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"It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it."
~Robert E. Lee
Chapter Forty: Hook, Line, Sinker
"Heads up," warned Big Sky. "Three minutes."
"Roger." Shaojie Zhang checked the bulky suit he didn't like for beans. "Mic check, channel three."
"Loud and clear," Fatima Tariq replied. Marcel, Matt, and Said all confirmed receipt just the same.
"Five by five," Annette finally allowed. She fished for her helmet, tucking it under her arm for a moment. "Got any plans for after we get back?"
"I never have plans." Zhang found his own helmet, pulling the hot, enclosing shield of alloy down over his head and activating the vision camera. "I'm a soldier."
"Soldiers have lives." Annette slipped hers on. "I'm going to play golf. Van Doorn insisted on that stupid underground course, so we might as well take advantage."
"Golf, really?" Marcel snorted. His suit wasn't the same as Zhang's or Annette's - or Matt's, for that matter. It was lighter, it was thinner, and Zhang heartily wished he was wearing it instead. It wasn't nearly as oppressive. "The most boring game in the history of boring games."
"Two minutes," Big Sky checked in. The Furies all confirmed they heard, so Zhang didn't bother.
"We have a date," Fatima added a moment later. She grabbed Said's arm. "He's just a monster in bed."
"Do you have to do this?" her brother wondered, gently shaking her off. "You're the only one who finds the joke funny."
"The joke, yes," Annette said, very seriously. Zhang couldn't see her eyes through the helmet of death, but he could imagine her self-assured smirk. "That's all it is, right?"
"Oh, yeah. A joke." Fatima scoffed, then pulled on her own - much lighter - helmet. "Hilarious, isn't it?"
"Weapons check." Matt examined his laser sniper for a moment. "Safety off. Alecto is green to go."
"Megaera is green."
"Tisiphone."
"One minute," Big Sky said. "Opening bay doors."
Thwoom! Hydraulics hissed and whirred, and the huge doors at the far end of the compartment lowered. The ramp hung out in empty air, wind blasting and scouring through the bay, trying to take anything that wasn't strapped down. Marcel and Said quickly donned their helmets. Zhang glanced down, eyeing the clouds splayed out below the Skyranger.
"Chilong is green," he finally announced, after checking his laser cannon. He felt for his cigars, but didn't bother lighting one now, when the wind would merely take it from him.
"Hot and bothered and fit to be tied." Annette never had been high on military punctilio. She fixed her rifle over her back, cracked her knuckles, and eyed the drop. "Fiver someone pukes."
"You're on." Fatima grinned. "And if it's you, I still collect."
"Ten seconds," Big Sky said, now over their coms. "Stand by for HALO."
"I love this part," Annette mused. "Never gets old."
"Easy for you to say, frog." Matt rolled his shoulders, gazing out at darkened nighttime Brazil splayed out below.
"You're a softie, Yank-"
"Three. Two." Big Sky paused for a moment, as if timing the drop to the last millisecond. "Mark. Out you go!"
"Team One, drop!" Zhang had to pull to the side as Annette, with a whoop, nearly did a handspring out into freefall. Matt followed a lot more sedately, but there was nothing wrong with his courage. Zhang sighed, wishing for a smoke.
But, that failing, he strode up to the edge...and out, walking directly into open air without flinching.
The rush came in more than one way: adrenaline seared up through Zhang's system as he fell, arms and legs spread as he worked his way toward the flashing IR beacons that pointed out Annette and Matt in the dark. The other rush was wind, scourging past him and battering at his body, tugging at every loose flange of alloy and fabric, trying to spin him over and flip him head over heels. His stomach worked, but this was not Zhang's first HALO. He was grateful for his helmet, because even with the tugging, freezing wind and the air resistance of terminal velocity, his eyes neither watered nor stung.
"Magnifique!" Annette cried. Zhang never would have heard her without his com, and it was a challenge even with. He wondered if her time as an alien captive had addled her brain: coward he was not, but freefall was not exactly his idea of a Friday night out either.
