Please remember to favorite and follow!
"It is not tolerable, it is not permissible, that from so much death, so much sacrifice and ruin, so much heroism, a greater and better humanity shall not emerge."
~Charles de Gaulle
Chapter Twenty-four: The Grip of Death
"Shit...shit!" Jane ground her teeth. "That's not good. That's not good at all."
Violet light still filled the night sky like a malfunctioning Aurora Borealis, and the thrumming noise of a psionic transporter shook the building. Jane's eyes flicked to the darkened spots of the room, and she could imagine the Assassin lurking in the shadows, watching and waiting for the opportune moment...
"What do we do?" David demanded, appearing at Jane's side. "There's the garrison, there's the Assassin, there's the prisoners and the mission-"
"Mission's secondary." Jane made that decision as easily as breathing. "We have to get the prisoners out of here, and keep them safe."
"That's a great plan," David growled, "but how?"
"We can break for the hills," Julie suggested. "There's a haven, not far. I checked records before we dropped."
"They'll never make it," Elena snapped, hurrying past with an armload of Advent coats. "They'll freeze before leaving the valley. And even if they didn't, we'd be leading Advent right to the haven."
"Avenger-"
"Firebrand can't carry sixty people." David shook his head, and Julie wilted. "And we can't risk bringing Avenger herself in, not this close to a major Advent facility - and the Assassin herself." The Australian's scowl deepened. "This is probably the shortest rescue in history."
Jane let out a long breath. She leaned on the nearest column, idly planting building-wrecking high explosives while she did. Her fingers flew through the comparatively mundane task, and she ground her teeth again, harder.
There's a way, she thought stubbornly. There's always a way. They had to get these people here somehow!
"Jane, we have minutes until they figure out where we are, at most," Elena reminded her, reappearing while Mox helped the prisoners. "We need a decision and we need it-"
"Avenger, this is Menace." With four words, Jane broke radio silence and made her decision - quite possibly signing her entire team's death warrant. "Central, do you copy?"
"Central, do you copy?"
"They've broken..." Gallant leaned over the holodisplay, and his eyes probed the facility diagram. "John?"
"Sir." Bradford touched his com piece. "This is Central. Sitrep, Menace?"
"We're inside Charlie Building." Well, at least she was being vaguely circumspect about the team's location. Not that Gallant expected it to help, watching how quickly his own techs(with their crappy-by-comparison equipment) were triangulating the broadcast point. "Sir, there are civilians that were held captive inside."
"To what point and purpose?" Tygan asked. Two minutes of terse explanation followed.
"My...God..." Shen's eyes bored, wide and unseeing, into the holodisplay. "This is worse than..."
"I'm sorry I asked," Tygan muttered.
"I've laid X4 to demolish the building." That made Gallant's lips thin, but he decided to pick his battles.
"I'm guessing you didn't break operational com silence just to report in." By Bradford's tone, she'd better not have.
"No, sir. I need the command crew to track that rail line and find out how close it gets to Resistance positions."
"The..." Bradford blinked. "Say again, Menace?"
"The line passes near a haven called Humanity Falls," Shen reported, ten seconds after appropriating a terminal with a minimum of politeness from a very confused tech. "If they can patch me into the train controls, I can drop the speed enough for the prisoners to eject from the train in motion, then lead Advent on a merry chase across Western Europe's rail net, all by remote."
"Tygan, get in contact with the haven," Bradford ordered. "Let them know what's coming and have their security on standby. We'll check in with them as soon as we're clear."
"Of course." The doctor hurried to another terminal. "That doesn't provide for the Advent garrison. They'll pursue the train, and if the Chosen is really on the ground-"
"I know." Bradford sighed. "Menace, you're going to have a running fight on your hands. I'll contact Firebrand and-"
Gallant cleared his throat, rather loudly. All bridge activity ground to a sudden halt, and he heard Jane Kelly softly suck in breath on the other end of the line.
"Sir?" Bradford blinked. "Do you have something to add?"
"Yes, actually." Gallant did his level best not to lean on his cane or the rail more than he had to. "Belay the Firebrand order, Central."
"Commander, the team will need an extraction before the drop at Humanity Falls-"
"No, they won't," Gallant growled. "They won't be taking the train, Central."
