- Reconnaissance – (part1)
An Appleseed fanfic
Characters & universe created by Masamune Shirow.
Author's Note: I've cleaned up the chapters a little to meet the M guideline for ffnet, so if you've read this story elsewhere expect a few changes,
888888888888
DEUNAN
It was pouring as Briareos slogged his way back to her through the line. Water pelted off his face, running the length of his extendibles and dripping in a steady trickle down the tarp he wore as a poncho.
Deunan raised her hand in greeting, wondering how he could even tell which of the hunched soldiers swathed in grey raingear was her. Compared to the line of soldiers and trucks buttoned up and dripping wet in standard colors of blue and grey, his tawny blotches, originally desert cammo, really did stick out. She smirked to herself, as she hooked her wet hair behind her ears, that he'd have stood out anyway. Their outfit ran on the lean-side as far as cyborgs were concerned. Really, Briareos was the only one. He fell in-step besides her, conveniently placing his larger frame between her and a jeep that was accelerating alongside the main column, sparing her the indignity of being sprayed with mud when already soaked to the bone.
"So what did they want?" She asked, glad that at least it wasn't a freezing rain. If anything the clammy humidity was more annoying than the mud. The air felt thick enough to swim through.
"They wanted me to try and boost signal to the satellite. Verify our position." He shrugged, water sheeting off his shoulders with the futile gesture. "I tried to explain to them that my system doesn't work that way, but they figured it was worth the attempt."
"You get anything?" Deunan watched her footing over a particularly soft section of road, wishing the sucking mud to the seventh level of hell.
Briareos shook his head slowly, rain running over the plates that made his cheeks and chin, giving the illusion of tears. "Not a damn thing. The rain is causing merry hell with the signal. The clouds must be a mile thick up there. Lots of moisture beading up. Lots of noise."
"That sucks." She grinned up at him. "So we're walking in circles, potentially."
"In the rain." He agreed with false cheer. "In the dark."
"Surrounded by enemy drones, no doubt." She leaned against him briefly, not as depressed about their situation as she probably ought to have been. Sure marching in the rain wasn't her idea of a fun time, but Briareos was strangely good company, even now.
The longer they staggered through the confusion of the war, the more she found she could put up with so long as they stuck together. The only times she ever felt truly lost or frightened was when she hadn't known where he was. Whether he was still alive. Finding his battle group after her own had been all but demolished in the initial chaos had been such a tremendous stroke of luck that she was willing to put up with a little misery in other parts of her life. She was young, and healthy, and had the training and wits to survive. In that she was a lot better off than most of the poor bastards she marched with. She glanced around her at the exhausted and downtrodden expressions of the soldiers around her before looking back to Briareos' enormous silhouette looming next to her against the dreary sky.
They'd never managed to find him rain gear in his size. Deunan shook her head at how slapdash they both managed to look after a year in the field. Her own gear had definitely seen better days, and she at least knew how to mend a rip and re-attach a button. Homemaker of the year she'd never be, but she thanked her hazy childhood memories for _some_ feminine skills amidst her more violent talents. Briareos' fingers were too big for such chores, so she assigned herself the task of keeping them both up to scratch. Even her humble efforts were apparently the exception rather than the rule. Their whole army looked one step away from bandits, honestly. She couldn't remember the last time they'd had a proper refit. Not since she'd ditched her previous unit to reunite with her partner, at least.
Most of the gear and weapons the team had, they'd scavenged from derelict depots or looted off the dead. Her boots still had the stains of their last owner, if she bothered to look closely. Briareos' poncho had started life as an all-weather cover on an ATV. But they were surviving, and were headed back into an honest to god camp at last, if they could find it.
She was half tempted to tell her cyborg to strip down to the skin just so that the torrent could take care of some of the worst of the dirt that had formed a film over him the past few weeks. He'd never go for it. Even with metal plates covering anything that might qualify as indecent, he got tetchy about the idea of 'wandering around naked'. Probably the water would do more harm than good. Dusty as he had been, the moisture would just make the crap stick worse than it already had, caking into mud that would get into all his joints and cause no end of annoyance later.
