Ch13 - Of Mice and Men
Austria was truly beautiful, OSS Agent Piper McLean had decided, on her second day of being so deep behind enemy lines.
Even in the hell of war, the countryside seemed to hold some kind of natural beauty, a certain ethereal green to the forested hills, which seemed to glow in the autumn sun, and the snow already forming in the seemingly divinely carved peaks.
The border with Germany, Piper knew, was not too far from here, as was the next checkpoint. There was trouble ahead, and it was naught but a matter of time before something happened.
As it just so happened, it was not too long at all.
The party had evaded yet another convoy of German troops, this one actually being one they seemed to have caught off guard as much as they themselves had been, the appearance of a slow-moving platoon of vehicles seeming like almost incredibly bad, luck, but it had been nothing more serious than a medical train, and so their admittedly impressive knowledge of German had got them by, the dim light of the late evening enough to mask the American makes of their bikes, though Piper thought, with a hint of self-importance, that it wasn't just anyone who could spot a bike and recognise it for what it was during a conversation with the rider. It was a skill that was hammered into every spy in the employ of the OSS, and it was common knowledge that a spy without observation is like a bird without wings.
They made distance between themselves and the ambulance and its escort, though, and were closing in on the Kalkalpen region, which promised less towns and cities, hence less enemy troops and by extension, a good place to sleep, and within striking distance of Vienna at that.
They had made good pace, all things considered, and they were not too far away at all from their desired checkpoint of Linz, in the Northern part of the country. The city was unimportant in the grand scheme of things but it did notably function as a layby for the train from Innsbruck into Vienna itself. It had been too much of a gamle two days ago, to board a train at the very beginning of their journey; it wouldn't do at all to encounter Austrian ticket collectors on the train, or perhaps to be picked up on as they communicated. Granted, it didn't help at all that there seemed to be some enemy 'lord' who knew Jackson by name, let alone that he was outside the very room in which he held his meeting.
As a matter of fact, none of the trio that had gone towards the university in Innsbruck had been quite the same when they had heard that little encounter. To know that there was some entity, quite probably a rather powerful one, knew of the exact details of their mission, all while their comrade Annabeth suffered, most likely at the receiving end of countrymen's worst kinds of punishment, and as Agent Selene, or Artemis as many of her closest confidants knew her, grew inevitably closer and closer to her own breaking point.
Time was running short, and it would not do at all to have another player in the game.
Of course, just as the words crossed her mind, her tyres were blown out from under her.
Bianca Di Angelo reacted in the blink of an eye, clasping the downed American by the arm, and in an impressive show of strength and judgement, swinging the afflicted agent onto the back of her own bike, letting a breath escape her lips when she felt an affirmative pat on the shoulder from the quaking spy. Both women flinched as the newly discarded Harley, a state of the art vehicle and such a valuable piece of equipment in their journey thus far, slid into a ditch at the side of the road, exploding in a searing hot fireball and igniting the tinder-dry grass at the edge of the road.
The line of allied agents accelerated, the minds of each of them blanking out the roars of protest from their bike engines. Another shot sounded out, this time much easier to trace due to their newfound, nearly frantic alertness. Bianca drew a pistol from the pocket of her jacket, passing it to Piper behind her in the hope that the American had also clocked the presence of the gunner on their Five O'Clock.
Alas, even the best had their moments of weakness.
Guiding McLean's hands onto the handlebars, hoping that the OSS Agent could at least keep the bike steady as they hurtled along the straight uphill, Bianca turned in the saddle, right arm coming up, Colt M1911 'Government' pistol spitting out two .45 calibre rounds, the first striking the German's makeshift barrier and throwing up chunks of wood, before the second round struck true.
Two more bikes went down in quick succession, Valdez and Ramirez-Arellano being sent sprawling as their bikes skidded, metal bodies sparking violently against the tarmac.
Jackson and Grace, at the head of the column, decided that enough was enough.
Nightshade, too, at the back, cursed loudly in Arabic before dismounting in a single smooth movement, letting her momentum carry her into a roll, firing off a pistol round into the distance as she came up.
A moment later, her Springfield sniper rifle was up at her shoulder, face contorted in a scowl as she squeezed her unused eye shut to peer through the rifle's telescopic sights.
