Hey guys. It's me. Back again with the conclusion to the initiation arc. It's a bit long as a sort of apology for missing like, 3 Sunday's. Also before we begin I have two things.
First I'd like to thank Dragon Lord Syed. Your comments are one of the major reasons I've persisted with this project.
Second I'm considering starting a second RWBY fic based on the World of Darkness RPG system. Let me know if you guys would be interested in something like that. I promise that if I do start writing it the schedule, or lack thereof, of AGF will not be affected.
Cover Art: Jack_lope
Captain Song stood on the bridge of the Iskandar and gazed over the Emerald Forest. It was unimpressive. By Song's reckoning the greenskin threat had been grossly overrated. The rabble that her armsmen had dug out of their holes had not been worth the force committed. Two battle cruisers and their escorts paired with Ozpin's behemoth of a ship. Half a million men brought to bear in crew alone, not to mention the veritable legion of armsmen that were combing the asteroids for orks to slaughter. It was all an egregious waste of time and resources.
Captain Song Huilan clasped her hands behind her back and watched her bridge crew conduct pest control. This was not a battle worthy of her or her ship. The Iskandar was an ancient and respected warship with so many honors attached to its name that an entire deck had been set aside as a memorial hall. And she was one of the finest officers ever to graduate Mistral academy. She was one of the best leaders in command of one of the most respected ships in the sector and she was conducting pest control. Or, more accurately, she was watching Ozpin and his horde of children take what little glory there was for themselves.
She had been staring out of the bridge viewport since the culling had begun. She simply had nothing better to do. The was nothing that merited her attention. Her fighters were sweeping forth unopposed, her armsmen had thoroughly culled the greenskins from their holes in the outer asteroids. Ozpin's intelligence had warned them to expect stern resistance in the form of orkish cruisers and ship-killers emplaced along the outer asteroids. These dire projections had not come to pass. Captain Song suspected that Ozpin's warnings were the capstone to ten years of stalling. This asteroid field and its inhabitants had never been a threat. It would have been madness to let any sizable threat grow near one of the great stations. Ozpin just wanted to show off his precious battleship.
Captain Song had no real issue with this. She understood the necessity of pomp and circumstance. She understood that this little cull would do wonders for civilian morale. Another way to show that humanity had firmly rebounded from the depredations of Grimmfist. Captain Song even admired Ozpin's sheer stubbornness in delaying this cull as long as he had. Holding off both the station council and the Schnee could not have been an easy fight, especially over the course of ten years. But Oz had kept them in check and bought himself a day in the sun. Captain Song appreciated this. What she did not appreciate was her involvement. Lionheart had diverted her from her patrol of Mistral's outer colonies as, 'a show of friendship and solidarity.' Which she had begun to suspect was his way of saying, 'a massive waste of time.' She did not appreciate that she had been pulled from the frontline to act as Ozpin's cheerleader. She did not appreciate Ozpin completely ignoring her presence. A visiting captain on a diplomatic mission should have been greeted with a feast and honors. Instead she was voxxed her place in the battle-line and told when the operation was slated to begin. That was it. A month of travel. Colonies left defenseless. Her entire tour of the Wild Stars diverted. All for a brusque communique and a place in a pointless battle-line.
Captain Song was not a young or rash woman. She and the Iskandar had been together for nearly twenty years. She did not have to prove her worth because she had proven herself a hundred times over. She was renowned as a line-breaker. Her ability to place herself in the absolute best possible position was a fact that the textbooks of the great academies referred to time and time again. She was not young. She was not rash. And really, in any other situation, she had nothing to prove. But right now, she was fuming. She had been insulted and ignored. She stood on the bridge and contemplated every single invective she would hurl at Ozpin and Lionheart the moment this pointless chore was over with. She would chew them out like a sergeant on the first day of boot. She would destroy both of them for daring to pull her from her task just to snub her and make her watch as teenagers did all of the work.
Oh, Ozpin could have his day in the sun all he wanted, but he was going to feel the heat of her fury for every second she had to endure staring at this infuriating asteroid field.
"Captain." Her second stood a respectable distance behind her. He could read her mood as easily as she could read this barren battlefield. Her crew knew her well. And they all knew that to bother her right now was to invite a summary execution.
"What." She didn't quite snap. Officers never snapped. Captain Song firmly believed that officers must be rocks of calm in the turbulent river of battle. And while what was taking place before her was closer to a live fire exercise than a battle, she held true to her sense of professionalism.
"An Orkish warship has been sighted, ma'am." He informed her just loud enough for the deck officers around them to hear. He would make a fine captain someday. Just like all of the officers that had served on her bridge. He understood that command was essentially theater. And he knew exactly how this script was going to go.
"Tonnage and bearing?" She asked, again just loud enough for the immediate officers to hear over the general rumble of the bridge. From the corner of her eye she could already see the Master of Helm plotting a heading.
