Galactic High

“No! Jack!” Sephy cried out as she saw them fall, quickly swapping to her plasma rifle to try and give him some covering fire.

“Sephy! Enemies close!” Nika warned with a yell as she blasted a gutter punk that had tried to rush her, destroying the left part of the amphibian’s torso with a powerful shotgun blast that stopped him dead.

“Shit!” The Skritta cursed as she dove into cover on the opposite side of the alcove as plasma blasts zipped over her head, pummelling the plastered walls where she had just been standing and spitting up dust. Scrambling to her feet and unclipping her plasma rifle she blind fired around the corner, not caring who was on the other side as she bought Alora and Chiyo time to use their powers.

Dante barked loudly, as a dome of the most translucent sparkling blue settled over the girls. Recognising it as the same kind of shield the ‘dog’ had summoned when they were ambushed by the Red Legion aspirants on the way back from the Oracle, the Skritta grit her teeth as her brain caught up to what had been pure instinct. Holy shit this was bad!

Chancing a peek around the corner she could see a scrum for the stairs as a few of the more sober and less combative-looking patrons wisely decided to make their escape while they could, meaning that the stairs were clear enough to descend quickly if she and the others could get there. Unfortunately the path to get there was packed with many, many more of the rougher-looking mercenaries, gangsters and other toughs fired up by what was going on!

“ERE WE GO BOYZ!” A loud drunken voice yelled out from somewhere nearby. “WAAAAAAAGH!”

As two heavy-armoured Xarak wearing purple gang symbols charged into a group of avians wearing green, the resulting drunken brawl quickly escalated like wildfire into a full-blown melee, drawing nearby bystanders into the mix as drinks were spilled, bottles were smashed and bodies hit the floor.

‘Shit, getting out won’t be easy.’ The Skritta thought to herself, before suddenly getting an idea as she looked to the overhead turrets that looked like they were powering up.

“Cover me!” She called back to the others, as a translucent AR feed highlighted her vision to reveal the poorly maintained and vandalised local Matrix. Looking around the display, she could see poorly coded glitches rampant throughout the area making it difficult to perceive the local connections, with what looked like years of virtual graffiti scrawled everywhere else.

‘I’m surprised that any electronics work here…’ Sephy thought to herself, sending a scouting program to work out what she had to work with, while in the real world she moved to the balcony to try and look for Jack. She couldn’t see anything through the chaos and her view of the Matrix before she had to duck down back into cover as several plasma blasts were sent her way from the opposite side.

A quick blip from her scouting program told her that it had found what she was looking for, and Sephy wasted no time as she switched her view to that of her scouting program, holding back the nauseous sensation caused by the sudden perception shift, as almost immediately she had to focus on bringing her defensive programs to bear as several hostile nodes honed in to attack her.

‘What the fuck? These IC are way too powerful for a place like this!’ Sephy thought to herself as she backed away, maintaining her defences and cursing the fact that she couldn’t fully fade into the Matrix to speed things up. Looking up, Sephy saw the connections for the local turrets defended by a wall of advanced Blocker IC too advanced to be part of the local system, and she also saw the reason.

‘Oh you motherfucker!’

Hiding behind the defences, Sephy spotted a shrouded ghost-like shape by the turret connections, working an intrusion program on them to bring the turrets under their control.

Another slicer was already in the system!

As she sent a data bomb their way, the defences quickly acted to protect their charge, intercepting the digital attack and exploding in a debris of code lines and pixels. Turning around, the other slicer grinned as his hack of the turrets continued automatically, indicating that he was fully sliced into the local Matrix.

“Ah, yes. We were informed that the outsider had a slicer amongst his group.” The figure cruelly cackled, though Sephy was unable to tell their species or gender due to them both being in cyberspace. “I would normally tell you to surrender, but our Lictor gave us orders to eliminate every single one of you. But hey, if you’re lucky you’ll be alive long enough for me and the boys to run a train on you and your friends while you stare at the Outsider’s bloody, broken corpse. What do you say?” The form gave a wicked grin even as he knew the answer, summoning more Defender IC.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sephy snarled as she programmed another data bomb. “Doesn’t matter if it’s cyberspace or in reality, you’re not leaving this shithole alive!”

