"Go! Move!" yelled the Special Forces operator, concentrating on the enemies pressing forward.
Lieutenant Commander Shiho Hahnenfuss, still stunned from the grim soldier's arrival, stood and ran. In the distance the smoke from her crashed E/A-18 Growler rose, a beacon to the rabble militias in the area. She had been on the radio with her Electronic Warfare Officer as he had fallen prey to just such a group earlier in the day. Shiho herself had almost been killed when a small Combat Search and Rescue team had reached her, guns blazing. They had retreated and finally pulled back to a potential landing site for the extraction helicopter, but in the process four of her five rescuers had died. Now the solitary man was telling her to run.
The sounds of gunfire picked up behind her as she ran, the noisy clattering of small arms punctuated by the occasional blast of an RPG. Even less frequent were the measured shots from the soldier behind her. She felt terrible leaving him behind, as she had for the others, but she obeyed his command and sprinted ahead.
Master Sergeant Yzak Joule whipped back around the piece of rubble he was using for cover. He had popped out just long enough to send another human to his death. Now he quickly exchanged magazines for his M14 battle rifle. He needed to move back and gain some range for his skills as a sniper to truly come into play, but the pilot was no ground-pounder and needed all the protection he could give her. So he sat, grumbling as he secured the new magazine and charged the rifle. Peeking around the rock again, he saw more and more of the ragtag militiamen pouring into the village square before him.
"Shit," he muttered absent-mindedly. Squeezing a stud on his radio, he whispered into the attached boom mic. "Sierra Lima Two, this is Razor Three. I'm in contact with upwards of one hundred hostiles. I cannot hold for long, over."
"We copy, Razor Three. ETA ten minutes, but we can't come into a hot LZ. If we take an RPG, you're going to be stuck with another crash, over," came the reply, fuzzy over the static of the radio.
"Roger. The pilot's at the coordinates. I'll keep the skinnies off your back while you grab her. It'll take me a minute to get from my current location to the LZ once she's secure, over."
"Understood. We can hold for that long, but not longer. We'll be damned close to Bingo out this far, over."
"Copy that, Sierra Lima Two. Razor Three out." Yzak peeked out around the rock again, wincing as stray rounds kicked shards of rock into his face. He hefted his rifle and picked his next target.
Shiho braced herself against a tree, gasping for breath. She had reached the place the soldiers had told her to run to and now she was ready to go home. The gunfire from before had not abated at all, still echoing over the hill she had just climbed. She glanced up at the sky, hoping to hear the rhythmic beating of a helicopter any minute now.
Almost lost in the clouds and chaos of her surroundings, she jumped when her emergency radio came to life with a hiss.
"… Hahnenfuss, come in. Captain Hahnenfuss please come in, over."
She squeezed the "transmit" button, still a little unsure of herself.
"I'm here."
"Captain, the evac bird will be here within minutes. I want you to get aboard as soon as it touches down. The pilot will radio me and I'll boogey on back to the LZ. Do not try to come get me, are we clear?" His voice was stern and confident. The ground, after all, was his customary battlefield. Shiho longed for the skies, where her voice could also radiate confidence and comfort.
"I understand Sergeant. I just don't want to leave you behind."
"Captain, do not concern yourself about me. I can survive even if you have to leave me. Just do what I say… ma'am." She could tell he was annoyed with her.
"I'm sorry Sergeant. I'll do what you say."
"Thank you ma'am. Now just sit tight and wait for evac. You'll be back aboard your carrier in no time."
"Understood…" She paused, pursing her lips. "And thank you Sergeant."
"No problem…" His reply was interrupted by sustained gunfire, audible both over the radio and in the distance. "Shit… Keep your sidearm ready, just in case. Joule out."
Shiho's hand strayed down to the pistol from the emergency kit, now secured in a holster. She had yet to use it and prayed that the arrival of the helicopter would mean she never would.
"Isn't this a little unfair, guys?" yelled Yzak from behind his ever more precarious shelter. Shouts were flung back, as unintelligible to him as he was sure his comment was to his enemies. "I mean really, do you need this many people to kill little old Yzak?" He popped up and squeezed off two rounds into the chest of an advancing native. "Guess so…" he muttered to himself.
His bold move was answered with mounting fire, greater even than that of a few minutes ago. He had to duck as an RPG zipped right over hid head, exploding twenty feet behind him. A piece of shrapnel had cut his leg and he grimaced as he felt the wound. Satisfied that it was just a surface cut, he returned his attention to ending more lives.
