Chapter 38:
Capital Punishment
Rebecca came back to consciousness slowly, her mind addled from the head injury.
She was sitting down, she could tell that much; her neck hurt from the way her head had been hanging limp for who knows how long, while her equally limp ears formed a curtain over her face.
Her eyes rolled around as she tried to focus; the side of her head and face felt tacky, dried blood indicating just how hard Carol had hit her.
Someone was talking to her, someone she loved, or perhaps… didn’t?
“-idea was to ship them in pieces, so that the inspectors would just see harmless machine parts.”
As she took in her surroundings the Lapine came to realize that they were in the office in the machine shop.
Somewhere she definitely shouldn’t be.
She jerked in place with the realization, only to feel hands settle on her shoulders and arms, firmly keeping her in the chair.
Head throbbing but fully conscious now, she looked across the desk, watching as the other woman deliberately assembled a familiar item.
“We even have a plausible explanation as to what they’re for to cover our asses. These-” Carol gestured with one of the little pieces before sliding it in place inside the weapon; “Are parts of the control mechanism for our presses. That explains the trigger and the springs and such to the uneducated.”
Her face darkened as she finished the trigger housing by putting the clamshell pieces together and Rebecca’s heart began to pound in her chest as their eyes finally met.
Carol was gone: Bethany was glaring at her now.
“It was a good plan, so what I need to know now… is how a dumb bunny like you figured out what they really were.”
The words stung, and she turned her head away as an involuntary sob escaped her lips from the crushing weight of her situation, all of the lies between them having been stripped away.
The grip that Gregory and the other man had on her arms kept her from moving as Bethany combined the parts she had just put together with the receiver and finished assembling the caster.
“And more importantly, who have you told?”
“Nobody.” Rebecca whispered immediately.
The arms dealer’s lips twitched into a slight grimace at the obvious lie as she looked to the night manager.
“Make sure everyone is armed up in case we have to deal with company, if it’s the lawkeepers we more than have them outgunned.”
“What if it’s the Aegis?”
Looking a little like she bit into a lemon, she sucked in air between her teeth with a grimace.
“Then we’ll see won’t we?”
She stood and stepped around the desk as Rebecca shrank in on herself, her ears flat to her head.
This time it was the cherry-haired woman’s grip that forced the bunny’s ears to straighten as she cruelly used them to force her to face her.
“As for you, sweetness, I’m sorry to say you won’t be making any more deliveries any time soon. Too bad, I really did love that piercing of yours.”
As the world crashed around her, the only thought that the young Lapine could formulate was a simple question.
“Was any of it real?” Rebecca whispered.
Bethany looked up and to one side as she thought back on every date they had shared, every truth she might have let slip to the Lapine in a rare moment of tenderness.
Inevitably she dismissed it all with a shrug and a smirk as she released her ears.
“I did grow up in the slums.”
With that she took a step back and leveled her pistol at the bunny’s head as a cold expression settled on her face.
Rebecca steeled herself, with strength she never knew she had filling her breast, she matched the other woman’s glare unblinking.
If this was her end then she intended to meet it with both eyes open.
The evil woman smirked.
“Brave little bunny. So very dumb, but brave.”
But just as she was about to pull the trigger, the whole building shook as something very large impacted it...
Or rather, something very small.
__________
Downstairs no work was getting done, the presses were silent and the crucible unlit. Workers were milling about with weapons in hand all over the machine shop, talking and laughing in the surety and arrogance that their employer had instilled in them.
Then everything changed.
The thick steel doors exploded inwards as a tiny red figured barreled through them with an enormous black hammer taking the lead, the heavy doors and the girl that broke them smashed into the crucible with implacable force, crushing it and sending ceramic shrapnel everywhere.
Once the clattering of the big doors had faded, the thunderstruck inhabitants of the machine shop all looked to the unexpected visitor now standing in the wreckage of the crucible.
“THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND DIE!” The Gigas roared at them.
In the midst of sneaking in with Erica and Kala through the now-broken door down the bathroom hallway, Miranda cursed into the startled silence.
“Or die Nina, for fuck’s sake.”
There was a long moment of stillness as the giant looked around at everyone, red eyes wide and hammer raised to show them she meant business.
All at once men began to scramble, a few ran for the exits, while a couple more dropped whatever arms they were carrying and lifted their hands high in the air, smart enough to recognize a Gigas for what she was.
The rest lifted their weapons to their shoulders and did something stupid.
There was a sound of thunder as they lit up the little red girl from all sides, while a couple men stalked forwards with flamers and poured the heat on her.
One especially reckless man on a catwalk above the presses towards the back of the room placed the odd tube that Rebecca had found on his shoulder and fired into the fray, the bulbous end separating and flying towards the Gigas with a terrible hissing sound.