"Sir?" Oh, Kelly asked the question, but she knew. Fighting Irish could read her CO's mind a little better than she thought, and a little better than Gallant was comfortable with.
"The garrison will pursue the train." He clasped his hands before him, trying to be as surreptitious about the fact that the clasping was done on the railing as he possibly could. "Unless someone prosecutes a holding action and diversionary strike, buying time for Shen to breach the train's security protocols and get the prisoners moving far enough away to be out of immediate threat." His lip curled. "And such an engagement offers a reasonable opportunity for Menace to complete its operational objective."
"Sir, the skulljack is an ambush weapon-" Tygan broke off when Gallant met his eyes.
"Sir..." Bradford made sure his com was disabled. "Sir, you're suggesting what can only be a suicide mission. They're up against one of the Chosen, at least one MEC, and God knows how many Advent."
"I'm aware, Central." Gallant checked his own com. "This is XCOM we're talking about. There's no finer soldiers in the world for the kind of fight we're bringing on. And besides, we brought the Terminator for a reason. Advent doesn't have a MEC monopoly."
Silence. The bridge crew traded glances, while Shen visibly struggled not to object. Gallant hoped his nervous inhalation wasn't too noticeable.
"We can win this fight," he insisted. "I know we can. It's time we won something, unequivocally, and reminded everyone that we're in this not for survival, but victory."
"Sounds like a suicide mission," David growled, checking his machinegun. Jane glanced at him.
"It's for the civvies. Isn't that why we signed up?"
David let out a heavy sigh. "Yeah, I suppose. Just never wanted to go the way of my old team, that's all."
Jane snorted - quietly. "Me neither. Irina died so I wouldn't." She took a deep breath. "Still. We don't have to distract them long - just long enough for the train to get moving. Maybe we pull through."
"Maybe." David's eyes were dark. "I want a bloody drink."
"Yeah, get in line." Jane chuckled. "I'll buy."
"Not on your life. The gentleman pays, that's how drinking works."
"It's 2035, jackass, not 1800-"
"Don't you call me a jackass for being polite," David snapped. He huffed, and Jane put her free hand on her hip in what she supposed was Standard Feminine Posing - though her right hand had an alien-alloy-shard railgun pointed at the floor and there was an electrical death sword over her shoulder, so classical femininity was probably dangling by a thread back near the Italian border.
Good! I don't want any part of any femininity that excludes high explosives!
"I'll call you a jackass whenever I feel like calling you a jackass," she insisted. "Bite me."
"As if!" David cleared his throat, turning back to the door. "You're the jackass, Kelly."
"I said it first." She took her position beside the exit, pausing to glance at Mox. "What?"
"Nothing." The Skirmisher had to be grateful for his helmet, but Jane would have sworn he was grinning. She pointedly ignored both him and her jackass of a Grenadier as they settled into position.
"Julie? Elena?"
"We're set," the Reaper chimed in from the other door, just far enough away that it was com or shouting. "On your mark."
"Right. Well-"
"Kelly."
She stiffened. "Commander, sir?"
"For the record-" Oh, great, that was a definite note of reproach in his voice "-having reviewed your visual data on that facility...permission to place charges granted."
Jane blew air through her teeth, rolling her eyes. "That's awful kind of you, sir. Point taken." She turned to the door. "All right, Menace. On my mark, exit breach and shoot anything that moves." She glanced to the civvies clustered by the far exit. "Once we've drawn their attention, get across the yard to the train as fast as possible. Doctor Shen will take it from there, and Junior will cover your approach."
"I will comply with this order," the SPARK replied agreeably.
"Good." Jane sighed when she realized she was simply delaying and delaying for delay's sake. "All right. Three."
Hands tightened on gun grips. Jane took a steadying breath.
"Two."
She was sure she heard Julie's amp warming up.
"One."
Again she thought of that floating body in the acid, and all the others like it, and Jane didn't regret planting the charges without permission in the slightest.
"Mark!"
Mox hit the door switch, and then Jane burst free into frigid air.
"They'll be okay," Aileen Quinn assured. Somehow, she'd wound up sitting beside Sylvie in the Frenchwoman's booth, and they both nursed what were definitely not their first drinks. The Volunteer swallowed, watching the feed of the transponder beacons breaking into open ground.
