Chapter 151 - Small Town Duel (Patreon)

“What do you mean no?” Don stared at the person sitting opposite the table with steely eyes. The room was a brightly lit bar, while the person opposite was flanked by two heavily armed guards in combat armour and shotguns.

Don wasn’t the least bit intimidated, with his confidence placed in the standardized rebel exosuit called ‘Victorious Revolt’ that he had along with an in-house VR-01 energy rifle designed by the rebellion.

“No means no. Haven’t you watched the press conference? The enforcers are about to come cracking down on your asses, and I ain’t being a part of it.” The person scoffed. “You better leave while you can, or else you won’t like it. I don’t want to force you.” He motioned to the two armed guards behind him, but it didn’t scare Don.

“This wasn’t the deal, Regan. We already placed the money.” Don tried pressing a bit further.

“And the enforcers now have the legal right to jump all our asses no matter how far we run on the planet. I’m thinking I don’t like running. See how quickly things change?”

“Well then according to the contract, the cancellation clause is three months of repair parts. It’s stated very clearly here in Section 7.” Don whipped out his multi-terminal, showing the highlighted portion of the contract.

“I don’t recall such a contract, in fact, I have no idea the rebellion ever existed. This is the first time I’ve met you guys.” Regan grinned. “Look, I don’t want to sound rude and all, but you guys are an ILLEGAL organization. Why would I ever have a contract with you guys?”

“Don’t do this Regan. The rebellion had stuck with your outpost through thick and thin. How else were you able to fend off Bee Strathon?”

“It was just merely business. I did what I had to stay afloat, that’s how the game is. How about this? Give a quick call to the ‘White Fang’ and let him know the situation, I’m sure he’ll agree with me. Take a minute or two, however long you need.” Regan pointed at the metal door of the bar.

Don grimaced. “You’ll regret this, Regan.” He left the bar, stepping into the dark night of the planet’s surface. It was a tiny outpost of merely two hundred people, a small family-owned mining business.

While New Saint had the majority of colonists concentrated in the city, not everyone wanted to become another cog in a huge machine like Bee Strathon. Numerous smaller groups broke out on their own across the surface, claiming their own territory and area. There were a few other cities and towns on the planet, but New Saint dwarfed them by close to a thousand times in terms of population.

The Consortium helped to solve disputes this numerous groups, but all of that was about to change.

With the recent announcement by Oliver, the planet was now undergoing a unification phase through the Consortium, which had divided the community of outsiders of New Saint. Things looked to be getting rougher for the rebellion, as they could no longer skirt around the New Saint enforcers.

“God dammit.” Don cursed as he walked down the brown dusty street, the night lights barely enough to keep the area lit as the winds howled.

He walked towards an armoured hovercar, where Randy and Ceres were sitting comfortably inside. Randy was practically shivering in the passenger seat even though the hovercar was put on maximum heat, while Ceres was lazing in the backseat, playing the same old Glucose Rush on the multi-terminal he had to pass the time.

“What the fuck are you two idiots doing? Didn’t I ask you two to keep a lookout?” Don asked angrily, though he did not raise his voice.

Randy shivered violently with chattering teeth while he clasped his arms… “I hate the nighttime, it’s too cold!”

The planet was closest to the local star, hence the immense heat during the day, but the night was the exact opposite as expected of a savannah-like planet.

“Shut your mouth, it’s only 5 degrees Celsius out here. Your exosuit has an inbuilt heater for god’s sake. And you, Ceres. You were practically a god when we were practising in VR, but you’re playing a fucking child’s game now?!”

“It’s an important game, alright?” Ceres put the multi away, looking at Don. “You failed the mission, didn’t you? What’s the plan now?”

“What the… how did you know?!” Don was taken aback by Ceres’s pinpoint prediction but calmed himself down. “You’re right, this outpost has basically refused to continue manufacturing repair parts for the rebellion. They have reneged on our contract!” Don complained, but he soon noticed Ceres was looking beyond him into the distance instead.

Ceres could see a few glints of red in the distance, a result of his ability to sense emotions at an increased range. With no wall to block him on the surface, his H.T. mode range had extended to more than ten kilometres.

