Chapter 32 - RETRIBUTION AT ZERO DEGREES
"Sarah, down!" I roared.
I tackled her to the floor just as the miniguns unleashed a deafening storm of high-velocity lead. The air turned into a whirlwind of shattering glass, pulverized server casings, and screaming ricochets. The heavy aluminum rack behind us collapsed under the hail of fire, burying us under a tangle of severed power lines and sparking fiber optics.
Sterling turned and walked calmly toward the blast doors, his voice amplified over the facility’s intercom: *"Purge Sub-Level 4. Vent all nitrogen reserves. Wipe all local hard drives."*
The heavy steel bulkhead doors began their slow, hydraulic descent, sealing the exit.
"Grant, we have sixty seconds before the nitrogen displaces all the oxygen!" Sarah choked, coughing as the freezing white vapor rolled over us like an icy ocean.
I scrambled to my knees, blood dripping from my fresh cuts onto the frozen floor. The two tracked combat drones were maneuvering around the server aisles, their thermal sensors sweeping the fog to pinpoint our location.
I didn't have armor. I didn't have air support. But I had the environment.
I lunged toward the ruptured main power conduit hanging from the ceiling—a massive 480-volt, three-phase high-voltage cable that had been severed by the drone's initial volley. Using the insulated rubber stock of my tactical shotgun, I hooked the live wire and hurled it directly into the open drainage trough at the base of the drone's tracks.
The current met the pooling coolant water with the fury of a lightning strike.
A blinding blue arc flashed through the chamber. The electrical surge traveled up the steel tracks of both drones, blowing their internal microprocessors in a shower of sparks and smoke. The machines spun crazily in circles before collapsing into dead heaps of scrap metal.
"Move!" I dragged Sarah by her tactical vest toward the descending blast door.
The heavy steel slab was four feet off the ground and falling fast. The private contractors were already on the other side, firing their weapons through the closing gap. I threw my shotgun horizontally into the doorframe track.
The hydraulic motor strained with a deafening groan as the steel door slammed down onto the forged-steel receiver of the Benelli. The hardened shotgun barrel bent under the immense pressure, but the door jammed, leaving an eighteen-inch opening at the concrete floor.
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"Slide under! Now!" I yelled, pushing Sarah through the gap into the outer hallway.
She cleared the opening. I dove headfirst after her, scraping the skin off my back as the shotgun finally snapped under thirty tons of hydraulic pressure, the massive blast door slamming shut with a thunderous *CRACK* inches behind my boots.
