Out of the Frying Pan

"Get him up." Xanthiana had used the bodies and a stretcher to create a makeshift barricade, there were already two new dead to add to it and she knew there would be more.

"Xan he was just undergoing adrenaline removal, combat efficiency will be well below fifty percent."

"That's fifty more percent than I've got right now." Xanthiana pulled a rifle from one of the dead mutants, she meant to set it next to her but a hand grabbed it. She turned around to see the operative, he was still in a medical night gown, but looked no worse for wear outside of that.

"Operator Roeyka thank you for coming, I hope you have a better exit strategy than you did an entrance one." He was one of Von Bach's personal security, she could tell from the bar code on his arm.

"Figure they can't keep coming, eventually they'll run out of men." She had to admit it was not a very good strategy.

"Fantastic, the kind of plan I expect from someone being paid to shoot not to think, one moment." His voice was pretty gruff, most likely from smoking and not just having been taken off adrenaline stealing machines. Hair was black, going grey, decent shape though she could tell the muscle tone was fading, age was catching up like with his hair.

"I don't think this operative likes us very much Xan."

"Oh what gave you that impression?"

"His ego unit keeps using derogatory terms to refer to us."

"You know in another place that would be hilarious to hear." More mutants were coming, Xanthiana could hear the clank of heavy weaponry coming with them, it was what she feared.

"There is a hallway past this one, listed as closed off due to a Hellbug infestation, we can go that way." The other operative stole some clothes from a corpse, they didn't fit, but Xanthiana couldn't really comment on not looking regulation.

"Sure lets go from guys with guns to creatures that suck the marrow from your broken bones."

"Do you have a better idea?" The clank of a high explosive device ended the conversation, Xanthiana and the operative lept over her makeshift barricade and ran away from the mutants, their gunfire came zipping on by before the explosion let up the world behind them. The mutants seemed genuinely surprised about them running, or at least it seemed that way with how wildly inaccurate their gun fire was. The other operative was leading Xanthiana though Elly had also given her a map to their location in case he tried to leave her behind. They broke through a barrier into an area with quarentine written in an unsteady hand, and then the metal underneath their feet gave way. Xanthian landed right in hellbug shit, the other operative crashed into a cluster of eggs.

"Well I'm so glad we went this way." Xanthiana pulled herself up looked around saw they were in the middle of what appeared to be hundreds of hellbugs.

"Xan I think we were better off with the mutants." Elly piped up her ai voice almost sounding afraid.

"Don't worry Elly, I'm sure they don't eat AI's."

Alone But Not Out

"Put your weapons down." There were four of them, they looked less armed and armored than the mutants outside, but lesser weapons were no less deadly. Xanthiana reached down to where her pistol was on her hip, they had gotten to her so fast she didn't even have time to draw it to the ready position.

"How's my adrenaline Elly?"

"You are in the safe zone as far as usage, if you are wanting to use a burst your health would not be in any danger."

"Excellent."

"WEAPONS DOWN NOW!" The mutant snarled and Xanthiana removed the pistol and in one swift motion tossed it and dove after it just as the adrenaline hit. The mutants were caught off guard from her sudden position change, they didn't even bring their rifles around by the time she put them down. The last one alive managed one errant shot as he died. Xanthiana felt the adrenaline pulsing some more, but it abated as Elly brought her back to normal levels.

"Well I'm so glad I didn't dump that extra pistol ammunition earlier." The bunker was dark, but the EGO overlays made it manageable. Xanthiana was able to see her way forward, and see no one else was coming.

"It would be unwise to leave ammunition lying around Xan." Elly still hadn't gotten a hang of rhetorical statements and that brought a smile to Xanthiana's face. It was like dealing with a really smart child that was somehow stuck in her head and didn't understand people.

"Do we have a map of this bunker available Elly?"

"One second let me try and access the internal servers, yes I do have an overlay, crosschecking with recent power usage finds the most likely room location for our operative here." Xanthiana got a mental image of a room deeper into the bunker.