"I'm getting old," he thought, without triggering his com. The slipstream blew his words away, but that didn't take the sting of truth out of them. "Too old for this shit."
"Team Two is dropping," Big Sky said. "Good luck, Strike-One."
"Link up," Zhang ordered, and the tracking program Carlock had coded popped up on his visor screen. It suggested minor course corrections - so minor he could manage them on his own, without relying on his suit. He turned left slightly, nearly swimming through the air until his icon fell into the proper box.
"Targeting computer online." Fatima sounded a lot more nervous than before. "Let's hope Carlock wasn't talking out of his ass, huh?"
"He's never let us down before." Matt left it there, which was very good.
"There's always a first time." Said couldn't leave well enough alone. "And if tonight's the first time, there sure as hell won't be a second."
"Forty seconds to ground contact." Zhang spotted Matt with mere visual, and he waited for Annette to join the gathering. "If we don't link up in ten, there's going to be a mess down there."
"Woo!" Annette shot down onto Zhang's right, corkscrewing for no particular reason he could see. She snapped her arms and legs out, arresting her momentum. "Let's do this again sometime!"
"Team Two, you're clear." Zhang watched the jungle give way to the hooded lights of an Advent facility. "You're running out of time."
A shape shot past him in the dark, arms and legs tucked tightly. Like missiles, Said, Fatima, and Marcel all plummeted headfirst, silent as they concentrated, waiting for the moment when their computers would begin their direction. Meld merged with transistors and neurons in two separate links, then linked to itself, and for just a moment, they allowed a program to operate their bodies like MECs.
That was just as well, because no human being could possibly manage the maneuver that Carlock and Vahlen had been so giddy about.
"Computer is responding," Fatima reported. "Mark."
Zhang didn't bother acknowledging. Instead, he activated his jetboots and the stabilizers in his forearms. With a roar, the Archangel Suit came to life, slowing his descent enormously. Matt's jets flared with blue fire an instant later, and then Annette's. They were pinpricks of light in the night sky, exhaust-shielded with Meld technology, and hopefully no insomniac Adventer on the ground would think they were anything more than a shooting star or a distant alien ship in flight.
"Stand by." That was Said, and Zhang braced dutifully. If only they'd had enough material to manufacture six Archangel suits, instead of three. Then this maneuver would be unnecessary. But, since a ground approach through the watch fields was impossible, airdrop was the only way - and Advent was very good at spotting parachutes.
Bang! Zhang fancied he could hear the sharp barks. He did see the impossibly tiny flashes of magnetic accelerators hurling their projectiles, and he spent a moment praying Carlock was as good of an engineer as he claimed. The mechanical department under Vahlen wasn't what it had been under Shen, but even she recognized that sometimes, equipment was superior to genetic enhancement.
But, on the other hand, that genetic enhancement was useful too. Without it, the shock when Fatima's grapple line wrapped around Zhang's ankle and went taunt would either have ripped his leg off or her arm - or both. As it was, he grunted when his leg burned and jerked, and Fatima let out a strangled yelp. Zhang had to throw some more juice into his stabilizers to compensate for the drag.
"Archer connected," he finally announced, when Fatima did not declare a problem.
"Longsword connected," Matt declared from the left.
"Falchion connected." Annette paused. "I still have no idea what a falchion actually is-"
"Boots on the ground, then," Zhang announced, talking right over her. "Drop Team Two to secure extraction, then let's hit the server hall."
Annette Durand smashed straight through the red glass window on the second floor of the server hall. She raised an eyebrow as the four Advent soldiers in the room cried out, scrambling to their feet and grabbing for sidearms.
"Gentlemen," she protested mildly, as they opened fire. Their red tracers pinged off her Archangel armor, almost as useless as spitballs. "Please, we should talk this through."
Matt's laser fire hit them from behind as he tore through the far side window. He double-tapped a pair of them before they had a chance to turn around, and then Annette drew on her Gift. Psi-energy shot out, seizing one like a puppet and flinging him straight up into the ceiling. The other yelped - and she threw his friend into him from above.
"Good talk," she decided, over the moaning, twitching forms. "I like diplomacy."
