Alecto faded from view as the door opened, her armor drawing on an auxiliary power source to put the chameleon surface into a much higher-resolution mode. It drained energy quickly, but rendered her almost entirely invisible for a brief time.
The prison was already in chaos.
Humble had barreled out and was singlehandedly wrecking one of the giant robots. One of the patrolling squads was engaging Vello and some others down a side corridor, just inside the lockdown. Thrudh was busily laying down fire and pretending to be with the Hammers.
An interesting tactic, Alecto thought, but given how many Hammers now were expressing interest in joining the Black Company...and how the Hammers were themselves no longer an effective organization...it might not be quite as effective a ploy as it would otherwise have been.
It would sow confusion though, and that was not without value, especially when the cost of doing it was virtually nothing.
The Coalition began recovering from the surprise attack, officers issuing orders and getting the troopers into cover. Heavy infantry weaponry began appearing, shielded from direct counterfire by phalanxes of armored riflemen. The laser fire peppering the Company was joined by the distinctive roar of plasma discharges and the buzzing booms of railgun chatter.
And then the officers began to die. Where they stood, in one case while in mid-order, they would stop, jerk about a little...and blood would fountain out of a hole that appeared in their distinctive armor. Then they would fall, and only a telltale ripple in the air left a clue what had happened.
The third officer however, got smart. Kind of. On realizing what was happening, he primed a grenade and held it in his hand while depressing the device's override control to make a kind of improvised deadman's trigger. The sad irony was that it might even have worked, but Alecto, carefully weaving through the increasingly panicked soldiers, never saw it. She cut the officer across his chest and abdomen, then followed up with an upward thrust that angled under his ribcage and into his heart.
The grenade tumbled from his hand and exploded.
The damage done to his own troops was quite a bit worse than what Alecto experienced herself. Men were thrown clear of the blast, their armor hanging in shreds. The android's own armor was made of sterner stuff, supported by a light integral exoskeleton, but it wasn't immune to damage. The fragmentation dug several furrows in its surface and caused the chameleon system to become inoperative. And then Alecto was by herself, in the middle of an enemy formation, visible.
Only the fact that the squad was recovering from the grenade saved her. She immediately went on the attack, slaughtering two soldiers before they could bring their weapons to bear. Then laser fire began erupting all around her. In close quarters Alecto had the advantage...it wasn't easy to bring rifles to bear on a fast-moving target up close...but they had numbers. She couldn't get in all of their faces at once. Another one fell, and another. Two more, three. A series of laser hits stitched across Alecto's back, sending her stumbling, if not quite penetrating to her body. Another Coalition grunt was bisected. They were trying to regroup, so she charged them, killing another two and sending others reeling away. It came at a cost though, two direct hits impacted...one on the thick chestplate, but the other digging into the articulation of her left shoulder. Armor melted, and sparks flew from not just the armor, but her own shoulder underneath.
Alecto barely paused in her assault though. Retreating wasn't an option. The rest of her squad had their hands full, and she had to eliminate the infantry before releasing the prisoners. She was damaged now, but the amount of incoming weapons fire had dramatically lessened...she'd killed most of them already.
Her armor suffered another few hits, but nothing that penetrated as deep as the shoulder injury. An unaugmented human would have been cooked in her armor after that much punishment.
When the last Coalition troop fell, Alecto surveyed the field. The robots were down. The main forces in the prison block were down. There was a little fighting in the corridor...mop up from the sound of it...but no time left. The retreat was being sounded.
Alecto contacted the prison computer via the backdoor she'd installed, and opened the cell doors keeping the Black Company members contained. With just a moment's hesitation she then opened the rest of the cell doors as well. There was a good chance some of these beings were here for good reasons, but there was simply no time to discriminate...and a mass escape would help conceal their motives from any investigation. No one would be able to tell who specifically they'd wanted to free if EVERYONE had been.
"You are now free from the Coalition," Alecto said, her voice amplified as she addressed the erstwhile prisoners.
"We have arranged a means to escape the facility, and you may accompany us if you wish. If you do not, you will be on your own to escape. The guards have weapons, and some usable armor. I suggest using them."
And then a face appeared among the cautiously emerging men and women that Alecto recognized. A woman who, on seeing the other team members of the Black Company, started edging towards the prisoners who were not lining up to take the Rift out. Started to, that was, until Alecto put a hand on her shoulder.
"Molly," she said flatly.
"You will come with me. I advise against resisting."
The woman, last seen waaaaaay back in the guise of a news reporter, who's footage had created the false story of the Black Company's treachery, flinched and protested,
"You said we were free!"
"From the Coalition," was Alecto's reply.
"You and we have matters to discuss."
Molly made a token struggle, but Alecto was far stronger than her even without the exoskeleton's aid. With it, Molly may as well have been wrestling with a juicer.
Damaged, but victorious, Alecto took Molly with her as she led the formerly captive Black Company to where the exit Rift was starting to materialize. Prison security pinged status updates on the back channels she'd invaded previously. More reinforcements were coming. Heavier by far. Coalition infowar-specialists were already drilling away at her hastily constructed lockdown.
"It's time to go," she said as she rejoined the others.
Sammy my man, er cat, you going to tell me who the 8 are? List them?