“Randy, check the hovercar’s radar.” The rebel armoured hovercar was a standalone vehicle meant for small squad operations. This meant it came equipped with all the necessary tools for a rebel squad to survive on the planet’s surface.

That meant hiding and evading the enforcers, who had a near-global ability to see anything on the planet’s surface thanks to their space base and orbital capabilities. The armoured hovercar could mask their position, but a nearby enforcer patrol would be able to visually spot them even at night.

Randy’s face turned grim as he checked the radar. “Looks like an enforcer patrol squad coming in… it’s too coincidental!”

“We should leave now,” Ceres said. It was standard protocol to immediately flee during a minor mission if they were to encounter an enforcer squad. It was not worth it to waste resources fighting over a mission that would not jeopardize the rebellion. In fact, it would be even riskier if they got caught by the enforcers.

Don nodded in agreement. As much as he hated what Regan, the leader of the outpost had done, it wasn’t his position to fight and potentially lose his life over it. Don immediately headed to the driver’s seat, firing up the hovercar as it slowly began to take over.

Ceres suddenly pulled out his rifle and aimed it out of the backseat’s window, firing a shot into the town. “What the fuck are you doing, Ceres!” Don yelled before he saw what Ceres was shooting at: an armed squad of Regan’s guards were charging the hovercar. There were close to twenty of them, far outnumbering them.

The guards were all armed with combat armour, and they had already a few heavy shields as though they were prepared for a heavy confrontation.

“Holy shit!?” Randy cried out as he saw the massed guards, who began to fire at them with their kinetic rifles.

Ceres had taken out a guard who tried to fire a device at the hovercar. However, before Ceres could take out the other guards, three shots landed with a small thud on the hovercar, before a sudden wave of electricity overloaded the hovercar’s circuit, causing the internals to malfunction.

“REGAN!” Don raged as the hovercar came to a skidding halt on the ground before the exterior armour was pelted with a storm of bullets.

“They are trying to keep us here till the enforcers’ patrol gets back!” Randy yelled as he ducked, hiding as the bulletproof window started to fragment from the bullets. “Can we fix the hovercar? We can’t even get out of the doors!”

Due to the hovercar’s malfunction, all doors remained locked, causing the squad to be trapped like fish in a barrel. The guards were now slowly closing in, the heavy shields in front serving as barriers as they neared the hovercar.

“I can try to reboot it, but you got to stop them from firing at us!” Don yelled as he opened a panel below the wheel, trying to diagnose the problem.

“Don’t let them get out of the armoured car!” One of the guards yelled, resulting in a few more of the disabling device landing on the hovercar, causing the panel below the wheel to blow up in Don’s face.

“Fuck! I can’t fix the hovercar without removing those devices, but we can’t get out of the hovercar in the first place! Maybe we can climb out through the windows. Ceres, help me smash the glass on the other side!” Don turned around, but instead of seeing Ceres come over to help him, he saw Ceres leaning on the backseat, lifting his knees to his chest.

“What the fuck are you..” Before Don could scold Ceres, Ceres kicked out with both of his legs, causing the front door to fly forward like a flying brick. The door immediately knocked on a guard and sent him sprawling onto the dusty street, while the guards temporarily stopped firing due to the shock.

Don and Randy were shocked too. The ‘Victorious Revolt’ rebel exosuit that all of them were wearing did not possess such capabilities. Sure, it was intended to be a military exosuit first and foremost, but due to the limited resources and manufacturing capabilities of the rebellion, the exosuit was not exactly strong.

In fact, on an average rating, the Bee Strathon Miner Suit VI could go toe to toe with the Victorious Revolt in terms of strength alone. Furthermore, the exosuit was designed to be balanced, which meant it did not excel in anything, especially not leg kicking strength.

Don was only confident of pulling off a feat if he specifically configured his exosuit to have stronger leg actuation motors and structure.

Ceres used the moment of shock to deftly exit the vehicle, firing at the stunned guards with his rifle before running off into a nearby building, taking cover.

“What the hell?! Stop that rebel, he’s trying to escape!” A guard captain ordered, sending three guards over to capture Ceres while he knelt down to check the concussed guard who had been sent flying by the door.

“Holy shit Ceres, that was amazing!” Randy cheered, while Don scowled as the open door gave the guards more angles to fire into the hovercar, forcing him to scramble deeper into the hovercar. “Damn you Ceres, you removed our defence!”