She knew _she_ would kill for a shower. At the rate her man was going, he'd need to get worked over with a toothbrush before he'd be able to move without sand chafing at his servos. The constant dust was probably taking years off his joints' useful life, and replacements were a rare commodity out in the middle of nowhere. Resolved to find that toothbrush as soon as they hit camp, she was too distracted to notice him reaching for her until he wordlessly lifted her pack from her shoulder, swinging it up onto his back next to his own.
"It's bad for morale when you carry my stuff for me, handsome." She gave him a gentle shove as she grinned up at him. The move was about as effective as trying to push against the side of a tractor. He just shook his head at her again, sending a shower of droplets down, and causing her to duck and turn her face away in order to avoid the additional soaking. Anyone who might have complained about her unfair exploitation of her partner, was too busy being miserable and wet however, and didn't bother to look up.
Deunan glanced ahead with tired curiosity. The murky line of men marching in front of her looked the same as ever. Distant lights from the command trucks showed the front of the column, but other than the trudge of men around her and the steady hiss of the rain, the evening felt claustrophobically quiet. There was no way to tell where they were going with all the fog. Following the road was probably the best they could do. Mind wandering again, she stared into the shadows along the side of the road, rolling her shoulders to relax them now that her bag was in Briareos' keeping. She blinked, swearing she could see something like a town outlined in vague shadows on the hillside. Pulling her goggles down over her eyes, she toggled them into night mode, and found the image not that much better. There was something out there, shelter maybe, to their left. She scanned for heat signatures out of habit.
"Ghost town." She mused aloud.
Following her stare, Briareos gave the distant target a calm inspection of his own. "Seems that way. Bet you five bucks we have to recon it anyway?"
"No bet." She shook her head, already well familiar with the leadership's paranoia. "I'm surprised we haven't gotten the ping already."
No sooner than she'd speculated about it, than her earpiece came to life, discrete series of tones clearly issuing the order for specialists to separate from the main group and meet at the forward checkpoint for instructions. Briareos tilted his head at her, the closest he could manage to a knowing look, before handing her back her pack and leading the way forward.
They and ten others, a mix of former special-forces types and civilian experts, were given orders and allowed to dump nonessential gear for the side-trip. Deunan sighed in resignation as she hopped down off the roadbed into a knee-deep drainage culvert running parallel to the highway. The muddy water soaked her pants and boots immediately as she slogged her way to the relatively drier land a few yards in.
The ground was little better than clay-heavy mud, shale, and some miserable grass. She followed the other scouts in picking her way up hill towards the outskirts of the abandoned looking settlement. In the sunshine the place probably looked like any number of other badlands. On a wet and foggy night, it looked like something out of a cheesy horror film. Wiping her goggles on the relatively dry fabric of her collar, she peered through the mist again, trying to guess what it was they were walking into.
Not on point this time around, she watched for the silent hand-signs from further up and worked her way to the west as she was bid. Briareos was a few yards further to her right, stalking forwards at a half-crouch as he too prepared to come at their objective from a supporting position. Trusting his enhanced ears to pick up anything note worthy, she didn't bother to turn on her surveillance equipment, knowing it would all be a mess due to the rain anyway. If they did get blasted with an audible attack, at least one of the two of them wouldn't be immediately deafened. Deunan felt for her flares, and spare clips as she crossed the last exposed section of ground and pressed her back against the welcome mass of a broken wall. The old outbuilding provided a pleasant bit of cover right before they committed to sweeping the town. Something about the hush, and the hiss of rain, made her neck itch. Paranoia, she wondered? Or her elusive 'sixth sense' for battle?
Glancing sideways, she could make out Briareos' distant bulk as he crouched next to the next building, peering into town with both extendibles forward. For a comical minute she was reminded of a giant watchdog. His antenna's looked like the alert ears of some sort of robotic canine as he leaned forward on his hands to get a closer look at something. She blew through her teeth at him, not even a whistle, but enough to get his attention. When he looked over, she did her one-handed best to ask him what he saw, fumbling the signs as her hood got in the way.