She shot once, twice, and turned, apparently satisfied.
She brought the American-made rifle to her shoulder once more, having apparently picked another target, when she went down, hard.
When Nightshade fell, time seemed to stop for the team, the seemingly ageless sniper being one of their toughest, and quite probably their greatest asset in a sniper-on-sniper engagement such as the one in which they were currently caught up.
Leo Valdez understood this quickly, and rose to his feet, knees shaking from the compounded strain of so long on the road, as well as the particularly nasty fall he had just now taken when his bike was blown out from underneath him.
Scrambling across the gravelly tarmac, he made his way towards the downed sniper, sighing in evident relief when he felt a strong pulse in her wrist. Dragging her towards some semblance of cover in the ditch by the side of the road, he began to search for the bullet which had felled the seemingly unstoppable force that was Zoya El-Faouly.
Mercifully, it wasn't a long search, and further relief came when the woman herself began to stir from her previously unconscious state, grumbling what sounded entirely indiscernible to the Texan.
"Catty fur is lemony?" he wondered aloud, the apparent hilarity of the Arabic phrase dissociating him from the warzone in which he was currently crouched.
His musings were cut short when the barely conscious Egyptian whacked him, hard around the head.
"My Shoulder, you fool," she groaned, rolling her eyes despite the pain, grimacing further when he jostled her slightly as he went to inspect her shoulder, which was, indeed, the affected area.
A typical, stressed out, field-trained soldier might have pulled out tweezers and fumbled around for some time, trying to extract the bullet from where it was, mercifully not far into the afflicted body part.
Leonidas Valdez was none of those things.
An engineer in the field of battle would never follow the convention.
That was precisely why he blocked out the experienced sniper's protests when he pulled a magnet from his webbing, in addition to the standard, expected equipment, a needle and some suturing thread from his first aid kit.
Being a genius was immensely fun.
Outside the little drainage ditch at the side of the road, the scene was very much different.
Frank Zhang had understood immediately when Sergeant El-Faouly had fallen that all of a sudden he was the best marksman here, barring Percy and Thalia, who never seemed to be out of place in a warzone. The OSS agents were far, far out of their depth, trained for espionage and assassination, not open combat such as this.
McLean had taken cover, trying with some difficulty to pick out her targets. The problem was, of course, that even when it seemed as though they had killed an enemy soldier, they seemed to rise once more, like Frankenstein's monster, rising to live once more.
Worse still was that Frank had seen movement in the trees. He knew exactly where each of his comrades were, and so it was rather obvious that the enemy was advancing on them, firing all the while.
Out of the trees they came, clad in the darkest of blacks, faces hidden from view by shell-like masks fashioned into the likeness of skulls, some stained red, others decorated with grotesque images of snakes and hellish creatures of nightmare and suffering.
Their footsteps made no sound, their movements like ghosts in the dead of night, despite the light of day illuminating their hellish armour, the black seeming to gleam in the rays of the sun.
More and more poured out of the trees, these humans-turned-demons, not by mystic means, but by the poison fed into their minds for so long. By the end of it all, the team were faced by twelve of these men, each crouching low, like a panther ready to pounce.
Frank glanced out of the corner of his eye at the man who he had come to respect in so many ways since their miraculous meeting on the beaches of Normandy so long ago.
Perseus Jackson was stood stock still, body coiled like a taut spring, no hint of his inevitable nerves visible on his blank visage, despite the constant back-and-forth flit of his eyes as he scanned the men in front of him.
Zhang's next look was towards Jason Grace, the intrepid American Paratrooper, who seemed to have matured so much in the months they'd known each other. The man was nearly the polar opposite of Jackson, a bundle of nerves whose face seemed to relay his entire emotional spectrum, from the fear of death, all the way to the inevitable adrenaline-fueled bloodlust of a man who was trained to the highest degree in the art of combat.
He had time only to glance at the fallen Zoya 'Nightshade' El-Faouly, no doubt one of their greatest assets in such a fight, with all her experience in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the man desperately fighting the flow of blood to keep her in the fight, Leo Valdez, when he heard the metallic zing of knives being drawn, and all of a sudden the burly Canadian felt oh so desperately out of place.
He was a sniper, a mover, a fighter at long range.
