A/N: I'm blaming you for this, Ismelda. You know who you are.
"Wyvern Six is down."
Only someone who had known Corran for years could have heard the subtle tone in his voice, how close it came to breaking. Death was always a possibility for Corsairs, yet every time he lost one of his pilots, it was a wound on his soul that never healed. He'd see far too many die, first in his time with the Navy, then as a Corsair. And this time it was one of the worst. Heron had been so alive, had meant so much to his Captain and his shipmates. White Heron may not have been a Corsair for long, but the brightest stars always burn fastest, and Heron had been a bright star indeed.
Time enough for those thoughts later. Right now he had to focus on not joining her. He slewed his fighter around, firing his guns at the flying Grimm swooping around the cavern. Lancers had joined the Nevermores, and he could see more large Grimm on the ground. Damn, things were getting downright hairy in here. Requesting additional air support, Corran sent over the general tactical net, preferably configured for ground support.
The bridge of a warship in battle is a unique sort of controlled chaos, and by no means quiet. Now there was a hushed tone as the crew went about their tasks, and everyone was very carefully not looking at their captain any more than they had to. The hatch opened quietly, and Stalwart Ironwood stepped through, stopping behind his captain's command chair. "Captain, if you need a moment," he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear
"That's a moment we don't have right now, James," Blossom replied, just as softly as he had spoken. "Right now all I can do is make sure she has a hell of an honor guard in hell." Her voice rose, taking on a firmer tone. "Helm, come to two-one-zero, up four-five. Looks like the Vendetta's gotten themselves outnumbered; let's even those odds. Focus fire on the pirate cruiser to port, guns only. They're closer to the Vendetta than I like."
Dragon ducked behind a pirate shuttle that had mercifully survived the battle without any damage so far. This was taking too goddamn long. Corsair marines were trained for boarding actions, not pitched battles like this. "After this," she gasped, looking at Blake, "whaddya say to a week on a beach somewhere? I think you'd look great in a bikini."
"I...I can't swim," Blake replied, surprised.
"You can learn. I used to love to swim, before..." Dragon shook her head, peering out from her cover. "Okay, Bolt, looks like half a dozen pirates have decided to hide behind that heavy lifter over there. Bad tactical decision, don't you think? Do me a favor and show them the error of their ways?"
Bolt nodded and took Dragon's place at the edge of the shuttle, sticking his head out to get the range. Lifting his grenade launcher, he fired three shots in quick succession, bracketing the pirates hiding behind the lifter, killing a couple of them and sending the others running. Dragon and her marines opened fire, and she saw at least two more pirates drop
"Is today Tuesday? I could have sworn today was Tuesday." Dragon quipped as her squad moved out.
"Nah, it's Monday. Mondays always suck." Bolt's comment drew a chuckle from the marines; aboard ship, there's no such things as weekends.
Dragon spared a moment before leading her troops onward to send a message to Neptune and Sun: Any luck yet?
Sun dived for cover as he took fire from behind a stack of cargo containers, Neptune spraying fire at the cultists. No, not yet. Rough going getting there. One sec. Sun popped up, adding his fire to Neptune's.
You do realize she went down in an inferno, don't you? Neptune added as two of the cultists broke and ran, Sun gunning one of them down before he could get more than a dozen steps.
I know, but...it's Heron. If there's any chance at all, we have to take it. For Blossom, Dragon sent back. Neptune could hear the anguish in her words, and immediately wished he could take back his words.
It's cool. You just owe me and Neptune a week on a beach somewhere :P, Sun shot back, managing to get a grenade over the cargo containers the cultists were hiding behind, scattering them.
No beach. I don't like the water. Neptune flipped his rifle to full auto, spraying the fleeing cultists.
Wherever you like, guys. Just find her, but don't get dead doing it. Dragon broke the connection.
Neptune looked at Sun, coughing from the smoke. "You know this is pretty much a suicide mission, right?"
"Yeah. But it's for the Captain. And you know she'd do the same for us. Remember that shuttle full of hostages right after she took command? I saw her take down three guys with just a knife in her boot before the first shot was even fired." Sun shook his head. "Now's our chance to pay her back, with interest. Come on."
A pack of beowolves came howling over a shuttle at Dragon's team, and she grinned even as her marines opened fire. More Grimm meant she was getting into the cultist positions. Above her, she could see Corsair shuttles and fighters making landings and providing close air support. Now that they were past the surprise of finding cultists mixed in with the pirates, the Corsairs were responding with overwhelming firepower.
Dragon snarled as she punched a beowolf in the chest with the plasmafaust built into one of her gauntlets. It was times like this she missed her Ember Celica, left behind when she and Ruby fled for their lives in the wake of Dad's conviction. Yeah, a plasmafaust did the job, but it just wasn't the same.
