Necropolis 2 (17 page)

They gathered in front of the doors, hiding behind mainframes.

“What the fuck are we going to do?” Campbell called over the gunfire.

The Drones advanced, but slowly, their legs still not yet meant for speed or dexterity. Greg wished that meant something, but it didn't, the Drones were going to take them down with pure numbers.

“Gimme the detonator,” Billings called.

Campbell, who was the nearest to Billings, passed it to him. Billings looked at the small thing in his palm, and then nodded to himself.

“They're most thinned out along the left side of the room. I'll make a distraction. You three get the fuck out of here!” Billings called. He tossed something to Campbell, who caught it, then began to move.

“
What's this?” Campbell asked.

“
The part! Keep it safe!”

“
Wait. What kind of distraction?” Greg replied.

“
Gonna run into the security center, let them know I've got the detonator. Once you're out, I'll blow the bombs.”

“
But you'll die!” Kyra cried.

“
Nobody lives forever. Now
go
.”

“
Billings, don't do this! We can find another way out,” Greg called.

“
Too late. This way I get to die and it means something. Fucking
run
.” Billings suddenly shoved Campbell towards Greg and Kyra, and then hopped out in front of the Drones. He held up the detonator.

“
Look what I've got,” he called.

“
Billings
!
No
!” Greg screamed.

Billings turned and sprinted into the security center.

“We have to go,
now
,” Campbell roared, shoving Greg and Kyra.

There was no choice. The Drones focused on Billings. Greg, Kyra, and Campbell broke for the left wall, slammed into it and began sprinting along its length, making for the exit. They passed dozens of Drones along the way, who now seemed more interested in Billings. Greg fired at any who tried to get in his way, blowing heads off or decimating torsos. For a second, the Drones crowded in around them and it seemed that none of them would get out alive. Then the three of them blew a hole in the ranked Augmented and squeezed through it.

Greg burst out into the corridor beyond and kept running full tilt, expecting the bombs to go off any second. He glanced behind him, spying Kyra and Campbell keeping pace with him. Greg looked forward again, focused on running.

When were the-

The bombs went off.

A solid wave of force and heat picked Greg up and threw him several meters down the corridor. His hearing was reduced to a loud ringing, but he managed to hang on to his sight. Greg grunted as he landed and rolled a little ways longer,
then came to a stop. He stumbled to his feet, his equilibrium askew, and caught sight of Kyra and Campbell.

“
You made it,” he said, though he couldn't hear himself.

Kyra looked up at him, seemingly confused, then took his offered hand and stood shakily. Campbell said something but Greg couldn't make out what it was. Not that it mattered, he was probably just complaining.

They waited for ten minutes before they felt stable enough to walk. Greg was glad when his hearing came back and the world stopped swaying. He turned and looked back down the corridor they'd fled from. It ended in twisted, blackened metal. Large amounts of smoke billowed from the hole where the network room used to be.

“
Come on,” Kyra said after a long moment. “We really need to go.”

Greg found it difficult to stop staring.

“Billings,” he said, softly.

Kyra took his hand. “I know...come on.”

Greg turned and began following them deeper into the ship.

Chapter 17

–
Beyond Sanity
–

A war was being fought within the metal hull of the
Anubis
.

As Greg led Kyra and Campbell silently through a side passageway, he heard the sound of three armies clashing. Williams and his Dark Ops troops were no doubt doing everything they could to regain control of their operation gone horribly wrong. Erebus and its Augmented were moving relentlessly forward with Erebus' own plan, whatever dark and terrible thing that might be. And the Undead were going berserk on everyone.

For a long while, Greg had said nothing, merely brooding about Billings. He supposed he should have seen something like this coming, in retrospect, what with all of Billings' grim, bleak dialogue on life. Of course, being in a nonstop nightmare like this tended to turn most people towards darker thoughts.

Had Billings' death meant anything?

Greg decided that it wouldn't mean anything at all if they didn't get to the engines and go through with this plan. Then what? How many times had Greg asked that of himself? The future was becoming smaller and smaller, first weeks, then days, and then mere hours, as Greg's life expectancy kept shrinking. He glanced down at his arm.

And then
this
.

“
Okay, this is as far as it goes,” he murmured, coming to the end of the side corridor.

They'd managed to make their way down to the engineering deck and looked for ways into the engine room itself. Only they kept running into problems. There were several more out of the way routes into the engine room, but they were all, for one reason or another, blocked off. Some were locked down and there seemed to be no way to override them. Others were physically damaged to the point where the doors couldn't open.

“It's locked,” Greg growled.