Even through the haze of flame and heat Nina saw the strange projectile coming though and swatted it out of the air with her hammer, the rocket slamming into one of the presses before detonating and indiscriminately killing several people as the explosion blossomed outwards.
There was an awful screeching noise as the multi-ton machine began to crumble from its own weight.
The weapons fire halted after the explosion, the armed men too shell-shocked to keep up the pressure, while several had to scramble to get out of the way as the press collapsed.
When the smoke cleared from the blast there Nina stood; bleeding slightly in several places and stark naked, her clothes having succumbed to the blaze of the flamers.
She looked down at herself; the eyes of all still present followed her gaze to her naked form.
“That was my favourite shirt.” She complained.
Without delay she threw herself at the man with the strange cannon, crushing him instantly before he could blow anyone else to pieces.
Though it could be argued that she swung a bit too hard given that she took the catwalk out with him, the metal railing and reinforced ceiling mounts snapping like dry sticks under the weight of her wrath.
Her landing was less than graceful as she had been expecting her hammer to slow down in her overhand swing; instead she flipped ass over teakettle and landed on the stone floor flat on her back in the midst of a shocked group of workers.
There was a brief pause before they leveled their guns at her.
“Don’t even think-”
They thought about it, and then did it, bursts of red light accompanying their weapons fire.
But to no avail.
“OW! You almost got me in the eye you little turds!”
Still flat on her back she spun her hammer around her, sweeping their legs out from under them and using the weight of the weapon to help her get back to her feet in an odd spinning maneuver.
Then she closed her eyes, because while she might not have been able to recite the criminal statutes she was supposed to have learned at the academy, she did at least know that when the Aegis made entry into a building, they led with strobes.
__________
Upstairs, panic reigned.
“They’re here already!”
“They brought a fucking Gigas! We don’t have anyone outgunned!”
In all the chaos brought about by the explosion, Gregory closing the door to the office and locked it.
As if that would keep the giant out.
Still held in place by the other man, Rebecca licked her lips frantically as she looked for an out.
“Y-you should turn yourselves-”
But she was cut off when the night manager rounded the chair and ruthlessly punched her in the stomach, causing her to fall out of the seat, retching on all fours.
Bethany talked over the unpleasant sound.
“The others are on their own. You two have enough sense to follow me out of this shitstorm?”
They didn’t move right away, too focused on listening to the drama downstairs, but then their eyes flipped to the pistol she was rhythmically tapping against her thigh.
She leveled her best glare at each of them.
“You want to avoid the digsites? I’m still your best option.”
Left unspoken was the fact that if they didn’t help her neither of them were likely to live long enough to dig anything.
Despite the chaos of the Aegis raid, the cherry-haired woman didn’t appear worried, though there was a certain urgency in her movements that betrayed her nerves.
Inevitably the pair as she said, tossing whole sheaves of papers off of a long box in the corner while she turned and knocked over the shelf in the back to reveal a hidden exit cut into the wall next to the icebox.
Desperately hoping to slip out while they were distracted Rebecca crawled on all fours to the door, reaching to the lock with trembling fingers.
But Gregory spotted her and snagged her by her ankle to drag her away from the exit.
“And her?”
Bethany looked over her shoulder as she worked to undo the rusted latch on the hidden exit.
“We take her for insurance. She makes a fuss, hurt her some more.”
“You r-really are a b-bitch.” Rebecca wheezed with hot tears of pain and anger spilling down her face.
“Tell me all about it later. Let’s go!”
__________
Meanwhile there was a series of pops and snaps as the task force flooded the shop below, the main room filling with blinding light that disoriented their targets as they lead the way with their lost-tech canisters, most shouting almost the same thing Nina had.
Kala and Erica were wrestling with a trio that had tried to sneak out through the bathroom hall, the brief tussle ending badly for the criminals, while Miranda slipped past them to toss a stinger into a cluster of people by the collapsed press.
“Drop your weapons!” Her words were muffled by her breather mask, but they still heard her.
A dozen or so men were now dead from a severe case of Nina, and several more were otherwise incapacitated by the Aegis team’s lost-tech.
But the fight was far from over.
Barely finished speaking, Miranda had to duck behind one of the warped belts leading to the demolished press when the teary-eyed workers blindly leveled their weapons at the sound of her voice.
Covered by their braver or more foolish compatriots, the bulk of the forces scrambled away from the Aegis team towards the only viable exit at the back of the shop.
Even the ones who had initially surrendered had rearmed themselves, their survival instincts overriding their own judgment as they were driven into the scrap-yard by the blinding strobes and stinging gas.
Just as the Aegis intended.
While the operatives within pursued them, in the open air they were set upon by a Wolfen pack and Oldeera’s hive.
Then the real bloodshed began.