Rain and clumsiness aside, he seemed to understand her just fine. He carefully gave the 'all clear', with a more hesitant follow on of 'something fishy' a moment later. Deunan frowned at the conflicting message, repeating the all clear back to him for confirmation. He visibly shrugged, as if to say he had no more idea of what they could expect than she did. She flipped the safety off her gun and popped the toggles on her raincoat, hoping she remembered to come back for it later. Better to fight unobstructed and get soaked, than to be optimistic about the tickle on the back of her neck, and get killed because she was too lazy to dress for action.
Her headset chimed as she was settling her nerves, the signal to close and secure their initial position. Looking left and right to verify her closest allies, Deunan pushed forward in a crouched run, trying to keep her eyes on everything at once, not wanting to mark a friendly by accident, but not wanting to miss anything hostile either. Briareos was a silver and black shadow as he kept to her right, shadowing a building and pressing along side a door, waiting for her to back him. Sweeping the empty street adjacent with her automatic, she didn't see any reason not to and matched his stance on the other side of the door, looking to him to see who'd do the honors. He jerked his chin at the entrance, offering his silent 'ladies first' while holding his rifle at the ready. It was almost like old times. Deunan smiled at him as she twisted and kicked through the half rusted alloy door, rolling into the room and training her weapon on the dusty interior. It was bare floor for the most part. Feeling Briareos looming over her shoulders, she shuffled forward, prodding a likely looking pile of rags with her foot.
"Clear." He whispered after making a thorough inspection of the walls and ceiling. Deunan nodded, proceeding to a second door, preparing for their next check. Repeating the process brought them to a two-level structure, again stripped bare. The roof had failed in places, leaving the building smelling of mildew as the rain happily pattered into puddles on the floor. A third door brought them back out into the storm. Deunan brought her gun up reflexively as another member of their team emerged from the partially ruined building across the street. They exchanged 'all clear' signals before continuing forward as a group.
Closing on the center of the tiny town from three sides, they all gathered in the town center. The ruined 'burb was almost too quaint with its crumbled well, dilapidated trees, and broken storefronts. Deunan snorted at the archaic example of 'Smalltown, U.S.A' left over from before the third war. Half buried in the dust and long forgotten, it was almost like a film set from one of those historical dramas her partner liked watching so much. It was interesting, but hardly worth standing around in the rain for. With nothing so far to threaten them, everyone looked at each other for validation. Deunan shook her head at how most of the so-called specialists hadn't bothered to remove their coats. They were probably drier than she was, at present, but her father had beaten his motto into her at too young an age for her to ever forget it.
Confidence was a killer.
She put the safety back on her gun, relaxing a fraction, but couldn't let her guard down. The tickle at the back of her scalp hadn't gone away. Maybe she'd gotten water under her helmet, she wondered prosaically. Probably the fog was just making her paranoid. Habit had her at an angle to Briareos' shoulder. Instinctively covering his relative blind-spot while his attention was forward, she waited for their team captain to make up his mind whether they would look further or hoof it back to the road. Habit, or dumb luck, therefore allowed her to spot the telltale gleam of tracer light in time to sing out and warn the others.
Her partner didn't even waste the effort of turning to look, arm snapping out and encircling her waist in order to lift her bodily off her feet and against his side. Deunan cursed as she tried to bring her gun to bear where the tracer had come from a moment before. Keeping her arm steady as he charged forward into the most likely bit of cover was nearly impossible. Her first shot went wide thanks to the sudden change in momentum, but she was able to correct for the second as she was carried backwards. Something grunted in pain from the shadow of a storefront and fell to the side. Any further analysis was postponed by the obscuring mass of Briareos' chest as he shoved her down and into a likely building. His gun nearly deafened her as he suddenly took aim at something sharing their hidey-hole with them. Deunan clamped her free hand to her head, cursing the fact that she hadn't put in earplugs. It was an easy fix. She jammed the necessary safety equipment into her unprotected ear, trusting her headset to keep her other one from ringing. A moment later and she was back on her feet, listening to the sporadic rattle of gunfire from all sides of the square. Underneath the high pitched clatter of bullets came a lower, whining sound and a 'thud' that shook the floor.
