CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Ascent
A sense of dread lingered with Fletcher's departure, and in that brooding silence both Major Daniel Vaughn and Kiros Myzet sat motionless and despondent. Their jailor, Private Marcus, leaned against the opposite wall with his arms folded and gaze averted – like Vaughn and Kiros, he also seemed unwilling to speak. They all might have remained in that uncomfortable silence for hours had it not been for a commotion that sounded from the room's entrance.
The door began to slide open. However, it apparently opened too slowly, for a large clawed hand appeared and roughly shoved the panel into the recess of the wall. There was a screeching of metal as the door protested the forced journey along its rails. The noise died. Grall lumbered into the room.
Both Vaughn and Kiros gave a start as the krogan seemed to fill the entire room with his monstrous bulk. Vaughn's heart began a panicked thumping. He hadn't expected for his grenade to kill – at that distance krogans were still quite resilient – but he never dreamed that Grall would be up and walking after only a few hours.
Indeed, it looked as if Grall shouldn't have been walking. Yellow drops of blood left a trail as Grall, oblivious to the puddles, thundered into the room. A noticeable limp barely slowed him. The right side of the krogan's face was plastered with bandages though smaller, unwrapped gashes could still be seen. Grall's right eye was also covered, leaving only a single bright-red slit of malevolence that narrowed at the sight of Vaughn.
"You're not supposed to be here," Marcus said. He reflexively took a step away from Grall as the krogan entered the room. The private's hand nearly reached to a sidearm at his waist, but he stopped himself. Marcus' gaze then dropped down to what Grall carried with him. His eyes widened. "The colonel ordered you to put that away when you're here in Illyria. It makes people nervous." The private's gaze remained fixed as the pale light shone dully off of Grall's makeshift battle axe.
Grall ignored the man and instead took a step closer to Vaughn. His lips parted to reveal sharp rows of teeth. "Well now..." the krogan said. "Here you are."
"Good to see you up and about," Vaughn said flatly, hiding his unease. "Though, it seems you're actually sober this time."
It was true. Grall's eyes were no longer dilated, and his perpetual biotic shimmer was gone. His voice sounded in a malicious rumble. "I have business to settle with you, human." For a heartbeat it seemed as if he would step closer, but instead he then turned to Marcus. "Where's Fletcher?" he growled.
"Not here," Marcus said. "He's waiting while they ready the frigate. But I'll save you some time, Grall. He's not letting you have any. You're supposed to rest, heal, and stay out of the way."
Grall snarled in anger. "You will save me time. Where does he keep it? Tell me. Bring it to me." Blue light flickered from the tips of Grall's fingers, but the flare was weak and died after producing little effect. Grall frowned in confusion as he looked down at his hand. It was then Vaughn noticed that the krogan's extremities were twitching ever so slightly.
"He's going through withdrawal," Vaughn realized. "His body's become so reliant on those biotic-enhancing drugs that when he's not on them, he has trouble using his ability..."
Regardless, Grall was still a fearsome sight to behold. He loomed over Marcus, standing over half a meter taller than the nervous human. "Well?" Grall prompted after a moment of Marcus' hesitation.
Marcus swallowed. "You don't need any more Minagen. The ground assault is over, and the colonel doesn't want you on that stuff while you're around civilians. It makes you unstable."
"Knives…" the krogan hissed, shaking his head. "It's like knives in my skull without it." The krogan lifted a hand to his scarred frontal plate. A low, pained growl followed, reverberating in Grall's throat at the apparent agony. Then abruptly, the growl erupted in a sudden crescendo as he bellowed at Marcus. "Damn what Fletcher wants! Where is it?!" he shouted in a squall of murderous fury. The battle axe glinted menacingly as the krogan brandished it.
Marcus jumped back a pace and drew his pistol in a quick, practiced motion. The weapon's barrel leveled at Grall's face, though the trembling in Marcus' hand betrayed fear. "You know what, Grall? We don't actually need you anymore. We don't need your insane, coked-up ramblings or your threats. After today, Isara and her hounds will all be dead and you'll have nothing left to hunt." An undercurrent of anger ran through Marcus' voice; the bitter words tumbled from his mouth like water from a burst dam. "We… we won't need you anymore."
Grall froze, and a deafening silence fell over the room. On the krogan's face, Vaughn could see a poorly-controlled rage thrash just beneath the surface. Yet, after a tense several moments, the savagery appeared to calm. The axe lowered. "There's no need for this, is there?" Grall asked, somehow imbuing his gravelly voice with a placating tone. "We're on the same side after all."