Yzak was hardly conscious of squeezing the trigger at this point. He had been training for and doing this exact thing for more than a third of his life now. He had even been in firefights as bad as this maybe a half-dozen times in the past, though, he admitted, none worse. His reverie of combat was broken as his radio spluttered static for a moment.
"Razor Three, this is Sierra Lima Two on approach. We have visual confirmation of the LZ, over."
Yzak breathed a sigh of relief. This operation had been entirely too intense, and fatal, for his liking. He caught himself quickly, stopping any thoughts of his fallen brethren to focus on the moment.
"Roger that. Let me know when the package is secured. Over and out."
At last the distinctive whirring of the helicopter could be heard. Shiho leapt up from her resting spot beside a tree and walked forward into the clearing. The lithe Pave Hawk helicopter eased over the nearby trees, flaring up as it slowed and descended. Shielding her eyes for a moment as the powerful downdraft hit her, Shiho bolted forward and was pulled into the helicopter by a crew chief. He settled her along the back, strapping her in between the two door gunners.
"We'll be waiting a few minutes for your friend," yelled the chief over the noise of the rotors.
Shiho nodded and looked out of the bird.
"… I repeat, the package is aboard."
"Alright! I'm on my way." Yzak lifted himself into a crouch preparing to sprint away towards the woods. But as he did, he caught a glint of metal in the buildings to his left and threw himself to the ground just in time. A few enemy troops had worked around his field of fire, and were no forcing him back against his shelter.
"Fuck!" he yelled, leaning around to fire at the building. "Sierra Lima Two, I cannot make it out now. Repeat I cannot make it out. I'm being outflanked and I'll be cut down if I move an inch."
"Wait one, Razor Three." The radio hissed nothing but static for what seemed to Yzak to be an eternity. Dropping another magazine out of his rifle, he found that he only had one left. He solemnly loaded it and recommenced firing. "Okay, Razor Three. We're going to lift now. We'll ease over the hill and see if the door gunners can suppress long enough for you to extract."
"No! Damn it! There are so many RPGs here… if you show yourself, there will be five rounds on you in a second!"
"Well, then we'd appreciate you weeding out as many as you can right away. Lifting now. Out."
Clenching his face in anger, Yzak leaned out again, downing two more natives with his fire before being forced back into cover. The muffled sound of the helicopter picked up and a moment later the helicopter appeared, cresting the hill. It stayed back, trying to keep out of the RPG's range, while the door miniguns began firing.
The near constant fire that had been falling on the rubble pile Yzak was hiding behind lifted for the first time in fifteen minutes. Looking around, he found that the miniguns were walking rounds across every conceivable location where the militiamen could be. It was questionable whether any were being hit, but certainly none were braving the fire from the helicopter.
"Nothing for it," he muttered, and leapt up. He sprinted towards the now descending helicopter, one hundred feet away, ninety feet away, eighty feet away, seventy feet away… He could see into the back now, making out the crew chief waving him along. Now he could see Captain Hahnenfuss, her face brightening as she saw him alive, running…
Shiho grinned, watching the soldier charge across the field. Too many had already died for her sake. Her eyes met his, and she blushed some, noticing for the first time that he was rather handsome. Maybe they could talk some upon their return, as friends, as a grateful rescuee and gallant rescuer, rather than in…
Her smile died as he lurched forward. Three red puffs of blood stitched their way up his back, the last one entering the back of his head and exiting the front. His body crumpled to the ground, barely forty feet from the helicopter.
"Shit!" Shiho could hear the pilot's yell from the back. "We're breaking off! Fuck!"
The rotors roared to life as the helo lifted away. Shiho crawled to the edge of the door, pulling against her harness as she watched the body grow smaller, tears forming in her eyes. The helicopter crested the hill again and the village and the clearing disappeared from sight.
A/N: I've not done much work on my other stories of late because of a combination of school and writer's block. I've been thinking about trying some different little stories recently to break that. This is an idea I've had for a while. Initially I wanted to do a normal in-universe Yzak and Shiho romance. Then I got the idea to shake things up, break the pattern of happy endings that seem to be common here. I tried writing this once before, but it was too long and unwieldy. Having tried it again, I think a short one-shot was the right decision. I hope you enjoyed it. There will be no sequels or anything. Just a short glimpse of Yzak and Shiho in action. At any rate, I hope I can update my other stuff pretty soon. Apologies.
Title from poem no. 86 from volume 2 of the Man'yoshu, the classic collection of Japanese poety: "I would rather die with a rock for pillow on a high mountain than continue living with so much yearning for you."