— Saturday, February 18, AD 2130 —

“Overdrive: CRITICAL OVERLOAD!!”

Instantly, deafening thunder roared through the air as a massive fireball erupted against the side of one of the buildings in EA’s base. Dirt, metal debris, and disoriented robots were thrown every which way under the force of Kate’s massive explosion — which Mark immediately followed by lunging onto the scene, halberd in hand to begin making fierce swings at the robots that had managed to survive. With his incredible strength, Mark’s halberd whipped through the air, tearing into the ground as he swung hard at any robot in reach, the blows from his swings flooring any robot and even sending some of them flying back.

Amidst the flurry of blows, Kate quickly fabricated a missile launcher and fired two missiles into the fray, detonating another two massive explosions that tore the nearby warehouse to shreds and finally overloaded the shields of the remaining robots in the vicinity. As soon as the telltale golden static fuzz swept over the robots, Colonel Saito, Major Hackett, and Captain Travis all jumped out of cover to open fire on the exposed robots, easily ripping them to pieces under a hail of high-powered gunfire.

And then, just a few seconds later, the thunder of explosions subsided, and the sounds of gunfire ceased. The smoke slowly began to clear, revealing a charred crater where one of EA’s warehouses had once stood, with Mark standing in the middle — unscathed — amid a pile of metal and robotic debris.

“Al-RIGHT!!” Kate whooped after witnessing the carnage. “THAT’S what I’m fuckin’ talking about!!”

“You’re getting carried away,” Saito cut in irately. “The point of this Op is to capture the facility, not blow it to pieces!”

“Arrrgh…” Kate groaned. “Look, it was just one warehouse! There’s tons of them around here!”

“Th-there’s tracks…” Researcher MacTavish quietly observed.

“Tracks…?” Travis echoed, glancing over at MacTavish before turning to look in the same direction that she was. Sure enough, amongst the charred remains of the prior skirmish were a set of railroad tracks, leading out of the remnants of the warehouse.

“So… whatever this facility was doing, it produced — or needed — enough cargo to warrant a train,” Hackett observed.

“B-but there were, um, n-no tracks leading o-outside the facility…” MacTavish said. “N-not on the scans, at least… so, um…”

“So these are Gatetrain tracks, then?” Mark questioned.

MacTavish nodded. “M-most likely…”

“Then following them will lead us to exactly where we want to go: the Interstellar Gate,” Saito declared, already turning towards the tracks. “Let’s get a move-on! The sooner we capture that Gate, the better—!”

The Colonel’s order was interrupted by the sounds of metallic screeching echoing through the air — accompanied by a single armored rail car careening down the railroad tracks towards the warehouse that had just been obliterated. As soon as the car came into view, a hatch on its side opened up to release a handful of robots.

“Watch out!” Mark exclaimed, quickly moving to interpose himself between the train and CSF-1.

“Ah ha ha ha!!” Kate cackled with glee as she whipped out another rocket launcher. “You idiots think you can take US—?!”

“No, don’t destroy it!” Saito shouted, grabbing the end of Kate’s rocket launcher and diverting her aim before she could fire. “That rail car is our ticket for a fast ride to the Gate! Destroy the robots, but leave the car and the tracks intact, you hear me?”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Travis remarked as he quickly ducked into cover behind a large piece of metal debris.

“…Fine, I won’t use the big fuck-off explosives,” Kate grumbled, only to fabricate two grenades into her hands and charge forward after Mark. “But you said I can destroy the robots, so I’ll fuckin’ hold you to that!”

“Of course you will…” Saito muttered, watching as she chucked the two grenades at Mark — who batted them to the sides with his halberd, causing the explosive devices to land at the feet of two robots and then explode violently, launching the two robots into the air. Immediately, Mark lunged forward, using the cover of debris to close the distance between himself and the other robots, in the hopes of drawing all of their attention. Sure enough, they all turned towards him, their single sensor dome seeming to focus on him — only for a single robot to charge at Mark while the rest backed off.

Undeterred, Mark whipped his halberd around to slam its spear tip into the charging robot’s sensor orb, causing its shields to flare up brightly and temporarily blind it. But before he could follow up, the rest of the robots all fired on him in a coordinated salvo, their bullets striking the shields around his head and blinding him in a similar manner. He quickly hunched down into a defensive stance, prepared for a follow-up attack — and sure enough, a split-second later he felt a hefty blow to his chest knock him over backwards. As he fell over, the flaring shields over his face finally dissipated, allowing him to see the one lead robot charge at him again, this time holding a large piece of metal debris in its hands — only for one of Kate’s explosives to obliterate the makeshift melee weapon and knock the robot onto its side.

As soon as he saw the robot stumble, Mark lunged for it again, his halberd at the ready. And then, halfway through his lunge, he quickly ducked his head and snapped his halberd into a blocking position, successfully deflecting another coordinated shot from the rest of the robots. With his vision unblocked, Mark was easily able to descend upon the stunned robot and swing his halberd overhead, slamming it down onto the machine with such incredible force that the concrete underfoot cracked and shattered, and the robot was half-buried in the debris.