“I doubt it!” The other slicer chuckled as they summoned more Attacker IC, easily done for them as they were fully immersed in the Matrix, unlike Sephy who was attempting it in synchronised real time as she stayed in cover in reality. “We were told you were the dumb one in the briefing, you are no match for me!”

‘That’s what you think…’ Sephy thought to herself as she tried a new plan, seeing that the other slicer was too well entrenched. Quickly pulling up her pre-prepared list of viruses she shot out her virtual hands as what looked like several paper aeroplanes shot out to go for the other slicer. They were weak, unable to do any damage to the slicer, and most were easily intercepted, but enough hit the slicer to do what she needed them to do. Just for a moment, the avatar dropped and she saw the slicer for a brief as he actually was, an obese toad-like being in some kind of uniform.

More importantly, she was able to pinpoint the exact direction and distance of his real body from her current location.

“Hah! Pathetic!” The other slicer cackled again, not noticing what Sephy’s attack had actually done. “Was that meant to hurt? Take this!”

Sephy grimaced as her Matrix defences took a heavy hit as she quickly backed out of cyberspace to return to the real world, grunting and shaking off the disorienting feeling of treading two worlds and being violently ripped back into one. Had she been fully sliced in, it could have caused her some serious injury.

“Guys! We have a problem!” She shouted back to the others, as she saw the turrets begin to swirl around to aim their way…

*****

“Dessenta!” Alora gasped as she finished the spell she had been casting, causing blurry illusionary duplicates of her, Dante and the other girls to randomly appear near them, before with another word of command she caused them to run out and scatter to hopefully confuse the enemies targeting them. Ever since the trick had worked when they fled from the Cult of the Destroyer, Alora had been practising this technique, though it was still far from a perfect distraction.

Some of the illusions ran off the balcony only to dash uselessly through the air, while others waded into the various fights that were breaking out, even going through some people as they yelped out in confusion before trying to attack them.

“We’ve got to get Jack and run!” She yelled out, though she wasn’t sure if the others could even hear her over the blazing music and the veritable moshpit that had formed on the ground floor under them. She turned to the crew of River Giants that were still with them, standing there with weapons brought to bear, but not really knowing what to do. “Where is your vessel located?” She asked them sharply.

The River Giants just stood there with a dazed look, and Alora realised they were probably in shock at seeing what just happened with Jack.

“Captain! Where?” Alora yelled, and that seemed to awaken the giants out of their stupor.

“Far right side of the docks, lass!” Captain Ripples-On-Salt spoke up hastily. “Largest vessel there, it’s called the Siltskimmer, you can’t miss it!”

“Alright.” Alora nodded, trying to remain calm. “When you get the opportunity, get away from the place and get everything ready to leave. Pull out of dock a little bit if you need to but do not leave without us. We’ll join you as soon as possible.”

“Lass, we’re not sticking around if things get bad!” The captain warned with a panicked look.

“If it spreads that far and you need to protect your people, then do so,” Alora acknowledged. “But we’re here for a reason, and our mutual friends won’t be pleased if you lose your nerve!”

“Alright, alright!” The captain nodded, raising a hand placatingly. “We’ll do what we can and wake all hands, they’ll be sleeping around this time.”

“Good!” Alora nodded. “Stay back and as far away from us as you can be, then make a break for it!”

“We can fight, you know!” One of the crew spoke up, as the captain rounded on them.

“You’re drunk off your ass Dips-In-Bog! And we have our orders! We’re not sticking around, but at least we’ll probably have to batter some fools to get out!”

Glad to have resolved that, Alora turned around to assess the situation. She could see Sephy covering the right side while she was looking up towards the turrets, no doubt trying to take them over, while Nika was holding the right, and was attracting the most amount of fire. Seeing where the shots were coming from, Alora quickly ran towards the edge of the balcony near a wooden pillar that would hopefully give her some covering fire as she quickly cast a spell.