"Cruiser weight ma'am. Headed for the outer Mandeville point. On the other side of the Emerald Forest." The general tone of the bridge was shifting now. Shifting from quiet reports and orders to a far more active tone. In front of her she could see the Master of Vox preparing his minions to recall their fighters. At any other time, it would hurt her to know that she was so predictable.
"What is the status of the offensive?" She had to perform first. They all knew the outcome of this conversation, but they still had to follow the steps of the dance.
"All fronts are green and ahead of schedule ma'am. Tactical expects that any meaningful resistance will be crushed within the hour." As if any of the resistance so far could be called meaningful.
"Hm." She pretended to consider. "I think that the Beacon and the Timeless Father have the situation well in hand, wouldn't you agree Mr. Black?"
"If it were my place to say so, ma'am." Mercury stood stiffly, waiting to carry out the orders he knew would follow.
"Inform the Beacon of our intent to hunt." She said loudly. "And if they have any response, our vox was damaged in the fighting." He nodded eagerly and rushed off to spread the good news. She liked to think she could feel the deck shudder as the Iskandar began its headlong charge through the Emerald Forest.
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The deck shuddered as the Black Ork's axe cleaved through the place Ruby had occupied a moment before. To say that her situation had deteriorated would be an understatement. She couldn't keep up this speed forever. Using her Semblance was draining. And right now, it was the only thing keeping her alive. The Black Ork was furious. And that fury had either lent it an incredible amount of strength and speed, or it had simply decided not to play with its food. Really it didn't matter which, because right now her life was on a timer. Because around her the circle of orks was slowly closing, and soon she wouldn't have anywhere to run to. She might be able to blink onto the fighter, and from there she could blink out of the hangar and buy herself some precious time. But if she did that then the Black Ork would be free to go through with its plans, which was something that she absolutely could not allow. If she ran now thousands of people would die.
Which meant that she had to win.
The deck shuddered again as she blinked out from under the falling axe. The Black Ork wasn't talking to her anymore. In fact, it hadn't made a sound since she had cut its hand off. It didn't demand that she hold still. It didn't tell her about the inevitable doom that she and her kind would suffer. It wasn't even breathing heavily. It moved in near complete silence as it drove her backward into the ever-tightening ring of Orks. The axe clanged against the deck plating again as Ruby barely dodged death. She didn't have an opening to attack. Its reaction times were too fast. It was too strong. It was too smart. She needed a plan. She needed time.
She didn't have time. She didn't have a plan.
Well. Maybe she had a plan. It was a really stupid plan. But the Black Ork was super smart, so maybe the sheer stupidity of her plan would throw it off. Maybe, just maybe, Crime-Buster Ruby could quickly transition to Master-Gladiator Ruby. She blinked behind the Black Ork as her mind raced with the possibilities. Oh, this plan was dumb. Really, really dumb. But her options right now were dumb or dead. And she was pretty sure that dumb was better.
So, she could bring stuff with her when she teleports, right? Wouldn't it make sense, then, that she could leave stuff? Heated combat with a twelve-foot-tall pile of muscle and anger was probably not the best time to experiment with her Semblance. And that wasn't even the stupid part.
She could see what the Black Ork was going to do with its next swing. The only place she had left to go was behind it, so it was going to cleave around in a circle to catch her when she blinked. If it wasn't for her stupid plan this attack would absolutely kill her. As things stood it would only probably kill her. Which was an improvement.
She blinked twice. The first time was to separate her body from her cloak. The second was to vault her over the Ork's head and wrap her cape over its eyes. And Yang had told her that capes were dumb and useless. Phase One success. Master-Gladiator Ruby was totally going to be a thing. Now it was time for the dumb part.
Her cape trick was only going to blind the Black Ork for a second. And really, there wasn't much she could do with that. The Ork was already falling into a defensive pose as it reached up to rip her cloak away from its eyes. Which meant she needed to buy herself more time.
She brought her scythe down and decapitated the nearest ork which formed her living prison.
That was the dumb part.
With the unspoken compact that the Warboss had put into place broken, the orks around her surged forward to take a swing at Ruby. And the Warboss couldn't see them to stop it in time.
Sure, she had traded one enemy for a thousand and one enemies, which in most circles would be regarded as, 'a blindingly stupid move.' But here's the thing. Ruby could beat these orks. She could carve through them like a power sword cuts through flak armor. Sure, she wouldn't be able to keep it up. Sure, she was already exhausted. And sure, she was oh so very dead. Probably in the next few minutes. But right now, all the orks were focused on her. They had a target, something to kill. And despite the Black Ork's startling intelligence, she was pretty sure that orks on a whole were still stupid. Which meant that until she was dead the Warboss probably wouldn't be able to go through with his big trap.
