NOTICE: I will no longer be updating this story. It will stay as-is, I am sorry to those who were expecting more. :/
--Meggie
"Where the fuck do they all come from? Shit!"
Anya glared intently at her display screen, cuss words from Dom pouring into her ears like a waterfall. The digital layout of Delta's position, as provided by the JACKbot, did not look too appetizing. There were small blue dots -- Marcus and Dom -- and a whole shitload of red ones, Locust, pouring out of at least three emergence holes which were all within a one-hundred yard radius of her comrades. This was going to be tricky.
"Control to Delta, incoming hostiles on all sides, i repeat, all sides!" She spoke loudly into her headset, speaking over the gunfire, trying to figure out how the little red dots kept multiplying.
"Please advise!" Marcus shouted back, almost blowing out her eardrum as he fired off another round. A red dot to his right blinked and faded away. "Now, Anya, we're running out of time!"
She ignored the informality, Marcus often got that way when he was stressed. She, Marcus, and Dom were good war buddies, having fought together in almost every major COG military action since Aspho Fields, way back in the Pendulum wars. The two men, more specifically Marcus, trusted her with their lives on more than enough occasions, and trusted her blindly. Way more than they ever should.
And this was where the shit hit the fan. Faintly, as if from another room, she heard Dom yell "Boomers! Look out!"
She didn't know a way out of this.
"Control is unable to--"
"Nevermind Control," Marcus said. "I got something." He sounded like a man with a plan. Anya wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
She heard a loud explosion, and suddenly about ten of the red dots flickered off screen at once. If someone had been standing near her, they would have been able to see the smoke pouring out of her ears, the sprockets were churning so fast. How the hell did he do that? Another explosion. Fifteen grubs this time. The only thing loud enough and lethal enough is a boomshot... How the hell did he take down a boomer that fast?! He never ceased to amaze with his unorthodox methods of fighting. But at least he knew how to survive.
Only three grubs were left now, from what must have been at least thirty. Lancer fire picked off those remaining, she heard Dom's yelp of joy as a locust head exploded. Then it was just two blue dots, in a swath of what would surely be locust blood.
"JACK, Open visual feed with Delta One." Her slender, gloved fingers glanced over certain keys on a vast keyboard that was hodgepodged together and only she knew how to use. She could imagine the bot decloaking and whirring itself down in front of the battleworn soldiers, flipping out it's video screen. There was a slight pause, and suddenly Marcus and Dom's faces flickered on to her display. Marcus was in front. He was always in front.
Both were coated in a fine layer of blood. Obviously they had both made adequate use of the chainsaw bayonet, but the carnage behind them was unbelievable. She was glad that she would never have to actually see Marcus in battle. What she saw might horrify her.
Raising an eyebrow at the Sergeant, she asked a simple question.
"Boomshot?"
"Hell yeah." Dom answered, smirking at Marcus who grinned at her skeptical look.
"What's up Control?" Marcus asked, all business. He was always all business.
"Orders from the top say Delta is to head back to base for briefing on some new intel," She said, pressing some more buttons that would send a Raven to their coordinates, or at least an LZ near there. "Raven is on the way to pick you up. Continue east out the tunnel and it should be waiting for you."
"Wilco, Control. Delta Out." Marcus said, turning away. Dom was already trotting back to pick up some ammo before they moved on.
"Hold on, one more thing--" She said, stopping Marcus mid-step. Not many things could do that. Her eyes widened a little as she read the code feeding from the JACKbot. "Apparently there's a mortar closing in on-- shit-- that's not your position--"
She looked upwards, she had read the screen wrong, reading her own radar instead of Delta's. The faint glow of the missile in the sunset was almost beautiful. It fractured into five or six pieces, continuing to drop steeply. Around her alarms began to go off, officials were leaping into helicopters, someone was tugging her arm-- perhaps it was Marina, Alpha's communicator, but Anya didn't budge. She could only watch as the mortars broke through the skylight ceiling, crashed into the center of COG operations, and exploded.
Marcus glared into JACK's video screen. "Control, what's going on? Control!" It wasn't like Anya to not respond to him.
"Anya!" Marcus yelled. She was just there, her dark eyes filled with something between unshakeable terror and wondrous awe, small strands of platinum blonde dangling down into her face. Then everything exploded, and all Marcus and Dom could do was watch.
"What the fuck is going on?" Dom asked, beside him again, his ammo rounds full, the static that had enveloped the screen dissapating.
"Shit. Nothing good." Marcus said, narrowing his eyes and looking for something telltale besides the faint amount of blood he could see scattered across Anya's keyboard. There were shapes moving in the background rubble, humanoid in shape but not quite in movement.
"Locust." Marcus said, knowing.
"Shit. How the hell did they get to command?" Dom replied, still confused about what had happened.
"Or, where the fuck is Anya." Marcus grumbled, not quite loud enough for anyone on the other side of the screen to hear. He stomped around for a minute, not quite fuming, not quite defeated. "JACK, close it up." And the bot did so, re-cloaking itself in the process. "Dom, let's get out of this damn tunnel and go find that Raven."
And so they did.