"I don't," one of the Adventers moaned, and Annette giggled before she landed and kicked him into blissful unconsciousness.
"You know," Matt observed, "I think you enjoy this job far too much."
"A girl's got to have fun." Annette cheerfully started off for the stairs. She unslung her rifle - for all her lightheartedness, she was ultimately a professional. "Chilong?"
"Covering the door," the old fart confirmed. She could picture him perched atop the arched entryway in the shrouded darkness, doing his best Batman without a cape but with a giant laser cannon. "Team Two has secured the launch pad."
"Then I guess the first floor is ours." Annette glanced to Matt. The sniper shrugged.
"Lead the way, mon cheri," he encouraged.
"You don't pronounce the N," Annette chided. "Americans." Without waiting for his reply, she pushed through the door and off for the stairs. Instead of taking them, she simply vaulted from the landing, coming down hard at the base of the circling steps.
"Donut!" shouted a surprised priest. Annette shot him.
"Servers should be just ahead." She hurried forward, listening as at least three more Advent voices burst out with wild calls in their language. "Honestly, it's like they didn't hear the mess upstairs..."
Matt's laser sniper boomed, and red light speared through a chair and out the other side. An alien-lover screamed, and Annette bounded forward. Her rifle came up as she rounded a corner, and the soldier she encountered only had time to hold up his hand and shout emphatically before she gunned him down with two quick blasts to the chest.
"Did he really..." Annette blinked slowly. "Did he say 'great tits ahoy'?"
"Well..."
"One more word, Alecto: one more word." Annette breathed in, then her Gift lanced out, feeling around the room and tinting it violet. She found the last of the Adventers, all right, thinking he was smart to try and sneak up on them from behind. Without turning her head, Annette drew her sidearm and shot him.
"Showoff," Matt muttered, after he glanced back to see the tumbling corpse. "If you'd missed, I'd have laughed about it for the rest of our lives."
"Good thing I didn't, then." Annette hurried to the terminal, then drew her datapad. "Cover me."
"Copy." Matt filtered back through the servers, switching to his own sidearm. Annette worked as quickly as she could, pausing to activate the heat vent on her rifle while she did.
"Really?" Her brow creased. "Zero-seven...that sounds like a UFO designation." Annette filed that away, then turned to her real mission. "This is Wildcard." Her own callsign always put a smile on her face. "Beginning data transfer. ETA twenty seconds."
"Copy, Wildcard." Fatima checked her scatter laser, then did a quick once-over around the landing pad. "No tangos left in sight."
"That thing smells." Said waved at his face, trying to push the reek of half-boiled berserker off at his sister. "Smell it!"
"I don't want to." Fatima turned her nose up - not just a metaphor, not now - and deliberately stepped over the broken and battered bodies of the two mutons who had done their level best to not suck and failed. "Chilong?"
"Holding position." The team leader never broke character. He was the rock: the steady foundation everyone else depended on. Fatima had never said it - probably never would - but she very much enjoyed that about him. As long as she had Chilong to guide her, she knew things would be alright. After twenty years in the Triads and then another twenty fighting Advent - close to twenty-one now, as a matter of fact - there was almost nothing about war that the Chinaman didn't know.
"Marcel?" Fatima didn't know when she'd effectively become the leader of the Furies - and thus the number-three woman in the team - but somehow it had happened, and now she was here in command of Team Two. "Movement to the south?"
"No," said the Argentinean Heavy. She couldn't see him, since of the three, he was the only one who'd activated his Ghost armor's main function, but she knew he was keeping watch. "So far, we're clear."
"That's good," Fatima decided. "Clear is good."
"No, it's not." Said glanced worriedly at the sky. "Someone should have heard the weapons-fire. Advent uses weapon sensors too - the server hall had to have at least one. Why didn't they detect Annette and Alecto's breach?"
"Maybe the system is down for maintenance?" Fatima frowned. "Stranger things have happened before and will again."
"Well, yes, but I'm worried that-"
Whizz!