"Its weird to have an internal gps system Elly."

"I don't find it at all strange, I have several internal diagnostics I'm constantly evaluating." Xanthiana started making her way down the corridor, Elly highlighted areas she considered to be more dangerous than others. Xanthiana went as stealthy as she could, and it appeared successful. Either the mutants were still too engaged with the forces outside the bunker, or this group wasn't as large as their presense outside hinted at.

Xanthiana came upon the room with the operative. It looked like some kind of lab, there were discarded drained bodies near the front of the room and a bunch of tables with drips set up. On one of the tables was the operative. He wasn't Von Bach, but she wasn't going to allow him to die like the rest of the drained corpses like an animal. There was only one other occupant in the room, a huge bioman dressed in a scientists overcoat, the coat was way too small for the Bioman but that apparently didn't bother him. She was however completely confused by what he was doing.

"Producing a drug based on Adrenaline that was developed during the war, in the war they used criminals to produce it, the draining is fatal." Elly answered before Xanthiana could even articulate the question.

"Monstrous."

"It was war is the justification VBI lists in the books, I'll admit it does look fairly horrible when seen like this." Xanthiana didn't know how this wouldn't look horrible when seen some other way, but she didn't want to get into an argument in her own head. On top of that the blueman scientist had spotted her and snatched up the operative.

"Come any closer and this one dies, drop your pistol."

"Yeah that's not fucking happening, put him down and maybe I'll let you live." The creature sneered.

"Your pistol can't even attempt to penetrate my ski..." Xanthiana shot him through the eyes and his big hulk of a body collapsed to the lab floor. The operative was still out, but he was at least safe.

"Xan I hate to be the bearer of bad news."

"But the shots seemingly alerted the base to our presence."

"Correct."

"Swell."

Good Plan, Great Plan

The explosions started rapid fire as Max and Xanthiana charged the bunker. Some of them were from Max's grenade launcher, most of them were the mutants. Xanthiana didn't recall seeing mortars from when they did a quick scouting of the area, but obviously the mutants had some. Elly was tracking trajectory and showing Xanthiana the safe places to run, but she was moving at a high speed and trying to course correct in the midst of gun fire and mortars striking was a little bit harder than just avoiding the very widening circle of doom. Xanthiana slammed into a piece of burned out cover and took a mintue to catch her bearings. Max was well behind her crouched down near a burnt out car, he motioned her forward.

"He has a leg injury his EGO unit informed me he will not be able to make the final push on the bunker."

"Well that's just great, he does realize the point was to at least get two people inside correct?"

"Correct. Xan I'm beginning to suspect the planning for this operation lacked in some aspects."

"You don't say, how are the twins doing?"

"Kill counts are high, ammo counts are running low, their egos are informing me in that we have to 'shit or get off the pot' to borrow a nice earth saying."

"So how much of a chance do we stand, be blunt I can take it."

"We have a 15% chance of making the bunker door, and if I'm being generous a 2% chance of making it out alive."

"I lied I can't take it, tell me we'll make it Elly." Xanthiana shouldered her rifle, she hadn't fired a shot so the magazine was full, but she knew that too would not last.

"We will be 100% successful Xan, so successful the enemies will just give up in the face of our success."

"You are not very good at this lying thing Elly."

"I hope to get better Xan."

"Don't worry you will." And with that Xanthiana pushed herself off the burnt out wall and rushed forward. The first mutant she came across she hit with the butt of her rifle stunning him long enough to spin him around and use him as a human shield from some of the incoming fire. The mutant spun in place as his comrades lit him up, Xanthiana returned fire and kept running. One of the deadly circles came too close to her, the ground erupted to Xanthiana's right and knocked her down.

