Reply to grey fox anon: I'm very happy that you find Runa a well-developed character. I don't like it when OCs are written to be perfect and overpowered with no flaws, or steal the thunder from canon characters, so I tried to make her believable while interesting to read about without making readers roll their eyes. The counterbalancing imagery between Radec and Runa is exactly what I'm going for: how he ascends from poverty and how she descends from aristocracy so they find a common middle ground in the army. Very perceptive of you to already catch on the private and closed off nature of the Helghast. I'm going to touch on this some more in future chapters. ;)
The Hounds of Helghan (14)
Radec didn't forget about the sniper rifle that Runa had confiscated and delivered to him, nor did he forget the man who had used that rifle to incite insurrection against the authorities. Investigating further into the matter was what led him to the interrogation room, standing before a woman bound to a metal chair and weakened by successive rounds of petrusite electrocution. The petrusite was delivered at a nonfatal, but still quite painful level.
"I...I don't know anything," the woman managed to say between pants. "That traitor told me nothing."
"Spare me the lies, Citizen Valov," the colonel replied with cool confidence. "The 'traitor,' your husband, trusted you with his stash of weapons. You must know where he got his hands on them. You aren't just his wife, but his fellow conspirator."
She shook her head and grimaced in pain. "I told you, sir, I don't know anything about his illicit activities. I had no idea about these weapons until the police stormed in and searched my house today."
Radec narrowed his eyes. "I'm insulted by your stubbornness. It's no use here. I have informants seeded among the Pyrrhus population, under the guise of being recruits for this underground anti-government movement you're part of. They've told me of your plans to stage another protest at the square. You know much more than you're letting on."
The technician managing the interrogation chair threw Radec a questioning glance, but the colonel shook his head. This technician was young, new to the art of interrogation, likely eager to administer more electrocution soon after the last round. Slow and steady does it, Radec thought. Too much punishment too soon would only wear out the captive and lead to no answers.
"I don't care so much about your pitiful protest. On the other hand, the fact that you and your accomplices, mere civilians, somehow possess military-grade weapons concerns me. You must have connections with army personnel. I need to know who's responsible for giving you these weapons." Radec reached out to grip her chin. "You will help me weed out traitors from the Helghan army, Citizen Valov. I will not accept anything less. Tell me what you know."
Valov replied by spitting at him. More precisely, at the visor and respirator obscuring his face. Radec dealt her a backhanded slap across her cheek. Blood trickled down the corner of her lip.
Radec returned his hands behind his back, and instead of raising his voice, he kept it at a level one would hear over a casual chat and tea. "The lengths you go to protect your husband and your accomplices is admirable, but your husband is dead, and my informants will soon have your accomplices captured and brought in for questioning. We will get answers after we break you. It's just a matter of time." It was then that he nodded at the technician.
Valov screamed as petrusite surged through her body. Radec ordered a few more rounds of electrocution for her insolence and lack of cooperation. The ordeal was drawn out for another two hours. Radec impassively stared down at her all the while. Finally, as she slumped in the chair, on the verge of losing consciousness, she gave names.
"The Flightless...an apt title they gave themselves, if you ask me."
That was Visari's response to Radec's report. The colonel remained standing to attention in the palace chamber, even as the Autarch directed his gaze to a sweeping view of Pyrrhus from the huge windows. As with most Helghast architecture, the triad was the dominant motif in Visari's throne room. Coming to a close second, however, was the Visari family crest—a phoenix rising from the ashes, its fiery wings spread in a V shape.
Radec supposed that the dissidents opposing Visari's rule took on a name going against that phoenix imagery.
Visari turned from the window to stare down at Radec. "Excellent work with digging up leads on this Flightless movement, Colonel. I'm not surprised that our defeat in the invasion has emboldened defectors to crawl out from the shadows, like the bugs they are. However, I am just as disturbed as you to know that some of these traitors are within the army's ranks. Have they been dealt with?"
"Not all of them, your excellency," Radec had to admit. "I've ordered a firing squad to execute the ones who've been caught: one major, four sergeants, and two corporals. But some were able to elude capture and escape Pyrrhus. I've caught word that they're attempting to leave the planet entirely and defect to Vekta."
Radec had employed Runa and Sikla to obtain that last piece of valuable information. The captured sergeant had refused to cooperate, but quickly changed his mind under the guard dog's mauling fangs. Half the flesh on his arm had sloughed off as a result. The traitor spilled out coordinates and the name of their ISA informant.
"Do what you do best, Radec," Visari said. "Hunt them down and eliminate them."
The colonel saluted. "Your will is my command."