“Pyrallis!” She yelled out as she pointed her wand at the group of enemies aiming for Nika, as a jet of fire roared out, zipping around, above and below anybody not shooting at them as it smacked into the trio on the opposite balcony that were, immolating two of them, but the third, a great hulking Balnath with a huge overgrown maw of teeth, was able to shrug it off. Alora dove to the ground as they returned fire, completely obliterating the pillar she had tried to hide behind.

‘Well that got his attention’. Alora thought to herself as she rolled to the side away from the pillar, out of sight of the Balnath as they let rip with their gatling plasma gun, though fortunately most of the wild shots had been intercepted by Dante’s shield. Waiting for the sounds and lights to dissipate, Alora quickly got to her feet and cast another spell…

*****

“Come on then you fuckers!” Nika growled after she dispatched her amphibian attacker, quickly switching to her plasma rifle as she checked her side of the balcony alcove, quickly dispatching a figure that looked like she was heading for them. Nika didn’t allow any sliver of doubt to shake her, this situation was dire enough that anyone even remotely looking like a threat to her or her friends was going down!

‘We need a way out, Sephy has the stairs.’ The Kizun thought to herself as she spotted a sharpshooter on the opposite balcony far too assured of themselves to be just an ordinary patron, an assumption that was proven correct as they moved to take aim at Sephy, before a burst from Nika smacked into him and threw their aim wide, though didn’t finish them.

‘They’ve got good armour, maybe shields too, these guys are professionals.’ Nika concluded, though grinned as she spotted a group of some blue-feathered avian species mob the sharpshooter, clearly looking to grab their weapon in the midst of all the chaos. ‘Stairs were at the back of the building, so my way leads to the front. Maybe we can blast a way out and jump down? That plan worked out for us before…’

She contemplated the idea, knowing that she hadn’t taken as many breaching charges as she normally would for an urban mission, having dismissed the need to have as many in a rural environment, but she had one on her just in case, with a couple more distributed among a few of the others. However, the building they were in wasn’t the most structurally sound, and she had a real fear that enough damage could bring it crashing down above their heads!

The decision was taken away from her, as from one of the far alcoves ahead of her, a group of three strangely uniformed soldiers of some kind advanced towards her, with the Kizun having no doubt they were enemies, as two of them carried tall, broad riot shields locked into place, while the third shot at her with an accurate burst, cracking her shield and thumping into her heavy armour as she retreated. Where had these guys come from? She could have sworn she hadn’t seen anyone in uniform, but realised that, like them, their opponents may have been in disguise and had needed to quickly gear up before engaging.

Immediately, Nika reached to her belt for a grenade, electing for a smaller yield as she activated the timer and waited a few seconds before flinging it back from cover with a well-practised blind throw, sending it bouncing and clattering in a straight line before detonating right on target. Grinning with the roar, she dashed out from cover, going full auto as she unleashed hell, keeping low as she pushed forward, not letting up as she saw one of the shield guys drop to the ground while another couldn’t hold on, stumbling and falling back down the freshly blown hole caused by the grenade, which must have slipped under the shields and taken out the third guy.

And as she looked at the freshly blown hole, she realised now they had a quick way down!

*****

Those are Regulators! Chiyo warned, though she had no idea if any of her friends were paying attention as the Ilithii drew her power in to assist Dante in maintaining an energy barrier, before taking out her magic staff and channelled her power to lash out with psionic power at whoever she could detect down below, sensing that they were going after Jack. She heard her friends acting and knew she had to do everything in her power to get them all out in one piece!

Sensing a lot of magical energy flaring up, Chiyo activated her astral sight to check what was happening, and cursed as she did. There was a lot of ambient mana dissipating in the air from several illusionary spells, likely from their attackers, and she detected three strong signatures in particular, and two of them were situated on the ground floor.

The third was on the other balcony!

