AN: Thanks to Oblique Strategies for reviewing! Strong language and some fightin' in these parts.
"What the fuck is that camera doing?"
The voice launched at them from off camera like the crack of a rifle. What had been a smooth, sprawling scan of the line of red-armored men and women standing sentinel along the top of the wall jerked erratically before another figure in crimson dominated the lens. A gloved hand shoved it down and away from the wall, leaving only the view of an armored leg, spiked boots, and the cracked walltop beneath them. The camera could not see her, but a woman's voice followed shortly thereafter.
"And good morning to you, too, Captain Torn." A pause. "My name is Imre, and we're with the Haven Tribunal. Do you have anything to contribute with regards to the increased security measures Baron Praxis has implemented?"
Scuffling.
The camera righted itself abruptly with an oof from the cameraman. It levelled out to show said Captain, a broad-shouldered man in light armor and a steel blue mask, and the reporter, a mousey sort of woman wearing thick goggles. Torn didn't so much stand over her as he did loom over her like a thunderhead, hands held slightly away from his sides like he would either go for a pistol or throat-punch the next closest person. To her credit, Imre stood firm with a righteous set to her shoulders, eyebrows raised still in her unanswered question. She waggled the mic in front of his mask a little.
"Do you people realize we're about to make contact here? I'm about to have you arrested and your equipment impounded for infringing on Order 76 Bravo," Torn fired back. His voice carried more urgency in it than anger, but it would take a keen ear to tell the difference. "You can't be up here unless you go, first, through Public Affairs, who then goes through Det Command, who then goes through me, so either you have a higher clearance than the Baron himself, or you're about to get your asses chucked off this wall!"
Imre's lips pursed in a way that would've curdled milk. She pressed on. "Do you really think infringing on the freedom of the people is going to help win the war?"
While the argument continued, the cameraman took the time to focus on the other half of their story. A blue sky burned overhead, but a roiling tide of dark shadows started to gather on a ridge some distance away from the wall and into the encroaching desert. Horned and armored figures wavered in and out of focus as the cameraman adjusted the settings.
Along the wall, the line of Krimzon Guards shifted, some nervously, some with purpose. Somewhere down the wall, one of them shouted, and some seconds later a sergeant bustled into the picture. Torn held up a hand in front of Imre to silence her. Her face reddened in bemusement, but something in her eyes said their 'interview' wasn't quite over yet.
The sergeant spare neither her nor the camera glance. "Sir, the Metal Heads are starting to mobilize," she said. The KG lingering within earshot turned in her direction, emotionless and robotic behind their goggles and masks, but expectant all the same.
Torn seemed to toss his conversation with Imre over his shoulder like a ball of scrap paper. He started to move away deliberately, voice loud and brassy as it carried up and down the line. "Go level 3! Arm up!" A cascade of orders rippled out from where he stood, and the KG moved. To the camera, it looked chaotic. To the trained eye, it was pure efficiency, whumpbees swarming to protect the nest.
Imre darted a quick look at the cameraman before gesturing rapidly for him to follow her. She started after Torn. "Captain, what's going on? You realize we're not finished here!"
The cameraman nearly blundered straight into her back when she screeched to a halt, Torn once more towering over her. He threw an arm out to gesture to the mass of shadow on the horizon. "Do you see that?" The camera darted that direction – the bustle of activity started to organize itself into rows. Tall fanged shapes started to rise into view, themselves standing many heads and shoulders above the smaller creatures below them. The lens slid back to the wall and to Torn. "Those are Metal Heads, and in case you haven't been paying attention for, oh, the entire war, they're planning on attacking this wall." Torn pointed an impeccably gloved finger into Imre's face. His voice dropped low. "So I'm not going to tell you again. Get. Your. Nosy. Asses. Off. Of. My wall."
He punctuated his words by poking her in the nose with each syllable, finishing my wall with a forceful push that forced her to step back or face losing her balance. Rather than wilt in the face of Torn's derision and impersonal T-shaped visor, Imre stared back with a sneer. Without looking at the camera, she snapped her fingers once.