And then the beowolves were among her marines, and it was Corsair blades versus claw and fang, the mini pulse weapons built into their blade seeing liberal use. She saw one beowolf literally throw itself on a marine's blade, snarling and snapping to get at the marine even as it impaled itself further on the blade, ending when the marine blew the Grimm's head off.
As the last of the beowolves vanished into smoke, Dragon waved for a breather. Time to let her marines catch their breath. She brought the tactical map up on her implant. What a mess. Between their shuttles getting shot down or having to make landings wherever they could, the Corsairs had stated out in small, isolated pockets. But it looked like the tide was turning. The marines were fighting as a unified, disciplined force, taking and holding ground, survivors hooking up to form larger units. Pirates held little loyalty to each other, and it showed. They were either fleeing or attacking whoever was closest to them and suffering for it. As she watched, Dragon could see known or suspected pirate positions disappearing from the map.
The cultists were holding out, though, and calling up more and more Grimm. Hells, they probably weren't even bothering to control the beasts, just turning them loose to cause whatever havoc they could.
By the grace of whatever dark gods looked after fools and Corsairs, it looked like Dragon's team had worked their way towards one of the larger Outer Dark concentrations. Good. Time for some payback. Maybe they'd even manage to get the bastard that called up the thing that downed White Heron.
She forced herself to stop, taking several deep calming breaths. Being angry over Heron's death was okay—Dragon was only mortal after all—but this was no time to let her temper do her thinking. Too many other lives depended on her having a clear head today. Dragon considered the tactical map carefully. It looked like there was a good-sized group of cultists nearby and a lot of Grimm coming from that area too.
Time to go hunting.
Outside, the space near Night's Haven Anchorage had become a silent disco of carnage. Pirate reinforcements were starting to arrive in scattered ones and twos, forcing the Corsair ships to break off their assault on the anchorage and face them.
Crescent Rose, Ismelda's Blade, Damnation's Hammer, and the Vendetta were paired up in two-ship elements, the Hammer with the Vendetta and the Blade with the Rose. Space twisted and warped as a pirate cruiser dropped out of hyperspace in front of the Blade and the Rose. Beams and missiles lashed out from the Corsair ships, gouging deep into the pirate vessel before it even knew what had killed it. Blossom bared a feral grin under her mask as lifeboats spilled from the dying pirate cruiser. Between the natural gravity well of the anchorage and the hyperspace mines the Corsair ships had deployed, the odds of an incoming vessel arriving anywhere near its intended arrival point were next to nonexistent.
Crescent Rose shook as another pirate vessel dropped into existence, this time aft of them and the Blade. The Corsair ships arced around, splitting up, Ismelda's Blade swooping above the pirate ship, Crescent Rose diving underneath, both ships rolling to bring their broadsides to bear.
Another pirate vessel destroyed, Crimson Blossom thought as Crescent Rose and Ismelda's Blade turned back toward the anchorage. The Corsair assault teams were slowly but surely clearing a pathway through the abattoir the landing cavern had become. It was simply bad luck that the Corsair assault had coincided with a visitation in force by the cult of the Outer Dark.
Or maybe there was something more to it. Was the Outer Dark preparing to bring the pirates under their control? Now there was a horrifying thought. The pirates were already a fairly bloodthirsty lot; adding the lunatics of the Outer Dark to the mix didn't bode well for anyone.
No time to worry about that now. Blossom snapped out orders and beams shot out from the Crescent Rose, shattering more of the remaining weapons mounts on the surface of the anchorage.
Underneath Blossom's mask, a tear rolled down her cheek.
Dragon bit back a curse as her marines poured fire into a pack of cultists huddling in the wreck of a shuttle. Sane people wouldn't take cover in something that was actually on fire, but the Outer Dark wasn't known for their sanity on a good day. Today what little sanity they normally had was gone, shattered by their rage at finding themselves under attack by the Corsairs.
"Bolt, how many grenades do you have left?" she called over her shoulder as she fired her burst cannon into the shuttle. She was going to have to order a break in their advance soon. The marines' weapons were overheating and malfunctioning, to say nothing of her cannon.
"Two, boss. 'Don't miss,' right?"
"Right." Unfortunately, their merry little band of maniacs was currently cut off from any other Corsair forces, whether by the pirates, the cultists, or some combination of both, it didn't matter. They were short on ammo and long on odds. What the hell. Most outcasts didn't live more than a decade, though Corsairs tended to buck that trend. "Cover Bolt!" she ordered at her marines, and they all opened fire as Bolt fired the last of his grenades into the wrecked shuttle.
The shuttle exploded, whether from Bolt's grenades or something cooking off inside the shuttle there was no way of telling. "Take ten. Check gear, do what you can about ammo." Dragon flipped up her faceplate, not caring right now if anyone saw her face or not. It was getting pretty whiffy in her armor. "Blake, can you sneak ahead a bit and give me an idea what's in front of us? A spa might be nice."