"Bri?" She got his attention. Wondering if she was hearing what she thought she was, or if it was just an artifact from her still buzzing ears. Her cyborg looked up from his kill, eyes glowing in the darkness. "Do you hear that?"
"Massive servo noise." He confirmed grimly. "Treads. Mobile platform maybe? Something big."
"Cyborg?" She gestured at the remains of the soldier her partner was kneeling on, noting the tell-tale glimpse of metal plating down one arm.
"Yeah." He stood, crossing to the door to get a better look at what else was suddenly hunting them. "No good parts though."
"Too bad." Deunan replied practically, switching to her heavier gauge rifle in anticipation of needing the armor piercing rounds. "Maybe the big boy will have something you can use."
"That's one way to look at it." He replied, grimly entertained by her optimistic comment. "Ready?"
"Born ready, handsome." She leapt forwards into the melee, kneecapping the first enemy she dove past and letting her partner's precision aim obliterate the next two from over her shoulders. A spatter of bullets and a horrified curse to her left hinted at the unseen mobile fortress hidden in the fog. Sensing more than seeing that her team was scattering before the hard-target, she opted for the reverse, trusting her reflexes and tiny size to give her the advantage against the heavily armored but slow moving assault vehicle. Briareos gamely followed, knowing as well as she did that if the machine broke free of the town it would cause all kinds of chaos with their exhausted column on the highway.
Had they sprung the trap meant for their force? Or had they simply walked into an enemy camp by chance that they could have just as easily gone around? It was too late now, either way. "Did you see any flares?" She asked over the sudden roar of heavy shells.
They split up as they dodged the hail of steel-jacketed bullets. She dove behind a rusted hunk of antique machinery, he opted for the relative safety of a porch roof. Deunan shook her head to cast the worst of the wet from her goggles and watched him climb the side of the building with silent skill. He ascended with uncanny ease despite his bulk. Scaling the second floor of the building, he settled on the peak like an oversized gargoyle, well above the tank's initial sensor sweep.
Too far away to answer her question properly, he did the honors instead. Shifting gear briefly he pointed skywards with an almost toy-like gun. The solid charge flamed to life fifty feet overhead, despite the downpour. On the other side of town, someone had the presence of mind to do the same. Two red flares burning merrily as they fell to earth, warning the main group that there was something nasty out in the fog.
Knowing any enemy attention would be drawn upwards at the bright sparklers, she crouched and crawled sideways around her hiding spot. Her reward was an extremely up close and personal view of the treads of a multi-turreted vehicle crawling forward through the fog. For a second, she felt panic well up, but even that had its uses. The surge of adrenaline warmed her rain-chilled muscles for the impending fight. Fingers moving before her brain really recognized what was happening, she had a high-heat sticky grenade out of her belt pouch and armed. Slamming it up against the primary support strut nearest to her nose, she pressed it down until it stuck fast. Deunan wasted no time in getting out of the way it as the charge started to blink, primed and counting.
Crouching as she made her way along the side of the long vehicle, she passed under two sensor arrays and to the back of the thing before deliberately throwing herself underneath the armored hide, mentally blessing the gods that had sent the instrument-blinding rain. It was a tight squeeze, but she didn't plan to stay long. Slapping another sticky grenade against what looked to be a backup power plant, she squirmed out from under the monster and promptly slipped on a wet section of pavement, sprawling clumsily against the hard ground. Immediately the closest gun turret swiveled in response to her noise, lasers painting her in preparation to shoot. Was there a human behind that gun? She wondered. Or was she about to be killed by a god-damned computer program?
"Deunan!" The heavy slam of Briareos' oversized ordinance had never sounded so good. She bit off cursing at herself as she observed her partner's shot. The slugs demolished the aft-gun's control motors even as it trained to focus on her. Deunan scrabbled to her hands and knees, pushing off and away from the platform as fast as she could in hopes of finding some cover before the fireworks started. Just because the gun couldn't aim correctly, didn't mean its operator wouldn't try for a lucky shot.
