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"Your drop location will, uh, it will be isolated from the other specialists." He heard the assistant's voice crackle in his ear, a glowing orange display of a section of Omega lighting up as she did. It zoomed in on a northern section, showing a bare impression of a few decks and designating a spot on each. "Each of these decks has an access dock under what intelligence has determined to be light lock down."
"Mhm." Light lock down, according to intelligence? He sighed, thumbed the M7S slotted in beside his Harrier knowingly, and nodded his understanding. "Understood, Miss Beau. What are my short-op assignments?"
"Confirm our intelligence, secure the docking area, signal for allies to dock and assist with their orders or assume command as you determine is needed." She answered clippedly, in the way that one did while reading a list off of a piece of paper. "Other teams will be hitting more heavily secured zones, and making a… Show of Aria T'Loak being with them, retaking her station."
"Propaganda."
"Yeah."
"Mhmm." It made all the sense, really, to play up her involvement. Like they'd said in the meeting. And this sort of stunt would tie her directly to the Coalition, legitimizing them both in turn. "Is that all?"
"The rest is up to you to determine on-site." She answered quietly. Before he could respond, she had moved on, "I'm checking your pod's seal. Check your armor and hard-suit. Launch in ninety seconds."
"Armor seals green across the board." Nature of the mission - being punching into a space station with a heavy drop pod and then fighting there - had reasonably meant wearing a fully hardsuit. And while he preferred the tactile feel of the open trigger finger, he found the textured inside of his suit preferable to the vacuum of space.
It was warmer at the very least.
"Pod status is green as well, Lieutenant Commander." And with a jittering tremor, he felt it lock into what had to be final launch position, set on what seemed to amount to a railgun catapult system, from what he had seen of it. "Launching in around sixty seconds, last call. Good luck, and godspeed in your mission."
"Understood. Ready to launch as soon as possible." He would have preferred 'happy hunting' personally, with his opinions on the heare-after and the like. In all fairness, though, the Covenant may have colored his opinion of such things a bit. "Heavy orbital plasma bombardment has a habit of that…"
"Pardon?"
"Nothing." He grunted, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "Talking to myself."
"Long as you don't argue with yourself..."
"Nah, I don't do that anymore." He cracked a smile he knew no one could see and chuckled, then, and added, "I lost them too often to keep doing it, so I cut the habit out. Lesson one, Miss Beau. I really, really hate losing."
"Well, you'll, uh, just have to win the war then, so you won't lose. Won't you?" He chuckled but didn't answer, feeling his pod shudder around and letting it cut him off. Her ease gone from her voice, she grunted a last warning, "Launching. Brace for launch and impact, flak is light but present."
He never got a chance to answer, feeling momentum slam him back against the seat he was on and sucking in a breath as he was launched through. For a few seconds, all he could see was darkness, and all he could feel was the tremor that launching through the long tube gave him, reverberating powerfully through the hull of his pod. A heartbeat, and he felt the tremors die as he broke free of the armored hull of the Everest's prow.
Through the viewscreen above him he saw dozens more pods like his, interspersed between torpedoes meant to mask their existence. Not in the sense of being invisible, he knew, but rather to make their landing assaults easier. At least in theory. Regardless, insertion pods, torpedoes and, somewhat faster and more fiery, mass accelerator fire lanced by Rachni forward assault ships towards Omega.
And for a moment, all was quiet and peaceful, just them drifting through the orange and ruddy colored space around Omega.
But as always, reality was swift to come crashing down, the bow of a black and white ship creeping into view hundreds of miles away. Red light glinted as its GARDIAN systems kicked in, lashing out and lancing down the torpedoes they had detected incoming. Muted, he saw a hundred missiles and mass accelerators, alongside a handful of unlucky pods of course, be swatted aside as it and other Cerberus ships engaged the barrage.
His hand lingered on the personal control stick beside him for a moment, tempted so badly to engage the thrusters early and take evasive maneuvers. But if he did, he knew, then Cerberus would detect his thermals and blot him out of the sky specifically. Worse, it would spoil their gambit entirely. Something that only one of them reacting that way would do, as their trajectories had been pre-plotted to avoid any Cerberus ships, even as he saw torpedoes impacting along Cerberus hulls.