Blake gave Dragon a quick kiss before disappearing into the smoke and chaos. Less than ten minutes later she was back, looking like she couldn't believe what she had found. "Yang, Dragon, you've got to see this. I...I can't really find the words."
Frowning, Dragon motioned the marines to follow Blake. What had unnerved her so much that she'd called her by her birth name? Blake motioned everyone down, then gestured for Dragon to follow her up a stack of cargo containers. Once at the top, Blake got down, crawling to the far edge. Dragon followed, slow and careful. Her lifepartner sometimes mocked her for having all the subtlety of a supernova, but she knew how to move quietly when she wanted to. "Lord and Lady," Dragon whispered, horrified at the sight that lay before her.
The Outer Dark cultists had found or made a large clear area between a group of their shuttles. Pools of roiling, viscous blackness lay scattered around. As she watched, a trio of cultists dragged a struggling pirate to the edge of one. Two of them held the pirate while the third slit his throat, chanting as she did so. Even before the cultists had dragged their victim's body aside, beowolves started to drag themselves from the pool, snapping and snarling at the cultists and each other. The one that had chanted spoke again in the same language to the Grimm, gesturing out into the landing cavern. The largest of the beowolves threw back its head and howled., the rest of the pack joining in.
They crept back to the rest of the marines, filling them in on what the two of them had seen in hushed tones, Dragon finishing with, "We've got to take this out. It's some sort of spawning place for Grimm. They can summon more of those damn things on a scale that's... unimaginable. And we've got to flat-out kill that woman in the red dress."
Blake shivered at the memory. While most of the cultists had worn a mix of black, grey, and white, there had been one woman wearing a crimson dress that had seemed to be in charge. And the look on her face...she shivered at the memory. It had almost seemed as if the woman was enjoying the carnage that had been unleashed with an almost orgasmic intensity. "No problem. She's mine."
"Blake... are you sure?"
The Faunus woman nodded again, her face set in stone. "Some people are just...just, I don't know the words. So far gone you can't share the universe with them, not and ever feel safe. Some people you just have to kill, put them down like a rabid animal." Blake drew her twin short-swords and looked at them, her voice catching as she continued. "I'll take her down after the rest of you hit their perimeter. Give me a five-minute head start."
"Okay, here's the plan," Dragon whispered as her marines took up position to assault the cultists. "Bust in and shoot anything that moves. Keep your fire away from the woman in red until Blake takes her shot. Other than that, just try not to die. I look forward to buying you thirsty bastards as much beer as you can drink." This drew a ragged laugh. Dragon reached up and pulled over her helmet, looking her marines in the eye. "I'm proud to have served with each and every one of you. I wish—" Yang's voice broke, but she continued—"I wish my father could have known such men as you. He would have been proud to see us today."
The marines broke through the edge of the cultist camp, butchering the cultist guards with lethal efficiency. They took what cover they could find behind random piles of debris, downing the cultists near them with rapid, precise fire even as every cultist in the area surged toward them. The woman in red sauntered toward the Corsair marines, her every move speaking a laughing contempt for her foes. She stopped and raised her hand, speaking an eldritch word that sent a shiver down Dragon's spine, as if someone had walked over her grave. A blast of fire shot from her hand into one of the piles of crates the Corsairs were hiding behind, destroying it and killing the marines hiding behind it.
Dragon swore. Of course, the bitch was some sort of sorceress! She'd promised Blake the first shot, but hell, Blake couldn't blame her for trying to take the bitch out, could she? Dragon centered her cannon on the woman in red, but before she could fire a shot, Blake made her move.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Blake appeared behind the cultist leader, one of her swords sliding towards her target for the killing blow. Somehow the woman sensed her approach, turning halfway to face Blake, only to stagger back as Blake's blow severed her left arm.
The woman fell at the edge of one the spawning pools, shoving her still-bleeding stump into the roiling blackness. There was a manic glee in her eyes as she stood, gazing at her new Grimm arm. She laughed and turned again to face Blake, her horrific limb snapping out and knocking Blake flying with its claws. Blake rolled to her feet and readied her weapons, still determined to kill the woman despite having lost the element of surprise. Before she could act, a giant, wintry armored figure dropped down in front of her out of nowhere, knocking the cultist leader to the ground with a single blow of its greatsword. The giant raised its sword again, stabbing at where the sorceress had fallen, only to have her roll out of the way.
Dragon stood there in shock. She'd only known one person who could call up things like that giant, and she was de-
Then she saw it. Standing on top of one of the cultist shuttles was White Heron, surrounded by a glowing white aura, her face covered by a strip of cloth instead of a mask. And Dragon was reminded of how the Schnees had won the throne of the empire.
Long, long ago, the clan that would one day become the House of Schnee had held some of the mightiest battle-mages anyone had known. Although wars were now fought with starships and blasters instead of swords and bows, that power still flowed in their veins.
And today, for the first time in centuries, a Schnee had come to war.