The pistol in Marcus' hand stayed raised, but the beginnings of doubt began to appear on the man's face. He said nothing.
"That's better," Grall soothed, despite the fact that Marcus had done nothing different. "Fletcher would trust you to keep calm. He relies on you. You know, he once told me-" Grall never finished the sentence. As if some switch had been flipped, the krogan suddenly dropped low and lunged forward with the axe. There had been no time to heft his arm back and swing the weapon in a proper cleaving blow and so he rammed it forward like a spear instead. It wasn't an ideal use for the weapon, but the sheer force behind the strike drove the pole end and upper tip of the axe's blade into Marcus' chest.
A single shot rang out, followed by a thud as Marcus slammed into the wall behind. There came a croaking gasp, the smell of blood, and a final wheeze as Marcus slumped to the ground. His lifeless eyes stared down at the blunt pole end that had partially impaled him and crushed his heart.
"Fletcher barely knows who you are," Grall sneered. He spat at the corpse and then began to wrench his weapon free. Fresh blood seeped from a bullet wound in the krogan's thigh, but he didn't even seem to register the injury.
"Well that doesn't bode well," Kiros muttered under his breath. "Orders, sir?" he asked mockingly to Vaughn.
Vaughn ignored the jab and whispered back. "My chains won't budge. You have any ideas?"
Kiros gave a confident smile. "I can get us out of this." He paused, then gave a shrug as the reality of the situation overrode his casual arrogance. "...Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"Or I just piss him off and we die horribly. It could go either way." Kiros smirked and then raised his voice. "Grall, I'm curious – what clan do you belong to?"
Grall turned, holding the axe now tipped with crimson. He looked as if he was noticing Kiros for the first time. "Doesn't matter. Clans are pointless. You only have yourself to rely on in life."
"What a shame," Kiros lamented. "You see, when I'm talking to krogan, I like to know if my ancestors used their ancestors as test subjects. Did I mention that the Myzet clan did much of the work on perfecting the original Genophage?" The salarian leaned forward confidingly. "You know, I'm curious… I heard there were a few mutations of the virus. As you know, the Genophage was only intended to reduce fertility, but… well, some mutations apparently affected 'performance', if you know what I mean." Kiros winked. "You know anything about that?"
"Oh, that's funny…" Grall said in a low, dangerous voice. He hefted the axe so that the pole of the weapon rested on his right shoulder. "I've got an even funnier joke for you." In a flash of movement, the axe vanished from Grall's shoulder and sped downward in a silvery arc. Drops of Marcus' blood flecked against the wall. The speed of the attack shocked Vaughn, and he almost expected a spray of green salarian blood to follow. But instead of gore, there were sparks.
Kiros pushed off from the wall, skidding to a halt in the center of the room. His chains scraped on the ground as the two equal lengths of metal links followed him. Vaughn blinked in wonderment. Grall was fast, yet Kiros had been faster. The salarian had managed to avoid the axe strike, moving so that his chain suffered the blow instead. He was still manacled to his lengths of chain, yet they did little to impede the salarian's speed.
"You-!" Grall bellowed, but was cut off by his own snarl of pain. The krogan recoiled a step as one of Kiros' chains lashed out like a whip. The metal links reopened one of the bandaged gashes on the larger alien's cheek. Grall's snarl intensified into a roar as he flung out his free hand toward Kiros. Biotic energy swirled around his hand… and then fizzled out.
"Yes, yes…" Kiros said absently, sounding like a physician lost in thought during an inspection. "Performance issues indeed."
This time, Grall lost himself in fury. He swung the axe wildly, hacking at Kiros. The attacks were so frenzied that the krogan likely would've thrown himself off balance if hadn't been for his massive weight and strength. Kiros was forced to halt his attacks with his chains and instead kept in constant movement. The salarian dodged with repeated sidesteps, circling his enemy and trying to keep on the blind side caused by Grall's eyepatch.
Vaughn watched the flurry of movement. Kiros was displaying a skill in close combat that awed Vaughn, yet worry was building up in the back of the major's mind. Grall was heavily injured, and so Kiros' speed advantage did give him an edge. However, Grall had the physical strength of a krogan – one far beyond that of salarians with their relatively frail limbs. If Kiros had his monomecular daggers, Vaughn would've felt more at ease, but all the salarian had were chains that proved to be nothing more than a stinging annoyance. The worst feeling of all was knowing that while he was still restrained, there was nothing Vaughn could do.