Ruby: 1
Big Stupid (but actually really smart probably) Ork: 0
All that screaming and gunfire? The sound of bullets whizzing past her and inevitably hitting other orks? That was the sound of victory. Because she really hadn't been Gladiator-Ruby at all. She had been Unreasonably-Smart-(and also super attractive)-Mastermind Ruby all along. If she had the time, she would probably let out a megalomaniacal laugh in triumph. But as things stood, she had a lot of stuff trying to kill her.
She blinked up onto the fighter where the Warboss had been giving its speech and got a good look at the hangar. Or, more accurately, she got a good look at the sea of aircraft that filled up the hangar. Or, even more accurately, she got a good look at the ships that were already launching themselves out into the void. She was suddenly even more glad that she had decided not to die to stop the trap. Because apparently it was happening regardless. She was still ahead though. Half of the orks were busy chasing her instead of killing the other students and imperials in the asteroid field. Which was probably a net win. Ruby was pretty sure that anyone other than her would not look at the horde of screaming savages shooting at her as a good thing. But then again, a lot of people didn't have perspective. Ruby always had perspective. Ever since she was little, she had understood exactly what the game she was signing up to play entailed. Did she have a death wish? Absolutely not. And really, deep in her heart of hearts, Ruby was sure she would make it through everything alright. After all, the hero always made it. And in this situation, she could not be more the hero if she had a cape. Which she had sadly lost. Speaking of her missing cape, the Black Ork did not look pleased.
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Weiss liked to think she was a woman of perspective. She had been raised from a young age to take the long view of things. She did not plan in terms of days or months, she planned in terms of years and decades. It was part of being a Schnee. Although a complete lack of humanity and a total willingness to overlook such petty scruples as 'morality' and 'common decency' were also part of being a Schnee. She supposed she was a failure in that regard. She was certain Father blamed the nannies and butlers that had so obviously lead her away from the proper Schnee view of life. But then again Father had always been too busy weaving his plots across the sector and dancing for advantage with the other people of power to really give a thought to such common trivialities as his own children. But, despite her supposed failings, Weiss excelled in the long view. She excelled in predicting movements and trends that would take years to really come into being. If she was given enough data Weiss was quite certain she could accurately predict the state of the sector a century down the line. Weiss held the long view and the ability to match. And right now, what her view was telling her was something that she couldn't quite believe.
In front of her was a horde of orks. Which, in and of itself, was unsurprising. What was surprising was the little girl who was blatantly taunting them as the horde did its very best to kill her. Weiss watched in jaw dropped amazement as Ruby blinked around the edges of the hangar and taunted a legion of eight-foot-tall killing machines into greater heights of fury than she had ever believed possible. Weiss quickly remembered that a Schnee did not allow her mouth to gape like a slack-jawed commoner and brought her teeth together with a sharp click. This did not lessen the shock that had taken hold of her. In fact, her trance was only broken as the girl ran past her at a speed more commonly associated with aircraft.
"HiWeissbyeWeiss!" Ruby said as she flew past her. Or that was Weiss had thought she had heard. It was really hard to hear over the impact of bullets and the roars of dismay that followed the fleeing girl. For a moment, just a fleeting moment, Weiss and the orkish horde stared at one another. If either side had had a second more to react, they might have blinked at one another in surprise. But as things stood, the orks we not deep thinkers. And the appearance of another girl did little to slow them down. If anything, they redoubled their effort as the raced for the doorway she presently occupied.
Weiss, on the other hand, was a deep thinker. And in the blink it took for her to act she indulged herself in a very human pastime. As certain death crashed toward her she could not help but ask why. Why what exactly? That was not very important to Weiss at the moment. It was the ingrained human response when faced with the ludicrous. Perhaps it was the presence of a child. Or perhaps it was the wall of meat and stupidity bearing down on her. Perhaps it was just the sheer madness of watching a child court death like a noble's son at a gala. A flash went by as Weiss pondered these variables. Until somewhere within her a voice firmly reminded her that a Schnee did not sit dumbly and question the situation before her. A Schnee acted. And so act she did.
A wall of ice quickly built itself between her and the oncoming wall of muscle. She knew it wouldn't last long. This was reinforced as the ice began to crack almost immediately under the impacts of charging orks. Weiss took this as her queue to follow Ruby's path through the station. She moved quickly, but not without caution and foresight. At every juncture she threw up walls of ice in all four directions. She figured the time and Dust lost would more than make up for itself if she managed to delay or throw off the orks.
Seals formed beneath her feet as she practically flew after Ruby. The Schnee family Semblance was extraordinarily useful. There were many rumors that the Dynasty was tainted by the psyk. How else could you explain a Semblance that allowed for gravitic manipulation, summoning, and temporal manipulation? Not to mention the ubiquitous ice that followed in the tracks of all the Schnee? The thin veneer of 'Dust manipulation' had never satisfied her peers or the inquisition. And if it wasn't for their status as a rogue trader dynasty, as well as the fact that the entire sector depended on them for its continued survival, Weiss was quite certain that she and her sister would have been quietly forced aboard the Black Ships a long time ago. As things stood Weiss and Winter could only walk free due to Father's influence. The price paid was a close adherence to the Imperial Creed and following the words of the Lectitio Divinitatus to the letter. Such constant and perfect piety was the collar that Weiss bore in the place of the very real collar that bound sanctioned psykers to the cages the Imperium kept them in.