The camera dipped down to look at the floor again, and the cameraman wandered off a few steps, whistling innocently. It did nothing to diminish Imre's words or the acid in her voice.
"You're not getting it. Covering your activities, as long as they're legitimate, will validate whatever Praxis is doing." She might as well have made air quotations around legitimate. "Which is good for you, because it's starting to fucking look like you're all using some rather sketchy means to achieve the right ends."
A scoff.
"You think a few security measures suddenly makes the Baron, what? A tyrant? Get a hold of yourself. There's a war on."
"Okay, if that's how you want it to be, fine. I've got three words for you."
"Oh, really?"
"Dark Warrior Program."
If Torn reacted, the camera wouldn't have caught it even if it had been pointing at him. The benefits of a mask.
"Do what you want, but if you die on this wall, that's on you."
The camera panned back to find Torn stalking away and Imre with her teeth bared in a deliriously victorious grin. She gave the cameraman an enthusiastic thumbs up and once more raised the mic. "We're here on the southeastern portion of the city walls where defense improvements have fallen behind. Six months have passed since…"
As the accusations and inconsistencies of Praxis's policies and security measures set the narrative tone, the camera moved around to set the visual one.
Krimzon Guards manning their battle stations.
Metal Heads on the horizon to the northeast.
Torn and his officers working the line of soldiers.
Unimproved and crumbling sections of the wall.
Improved sections closer towards the city and the shadow of the Palace falling over them.
"This has been your weekly update from the Haven Tribunal. Take shelter, Haven City."
Imre's expression, ever earnest, ever stalwart in the face of the Baron's martial rule, stayed so for a few seconds after she stopped speaking. Then she relaxed, took a deep cleansing breath, and smiled. "How was that?"
The camera bobbed a little, likely from the cameraman nodding. "That was good. They're gonna love it. Boy, when you go in for the kill, you go in for the kill. Do you think it was safe for you to use the DWP like that?"
She reached up to tuck a stray strand of brown hair behind one ear. "I don't know, but it kept him from kicking us out. Maybe—"
A voice, shrill in authority, rang out followed shortly by an explosion. The camera cut away from her to catch the tail end of a mortar breaking against the wall just short of a rampart. More followed, filling the sky in irregular volleys of dark eco rounds. The line of KG barely flinched. Every third KG held aloft an energy shield to cover themselves and the men and women with rifles next to them.
Most of them held. An overshot round hit the walkway behind one group. A KG spun silently away through the air, trailing smoke from the explosion while the shieldguard and his neighbor lay draped over the rampart.
Up and down the line, the KG's own mortar positions started to light up, lobbing explosive projectiles to the dark mass on the ridge. The camera caught it all, zooming in at just the right time to see Metal Head skull gems arc up into the air, followed clumsily by the bodies. In following one of the tumbling silhouettes, the camera nearly passed by the gaping mouth of a monster-borne cannon, starting to glow. The gaping maw dwarfed the smaller mortars flinging hate towards the wall. In the camera's doubletake, a brassy voice rang out above the booms.
"Get down!"
A clatter of armor and blurred images. The camera dug into the walltop, plastic scraping. A blast, much too close for comfort, rocked the walls. Debris rained down a second later, blocking the light to the recording device. Groaning, the cameraman rolled over, and the camera followed him. It came to rest on the speedily retreating back of Captain Torn as he hurried away, shouting orders and directing hand signals at a mobile crew of KG.
"By the Precursors, are you okay?"
Imre's face filled the image, her eyes wide behind their corrective lenses as she pulled the cameraman to his feet. Dust came off him in clouds as she patted it from his shoulders and back. He made a few incoherent noises, turning one direction then another before he could answer. His hands absently righted the camera on his shoulder.
"Yeah. I'm fine," he managed, voice shrill. As he turned, the camera caught sight of the bomb crater some yards away. Beyond it, a pile of KG righted themselves, as well. "Do…do they usually have those cannons when they attack?"