"Slippery little bastard," Grall said between panting gulps for air. He had halted his attacks for the moment and looked to be catching his breath. On the ground, small puddles of blood collected from half a dozen trickling wounds on Grall's body – some caused by Kiros, some from the night before which had reopened.
Kiros didn't respond. A small gash showed on the salarian's upper arm from where Grall had nearly landed an arm-severing cut. The mockery was gone from the salarian's face, replaced by a look of intense concentration.
Vaughn watched anxiously as Kiros instead responded to Grall with an attack. The salarian whipped at the krogan's legs with his left hand chain, but the attack proved to be a feint as he let the blow falter. Instead, he snapped his right hand chain at the krogan's face, presumably aiming for the alien's remaining eye. But as he did so, Vaughn cursed. The strike to the face was too slow, and Vaughn knew it. He watched as Kiros hesitated a heartbeat too long before pulling back on the chain, and to Vaughn's horror, Grall grabbed the whistling metal links in mid-air.
Grall roared in triumph. He pulled, forcing Kiros to stumble forward. The axe rose, and as the room reverberated with the krogan's bellowing, the axe fell. Salarian blood splashed on the already-stained floor.
The echoes died. Yet, in their stead, there was a curious humming noise, followed by the clattering of metal on the ground. It was the axe that dropped. Kiros still stood, for instead of resisting the pull, he had moved forward and inside the axe blow's reach – too close to Grall for the blade to have done its work. As Kiros stood there, the salarian's right fist was raised up in the air, looking as if he had just followed through on an uppercut. But the fist had not connected with Grall's chin. Instead, the salarian's omni-blade sizzled in the quiet as it impaled up the soft underside of Grall's chin, through the roof of his mouth, and into the krogan's brain.
Grall's eyes widened and it seemed as if he tried to speak. However, the omni-blade had effectively sealed the alien's mouth shut – likely piercing his tongue as well – and so the words never came. Grall's body spasmed and Kiros had to throw himself out of the way to avoid the collapsing krogan corpse.
"What the hell?" Vaughn's mouth fell open. As Kiros pulled away, Vaughn could see a small omni-tool's emitter protruding from the top of the salarian's wrist, through the dark green flesh. Some blood still trickled, and to Vaughn's slight revulsion, small flaps of skin hung loose from where the emitter had erupted to the surface.
Kiros ignored the injury and gave Vaughn an ostentatious bow. "One of the first rules of the Special Tasks Group: always have a backup weapon the enemy won't find. Always be prepared." Kiros began to hack away at Vaughn's chains with the omni-blade.
A relieved smile came to Vaughn's face. "You know, I think that's the motto of the Boy Scouts back on Earth," he said as he stretched, glad to be free. The manacles were still locked around his wrists, but it was undoubtedly an improvement. "The 'be prepared' bit, I mean," Vaughn hastily amended. "Not the part about having backup weapons."
"Why not? Clearly, you humans coddle your children too much." Kiros began to work on severing his own chains.
"Does that hurt?" Vaughn asked as he watched Kiros work.
"I'm exceedingly tough," Kiros boasted. "...And a dose of painkillers gets released into my system when the omni-tool activates. That helps a bit." He paused and looked around. "Why has nobody come in here to check on the noise?"
"Like Fletcher said, he only kept a limited number of people in the loop – and I imagine many of them were leading his attacks in the forest. He's still trying to keep our presence a secret." Vaughn moved over to Marcus' corpse and picked up the man's pistol. "How long a charge do you have on that omni-tool?" he asked Kiros.
"Just a few minutes. As you might imagine, there's not a whole lot of room under my skin for a power source. Want me to try contacting the rest of the team?"
Vaughn shook his head. "Save the battery. By now they'll have guessed that we're captured. Standard protocol in that case is to change frequencies and encryption modules. They'll have picked any one of at least two dozen."
"Right." Kiros nodded. "So what now?"
"First, we find out where we are and make sure the rest of the building is clear. I want to be sure about us not having company."
It didn't take long for Vaughn and Kiros to gauge their surroundings. Luckily, any locks to the jail room had been broken by Grall, and so as they left the room, they found themselves in the basement of a tiny, one-story house. The dimly-lit basement hallway gave way to a narrow staircase, which then led up to a cramped room that opened to the outside. It was a shoddy prison, but given Fletcher's policy of shooting Isara's exiles on-sight, Vaughn figured the building was rarely-used.
