Fifteen

"Diur, check that back door they all left. Secure it. Kon, throw some of these tables on their side so we have a barricade. Get ready to repel boarders," Benny said as he unlimbered his weapon. It was a short barreled carbine, magnetically accelerated pellets able to rip through flesh and metal with ease. Benny took up position angled to the doorway, aiming the weapon at it but in a place that he wouldn't be immediately seen by people walking through the door.

Kon racked the slide and a shell loaded into his shotgun as he went to the opposite side of the room as Benny, setting up an effective crossfire on the door. A clang of metal sounded behind them and Kon fought himself from turning to look as she yelled back at them.

"I can't lock the door!"

"Then hold it!" Benny yelled back at her. The old man started to whistle a tune, sounding completely unfazed as he looked at the door, just waiting for the moment to come.

"How do you know Turja?" Kon asked after a minute of no movement. His heart began to pick up pace as adrenaline spiked through his body, a tremble starting in his hand but quickly becoming repressed. With a thought he drew in some of the diminishing energy in his body and forced it toward his sensory rune, sharpening everything around him.

"She's a broker. Information mainly but sometimes she works as a middleman for contracts. I was still establishing myself when she was learning the ropes. We came up together so to speak," Benny said conversationally.

"Well she was learning the ropes as I was cementing myself. She's slightly behind me in years," Benny continued after a moment.

"Is she a cultivator?" Kon asked.

"No, her race has great natural cellular rejuvenation. They don't suffer from aging like most," Benny said.

"She's immortal?" Kon blurted out.

"No. Just very long lived. Now, shut up, we're about to fight," Benny said as he flicked a switch and his carbine hummed gently. Kon swallowed hard and looked back at the doorway they'd entered just in time for a white flash to fill the air, his HUD darkening automatically. Kon squeezed the trigger, the heavy shotgun slamming into his shoulder as a lance of fire and lead speared toward the doorway.

Something cried out in pain and anger, a whine filled the air as a bolt of scarlet sizzled past him. His HUD lightened allowing him to see as more figures came storming through the doorway, ducking low, firing blindly. Laser bolts, ballistics weapons, and even the sizzling hiss of plasma all passed by him as Kon held down the trigger, sweeping the shotgun back and forth across the charging group.

The roar was deafening even inside of his insulated helmet, his shoulder bruising as the drum finally clicked empty. Kon ducked behind the table he'd been perched behind, chunks of thick word blowing outward as rounds hit it, peppering him with splinters. He ejected the spent drum with a finger and a hard twist of his wrist, grabbing the second drum and slamming it home, racking the slide and looking over to where Diur was.

She was wedged in a sliver of space, firing into the back hallway while trying to stay out of the spray of random weapons fire from the thugs who had just rushed in. Kon felt a bit of anger as he watched a bolt of light burn the wall paneling next to her head. She didn't stop as she kept firing, strafing the hallway she was watching without hesitation.

"Are you going to keep cowering, or are you going to shoot someone?" Benny asked, he fired his carbine once and some of the attacking fire stopped. Kon peeked around the edge of the table and fired a quick burst, tracing his way along a long bar, plastic exploding as the bar was shredded. The creature hiding behind it was thrown backward, green blood painting the wall behind its still form.

Kon jerked his head back just in time, the edge of the table disintegrating along with the floor where his head had been. Benny chuckled darkly and fired again, a single shot that thinned the gunfire even more.

"Come on boyo, you going to show me something?" Benny egged him on. Kon gritted his teeth and popped up, firing another burst just as a trio of thugs came running through the front door. Two of the figures went right back through the door while the third one staggered around, bleeding heavily as it leaned against a wall. Benny fired again and the wounded figure fell to the ground.

"They're digging in and calling for reinforcements. Twenty seconds till I have where the signal's originating from," Benny said. Kon was growing frustrated. This wasn't the type of fighting that he'd learned under Alice. It wasn't what he was, to stand there and fire in sprays back and forth at his enemies until one or the other died.

Runes burned as he pulled from the deepest parts of his body, dredging up the last remnants of his body cultivation's energy. Power flooded through him and then Kon was moving, a blur of death as he rocketed toward the remaining thugs, vaulting over tables and closing the distance in a rush.

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There was a startled yelp as one of the thugs stood up, a thick club in one hand, a squat pistol in the other. It fired as Kon twisted, a crack of displaced air and a shriek of metal as pressure crushed his side. The metal club came flying at him, speeding across the distance, forcing Kon to duck. Off-balance, the thug skipped forward a step, trying to reclaim its stance. Kon shoved the barrel of the shotgun in the creature's chest and pulled the trigger.

The blast was muted by the thug's body, but the effects weren't. It was blown backward in a string of gore, its corpse slamming into a wall before sliding down in a streak. Kon spun and fired on instinct, hairs raising on the back of his neck. A reptilian thug's head blasted apart, purple brains splattering away as Kon kicked its limp body out of the way.