Following the blow was the thundering roar of another explosion as Kate blasted at the robots attempting to surround Mark. Three of the five robots were launched into the air, while the remaining two quickly turned their guns on Kate — who responded by haphazardly tossing aside her spent rocket launcher to fabricate a new one and fire on the two other robots. Just as she fired, however, one of the robots sniped her rocket out of the air, immediately detonating it and filling the air with a cloud of smoke and debris.

Amidst the debris, the three launched robots began to recover, with all of them backing away from the smoke cloud… only for the mangled, wrecked chassis of the robot Mark had been fighting to come flying out of the smoke, smashing into one of the other robots and knocking it over. Immediately following the robotic corpse was Mark, already mid-swing with his halberd as he lunged towards the nearest robot. The other robots attempted to blind him again with a coordinated shot, but Mark ducked, allowing Kate to lunge out of the smoke cloud and leap over him as she returned fire with a newly fabricated rocket launcher — at which point Mark charged around her while swinging his halberd, his incredible strength finally overpowering one of the robot’s shields and cleaving it in twain.

Now two robots down with only four remaining, the leftover robots appeared to abandon tactical strikes to instead unleash a hail of bullets at Mark and Kate, evidently hoping to overwhelm them with superior firepower. But even as they fired a storm of bullets, the robots’ accuracy was high enough to repeatedly strike Mark and Kate in their chests and faces, successfully putting them on the backfoot… until two well-placed bullets from Travis’s sniper rifle, and a spray of bullets from Saito and Hackett’s assault rifles, struck the remaining four robots right on their sensor orbs. Their shields flared to protect them from harm, but also temporarily blinded them, thereby reducing the accuracy of their weapons fire — just enough to allow Mark and Kate to recover.

Immediately, Mark lunged forward again, while Kate dived to the side while fabricating yet another missile launcher. Taking advantage of the robots’ temporarily stunned state, Mark began dexterously whirling his halberd about, slamming it into the side of one robot — into the head of another — into the legs of a third — with his fierce blows fully overcoming the robots’ abilities to remain standing. As he floored three of them, the fourth began firing on him again, but he simply spun around and hurled his halberd through the air, slamming its spear tip into the robot’s chest and knocking it onto its back.

But Mark didn’t waste time watching the robot fall over; as soon as he had thrown his halberd, he had already turned back to the three floored robots. They were already beginning to climb back to their feet, but Mark didn’t give them the chance; he quickly dove towards them, grabbing two of them by their legs. He then leveraged his incredible strength to swing the two robots through the air and hurl them at the fourth robot, thus causing the three to collapse into a pile. The one remaining robot began firing on Mark again, but a rocket fired from Kate stunned it just long enough for Mark to lunge towards it, grab its leg, and then throw it onto the pile of robots. As soon as he released the robot, Mark immediately backed away and shouted towards Kate, “now!!”

With a gleeful grin, Kate quickly cast aside her rocket launcher — only to fabricate another, with a significantly larger warhead. “FIRE IN THE HOLE!!” she shouted aloud, but had already fired her rocket halfway through her shout. It careened through the air towards the pile of downed robots; by then, the robots were beginning to untangle themselves, and quickly turned their guns on the approaching warhead… but they simply weren’t fast enough.

KRA-KOOOM

The thundering roar of an explosion, accompanied by a fierce shockwave and flash of light, rolled through the base. Concrete shattered and cracked as Kate’s explosive carved a crater into the ground, while the resulting fireball mushroomed into the air, leaving behind a cloud of smoke. Without even waiting for the cloud of smoke to clear, Mark dashed forward, his halberd summoned back to his hands as he dove into the smoke cloud and began swinging at the robots, aiming to ensure their destruction. And sure enough, the sound that met his ears wasn’t the familiar electrical static of flaring energy shields — instead, it was the shrieking and wrenching of his halberd cleaving clean through metal.

“Ahhh ha ha ha ha ha!!!” Kate cackled with glee, her hands planted firmly on her hips as she observed the result of her explosive handiwork. “How do you like THAT, you robotic bastards?!”

“I somehow doubt that they can hear you,” Travis remarked as he cautiously approached, along with the rest of CSF-1.

“Yes, I can confirm their destruction,” Mark commented as the smoke cloud finally cleared, revealing him standing amongst the metal debris of their opposition. He quickly looked around, searching for other opponents; in the skies beyond, he could see the continued flashes of light from the SERRCom fighters dogfighting with EA’s fightercraft. And a second later, there was a bright flash overhead as another orbital bombardment round struck the base’s bombardment shielding. But in the immediate vicinity, CSF-1, Mark, and Kate now stood alone.

“And the train even looks intact,” Hackett remarked as she nodded towards the now-empty rail car. “Good job, Kate.”

“Yeah yeah, don’t patronize me—” Kate began to retort, only to cut herself off as the rail car suddenly started to accelerate away from the group, all on its own. “What the fuck—? Hey, get back here!!”

“Damn it…!” Mark muttered, already crouching down. A brief moment later, he bounded after the rail car, his hands coming down to grab its rear coupling. As soon as he had taken hold, he dug his feet into the ground, leveraging his incredible Forcetechnic strength to slow the rail car to a stop.

“Good going, Mark!” Saito shouted after him as he and the rest of CSF-1 jogged after the newly stopped rail car. “Alright, let’s all get on board, quickly! Kate, MacTavish, I need the two of you to get this thing under our control and rolling down those tracks immediately. We still have an Interstellar Gate to secure!”