"Are you sure?"
"Positive." Aileen glanced around the bar, spotting Da-Xia Liang, Aidan MacLeod, Cameron Rogers, and a few of the science and support personnel. With Mendoza, Weber, and Nunez dead, every single off-duty XCOM soldier was here in the bar, watching the fate of their friends and colleagues.
"Positive," Aileen lied. "They're going to be fine, Sylvie."
"Cat's in very bosh-"
"Shut up." Jane approved of how conversational her voice was in the instant before she pulled the trigger. The soldier barely had time to finish turning around before she sent a full load of alloy shards ripping through his insufficient armor to tear out his heart and lungs. The blast virtually eviscerated the poor man, and the kinetic energy from the shot picked him up like a doll and flung him head over heels to crash in a heap.
Right on top of the white, ugly MEC's foot.
"Oh, shit!" Jane dove to the side as its mag-cannon leveled. She heard Julie and Elena firing over on the right, and Mox's bullpup barked as he followed on the Ranger's heels, but the sound that overrode her world in that instant came from the MEC's cannon, and from its shots as they hissed by on hateful scarlet trails, ripping furrows in the permacrete of the yard with every scattered hit.
"Someone do something about that thing!" she cried, scrambling on all fours as the MEC's fire rent the boxes she used as cover into scrap. The Ranger managed to roll into a better position - down a convenient trench near the loading belts full of green stasis canisters - and she leveled her shard gun at the next target.
"Jane!" David's shoulder hit her sharply, and both of them tumbled. Fortunately, the Advent soldier she'd almost eviscerated went down a second later, ripped to shreds by Mox's bullpup.
"What do you think you're-" Jane broke off when rockets soared through the air over her, bursting into miniature independent warheads and bursting in the air. She screamed, both from panic as shrapnel rained...and a deeper sort of panic when David threw himself overtop of her.
"The MEC!" Elena cried, distantly while the world shook and boomed. "Julie!"
"On it!" The redhead covered her head as she darted through the mess of airburst fragments, purple power searing over her arms. She drew her amp and her eyes glowed.
"David!" Jane pushed him off the instant the barrage ceased, and she scrambled to her knees. "David, are you-"
"I'm fine!" He had a scratch on his shoulder and another on his thigh, but that was remarkably light for the bombardment they'd just endured. He seized his grenade launcher. "We've got to-"
"Muton, on the right!" Elena's vektor cracked. "Officer and lancer!"
"Oh, joy!" Jane stumbled that way, barely even noticing as Julie's power encircled the MEC, freezing it in an orb of stasis. The Ranger hefted her gun, lips thinning as she beheld the enormous green-armored alien with its rebreather mask, plasma rifle in hand, roaring a challenge as it stormed for the first piece of cover that would protect its bulk. The bayonet on its rifle glistened angrily, and Jane swallowed.
"The officer," she growled, reaching to the...device...on her arm. "David, you and Elena set me up to get a shot at the officer-"
Hiss!
Jane never knew how she heard it. All she knew was that she did, even over the raging mag-fire and gunfire, the roars of the muton, the shouting of the Adventers, the searing whirlwind of Julie's power...
She heard the hiss of wind.
"What the hell-" She spun just in time. Jane brought her shard gun up, and because she did, it took the brunt of the sword-swing instead of her face.
"Oh, no," Gallant whispered, as the icon appeared on his holodisplay. He winced as Kelly flew almost eight feet, the broken halves of her shard gun crashing to the ground around her as she tumbled through a stack of stasis canisters and landed on the conveyor belt. He watched her tracker grind inside while she rubbed her head, and the Commander hissed. "That...thing..."
"The team will figure out a way to deal with her," Bradford growled. "She's not a major-"
"I had not expected you to find this place," the Assassin mused, and Gallant clutched his ears as her voice...appeared in his head, his head, even so far away. Bradford yelped, collapsing to one knee, while Shen nearly fainted. All across the bridge, personnel cried out and grabbed their heads, convulsing as their coms erupted with feedback. Tygan alone seemed unaffected, and he set to typing on his display with a will. "You are threatening for pests, XCOM. This facility is crucial to the Elders' plan, and I am afraid I cannot allow you to leave now that you have learned the truth."
