Chapter 339: Day 2 in hell (part 2)
The first attacker—a stocky man with a Ravager rifle trained on Second Squad’s position—never saw Lucas coming. One mont he was preparing to fire, the next mont Lucas’s fist connected with his solar plexus with enough force to lift him six inches off the ground. The sound was like a gunshot, a sharp crack that spoke to ribs separating from cartilage. The man folded around Lucas’s fist and flew backward fifteen feet, hitting the ground hard enough to leave a small crater in the packed earth.
Lightning arced between Lucas’s fingers as he spun toward the next target—the woman who’d been leading the conversation. She was fast, trained, professional. She managed to bring her weapon around and actually pull the trigger.
The beast core-powered energy blast moved like molten lightning, but Lucas was faster. He twisted, feeling the superheated air displacent against his cheek, and delivered an uppercut that caught her under the chin with enough force to snap her head back. She left the ground completely, spinning once in the air before crashing into a stack of supply crates twenty feet away.
The remaining attackers opened fire, Ravager rifles discharging bursts of concentrated energy that would have vaporized normal humans on contact. But Lucas was already moving, electricity wreathing his form in crackling energy that made the air itself hum with power. He flowed between energy blasts like water, each movent calculated to place him exactly where weapons fire wasn’t, each step leaving small scorch marks in the ground where electrical discharge earthed itself through his boots.
A bearded man with a Ravager rifle got close enough to be dangerous. Lucas caught the weapon’s barrel with his left hand, crushing the reinforced tal like paper while electrical feedback overloaded the beast core power source. His right fist caught the man in the sternum. The impact sent shock waves through the attacker’s body—Lucas could see the ripple effect traveling through clothing and flesh—before launching him backward into the facility’s main wall hard enough to leave a spider web of cracks in the concrete.
Two attackers tried to coordinate their approach, one high and one low, professional tactics that might have worked against a normal opponent. Lucas stepped into their attack pattern, ducked under the high shooter’s energy blast, and drove his elbow into the low attacker’s temple with surgical precision. The man dropped imdiately, unconscious before he hit the ground.
The high shooter tried to adjust his aim, but Lucas was already inside his weapon’s effective range. A palm strike to the chest—controlled, asured, designed to incapacitate rather than kill—sent the attacker sliding backward across the courtyard until he ca to rest against a prefabricated building.
Around the courtyard, Lucas could see his squads engaging the remaining hostiles with professional efficiency. Ravager rifles discharged in controlled bursts, his soldiers using cover and movent tactics while their opponents fought with the desperate coordination of people who knew they were outmatched.
The entire engagent lasted maybe forty seconds.
When the weapon fire ceased, thirty ard opponents lay scattered around the courtyard in various states of unconsciousness, their weapons scattered and useless. Lucas stood in the center of the carnage, electricity still playing around his hands like dosticated lightning, breathing steady and controlled.
His squads stared at him with the kind of awe that ca from watching soone operate at the peak of human capability. These were all enhanced soldiers, all awakened humans with their own abilities, but what they’d just witnessed was beyond anything they’d imagined possible.
“Sir,” Vasquez said, her voice carrying genuine amazent. “That was…”
“Field work,” Lucas replied, but he could see the impact his demonstration had made. His squads had heard about S-class awakened, had been briefed on their capabilities, but seeing it firsthand was different from reading technical specifications.
Behind their professional masks, he could see the sa thought running through twenty minds: This is what we’re following. This is our squad leader.
“Now,” Lucas continued, approaching the unconscious woman who’d been leading the group, “let’s see what we can learn about where they got military equipnt and training.”
—
The search of the facility revealed answers that only created more disturbing questions.
Hidden beneath the main administrative building, Torres found a cache of equipnt that made Lucas’s blood run cold. EDF combat gear, weapons, personal effects, and identification tags belonging to soldiers who weren’t supposed to be on this planet.
“Sir,” Torres called from the underground storage area, his voice tight with implications Lucas didn’t want to consider. “You need to see this.”
Lucas descended into what had obviously been designed as a weapons cache, several of his soldiers following to provide security. The underground storage area was larger than the surface buildings suggested, and what he found there made tactical sense in the worst possible way.
