I brought it all the way to the floor, and he stepped off it slowly and as quietly as possible, which was remarkably quiet, all things considered, and pretty much covered by the echoes of all the distant explosions and shooting and spiders screaming and scuttling down there.

Slowly he rotated around the corner, the five-foot barrel of the cyclical mini-rocket launcher held easily in his power-armored hands.

"How do you want to do this?" his voice came softly, and I could tell he was sweating. Yeah, that was a biiiiig spideroid.

I pulled out Chalice, set her down atop his hand by the trigger. "I'm going to Sun Shot your launcher here as fast as I can, so you're going to get off basically one round a second which is going to hit really hard. It might not kill her, but it'll get her attention. The instant she starts coming this way, you run for that Disk. If she sends her babies and doesn't come, keep shooting her until she does, while I keep them off you."