"Holy shit!" Gallant held the railing with one hand, eyes screwed shut as the feedback bounced and rebounded. He ripped out his com piece, gasping as his brutalized eardrum felt the rush of cold bridge air. "Doctor Tygan-"
"I've decrypted her psionic-wave transmission and am isolating it from the communications net!" The scientist worked feverishly at his display for another minute, while more of the crew removed their earpieces. "I can shut her out-"
"Belay that!" Gallant set his teeth. "Leave the channel open, Doctor. The more she talks, the more we learn about her, and the more distracted she is."
Tygan hesitated, but after a moment, he nodded. "As you order, Commander."
"But," Bradford snapped, rubbing his ear. "Get rid of that..."
"Yes," Gallant agreed. He glared at his still-sputtering com. "That noise."
"Consider it done, Commander." Tygan spared a glance for the holodisplay, as David White engaged the Assassin at close range. He winced when the Australian took a hit. "He's not going to win that fight."
"He isn't trying to," Shen posited. "He's buying time for Kelly to get back."
"Yeah." Gallant's eyes turned to the two figures swarming up the Advent watchtower at the yard's edge. "Or for someone else to get a shot."
"Outrider," Bradford pronounced, with a thin smile. "Who knew she and Mox would work together that smoothly?"
"They're professionals." Gallant cautiously inserted his earpiece. "Pulse is gone."
"Yes, sir." Bradford slipped his back in, and the rest of the bridge crew hesitantly did the same. All eyes fixed on Mox and Dragunova-
Something flickered. Gallant frowned as half the display...flickered in and out, and signals turned erratic.
"Doctor?" He watched as the...disturbance flew across the field, approaching the team. "Doctor?"
"Oh..." Tygan's eyes widened. "Commander, that's a serious problem."
"Do you have the shot?" Mox demanded, pausing to fire a burst at the first sign of black-helmeted motion he saw below. The stun lancer threw herself flat, swearing, and Mox contemplated the grenade on his belt. Maybe...maybe not...
"Almost." Elena took up position at the tower corner, sighting in close on her vektor. Mox kept guard, checking his ripjack and grapnel as the stun lancer edged closer and the muton's attention turned. The Reaper breathed out. "Assassin's moving after Jane. Almost..."
"Mox! Outrider!"
Mox frowned. "Central?"
"Get out of there, now!" There was an edge of...Bradford had no panic in him, but that was definite concern. "You've got incoming!"
"What's incoming?" Mox demanded, spinning to scan the tower. "Outrider?"
"Got it!" Elena hit the trigger, and her rifle barked. Mox didn't dare look, forced to unload a quick burst at the nearest soldier as he started for Julie Richardson. The shots ripped into the puppet with a spray of yellow blood, but it didn't stop the trooper from shoulder-shoving the redhead straight back through the door into the black site's main structure.
"Get out!" Bradford insisted. Mox reached for Elena, biting his lip.
"I don't understand," the Reaper snapped. "I have another shot on the Assassin-"
Hiss!
Mox spun. He didn't spin fast enough, though, because a long trunk came out of the darkness, hitting him in the padded chest. The Skirmisher tumbled with a cry, rolling to the other end of the watchtower and hitting the far railing far harder than he was comfortable with. His bullpup skittered left, and he dug his ripjack into the ground as a brake.
"Mox!" Elena spun, bringing her rifle up. "What the hell-"
A shriek filled Mox' ears, though his helmet automatically dampened the noise to acceptable levels. He struggled to one knee, scrabbling for his gun...and ground to a halt when he saw Elena, rifle upraised.
Frozen in ice.
"Oh...no..."
The Viper King shrieked again, this time in challenge, and then it lunged.
"Julie!"
Jane Kelly rolled off the conveyor belt, after expending all too much effort. She scrambled on hands and knees, yelping as red mag-fire shredded desks and worktables around her, mixing with the green glow to create a lethal Christmas light show.
Who the hell followed me in here?
"Julie!" Jane reached the psi-op's side, and she grabbed her by the shoulder. Julie groaned, and hope flared in the Irishwoman's chest.
"I'm alive," the redhead mumbled. "God help me, I'm alive."