Ceres didn’t reply, taking out a hand-sized pole from his back, and detaching it from his exosuit. With a flick, the pole became extended, while the tip protruded with a sharp ‘zing’ as it formed a pointy spearhead.

Holding it in his left hand and his rifle in his right hand, he kept his body close to the wall of the building, watching the figures of the three guards approach him from around the corner from the street using his H.T. mode.

The three guards did not hug close to the wall of the building, instead swinging wide to prevent a corner ambush on Ceres. However, due to Ceres being able to accurately track them, Ceres was able to react faster, immediately firing the rifle at them with a rapid burst.

The first three shots landed in the same area, burning a hole through the weak armour of the guard’s combat armour before melting into his waist, causing him to scream and double over in agony. The remaining two guards shot towards Ceres, who nimbly dodged and hid behind the building.

“God damnit, pincer him!” One of the guards yelled to his comrades on the streets, who had stopped advancing towards Randy and Don, making two guards leave their positions towards Ceres.

“We need to help Ceres,” Randy yelled as a bullet caused a few shards of glass to fall on him.

“No, Ceres needs to help us! We’re trapped here!” Don argued back when he spotted a shiny object being thrown towards him by the guards. “Shit, get down RANDY!”

The grenade landed under the hovercar, before blowing up and sending the hovercar spinning once in the air, before landing upside down. The exosuits managed to dull most of the impact for Randy and Don, but they were still shellshocked, and their ears were ringing heavily.

Ceres noticed the explosion near his squad, realizing he had to take out the guards faster.

Rather than playing hide and seek with the guards, he suddenly went back the same way, catching the remaining two guards off guard as he shot both of them in the chest, knocking them out.

The weak combat armour all the guards wore was effectively useless against energy rifles, so Ceres began to methodically take out the guards one by one.

However, the guards had already noticed this and hid behind the heavy shields, aiming some of them towards Ceres now that Randy and Don were assumed to be knocked out of the fight.

Ceres managed to take out ten guards before the remaining guards decided to stop contesting him.

“Take him out! How hard is it to land a bullet on one single human?!” The guard captain yelled. “Give me that.” He grabbed a machine gun from a nearby guard, before running forward and mounting it on a heavy shield. With a roar, the machine gun spewed bullets out, flooding the entire area as Ceres jumped out of the way, rolling behind the cover of the building.

Don slapped his ears as he tried to get the ringing out before he noticed that the destroyed door was no longer facing the guards. He quickly tapped Randy and pointed the way out, both of them knowing it was impossible for them to hear each other over the ringing in their ears.

Crawling out of the flipped armoured hovercar, they began to fire back at the guards, who now had their sides exposed.

The guards quickly fell one by one, unable to beat the trained shooting of the rebel squad. Soon, only the guard captain remained standing while the other guards were all either dead or writhing on the floor in pain. He had an exosuit and was panting heavily behind the machine gun, which was already damaged due to his precise shots of Randy.

“Why don’t you surrender?” Don yelled out from behind the cover of the hovercar. He wasn’t going to walk out into the open especially when they were not sure if the machine gun still worked or not.

“It doesn’t matter, you’re all dead anyway! They are already here!” The guard captain grinned even as a trickle of blood leaked from the side of his mouth.

Sure enough, behind him, an enforcer hovercar was already fast approaching.

“Shit!” Don cursed. “Randy, signal to Ceres that we need to leave immediately. Otherwise, we’re dead! Our exosuits can’t contest with the Athen Defenders, especially now that we’re hurt.”

“Uhm… I don’t know where Ceres is!” Randy tried looking out, but he could not see Ceres anywhere at all.

It was too late. The enforcer hovercar immediately stopped right above them, hovering at a height of ten meters and dropping three Athen Defender exosuits right next to the guard captain. Don noticed that the hovercar was much different from the usual style, being more of a infantry fighting vehicle than anything else.

The Athen Defender exosuits that arrived were outfitted differently as well, their modular New Saint Peackeeper energy rifles docked at the side along with an array of grenades. Don got the feeling he was facing a military squad instead. “Shit, is this the next evolution of the enforcers?”