"Shit!" Fatima cried, as a flare rocketed into the heavens. She spent a second longer gaping than she should have, and by the time she ripped her gaze away - well before it actually burst in a shower of scarlet sparks - she heard them.
Running feet on all sides...and not many of them humanoid feet.
"Aliens," she swore, hefting her scatter laser. "Mutons, berserkers, troopers mixed in...probably andromedons too-"
"Wildcard!" Said called. "Wildcard and Chilong, you've got to get out of there. It's a trap!"
"Oh, that's lovely." Zhang didn't abandon his post right away. He gauged the yard with the judiciousness of the career soldier he had somehow become over the last decades. A younger man would have spit out his cigar, hefted his gun, and collected his team in a flash, but this Shaojie Zhang had been in too many traps to panic over one more.
Even in the worst of scenarios, Team Two could hold for a few minutes. Fatima was a lot better of a leader than she thought she was - Zhang often suspected she had more ability than he himself did, and merely lacked the years to use it - and she was exceptionally stubborn. If she and her boys decided they didn't want to be moved, good luck to anyone who wanted to move them.
Annette was no fresh-faced rookie either. She had Matt for backup, and in the tight confines of the server room, anything less than a major breach by stun lancers and vipers would bog down quickly. Numbers didn't mean very much when terrain favored smaller units moving in isolation - like a large room with limited visibility and narrow approaches.
Which meant Zhang was the lynchpin holding the main door into the facility - the one approach angle Annette and Matt couldn't easily fend off a strike from. Looming over the doorway, Zhang had an excellent field of view.
Which gave him a wonderful look at the dozen troopers and their two captains rushing across the open ground.
"This is Chilong." Zhang hefted his cannon. "Wildcard, you'd better finish up in there quickly. I can't hold them forever."
Annette's reply was drowned out by the roar of triple super-cooled lasers. Red blasts chewed up permacrete and sprayed gravel and rubble - but they also melted Advent armor to slag and blasted holes in helmets, instantly boiling flesh and searing anything they touched. Eyes exploded from direct hits, Meld-infused blood flew from wounds that weren't fully cauterized, and soldiers tumbled as the ground beneath their feet ripped up and caved. Zhang fired on full auto, spraying the entire ill-advised wave. At least four of them went down and weren't going to get back up, and the survivors threw themselves flat behind supply crates and building corners as fast as they could. He heard officers shouting.
"Leaves from the vine," Zhang hummed, "falling so slow." He drew the long tube from his back, checked the safety and diagnostic, and set the range. "Like fragile, tiny shells..." He set the Dragon II launcher to his shoulder, took aim, and waited for just a heartbeat, until his thermal scanner confirmed who was alive and who wasn't.
"...drifting in the foam," Zhang finished, as he completed the procedure and hit the trigger.
The rocket lanced out on a trail of fire, boring right into the side of a puny building never designed to stand up to handheld artillery bombardment. Someone over there shrieked in a most unthreatening way right before the warhead made contact with alloy, which made Zhang's cigar glow wild red as he inhaled laughter. Up came his laser, almost before the sudden blast and wave of fire and shrapnel had finished demolishing everything anyone could use for cover within hundreds of yards.
Laser fire lit up the night again. He walked fire over an officer, then his friend, then another two soldiers who weren't fast enough about scrambling to better cover. That was eight down from laser fire, and at least one who'd taken too much heat in the rocket blast. Zhang's cannon hit the red, and he activated the heat vent procedure.
"Mor balaten!" cried the surviving officer. She and her two soldiers took aim and fired, ripping up chunks of the roof as they spat magnetic rounds at the Heavy. "Donut! Donut!"
Standing up to shoot was suicide in the midst of this, and Zhang wasn't happy about his shots either, given that all of them had found nice, tall stacks of boxes to shelter behind. So, he did what he did best and came up with something so stupid it had to work.
His jetboots fired, and then Zhang was in the air, soaring right over the Advent position, cigar clamped firmly between his teeth. He beamed when he heard them scream and shout.
Blam-blam-blam!
Blam!
