The enhancements are intoxicating. They assign you a speed mod for testing purposes, and you love it more than you have any right to.
Slowing from 130k/h is a well practiced maneuver. An unbalanced hiatus often resulted with heavy tissue and structural damage. You broke three ribs and sprained a wrist on the first go, and that was considered to be lucky. Figuring the metrics of terminal speed inside the kevlar, underneath the body armor, while under fire was something that had taken weeks and a variation of injuries to fully clear. You still aren't quite sure you've mastered it.
There's a short burst through your headset that you disdain from attending to, focus diverting to the unpleasant grind of grav boot against tarmac. Adjust that weight into your heels while still measuring the fold of your knees. Wait for inertia to catch up, the punch of metal mass to your bones as it does. Feel your jaw rattling as you drop to one knee, dragging your arms elbow to wrist into the ground. Stone and cement shred beneath you in a cringeworthy wail. The mod's alert goes off, a dull sound that you mute before considering too deeply.
It takes moments to regained your composure, then you're on your feet again, following the readout display of your visor. Distant com chatter floods the headset while you run; bicker between agents, adrenaline powered breaths, violent slang... You pick one voice out from the rest and open a channel. "ETA four minutes."
"Nice of you to join us." He responds immediately, the ringing of gunfire loud against audio ports. ..."Four minutes is bull. You fry the booster?"
"No one else is complaining."
"You fried the booster."
"Sit rep, York." It comes out a growl.
"Here I thought you were interested in hearing from me. Arkansas and Alaska are up top; vitals look good."
"I have a readout, I know they're fine. What is the deal with Montana?"
"Maybe talk to her yourself, alright? As the only one getting an ass licked by Innie fire, 'think I have a valid right not to play operator this time around."
Without sparing the time to sign off you cut his channel. Breathing filtered air into your suit you patch in to Montana.
"What's the hold up?"
"Nearly through- don' get ya panties in a bunch." Comes her thick, southern cadence. "Ah like this tech. ...All up an' pretty."
"York will be on infiltration our next run."
"Replace me with pretty boy? Thought we were closer than that, Carolina."
Your readout flashes two minutes. Up ahead, Arkansas spits curses. For all the noise he's making one would imagine him to be bleeding out, but you know for a fact he's been nicked only twice; the more serious of the wounds stuffed with biofoam. Alaska and Montana are both uninhibited. York is taking a beating.
Eight months you've been a Freelancer. Four from when you were boosted to Alpha team. Eight weeks since the last squad leader was bumped. This your squad now. These are your men and women to bring home safe.
Alaska clears a new channel, interrupting your thought process. "Interested in a zhestkaya napitok 'bout now, eh?"
York half wails just as you reach the boarder of the empty lot. "Man, I don't know what the fuck you're askin'. Quit filling my headset with Pinsky bitch spam, gotta be focused."
A static sigh. "Sad mal'chik. You must relax, plaksiyvm mal'chikom."
Montana snorts obnoxiously enough for the phlegm to create a buzz through the headset. "Ahah, sad is that York's readin' shit like Pinsky, an' yah read 'em toffee gum wrappers."
"Blyad', who is Pinsky?"
Scanning the grounds from a good distance, you take the time to place your teammates. Alaska and Arkansas are above to cover flank, Montana within the complex. York has set himself up behind a damaged trailer at the opposite end of the lot. Half a dozen Innies are ducked below four-foot cement barriers, pelting his cover while creating a dangerous ring around him. Forced into a tough place, he alternates between exposing himself to fire and taking pot shots at the enemy while they attempt to close him in.
The booster is malfunctioning but you still cover the lot in good time, flicking for the blade strapped in against your collar. The first one doesn't realize you're on him until it's too late. You try to fall with him silently, slipping the blade out of his throat. The next in line turns his rifle on you and lets out a warning cry. The shot clears over your shoulder as you come at him, cleaving a knee into his gut and folding your arm around his throat. You release when there's a brittle snap against the fold of your elbow and let the body drop.
Bullets pelt you in motion, clipping accents of cerulean. York has taken initiative redirecting the Insurrectionist's train of fire and that leaves you the window to bolt.
It's an ungraceful skid, but you make it with York covering. He takes no further chances once you're crouched away from their fire, dragging the rifle to his chest and tucking away from the spray of bullets that come for him as he withdraws.
"...Nice to have company," He puffs, folding shakily to one knee and checking the rounds in his rifle. "...Last mag." It's slurred, like he's ready to lie down. The kevlar closed around his lower torso is wet.
"Are those cauterized?" Take the rifle from between your shoulders.
He knows what you're referring too and shrugs. Picture the infuriating grin behind that helmet. "I'll get to it in a minute."
"Get to it now." You shift up from your knees, checking your numbers briefly before returning attention to the firing Innies.
"Nice to know you care." He grunts, shifting in discomfort to nestle himself farther into the trailer bed. He chokes off a little as the suit's sensory system commences the procedure. Redirect your attention and put eighty rounds into the affronting Innies.
A com sounds off and you're met by Arkansas's wet cough.
"Carolina? I'm picking up enemy aircrafts coming in. Sixteen miles."
Your hud almost immediately begins to light up with the same schematics and low alert beacon. Leaving York to deal with the remaining men, you flood cover from the backside of the trailer to the front. Dead turrets aim toward you menacingly but your gaze passes them into the start of the facility's archway. You open a channel and the murmured rendition of Louis Armstrong's Wonderful World is the first thing that the audio picks up. You would find it morbid were you not so use to Montana by this stage.