Overhead she could hear the platform trying to pick off her boyfriend in retaliation for his well-timed sniping. The roof, really the entire side of the building, he had been shooting from was trashed as several no-nonsense rounds were fired into the old stonework. Hearing the building fall, she hoped he'd had the sense to get the hell out of the way. At least the chaos provided her some cover. Seeing a likely pile of rubble, she threw herself behind it just as her first grenade did its swan song.
The front of the crawler exploded with a sound like a giant metallic fart. Bits of treads and gears sprayed out in half-melted insanity as the charge unleashed its lithium payload. Her second grenade detonated a moment later, actually lifting the back half of the segmented vehicle off the ground with the strength of the reaction between the explosive and the battery packs. Deunan laughed to herself at how pissed the driver would be at his crew now that he'd lost both auxiliary power and forward movement.
Her hiding spot didn't feel half so safe when the aft-guns opened fire at random, hammering her make-shift bunker and the building beside it with rock-crushing strength. Even worse, she realized that the side turret had greater mobility than she'd expected, swiveling to pick at her position with gravel-making results. Pinned on both sides by the vengeful tank, she swore and took a chance. Chucking her last grenade up and over the top of her meager shelter, she hoped it stuck to something important.
"Deunan?!" She could hear Briareos again, despite the noise. If he was free enough to worry about her instead of his own ass, he was either in a good position, or getting desperate.
"Back-left! Get this thing off of me!" She shouted, not worried about giving away her position. The thing already had her number.
Her grenade combusted with a satisfying boom; temporarily distracting the gunners who were trying to kill her with problems of their own. The explosion was magnified by a second bang, just as loud, from the front of the vehicle. Not of her doing, but of Bri's? Deunan covered her head with her arms as she was sprayed with painful prickles of debris. Thankfully none of it was sharp, but it was _hot_. She swatted the scorching droplets of metal off herself, trusting the wet to keep her from real harm. Briareos was still at work on the crawler. She heard the staccato rhythm of his strafing from the other side of the massive war machine.
"Briareos?!" She squinted into the rain and smoke, wondering where her goggles had gotten knocked to.
"What the hell are you waiting for, and invitation? Up and over, girl!" Her partner advised from the other side of the smoking platform. She blinked at the insanity of the instruction even as she did as he told her. Vaulting over her position she landed on the back of the now-smoldering tank. She took malicious pleasure in spiking the gun that had been spiritedly trying to kill her a moment before with a chunk of brick she'd picked up. Running forwards to shoot out the sensor array on the left turret she jammed it as well.
A painful sounding screech of metal just ahead proved that she wasn't alone. Briareos was shooting out sensors on the front of the tank, effectively blinding the mobile platform's driver. Discarding his spent rifle he opted for brute strength in continuing his attack, tearing one of the auxiliary guns off its mooring with his hands when it tried to turn on him. Continuing his swing forward with enviable economy of motion, her cyborg used his make-shift club to crush the head of an enemy that emerged from a hatch almost between his feet. Helmeted or not, a hundred kilos of heavy gauge steel pipe and fittings to the head was a killing blow. Deunan swore she could hear the man's gurgle of surprise as he died even with the firefight going on all around them. Briareos just continued doing what he did best, methodically drawing his semi-automatic from his back-holster as he discarded his more primitive weapon. He pointed the gun into the cheerful light of the hatch and casually sprayed the cabin below with bullets.
Deciding that it was no fair that he had all the fun, Deunan found a second hatch on the other side of the platform and tested the handle. It was locked from the inside. Patting her vest, she came up short on grenades, but did find a perfectly serviceable electrostatic mine. Beggars couldn't be choosers. She whistled and tossed it at her partner when he looked up. Catching the fistful of abuse out of the air, he barely spared it a look before arming it and dropping it into the opening beneath him. Cyborg that he was, he jumped backwards off the tank, putting necessary distance between himself and the specialized weapon.