"They are not getting through here," Fatima snarled. She worked the heat vent on her scatter laser, then hit her own Ghost system, vanishing into the air. Yes, there were dozens of mutons charging the landing pad, each armed to the teeth, with stun lancers and priests in support. Yes, there was only Fatima, Marcel, and Said to hold them.
No, that didn't mean the aliens had the advantage. Fatima appeared and disappeared in flashes, popping in and using her scatter to slaughter three or four aliens and their minions, then vanishing before overwhelming force could come to bear. Said fought just like her, the pair adding their grapnel launchers to the mess whenever they could. They struck from the high towers ringing the launch site, and they struck from perches atop fuel drums. When the aliens got wise and began shooting at the high ground on principle, Fatima dropped back to ground level and drew on her Gift.
"You belong to me," she hissed, grabbing the cheek of a stun lancer in passing. He twitched and he gasped, and his limbs twitched in and out for a long moment as his will fought hers. In the end though, he submitted. The lancer leaned hard on the near wall, visor glowing purple, and Fatima paused to shoot the next muton that rounded the corner before her adoring servant was ready.
"Chilong," she warned, as she ducked back into safety. The lancer ran out, shouting wildly and drawing men away toward the north. Once there, he'd go out in a blaze of glory for his mistress, which was about all the utility he had to her. "Chilong, you and your crew had better get here soon. They're not getting through, but we can't hold them like this forever. My suit's low on Meld." That would be the end of her stealthing in and out, and that would be the end of Fatima Tariq sooner rather than later.
"Stand by." The Old Man never sounded winded or perturbed. Fatima envied that.
"Enemy's bunching up at the entrance gate," Said announced. He appeared from the shadows for just a moment: just long enough to pick off a pair of unaware troopers. Fatima glanced past him, and she nodded when she saw what he did: a group of mutons and a single berserker, forming up to push through the main gate and fan out into a search pattern.
"Marcel, hit them!" Fatima fired her grapple, hauling herself almost all the way up to the top of the launch control tower. She terminated the line at the last possible second, grunting when she hit the wall hard. Operating more on instinct than anything else, she ran two steps along the wall, firing her other arm's grapple off into the night more on her computer's guidance than her eyes. As gravity sunk its claws in and she slipped from the tower, the motor hauled her up atop a stack of shipping crates.
"Damn it!" She covered her face as Marcel's rocket lanced in. It slammed into the muton group, and the creatures sent up a chorus of screaming and roaring grunts while shrapnel ripped up their armor and legs. They staggered and collapsed on all fours, all save the berserker. She roared, beating her chest like an overgrown gorilla.
"Grenade!" Said called, and a plasma charge flew. Fatima leveled her scatter as the device clattered down. The berserker merely stared at it, while the mutons rolled for cover-
Boom! Blam! The hits were simultaneous, and the green energy blast made the berserker stagger - even as Fatima's shot blew her head off. The animal thrashed, stumbling twelve steps and bringing its fists down on one of the mutons assigned to cover it before its body realized that without a head it was dead. The berserker collapsed atop another wounded alien, and then Said and Fatima's laser-fire tore into the survivors. Alien flesh melted and boiled, and armor plate shattered and scattered under the pressure of the precise laser hits.
Hiss!
"What?" Fatima spun...and she yelped as the viper she hadn't noticed creeping up from below seized her in a tight embrace. Its trunk tightened convulsively, and abruptly, the Assault couldn't breathe. She gasped, scatter laser falling from hands now bound tightly to her sides. She scrabbled for her sidearm, but she didn't have the reach.
"Sis!" But Said's rifle blared and the viper didn't die, so someone else must have made a similar play on him. Marcel's gun roared, and red laser light split the night...but none of it made contact. Misses, or different targets?
Fatima couldn't tell. Her lungs were empty and her chest was crunching inward, burning with sudden intense pressure. Her heart beat faster, and she gasped for air, collapsing to her knees under the weight. The viper's mouth opened, and those fangs glistened. Fatima could see those hateful dark eyes hunting for the weak points in her Ghost armor - the places she could sink her teeth into with some hope of causing harm.