Imre blew onto the lens to remove the dust there, fingering the crack in the housing; fortunately, it wasn't in the main structure attached to the camerman's shoulders. Her face was serious. "I don't know. I… didn't realize that was a capability either. Does it feel like it's loose at all?" She shook the housing. The camera and its operator jittered around.
"Damnit, stop! It's fine."
"Incoming!"
The cameraman didn't get the time to cover the scene again before Imre dragged him away, but around them, KG scattered in red, shouting blurs. The news team ran.
At regular intervals along the wall were small guard houses. Built into the wall itself, the outpost had a set of stairs going down into it. The two of them dove into the nearest one, followed shortly by the ringing clatter of chunks of stone and a cloud of dust from another cannon shot.
The camera dimmed and refocused in the change of lighting, the source of which flickered overhead in the ceiling with each impact. Some ambient light filtered in through arrow slits behind a desk stacked with ancient radio equipment. One of the arrow slits had a hole the approximate size of an Eco round through it. Even through the noise of the battle, Imre's swearing was suddenly audible.
The radio operator at the desk sprawled in his chair, head thrown back from the impact of that Eco round when it split his skull.
Beyond the body, working at the desk, Torn spoke hurriedly into a hand mic. He seemed not to notice the news team behind him. "Erol, I've never seen Metal Heads organized like this. It's the biggest attack they've staged yet. We need—" He stopped abruptly, cut off by an equally fervent voice coming from the hand mic, a voice too tinny and wrought by static to be caught by the camera. Plus, someone outside had started screaming.
Whatever message came through the radio made Torn shake his head. "No, we need to get this sector evacuated now! The wall's not going to hold, not the way the engineers said it would. No, not with the firepower they're throwing at us. We. Need. Backup!" He paused attentively, but the set of his shoulders belied an angry tension now apparent in the way he cocked his head to the side.
"…You watch your gods-damned mouth, Erol! There's at least two hundred civilians left here. You don't just up and leave them, not with the wall compromised. There's nothing to fall back to!"
He listened for a moment, still as stone until he slammed a gauntleted fist down on the table. The cameraman jumped, as did a good bit of the rickety radio equipment stacked on the desk. "When the fuck did that happen? Why wasn't there an evac early? We knew, we knew this was the weakest part of the wall! No, don't even bother explain—oh, the Baron's ordering me now? Oh-fucking-really? You can tell him—"
Another small avalanche of gravel and debris interrupted him, and a KG grunt emerged from the dust cloud, grit and blood smeared across his chest plate. "Sir! Someone's issued a retreat over the Guard net. Charlie and Echo are already egressing!"
The camera flicked back to the captain. It couldn't see through Torn's mask, but the deathly stillness of his body belied whatever went on behind it, be it fury or fear. The muffled voice shouting at him from the mic remained unintelligible. He ignored it.
"Who's left?"
"Alpha and Bravo. Delta's taken the worst, but there's still some left to fight, sir." The grunt held himself a little straighter. "Some left who know what their jobs are. Some who know who commands them." A cheeky line from someone so low ranking, but Torn nodded to himself a little. He lifted the mic back to his mask.
"When this is done, Erol…" The other end grew quiet. Torn's voice chilled the room. "You and me are gonna have a talk. Boy, are we gonna have a talk." He released the key and slammed the mic down on the table hard enough to break it, claiming the last word for himself. Then he was gone through the stairway with the grunt before the news team could react. They scrambled after him.
Outside, Hell had come to visit Haven City. Fires raged here and there along the wall, sending rolling waves of dark smoke into an otherwise bluebird sky. Gaping holes of tumble-down wall isolated squads of KG, some of them with bodies strewn nearby. Someone still screamed. The camera passed once over the sands beyond the wall and lingered there to watch the wave of dark bodies swarming towards them.