And so, silent aside from his heart hammering in his chest, he drifted by the Cerberus battle line. Passing first corvettes, and then even beyond the heavy destroyers, cruisers, frigates, and a Cerberus dreadnought much like the Everest itself. Aside from its color, of course. Still, as helpless as he was, he took some satisfaction in watching the accelerator rounds and torpedoes - few of either as there were, now, having impacted the ships he'd already passed or been stopped - punch into its hull and kinetic barriers. Smoke and fire billowed alongside debris as holes were punched and explosions ripped through decks, before fire, manpower and debris all were blown into space and sent reeling into the abyss.
"They were already dead." He reminded himself as pity and sympathy panged painfully in his chest. "Or dying at least. Either way, better to get it over with. For them and everyone else included."
No one responded to his well thought out points, of course.
He was only talking to himself, after all.
"And after you just said you'd stopped that, too." He murmured with a wry chuckle, looking past his feet at the fast approaching outside of Omega Station. "No time to argue, though… It's time to work."
A moment later, he closed his eyes and flared his thrusters as the armored tip punched into old, worn metal and began shearing its way through. With the aid of the boosters, he ripped through the armor and stone as so much butter. Finally, he felt the engines die as their minute amount of fuel gave out. Just in time for him to punch through and into open air, falling as wind howled out the hole he'd made, until the kinetic barriers kicked in and sealed it.
He struck a building as he fell, though, and twisted sharply as he fell, jerking him around in his pod. Another building and he snapped the other way, ping ponging off walls in both senses until he crashed against the ground and came to a groaning stop. Groaning in the sense of stressed, impacted metal, and equally stressed and impacted Human being, that was. He let himself have a moment to breathe and recover, sucking in air through gritted teeth and ringing ears.
Only a moment, though.
He knew a lot better than to lay in a very conspicuous pod, in the middle of enemy territory, and take a nap. You'd have to knock him unconscious for him to consider something as suicidal as that acceptable. Instead, he flicked off his straps and sat up, yanking his M7S from its holster with one hand and reaching to flick the manual release switches with the other. Yanking its stock out he slid into a kneeling position inside the pod and hit the last release, standing with the door as it launched into the sky and sailed away.
Standing on his former seat he turned in a slow circle, pinging his VISR as he went. He'd landed partially in a wide alleyway or walkway, and partially on a small building, shearing it in half under the armored weight of his mostly destroyed wings. Inside was what looked like a shop of some kind, empty aside from rubble and ruined furniture. Around them, though, the ward was destitute, dust ridden and, above all, so eerily silent that it made his spine tingle and his skin crawl.
Something about this place was driving his instincts mad. He'd been told Omega was overpopulated, full of cramped apartment blocks and slums. Quietly, even if his voice sounded loud as sin in the dead of the silence, he murmured, "Where are all the people, then?"
No answer came, of course, but neither did any enemies wander into view at the end of the pathway. And so he knelt, leaving his worn M7 on the hull and quickly retrieving his weapons and the case of explosives he'd been gifted. Once he was loaded, he pulled himself over the rim of the hull and slid down along its front. He landed in a crouch and stayed there, one hand aiming his M7 at the entry to the alley and other reaching for a charge to plant.
"No sense giving them our tech to study when it can be helped." And he knew that this pod's concept and design had only come from one of his pods, so there was no sense risking that happening again.
That in mind he turned, and with a charge planted right under its nose, he made his way to the front of the wide alleyway. He paused at the corner to peak to either side and found a wide road made of brickwork, surrounded by old buildings marked in alien languages that did nothing to disguise it being some kind of market. Parked cars were interspersed in front of and behind buildings, and lights flickered overhead like something out of an old noir film, complete with equally flickery neon backlighting from the stores.
But not a soul in sight, and some of the doors were even open…
"Something is wrong here. Very wrong." He murmured lowly, chewing the inside of his cheek as he stepped from cover on the off chance someone would call him out.
A firefight would be better than this sinking, sour feeling he had in his gut. His HUD showed local time at only a bit past three in the afternoon, but it was dead. Standing in the open, he couldn't see anything, and no one, Cerberus or otherwise, made a move against him. A sensor sweep with his VISR even confirmed that there weren't any signals being broadcast, so it wasn't like he was being watched by drones.
The district was empty at what should have been the busiest hour of the day, and appeared to be unwatched to boot.
But he knew better than to look a gift war zone in the mouth and forced himself to move an, setting aside for the moment the mystery of the empty shopping district and setting eyes on his objective. Literally, in fact, as he could see signs pointing out directions, and one of those was towards the docking section along the outer hull of the old station. As he rounded a corner and slipped into another alleyway, he raised his arm and sent a signal to his planted bomb. The resulting explosion was powerfully enough that he saw the tall building beside it collapse, and felt the tremors reverberate through his feet.