..."Agent Montana,"
"It's a process, babe. Ma' process. ...Don't fuck with tha' process."
"Gospodin, you know you are slowing down gruppa when..."
"Up yers, asswipe. Ya takin' York's place as team bitch?"
Before Alaska can prepare his rebuttal you intervene. "Montana, so help me-"
"All good, m'am. F.I.L.S.S. 'got us covered. Comin' down bitches."
Nod beneath your helmet, glaring over the numbers displayed on you hud. "Alaska, get an extraction going."
York jogs up to you, but it's an awkward hobble. He leans himself against the trailer to remain upright. Discretely, you pull up his bio-com data, blocking it out when Montana alternates to humming.
Gathering himself, York's posture slouches but he focuses down the sight of his rifle. You gear yourself into doing the same. Ignore the red warning lights over York's log. Set your eyes over the remaining targets.
Before either of you can pull a trigger, the complex lights and ignites.
Force of the impact nearly knocks you clear off your feet before the grav boots have activated. The trailer you took cover behind has flipped onto its far side with a squeal you can barely make out through the bone rattling bursts of combustion.
"Chertovski yebat'! Mat' yebut!" The radio creates a crackle in Alaska's shout.
Knocked to ground by the blast York rolls stiffly to his knees, biting down a groan.
It takes you that long to realize there's no longer jazz music humming through the radio. Another half a second to pull up the bio-com in your helmet.
Montana's signal is non existent.
"...Carolina, I got three miles!" Arkansas reports, his voice rising in panic.
"Suka, Montana?"
Let Alaska try to contact her. Keep the information to yourself until the rest of your team is no longer at risk. York tilts his visor to you, holding himself up with the support of the flipped trailer's undercarriage. Your movements are sluggish enough that he reads into them straight away.
"Fucking- dammit..." He hisses, tenderly testing out his left leg.
"...Alaska where's our evac?"
He doesn't reply.
"Agent Alaska, are you fucking hearing me?"
"...Da. I am."
"Tell me where the FUCK they are!"
"...No here. Komandir su-"
His retort is shortened by the sudden heavy hiss of afterburners overhead. Just the sound and you're offered brief flashes of a distant yet not so distant time before. Tired and weary... Caked in blood and soot and dirt... The sounds of airships are customary to bringing relief. There is no relief in the arrival of these crafts.
Acting upon instinct, you throw your weight into York. Far too much of your attention goes to the hurt yelp he lets slip when you force him down against the tarmac. The radio in your audio set bursts into a solid static crescendo and you resist the urge to rip off your helmet and scratch out both ears.
The radio cuts out abruptly, replaced with the hissing of chain fire before they too are defused into silence under the masking of thrusters. Bullets rip through the air like swarms of wasps, cutting up metal and cement alike in their wake.
Thunderous rapid fire strikes off overhead, pelting off loose pieces of sidings from the factory buildings. York clutches your wrist and you let him squeeze, imagining his tight grimace and the sound of molars grinding. Arkansas's vitals light up with alerts, then they go out completely.
When the air engines finally grow distant, there has been a heavy decline of the signals on your hud. There is only York. You keep yourself tucked to him, monitoring your medical logs to figure his stats into numbers. The number of minutes he has before hemorrhaging out into his suit.
When extract arrives he's no longer lucid. A medic assists you with hoisting him on board, where they proceed to strip him out of gold and kevlar to tend to the many craters in his stomach. Only you get to see Arkansas's bloody mess, or how Alaska had been ripped into by machine gun fire and knocked from his sniper's perch to his head... and there's no way to recover Montana.
While they're boarding York, you make your way over to Arkansas and remove his bright red and white helmet. It's the first time you've seen his face, and there's a hole punched through to his cranium. Never had you thought Arkansas to be the crew cut sort. You hold you stomach down to look at Alaska. His helmet is the only thing keeping the neck in place. You don't try to remove it.
A recovery team would be dispatched, not for Montana but for the other two. It's not your job to tend to the bodies.
You are hastened into boarding, too detached to think more fully over what will be done with your former teammates. Strapped in, you see to it York is pumped full of anesthesia for the trip. Then and only then do you allow yourself to rest. It's while you're drifting that you recognize in a subtle wave of nostalgia, this may be you in shock.
The Intel was gathered. You established yourself by surviving at all. You saved one of your squadmates.
You were commended for efficiency and the timing at which F.I.L.S.S. was alerted and patched into the enemy's network. Small losses are acceptable while establishing great progression.
He makes it perfectly clear to you, indirectly and face-to-face; there will be no going out of his way to save them. Only you can save them, and you'll never save them all.
York is out of recovery by the second day, bound up around the middle but mobile enough to jog and dosed high enough to keep up that intrepid effort he rides so casually.
He finds you in the mess hall and takes the vacant seat to your right. He doesn't speak and you continue eating, working on abolishing his presence through your mind.
York takes a particularly noisy crunch out of his apple.
..."...S'not yer fault."
He says it in a disgusting mix of juice and fruit flesh, so it's easy to pretend you hadn't heard. Still, your appetite diminishes.
York finishes his apple and reaches across your plate to take a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
He almost seems disappointed that you let him.
Russian translations
Zhestkaya napitok ~ Stiff drink
Mal'chik ~ Boy
Plaksiyvm mal'chik ~ Whiny boy
Blyad' ~ Fuck
Gospodin ~ Lord
Gruppa ~ Group
Chertovski yebat'! Mat' yebut! ~ Fucking fuck! Mother fuck!
Suka ~ Bitch
Da ~ Yeah
Komandir ~ Commander