These were the thoughts that always hung in the shadows of her mind. Even as Weiss chased after Ruby every seal she threw down reminded her that if she had been born to a less fortunate station she would have been caged as a monster and lived a short life of torture and pain. It should be understandable then, that when she caught up with Ruby at the edge of the stations gravitic zone she was more than a little unhappy. In fact, she was livid.
"What did you do!?" She cried as she caught up to the smaller girl. Ruby had stopped to breathe. She looked exhausted, drained. Weiss was astounded that the younger girl could even stand, let alone speak.
"I was, hah, buying time." Ruby panted.
"You call antagonizing an entire hangar full of orks, 'buying time!?'" Weiss panted back. Ruby wasn't the only one out of breath. Both of them had sprinted at top speed down the station's corridors. And while Weiss was quite certain she was in peak physical condition, using her Semblance for such an extended period of time was draining.
"Well, it was more like antagonizing one ork." Ruby said as she caught her breath. "The rest were just a bonus!" Ruby sounded entirely too happy about the situation. While her happiness wasn't infectious, Weiss was having a hard time staying angry. If only because her mind was already racing with thoughts of their next move. The idea that Ruby wasn't now directly under her command didn't even cross Weiss's mind.
"Whatever idiocy you were conducting does not matter now. We have to complete our objective and get off of this station." Weiss did her best to project authority into her voice as she started to head toward the elevator.
"We can't!" Said the little girl from behind her. "We have to go back and fight them!"
"We most certainly do not." Weiss said. The key to command was calm. She was not going to argue with a child, she was simply going to override her and bring Ruby back into line. Since the girl clearly didn't understand their situation.
"We do!" Ruby said emphatically. "We have to keep them distracted so that they don't capture the Beacon!" Weiss raised an eyebrow in a gesture of cynical disbelief.
"What we need to do is carry out the headmaster's mission and extract ourselves before this station is overrun with Grimm." Weiss had seen hundreds of other students making their entrance into the station on her way in. She had no doubt that some of them were going to fall to the orks, and once there was blood in the void escape would be nearly impossible. They would either have to wait in the station with the orks as the imperial fleet crept its way across the Emerald Forest or they would have to make their escape through a sea of Grimm. Both of these problems could be avoided, however, if they simply acted fast.
"You don't understand!" Ruby said. "There's a Black Ork back there, everything is a trap! The entire fleet is going to be overrun!"
A Black Ork? Not likely. More like the stress-induced visions of a child thrown into a combat situation she was clearly unprepared for.
"We do not have time to discuss your delusions Ruby. We have to move now if we want to have a reasonable chance of making it out alive."
The younger girl set her shoulders and shook her head.
"I'm going to keep their attention away from everyone else. You can do what you want." With that Ruby turned and headed back toward the trouble they had so recently escaped.
Weiss groaned internally. She couldn't just let a child in her care wander off to die at the hands of xenos. Curse her charitable nature. She could already see exactly how this was going to go. The girl was going to get the both of them overrun in her suicidal crusade to outwit an enemy with the intellect of a brick. She didn't understand that no one could outsmart a brick. The more you tried to think your way around it the closer it flew to your teeth. Until all you had to your name was an extremely painful lesson and a feeding tube.
"What is your plan?" Weiss asked Ruby's back.
Ruby stopped and turned sheepishly back to Weiss, "I, uh, don't really have one."
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The Emerald Forest was relatively small in astronomical terms. Millenia of human mining and the more recent orkish occupation had brought many of the larger asteroids closer together than they ever would be naturally. And while it was relatively small it would still take several hours for the Iskandar to make her way around it. Which meant that Captain Song had to forge a path directly through the asteroid field if she as to have any hope of bringing that feeling cruiser to battle.
"Master of Helm, adjust Y angle by three degrees." Her voice rang across the bridge as she turned from her place on the viewing deck and made her way back to her command throne. The ship tilted ever so slightly as thirty thousand men and millions of tons of adamantine bent to her will.
It was easy to forget, standing on her polished bridge, that she was in command of what was essentially a city. Below the command decks there were barracks for armsmen, barracks for the engine crew, barracks for the serfs, mess halls, recreational facilities, decks filled with merchants, gardens, and cargo holds that had been converted to shanty towns by the families of the ship's serfs and unofficial hangers-on. Captain Song herself had been born in such a shanty a long time ago. She attributed her birth and early life aboard a voidship to be the key to her success as an officer. She could feel the gentle thrum of the Iskandar's great engine stacks beneath her feet, and often she could sense a problem with her engines long before her ships tech-priests could detect it. She could feel the minute tilt as the ship's gravity plating made micro-adjustments to keep the ship's gravity level as they wove their way through the asteroids. The void was her home. And the Iskandar was an extension of herself.
