Chapter 34 - Blood in the Salt
Sofia didn't hesitate. Before the lead commando could squeeze his trigger, she dropped low and swung her right arm upward.
The dormant bracelet violently discharged. A dome of iridescent shock-energy burst from the obsidian settings, catching the rain droplets and flash-vaporizing them into a blinding curtain of steam. The concussive wave struck the front two commandos square in the chest, flipping their armored bodies backward through the air and sending them tumbling off the cliff’s edge into the roiling surf below.
"Take cover!" Victor shouted, rolling behind a mossy granite outcrop.
The remaining two soldiers opened fire. Automatic tracer rounds chewed through the mud and bark around Sofia, splintering the air with deafening cracks. Sofia scrambled across the soaked earth, her hands catching on jagged slate as she lunged behind a collapsed boulder next to Victor.
"How many charges does that thing have?" Victor shouted, sliding a fresh magazine into his sidearm and leaning out to return fire, dropping one of the helmeted soldiers with a clean throat shot.
"I don't know!" Sofia yelled back, her fingers trembling against the pulsing artifact. The internal gears were ticking erratically, clicking like a countdown clock. "It's never responded like this before. It’s drawing power from the storm—or from whatever those ships are carrying!"
The last soldier abandoned his rifle, drawing an electric vibro-blade from his back and vaulting over the rock with blinding speed. He tackled Victor to the ground, the humming blade inches from Victor’s throat as the commando drove his armored knee into Victor’s cracked ribs.
Sofia lunged forward, grabbing the soldier by his tactical vest. The moment her skin-tight glove contacted the commando’s neural-link collar, the bracelet surged again. An involuntary arc of pale lightning jumped from the runes into the soldier’s helmet.
The commando froze, seizing violently as the suit’s internal electronics overloaded with sparks. With a muffled cry through his rebreather, the soldier went limp, collapsing face-first onto Victor.
Victor shoved the heavy corpse aside, coughing as he wiped black engine grease from his brow. He looked at Sofia, terror and awe warring in his eyes. "You just shorted out military-grade cranial cybernetics with bare contact."
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"I didn't mean to," Sofia whispered, staring at her smoking hand. The skin along her forearm was laced with glowing blue vascular lines that slowly receded beneath the surface. "We need to get into the salt caves. Now. If they have scouts up here, the main detachment is already climbing the ridge."
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