For a human the mine could cause a nasty jolt but was hardly fatal. For cybernetic or circuit-enhanced systems, the tiny but powerful EM wave produced could really make for a bad day. Deunan checked her gun and slid into position next to the hatch, trying her best to ignore the water soaking every inch of her beneath her helmet. The nanobots in her body would probably keep her from catching pneumonia, but she was still sore, and tired, and wet. Only an idiot volunteered to fight in the rain. Only _she_ was dumb enough to volunteer to fight a multi-segmented cyborg-controlled tank in the rain, at night, with no backup.
If she survived this idiocy she was going to demand a day off once they got to camp. On probation as a 'new transfer' or not, they _owed_ her after this! Hell, they owed Briareos ten times over, but he was too nice a guy to stand on his rights and demand better treatment. She was sick and tired of them treating her boyfriend like a second-class citizen. When they reached camp she was going to do something about _that_ too. Drenched and fuming, she counted off the seconds in her head, waiting for the inevitable panic within.
The hatch popped open at her elbow, the last of the platform's crew all but stepping on each other as they sought to escape Briareos' little parting gift before it went off. Deunan shot the first at point blank, leaning around the suddenly flailing body to shoot the cyborg right behind it in the throat. The third enemy saw her coming and was able to duck out of range, returning fire with his own weapons. She felt something graze her neck and pulled back out of the way. He was too much trouble to try and pick off. Happily, in bolting from her, the poor bastard had completely forgotten why he wanted to get out in the first place. Deunan smiled as the EM mine screeched and exploded, unleashing electrical chaos as it deployed.
Deunan felt the electricity crackle over her wet skin and clothing, but pressed against the massive metal surface of the tank, she considered herself well grounded against anything serious. The raindrops around her arced briefly with tiny lightning as the static dissipated.
"You're clear!" She called to Briareos as she twisted to point her gun back into the hollows of the weapons' system, checking for any survivors.
Her partner landed heavily on the metal plate beside her, stretching an extendible into the tank from the upper hatch. Seeing something worth shooting, he sank a few rounds into one of the bodies below before lowering himself into the machinery. "I'm plugging in. Let's see if this big bastard of a machine has any secrets to tell…"
"Watch for booby traps." She advised, squeezing herself over the corpse half blocking her hatch. Being able to get out of the rain for a moment was wonderful, even given the stench of smoked electronics. A quick check of the command center proved there were no other hidden compartments or obvious sabotage, but the platform was scrapped. For the best, she resigned herself. The treaded crawlers were too slow for her unit to use effectively, and riding in them tended to make her motion sick. Some of the communications gear might be worth salvaging, however, she glanced around, taking inventory. Some of the cyborgs had some interesting add-ons.
She kicked the closest body until it rolled over and bent to investigate, not wanting to interrupt her partner while he was fighting with the tank's software. The big systems on the other 'borgs she couldn't see him having a use for. His arms and legs were made superior to most anything they'd found on the field thus far. But a few spare mini motor-controllers were never a bad thing. And he was always scratching the crap out of his lenses. Reaching down, she detached one of the encoder assemblies from the body she was sitting on, holding it up to the light in order to guess whether it'd be a good match for Briareos' system. Deciding she could pocket it for him to look at later, she took a second encoder off the corpse before helping herself to his ammo and a good-sized hipflask of what smelled like brandy. A second corpse produced a rather handsome stun gun. The third by Briareos' feet had keys to the munitions locker.
Deunan cackled softly as she opened the cache up and got an eyeful of the contents. Some kind soul had even left her nice bag to carry all the goodies away in. She checked over the available weapons and ammo as she dumped as much as was worth taking into the sack.
The computer screens above her abruptly ceased scrolling data and began to flash Asian characters on a red background. She didn't need to read them to understand their meaning. Briareos must have found something particularly sensitive in his digging around. Her cyborg jerked back and clutched his head as the computer system attempted to defend itself against his Hecatonchires system. She gave him a few seconds to see if he could get the upper hand and then opted for the safer, if not necessarily more comfortable option. Deunan reached up and yanked his pickups free of the panel before they could short out. "Briareos!"
"Ow." He staggered backwards into the command chair and sank into it, rubbing his head. "Mother fucker, that hurt."
"You alright?" She cinched her bag shut, ignoring the blinking red lights now filling the cabin. Her partner retracted his leads into their usual storage nest in his neck, but still rubbed at his head, ignoring her in favor of trying to unscramble his wits.