Some might think that her feeling that the Iskandar was an extension of herself to be a mere fanciful metaphor. But for the captain of and Imperial starship it was all too true. At the base of her skill was a surgical implant that allowed her to plug directly into the Iskandar's noosphere. When she took her seat on the command throne, she quite literally became her ship. Only herself, Mr. Black, and the Master of Helm possessed such implants, the better to avoid mutiny. The ship could still be piloted without them, but at a terrible cost to efficiency. The power of an entire warship flowing through her mind made her confident. Perhaps overconfident. But only because she knew that there was nothing here that could threaten her or her ship.
Many would think her foolish for bringing the Iskandar and her escorts directly through a hostile asteroid field. And most of the time they would be right. But they were not privy to the information she held. Or, rather, the information she believed she held. Song Huilan was not a fool. She understood that she had left the imperial battle line behind, which was a reckless and dangerous thing to do. But she was not in command of some primitive warship blindly negotiating its way through a reef as its crew stared nervously into unknown depths. She could see everything that was happening in the void around her. She could see where her fighters were sweeping the nearby asteroids for orkish emplacements. She could see where her assault craft were slowly making their way back to the safety of the Iskandar's hangars. And she could see the utter lack of resistance around her.
She was certain that the Iskandar alone was more than enough to perform this meaningless culling. She had fought orks before, and she was certain she would fight orks again. During any given assault the orks would commit everything they had to the front. Orks did not hold troops in reserve, orks did not bait the enemy into an encirclement. Orks flew at their enemy with all the cunning and grace of a half-brick in a sock. Captain Song knew this from years of experience. She considered for a moment that the cruiser she was running down could be bait to lure her into a trap, but she just as quickly dismissed it. Years of experience and training told her that what she was seeing was a fleeing lieutenant. Some ork that saw its chance to escape from the beneath the yoke of its hated Warboss.
It was this confidence, this certainty, that would doom her.
"How fares the assault, Mr. Black?" She said as she mentally surfaced from a sea of auspex data.
"Vox is spotty out here ma'am. There's radiation interference." Mercury dutifully reported. At any other time, he would be on the battle bridge, ready to take over in the case of her death or the destruction of the primary bridge. Captain Song had decided the forgo these measures. There was no danger here, and it was best the Mercury observe her in command during a combat situation. He was still young, only in his mid-twenties, he had a lot to learn before he graduated from her bridge into a command of his own. And this was a rare moment for him to observe a veteran Captain in a combat scenario.
They observed the activity on the bridge from their island of calm. It was invigorating to see such energy and professionalism.
Her world rocked as alarms screamed and klaxons blared. In front of her blast shields slammed in to place over the bridge viewports, brutally cutting off the soft starlight and leaving only the harsh glare of the bridge lumens in its place. A spike of pain tore through her head as her neural implant was ripped from her skull. And at the same time, almost unnoticed, she felt a slight prick on her arm.
Spit bubbled from her lips as she tried to demand a status report from her shaken crew. Her mind was clouded with pain and the sudden absence of data. It was like being suddenly blinded, like a part of her had been violently stolen away.
"Asteroid collision along the engine stacks!" Came a voice from below her. She dimly recognized it as the Master of Serfs.
"Boarders reported on multiple decks!" came another voice. She thought it was the Master of Arms.
She was confused, disoriented. She had to steel herself and push through the pain. She looked up from the deck into the cold eyes of Mercury Black. The deck? Why was she on the deck? Her head hurt. She couldn't move. Why couldn't she move? She saw his lips move, but she couldn't understand him. The world was hazy as she fought for consciousness. She saw him grin as everything faded to black.
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Too easy. Mercury thought to himself as the stuck-up bitch died is his arms. She wasn't physically dead, but the neurotoxin he had administered would ensure that she would never return to any meaningful form of consciousness. A tragic accident. An officer suffering brain-death from a sudden disconnection from her MIU. Uncommon, but not unheard of. It had all been too easy. Goading this bitter old cow to her 'tragic' death had been the simplest assignment he had ever received. It had only taken a few choice words and some careful omissions.
"Oh, my apologies Lord Inquisitor. The Lord-Captain is indisposed, she will be unable to attend your banquet."
"No, ma'am. Nothing from Ozpin but these coordinates and time-tables."
From there all he had to do was let her rage and pride blind her to the trap. Now he just had to make sure that his useless subordinate made sure that phase two went off without a hitch.
"The Captain is unconscious!" He called out to the bridge. He needed a bit of panic, enough of a delayed response for the orks to get a solid foothold wherever they had boarded.
