I ordered the drones to engage, raising my Gazer and firing. I tagged the one I was targeting but only for a millisecond before it dodged.
Regar fired his Tempest, catching two of them near the cylinder but not dead on. They swirled around the destruction, slowing briefly. That was just long enough for me and the particle beam drone to both shoot one of them. It exploded, metal parts getting sucked into the spatial distortion. The other one flew off, escaping the vortex.
The third came at me again. It was incredibly fast, and I could just barely track it. It rotated around its central axis, the sound of its passage through the air loud and irregular.
"Don't let it hit you. Their blades will cut through armor like air!" Regar warned.
As comfortable as I was getting with flying, dodging something that fast and maneuverable just wasn't going to happen. I tried, and failed. It hit me and there was another boom of an explosion as my assault armor's countermeasures fired. The reactive armor vaporized the flying disk's blade and sent it tumbling, out of control. For a moment I could see it clearly—a rotating disk with four long, curved blades equally spaced around the center hub. Well, it had four blades. Now it had two intact blades and two shattered stumps. The Interface labeled it for me. I chuckled a bit at the strange name, but quickly pushed it out of my head.
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Wundrus Glayve, Threat Level: 8
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That one might be out of the fight, but there was no way I was taking a chance. I drilled it dead center with the Gazer and it exploded, raining pieces.
The surviving disk had been trying to get Regar, but he had been successfully hiding behind one of the very thick vertical structural beams. He had been keeping it between them, but the disk had been taking pieces out of it with each run at him. Regar was lucky the thing's blades weren't that long. I remembered the Cutter Alpha slicing completely through the structural beam I had tried to take cover behind in the Habitat complex.
"Some help here, Jake?"
It was ignoring me and the drones, fixated on Regar. I ordered the needler to shoot on target and the beam drone to shoot high. I would shoot low. We'd bracket it, and even if it dodged we might hit anyway. It was amazing how quickly I could pass on orders to the drones. It was like I merely had to envision what I wanted and they could carry it out.
The disk swooped at Regar, and he moved behind the pillar, interposing it between him and the spinning blades. With a loud triple clack, it cut another slice through the pillar. The drones and I all fired just after it passed Regar. It dropped, dodging the stream of needles and right into my fire. The particle beam clipped it, severing some blades, which went flying at high speed. It nearly recovered before the final blast from my beam drone made it into a pattering rain of debris.
"Nice shooting. Let's go; we're getting close to the top."
"How did you make it this far with just the Tempest?" I asked. "It's awesome, but situational."
"I didn't. I had a couple of other guns, but they're both scrap now. I was kind of surprised to see you only brought that beamer with you. The drones help, I guess. Basic Seeker rule—when it comes to guns, two is one and one is none."
"Well, I've got Excalibur here if it comes down to it," I said, patting the wrecking bar.
"Melee weapon, huh? Better than nothing I suppose. How did you take hits from those blades, anyway? That armor has more to it than it seems."
I looked down at my torso. Right at waist level on my right side was a scorch mark in the shape of a blade. Metra had somehow integrated that reactive armor she had made for me into the suit itself. The countermeasures had fired twice, as I saw another scorch mark on my left arm.
"I've got a hell of an engineer as a partner. I'll introduce you if we get out of this alive."
"When! A Seeker always tries to envision a positive outcome."
"When, then."
"I look forward to it. Come on."
We continued up the shaft. I kept my eyes peeled for more of the flying disks, but I didn't have a lot of hope I'd spot one before it was on top of us. They were just too fast, and the space in here too busy. I mourned the loss of my scout drone once again.
"We're nearly to the top. We don't want to go out there; we need to find an opening into the shaft itself."
I thought of all the mobile turrets, the flying squid monsters, and now the disks. Damn right we didn't want to go out there if we might meet all three of those things and more. Regar's plan sounded good.
"Yeah, I got in through a hatch on the outside. It had a little corridor that led right into the shaft. No idea what it was for, but there's got to be more of those."
"Right, you flew up here. That would have been nice. Climbing a Spike has never been on my list of things to do and it hasn't been as fun as you might expect. Let's keep an eye open for one of those corridors."
A few minutes later, the top of the Spike was above us. We'd climbed and flown as far as we could, with no trace of any kind of corridor from the outer skin to the shaft. There was no way we could scout the entire