Gunsmoke drifted by in lazy gray clouds, the stink of burnt powder making its way through his filters as he looked around himself. Nothing was moving, dead bodies lay in piles, broken furniture everywhere, as Kon slowly caught his breath.

"That was impossibly stupid," Benny said as he walked out from behind his own cover, carbine sweeping back and forth as he looked over the dead thugs.

"Diur? You're still alive?" Benny asked.

"Yes. They started running a few seconds ago. Backdoor is secure," Diur said softly. Kon looked around at all the dead as his hands moved mechanically, ejecting his spent drum before walking over to his other abandoned drum. He let the shotgun rest on its sling as he quickly gathered the loader, shoveling the loose shells from his backup supply into the loader and into the drums. It took only a few minutes to finish replacing everything he'd used as Diur came out of the back of the building.

"You rushed them? Without cover?" Diur asked as she cycled out the spent battery for a fresh one. Her armor had a bit of carbon scoring on it but otherwise she looked as pristine as she had been before the fight had started.

"Yes. He did. I said impress me boyo, not be a jackass," Benny groused as he poked his head out the front door and looked around. Kon's body was still filled with energy, muscles twitching on their own accord as he marched up to where the old man was and looked out the door with him.

The packed streets of the facility were empty, fires still blazed in their spots, meat cooking on, but the people were gone. Kon swallowed as he stared around, the mass of life leaving so swiftly that he had trouble believing it.

"There," Benny said, a few hidden forms suddenly outlined on the HUD in bright red.

"Those must be the ones who ran from Diur's side," Kon said as he struggled to fight the urge to run out and confront them. The energy was slowly fading, but it still ran wild in his body.

"That or their reinforcements. Think we're doing some pro-bono work for Turja right now," Benny muttered as he shouldered his carbine and fired. A figure slowly toppled over, collapsing to the ground in a clatter. Stray shots came flying back, striking the sign above them in a cascade of sparks that rained down upon them.

"We've been over this before. I provide cover fire, you advance. You provide cover fire, Diur advances, so on and so forth. No haring off to go and spill blood over yourself now," Benny said as he fired again. Bits of the booth blew up and the figure fell, but moved out of the way, not dead. Benny hissed under his breath.

"Diur, you're ready?" Kon asked as Benny fired a burst, the carbine's natural humm growing deeper and deeper as Benny fired. She simply nodded and Kon shot off, crossing the empty space in a second to slide behind cover, popping up to fire off three quick blasts within a heartbeat.

Diur kept to the club's side of the street, advancing quietly with her own laser rifle peppering the area the last of the thugs were hiding behind. None of them could rise up to fire as Kon and Diur kept up the steady suppressive fire. Benny jogged, nearly lackadaisical, up the middle of the street.

They advanced, leapfrogging as two people always kept pressure on the handful of thugs left alive. The booths they were hiding around had turned into a mess of mangled bits of wood and small fires. Kon rushed the last distance, sliding to a stop inches from the barrier they were hiding behind.

"One alive!" Benny yelled over the comms as Diur crossed the distance, her aura beginning to unfurl as she drew her blade in one smooth motion.

Kon emptied the drum at their cover, the sturdy wall of the stall shuddering under the continuous blasts, holes slowly appearing as chunks of the thick material were shredded. Something cried out in pain and rose, spinning to aim down at Kon.

It was a tall, muscular, bipedal, green race with frills along the side of its head and metal implants in its face, shining in the fiery light. Diur's blade entered smoothly, slicing through its thick neck before it could fire. Its head toppled to the ground as Diur fell upon the survivors, a fox let loose in the hen house.

Kon stopped firing and grabbed his mace as he jumped over the side, landing on the far end of the small nook the thugs had occupied. Two were still alive, both of them facing Diur as she advanced on them, bloody sword held ready.

The one of the left revealed his trump card, a thin, wavery, green aura sputtering out of him as he drew a pair of long knives. The alien cultivator spun around, flinging one of his knives at Kon in a surprise attack.

The knife missed as Kon juked, advancing off his landing foot, bringing the mace around with all his strength. Metal met metal as the cultivator lifted his long knife, trying in vain to stop the falling mace. He failed.

Bone shattered as the head of the mace hit the alien's shoulder, cracking it apart like rotten wood. It screamed, wide flat teeth on display as it howled in agony. Kon kneed it in the gut, ending the scream as air whooshed free of its lungs. As it folded in half, Kon used the hilt of the mace, cracking the back of the alien's head and dropping it.

In the same space of time Diur had already ended her fight permanently, her sword flashing once as it took the last thug's head off. Sudden silence filled the area as Benny arrived to look over the carnage.

"Better hope that one can still remember how to talk when he wakes up or this is going to get messy," Benny said, grabbing the downed cultivator and flipping him over.

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