Good fortune struck as the street lights flickered and died and alarms began to blare around him, the shoddy construction and maintenance of the station resulting in the main grid dying. Some of the building's lights stayed on, though, for whatever reason, and cast the district in uneven hues of orange, neon colors, and red alarm lights. That was where his good luck ended, though. A second explosion ripped through the street, crawling along it for almost a block and ripping down the fronts of several more buildings, sparking fires all along its edge.
Before reactors - Cerberus or otherwise, it didn't matter - could come to investigate and fight the fire, he turned and began a quick jog away and towards the docking zones. He did not want to get caught in a firefight with his back to a fire.
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Finding the Cerberus cordon around the docking zone was easily done, especially in the near silence of the mostly abandoned district. The docking section itself looked like an old style train station, made of nicer brickwork than nearby buildings and three stories in height. A wide, open semi-circle had been left around it, presumably for arrivals to meet and greet family and friends. What had filled it he wasn't sure, as it had all been stripped down and replaced by Cerberus defences.
The most impressive was a simple perimeter wall that cut through the halfway point of the pseudo-plaza, two stories in height and walked by a half-dozen Cerberus Troopers. Along with a single more heavily armored Centurion he knew to be in charge of the squad. Inside, his VISR's more intensive structure scans showed little aside from two moderately large buildings to either side of the docking zone. Swapping his VISR to its motion based setting, he took one for the barracks, full of barely discernible blocks of lines, where his system was attempting to delineate and identify individuals.
It failed, of course, too far away and with too many obstructions in the way. It did the job regardless, though. Using the poor motion signatures, he could see about as many men inside the compound as were patrolling the wall. Along with a handful of what he assumed to be officers.
"A full rotation, then. Plus anyone that left to deal with the fire." He murmured to himself, kneeling behind a window in an abandoned, but admittedly rather nice, apartment he'd broken into.
No one had been there either, of course, and he still didn't know why they'd all vanished. Whether something nefarious had happened, or Cerberus had simply evacuated the outer sections ahead of the battle, he couldn't be sure. What he did know was that while the sight-line was alright enough for spotting with his VISR, he couldn't engage from where he was. The building simply had too many entrances to be able to mount a defence in, and Cerberus would have him surrounded before he could kill nearly thirty men himself in a fair fight.
But he wasn't going to fight a fair fight, so that didn't matter.
The building he was in was five stories tall, and set a hundred feet or so from the compound's outer wall. So he went to the first floor and broke into the rooms there in the same way he had before, by using his Krogan knife to pry the frame apart and simply letting the still locked door lean against the wall inside. He planted a few of the powerful little explosives in the rooms, and in the spinal stairway, to cripple it and encourage it to fall a certain way.
He left them there and, creeping through alleyways to avoid exposing himself, circled around until he reached an alley that ran along one of the exterior wall sections. Still, he could stand and peek around the dumpster to see the building in question, directly across the Safely hidden behind a rusty dumpster, he smiled and set the explosives off with a simple press of a button.
The explosion ripped through half of the bottom of the building, sending debris hurling across the plaza and clattering against the armored hull of the wall. A few small specks of stone even reached him, dozens and dozens of feet away, clattering against the outer section of the station. The soldiers on the wall were quick to respond, crouching low behind the barrier and jogging towards the wall section closest to the damaged building, anticipating an attack. Then two more far more muted whumps echoed through the dead air, and the building groaned.
And then it began to tip, while the Cerberus Troopers stood and began to back away.
Rising, he leveled his Harrier at the space between the Centurion's shoulder blades and waited. The stone of the building gave a final crack and began to fall and, in the same moment, he let his burst punch forth. The rounds sparked off his barriers but surprised and, for a moment, stunned him, before he turned to look for the shooter. Out of kindness, the ODST stood and snapped a lazy salute for him just as the man saw him.
And, coincidentally, just as the building came down on him, crushing him, three of his men that were too slow to get out of the way, and a third of the wall under its weight.
"Down to nine, one and three." He murmured as he turned and vanished down the alleyway, kneeling to plant a charge behind the dumpster and then firing two shots with his rifle. In a faux-surprised voice, he shouted, "Shit!"
"Shots!" He heard a Cerberus soldier call, "Three men on me! It's the damn Talons!"