He left the palace to mobilize the swiftest troops in his division. The Flightless were trying to evacuate Helghan via the space elevator. Radec had informed Admiral Orlock to put the naval fleet in orbit on high alert, though he hoped to catch and crush the Flightless before they could even leave the atmosphere.
Boarding a dropship with his men, Radec tried to contact the troops stationed near the space elevator base. To his dismay, all he got was static. He barked out a command to the dropship's pilot to fly faster. Impatience gnawed away at him despite the dropship accelerating to its highest speed. The Flightless have likely seized control of the base. That could have only happened when the invasion had significantly thinned out the army's ranks, leaving little to no resistance for even civilians among the Flightless.
"Humiliating..." Radec muttered. Then he raised his voice to address the troops hunkered in the ship around him. "These Flightless cowards have already marked themselves for death with their treachery. Once we reach the base, we take it back by storm. Give them a taste of the army's might. No mercy, no prisoners!"
What he got in reply was a chorus of "Yes, sir!" and "For the emperor!"
Orlock's drawling voice crackled through Radec's comms. "Colonel Radec, do you copy? My men in orbit have tracked down and destroyed the ISA ship you've mentioned. Seems that those ISA dogs thought they could slip past our radar. We sniffed them out soon enough. The traitors have no one to extract them now."
"I copy, Admiral. That is excellent news."
"No sign of the Flightless at the space station yet."
"Understood, sir." Radec tightened his grip on the gun in his holster. "My men and I will do our part to ensure that they will never get there."
"I expect nothing less from you, Radec."
The colonel passed on Orlock's report to his men, which seemed to buoy their spirits and stir up their thirst for battle. As the space elevator base loomed in sight, Radec and his men wasted no time waiting for the dropship to land. They rappelled off the dropship, sending up dust with a heavy thud of their combat boots.
Runa and Iveta smoothly dropped to the left and right of Radec, flanking him as his personal guard for this mission. The base was linked to the foundation supporting the space elevator. Its low ceilings were sheltered under a weblike swath of steel beams.
"Spread out and surround the base," Radec ordered his men. "Have a squad head straight for the elevator. Don't let them leave Helghan alive."
Just inside the base entrance were the bodies of fallen soldiers. Their blood had already darkened and dried on the floor. The overhead lights were turned off and the hallways ahead were shrouded in darkness. Radec took in the eerie sight for a moment, then signaled with two fingers to proceed with caution. His men switched on weapon-mounted lights as they pressed on.
A trooper's voice broke through the dim silence. "Sir, no sign of the Flightless near or inside the elevator."
"Copy that," Radec replied. "They must be hiding somewhere in the base. Hold your positions." As he and his men ventured further into a seemingly vacant base, he rose his voice to a resounding taunt. "Come on out, you cowards. Resistance is futile. The army and the navy have you trapped here. You have nowhere to go." At that, he slipped in a wry joke. "You Flightless scum truly live up to your name."
A response came in gunfire bursting through the dark. Radec and his men took cover behind tall crates of cargo, retaliating with shots of their own. Enemy gunfire stopped as quickly as it came.
"They're retreating," Iveta called as she peered over the crate she used for cover.
"Push forward," Radec ordered. "Show them aggression."
Runa had used a sniper rifle to scope out the enemy, and as she kept pace with the colonel, she said, "No helmets, no goggles. They'll be hard to spot in the dark."
Radec nodded in acknowledgement. "Keep an eye out," he told his men.
They swept through the base with relentless efficiency, pursuing the sounds of retreat instead of relying heavily on their sight. They reached the heart of the base, where the ceiling curved upward to fuse with the foundations of the space elevator. As for the elevator itself, it was further inside the towering structure, but Radec heard no more reports from the squad standing guard there.
"Enemy sighted," a commando barked out.
Flightless members ducked into cover as Radec and his men opened fire. Through his tinted lenses, in near darkness, he almost couldn't spot their helmet-free faces. He opened up his visor to get a better view. To his disbelief, Flightless members began charging head-on, with no thought of taking cover. They vented wordless fury through animal-like screams. Radec put no effort into killing them with shots from his pistol. Runa and Iveta covered his back as they fired with their SMGs. When her SMG went dry, Runa hurled knives that sent foes reeling back.
"This is almost too easy," Radec said.
Then all the lights in the base turned on, bathing it in fluorescence, and a man's voice sounded from the intercom.
"Look down, army dogs. Look at the men and women you've killed. These are the faces of the poor and the oppressed. The faces of those who seek freedom and crave justice."
Shot or knifed down Flightless members who died falling onto their backs stared up through misted eyes. Radec then looked up and around to search for the source of the voice.
The man on the intercom went on undeterred. "We got you right where we want you, Hound of Visari. We know that we have no way out. And neither will you!"
