One Good Menace Deserves Another
(or How Scout Joined the Team)
by Cecily
(Updated to clarify scene breaks.)
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Power ran for all he was worth and dove behind the shelter of a rock outcropping. Hawk crouched there, blaster out, covering him. Power counted down. "Three, two, one. . ."
The explosion thundered through the air, right on schedule, right when the biomech troop transport rolled over the mine Jonathan had set.
Hawk peered over the edge of the rock before the debris had finished raining down. "Yee-haw, Captain! That got 'em!"
Jon wanted to yank Hawk back to the ground and out of sight, but the Major slid on the dirt and fell back under cover, his face flush with excitement.
"The rest of the column is still moving up, but it'll take them hours to sort out that mess. That should give us plenty of time to evacuate the settlement."
Jon gave him a congratulatory pat on the shoulder. It was rare enough they got to celebrate any kind of success, and this mission looked like it was going to go off perfectly.
Then another explosion rocked the dry creekbed the Dread troops were using for a road. Power and Hawk looked at each other, mirroring each other's confusion.
"How many did you set?" Hawk asked.
"Just the one."
They both leaned over the edge of the rock to have a look.
Another transport, this one toward the rear of the column, had transformed into a smoking wreck, complete with blackened crater. Between the two craters, the biomechs milled in confusion, aiming their rifles at enemies they couldn't see, attempting to mount a defense against what now looked like a full-scale attack.
Then the third mine went off, right in the middle of them all.
What the hell was going on? Power didn't know about any other resistance groups operating in this area.
The Captain switched on his comm. "Tank, did you do that?"
"Negative, Captain. I haven't fired a shot." He sounded disappointed.
A joyous whoop sounded across the valley, echoing on the rocks. He and Hawk were here, Tank never whooped, so who--
A young man in rough-worn coveralls and a beat-up flak vest jumped up on the ridge, punching his fist into the air. When the biomechs fired a few laser bolts at him, he dove back behind the rock and disappeared.
"Is he insane?" Power muttered. No time to find out about the stranger now. "Come on, we've done what we came to do. Time to clear out that settlement."
The three of them rendezvoused about a half mile away, outside a settlement where a handful of families lived. Families. There were two babies among the group. This made the Captain pause. On the one hand, there was the hope that somehow, even in the worst circumstances, humanity would continue. But he couldn't imagine trying to raise a child in all this, with little food, barely adequate shelter, and extreme hardship. But never mind. He had to do what he could to make their struggles easier.
With Tank covering them from high ground and Hawk flying watch, Power escorted the group to the jumpship. A perfect evacuation, without a hitch.
On his final sweep, he heard a commotion in the last structure, a lean-to built over the mouth of a cave. A straggler. Power went to hurry him along.
He found a brown-skinned man in a rough jumpsuit and beat-up vest packing supplies into a backpack. Even in the dim light, from this distance, he recognized some of the gear: detonator caps, timer circuitry.
"It was you," Power said abruptly.
The man looked up, stepped back, and put his hand on a sidearm.
Jon restrained an impulse to do the same. They didn't need a shoot-out here.
Then the man's face brightened into a smile--a cautious smile. "Hey--you set that first mine. Nice. Almost as good as I would have done."
Jon raised his brow. "Almost?"
"Yeah. A little more compression, maybe set it to go off between the first two transports instead of just the first one. But then, I have an 'as much damage as possible' philosophy. You may be going for pretty."
Power hardly knew what to think. Going for pretty?
"We can talk later," Jon said. "We've evacuated the rest of the settlement. Come to the ship, we'll take you to the Passages."
He was already shaking his head. "No can do. Too much work."
"You can't stay here. Dread's forces will be here within the hour."
"Oh, don't worry. I won't be here. But I'm not going to the Passages." The man slung his pack over his shoulder. "Been nice chatting."
He pushed past Jon to the front of the shelter.
Jon grabbed his shoulder. He wasn't big--he had a wiry, energetic frame. Jon thought he could take him. The guy was a couple years younger than him, with short, dark hair, dark eyes, and an intense gaze. He had a mission--maybe an obsession?
"You want to knock me out and drag me out of here? Go ahead and try," the man said, glaring.
Jon let him go, and he strode out of the cave. Who was Captain Power to argue with a mission?
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Captain Power. Some days he felt like he ought to be Lieutenant Power. No, Private Power. Some days he didn't seem to have much more sense than a green recruit. Sure, it had sounded like a good idea, blowing up the biomech production plant in Sector 20. Reducing the number of soldiers in Dread's army could only be a good thing.
It sounded like a good idea, until they were pinned down by enemy fire outside the factory before they'd even set the explosives. Their approach had been clumsy, the sky bikes coming in too low and alerting the base's defenses.
It seemed silly to go through the trouble of getting here and not going through with setting the explosives, but right now, Jon just wanted to get his team out of here in one piece.
He and Tank were trapped in a service tunnel between the sky bikes and the plant generator. He should have expected twice the usual number of biomech guards at a biomech production plant. They seemed to be activating them right off the assembly line, programming in place or no, and setting them shooting at him and Tank. Hawk's air cover wasn't doing much good when all the offense was coming from the ground.