Who the 'Talons' were he had no idea, but he walked on regardless, stopping at a junction and leaning around the corner where he could see the trash bin. A Centurion rounded the corner first, followed by three more Troopers, just as the Centurion had called for. With a hand, the Centurion waved them forward to sweep the alley and the ODST smiled.
He set off the bomb just as they stepped past it, annihilating the building beside it and ripping a hunk out of the thick hull section beside it. The hull held, though, even as the building across from it collapsed, burying the very dead soldiers under tons of metal and concrete. He left, then, leaving the soldiers to their panic and confusion and retreating to find a new vantage point to hit them from.
"Dow to six, none and three." He amended his count as he went, holding his rifle comfortably across his chest and walking the alleys with the aid of his VISR's navigational systems. "Nine surprised, leaderless soldiers…"
Walking through the alley he came out on the plaza and rolled his shoulders, fingers flexing along the grip of his rifle. Surprise and shock was the best way he had to deal with them, and there was only one way in that would surprise them well enough. Taking long strides and watching the, for now, empty wall he walked forward.
Right towards the large, open main door into the compound proper.
Stepping through, he paused to look around. The barracks had been crushed under the weight of the building, and two Engineers milled about the wreckage aimlessly under a Trooper's supervision. Looking for salvage they could recover, he supposed. All three had their backs to him, though, and he sighed as his rifle came up. Three long bursts cracked through the air, ripping into their backs and sending them sprawling before anyone could react.
"Five." He grunted, stepping to the side as two more Troopers stepped out of the other, intact building and spotted him.
A small, chest high wall stretched along the inside of the greater wall, presumably for cover in the case of boarders attacking from the docking station. It provided ample cover for him, though, reloading the spent thermal clip and exchanging his rifle for his M7 in one hand as the two alternated suppressing bursts and advanced on him. Drawing his knife, he slipped his hand under the weapon and pressed his wrist against the foregrip to wait while the heavy footsteps closed on him.
"Surrender, you son-of-a bitch!" The first to reach him bellowed, but he ignored him and rose, twisting around the cover and rushing towards him.
The man opened fire, rounds sparking off his barriers, but the other couldn't fire without hitting his ally. Five rounds punched into his face and throat and the man gargled blood before the Krogan knife slammed in between armor sections. Using the blade for leverage instead of killing power, given the new breathing conditions the man had developed, he held the man like a shield.
"Bastard!" The other man snarled, bending and twisting for an angle before realizing his friend's fate and simply spraying rounds into the corpse and hoping to pierce.
His Hornet whined and hissed and John pushed the dead man off of him, leaving the knife in his chest to get a better grip on his own submachine gun. A short burst into the Trooper's throat ended him as it had the other, leaving him choking on the ground. For all their heavy helmets and plated armor, the throat was still rather open, so they could actually look around.
A deadly, necessary gap in their defenses.
"Three." He murmured, turning and sweeping the wall until he spotted them sprinting along it towards him, their little PDWs too inaccurate at range to try engaging. His M7 suffered a similar problem.
His Harrier, though, didn't. And he traded out the weapons out faster than they could run, sending rounds ripping through them as they tried to close with him. One slumped over the railing and fell, but the other two collapsed into the compound. There they lay still, but he let a pair of rounds loose to make sure before he turned towards the command building. Stopping outside the door, he collapsed the Harrier and set it on his back before rolling his shoulders and popping his neck.
Stepping through it he grunted as heavy rounds punched into his chest, sparking off his shield but hitting with enough force he grunted. The officer a young woman with short cut hair and hard eyes over set lips, snarled as he approached and barked two more rounds into his chest.
"Drop the weapon and I'll let you live." He offered as he crossed the office-like interior, one hand drawing his own sidearm as he went. She answered with two more rounds and he responded in kind, the shots punching holes in her sternum and tossing her back as he reached her. With a flick, he chucked another bomb onto the radio console and left.
"Begin docking at my section." He ordered quietly as he stepped into the docking station and began scanning for threats. Nothing in here would prevent docking, he knew, but he could deal with it for them. That way they could deal with the response he knew was coming. Speaking of…
With a whump and a tremor, he annihilated the Cerberus communications station. With a nod, he added, "I've eliminated Cerberus assets at the docking location. Expecting reinforcements, though."
"Understood, Insertion-Nine." A voice clipped in his ear, static-laced but clear enough to discern. "Assault craft closing on your coordinates. Please hold your location."
"Landing time?"