"No signs of panic outside," Vaughn observed as he peered through the room's single, dingy window. The streets were empty, tinged in the steely-gray light of early dawn. "We might actually have the element of surprise here."
"Engineering Crew to the landing pad." A voice echoed from outside the building, the surprise of the noise causing Vaughn to jerk away from window. "Engineering Crew Alpha to the landing pad," the voice repeated in its slightly metallic timbre.
"They have an intercom system set up," Vaughn realized aloud.
"And they're blaring messages at this ungodly hour of the morning?" Kiros shook his head. "Despicable."
Vaughn turned, finding the salarian standing in front of a table at the room's opposite corner. "What's that?" he asked.
"It's what exactly what I needed." Grinning, Kiros threw off the tarp that had covered the table's surface.
There was a scattering of pouches which Vaughn recognized as being from his confiscated utility belt. He rummaged through them, but found them all empty. Yet, there were also a few devices that Vaughn couldn't recognize. "Those yours?" he asked Kiros.
"They are indeed," Kiros said, inspecting them for damage. "It looks like they took our weapons, our ammo, and our rations – but they left these. They probably had no idea what to make of them… I'm always grateful for human ignorance."
Vaughn rolled his eyes. He couldn't see anything useful of his that Fletcher had left behind, but Kiros was evidently satisfied with what remained of his gear. "Is that your tactical cloak?" Vaughn guessed.
"Very good, major," Kiros said with mock approval. He clipped the device onto his waist, then held still for a minute as the cloak readjusted to his frame. A second later, Kiros vanished, leaving only a pocket of barely-noticeable distortion where he once stood.
"It's a good thing you have it – I can probably walk around out there with little problem, but you're going to catch some unwanted attention."
"Catch a few bullets you mean," Kiros remarked.
"We don't have much time," Vaughn said. "We need to stop that frigate. Lucky for us, it sounds like it's not quite ready to take off yet."
"That's only part of the solution," Kiros said. "As long as Fletcher's still in play, we're at risk." The salarian's eyes narrowed as he studied Vaughn. "He needs to be taken out."
"You're right about him being the key to this," Vaughn agreed. "But we might still need him alive. I just need to discredit him in front of the people of Illyria – to let them know he's been lying to them about our presence. If we just kill their leader, it could make things worse." But despite his words of caution, Vaughn wondered at how he would react upon seeing Fletcher. He shuddered at the thought of the massacre Fletcher planned and of the massacre Fletcher had already caused. His trigger finger twitched at the thought of Glissa's blood-soaked body.
Kiros gave an unintelligible murmur of disgust, but didn't contradict Vaughn. "Let me guess – you're going after him yourself."
"And I need you to find the Verdun. You may not be able to capture the frigate by yourself, but do what you can to stall it. Delay it as best you can," Vaughn said, eying the tactical cloak emitter now at Kiros' waist. "Just be sure not to damage the engine's power couplings."
Kiros scoffed. "I know what I'm doing. Do you? You still look like hell."
Vaughn felt like hell. Anytime he moved, his right shoulder and chest sent bolts of pain flickering through his body. His head throbbed with a dull pounding, and even their previous short walk up the stairs was enough to make him slightly dizzy. "Might have a minor concussion from that grenade," Vaughn thought. But he could stand, and he could hold a gun. That would be enough.
"I'll be fine." Vaughn opened up his pistol's firing chamber, studying the faintly-glowing thermal clip. "As long as I don't need to fire more than seven shots," he added.
Kiros frowned. "A frigate on a landing pad will be easy enough for me to find. But do you know how you're going to find Fletcher?"
"I might," Vaughn said thoughtfully. "Fletcher wouldn't allow your gear to leave this building because its salarian origin was too noticeable. But the other guard, the one that left with Fletcher… I'm pretty sure he was wearing my omni-tool."
Kiros thought for a second and shrugged. "I didn't notice, but it wouldn't surprise me. If Fletcher has even half a brain, he'll be trying to hack into it. No way he'll ignore a possible-" Kiros abruptly halted mid-sentence, struck by a sudden idea.
And Vaughn gave a triumphant smile. "So… my suspicions were correct," he said airily.
For a moment, Kiros looked too confused to speak. Then there was panic, and a deluge of questions and excuses tried to pour from the salarian's mouth all at once.
"Well it was just a precaution-" Kiros paused and furrowed his brow. "You see, once the mission was over I was going to remove it and-" The salarian's face morphed into an uncomfortable smile. "It's common practice in the STG to-" His fists clenched. "Dammit, Corporal Volkov is guilty of the same damn-… Dammit!" Kiros heaved a deep breath to release his exasperation. "How did you know?" he asked through clenched teeth once he had calmed.