"And you're going to stay that way." Jane grabbed her mag-rifle and amp and quickly threw them back in place, ignoring the shouting and shooting. "Come on. Get outside and I'll trigger-"
She saw it. It saved her life that she saw it: a flicker of scarlet motion in the gloom, as an officer's cape shot around a corner. It blazed in a gap between stasis containers, and Jane knew she had perhaps a second until the thing appeared in front of her, weapon leveled.
Her shard gun was rent in half. Her sword was strapped to her back.
She resorted to the one weapon literally close to hand.
"Don-" That's as far as the officer got. He managed to upraise his hand threateningly too, but that took it off the gun, and that was fine by Jane, as her left hand first batted the weapon aside, then gave the red thing her best, most brutal hook. It staggered, and her right fist snapped out for a savage, trained-by-barroom-brawls uppercut with a decided lack of finesse and maximum of brutality.
An uppercut assisted by the computer-chipped blades that had just sprung out over her wrist.
"Gotcha, you son of a-" Jane's blow was so powerful she hoisted the officer off its feet for just a heartbeat. It shrieked, but her blades punched through its chin, into its mouth, up further and straight into the creature's brain. Neural activity completed the circuit, and the Skulljack accessed an Advent neural chip for the first time.
"She's done it!" Gallant cried, as the notification flashed up on the display. "Doctor-"
"We've managed to initiate cranial connectivity!" Tygan shouted, which won a ragged cheer. "I've dedicated the entirety of our systems to processing the new data, but we have to work fast. It won't take the aliens long to detect our-"
Interference spiked on the map. Gallant's heart stopped as he saw it, and his jaw cracked open as he watched a purple vortex appear in open space. It whirled and twisted inward, and he clutched cane and rail alike as a golden figure appeared in the center, with spiraling ebony smoke for hair and vicious red eyes full of hate.
Staring directly at Jane Kelly, before she could even discard the corpse.
"...to detect our intrusion," Gallant muttered.
"What the hell is that?" Julie cried. All things considered, Jane thought her tone was fairly reasonable.
And she had no better idea than her psi-op did.
"Kill it!" Jane cried. "Kill the damned-"
It shot for cover, flickering as it seemed to skip across the ground. The way it moved was...frame-by-frame, as if it was in one spot one second, then another the next, without having moved between the two points. It was disconcerting and wrong, and Jane's mouth went dry when it shot a hand toward her and her soldier, pointing with the authority of fate itself.
"Jesus Christ!" Jane covered her head as a violet vortex exploded around her. It drove knives into her ears, pricked up the hairs on the back of her neck, and ran harsh fingernails over her skin. Julie leveled her rifle and pulled the trigger, and the gun clicked mechanically.
"Jammed!" she cried, eyes wide with pain. "Let me-"
"No time! Move!" Jane didn't trust purple prisms of evil hate spawned from golden murder avatars, and she seized the redhead's hand, lifting her to her feet. "Get out of the light, idiot, before something-"
Something happened...but it wasn't the vortex. The vortex, the lightshow...that was the distraction. The shell game to Jane's mark.
And the Assassin was the pickpocket in the crowd...only coming in with a bit less subtlety.
"Jane!" Julie screamed, as the creature hit her with her sword-hilt. Jane tumbled, rolling across the floor and hitting a support column hard, crying out as something in her shoulder cracked on impact. Pain rolled over her in a horrible wave, but somehow, she didn't care.
"Julie, run!"
"I'm afraid I cannot permit that," the Assassin growled, and Julie howled an instant later, crashing down in front of Jane's eyes. The Ranger struggled to her knees, clutching a shoulder she suspected was dislocated at the least, as the Assassin approached.
"Julie...Julie, get up and..." Jane broke off when she saw the haze in her friend's eyes. Julie needed at least a minute to clear her head, dazed like that.
A minute she didn't have, as the Assassin and the golden...thing advanced.
"You have some fight left in you," the Assassin mused, as it loomed over her. Jane reached for her sword, but the creature caught her wrist and flung her to the ground, almost effortlessly. Jane didn't even notice the deed: just the flash of agony and the sudden impact before the Chosen's boot. Blood burst from her nose, and she caught a good bit in her mouth. "It's over, child. Let the resistance fade from your bones, and accept the fate of your world."
"You..." Jane couldn't muster words, so she substituted a hand gesture. The Assassin's eyes flickered with cold amusement.