Military equipnt for approximately twenty soldiers, all of it bearing the identification codes and personal customization that spoke to extended field deploynt.
“These are from Strike Team Echo,” Vasquez said, reading identification tags with growing horror. “They were the initial response team, sent to investigate the communication blackout three days ago.”
Twenty professional soldiers with enhanced abilities and military training, presumably killed by mining facility workers who should have been civilian refugees.
“How?” Rodriguez asked, voicing the question that was dominating Lucas’s thoughts. “How do civilian miners kill twenty EDF soldiers?”
Lucas examined the weapons cache more carefully, looking for clues that might explain how the engagent had played out. The equipnt showed signs of hasty abandonnt rather than prolonged battle. Personal items were scattered, weapons had been stored without proper maintenance protocols, everything suggested a rapid and overwhelming defeat.
“Earth manipulation,” he said finally, pieces of the tactical puzzle beginning to form a picture he didn’t like. “This is a mining world. These people would have developed geological abilities for their work—sand control, rock manipulation, probably so seismic enhancent for industrial applications.”
“Civilian applications,” Vasquez pointed out.
“Civilian applications that can be weaponized,” Lucas corrected. “Soone with strong enough geological control could create sinkholes, cause localized earthquakes, manipulate terrain to create killing fields. Twenty soldiers with standard enhanced abilities, caught off guard by opponents who could literally change the battlefield beneath their feet…”
The tactical scenario was horrifying to consider. Professional soldiers trained for combat against human opponents and Harbinger forces, suddenly facing enemies who could turn solid ground into quicksand or cause the earth itself to swallow tactical positions.
Around him, his squads were processing the sa implications. These weren’t just random civilians who’d gotten lucky—these were people with abilities specifically suited to controlling the battlefield in ways that conventional military training couldn’t counter.
“Sir,” Torres interrupted, his voice carrying the kind of urgency that ant bad news was incoming. “I’m picking up seismic activity. Multiple impacts, high-velocity, incoming trajectory suggests—”
The first explosion cut off his words. Lucas felt the impact through the facility’s foundations, a deep rumble that spoke to sothing massive hitting the ground with trendous force.
He moved toward the facility’s main entrance, his squads following in combat formation, and erged into a courtyard that had been transford into sothing from a nightmare.
Black pods the size of small buildings dotted the landscape, each one surrounded by a crater that spoke to high-velocity planetary impact. Steam rose from their surfaces, and as Lucas watched, the nearest pod began to split open with the kind of chanical precision that suggested advanced technology.
What erged made Lucas’s enhanced senses scream warnings about imdiate lethal threat.
The Harbinger stood nine feet tall, its humanoid form covered in natural armor that looked like it had been designed by evolution specifically for killing. A single horn crowned its skull, but Lucas could see the intelligence in its eyes—this wasn’t a mindless monster, but a predator that thought and planned and adapted.
“All squads, defensive positions,” Lucas ordered, his voice carrying across the courtyard with absolute authority. “Establish overlapping fields of fire. Standard anti-Harbinger protocols.”
His soldiers moved into position, but Lucas could see more pods opening across the mining facility’s periter. This wasn’t a single threat—this was a coordinated assault with multiple vectors of attack.
“Sir,” Vasquez called from her elevated position, her voice tight with the kind of controlled fear that ca from understanding exactly how bad a situation had beco. “I count at least twelve pods. Multiple Harbingers erging. They’re moving to establish encirclent patterns.”
“What’s the plan of attack?” Rodriguez asked, checking her Ravager rifle’s beast core charge indicator while keeping eyes on the nearest Harbinger threat.
Lucas rose into the air, electricity coursing through his body. The world spread out below him with tactical clarity—enemy positions, terrain advantages, optimal engagent vectors all processed with superhuman speed and precision.
Lightning played around his hands like captured thunder, and when he spoke, his voice carried the absolute confidence of soone who’d faced impossible odds before and erged victorious.
Twenty soldiers looked up at their squad leader floating in the air, wreathed in electrical energy, and understood exactly why they followed him into hostile territory without question.
“I am the plan of attack.”
New novel!! New novel!!
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