"That you put a tracker on my omni-tool?" Vaughn asked. "Back in the forest, it almost seemed as if you were expecting me to come get you. And then afterward, before Grall arrived, I told you about how this team needed to be founded on trust. The guilt on your face was as clear as day."
"I nearly told you then." Kiros shook his head. "I would've told you... And I was going to remove it at the end of this mission. Sometimes… it's a quicker way to learn about who you're serving under." The salarian sighed as he activated his omni-tool. The device was running at half power to conserve energy, but on the faint display a small triangle rotated slowly, a few centimeters offset from the image's center.
"How far away is that?" Vaughn asked as he started to commit the image to memory.
"Just a city block away, northwest of here," Kiros replied. "That's where you'll find Fletcher. Or his guard, at least. Let's hope they're still together."
"Either way, it's a start; I'll find out where he's hiding," Vaughn declared. He patted Kiros on the shoulder as he pushed past to the door, but paused at the threshold. "I'll tell you now the same thing I'm going to tell Alexei. Pull something like that without permission again, and I'll have you off this expedition. And after what I've seen from you today… that would be a real shame."
"Yes sir. And..." Kiros trailed off, and for a moment it seemed he wouldn't continue. "Good luck, major," the salarian finally said. "Be careful."
Vaughn walked down the streets of Illyria, accompanied only by the echoes of his footsteps. "Is this part of the city deserted?" he wondered. "Or maybe it's still too early in the morning..."
It was hard to tell which was true. Normally, Vaughn wouldn't have expected people to be living in these half-ruined buildings, but he doubted there were the resources to fully reconstruct the city. Much of what Vaughn saw reminded him of the early days after the war: the cavernous hollows left by collapsed roofs, the mountains of rubble that had once been skyscrapers, and a fine layer of dust that seemed to cover everything. There was some evidence of reconstruction, however. Frameworks of lighter-colored wood told of freshly-cut trees brought in from Elysium's forests. It was heartening to see, yet there was clearly much that still needed to be done. In the end, Vaughn was grateful for the solitude, for it spared him a potential confrontation. He was human like the other occupants of Illyria, but doubtless his haggard and bloody appearance would have attracted a second look.
"Here." Vaughn stopped. He found himself before a tall wooden fence that stretched between two collapsed concrete buildings. The fence was tightly constructed and built high so that the single door in its center was the only means of discovering what lay beyond. Vaughn was certain that Kiros' signal led here, for he had been counting his footsteps and maintaining a fixed gait – an old trick from his military training. "Fletcher better still be here… Wherever 'here' is..."
Vaughn pushed lightly on the door, letting it swing inward just enough for him to squeeze through. Taking in a deep breath, and with his pistol at the ready, he entered.
It was a cemetery. This wasn't immediately obvious, for the headstones were little more than irregular pieces of rubble jutting from the ground. It wasn't until Vaughn saw the crudely engraved names that he realized their purpose. In all, there was somewhere close to a hundred of them on a field of coarse dirt, ordered in neat rows and ringed by the fence. And among those graves was Fletcher, kneeling before one of the stones, his bodyguard several paces away to the side. By the way the headstones were oriented, both men had their backs to Vaughn. "Diana Fletcher..." Vaughn read from the weathered concrete slab.
"Do you really think your wife would want you to go through with this?" Vaughn called out.
Fletcher jerked his head as if he had just been slapped. His bodyguard also whirled around, but both men froze as they saw the pistol in Vaughn's hand. "Major? I… Where is Private Marcus?" Fletcher asked in a hoarse voice.
"Dead," Vaughn sighed, his words blunted by exhaustion. "But at Grall's hand, not mine." The major shook his head, heading off Fletcher's bemusement. "And then we took care of him. There's been enough death today. It's time to bring this to an end, Fletcher."
The colonel's face contorted with bitterness. Then, to Vaughn's surprise, he ran.
The pistol in Vaughn's hand twitched to the left, tracking Fletcher as he darted between the gravestones. There came the split second in which the shot lined up perfectly, and the urge to squeeze the trigger swelled up inside Vaughn. It would have been so easy… but he stopped himself. "I can't," he realized. "We still need him alive."