"Fine girl. I'm fine." Briareos pulled himself together and answered her, reaching out and cupping her cheek in silent thanks even as he looked around. He froze as he stared at the screens. "Oh shit."
"What?" She couldn't make anymore sense of the text than she had a moment before. But some of the symbols had a distinctly numerical feel about them as they clicked regularly in a series on the screen. "Don't tell me…." She sighed.
Briareos scooped her up for the second time in what felt like twenty minutes. Hoisting her onto his shoulder, bag and all, he vaulted up and out of the self-destructing war machine. Deunan concentrated on hanging on, fingers finding the straps for his holster across his back and clinging to them as he made an earnest effort to put as much distance between them and the tank as possible. Mercifully, after the first few spine-jarring landings, he shifted her off his shoulder and against his chest, sprinting across the nominally flat ground. His strides became considerably less tooth-rattling as his hands supported her neck and head. Knowing what was coming she didn't bother trying to find the voice to complain. She curled into ball in his arms, trying to allow him maximum freedom of movement while bracing for the boom.
The tank went up in a roar of red and white. The concussive force of the explosion managed to push Briareos off his feet, despite his weight. Deunan winced as she felt the heat of the air wrapping around them, propelling them forward. She didn't want to think of how many karma points they'd just cashed in to survive the near miss. Briareos rolled with the blow over, keeping her tucked in relative safety against his chest, as he crashed to the ground.
He came to rest in the mud with a groan.
"You really pissed it off but good!" She found the breath to tease as he let go. Taking moment to check herself over she saw nothing worrying, and so turned her attention to him instead. "Let me check you for damage, big guy."
"I'm ok. All systems green." He sat up slowly, shaking his head as if dazed. "Damn that was close."
"Find anything useful in there?" Deunan climbed out of his lap in order to check his back, seeing for herself that he was unharmed by the explosion. His shirt was scorched, and his skin hot to the touch, but there was no sign of shrapnel or other injury. The rain hissed as it pelted down on him, probably doing his cooling system a favor by doing the work for it.
"I found their weather forecast." He joked tiredly. "Eighty percent chance of rain."
"Ha ha." She checked and rechecked the area around their hiding spot but didn't see anything amiss.
Either their team had beaten off the other cyborgs already, or they had moved their fight further back towards the main army. They'd be obliged to go and check soon, but she was all for taking a two-minute breather first. Now that the adrenaline was fading, she wondered what the hell they'd been thinking to even try taking on the tank. Deunan unbuckled her helmet, pushing it back off her head and onto her shoulders, not caring that the rain was now soaking her hair. The water felt good against her overheated scalp. Reaching out, she ran an appreciative hand over Briareos' head and down the back of his neck, wiping water and mud away with the side of her glove. He looked a mess, she sighed. They both did.
Luckily her hard-headed lover didn't seem to mind the soot that had to be covering her face as well. He pulled her closer to where he sat, guiding her into an abrupt kiss. She sagged into his arms, more than happy to oblige him as her muscles reminded her pointedly that she'd been walking all day _before_ picking fights in the rain. In all the excitement she'd forgotten how tired she was. Briareos kissed her again, warm and solid and steady beneath her trembling fingers as she clung to his shoulders, kissing him back. He pulled her into his lap to pet her hair and shoulders a moment before leaning back and shaking her gently. "Don't you _ever_ go throwing yourself under a tank like that again."
"You make it sound like I was diving under the treads or something." She laughed weakly up at him. "I wasn't in any danger of being run over."
"Oh no?" He shook her again. "What if the morons had thrown it into reverse, huh? What if there'd been anti-guerrilla systems on the underside of the chassis? You could have been flattened, or worse."
"I wasn't." Deunan grinned at his fussing, tasting the smoke as the rain bathed her face. "Besides, you're the one who told me how nicely those battery packs responded to heat-grenades. You can't go telling me stories like that and not expect me to want to see for myself."
"God damn it." He shook his head, casting water in all directions. "You're incorrigible."