Using orks as the gears of a plot was always a tricky thing. You couldn't really manipulate them, but you could rely on them to attack the first thing that moved. Cinder had made sure that the orks weren't immediately destroyed, and he had made sure that his idiot captain had blundered her way into their half-baked trap. Honestly, things were going better than expected.
"We need a medicae team to the bridge now!" He heard panicked tones as his words rang across the bridge. The drones were scared now. The queen was down, and they didn't know what to do. This was good. It meant no one was responding to the orks that were no doubt swarming the lower decks. He was certain that no security teams had been dispatched yet. Mostly because the real Master of Arms had suffered a tragic case of catastrophic organ failure this morning when he had stepped out of the bridge to attend to a disciplinary matter with a certain green-haired crewwoman.
No one was going to find his body.
He looked over to where Emerald stood inside the old bastard's skin. It was nice to have a shapeshifter around. It made things so much easier. He counted patiently in his head.
A second explosion rocked the ship as several key parts of the warp-drive underwent rapid unplanned disassembly.
Oh, this was all going perfectly.
Mercury stood up from the body of his 'wounded' captain and took command of the situation.
"Master of Arms, stand by to repel boarders!" He shouted. Emerald saluted him stiffly and stepped away to rally the ships defenders. Oh, that had to hurt her pride. He was going to hold that salute over her for weeks.
"Master of Serfs! I want the guns run out and the voids up!" He was clearly just a young commander in over his head giving out obvious orders. Definitely not an assassin. Nope, not him. No need to look over here, no need to concern yourself with the senseless body on the floor. She would probably be fine. Everything was totally fine. Nothing suspicious at all going on.
"Commander Black!" came a voice from below him. It was the Master of Vox.
"We have a transmission coming over a restricted frequency from Castrum Primary!"
Oh, did we now?
"Put it through to my commbead." Mercury called down. It was probably his next set of orders. Cinder was nothing if not punctual.
"This is, uh, Lord-Overseer Arc calling to all Imperial forces."
Who?
"There is a confirmed Black Ork aboard Castrum Primary. I repeat, A Black Ork has been confirmed on Castrum Primary."
Well. He couldn't ignore that, now could he? After all he was the nearest friendly ship. And a Lord Overseer sounded pretty important. Important enough that if he offed this guy Cinder would probably forgive him for blowing up her new toy.
"New orders!" He bellowed. "Bring the long guns to bear on Castrum Primary. Fire for effect!"
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Jaune and Pyrrha's insertion into Castrum Primary had been. Unconventional. In fact, insertion might be too precise of a word. If Jaune had been conscious, he probably would have described it as something like a 'fiery death spiral.' Or some equivalent. Pyrrha was really glad he was unconscious as she pulled him from the smoking wreck that was his Lightning. If only so that she wouldn't have to hear him tell her what an idiot she was. She had flown them into an ambush without even thinking, and the best she could do was to crash them both in a hangar that was, to put it lightly, overflowing with sentient walls of meat and anger that were wider than she was tall.
She was really glad no one was around to see her embarrassment. Well. No one except for the orks. Who were suddenly very interested in the two humans who had so politely delivered themselves directly into their trap. Or they would be, if they weren't so preoccupied with the other two humans who also had the manners to deliver themselves to the fight. Across the hangar Pyrrha could see two other girls going at a mob of orks hammer and tongs. She silently wished them well as she carried Jaune over to a secluded corner. As soon as she had him tucked away behind a pile of disused crates, she turned to regard the situation before her.
The hangar had quite recently been full of orkish fighters, as the many holes in Jaune's lightning could attest. There were signs of their rapid exit everywhere; oil stains, discarded fuel lines still leaking promethium onto the deck, wayward tools and crates full of ammunition that the orks presumably couldn't cram into their fighters, but most of all there were corpses of orks. At the opposite end of the hangar she could see a mob of orks trying, and failing, to take down a pair of girls. One of the girls was throwing up ice walls and forcing the orks to attack piecemeal wall the other cut them to ribbons with a speed Pyrrha had seen few humans match. The ice girl must have been the Schnee, but Pyrrha didn't recognize the other. Not that it really mattered. They were killing orks, but not fast enough. They needed her help.
Pyrrha charged across the hangar, careful to avoid the oil and leaking fuel. Where did the orks even get oil from anyway? It was better not to think about it. Pyrrha zeroed in on the nearest ork and leapt to strike, only for her spear to be intercepted midair by an axe blade the size of her torso.
Instinct and muscle memory took over as she brought up her shield and used the momentum of the ork's swing to propel herself beyond its reach. She looked down and met the glaring red eyes of an ork with pure black skin.
That probably wasn't a good sign.
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Jaune opened his eyes and watched as Pyrrha was thrown across the hangar. She had barely hit the ground before she was up and charging an ork of truly monstrous proportions. Jaune stood hesitantly, bracing himself against a nearby crate, and watched her face down a living nightmare without a hint of fear.