He was not meant for a knife fight.
Academically, he understood why the enemy would favour such means in this kind of fight, rifles being prone to a misfire, and potentially beginning friendly fire among the two sides, and Frank sure as hell wasn't having that on his conscience.
Equally, he hated the idea of being so open, so vulnerable in a fight, where so much of his training back in Canada had been based around long-range action, building clearances and urban warfare being but a small part of what he learned.
This was an entirely different kind of battle, and he had to be ready for it.
Swearing violently under his breath, Frank Zhang discarded his trusty Enfield Rifle, drawing his bayonet and near-unused Colt M1911 pistol, smiling grimly at the almost reassuring weight of the loaded weapon in his hand.
A glance out of the corner of his eye told him that the enemy… Agents? Spies? Had begun to make their advance.
They seemed to advance as one, footsteps silent, the only indication of life in their bodies being the ominous rattle of the respirators built into their masks. It reminded Frank of watching video reels of skeletons, the enemy soldiers' own skeletal frames completing the image, with the grotesque imagery of their uniforms painting the clearest of pictures of the situation.
A knife blade caught the sun as one man swung, body moving seemingly like lightning as the enemy operator lunged towards Frank, and the battle began.
Thalia Grace knew she shouldn't have relished this nearly as much as she was at this moment in time, but she couldn't help but enjoy the shiver down her spine and sudden rush of blood that came with the adrenaline of a good fight.
One enemy slashed at her, jagged blade arcing towards her neck in what the fool clearly believed to be a killing blow.
No chance.
Ducking the blow and dropping into a roll, she came up on her opponent's opposite side. Suddenly, she was in the far superior position, with the enigmatic black-clad operator looking into the sun, his back to the rest of the fighting. They now had two things to worry about, whereas Thalia had only one.
The sly bastard's complete and utter annihilation.
Moving in quickly, Thalia struck, going not for the head or neck as her opponent had done to her, but for the body, forcing the assassin to dodge sideways, towards another fight in full flow, her own little brother up against one of the other blithering idiots who thought themselves good enough to win a fight against them.
Her opponent was now trapped, He had Thalia to one side, Jason and his opponent to another, and suddenly nowhere to run.
It is said that when the human brain is confronted with a situation of extreme stress, it chooses either to fight, or to flee.
The man in front of her had run out of all options of flight, and so his brain made the choice for him.
With an indiscernible battle cry, the man charged, closing the distance quickly and slashing wildly downwards, from high above his own head.
Or, at least, he thought he did.
The hunting knife buried to the hilt in his abdomen begged to differ.
He slumped over the blade, crimson blood leaking from the wound at some pace. The man coughed quietly, blood staining the inside of his visor, just about visible under the black mask, and he inexplicably straightened up once more, the hole in his abdomen seeming to seal up in a feat of magic.
Thalia backed off, quick, eyes wide in shock as the… creature… in front of her straightened, ripping her knife out of the gash in his torso, throwing it off to one side as though it were some minor inconvenience, the now hellish rattle of the respirator starting up once more in earnest as the fiend advanced once more.
Thalia drew a pistol as she backed up, hand shaky from fear as she fired, one round smashing into the agent's neck. The figure was rocked back once, twice, thrice, as she began to empty a full clip into his body, not even trying to go for the heavily protected head as she fought for survival.
Still, the man advanced, driving her back towards the forest
Her senses were on high alert, her heart teeming to pound of her chest as she retreated, not daring to look back, and yet knowing that she had to as a result of the ominous risk of tripping; a catastrophic situation in which to find oneself when confronted with an apparently immortal foe.
Her opponent finally broke the pace of his steady stalk, bursting out in near-superhuman strides and tackling her to the floor, when Thalia noticed their true target, almost laughing in her hysteria at the ridiculousness of it all.
Her closest ever friend, her brother in all but blood, Percy Jackson, was holding his ground, fighting ferociously against five of the fiends as they bore down on Bianca di Angelo, the almost mythical things having driven through the gap she had vacated as she was forced into a stumbling retreat.
