Chapter 4: Red
Two.
One.
"Moving out."
Keith was on his feet and flying down the hill as soon as the second ticked over in his head. He didn't need to glance around himself to ascertain whether his comrades were similarly on the move. They would be, he knew. Besides, he likely wouldn't have been able to see them if he'd bothered to look.
Each step was carefully trodden, yet remained upon the ground for barely a second before launching free once more. Keith was fast and he knew it. It was as much his mission to be the first into the town, the first on the scene, the first to eliminate a threat, as it was Pidge's to relay directions, or Lance to snipe any flicker of movement he saw before Keith confronted it. Within seconds, slipping down the decline of loose rocks and meagre sprouts of vegetation, he was darting across the brief, open stretch of evening gloom and into the shade of the nearest building.
For barely a moment, Keith pressed his back against hard wall and dropped to a ready crouch. The buildings were small, squat, some little more than lean-tos and with windows draped in rags more than curtains. A minimalistic town, small of populace and on the cusp of poverty. In many ways, it only made the situation that much worse. Keith knew Shiro thought so. He recognised the expression on Shiro's face from the moment the town had come into view.
Shiro was angry. Not like the anger that Keith could become sometimes, but angry nonetheless. Keith, as with every one of the rest of the paladins, felt the unshakeable urge to relieve that anger almost as much as he did to help the clutch of people trapped in the town.
For two breaths Keith paused with his back against the wall. Two breaths, short inhalations, as he strained his ears for the faintest sounds of movement. There would be something. Surely something. Hunk had been the one to spot the motion and Lance would keep his eye out for approaching threats from his perch. The Mothership would also keep her eye firmly affixed.
Not that Keith should rely upon that. He had a team, but foremost he was supposed to manage for himself. A team was only as strong as their weakest member, and Keith wouldn't hold his paladins back.
No sound reached his ears so Keith sprung from the wall onto silence feet once more and made a darting sprint down the first narrow road he happened across. He barely considered the assault rifle slung over his shoulder and made no move to sling it free, to hold it at the ready for an attack. Keith was a combat specialist, but assault rifles? That was Lance's area of expertise, not his
He made it nearly to the town centre. Down streets, glimpsing not a soul and slinking at flying speed between the shadows of the silent buildings that could have been empty for all Keith knew. He hoped they were. He hoped the message had reached the town in time for most to evacuate. There were some hostages – of course there were, for why else would his team be assigned the mission? – but Shiro had voiced his hopes that there would be few.
It was nearly at the town centre that he was set upon. Rounding a corner, instinct more than deliberate thought had Keith ducking, dropping to the ground onto his shoulder in a roll and dodging beneath the violent swing of a heavy rifle. He didn't spare a second for thought before he was flying into action, for the enemy had weapons. They had guns. There wasn't time to think.
Keith leapt to his feet and swiped the rifle from his opponent's hands. He spun with a flurry of movement, drawing his combat knives and swiping at the figure that he detachedly recognised as a man before sidestepping and springing in close. A knee to the gut, twisting aside, heel to the side of his opponent's knee, then he smacked the butt of his knife hilt into the man's head.
The man toppled in an instant.
Keith had barely a second to straighten before another was upon him. He dodged, ducked, parried with his knives as much as his fists, and in another second his opponent stumbled to the ground. Then another appeared from around a building. He was on his back, Keith battling him for a moment before another smack to the head knocked him from his senses. No emotion. No reaction and barely thought except for –
Three? Just three? Definitely not.
Keith didn't get the chance to glance around himself for evidence of more attackers. He'd barely climbed from his opponent's felled body before the first sound of gunshots dropped him to the ground once more in a dive. A crack, a snap, a hollow echo, again and again. Keith rolled to the nearest cover. He pressed his back against the wall and tucked to minimise surface area as much as possible.
Keith wasn't scared. He rarely got scared anymore, even if his body still felt it. The rapid thumping in his chest, the instinctive tightening of his fingers around his knives, the dribble of sweat down his spine – he felt it but he didn't feel it. Keith didn't let himself, even when the deafening crack of gunshots tore down the street.
In a flurry of movement, barely pausing to ascertain the direction the gunfire was raining from – not friendly; definitely not – Keith sprung to his feet once more. He launched himself to the nearest alley from the main strip of narrow road in a lunge. His boots crunched briefly on the dusty road, a puff of cloud rising in his wake before he was diving once more into shelter. The crack of shots chased him but, in his relative safety, Keith barely considered them.
One.
Two.
Three then –
Four.
Another series of thundering bursts. Must have been from an automatic rifle. Keith catalogued them in his head, ordering the facts his eyes had absorbed but, fighting, he hadn't registered. His opponent's gear had been worn but sturdy, of quality make. The heavy rifle that had nearly taken his head off like a baton was scarred but of modern make. A machine gun? Really? The man clearly hadn't known how to use it if he'd attempted to swing it like a blunt weapon rather than fire it. Or maybe he hadn't been expecting to see Keith quite so soon.
"They're armed, and well enough," Keith muttered into his headpiece. He sunk further onto his haunches, all but ignoring the shots thrumming along the road alongside him. There was return fire, Keith noted detachedly. Of course there was. They surely wouldn't be continuing their aimless shots otherwise. "Bastard just tried to take me out with a submachine gun to the head."
"Are you injured?" Shiro asked, his tone clipped and just slightly strained. It was barely audible over the sound of gunfire in Keith's ear, but not for distortion of the earpiece.
"Negative. Idiot didn't even pull the trigger. I doubt he knows how to use a gun."
"Well, that's a positive for us," Pidge said, her own voice nearly as muffled as Shiro's. "Stupid enemies are always the best."
"I wouldn't be so fast to claim they're stupid," Hunk said.
"I didn't say they were. I just insinuated it would be to our benefit."
"Is that Sharpshooter?" Keith asked, ignoring the exchange. Even in the midst of open fire they always somehow managed to speak with remarkable calm. "Or is it you, BlackLion?"
"I love how he doesn't even ask if it's me," Pidge muttered.
"You have your talents," Keith replied. "Shooting isn't one of them."
"And neither is it yours."
"No. It isn't."
"I'm making my way towards you," Shiro said. Keith thought he could even hear the echo of shots through his headpiece. He peered along the alley once more in the direction he'd come as Shiro continued. "We'll converge. Meet at six o'clock."
"The two-storey? Slated roof?"
"That's the one."
"Already on my way," Hunk said, a puff through his headpiece suggesting his movement as much as his words. "And yes, I do believe that is Sharpshooter."
"Holding them off all by himself, is he?" Pidge asked. "At 'em, Sharpshooter."
"You know it," Lance murmured, and there was very definite distraction to his tone. Keith wondered that he even bothered to reply at all. But then, Lance was never one to pass up a discussion.
Keith found himself smiling thinly. Lance was their prime shooter and he knew it, but was surprisingly sparse with his arrogance in that regard. Strange, how he was so little when it was deserved. Rising to his feet yet maintaining his half crouch of readiness, Keith skirted towards the opposite end of the alley. "Don't die, Sharpshooter."
"Who do you take me for?" Lance replied shortly. "I've got this."
Keith trusted him. He trusted Lance with that much at least, even if it always niggled at him with distinctly more concern than it should when he became so aggressively involved. But he couldn't think like that. Not about Lance. Keith had to force his worries aside when they had a mission to complete.
Even so, when Keith sprung from the alley, it wasn't quite in the direction Shiro had pointed him. They did have a mission, but that didn't mean they'd be mindlessly foolish along the way. Keith had his missions too.