No amount of training or instructional videos could have prepared him for the sheer visceral terror that ripped through him as he watched the Black Ork bat his friend around like a cat with a ball of yarn. Jaune instinctively reached for the comfort of has lasgun. It was a solid weight in his hands, but he doubted it was going to do much more than piss that massive ork off. He was going to have to come up with a better plan. Ideally one that didn't end with him suicidally charging the biological equivalent of a Leman Russ. He'd leave that sort of thing to his insane friends. And while they did that, he'd figure out a way to pull all their asses out of the fire.
Beyond Pyrrha he could see Ruby and Weiss fighting a rapidly losing battle against a tide of orks. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. Everyone here had clearly left their sanity behind at the Beacon's baggage claim. If any of them had even a modicum of sense they would have run from all of the nonsense as fast as they could. Which was exactly what Jaune planned to do.
Now he wasn't planning on leaving them to die. He was just very aware that in this particular situation he and his lasgun were worse than useless. He needed to find some way to level the playing field. Ideally by finding more people with guns. If there was one solution his training had drilled into him it was, 'If gun doesn't work, use more gun.'
Jaune quietly slipped through a nearby door and hoped that he could come up with a solution to this mess before everybody died.
Alright. There were no orks in this hallway, which meant it was time to take stock of his resources and put Operation: Out of the Frying Pan into effect. He had his lasgun, his stupid identifier helmet, and a sheaf of papers that he had tucked behind his breastplate.
Not an auspicious start.
The papers were probably useful. They had schematics and maps and things. Jaune ran a practiced eye over the schematics and quickly realized that he had no idea how to read them. Alright, no fancy inquisitor holovid stuff. Who needed maps anyway? All he had to do was find more gun. Jaune quickly discarded the useless schematics and started sprinting down the hallway. Time was of the essence.
Any other students would probably be at the objective the schematics outlined, so finding them was out unless he got stupidly lucky. And judging by his track record so far that was unlikely. Which meant he had to find something else. A vox would be good. If he could find a vox he could call for reinforcements. That was the textbook way of finding more gun. And he was a student now, so it made sense that he would do stuff by the book. Or something.
Frak I have no idea what I'm doing.
That wasn't an unusual thought for Jaune, but right now people depended on him figuring it all out really frakking fast. He turned left and started sprinting down another hallway. Why didn't the station have maps? Who designed this place? It was just endless circular white corridors with unmarked doors. What purpose did that serve? How was anyone supposed to get anywhere? As he ran Jaune unilaterally decided that anyone who had anything to do with void architecture was an idiot and everything would make so much more sense if they had just asked a regular person what they would need if they were frantically running through corridors trying to find a way to summon an army to defeat a ravenous tide of green aliens.
That wasn't even an unreasonable request given the nature of things.
No signs and no maps. This wasn't going well.
Okay. Think. He needed a vox. If none of the doors were labeled, then he had to find the bridge. The bridge was guaranteed to have a powerful vox. And, traditionally, bridges were up. Thankfully the elevators were in a place that made sense., although they didn't have gravity, which was weird. And they were filled with a bunch of crap, which was annoying. The combination of these made his ascent far slower than he would have liked. Every single time he bumped into some floating piece of junk or careened off of the elevator shaft he was reminded that his friends were busy facing down a horde of monsters that would send any normal human running in terror. These thoughts lent him speed and urgency as he crashed on to the bridge.
It was completely abandoned. No orks, no students, no nothing. In fact, it looked like nothing living had been up here in months. None of that really mattered to Jaune at the moment. He really hadn't expected to find any help, and he was pretty sure all of the orks were presently distracted by his insanely strong friends. Who were teenage girls.
The world made no throne-damned sense anymore.
The vox station was easy enough to find. Now the key was to get people to listen to him. Jaune fished his packet of papers out from behind his breastplate and checked the list of frequencies. There. That frequency was labeled 'emergency.' That would probably get someone's attention. Now all he needed was to not sound like a desperate student who was panicking because he was in over his head. Which he was but no one else needed to know that. A good inquisitorial title. Lord-something. Hmm. Lord-Overseer? That sounded pretty good.
/-/
Ruby tripped as the station shook. The ork in front of her died with her scythe in its guts instead of the clean decapitation she had been aiming for. The fighting lulled as everyone capable of higher thought pondered the nature of earthquakes on a space station. Predictably, Weiss was the first one to figure out was going on.
"We're under fire." She said as the station shook again. The orkish tide started to recede as the Warboss shouted orders.
"They are going to tear the station apart." Weiss said in a voice that was far too calm for the words she had just said.
Ruby, by contrast, was pretty sure she was the appropriate amount of freaked out.
"They're what!?"
"The Imperial Fleet is firing on us." She said as she regarded the backs of the fleeing orks. "It seems this station has been deemed a greater risk than an asset."
"Yeah I get that!" Ruby shouted over the sound of explosions. "But why!"
"I do not know, but we should really be leaving." Weiss said as Pyrrha jogged over.