"Unknown. At least for sure." The radio handler responded tersely, likely handling a dozen such tasks at the moment. After a moment, he heard her hesitate and she added, "Uh, belay that, Lieutenant Commander. Assault craft for your location estimated time of arrival is fifteen minutes."
"...Understood." It was a surprising about face from what the handler had said, but he wasn't about to look the gift in the face. "Moving to ensure secure landing. Awaiting reinforcements as ordered."
She didn't answer, of course, likely simply noting his acknowledgement and moving on to the next call. All he had to do now, though, was find a comfy spot to catch a few minutes' nap, seeing as he'd finished sweeping the docking station. It struck him as rather empty, given the defenses outside, but he supposed that was to preempt the violence - and casualties - of someone forcing themselves through the hull and into the station.
But well, here he was with a gift horse again.
He heard and felt them dock far before anyone came to see him, sitting on a windowsill with his rifle across his chest. The tremors rocked up and down the building hard enough that the glass shook in its frame. Not evidence of a hard breach, he knew, but rather of many of the assault and boarding craft docking at once. Outside, everything was quiet, the fires in the distance having long since been extinguished. By Cerberus or otherwise, he couldn't be sure, but either way the glow had died out and no attacks had come. All he could see was darkness, smattered by neon light.
A pretty sight, if he was honest.
Also terrifying, though. Because he knew that, soon enough, he'd be out there fighting through that inky blackness.
"Fan out and secure the perimeter!" He heard a man in more formal, Alliance armor bellow as he strode into the open.
Soldiers and mercenaries followed his command, mounting the wall and toting out crates of supplies. Some in lighter Alliance armor paused to look at the ruined section of building buried wall in amazement. Until, that is, a more veteran soldier shouted at them to get moving again. And moving they did, mounting the wall and holding their Avengers awkwardly.
"New recruits…?" These were supposed to be assault specialists, not raw recruits.
"Not recruits. Just their first assault like this, against something like this." A voice grunted from behind him in a deep baritone, the ODST turning to look at the heavily armored man approaching him.
His armor was like Vega's was, with heavy plates and sections unlike what other Alliance soldiers, and his body matched as well. Thick, stocky, and cumbersome even though he moved with an ease that belied the strength he had to hold. He hadn't even removed his helmet, but that was probably intelligent of him, given where they were. 'Special Lieutenant Denbei' was stenciled across his chest in white lettering. What a 'Special Lieutenant' was, exactly, he didn't know.
But if he contested his rank then he might be in charge, and he wasn't up for that.
"Before now, they were mostly just garrison forces, back in Tuchankan space." He explained, offering the ODST a hand to pull him to his feet. He took it and let the bear of a man tug him up, "Light Reaper contacts, came to them, that sort of thing. This is a whole different beast, though."
"You can say that again…"
"They proved their worth out there." The man assured him simply, waving a hand at them outside and going on, "Part of the Liberation Corps. New army corps, for retaking occupied worlds and bodies. This is their first outing under that name, hence the nerves."
"Hm." A test, then, for a military body dedicated to a very important job. "Let's put their nerves at ease then, Special Lieutenant. Do you have orders for me?"
"More a directive than proper orders, if I'm honest, but…" The man's armored head nodded and he half-turned, gesturing down the hallway for him to follow. "Come with me. Let's talk, so we can get our job here done, and get on to the next one."
"Not home?"
"I'd think you knew better than that." The man chuckled darkly, "We go from one job to the next. Same as it's always been, isn't it?"
"Mhm. I know the idea, yeah." That had always been how it had been, back home against the Covenant, he supposed. One mission to the next, and don't put down roots or they'll end up glass. More ash here and now, he supposed, but the sentiment seemed the same even if it felt different. Instead of agreeing, he offered a simple, "Let's get it done, then. We have other jobs to get to."
The other man's only response was a quiet, wry chuckle.
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Happy New Year everyone! Celebrate with festive explosions! Just like John did. XD
In all seriousness, I hope you enjoy the chapter, though it feels a bit… Clunky to me, in places. Nothing terribly severe, of course. More me feeling overly critical, I feel like. Though I do have some difficulties conveying swiftly, but well, asymmetric warfare. End of the day, long as you all enjoy it, I'm happy.
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Shiro Tsume :
Mehbe~
Fox Comm :
I almost - almost - tweaked my plans after reading that. But for continuity and by what he does, I have him doing his own thing elsewhere. Aria is off on the more show missions atm.
There ARE black boxes, tho.