“Good job holding them, we’ll take it from here.” One of the Athen Defenders said, before advancing towards Don and Randy.

“Looks like Regan really wants to sell us to the enforcers, most likely for a pardon…” Don sighed as the two of them cowered behind the flipped hovercar. He didn’t see a way out. “It’s torture or death.”

“Should we surrender?” Randy asked. His hand was shaking a little bit, unable to come to terms with what was about to happen. He wasn’t a newbie, but he had never been captured before.

Don let out a chuckle, recalling the shuddering Randy wanted to do major missions next time.

“End of the road kid. If you don’t want your buddies back at the base to die, it’s time to make a real choice. Fight to the death.” Don readied his rifle, nodding at Randy.

Before they moved, however, Randy spotted a flying shadow leaping from the roof of a two-storey building onto the enforcers’ hovercar. “Huh? Is that Ceres?”

Ceres landed on the roof of the hovercar, using his left hand that had been sharpened by the black goo into a spearhead to punch a hole right through, cratering the composite ceramic armour.

“What the fuck?!” The unarmoured driver inside exclaimed before he was shot in the head by Ceres, dying instantly.

The hovercar immediately went into an automated mode, with Ceres widening the hole and jumping in.

The energy shot did not go unnoticed by the three Athen Defenders on the ground, who turned to look at the hovercar. With a sudden jerk, the hovercar suddenly dropped towards the ground, landing on the street with a loud bang.

The guard captain that was standing under the hovercar could not evade in time, immediately being squashed into bits.

“The hovercar is compromised, take it out.” One of the enforcers, the lead enforcer, activated a command, which remotely turned off the hovercar. Hovercar takeovers were not new to the enforcers, so there were plenty of failsafes available.

They did not expect Ceres to be able to rip right through its defences. “Be careful, the rebel squad seems to be stronger than expected.”

The enforcers assumed that the rebel that infiltrated the hovercar must have a stronger exosuit, so they were much warier, aiming towards the crashed enforcer hovercar. Two energy beams suddenly hit them in the back, causing their personal energy shield to flare up as Don and Randy let loose all their remaining rifles’ batteries into them.

“Fuck, you two subdue them, I’ll take on the other!” The lead enforcer ordered the other two, while he advanced towards the crashed enforcer hovercar.

He moved carefully, quickly using his exosuit’s sensors to scan the hovercar. “Is it a stealth exosuit?” The lead enforcer couldn’t detect any signature.

He noticed the top human-sized hole on the hovercar’s roof, looking like it was cut open by a metal saw. Playing it safe, he quickly tossed a flash grenade into the hole, waiting for it to pop before quickly using his rifle to aim into the hole. “What the… there’s no one here.”

Suddenly at the periphery of his vision, he saw a spear fly towards him from the roof of the two-storey building on the left.

Dodging backwards, he fell and rolled onto the ground, recovering into a shooting position as he aimed up towards where the spear was thrown from above, which had impaled itself into the ground.

However, there was no one on the roof either.

Instead, Ceres had already jumped off the roof, rushing forward towards the lead enforcers and tackling him with his shoulder. The momentum dispelled the personal energy shield with its sheer kinetic impact and sent the lead enforcer tumbling twice. He dropped his rifle, but the Athen Defender was sturdy and took the beating well.

Ceres pulled the spear out from the ground, dashing towards the lead enforcer to prevent the lead enforcer from recovering. The lead enforcer barely looked up when he saw Ceres already in front of him and stabbing his chest with the spear. “Ugh!”

The spear was too weak and flimsy, snapping as it bit into the armour of the Athen Defender. The blow knocked the lead enforcer down again, as Ceres placed his body above the lead enforcer, pinning him down.

With a few rapid punches with his armoured fist, Ceres managed to damage the nerval plug and processor chip of the Athen Defender, causing the exosuit to malfunction and shut down. The exosuit immediately locked itself in, preventing the lead enforcer from exiting the exosuit. With a final punch, Ceres concussed the enforcer within.

The weak point of almost every exosuit was the nape of their neck, which was why it was heavily defended. It was only thanks to Ceres’s strength that he managed to finally damage the nerval plug and cause an internal shutdown.

“One down.”

Before he left the lead enforcer, he grabbed the head of the exosuit and smacked it hard on the ground, causing the lead enforcer to be knocked out.