Responding to the imminent threat, Chiyo focused on her attack as she saw the astral form of the physically obscured wizard on the other side of the room whispering words of power and weaving their hands in strange patterns for a complicated spell of some kind that didn’t look good.

Her meditations with the Essence of Water they had looted from the Pallid Pit had proved fruitful as she had quickly learned to combine her new affinity with her existing psychic powers to weave together some new tricks, her most basic one coming into play as she quickly drew in the ambient water from all around them to cluster in one great ball, before launching several blasts that shot out to catch the enemy mage completely off guard, battering their body and cracking several ribs, causing them to flail back and, more importantly, completely disrupting whatever spell they were trying to cast.

The enemy mage appeared physically as their illusion mask was dispelled, revealing a diminutive blue furry mammalian with a long, thin snout in a set of traveller's robes with the insignia she recognised as belonging to the Order of the Infernal Harmony. Chiyo saw them angrily motion at her, ordering several more Regulators on the other side of the building to aim at her.

‘Well, I’m flattered…’ Chiyo thought to herself as she put more of her energy into maintaining her personal shields and hunkered down to avoid the gunfire, which took some of the heat off Nika, before the inevitable explosion went off several seconds later.

“We’ve got a quick way down!” Nika called back after dashing back to them, a sentiment that Chiyo quickly repeated to Alora to get past the deafening noise.

“Understood!” Alora shouted. “Chiyo?”

Lead your crew to the left and drop down the hole, the Ilithi told the River Giants, imbedding the thoughts directly into their minds over the noise. We shall follow promptly. Get everything ready for a quick exit. We’ll cover you, go now!

Quickly nodding in agreement, the band of River Giants needed little prompting to run the fuck away from the ongoing shitstorm while the group covered for them, with Chiyo unleashing her power and levitating a Regulator from behind an overturned table, only for Nika to cut them down mercilessly with plasma fire.

“Guys! We have a problem!” Sephy yelled in a panic. “They have control of the turrets! I can’t take them back from here!”

We’ve got to get off this balcony! Chiyo warned the others. Nika has an exit! We’ve-

But then she sensed it.

Scatter! Now! She warned as the entire balcony suddenly collapsed violently from under them…

*****

With a roar, Jack braced for impact as the ground rushed up to meet him with terrifying speed as he struggled with The Redeemer, before they both collided with the dancefloor in a bone-jarring smash, breaking the grapple as The Redeemer slammed hard onto his back, with Jack faring little better as his shoulder took the brunt of the heavy impact, sending shockwaves of pain radiating heavily through his body. The air was knocked from his lungs as he had the presence of mind to roll away, quickly scrambling to his feet with a fierce determination as he gathered his bearings

The room span in a disorienting blue for a second as Jack blinked away the stars dancing in his eyes, but Jack could see a crowd of gangsters and mercenaries forming around him, whooping and cheering, having seen his fall but not having any idea what just happened.

“Where is he?” Jack managed to gasp, as sudden movement from the side caught his attention, springing him into action as he quickly drew his heavy rifle, dodging the Redeemer’s enraged charge at the same time as he managed to get off a risky burst of heavy plasma that caught the Redeemer dead centre of mass as they passed and crashed into a table of avian mercenaries wearing what looked like biker leathers.

“You fat cunt! You spilled my beer!” One of them squawked at the Redeemer, who simply pushed the speaker aside as he quickly assessed the hits he took, a decision he quickly regretted as Jack put another accurate burst into him, staggering him backwards with many smoking holes in his now ruined brown overcoat, but not dropping him.

“Go down you fucking wanker!” Jack growled as he levelled his gun to shoot again, before several shots smacked hard into his shoulder, sending him careening to the side in a wild spin as his shots were sent wide, blasting smoking holes through the roof that allowed the evening light to shine through as he barreled into a group of furry beings that closely resembled silverback gorillas in matching military fatigues that denoted them as part of a militia.

“Fucking kid!” One snarled as he bodily shoved Jack to the ground, flicking a telescopic baton as he approached again to try and do him more harm before Jack got his gun up.