"Has anyone seen Jaune?" she asked.
"No? Who are you? Is Jaune here? Did you come with Jaune?" Ruby asked.
"I'm Pyrrha-"
"Is now really the time for introductions?" Weiss cut in, reminding them all of the very real timer that their lives were on. "We can save that for when we've gotten off the station."
"Right." Ruby said. "How are we going to do that?"
Both Pyrrha and Ruby looked expectantly at Weiss. Weiss froze under their stares. Ruby snickered at her observation. Yang would be proud. But puns aside, Ruby realized quickly that Weiss wasn't really good at making decisions under pressure.
"Well if Jaune came in with Pyrrha then they won't be able to fly out on their own." She said as another volley wracked the stations superstructure. They were becoming more frequent. Ruby doubted they had much time left. But listing things they couldn't do was going to get her closer to something that they could do.
"Maybe they could ride on the wings of our ships?" She suggested. It was better than nothing. And they had to get moving quickly if they wanted to make it all the way back up through the living quarters before the entire station was destroyed.
"Oh, and we have to find Jaune. Does anyone have any other ideas?" The other two girls didn't seem to have much to say, so Ruby lead the way.
They found Jaune at the elevators. Or at least Ruby was pretty sure it was Jaune. Who else would be wearing olive drab body armor over a black voidsuit? Though Ruby couldn't really judge, she had put her cape on over her own suit. It was all about style. Something he clearly understood.
By the time they reached the station's living quarters the station had completely depressurized and the imperial bombardment had reached apocalyptic levels of fury. Thankfully both Weiss and Ruby's fighters were still intact. Pyrrha decided to ride on Weiss's wings, so Jaune got to ride with Ruby.
She hoped he liked going fast.
/-/
Mercury stood stiffly before the desk of one of the most feared and powerful men in the sector. Ozpin hadn't looked up from the papers on his desk since Mercury had stepped into his office. That probably wasn't a good sign.
In retrospect it had been a terrible idea to blow up an Imperial station that was apparently loaded with kids. He might have gone a little overboard. Just a little. Mercury really hoped Ozpin just executed him on the spot. It would be a far kinder fate than whatever Cinder would have planned for him when she found out that he had blown his cover so disastrously.
In front of him the old man gently set down the report he was reading and turned his gaze up toward Mercury.
"Commander Black." He said. "Headmaster Lionheart tells me that you have a long record of exemplary service as both a student and an officer."
Mercury silently promised to buy Watts a shot for so thoroughly breaking Mistral's headmaster.
"Yes, sir."
"However. You opened fire on a vital Imperial listening post that was critical to the defense of Vale and her colonies." Ozpin's stare pinned him in place.
Gulp.
"Through your actions, you doomed nearly forty inquisitorial candidates to their death and very nearly derailed the entire offensive."
Good, if he hadn't been caught. But also, bad. Very bad.
"There are many in your position who would have balked. There are many in you position who would have sought to find another solution, to save the lives of the innocents aboard or to preserve vital infrastructure. So, tell me Mr. Black. Why did you feel it both necessary and within your authority to take the actions that you did?"
Uh.
"There was a confirmed Black Ork aboard the station Lord-Inquisitor." Mercury said easily. The best lies were woven from the truth after all. "I could not allow for its survival. Remnant could ill afford another Grimmfist." Hell yeah. He'd said, 'ill afford.' That's how you knew he was dealing in serious business.
"Indeed." Ozpin said. "From the reports it seems that you made your decision the moment you received this information from one 'Lord-Overseer Arc.' Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir" Mercury said. He was warming up now. The more Ozpin let him talk the more layers of honor and patriotism he could throw between himself and his blatant disregard for military assets "There can be no hesitation in battle. Especially when the entire sector hangs in the balance."
Ozpin nodded and leaned back in his chair.
"If there had been more officers like you at Mountain Glenn, I believe that we could have avoided the catastrophic loss of life that was Grimmfist." Ozpin glanced at his report again. "It says here that your warp drive was critically damaged by an orkish boarding party, and the Mechanicus is projecting several months for the repairs to be complete."
Mercury nodded. More like it had been destroyed by explosives that he had put there. But Cinder's whole plan had been to blame it on the orks. So that worked out.
"With that being the case." Ozpin said. "Due to your exemplary performance and willingness to make difficult decision in the heat of battle, I would like to offer you a position as a professor here aboard the Beacon while your ship undergoes its repairs."
What?
Aw Yeah. It's time for Professor Mercury. Surely allowing Mercury of all people to shape the minds of the youth will have no unforseen consequences. Good job Ozpin, you sure know how to pick your friends.
Also, Emerald is a Callidus assassin. I just couldn't figure out a way to work that into the chapter without 3 pages of exposition on what a Callidus actually is, so I just went with 'shapeshifter.'
Also
Comments are the fuel which feeds the forge of creativity. Just sayin.