"Flynn, there, go." Imre ushered the cameraman away from the nightmare approaching them from the desert. He staggered onwards in stunned silence, breathing harsh over the noise around them. Ahead, Torn grabbed a fleeing officer by the pauldrons and shook him twice, violently. A number of other KG disappeared below them down a set of stairs, the stragglers from the retreating Charlie and Echo platoons. The officer in Torn's hands, a lieutenant managed to push him off by the time the camera got within earshot.
"-to retreat! This is suicide!" he cried, lurching away from Torn's fists.
"You fucking coward!" Torn screamed hoarsely at the man as he fled. "You're abandoning your men up here to fight! I taught you better than that!"
The lieutenant didn't reply; he only ran, a red helmeted head lost among the crowd disappearing between the buildings below.
A few KG arrived on scene. It wasn't clear if their intent was to follow their unit leader or stay and fight. They paused near the top of the stairs where Torn seethed, neither committed to fleeing nor to staying. Instead, they merely looked to Torn. The captain spared them one piercing look, sharp even from behind an otherwise blank T-shaped visor.
"What's it gonna be, fellas?"
A beat of silence. Then, the grunt at the head of the small group pounded his chest in salute. The details of his armor finally stood out – they belonged to Echo by the yellow painted 'E's on their left shoulders. "We're with ya, Cap."
Torn nodded once. Grim respect breached the surface of his impersonal mask, and he gestured for them to follow him. He spun on one heel to hurry away. Imre and Flynn found themselves carried along by a wave of red-armored figures. Up ahead, Torn came to a halt to pull aside two sergeants and another KG, a large man without a helmet that stood almost a head taller than the captain himself. Blood smeared his face, obscuring the corporal marks on his jawline.
"Praxis be damned, we've got a duty to this city." Torn pointed at the large man. "Kai, get what's left of Delta and see what you can do about that old cannon there at the south corner. Use your comlink to get a hold of Vin, the engineer at the power station, get power re-routed to that thing. Take these Echoes with you."
The KG nodded an affirmative and, gesturing for the grunts standing near him to follow, ran towards the southern corner. There squatted an ancient defense cannon likely left from Mar's day. Between the task force and there, though, the worst of the fighting raged. Silhouettes framed by the fires fought hand-to-hand against Metal Heads breaching the wall.
Torn gestured to one of the sergeants, a woman. "Sears, get Bravo and do what you can to maintain ground on the wall." Torn pounded one fist into the palm of his other hand. "We can't let them get in. I'll grab Alpha with Foxx here and start evacuating civilians out of the section. Comm me when you're good to assume Alpha's coverage."
The sergeant echoed Kai's salute. "Yes, sir," she replied and was away, laying down suppressing fire as she went to clear her path to where Bravo did battle against the wave of Metal Heads starting to swarm the wall. Foxx nodded sharply and headed off towards Alpha to start rallying.
Torn then nodded to himself, turning in a circle to take stock of the situation before stopping on the unfortunate news team. The camera trembled. "Either of you ever handled a weapon?" he asked. The camera shook again with the shake of Flynn's head. Beside him, Imre stepped forward.
"I have," she offered. Torn's mask cocked sideways just a fraction but just enough to be noticeable. Praxis's weapons ban for civilians was not a new protection measure. Torn pulled the pistols from his thigh holsters and passed one off to her, butt first.
"Don't fall behind."
Alpha held the wall closest to them by the stairs, by far the strongest formation remaining. Their shieldmen still held aloft their shields. Their riflemen maintained a steady line of fire, waiting for Foxx's order for them to break contact. The sergeant turned at Torn's approach. "It's starting to look grim," he rumbled. The Metal Head lines had fully reached the base of the wall. The larger cannon-bearing monsters stayed beyond the dunes, but the grunts and man-sized beasts roiled down at the bottom of the wall, pushing each other up the stones so they could get purchase. Torn leaned over to look at them, even going so far as to fire a few shots down into the pile.
"I'd have to agree with you." He glanced to his left down the wall where Sears rallied Bravo. She stood over the crouching riflemen and shields to wave in his direction. At the same time, her voice came through the comm in Torn's helmet. The half of Bravo not in her vicinity hurried towards Alpha.