“
Shit,” Campbell muttered. “Looks like we'll have to go through the main corridor after all. This sucks.”

Greg didn't look forward to it. They turned and made their way back along the side corridor. They'd taken a short break to look for any potential way to hit the self-destruct button without actually, physically being there, but short of going to the bridge, which was very far away and no doubt under control of
one
of the three groups, there was no way. So, they'd opted to press on to the engine room, which seemed to be heavily contested territory.

“
I can hear a
lot
of fighting out there,” Campbell said uncertainly.

“
Good,” Greg replied curtly. “We'll slip through while they kill each other.”

Campbell seemed uncertain, but Kyra was with Greg all the way. It was just the three of them now, at least on this ship. Greg wondered if Cage and Powell were okay. He wondered about their bomb. How close was it to actually being built? Had any of the three armies managed to gain a foothold on the other ship? There was only just Powell and Cage over there, even if Cage was a bit of a killing machine...

Greg stopped at the first door he could and froze his thoughts. None of that mattered. Now was the time to fight or die. Plain and simple.

“
Everyone ready? Safeties off? Guns loaded?”

Kyra and Campbell responded affirmatively.

Greg opened the door to the main corridor that would take them directly to the engine room. It sounded like a world war raged within it. He poked his head out and looked around. An army of Drones fought a battalion of Dark Ops troops, both of whom were involved in an intense battle with a legion of Undead.

“
Holy fuck,” Greg whispered.

“
Time to go,” Kyra replied.

They slipped out into the unmitigated chaos. Greg still only had his shotgun. He hadn't managed to find any other weapons along the way. He kept his gaze continually sliding over everything as he slunk along the left wall, trying to keep out of everyone's way. Combat was fun and all, but staying alive was, by far, much more fun.

Up ahead, a Berserker tore through a dozen Drones, which were doing everything in their power to bring it down. Greg paused as it crashed into the wall just a meter in front of him, leaving a huge dent, then righted itself, stumbled, and punched a Drone so hard that it came apart into several flying pieces.

He rushed past, before it took notice of him, and narrowly avoided a small hail of gunfire. Glancing over, he saw a pair of Dark Ops troops take down some zombies. They seemed to take notice of him and the others, raised their weapons, prepared to fire, then a Creeper leaped onto one of them and knocked both of them over. The trio of survivors pressed on. All around them blood and bullets flew. The corridor became overwhelmed with a pall of gun smoke and death. Greg found himself wishing for a gasmask.

They pressed on. The massive opening at the end of the corridor that led to the engine room grew slowly, inexorably closer. He saw a lot of fighting going on in there as well. He ducked as a cluster of Lancer spikes came his way, embedding themselves in the wall. Greg prepared himself for combat, but a squad of troopers took down the collection of Lancers, who turned and opened fire on the squad.

“
This is crazy!” Campbell cried.

“
As hell,” Greg agreed.

Somehow, in all that ataxia, they managed to gain entrance to the engine room without having to fire a single shot. The room was enormous, half of it taken up by titanic pieces of equipment that maintained the engines. The walls were lined with workstations and the floor were studded with equipment nodes. The fighting was crazier here, though it seemed that Dark Ops might be gaining the upper advantage with sheer numbers.

How many of their soldiers were on the ship, committed to taking it back? How many men and women were about to die because of Greg?

A fuck of a lot less than they had killed when they'd destroyed Dis, he decided.

“There. We've got to get to that terminal.” Campbell indicated a terminal at ground level, roughly in the center of the far wall that housed the monitoring equipment for the engines. There were a lot of enemies between them and it.

“
Let's go,” Greg replied, then blew the head off a nearby Drone and blasted a huge hole into the chest of a zombie.

They began shooting their way through the shifting crowd. Greg focused on putting down Dark Ops troops simply to try to keep them from gaining any sort of upper hand. Chaos was great. One of the bad guys winning was not. They kept pressing into the crush of combat. Greg emptied his shotgun, reloaded it, emptied it again. By the time they reached the terminal, he was running seriously low on shells.

“Cover me!” Campbell yelled.

“
You sure you can do this?” Greg replied, struggling to be heard over the din of chaos.

“
Yeah. They trained me on it. I think the idea was Williams or Starck would send me to do this while they escaped.”

He slung his rifle and set to work on the console.

Greg and Kyra turned and kept watch, shooting anyone or anything that got too close.

“
You never told me what happened after I was captured,” Greg said.

“
We tried to stop Graves, but he was too fast, too powerful. Knocked us all on our asses and took off. And of course there were all those damned Undead. A squad of Drones showed up and in all the chaos we managed to slip out. We tried to track Graves, but he was long gone by the time we managed to get somewhere safe. I'm sorry we couldn't get to you.”

