Stop on the X, please

  “Another squad moving i!” EP yelled. “Heading towards the southeast offices!”

  The MG3 erupted ial-tearing roars and Luke yelled between the bursts.

  “They gotta get in line!”

  He poured lead at the two SUVs speeding past the ter row that bisected the pallet racks. They sparked in the dark and vanished, but he kept firing blindly into the maze of cardboard aal until he thought better of it and decided to save his ammo.

  “Fuck! You got anything for these pieces of shit?” he yelled.

  “Gonna try!” EP said.

  EP guided another bomb drooward the southeast er of the De of the gunmen got out of the SUVs and piled into the truck bed while others sed the air with their rifles. As she dropped the drone down out of the support struts, one gunman caught her drone in a beam of white light. She twisted the trols and smmed the dest, but the feed went dark as a stationary camera drone caught the muzzle fsh.

  “Shit!”

  She closed the dead drones feed and switched to the stationary ohat had caught its death. As the attackers who had broken in through the southeast offices linked up with the two SUVs, the pickup truck coasted along the wall towards the frorance, gun barrels g out of the bed and windows.

  “That truck’s moving down the east wall! Quadrant Five to Four!”

  Luke pivoted the MG3 and burned brass a firing blindly into the pre-marked zone of cardboard aal. For the first time in what felt like ages, EP saw something ght. The bullets cracked out of the boxes and spttered the gunman in and around the truck with rippih. Some fell instantly while others scrambled to cover or shot wildly at nothing.

  Trying to keep the momentum, she prepped another bomb drone and sed the other feeds. Another vehicle sped out of formation in the back lot, and before she could find the words to call it, two other vehicles made for the south ramp again.

  “Two more heading for the ramp, April!”

  Suddenly, one of the Suburbans in the southeast er squealed across the floor and flipped a bitch, heading back west. It took a hard fast turn down the ter path betwee pallet racks, right at Luke.

  “Bitch really?!” He swiveled his gun again and squeezed the trigger like it was a trachea. Rounds sparked in the darkness as he walked the fire from the grill to the right tire.

  There was a fsh and a roar as a gunman atop the sunroof id into an M249 and everything around Luke became crag air and screaming ricochets and shattered barrier. At just under a hundred yards away, the two belt feds ripped the dead space between them into something heavy and bristling. It seemed to st forever, the muzzle fsh of the 249 growing like some widening demonic eye as the SUV barreled towards him.

  A breath ter the PKP cracked the air open just over his head and his earbuds muffled everything down to his heartbeat. In almost the same moment, the tire he had been shooting at exploded, and for a measureless drawn out sed the SUV sailed forward like a ghost ahought it would op, but in a sudden jump, like time had caught up with itself, the SUV jerked to the right and smmed into a pallet rack with an all-metal crash. The rack colpsed in a heap as Luke broke through the windshield with a sustained burst, and it took a few seds after that for him to realize a stray PKP round had taken out the M249 gunner long before the wheel went.

  “Joe! Left! Quadrants two-one!” EP screamed. It all clicked into p his head, his situational awareness good enough, in this instao tell him he was fucked, but uo do much else.

  The truck hugging the east wall had accelerated in unison with the SUV and in an instant, it ulling out from around the racks in front of the turnstiles, bristling with fresh barrels.

  Luke pivoted his gun to his left like a boxer rolling with a punch, but it felt like moving through thick oil. He fought the urge to shoot until he had them in his sights, but right as the front bumper slid into his line of fire, there was a distinctive “k” and the veyor belts exploded ten yards ahead of his face.

  “Fuck!”

  He went blind in a fsh and his swear dissolved into a groan as the suddeions of gut punch, eardrum strike, and burning needles rolled over him. If he could feel that much with the adrenaline, he thought, almost detachedly, the real damage robably far worse.

  He unleashed a wave of fire into the pallet racks, the floor, the wall above the entrance, aually, into the gunman in and around the truck, but the biggest effect of the burst was that the muzzle fsh reflected off everything, telling him it wasn’t his real eyes that had beeroyed.

  “My NODs are fucked!” he hissed, and with one quick swipe of his forearm, khe broken half tubes of pstid gss up out of his face.

  His bursts turhe truck to scrap, but the gunmen had quickly realized that was about all he was hitting. They started to fan out, moving out of cover, and each step they took without getting cut down made them more bold and more sure; This MG gunner was blind as a bat.

  “Joe!” Lindsey shrieked and got halfway through ging positions before the gunman moved in for the kill. They were in a half-moon, with rifles raised when the gunfire cshed with the bursts of the MG3.

  It was the slow steady fire of an Ultimax 100. Sam flicked on her IR beam and opened up from uhe mezzanine, catg them pletely off guard and dropping two before one had time to return fire with a FN MK46. She y into the trigger and gave them the rest of the drum as rounds sparked off the mezzanine around her like fireworks hitting a link fence.

  “Oh shit, sorry!” EP squealed, and one of her micro drones bathed the truck gunmen in white light.

  “About god damned—” Luke y into the gun and three men died instantly, but others opened fire from the deep woods of the pallet racks. The trated rifle fire rivaled the MG3 and Luke was once again in a world of splintering air and spittih.

  “Mother fuckers!

  He returned fire, but this time with more servative bursts. He could feel the belt getting shorter. Somewhere beyond the circle of white light, another belt fed opened up, this time using his own thinly packed quadrant against him, and one of his barrier pallets broke open in geysers of sand.

  In one peripheral camera feeds, EP saw the other two SUVs from the back lot speed up the South ramp and into the DC.

  “Joe, fall back!” she squealed, but Luke just ughed a firing. She mashed the mute button and screamed. On her camera feed, gunmen scampered down the rows of pallet racks, crawled through boxes and climbed over the racks like is, evenly spread apart but advang as a single force, looking for a line of sight on Luke. When they found one, he’d be in trouble, and she would once again be pletely helpless and far away.

  Lindsey was less disheartened.

  “Quadrants four-five!” she screamed. “Let em fug have it!” She unloaded into a se of the pallet racks and the PKP sent the gunmen scattering. Luke so her target and the two of them once again caught the enemy in a wall of lead, though this time the devastation was diminished. At the very least, the gunmen slithering through the racks stopped dead still.

  EP saw her ove in a bomb drone while the gunmen were suppressed. She flew it out of the top of the rad hugged the ceiling. She was soaked i, breathiically, and purely focused on piloting the drone, so she didn’t see another SUV speed across the lot and pull up to the truck office door.

  Luckily, Michael was more alert.

  “Gunmen iruck office.”

  And the whole time a certain someone is stuck digging through a pile of returns! ime, things e apart at the welds. episode, Fragmentation.