Fatima tried to headbutt her way out. The viper bent out of harm's way, and its hands caught her head on the second strike. Talons scraped against her helmet, and Fatima's stomach twitched as the viper hauled hard toward the edge of the crates. She couldn't move...she couldn't...she tried to draw on her Gift, but concentration was impossible without air...
Wait!
Fatima twisted violently. She could never overpower the snake-woman, and the creature hissed something that had to be laughter. She was enjoying this, and that pissed Fatima off all the worse.
She twisted her wrist...twisted a little more...she couldn't reach her sidearm, no, but she could...
The stars appearing before her eyes aligned, and Fatima fired her grapnel launcher.
It was almost funny, in the cosmic sort of way. The viper's eyes got very wide - and then it was screaming in a strangely shrill voice as the pair went flying. They soared over the launch pad, borne on Fatima's line - her line meant to be borne by the full weight of her arm instead of just her wrist, that is. Fatima had no breath to cry out as she felt bones snap, but despite the break, her hand remained attached and that was all she needed.
The viper hit the control tower first, and Fatima's weight followed. The impact cracked the creature's skull, and yellow goo trailed it as it released the Egyptian and slid down twenty feet for the ground. Fatima let out a sigh of relief - then a howl of pain as she fell too, fell until she hung from her now-extended arm. With a mental command relayed by Meld, Fatima disengaged the grapnel - and she cried out again when she hit the ground. Thankfully, her armor absorbed the hit and nothing broke, but she could just smell a heavy bruise over her shoulder.
"Chilong!" she screamed, ignoring the Adventers closing in on her prone form. "Where the fucking hell-"
"Hang tight!" And then two forms rocketed by, and Fatima heard grapnel launchers fire. Said and Marcel caught on to Annette and Matt, and that left one of the Furies on the ground.
"Fire!" Zhang ordered, appearing overhead. Fatima swore under her breath, remembering she'd discarded the line from her good hand's grapnel.
Nothing for it. She leveled her broken wrist and let Carlock's program do its thing, hoping against hope that it didn't hurt too much when Zhang blasted off for Big Sky on his holding pattern.
No such luck.
"Mighty Hunter."
"I said you can drop the honorific." The Chosen sat cross-legged before his Sarcophagus, cleaning his rifle. Din Dourde had never seen any soldier as meticulous about his weapon - but, then again, she'd never seen a soldier as good as the Hunter. He looked up at her, hood still drawn as it always ones, even the black ridges tinted violet by the glowing psionic light. "Does it make you feel better?"
"It is respectful." Dourde was still feeling out the differences between her new patron and her old, but some habits died harder than others. She did, however, feel comfortable with a bit more levity than before - which was odd, since she had not been created with personality in mind. "And if I don't remind myself you're mightier than I, who knows? I might forget."
"Well, we wouldn't want that." The Hunter never stopped working with his rifle. "After all, I might have to find some chryssalids of my own then, and that's just annoying. First it's tracking them down - oddly stealthy little buggers - but then it's the mess. They leave droppings and goo everywhere and I'd step in it sooner or later."
"I'm happy your fastidiousness plays such a large role in my survival."
"And don't you forget it," the Hunter agreed mildly. "I expect that means you'll pick up a mop a little more often." Before Dourde could even fathom a reply, he leaned back, putting his blue hands behind his head. "Where's the fire, General?"
"We have word from Brazil. The facility near Rio."
"Oh, the data center." The Hunter put on a good show of lackadaisical disinterest, but he had an eidetic memory for Advent's installations and their roles and whether or not he had any use for them. Even the ones he didn't care about, he remembered that he didn't care, and therefore remembered why, and thus their functions in the administration.
"It's been raided, sir." Dourde proffered her tablet, and the Hunter took it. Before looking at anything, he popped a human-made lemon drop into his mouth. It wasn't the first time. Dourde had never asked and didn't intend to start now. "A set of operatives that-"
"I see." The Hunter may have been laid back, but he wasn't slow. His eyebrow rose as he watched the security footage. "Hardly subtle, were they? They stopped just short of an atomic bomb."
