“Bangs and disco. Now!” Cueto shouted. MCB agents rushed forward and began tossing distractionary devices through the gap. Some blew up with a bright flash and a lot of noise, but the really obnoxious ones were clear rubber balls filled with incredibly bright, flashing LEDs. Since it was such a big room, they wouldn’t be that effective, but it was mostly to draw the defenders’ eyes from what was coming next. “Toss the eyes.”

The next two MCB agents in line each had an object that looked like a black softball. They chucked them through the opening, each in a different direction. The sensors hit the ground rolling. “Eyes in!”

The door was still opening, but it wasn’t fast. It was wide enough now for a man to go through, but this was the very definition of fatal funnel. Even Franks wouldn’t make it through there without being chewed to pieces. They needed to secure their beachhead. Luckily, the MCB had a lot of tricks up their sleeves.

The sensor balls were weighted so that they’d stop bottom down. Their tiny tracks didn’t make them very fast, but they didn’t need to be fast since their thermal, IR, and seismic scanners could see quite a long ways. “I’ve tagged three defenders,” Archer said over the radio. He was in the comfort of the command truck, but for the next few seconds, he was the one having all the fun. “I’m going hunting.”

“Robots up,” Cueto ordered.

The little tracked vehicles weren’t that impressive, but they were heavily armored, and each one had an M240 machine gun mounted on it. The machines could work autonomously, but their decision-making wasn’t perfect, so Franks preferred flesh brains running things over electronic ones. Their controllers were back at the truck, watching monitors and driving the robots with controllers actually taken from popular video game systems. The first one rumbled through the narrow gap, through the smoke and flashing lights, until its controller spotted one of Archer’s marked targets and opened fire.

“Okay, men. This is it. We need proof it was Stricken who hit us. I want that pasty shit bird in cuffs,” Cueto ordered. “The rules of engagement are simple. Nemesis soldiers get put down. STFU personnel either cooperate or get shot. We are not fucking around in there.”

Once the second robot was inside and making a lot of noise as well, Franks ducked through the door. He rushed through the smoke and took cover behind a pylon. The defenders had retreated ahead of the robots’ fire so Franks didn’t have a shot. Franks kept watch as the robots rolled further in. As the gap widened, more MCB and Swiss Guard rushed in behind him.

“They’ve fallen back,” Archer said over the radio. “I’ve got at least five of them near you, but they’re retreating through the factory.”