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H0P3 Stunned - Shortfic
🕑 Added 2021-05-07 19:42:47 +0000 UTCH0P3’s eyes briefly closed as the shockwave crushed her body against the splintering drywall of the villa. A shower of dust, debris, and timber accompanied her flying body out of the building.
H0P3 felt nothing. Stimulants, nerve blocks, and an exoskeleton kept her together. The pain couldn’t reach her mind.
Blinding light assaulted her eyes. The clear blue sky burned into them as her helmet’s visor was torn open. The suit’s HUD pulsed with crackles of distortion, ethereal text projecting up into her eyes despite the damage.
AVAS:: \...\SBSIC
{Warning: Exosuit Breached!}
[Running SIC]
{Suit Integrity Check:
Armor:(Chest-Penetrated, RThigh-Functional, LThigh-Functional, Helmet-Damaged), Inner Suit: Punctured, Helmet: Damaged, Visor: Damaged, IFAS: Nominal, Endoskeleton: Nominal, Augmentations: Nominal, Core Systems: Nominal
Begin tending to likely wounds. Check Vitals and triage wounds, please contact the medical unit for assistance.
AVAS:: \...\ER
{Emergency Repairs}
[Visor Lattice]: Checking
[Visor]: Deactivated
[Nanite Pack; 24-35]: Deploying
[Vitals Check]: Initializing
Nanites began to fizzle in a gentle foaming of material as they poured out from little pearl-like containers which held them at bay, flowing like cracking ice to fill the broken faceplate.
While this setback left her in a precarious position it did not reduce her appetite for her prey inside the villa.
H0P3 didn’t have time to wait for the nanites to finish their task. She needed to move now. She leapt to her feet.
Smoke poured out of the gaping tear in the wall. A laser sight lanced out, questing for her body as the man inside aimed at her.
H0P3 dodged, using her powerful cybernetic tail to lift and launch her body off the ground directly into a wild sprint toward the side of the villa. A hail of machine gun fire stitched the ground she’d just vacated, the impacts chasing after her like a swarm of mechanized hornets.
The smell of brimstone was suffused with the iron taste of blood as H0P3 ran faster, using her augmented legs to leap up onto the roof of the villa. Her strides ripped up chunks of cedar as her vicious, cybernetic claws dug into the villa’s roofing for traction.
H0P3’s breath became ragged with a coarse wetness. Blood continued to fill her lungs. It hurt to breathe, briefly, the nerve overrides struggling to keep up with the continuing carnage inside of her.
AVAS:: \...\IHD
{Warning: Internal Hemorrhaging Detected}
{>>>Danger!<<<}
[Time Remaining To Potential Unit Failure: 16:41 ]
Attempt To Remain Stationary Until Other Units Can Assist You.
{>>>Danger!<<<}
AVAS:: \...\IFAS
[Engaging IFAS]
{Individual First Aid System Active:
Foreign Bodies: Detected, Multiple Puncture Wounds: Detected, Lacerations: Detected, Internal Hemorrhaging: Detected}
Stop blood loss,drain lungs, stabilize, and hope for a miracle.
AVAS:: \...\TRIAGE
[Seek Medical Treatment Immediately: H0P3.ASH]
{Traiging:}
— [Coagulant]: Injecting
— [Emergency Stent]: Deploying
— [Projectile Tether Nanites]: Deploying
— [Formula PM401-5]: Injecting {WARNING: NOT-FOR-EXTENDED-FIELD-USE}
H0P3 felt needles prickling her chest seemingly at random as a lattice of micro injectors in her suit began to apply localized doses of coagulant to the multiple shrapnel wounds throughout her body. A wet stabbing noise punctuated her sudden stop as she came to the edge of a sea of glass spanning across the roof.
The pain finally managed to bleed through her nerve blocks entirely, causing H0P3 to let out a soft gasp as she felt the stent in her chest begin to drain her lungs.
That hurt too. But then the fresh stims kicked in and she forgot about it.
Her eyesight became a haze of tv static for a brief moment. As it corrected, H0P3 caught sight of her target; the man was taking cover behind a large concrete fireplace. He glanced over nervously eyeing a data slate mounted on the wall next to him. He still held a heavy assault rifle braced against his arm, it was aimed toward the blown-out front wall.
H0P3 lept through the skylight.
Glass shattered as her sabaton-clad feet smashed through the panel. Her claws burst forth, feeling intense energy fields flickering into existence on each finger-tip. The blades ionized the air around them into a wicked, teal-tinted field of death.
She howled in anticipation, letting loose with the rage of a thousand valkyries on her descent to collect her target. For a moment, time froze. The man looked up at her in shock, swinging his rifle over to fire at his assailant.
Numerous luminescent, sizzling tears appeared in the rifle, punctuated by the hot sound of ripping carbon-steel; a moment later, her claws tore through the body of the rifle, detonating the roungs inside the magazine and sending a spray of 5.56x45 mm ball across the pair. The force of H0P3’s strike, coupled with the inertia of her meteoric descent, carried them into a slide, with wet pop punctuating the impact of her body onto the man.
The man screamed, the sound’s source becoming evident: her impact had dislocated the man's right arm with the force of her landing.
Pain transformed to rage in an instant; her target scrambled with its remaining, functional arm for the knife sheathed at its hip, trapped beneath H0P3’s weight.
H0P3 found the man's continued resistance impressive for a human. Regardless, she didn’t hesitate to stab her tail through the man's left hand, pinning it to the ground like an insect on a needle.
The man writhed in pain.
Blood dripped, beginning to pool on the cracked, glacial surface of the white marble floor. H0P3 licked her lips and contemplated her pacified prey.
“Fuck you! You— you fucking demon!” It spat at her from underneath H0P3’s bulk.