"Captain, I think I can break through the flank, there."
"Will it get us out of here?"
"And maybe buy us time to set those explosives."
"No time, Tank. Just get us a way out of here."
"Right."
Tank swiveled his immense armor to a place where their attackers' position was weaker, a few clickers holding a narrow grating on the left hand entrance. One blast from his cannon, the grate and biomechs were gone.
Power touched his comm pad. "Hawk! We're getting out! Cover us!"
"I read you, Jon!"
The Captain and Tank rushed the opening. They depended on their power suits to protect them. They finally emerged into open air, smog-ridden sky, and laser fire. A winged humanoid swooped a dozen feet above ground level, clearing a space with his blaster.
They were free of the tunnels. Just a hundred feet to the sky bikes and they could get out of here.
Another figure, human, darted ahead of them, cutting across the blasted landscape to a place beyond the next ridge.
"Who is that?" Jon asked.
"Don't know," Tank said curtly, methodically blasting the clickers who had locked on to their positions.
"Not biomech. Overunit?"
"Running away from a fight?"
"True." The human officers of Dread's forces would have to face Dread himself to explain such a display of cowardice. Better to die in battle.
Jon thumped Tank on the shoulder. "Come on."
Maybe they'd get to the sky bikes in time to track down the odd figure. Was there a new resistance cell working in the area? An escaped prisoner? Remember that old saying regarding curiosity and the cat. . .
Hawk flew ahead, his firing causing enough disruption to cover an escape, and even Tank with his immense armor was more agile than a squad of biomechs. A couple minutes of hard retreat brought them to the sheltered ravine where they'd hidden the bikes.
Hawk was waiting there. With a prisoner: he held his pistol to a man who stood warily some ten feet away, hands in the air.
"He was trying to hotwire one of the bikes, Captain," Hawk said.
"Hey, if I'd known they were yours--"
"You," Jon said wonderingly. It was the explosives man from the attack a few weeks before. The refugees from the settlement hadn't know him well. He was nomadic, stopping by every couple of months for the last year. In exchange for food and shelter, he helped around the settlement, repairing solar cells, stoves, lamps, heating elements, digging wells and building cisterns. They called him Scout, because he always gave them information about Dread's troop movements in the area. He'd been the first one to warn them about the approaching attack. He wasn't a raider, wasn't a vagrant--they'd come to trust him. But he didn't seem to trust them enough to stay.
Hawk's expression furrowed. "Captain, you know him?"
"I've run into him. What are you doing here?"
"I don't suppose you'd tell me first, would you?"
"I don't think you're in a position to be asking questions."
"Look, Captain--you are Captain Power, right? We're both on the same side here."
Hawk grumbled. "And that's why you're stealing our sky bikes."
Power glared at the stranger.
"It's faster than walking," he said, shrugging. "And trust me, we need to get out of here fast. In about, oh, forty seconds."
"Forty seconds?" Jon said. "What are you talking about?"
Tank interjected, "Captain, why don't you let me talk to him?"
The stranger backed up a step. His flippant smile turned into a grimace.
He glanced at a wrist chronometer. "Guys? It's too late. I suggest you take cover. Trust me on this." He scrambled under a protective ledge of rock.
Hawk stared, dumbfounded. "What the--"
An explosion rocked the earth so hard, Hawk stumbled and fell. Power crouched quickly, or he'd have been thrown off his feet as well. Tank merely braced himself, his armor serving as his personal bunker.
A heartbeat later, debris fell. Jon fell flat, arms over his head. He couldn't see where Hawk went--hopefully someplace safe. Chunks of concrete pounded them, some pieces as large as his head. They battered against his suit.
"Warning. Power level at ten percent." Damn, he couldn't take much more of this.
It was a massive explosion--the production plant, he realized. But they hadn't placed their bombs--
He was buried under a layer of concrete and dust when the tell-tale hiss and crackle of his suit's charge giving out burst around him. Exhausted, bruised, he lay unprotected, in the open, trying to find the strength to stand.
"Jon!" Hawk called, the same time Tank said, "Captain? You all right?"
The big guy offered Jon a hand up; he took it, brushing off his khakis and wincing at the various bruises he knew he was going to have.
Before Hawk could fuss over him, he scrambled up the slope to look over the side of the ravine.
The plant was gone. Just gone, replaced by a smoking crater.
"The reactor must have blown," Jon said, half-grinning in spite of himself. "Did we do that?"
The stranger stood nearby, leaning on the same slope, a grin splitting his face.
"That was me. I did that."
Hawk tore off his helmet in a gesture that Jon had long ago recognized as extreme annoyance. "You could have got us all killed! If that thing had gone off five minutes earlier--"
"I didn't know you were here. I thought I was the only one crazy enough to go after this factory."
Hawk stood blinking for a moment. Then his face went red. "Who are you calling crazy?"
"I call 'em like I see 'em. Sorry."
"You--you're a menace!" Hawk scowled.
The guy grinned brightly. "Thanks!"