Vaughn was also able to resist the urge because he knew Fletcher had no hope of escaping. He blocked the only door, and the whole area had the high fence wall which Fletcher couldn't possibly hope to vault. As Vaughn realized this, he caught a glimpse of Fletcher's face and noticed something: a sly grin. "He knows I won't risk killing him," Vaughn realized with sudden horror.
The major desperately swung the pistol back to his right, toward the gunshot he knew was coming. Sure enough, as Vaughn's eyes darted back toward Fletcher's bodyguard, he could see a handgun rising – aiming for him. There was no time to settle his own weapon. There was only instinct. Instinct had warned him of the true danger, even before rational thought coalesced in his mind. And it was the instinct of muscle memory that Vaughn relied on now as two simultaneous shots rang out.
Vaughn's pistol hovered steady, ready to fire a second shot. But none was needed. Blood misted from the bodyguard's head as it jerked backward, sending a familiar metallic stench that permeated the graveyard.
"Jesus..." Fletcher said, aghast. He had stopped running and was staring wide-eyed as his subordinate slumped over his wife's gravestone, sheeting it with blood. He turned accusing eyes toward Vaughn. "Sergeant DeLuca was a good man. He-..." The words died as Fletcher's shock abated and he seemed to realize the foolishness of his indignation. "You, uh... you're bleeding, major."
Vaughn glanced at his left arm. Blood stained the shirt sleeve of his upper arm, and with this revelation came the surge of pain. It was enough to make him curse, but it was manageable – it was just another to add to the list. Vaughn carefully felt at the wound.
"Looks like it just grazed you," Fletcher offered as he moved toward Vaughn with tentative steps. It looked as if the man hadn't thought to carry his own weapon, and so the defiance had fled from him.
"I think you're right." Vaughn nodded. Then suddenly, he swung his wounded arm, striking Fletcher on the side of the head with an open palm. He watched with a measure of satisfaction as the man stumbled to the ground. "You deserve worse than that, you bastard," Vaughn snarled in vented frustration. "But I'm going to make sure you do the right thing and put a stop to this madness." He stooped over the corpse of Sergeant DeLuca and tore a strip of unbloodied cloth to bind the wound on his arm. He also made sure to retrieve his omni-tool from the dead sergeant's wrist.
"And how am I going to do that?" Fletcher rasped as he used a gravestone to help himself to his feet.
"Your intercom system," Vaughn said. "You're going to tell the truth – the whole truth – and you're going to declare a ceasefire. And don't think about causing any trouble," he warned. "Even in this state, I'm stronger and faster than you. And I'll be faster still if you force me to put a bullet in your leg."
"There's a problem with that plan," Fletcher mused softly.
"And what is that?"
"By now, people will have heard the gunshots."
"Dammit, he's right." Vaughn ground his teeth. "Then we just need to move fast." Vaughn pushed Fletcher forward and moved to conceal his weapon – his hope was that the only thing anybody would see is Fletcher and a bodyguard, nothing more. But those damn gunshots…
Vaughn followed Fletcher out of the cemetery and into the street. The major craned his head up to look at the power lines. They fed electricity to the makeshift speakers that were mounted on street corners, and Vaughn watched where they led. He had a pretty good guess that a communications building would be at the other end of the thick cabling, probably not too far from Illyria's power generator.
"Major, I think we both know what will happen when the first group of my soldiers arrives," Fletcher said, half-turning to look at Vaughn behind him. "You're fast and you're good, but you won't make it to the city's center. I will likely die in the crossfire, but I am prepared for that. And so I remind you: my offer of friendship still stands."
"No." The answer came automatically, escaping Vaughn's lips before he could dwell on it – before he could agonize over it. Deep down, he knew it was the only choice he could make. "Not if it means the death of all the people in those caves."
A streak of red light blossomed in the west, rising high against the early morning sky before dropping. A second followed soon after somewhere south of it. They were still far away, but Vaughn thought he recognized them for what they were. "Flares?" he wondered.
"What in the hell..." Fletcher whispered. A third flare rose and fell.
A moment later, the intercom speakers buzzed to life. "Squads Alpha through Epsilon report to the western ramparts immediately. Repeat: Squads Alpha through Epsilon to the western ramparts."
"Fletcher?" Vaughn asked, though he had an idea of what was happening.
"The outer ring of the city is kept abandoned," Fletcher said in a distracted voice. "But we keep scouts there. Something is speeding through on its way here, and-" A fourth flare erupted, and Vaughn thought this one seemed larger – closer. "...And it's moving fast," Fletcher finished quietly.
Vaughn smiled. "Alexei, you glorious bastard..."