A series of explosions went off from both within and outside the base, sending down pieces of the ceiling and rocking the floor underneath Radec's feet.
"Down with Visari! Down with the regime!"
Other Flightless members took up the man's cry, heedless of the beams and ceiling descending upon them, raising a death chant that sent a chill down Radec's spine.
"Fall back! Head for the dropship!" Much as he hated to say it, Radec broke into full retreat as soon as he issued the order, and his men followed suit.
More charges planted by the Flightless detonated in the hallways, cutting off escape and blasting apart those unfortunate enough to be in the radius. Blood and hunks of flesh flowered on the walls. Radec forced his way through a hole blown through the concrete wall, only to narrowly avoid being crushed by a collapsing steel beam. His eyes widened at the sight of the elevator itself buckling in toward the ground.
"They're bringing this whole place down on us!" Iveta shouted.
Radec and his men ran harder than ever to evade raining debris. A few stumbled through the large dust cloud that mushroomed out, and the delay cost them their lives as shrapnel and beams crunched into them. Radec's custom armor saved his skin many times over as hot, jagged pieces of metal glanced harmlessly off of him. Hot pants filled his respirator and a burn engulfed his legs as he ran for his life.
Some of the charges that went off had blown away parts of the floor ahead, caving away into holes revealing a lower level of the base.
Iveta and some of the troops managed to jump over the hole before it caved open even wider into a distance that made jumping impossible. Radec skidded to an abrupt halt over the edge, and waved furiously at the men who hesitated on the other side to keep running.
"Look for another way around," he told Runa and the men still beside him. "I think I can get across this." Teleporting couldn't work at a certain distance, but six meters ahead of him was still within his capability. He stood still and activated the teleportation device embedded in his armor, but instead of flashing out of sight and reappearing on the other side, there came a weak spark and a whining sound.
Runa returned to his side while the others went on ahead. "Sir? Is there a problem?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Must've been debris that hit my armor and jammed the device." Radec tried activating it again, only to get the same weak spark. He struck the breastplate of his armor. "Work, you blasted thing," he growled. Then he snapped at Runa, "What are you still doing here? I told you to go on ahead."
To his disbelief, she stood her ground. "I'm not going until I know you can cross safely, sir."
Radec had no time to argue with her. A massive steel column crashed through the ceiling. He only got a glimpse of it for a split second before Runa shoved him out of the way. Into the hole. Radec fell through to the lower level, the hard floor knocking the wind out of him. Pieces of the ceiling, pipes, and scraps of metal rained down and he recovered quickly enough to roll out of the way. The debris kept raining to form a messy pile where he once fell. Radec winced as he staggered to his feet. Again his armor had protected him from what would have been several fractures.
"Lieutenant," he called out. Next he tried the comms. No answer. Radec scrabbled up the pile of debris to reach the stretch of steel column that had covered up the hole. Steel pipes criss-crossed on each other to form the column, and the gaps were big enough that Radec could squeeze through them.
"Lieutenant," he called again, though he feared the worst.
A groan nearby made him turn his head, and a cold fist gripped his gut. Runa was caught under the steel column. Some pipes had broken away and splayed out to form metal claws that dug through the right side of her helmet and her right shoulder. The rest of her right arm was engulfed and flattened by solid steel that required at least three men to lift.
Radec rushed over to her. "Lieutenant, can you move your legs?"
She responded by curling them in. No back injury meant no paralysis. She still had some fight in her. The tactician in him kicked in and he drew out his knife. Some of his men were still fleeing the collapse of the elevator.
"You, there," Radec called to the pyro trooper nearby. He held out his knife. "Give me your flame."
"Understood, sir."
The pyro trooper kept a distance from Radec and ignited his flamethrower to spew out a thin arc of fire. The heat of its end made Radec's blade glow red. He flipped it in his hand to angle the blade's edge over where Runa's mangled right arm met her shoulder, and brought it down in a decisive plunge.
The helmet muffled her scream of pain. Despite the searing heat of the blade, it took him three more hacks to free Runa from her crushed right arm. Her screams didn't stop him from cutting all the way through bone and flesh. Her blood stained his armor from the knees down. Radec dragged her out of the steel column and slung her limp body over his shoulder. After using the column to cross the now filled up hole, he pelted after the pyro trooper and the rest of his men back to the dropship. They took off once Radec was onboard, leaving behind cacophonic destruction in their wake.
Radec handed Runa off to the medics, who immediately saw to the cauterized stump where her right arm used to be. They also peeled back her dented, blood-streaked helmet to reveal a deep jagged cut through her right eye. Her good eye was shut tight in agony until the anesthetic settled in. The sight of her injuries made Radec clench his jaw until he got a headache.
