Maty by Aer-ki Jyr (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📗

order to access different parts of it, for the Gahana had not made infiltrating its systems and assuming control easy by any stretch of the imagination, even for another machine race, and the Elloquim only had access to areas near the entry points that could maintain full security at all times, otherwise their tethers would be cut and have to be rebuilt.

But the Gahana had made assuming control possible using merit gates rather than alphanumeric passcodes that could be eventually hacked by systematic attempts, even if the number of those attempts were limited during a given period of time.

The merit gates assured that no primitive could access even the most basic systems given an eternity of trying, but the PanNari…even the Elloquim and their direct links…were not as advanced as the Gahana had been, so they were having to learn and grow in order to access more and more of the Maty, and the more Craniems they had working the problem in multiple places, the faster their collective knowledge would become.

And that was also why the comm chains between all the Craniems had to be kept intact, so they could share what they learned immediately. And not too far behind where Kyra currently was there lay one of those limited wireless data lines…and these minions were not going to get to it today.

Kyra stopped firing and started punching and kicking her way through, then leapt up on the sidewall and clung to it with the bottoms of her armored feet in order to get a shot at the nearest pot. The zerglings tried to jump on top of it to block her, but they weren’t quick enough and didn’t fully block her line of sight…and Kyra didn’t hold back, firing a shotgun-like barrage of all her weapons at once…with the pot being cleaved in half for a moment before the explosive decompression of its contents blanketed the zerglings all around it…who also shielded Kyra from most of the blast.

They melted apart within seconds, dying to their own weapons, but a few tiny splatters got through and sucked 18% of her shield strength down in a flick of liquid smaller than raindrops. How it was so effective was an ongoing mystery for the Craniems, for the acid didn’t last long enough to be analyzed.

Kyra scooped up one of the droplets in her right hand, lowering her shields over it and letting it burn into her armor and skin as she turned around and ran back towards the sentries, calling for help over her short range comm. The pain in her hand could be ignored, but even that data might be helpful so Kyra didn’t dial back her biological senses, and in the process of her running she involuntarily puked, stumbling into two zerglings who took advantage of her misstep and jumped onto her torso and wrapped their claws around her neck, sawing back and forth trying to get through to her head.

The weight tipped her down, but with her good hand she shot one of them off while the other was already through her neck shields and working on her armor, filing it down like sandpaper as its spit mixed with the shards and formed a paste that actually helped accelerate the friction damage.

Warnings flared, but her hand was giving her the most trouble, so Kyra bent over and grasped it against her abdomen and twisted her body in a sideways leap, moving her and the zergling across the hall and into the wall where she smacked it hard, but it didn’t let go, and three more jumped on her now that she wasn’t running evasively.

Topaz beams burned through them, and the one clinging to her neck, barely having inches to spare from missing her throbbing body as she tried to shake them…then the pressure relented as they were all dead, and Kyra jumped into a run back towards the nearest sentry that had shot them off, diving under its floating torso for cover as more came and jumped on it in a wave of reinforcements that had a pot with them.

Kyra scrambled to get away as two more sentries and a walking gogorum moved up to form a line and they took the next pot hit. Their shields went down immediately, then the acid began to eat through their armor but not enough to destroy it. All the minions around them melted, and the next wave to come through died as well, stepping on the acid on the floor, but eventually their corpses covered it and they jumped onto the damaged attack drones whose weapons were mostly incapacitated, but they held their ground and bought Kyra time as she ran and ran back through the other attack drones, keeping what was left of her hand tucked up against her abdomen as the pain made it hard to focus enough to keep from tripping.

Everything she was experiencing, her biological senses to her technological ones, she was transmitting through the drones back to the line that linked the Craniems, so they could see what she had done when the moving drones came into alignment around various corners. It wasn’t instantaneous, for there were moving units all over, but her proximity to one of the fixed lines meant they were already getting her information long before she got there.

A floating cargo unit met her first, escorted by four sentries, and Kyra was ordered to jump onto it. She did so clumsily, and had to drag her right leg on with the help of one of the sentries’ gun barrels, because her right hand and now arm were totally inoperable, yet stuck in one position. The acid had worked its way up her arm with her blood flow, and though it was now all consumed, the damage remained.

Kyra was told to deactivate, and she gladly did so, cutting out the pain and all vision and senses, and simply becoming cargo that