"As you say," seemed like the best response. Dourde thought it had been a spectacularly-executed piece of work herself. Especially the iron nerves that must have been required for the airdrop! She wished Advent forces were as capable of aerial ballet as the humans in the footage. Though she didn't know it, she followed in the footsteps of human warriors throughout time as she awarded unfeigned respect to the fighters of the other side despite her commitment to their extermination. She even supposed that, if it were her and that team's commander alone for a moment before his liquidation, she'd probably offer him a smoke to show that respect.
Funny, she mused, as the Hunter continued to look over the data. The Warlock would have fed me to his pets for even thinking something like that. Perhaps company really does change people. It certainly seemed like the kind of thing the Hunter would do, if he wound up officiating over that rebel Bradford's execution, or Volikov's.
"I see they took data." The Hunter glanced up at Dourde, obviously not caring enough to check the rest of the numbers. That was, after all, what he had her for. "And I see what it was, too."
"Yes, Mighty Hunter. They have access codes to your brother's Crypt." That didn't really bother Dourde. Why in the world anyone would want to enter a Chosen's lair baffled her top to bottom. They'd only ensure their deaths.
"A part of me is tempted to do nothing," the Hunter admitted, which Dourde had already cautiously guessed. "Can you imagine the look on his face when a bunch of raging special forces types show up in his flower garden? When they shoot their way through his priests?" The Hunter snickered, and Dourde reminded herself that despite his amicability, he viewed Advent soldiers like priests - like one Din Dourde - no differently than the Warlock, at the end of the day. There would always be more soldiers, after all.
"Are those your orders, sir?"
"No." He let out a wistful sigh. "A fine fraternal prank it would be, but I think Angelis would find it irresponsible of me." Dourde respectfully cast her eyes down when she heard the name, though she noted the Hunter did not, and was surprised when no pillar of psionic light smote him from above for it. "I haven't been on good terms with her and her little clique for a while, but I really should probably do something about that rather than revel in it. And besides!" He bared his teeth. "Here, our interests would seem to align."
"The mission?" Dourde asked. The Hunter's smile only widened.
"The hunt," he corrected. "And I can't imagine anything that will piss Edward Gallant off more than finishing this one."
Author's Note 40: Skydiving
Yeah, logically, the Ghost Armor people should have attached their grapple lines to the Archangel suits before vaulting out of the airplane, and just dropped in pairs. But my way is cooler so shut up.
I've said it before, I think, but I absolutely love writing the Hunter. He's everything I want in a villain character: he's not a raging idiot, and he has a vibrant personality. The only thing he's lacking is a clear, relatable motive - something that would elevate him out of straight villain territory and into the gray moral miasma of a character who may make wrong choices but is understandable. However, it's not like that makes him the only flat villain I've ever worked with...nor the last one, because I can think of at least Kingmaker(not a VC character) who is ultimately quite shallow once you pare it all down. But there's a place for a villain who's nothing but a straight-up slimebag too, isn't there?
I've always liked Zhang, too. I prefer him to Annette in EW - possibly because Annette is ANNOYING AS FUCK. "Don't send me into any dark corners" "I suppose I do owe you that much" "I'm still learning"...COME ON, girl! You volunteered! Or...did you? I don't care. Either you did, or XCOM enslaved you and you can at least buck up and not be an old woman about it. Meanwhile, Zhang kicks asses, takes names, and gives those names to other people, without any hesitation at all.
You may notice I'm consistently not capitalizing alien race names. The game does - Sectoid, Muton, Faceless, etc - but technically, a species name is not a proper noun. Bear that in mind for your own writing! They're not "Elves" they're "elves". Proper noun is correct if the nation has the same name as the race - "Elvish ships" refers to ships of the elvish nation. But if the nation is called something stupid like "Fellguard" or "Spelderheim" or "France", even if it's a nation of elves, then they're simply "elvish ships". On the same logic: mutons, sectoids, stun lancers. You don't capitalize "human" every time, do you? The one exception is the Elders, but that's for dramatic weight more than anything.
Until next time, Vigilo Confido.