"I think my brother would like you." She reached out then, and Jane choked as the creature took her collar firmly in hand. "Perhaps I will introduce you, after I break your spirit and learn what I can."
"Jane...Jane..."
Julie was moving. Julie was scrambling for her amp and her gun, but they would do her no good. The golden creature aimed a plasma rifle, and Jane could see the next moves of the dance all too well. Her friend would rise and try to fight, and all she would earn was death for it.
But there she was, right by the door, and if Jane timed things just right...
Funny, she thought, as her hand scrambled on her belt for the one thing she had left. I never thought onrushing death equaled serene bliss.
"Julie," she urged, coughing on blood. "Julie, I need you to-"
"She can't save you, child." The Assassin turned, obviously disinterested. "Shall I bring her too?"
"Julie," Jane ordered, meeting the redhead's eyes. She held up the object she'd plucked from her belt, and she cracked a smile, remembering That Day so long ago. "Cover your ears."
Her thumb came down on the detonator switch.
"Holy shit!" Gallant stared as the black site abruptly came apart in a searing wave of fire. The shock wave flew outward, and so did the form of Julie Richardson, probably screaming up a storm as she tumbled halfway across the yard for the second time in a row. Smoke shot up and out, enveloping the firefight and bringing a temporary halt to Mox and the Viper King's sparring match, as well as David's engagement with muton and MEC. Junior was unaffected, storming his way back into the maze with autocannon at the ready, and Gallant breathed a little easier when he saw the train start to move, but...
"Kelly's transponder is no longer..." The bridge tech swallowed. "She's gone, sir."
"My God." Bradford's eyes hung wide open, and his shoulders quivered. "But she...she got the Chosen and the..."
"That appears to be the codex responsible for safeguarding the alien data stores," Tygan said. He hesitated. "And...Central..."
"Oh, I don't like that tone." Bradford's face turned a nice shade of puce. "Doctor-"
Gallant watched. He ignored everything his team had to say, and he watched as three things happened all in a few heartbeats.
The Assassin hurled a chunk of fallen building aside, snarling angrily as she burst into open air, leaning on her sword in place of a cane. She marched into the smoke, and Gallant's lips thinned as she made a beeline for Julie Richardson, blade no less lethal for its current unmartial duty.
Another figure rose behind her, flickering in and out and barely visible on sensors. That it was the codex was never in doubt, but what stuck in Gallant's mind was that it...twitched, in a very unusual way. That was right before the third thing.
The codex sheared, pulling apart at the seams as it staggered from the explosion point, and Gallant's eyes narrowed as a second one appeared across the yard, shaking its head as it practically fell to earth from nowhere, flickering and glowing just as energetically as the first one.
"I have never...in all my years..." Tygan's face went white. "It's multiplying."
"Oh, no. No. No, no, no!"
"It'll be..." Aileen Quinn wrapped an arm around Sylvie's shoulders, but she shook too, processing the suddenness of Jane's sacrifice, of the explosion and the carnage enveloping the yard. "Sylvie, it'll be-"
The protest died. It died hard, and suddenly, as Aileen had to take in the situation splayed out on the screen. All the soldiers in the bar watched with sheet-white faces and horror-stained eyes, and Aileen was no different.
Julie was dazed. Elena was frozen. Jane was gone. David and Mox were blinded. Junior was alone.
And facing them? A stun lancer, a MEC, a muton, those two codices, the Viper King, and the Assassin herself.
"My god," Sylvie cried. She literally burst into tears, unable to rip her eyes away from the screen. "They're dead. They're dead, they're as good as dead!"
"Sylvie..." Aileen swallowed. "Sylvie, they'll...one way or another, someone-"
"Who?" Sylvie demanded, shaking so hard the table shook with her. "Who's going to save them?"
Author's Note 24: Right in the Belfry
I'll just say I like bookends. There's something clean about them. I'm also a sadistic character-murdering son of a bitch author, as you might have guessed after Mendoza. I don't think my alpha readers will ever forgive me for the time I killed off...well, let's just say I've got no regrets about a lot of murders I've committed through written word. I'll pull off some truly nasty ones later in this project.
Come back Saturday for the grand finale of Season One!
Until then, Vigilo Confido.