She found the prey's cursing amusing. Its efforts were entirely fruitless. H0P3’s face twitched, one side of her lip curling up into a contorted grin.
Then her programming brought her bloodlust back into check, her face became emotionless and implaccable once more.
“Get off me! You cunt!” the man screamed, bucking in its attempts to shake H0P3 off of it. It shrimped its hips, trying to escape her crushing grip.
The Huntress merely allowed her full weight to settle down onto it, effectively locking its pelvis to the ground. The man cried out again, its face distorting with a strangled howl of agony.
Her drop had likely bruised - or shattered - ribs, to have elicited such a reaction.
It began to beg; “I-- Please! Please!”
But there wasn’t any more time to relish the pain of its prey: H0P3 had to move.
She snicked her tail up and out of its hand, swiftly stabbing it into the neck of the man, sedating it with a cocktail of potent narcotics. It twitched struggling weakly, then fell still but for the gentle rise-and-fall of its chest.
H0P3 jumped to her feet, dropping a canister from her back onto the ground. It unrolled, flattening out into a leaf-like stretcher with spined fronds. The surface was roughly the size of a full-grown human.
H0P3 surveyed her surroundings as her visor's final cracks were filled with nanite repairs. Ghostly apparitions began to faintly show through the walls as data feeds from the other two Huntress Drones were restored, outlining relevant visual information from her packmates’ point of view.
More PMC’s were arriving from the main barracks in a wheeled armored vehicle topped with a heavy machine gun on a spindle.
AVAS:: \...\log_0xese109txa4
IN87 :: H0P3 additional units are being deployed, enemy helios detected en-route to the compound, we need to extract.
H0P3 :: IN87 Understood, package secured.
With a rough grab, she dragged the man to the center of the flattened material, tearing its clothing off with her searingly hot claws, mindful not to maim it.
The spines of the mat started to curl inward, gripping their prey in their gentle embrace. Again, H0P3 surveyed her surroundings. The sound of boots padding stealthy down a hallway towards her prompted the Huntress Drone to act suddenly on her instincts.
A series of hanging planters above proved to be a perfect hiding spot. She crouched between two large ferns, watching her prey become encapsulated in the fetal position by the Man-catcher harness.
Moments after the harness finished bagging her prize, two PMC’s began clearing the room, moving quickly towards H0P3’s prey. The Huntress Drone flattened herself inside the planter, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.
She readied a projectile weapon on her right arm. It smoothly extended out of its armored carapace like a wasp’s stinger.
With a faint snick of metal-on-metal, the suppressed weapon fired, felling both men. They toppled over like a pair of tin soldiers. One lay across its rifle, twitching.
H0P3 surveyed the area and then swiftly mantled out of the planter, deftly striding past the two corpses. She scooped up the Mancatcher, pulled its straps over her shoulders and yanked them tight, securing her load in place.
She broke into a run, leaving through the exit she had inadvertently made by being blown up before. The ghostly figures of her two packmates lay up ahead, transposed over the burned wreckage of the wheeled armored personnel carrier.
They crouched across from one another having caught their prey in an ambush from behind. One still had smoke wisping up from the smooth bore of her shoulder-mounted rocket system. Though they both had a distinct resemblance to H0P3, they both wore totally different huntgear than her.
Before H0P3 could close the distance to her packmates, they turned and began to run further ahead, clearing their exit path from the villa and surrounding compound.
Crossing the property line into thick eucalyptus trees, H0P3 managed to finally reach her top speed, bounding on enhanced, spring-like legs and surging forward on wave of fresh adrenaline. Her breath became ragged again as the weight of her load and the strain of her recent exertions pushed her further beyond the limits of what her body could withstand.
AVAS:: \...\IFAS
[Warning: Internal Hemorrhaging Critical]
[Time Remaining To Potential Unit Failure: 5:13 ]
Please discontinue physical activity immediately, unit is close to failure.
She broke through a thick row of bushes and saw her packmates ahead, waiting with weapons pointed over her head.
Their VTOL was here.
H0P3 smiled grimly, pooled blood collecting in her visor, knowing she only needed to make it another 100 meters. Her task was nearly at an end, though her programming reminded her that extraction was the worst time to let one’s guard down.
The huntress drone continued her breakneck pace towards perching, avian form of the VTOL. Engines roared to life as the pilot spun up its blades again, beginning to teeter the armored bird of war up on its landing gear.
Dirt exploded in a string near IN87’s hunkered form. H0P3 heard the ripping crack of wild automatic fire ring out through the dusty clouds swirling in the rotor wash of the VTOL
Her packmates were fighting again and she couldn’t help them.
Mere steps remained until she would be able to help them. T2he harsh metal plating of the VTOL’s floor met her collapsing form. Her body felt immovable, her limbs limp. She could feel the thrum of the engines, and the feeling of the world drawing together into inky blackness.
AVAS:: \...\CORE
{Emergency Manual Override Engaged:
Authorization == KtQ4c$&oUv%64Juk6h@#H@h%r*$f6qDo@WVf7egt^LFNU65BfLjE%yL*6xMUAQ*nT$uWyF#DuJA#UWDsSZ5uUg9uLKKgM$u6coRGGLUhjUiy3HpiQC5JxisPMT5Hp^bf [IN87]
AVAS:: \...\ESP
Emergency Stabilization Procedure
{OVERRIDE.IN87}
— [Sedatives]: Administering
— [Neural Override]: Active
— [External Transfer Ports]: Ready
— [Artificial Blood Production]: Active
}
AVAS:: \...\CORE
{Missive Dispatched To Medical Personnel: Prepare operating room for emergency surgery and massive transfusion.}
{Missive Dispatched To Command: After-action review in wake of critically injured unit requested.}
A different chemical hit her bloodstream.
H0P3 lost consciousness.
