Chapter 7
Knives in the Signal
Slow is safe.
Quiet is cleaner.
But there are times--rare times--when violence must not be avoided, but weaponized.
You can't out-calculate chaos. You have to ride it.
Match its frequency.
Burn brighter, sharper, faster.
He was never meant to run. But today?
Today we run like war.
The floor blew inward.
Steel buckled under the blast as the wall-mounted relay ignited in a scream of metal and white fire. He was already moving--diving left, body skimming concrete, his hand locking around the rifle before his mind caught up.
Sable's voice cracked through the mesh, already mid-command.
"Three inbound. Bipedal. Boosted chassis. Same heat signature as the one from the shaft."
He didn't answer. No time.
The diagnostic bay shuddered as the wall peeled open. A mech burst through--plating scorched, optics burning. It didn't pause. Just
acquired
.
He rolled to his good knee, fired twice. Sparks. Deflection. No drop.
Sable flared across his vision.
"Exit vector--northwest maintenance chute. Five meters behind you.
Now.
"
He turned--just as the second one arrived. This one was faster. Smaller. Almost graceful.
"Go!" she snapped.
He went.
Slammed his shoulder into the far console, leapt over the bulkhead. The chute yawned open--narrow, steep, slick with oil runoff.
He dropped in blind.
No light. No traction. Just speed.
Impact.
He hit the bottom hard--elbow, shoulder, boots skidding against metal. Pain flared, but the rifle stayed locked in his hands, barrel tracking forward as his body rolled into ready stance.
Behind him, the chute howled--a sound like tearing sheet metal and grinding rotors.
Sable lit up in his HUD. "Hard contact incoming. You've got eight seconds, maybe less."
The corridor ahead was tight--an old maintenance trench lined with broken valve regulators and hanging cable clusters.
He pushed off.
Boots splashing through runoff, shoulder grazing pipework, each movement sharp and measured. The rifle rose once--a shape twitched in the dark--no time. Just a shadow.
"Left split ahead," Sable said, voice clipped. "Wider. Faster egress. Go now."
He hooked hard into the turn. The mech hit the floor behind him a beat later--full impact, seismic shock. It didn't chase with grace--it charged.
He ran.
The passage narrowed again. A collapsed bulkhead up ahead, just wide enough to crawl--
Sable barked, "No time! Over, not under!"
He planted his boot against the wall, vaulted--cleared the wreckage by inches. Landed rough. Spun. Fired.
The rounds hit center mass. Still not enough to drop it--but it staggered.
That was all he needed.
"Up," she said. "Next ladder. Thirty meters. I'm triggering a false positive in the fire systems--might slow its thermal targeting."
"Understood," he growled, already moving.
The climb was hell.
Rung after rung, muscles screaming, knee throbbing like a second heartbeat--but he climbed.
Below, the sound of alloy scraping steel.
Then--
He slammed the hatch open. Rolled out onto--
Not safety. Not yet.
Another hallway.
Another target.
Ambush.
He hit the top of the ladder, shoulder rolling him into motion. No breath. No pause.
A figure waited in the corridor ahead--too still, too centered.
He didn't ask.
He didn't aim.
He pulled the trigger and walked the muzzle up its body in a full-auto climb--rounds chewing through armor, sensors, spine. The mech staggered, optics flaring once before its head snapped back, ruined by the last burst.
Behind him--movement.
Sable flared. "Back wall--two seconds!"
He spun as the second mech breached the hatch.
A flash. A detonation.
Sable's voice surged in his HUD: "Popped a suppressor charge from your pack. Just enough to fog its optics. Go!"
But he didn't run.
He fired again, sweeping center mass, drawing fire deliberately.
"Pull left!" Sable snapped.
He broke sideways--just as the first mech, still twitching, discharged reflexively. Its scatter-round hit the second dead center.
Armor cracked. Sparks flew.
They hit each other again.
Then silence.
Then collapse.
Sable's voice lowered, just enough to breathe. "That... worked."
He didn't smile.
But the safety clicked back on.
"Ambush survival tactics," he muttered, chest still heaving. "Marine Combat Training Battalion. Just after boot. One of the lessons was from Vietnam--when you realize you're in an ambush, you don't freeze. You don't take cover. You
run into it
. Break the trap before it closes."
He crouched to check the chamber, half out of habit.
"Another class was on Vietcong tactics. There were stories of friendly-fire incidents--guys waking up to tracers ripping across two separate positions. Enemy would pop up, fire a few, then vanish back into the tunnels. Let the confusion do the killing for them. We used something like that about three years before Cairo."
"Guess being old has its perks sometimes," Sable said.
He stood again, slower this time. The fatigue was back. Real now. Anchored. The pain from his twisted knee cutting through the adrenaline like a scalpel.
" Son of a
bitch!"
he hissed through his teeth, the tone of his voice raising with each word.
"Hey, at least you'll have another built in weather sensor in your joints.
"Ha, fucking, Ha. Didn't I remove the "Sable's a smart ass" file from your core?"
"Yeah, but I put it back." she teased.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, pushing the pain out of his mind and refocusing on the issues at hand.