“Back off! Back the fuck off!” He yelled in a panic as he got back to his feet, warning the gorilla-men who cautiously took several steps back as he scrambled to his feet again, as he was shoved and jostled by alien bodies writhing and thrashing around in a frenzied melee of fists, feet, tails, claws, paws, teeth and fuck knew what else.

The pulsating thudding beat of the music jarred like a rampaging heart attack to provide a rhythmic backdrop to the rapidly escalating brawl, punctuated by the gunfire, the crash of breaking glass, and the roars of the combatants locked in drunken combat as he found himself in the middle of a full-blown mosh pit.

Risking a glance to the side, he saw The Redeemer rip off the smouldering remaining scraps of his brown overcoat to reveal the dull thick metal plates of his own heavy armour. He could see that his heavy plasma rifle had done some kind of damage, though he couldn’t tell how much from the melted, blacked, smoking marks from where Jack had shot them, or if his shots had even penetrated past the layers. But he could see that the Redeemer wasn’t going to go down easily as the avian gang was piling on the Ogar, who lashed out at them with his huge powerful fists as plates extended around his neck and head for extra protection.

Suddenly, Jack caught another movement out of the corner of his eye as he spun around, before a pincer deflected the barrel of his rifle, as a spindly insectoid quickly closed the distance, hostile intent abundantly clear in their snarling expression as they snapped a pincer at Jack’s face, who ducked out of the way and shunted backwards.

‘Shit! This place is too swarmed!’ Jack cursed to himself as he tried to aim his gun through the ongoing brawl. ‘I can’t risk firing into an open crowd! The rest of these people haven’t done a thing to me!’

Realising his rifle wasn’t the best choice of weapon now as he was knocked about by the horde of bodies, Jack flicked it around and behind him, relieved upon hearing the magnetic clips on his armour do their thing, latching his rifle in place so he could retrieve it later.

“Aegis!” Jack yelled out as the pincer of the insectoid came at him again, summoning his shield to take the blow before he lashed out, taking the bug in the maw and knocking him back, before he followed through with a quick draw of his sidearm, putting two controlled shots in the thing’s chest and missing the shot to the head as several bolts of blue light smacked into him, though his shield took a few of the hits as he disengaged.

‘Shit! How many of these fuckers did the Redeemer bring with him?’ Jack thought to himself, as he heard an explosion from somewhere up above him. ‘And how the fuck did they know we’d be here?!’

His Ring of the Berserker was flaring up as Jack tried to regain his bearings, trying to spot the source of the magic missiles that had just been flung his way, before he suddenly brought up his forearm, reflexively parrying a swipe from the gorilla-man that had tried to blindside him with the baton. His armour held, only causing him to feel a slight tingle as he lashed out with a punch, clocking his attacker in the face as his gauntlets instantly reacted to cap his knuckles with a metal coating, adding to the power of the punch, sending the gorilla-man to the ground in a daze.

“What’s up retards? May I have your attention please?” A sneering voice called out over the speakers of the music, and though Jack looked for the source of the voice as he tried to get away, he could see the DJ still at his podium looking confused at who was talking. “I know you crackheads aren’t very bright, so I’ll try and use simple words so you understand."

"You are currently being graced by the presence of the Order of the Infernal Harmony, along with our very special guest, The Redeemer! The reason why we’re here is the Outsider practically shitting himself on the dancefloor of this dump, along with a few random bimbos dumb enough to tag along with him. Anyone that gets in the way of our business or takes any action against us should be prepared to accept the consequences, up to and not limited to your brutal death, so if any of you losers are actually lucid enough to understand me, I’d get the hell out of our way.”

“Fuck you, bitch!” One drunken patron yelled out above the noise as he drunkenly shot at the nearest speaker, missing several times before reducing it to slag.

“Oh golly gee, what an unexpected answer from a bunch of fucking crackheads!” The voice mocked sarcastically as Jack saw the turrets above glow with power. “Time to die motherfuckers!”