Ceres immediately left the lead enforcer in his exosuit coffin, rushing towards the remaining two Athen Defenders.

They were overpowering Randy and Don, but the rebels were not giving up without a fight, having swapped to their pistols due to their energy rifles running out of battery.

Don personally witnessed Ceres take out two Athen Defenders with a simple spear, knocking out their nerval plugs from behind with a precise ambush attack. The speed and strength with which Ceres acted were far beyond anything Ceres had shown in the physical test or any of their VR practice sessions together.

Randy too saw it, but he was too badly injured to cheer. He had been hit with an energy beam right in the shoulder and the thigh, causing him to be unable to move.

Don wasn’t unscathed as well, his left forearm having a bleeding burnt hole through it. Both of them suffered from concussions due to the grenade earlier.

Ceres quickly ran over to the armoured hovercar, grabbed a medical kit inside and took out a foam spray, sealing the open wounds of both Randy and Don. “Can you walk?” He asked Don, who nodded.

“Okay, wait here. I’ll clean things up with Regan.” Ceres placed them both near the rebel hovercar, before walking off back into the street. The street was now littered with bodies: dead guards, slowly bleeding out guards, a squashed guard captain and three unconscious Athen Defenders locked in their disabled exosuit.

It was quite the body count, and it was Ceres’s first real battle as a rebel agent. Ceres had already spotted the enforcers coming long before the radar spotted them, so he had the time to check the surroundings and understand the layout of the buildings, allowing him to utilize them to ambush the enforcers.

It wasn’t much different from how they did the military test in the orphanage when Ceres lured the Athen Defender into a pitfall.

“Looks like they can improve the exosuit, but the enforcer himself needs to be improved.” He grabbed the armoured hovercar door in his hand, lifting it like a shield. It was much better than the metal heavy shields that the guards were using.

Ceres walked back to the same bar where Don was talking to Regan, slamming open the door. Immediately he was greeted with a series of shots from frightened residents of the town and the bar owner. “Get the hell out of here, we want nothing to do with you! It was Regan that betrayed you!”

All the residents of the town had seen the way Ceres had overwhelmed the enemy, knowing that they had not the slightest chance of defying him. Ceres noticed Regan wasn’t at the bar any longer. “Where the hell is he?” He snarled.

The bar owner pointed him to the factory down the road, causing Ceres to sigh. He already knew what was going to happen.

The original purpose of the mission was for the rebel squad to bring back a shipment of exosuit repair parts. The town manufactured them and sold them to neighbouring towns that operated mines, which required continuous maintenance of their mining exosuits.

Ceres marched into the factory without a care in the world, walking in through the front door. The fearful workers who had all been hiding in the factory cowered and ran away from Ceres in all directions. They weren’t the main target needing to be cleaned up, so Ceres ignored them.

The factory was a basic warehouse layout, with a loading bay followed by a long manufacturing assembly line, where the raw metals were turned into exosuit parts by a series of machines before being automatically tossed into crates. Hundreds of these crates were stacked up all around the assembly line.

As he walked in through the loading bay and got near the manufacturing lines, Ceres was forced to navigate through the dense stacks of crates, reaching a storage location. Through the two-storey high warehouse aisles, he could hear Regan’s voice echoing from the distance.

“I’m telling you, you have to send a Keeper here! There’s a brand new rebel exosuit that’s far more upgraded, and it took out the entire enforcer squad!”

[Message received. All our lines are currently busy, please hold.]

“God damnit!” Regan threw his multi-terminal on the floor, which skidded towards the feet of Ceres.

His face looked at Ceres with horror as he slowly stepped back. “Wait, I’m sorry about the contract! We can renegotiate it if you want! I’ll give you everything! I’ll even give you the rights to the factory, just don’t kill me!”

Ceres simply stood in place, waiting patiently for Regan to finish. Regan ran out of breath as he tried to convince Ceres, confused as to why Ceres was just waiting there. Regan even tried walking backwards a step at a time, but Ceres didn’t follow nor react at all.

“Are you done? I’m still waiting for your trump card. I don’t have time to wait for your ambush.” Ceres suddenly said, causing Regan to freeze in place before his face turned into a snarl.

“Shit, he knew! Get him now!”