CHAPTER FIVE: THE MAVERICKS’ BRUTALITY
764 Words
Calabar – Abandoned Council Robotics Facility.
The explosion tore through the facility with the force of a small sun.
One second, Dike was advancing with his squad through the skeletal remains of the HK production line. The next…
KRAKOOM!
A concussive wave lifted him off his feet and slammed him into a steel support beam. His helmet cracked against the metal, and the world dissolved into ringing silence.
Blackness…
Then…
"Dike! Wake up!"
A woman's voice, sharp with panic.
"Ebubedike Nnamdi, get up now!".
Delicate fingers tapped his back softly.
"Ebubedike, my son, wake up!!!".
Dike's eyes flew open with a gasp. His vision blurred, smoke, flickering emergency lights, the distant crump of plasma fire, but no woman. No hands. Just empty air where the voice had been.
A shadow loomed over him.
"Get up, soldier!." Aisha hauled him to his feet with brutal efficiency. "No time to waste."
She dragged him behind a collapsed generator, her enhanced optics scanning the battlefield. "Breathe. Then move."
“Just a dream. A glitch.”
The voice in his skull rang louder than gunfire.
So why did “Ebubedike Nnamdi” feel more real than his own heartbeat?.
Aisha and Zainab moved through the c*****e like twin blades precise, relentless, unhesitating.
Zainab's sniper rounds punched through HK cranial casings with mechanical rhythm. Aisha's plasma shotgun vaporized three Vanguards in one shot, her face eerily calm beneath her visor.
This was the recalibration's gift.
No doubts. No hesitation. No memories. Just the mission and enthusiasm.
Recalibration wasn't a quick fix, it was a slow unraveling.
Most subjects cracked within weeks. Some held out for months. The Council's record? 3 years, 4 months, 27 days of perfect obedience before the programming finally rusted through.
The Council's recalibrations were no different, every suppression carried its own death clock.
Aisha and Zainab were only two weeks in. They wouldn't question. Wouldn't remember.
Wouldn't hesitate when the Council gave the kill order.
The Mavericks had come prepared this time.
After the last m******e, the Council had upgraded their arsenal with nightmare fuel:
Pulse-Rifles: EM bursts that fried HK brains like overripe plantains.
Thermite Sun-Kissers - Grenades that reduced armor into dripping sludge.
Head Melter Rounds - Bullets that turned HK skulls to slag in one shot.
Ogun's Wrath - A wrist-mounted plasma saw that made Emeka giggle like a possessed mechanic.
But the HKs adapted fast.
A Vanguard sacrificed its own arm to smother a thermite blast. An Alpha used a dead comrade's chassis as a battering ram.
"They're learning!" Emeka roared, bisecting a HK with his plasma saw.
"Then we teach harder," Aisha replied, putting a pulse-round through an Alpha's thrashing head.
The battle lasted over four hours.
When the last HK collapsed, its optic sensors flickering out with a final, almost human sigh, it was a narrow win with:
37 destroyed HK units, their molten still bubbling.
14 dead child soldiers. More than half of Platoon 7 were gone.
1 silent alarm, blaring in every neural implant:
>> MISSION SUCCESS. RETURN TO BASE.
Then the rains came.
Heavy downpour sizzled on hot metal, washing blood into the soil. The Mavericks didn't move. Didn't speak. Just stood there, letting the water sluice off their armor, their weapons, their scars.
Commander Idowu's hologram flickered to life above the corpses.
"Outstanding work, Mavericks." His smile was a razor cut. "Your bravery will be rewarded with double rations and 72 hours' leave."
A lie. They all knew the "leave" would be spent in medbay, getting patched up for the next mission or some sparring contest.
"As for our fallen..." Idowu's image gestured to the body bags.
"Their memory will be honored. They will not be forgotten."
Later, as medics loaded the wounded onto transports, Dike caught it, a flicker of movement in the ruins.
His boot kicked something metallic.
A data chip, freshly dislodged from the HK's wreckage. The label made his pulse spike:
"THE TRUTH".
What truth?
He glanced around, market-thief quick and palmed it like stolen candy.
The second his thumb activated it, a hologram flared:
"THE m******e AT IHIAGHA"
Bootsteps echoed. He killed the feed faster than a blown fuse, the words searing his retinas.
“Maverick-209!”.
The voice cracked like a whip across the debris field. Vice Commander Amarachi stood silhouetted against the smoke, her pulse-rifle slung low but ready.
"Stop sightseeing. Move your ass, we’re dust-off in ten."
His fist clenched around the chip, its edges biting into his palm as he fell into formation. The words "IHIAGHA m******e" burned in his grip like a live grenade.
- Writer