The thing bore down on her, a terrifying sight she wished never to remember, though she knew for a fact that it would haunt her nightmares for years to come. She had to admit, even though she felt as though her life did not have much remaining, it was truly a privilege to watch that man fight. His limbs seemed to flow in a primal rhythm as he defended himself, pistol in one hand, bayonet of his rifle in the other.
His movements flowed into each other, his body entirely in sync as he kicked one away, sending the black-clad fiend two, perhaps three feet back to recover from his position in a heap on the floor, while simultaneously firing off a shot into the torso of a second, not even faltering as the assassin didn't even stagger, rather taking his opponent's momentary pause as an opportunity to press on, stabbing the afflicted assassin in the neck before shoulder barging him out of the way.
Three remained before Thalia's attention was drawn back to her own opponent. Resistance was futile, her legs too tired to move, her arms like lead and her head still ringing with the sounds of combat.
She could only watch as her opponent, who had so completely dominated her in this fight, raised his knife, ready to strike, and it was as though her life flashed before her eyes, her eyes almost seeing Percy in the park as they played on the swings back home.
The knife came down, and…
Missed
Jason Grace dropped his Winchester M12 20-Gauge Shotgun, cranking the pump-action once more, and grimacing in sick satisfaction as an entire arm was blown off, chunks of cloth and flesh flying out in every direction, blood and gore spattering against the road as the man himself was thrown back, neck snapping to one side in a fatal-looking angle, though Jason knew not to trust that. Another shot dealt with the head, and on he went, the instincts of a Paratrooper. John Browning and Thomas Crosley Johnson had designed the weapon well, all those years. In fact, the weapon itself had been designed before Jason had even entered the world, the weapon having been designed in 1912, and it was an established weapon by this point in time. It was rumoured that there were over a million in circulation, though Jason suspected that the number might well be closer to 2.
On he drove, taking a further two out of the fight, albeit his role rather less than the dervish that was Captain Jackson as he whirled through the enemy numbers, rolling and coming up behind the two he was currently fighting, stabbing one, before literally ripping the head off another.
Of the rest of the team, Jason had seen a fair few, having been all over the thin strip of road that had been their battlefield.
Leo and Zoya had been sequestered away in a drainage ditch, the latter having been struck down by a bullet, though Jason didn't know the extent of the damage to the invaluable Egyptian sniper. Bianca was by the bikes, protected by Percy and the wounded Reyna and Piper. The two of them, Jason knew, were not badly hurt, the worst case scenario involving a broken toe or two, painful as anything, but easily enough mended.
This left Thalia, his estranged sister, who he had, it seemed, saved with a shot taken in near-reckless abandon as he discovered the capabilities and potential of the shotgun he held, a unique weapon among the team.
Surveying the field now, he saw that much of the danger had been cleared, none of the black-clad fiends left standing, many with gaping holes blown out of their heads or torsos, giving Jason some small vindictive pleasure, knowing that so much of this destruction was a consequence of his own quick thinking, the buckshot of his fearsome weapon ripping through flesh and bone…
It was not a joy found as a result of a love of killing, or a love of battle, for Jason was far too human for either of those to be the case. He felt joy because he had served a greater purpose, the aim to which he had strived for so long. People fighting for good, good people fighting on the side of good were alive because he had done his duty.
Dropping the gun, he sank to his knees, entirely exhausted after what had been a harrowing hour, perhaps two, of brutal hand-to-hand combat.
The others emerged slowly from their hiding places, or from where they had been lying fallen. Thalia finally staggered to her feet, close to ten minutes after her duel with her own opponent. It had been impressive, of course, but nothing compared to the duel Percy had contested, fending them away from their intended captive of Bianca.
He didn't know why they wanted her, and he didn't know why the two di Angelo siblings had been in enemy captivity in the first place, but he knew that they had learned something which this 'General' of Hitler's wanted, and badly at that. Conversations needed to be had, and sharpish.
The team of nine had just about met by the discarded bikes, some still working, others wrecked by the fighting, when it all descended into chaos once more.
A fresh wave of enemies emerged from the woods, pouring out from the treeline and charging the beleaguered and battle-weary team from all sides.
The General was good, Leo admitted to himself, and he certainly had men to waste, throwing them into combat like this despite their indisputable skill. It was incredible that these were to fighting on the front, defending German borders, because they'd turn the tide of the battle on the front for sure.