“
Me too, but don't worry about it.”

Greg blew the head off a Drone that was making for him. He looked around, worried now. Many Drones in the area seemed to be heading their way, he realized. Erebus must have figured out for certain what they were doing. Greg tucked his shotgun tight against his shoulder after reloading it again and took aim.

“Take out those Drones.”

They opened fire, making head-shots more often than not, watching pallid skulls vaporize into plumes of sparks, brains, and red or black blood. Greg emptied his shotgun again and fed the last of his shells into it.

“How long, Campbell?” he snapped.

“
Done. We are fucking
out of here
,” Campbell called back.

His words were punctuated by him firing a few three-round bursts into the terminal he'd been working at. All around them, an alarm began to cycle long and loud. There was a brief pause in the combat at this sudden intrusion.

“This ship will self-destruct in twenty minutes. Please evacuate immediately,”
said a voice that was far too calm for the message it had just delivered.

“
Go,” Greg shouted.

“
Not so fast,”
came a mechanized voice from somewhere nearby.

Greg felt his guts freeze. His eyes immediately locked onto the origin of that voice: Graves. Or what had once been Graves. He was making his way towards them through the crowd, shoving aside anything that got in his way.

“I told you this wasn't over, Bishop.”

“
Run!” Greg screamed.

They broke and bolted through the chaos. Graves screamed Greg's last name again and, Greg saw as he glanced briefly over his shoulder, gave chase. He moved remarkably fast, shoving aside Drones, zombies, and black-armored troopers alike.

“Where's the fucking hangar?” Greg cried as they left the engine room and sprinted through the chaos of the main corridor.

The number of men in black armor had definitely gone up since they'd last been there. Yes, Dark Ops was gaining the upper hand. Though, from the way they were beating a hasty retreat, it looked as though it had all been for naught. Overhead, the alarm continued to cycle, the voice continued to benignly count down.

Greg risked another glance over his shoulder. His eyes bulged and he felt cold terror shoot through him at what he saw: Graves was catching up. A Berserker got in his way. He punched it so hard that its chest collapsed and it crashed to the floor.

Greg stopped, spun, and dug in his heels, readying himself to stand and fight. There was no way they were going to outrun Graves.

“What are you doing?” Kyra cried, skidding to a halt.

“
We can't outrun him,” Greg replied.

Campbell stopped, too. They had managed to clear the lengthy main corridor, coming to a halt inside a large antechamber that led to other areas of the ship. Graves kept running for them, murderous intent scrawled across his rigid, cybernetic face.

Greg raised his shotgun, aimed to the best of his ability and squeezed the trigger as Graves came within range. His hands trembled, so he managed to miss the thing's face and chest, but the slug shell
did
manage to connect with the behemoth's right shoulder. Sparks and blood shot out of it and Graves actually stumbled.

“
Shoot him!” Greg screamed.

Kyra and Campbell opened fire. Campbell flipped his rifle to full auto and Kyra joined Greg in pumping several slugs into Graves' immense body. He walked towards them, absorbing the gunfire, his right arm hanging uselessly by his side. He reached for Greg with his left hand. Greg and the others fell back.

They gunfire stopped.

Graves still advanced.

“Shit,” Greg snapped.

He backed up further, rethinking his plan of standing and fighting, when Graves abruptly rushed forward in a burst of speed and snatched Greg up by the neck.

“This time,”
he snarled,
“you are not getting away.”

“
Damn straight,” Greg wheezed.

He dropped his shotgun, snatched his pistol out of its holster, stuck the business end in Graves' mouth and emptied the clip. The top of Graves's head turned into so much spraying chunks of brains, blood and bone fragments. The lights in his eyes flickered, and went dead. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the grip on Greg's neck loosened.

After what felt like far too long, he was released, and Graves toppled over backwards. Greg fell to the ground, coughing violently.

“
Easier than I thought it would be,” he managed, climbing to his feet.

“
We need to go,” Campbell said.

“
You okay?” Kyra asked.

Greg nodded, coughing some more. “Yeah, come on.”

They turned and ran, leaving Graves' inert body behind. They hurried out of the antechamber, down another corridor, and came to an elevator lobby. Greg hit the access button to the stairwell, saw nothing and hurried inside.

The voice informed them they had nine minutes until the ship was destroyed.

“Can we make it there in nine minutes?” Kyra asked.

“
If we really haul ass,” Campbell replied.

“
That doesn't inspire confidence,” Greg said.

Campbell sounded irritable. “It's not meant to. So let's
hurry
.”