"Captain, Bravo assumes gap in coverage."
"Copy that, good work. Hold this wall, Sergeant."
"Yes, sir!"
Foxx's voice rang out. "Stay, shields! Alpha shooters, move out!"
Bravo and Alpha's riflemen switched positions liked they'd trained to do it. Hardly a second passed between the last shot fired by Alpha and the first by Bravo. In one seamless movement, part of Alpha took point to head down the stairs. Foxx followed shortly after, then Torn and the news team. Alpha's remnants covered trail.
Down on the ground, the noise of the battle waned, muffled by the wall and height of the buildings crowded up against it. The encroaching Metal Heads started the barrage of mortars again, closer this time. Some arced over the wall to impact into the upper levels of residential buildings. Debris rained down. Either prompted by the explosions or by the retreating backs of Charlie and most of Echo platoons, civilians already started to fill the streets to flee back towards the city.
"Help get these people to the interlocks!" Torn shouted over the noise. Alpha responded promptly, spreading out to move building to building, ushering civilians out onto the street. The platoon split into some smaller teams, as well, to fan out to parallel streets and start the process there. A few strides ahead of the camera, Torn tapped a button on the side of his mask, and his amplified voice boomed out over the heads of the people nearby, echoing up between the buildings.
"Citizens of Haven City, this sector has been compromised. Make your way to the interlocks in an orderly and expeditious fashion. I say again, this sector has been compromised. Evacuate now!"
He moved back and forth in a slow deliberate zig zag fashion like a shepherd as they headed down the street, occasionally dragging a slow moving person along to get them ahead with the crowd. Some swore at him, but all moved without much more ado.
Imre and Flynn hung near him. The reporter stayed nearly abreast of Torn while Flynn trailed behind with the camera, out of habit so as to get as much on tape as possible. The harshness of his breathing still dominated part of the audio, particularly with the streets beginning to quiet down. Imre moved in relative silence, holding the borrowed pistol at a low ready position but head darting around like something would jump out at her.
A sudden whump-whump-whump made them jump and drowned out Flynn's mild hyperventilation. The camera darted up and away from the street and, miraculously, managed to find the one gap in the buildings that could see the source. On the south corner, the old defense cannon had sprung to life. Huge gouts of laser fire flew from the barrel to hopefully hit the nearest Metal Heads. Impact explosions shook the ground beneath their feet, much closer than seemed normal.
"Sounds like they're shooting at the base of the wall," Torn grunted, mostly to himself.
Foxx, turning away from clearing a small shop on the ground level, pumped a fist once in the air. "Hot damn, they got that gun working!"
Torn's head snapped around. "Don't jin—"
He didn't make it through the sentence. Another explosion knocked them off their feet and blew out windows some stories up. Flynn tipped forward with the camera, jamming the lens into the ground again and scrabbling around before zipping back up towards the gap in the buildings, towards the wall. The bronze, bulbous body of the defense gun leaned precariously to one side, leaking smoke and fire. A flaming figure tumbled away from the controls. The crack of the gun supports rang through the streets, and the entire apparatus followed the operator to the ground on the city side of the wall. Much of the corner of the wall came with it, exposing ancient stone and metal in a gap big enough to fit a Hellcat through.
Dark shadows swarmed through the hole, launching themselves off the wall to the ground or over to the nearby buildings. The shrieks and roars of Metal Heads replaced the sounds of gunfire. Torn, already on his feet, pulled Foxx upright and brought his pistol to bear just in time for the first Metal Head to round the corner of their street. The pop-pop of Imre's gun nearby made Flynn jump even as he got to his feet.
A human scream rang out from one of upper stories of the high rise next to them. Many more Metal Heads followed, rounding the corner like a tidal wave of claws and teeth and weapons. Rounds of Eco struck the ground around them, scattering energy and melted
pavement.
Torn waved Imre off and pivoted on one foot, gesturing frantically in the opposite direction of the approaching hoard.
"Run!"