He tore his gaze away to approach the pyro trooper who had helped him. "Sergeant Peter Sklenar, is it?" he asked.
The pyro trooper removed his helmet to confirm Radec's suspicions. "That's right, sir."
"Good job back there. You deserve a promotion for being quick on your feet and resourceful."
"I'm honored to hear that, sir, thank you." Sklenar peered around Radec. "Will Lieutenant Metrac be all right?"
"I think so. She has shown me that she is not willing to die yet."
Despite that assurance, he and his men returned to Pyrrhus like dogs with tails tucked between their legs. The colonel had to make sure his troops were admitted to the hospital before he had to report to Visari. To anyone else not knowing any better, he looked stoic and impassive, with rigid posture and hands clasped behind his back, but underneath he seethed with anger and humiliation at the damage dealt to his men...and his ego. He had lost about a third of his troops at that base. To another commander the casualties may not be significant, but to a man with high standards like Radec, a third was too much. Many of them, like Runa, came out with crush injuries and maimed limbs.
"The fault is all mine, your excellency," he later admitted to Visari at the palace. "I led my men into unnecessary danger."
The blood-red hue of sunset and long shadows painted the floor of the throne room, and the grim palette darkened the lines on Visari's stony face. "Soldiers understand the risks that come with their line of work. Your men, and you yourself most of all, know this well, Colonel."
Radec shook his head. "I had led them into a trap. I had fallen right into the traitors' hands and let them deal a heavy blow to my forces. It's unacceptable."
Visari descended the steps to stand on equal footing with Radec. "You place too much blame on your shoulders. You are a man who demands perfection of those who serve under you, and of yourself. I asked for the Flightless to be eliminated, and it has been done. Thanks to you and Admiral Orlock, we've had no one successfully defect to Vekta. Take this as a victory."
"That's easier said than done," the colonel almost wanted to say. Instead he bit back a reply and remained silent. It was a hollow victory at best. By accepting the futility of their evacuation, and carrying out the suicidal gambit to take the army down with them, the Flightless had denied Radec the satisfaction of killing them himself. To add insult to injury, his division waned in strength and numbers. The sight of Runa's wounds resurfaced to his memory, and that made him clench a fist to his side.
Visari reached out to give Radec a brief pat on the shoulder. "You and your troops need time to recover, Colonel. Don't throw yourself at the next enemy to pursue. Rest for a while."
Radec got the sense that this was an order, not merely a suggestion. Visari had slightly below average stature—a head shorter than Radec—yet his authority and charisma more than made up for this and the colonel bowed in submission before his emperor.
Radec headed next for Stahl Arms, where he had his armor embedded with the teleportation device brought in for inspection. He had his armor scrubbed free of Runa's blood before that, though that blood had seemed to him a valuable reminder of the armor's failure. Of his failure.
"It appears your armor needs even more reinforcing than it already has," Stahl later declared as he and Radec smoked outside. "Nothing I can do about the mechanics of the teleporting itself, unfortunately. My engineers have tried and failed to find a way to activate it while the wearer is in motion."
Radec watched the biting winds of arctic Helghan snatch away the smoke billowing from his mouth. "Well, fix and improve what you can. The technical defect had cost me and one of my troops greatly. I'd much rather not have that defect be repeated again."
"Of course, my good colonel, I understand your concern."
Radec darted a glance at the older, smaller man before tossing his spent cigarette over the balcony and turning away. "ISA invasion is imminent, Chairman. I want all the equipment at optimal supply and function before that happens."
"We can really get that going if you bring in more test subjects for me." Stahl cracked a smirk. "Too bad you prefer your game dead than alive, Hound of Visari."
Radec didn't return a smile or a joke as he retreated into the facility, away from the wind and snow. Stahl took a shameless pleasure in testing his weapons on prisoners, criminals, the outcasts of society, whoever he and his private army could get his hands on. Radec didn't approve of the chairman enjoying the pain and torture of his own people, but he pretended to look the other way as long as he and the national army could profit off the fruits of Stahl's labor.
Radec thought of the faces of the dead Flightless on the way back to Pyrrhus. He had spent much of his life looking the other way. In dedicating himself fully to the military and to the emperor, he'd almost forget where he had come from sometimes. The cries of the Flightless, the poor working class, came back to remind him, to haunt him.
This is a chapter I wanted to write for a very long time (Runa losing her right eye and arm, Radec and Runa saving each other). I'm glad to finally get it out!
I had a hard time planning out how the space elevator base scene would go, then I picked up on a subtle detail in the Radec boss fight that I hadn't noticed for years: he always stands still when he teleports in and out. He's never in motion when he activates his teleportation. I see that as a drawback for his otherwise OP ability. I really liked that I could work it into this chapter.