"Yup." She pushed herself up enough to kiss his nose. "That's me."
"But you're not invincible, Deunan." Briareos chided softly, running a finger along her cheek. "For the sake of my blood-pressure, try to remember that? Occasionally? You nearly gave me a heart attack with that stunt just now."
"Okay okay. I read you. I'm sorry. That was some nice shooting, by the way." She complimented him playfully, standing again. "I owe you. I thought I was a gonner."
"Uh huh." Her cyborg stood as well, his pants liberally smeared in mud. "You were positively shaking in your boots. I know."
'I don't know if I'd go _that far_." Deunan winked at his sarcasm and checked her weapons, gesturing that he could take point for a while. "Shall we see what's left of our patrol?"
"Worth doing a walk around before heading back to the highway." He agreed mildly. Two steps around the corner and he stooped, picking up something by his feet only to turn and toss it to her as he stood again. "For you."
Deunan caught his offering by reflex, not able to see well enough in the dark to recognize the gift until it was in her hands. She laughed at the sight of her missing goggles. Half caked with mud it was hard to be sure that they'd survived their ordeal intact, but it was nice to have them back again. She draped them around her neck, resolved to double-check the electronics for functionality after cleaning them thoroughly. Thinking of her goggles reminded her about their orphaned coats too. She gestured mutely her intention before slogging back through the empty town center towards where they'd begun, leaving him to the grim chore of checking the corpses of any friendlies they passed and pulling the tags.
"How many?" She asked softly as she balled up his poncho along with hers under her arm. Neither of them was going to get any drier putting the capes on now. She resigned herself to a long wet walk to wherever they were going. Briareos reached out and settled a hand on the back of her neck, sympathizing with her exhaustion, or just avoiding the question. Deunan leaned into his touch for a moment, acknowledging his caress, then asked again. "How many did we lose, Bri?"
"Looks like about half." He pointed at the churned mud in front of them, voice going from grim to mildly amused. "Looks like the other half assumed _we_ bought it at the hands of the tank."
"If they're picking through my stuff when we get back, I'm going to be pissed."
"We'll get back a lot faster if you let me carry you." He offered.
Deunan frowned. She didn't like exploiting Briareos' strength on general principles, proud of her own hard-earned stamina, and unwilling to treat him differently from anyone else. It was bad enough everyone else making assumptions about what he would or wouldn't do, would or wouldn't _like_. It just wasn't his style to bitch when asked to do something that wasn't fair. Deunan knew he wouldn't change, so she made it a point to do that complaining for him. Finding uniforms that fit correctly, ensuring he had a bed that wasn't half-sized, reminding quartermasters to keep a stock of bare necessities like oil and rubber conditioner, telling off commanders who expected him to haul and hoist like some sort of dumb robot, and of course ensuring that he not being forced to give random lazy slackers piggyback rides when they got tired, it was all part of her full-service girlfriend package. She laughed to herself.
There was 'proud of her independence', and then there was 'stupidly stubborn'. She hoped she wasn't the later. Weighing her choices, she found she wasn't ashamed to opt for the expedient answer. "You volunteering?" She checked with him. "You don't get paid extra for hauling my ass through this shit. You've done quite enough hero-ing this evening, no need to play pack mule as well."
Briareos sighed audibly. "For once, will you just let me help you without reading anything deeper into it?" He turned and scooped her up in his arms again, not waiting for her answer. "If I didn't want to carry you, I wouldn't offer."
Closing her eyes, she let him settle her against his shoulder, hugging her bag of goodies to her chest. Sad that the loot was the driest thing to be had anywhere on the two of them, she realized. Protectively sheltered both by her boyfriend's bulk and a double layer of raincoats, her found-swag would make the trip from tank to camp in perfect condition. Pity the same couldn't be said for them. She felt utterly spent. Still, at least the rain was slacking a little. She peered ahead as visibility improved slightly. Briareos' body moved rhythmically with his slow lope down the highway, the motion almost sleep-inducing after her long day. She willed herself to stay awake as they played catch-up with the rest of the team, organizing her tired thoughts for the report they'd be obliged to make on arrival.