"Gentlemen." Jon crossed his arms and tried to hide the fact that he was biting his cheeks to keep from laughing. He looked at the stranger, a hundred questions boiling up. "Who are you?"
He opened his mouth like he was going to answer, then shook his head. "I don't think I'm ready for that just yet. It's been fun, guys."
He sat on the edge of the ridge, then rolled over, dropping out of sight.
Jon looked. The stranger slid all the way down on the gravelly incline, then took off running toward the foothills about ten miles away, where pockets of humanity survived, even now.
Tank said, "Should we follow him?"
Jon shook his head. "I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to be followed. I'd hate for him to use one of those bombs against us."
"He's more likely to get himself killed," Hawk said with a huff.
Jon agreed with him, and he thought that was a shame.
-------------------
A month later, Jon and his team were in those same foothills looking for refugees. After the destruction of the biomech factory, Dread retaliated, hunting down the stragglers and digitizing them. Jon hadn't ultimately set the blast, but he'd wanted to, and he felt responsible for drawing Dread's attention here. The least he could do was take the survivors to a safe place.
He and the team had already ferried one load of scavengers and refugees. That already made the mission a success, but there were more people in hiding. Some of them didn't trust Power. He always had a tough time convincing the hold-outs they'd be safer in the Passages.
He went alone on a sky bike, tracking a troop of clickers who systematically searched a section of a hill. Hawk was scouting ahead, attempting to locate where the clickers were converging--they almost always had a target in mind, when this many of them were involved. Tank was on another sky bike, patrolling, watching their backs.
He hated them separating like this. But it was the only way they could cover more ground. He'd been thinking more and more, as he planned increasingly ambitious missions, that it was time to add a couple new team members. A little extra firepower, another set of eyes.
"Captain!" Tank's voice crackled over the comm. "We've got company! Biodread, coming from the north!"
Soaron. That could only mean that the biomechs had found what they were looking for. "Hawk, did you read that? Soaron's arrived. Distract him. Tank and I will try to find who he's come for."
"I copy that, Captain."
"Tank, you cover the southern half of that ridge, I'll take the north."
Jon veered the skybike northward, scanning the ground below for any sign of humans trying to escape.
Off in the distance, laser bolts exploded in midair. Hawk had engaged Soaron. They didn't have much time.
Then a small, explosive burst caused a squad of biomechs to tumble down the ravine. Then another group fell amidst of a cloud of smoke and debris. Grenades, it looked like.
There, pinned against a rock face by the encroaching troops, was the stranger, the one called Scout. His gun was out, firing desperately, but there were too many of them, and he had no where to run.
Captain swooped in and launched a barrage of his own laser fire. That would clear them out. His lips pressed in a grim line, the man looked up and saluted. Between the two of them, they managed to scatter the clickers enough to let Jon hover in on the sky bike. He just had to touch down for a moment--
The man looked at him, but where Jon expected a wry quip, he saw a grim frown. He was young. Another kid thrown into war too young--even younger than Jon had been, when he was fifteen and saw his father die.
"Need a lift?" he said.
Scout blew out a sigh and climbed onto the back of the sky bike. "I've always wanted to ride one of these things."
More troops were coming. There were always more.
Hawk came onto the comm. "Captain, Soaron's turned tail!"
"Good. Meet us back at the jumpship. Let's get out of here before he comes back."
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At last, he set the bike down where the jumpship was hidden. Tank and Hawk had both returned already. They watched, arms crossed, concerned.
Power removed his helmet and turned to look at his passenger.
The man climbed off the back of the bike and looked around, taking in the ship, the bikes, the three men in armor staring back at him. Then he took a deep breath.
"Robert Baker," he said, his voice steady. "My name's Robert Baker."
"Jonathan Power," Jon said and offered him his hand. They shook, and Jon gestured at the others. "Matt Masterson. Michael Ellis. You know, Robert, you really ought to have someone watching your back."
"I haven't had that luxury in a long time." There was a story there, and a sadness that Jon encountered all too often.
"But you still like to find the action, don't you?" Hawk said, a hint of a smile growing on his lips.
"Call it a talent," Robert said.
Jon wasn't sure he was the best judge of character. He was inclined to trust everyone he met until they proved untrustworthy. That was why he was glad to have Hawk and Tank around. He needed the back-up. He didn't know how Robert had functioned so long without it.
Jon wondered if Hawk and Tank would approve of what he was about to do next.
Power said, "I can use someone who can single-handedly hold off a squad of biomechs." He glanced at his teammates--yes, they knew what he was thinking. Hawk was definitely smiling now, and Tank gave a single nod.
"And single-handedly destroy a Dread production plant," Hawk added.
"And wipe out an enemy column," Tank said.
Oh yes, Baker came to them with quite the resume.
"How would you like to come work for us?" Jon finished.
Robert Baker blinked, obviously surprised, and looked back and forth between them. He closed his jaw and settled on a wry expression. "How's the pay?"
"Terrible," Jon said, smiling. "But I can promise you explosions."
"Lots of explosions?"
Tank said, "Lots. Definitely."
Robert--Scout--smiled. "Then count me in."