Her vision was swimming, ears were ringing, and she felt what had to have been a pretty ugly injury to her right leg. She struggled to get back to her feet, in front of her no more than a hundred feet was the bunker, its large blast doors which would be impossible to blow open save some serious ordinance were closing. She gritted her teeth and charged forward, she hadn't come this close to get held back now. She felt the rush of adrenaline, each footfall caused her pain but she grit her teeth past it. The final two mutants between her and the closing doors recieved the rest of her rifles magazine and then the rifle as she threw it aside to not slow her down. Just as the doors were about to close she dove forward and came made it inside, the the loud clang of metal a punctuation mark on her victory.

"What was that Elly?" Despite not having to actually hear the EGO device, the ringing prevented her from focussing on it.

"I said we'll probably need that rifle."

"Right." Xanthiana looked on, the bunker looked pretty deep, there wasn't anyone there to greet her yet, but she knew they would be along shortly.

"Chance for success just went up half a percet Xan!"

"You're such an optimist Elly."

Best Laid Plans of Mice and Bunkers

"Well it's nice of you to join us today Roeyka did you get lost?" The leader of the band of three was a Sensoth, fairly large lumbering one too, Xanthiana could see what looked like a not particularly well dressed wound on his right shoulder. He was also missing most of the hair on his face, it looked like it got scorched off. The other two with him were human, one male, one female, they looked like brother and sister but Xanthiana was always terrible telling humans apart.

"Your directions are shit." It was partly a joke, but the bunker was in a fairly remote area and Xanthiana did have to take some weird paths to get there, Elly was quite proud of her AI self for getting them there without conflict.

"Bitch bitch bitch, its like being back in the Votanis Collective." Xanthiana smiled, most former VC soldiers did not talk very kindly of their former service, that was something the humans definately had going for them, they were at least proud of defending their home. The Votan's felt a bit of shame at destroying earth, and anger at how humans had treated them, but never pride for what they had done. Well outside of Casti's but they were assholes of the highest order.

"What's the situation?" Roeyka wanted to focus on the task at hand, she could tell from the glaze eyed look of the humans they were in conversation with their own EGO units, she hadn't been around many Ark Hunters since land fall, but what she'd seen they all would stand their in a stupor when deep in EGO converstaion, it was almost comical.

"We have a signal, possibly Von Bach, possibly something other VIP, its coming from inside. Mutants are swarming the entire complex, though there appears to possibly be some hellbugs inside, my EGO picked up some of their stink earlier, could have been a former nest of the fuckers or slowly becoming a new one. Can't be too sure until we get inside." Xanthiana could see the entrance, it looked fairly well guarded, the mutants for whatever brain ailment they had that made them still think the war was on, were still well disciplined. The entrance had two guard towers with what appeared to be a sniper and spotter in each one. Sand bagged entrance fortifictions with heavy weapons back up, and at least one blue man stomping around for extra shit and giggles.

"So what's the plan?"

"Kill everyone, collect the vip, get out."

"Sounds great how do you expect to accomplish any of that?"

"I figured with the four of us being ultimate bad asses we could have it done in time for lunch."

"Are all Sensoths entirely insane, or are you just from the same family as every other one of your race I've ever worked with?"

"Nah we're all crazy."

"Well at least that makes me feel better."

"The Ryan's here can provide cover support, she's nasty with a sniper rifle, he's a decent spotter, I figure you and I charge up the middle, I've got a couple rounds in a grenade launcher I borrowed from an Erep soldier here. Figure we can blitz hit them so fast they won't have time to realize our numbers don't resemble our moxxy."

"And what makes you think I like to charge anything?"

"Your charming wit, and your EGO device." Xanthiana wondered what else Elly said to other EGO devices she wasn't aware of.

"Are we going to talk all day or are we going to shoot somebody." The male Ryan was overly eager, but Xanthiana appreciated the sentiment.

"Lets do this before I get a brain and figure out this is a really bad plan." Xanthiana already knew it was a bad plan, but levity always helped in the face of futility. The sensoth who went by Max according to Elly piping up very briefly checked his weapons and motioned Xanthiana forward, and into the breach they went.