That was of course unless…
Perseus Jackson didn't ask when Valdez demanded they just give him some time, simply nodding and checking his rifle, ignoring the hideous screams of this fresh wave of men.
The American went about things in the way only a career engineer could, ripping parts off the near-enough written off bikes, hurling unusable components at the enemy if ever they came within the impressive range of his throwing arm. It didn't do much, but Percy supposed anything went in a situation as bad as this.
The enemy advance had been stilled against the fierce defence the beleaguered Allied agents had provided from behind their packs and what wood Reyna, Bianca and Piper had managed to salvage as they fought for their lives.
Notably positive was the reentry of Zoya El-Faouly to the fight, the Egyptian grimacing against the inevitable pain in her recently stitched shoulder as she braced against the recoil of her rifle, the worn Enfield No.4 picking out targets and putting them out of the fight with unerring accuracy, shots only ever hitting shoulders and necks, either removing the beasts' ability to fight, or achieving the one outcome they knew killed them outright.
Eight defenders battled away, not for victory, and not to preserve themself for some miraculous rescue, but to give their companion time, and to deal as fierce a blow to their enemy as possible.
Percy did not even need to think as he fired, round after round picking out targets, though he knew not all would be as effective as Nightshade's, the experienced sniper a true force to be reckoned with in the field of war, her ability to pick out and destroy her targets terrifying and awe-inspiring in equal measure.
It seemed like an age to the ex-naval officer when the US Navy Aviator tapped his shoulder, a steely look in his eye and a manic grin on his face. The entire image felt so wrong, but who was Percy to argue? Valdez was an expert in his field, with a brain to rival even the greatest that Percy had seen while under Tovey's command aboard HMS Rodney, or in his own time aboard Argo as a rather more senior Officer than he had been in his early days in His Majesty's Royal Navy. If the team survived, then Percy was happy.
"Break out that way," Valdez explained, pining towards the North, and towards their overall objective, "I'll follow, don't you worry cap'n," he said, voice calm, though his tone was less than genuine.
Percy didn't like where this was going, but he knew that he didn't have any better options.
Ammunition wasn't unlimited, and soldiers certainly weren't either, and so this opportunity would have to be taken.
The retreat was fast and orderly, Zhang firing off several punishing bursts from the hip to clear a path as Reyna and Bianca sped away, followed hastily by Jason and Piper on the second bike, the OSS Agent hurling a knife through the right eye of one of the assassins in their way, and the Canadian Corporal's machine gun dealing with two more before Thalia and Zoya made their hasty exit.
Finally, Percy turned away, unable to stay any longer, lest the gap they had forged close up.
Gunning the engine of the Harley-Davidson bike, he stayed just long enough for Zhang to join him, before firing once, twice, thrice at enemies heading in Valdez' direction, delaying them.
Giving the man a meaningful look, Percy signaled that they couldn't hold the gap forever, and that he needed to move - speed was of the utmost importance here.
The Texan merely smiled, gesturing for his comrades to leave, and holding up the contraption he had fought so hard to create. His smile was bloody, his hands dripping in the viscous red substance and suddenly Percy realised exactly what was happening, and why.
Perseus Jackson swallowed deeply, exhaling as he opened up the throttle of his bike and rode off.
He felt the surge of electricity, his hairs standing on edge from the sheer current generated by Valdez' jammer, and he punched the handlebars of his bike as he rode away, cursing himself over and over again.
How could he have missed it?
Of course they weren't human.
Of course he couldn't beat them like humans beat humans.
Of course he had failed.
Leonidas Valdez would die, he knew, for nobody survived that level of electrical exposure, not while holding it, not while you had a wound puncturing a lung, whenever he had been hit that hard.
It was tough losing a friend, a comrade, a brother in arms.
Percy had seen this happen many times in his long military career, and he had not known Leonidas Valdez all that long, but damn, it hurt. It hurt because that was the true burden of leadership. Every small detail is, in the end, your responsibility.
Success, Joy and Pain, and yet also Sorrow, Loss and Death.
Such was the burden of being a leader.
It was his fault, and damn all those who said any different.
A/N
Here, have a chapter. You'll get another at some point, university is great, but tough haha.
Haven't written this little bit in a while, I don't own PJO.