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"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."
~Herbert Hoover
Chapter Forty-two: Dark Tower
Boom!
It wasn't harsh. It wasn't a detonation that rang his world, no. It was...it was gentle, rolling, sweeping over his ears like a caress. It went on and on impossibly long, like a magazine slowly cooking off in parts, but yet...
He opened his eyes.
Haze. There was haze everywhere, tinting and filling the world and twisting up his perception until everything looked underwater. That booming rang in his ears, and the earth swayed under his...under his...not under his feet, no. His feet dangled, and they dangled in...
Edward Gallant sat on a surfboard, basking in the Los Angeles sun.
"I..." He couldn't help it. The world came back in, flowing forth and fro, and all he could see were the blue-green shades of the Pacific, wrapping him up. The thunder was the waves, tearing up and coming down out toward the deep, and Gallant's breath caught as he saw the revelers on their boards, riding the surge. Laughter and seagull cries mixed with the water's noise, and the faint humming of car engines. The ocean was warm, enveloping his legs and-
"Legs!" Gallant caught one of his in both hands. His heart - his heart that beat, his heart that didn't ache or thunder or burn or sear - nearly skipped a beat when he felt no scars, no exit or entry wounds, and no tell-tale signs of the metal reinforcement that had been his only prayer of standing up like a man again. He looked down at his chest, and instead of the forgettable wrinkles he'd succumbed to after his ruination, he saw powerful muscles up and down.
Splash.
Gallant's head turned. Sedately cruising up on the tide came another surfer, her board violet enough it almost looked red, to contrast his sky blue. She was lithe but tall, graceful and elegant...her indigo bikini showed off everything it needed to, but the way her head tilted gave the impression of someone just a little...out of reach. Gallant could almost reach out and touch her, but somehow, she'd always remain an inch from his fingers. Her hair was vibrant gold and flowed down almost to the small of her back, perfectly arranged in a smooth cascade. She had no old scars, no little stretch marks, no beauty spots, as if she'd simply emerged from the ocean as Aphrodite without a single trial to leave its imprint on her skin.
And her eyes were every bit as purple as her board and clothes.
"Welcome back," she said with a lily-white smile, in a lovely, ethereal voice like bird song. "But I think you should wake up now...Commander."
"Commander?"
"Huh?" Edward Gallant twitched. He shook his head drowsily, lifting it from the back of his chair.
"We're readying the strike team for the facility raid." Bradford reached out to put a hand on Gallant's shoulder. "You alright, sir?"
"Yeah. Must have..." Gallant coughed. "Must have dozed off." For a moment, the blonde appeared in his mind again, curvaceous and appealing and eyeing him like she could see his innermost thoughts. "Must have taken my meds before I did, too. Had an acid trip of a dream. Thought I was surfing off LA again."
"Ah. I know those dreams." Bradford picked up Gallant's cane from where it lay on the carpet. "Sometimes, I dream I'm back in Kansas, reliving my five minutes of college football fame. And the booze after!"
"Yeah." Gallant didn't think he would have dropped his cane no matter how drugged-up he was when he dozed off, but he supposed Avenger could have bucked and it might have flown. "I had a game like that, but it was basketball. The girls after!"
"There was this one," Bradford began, as he helped Gallant stand and keep himself that way when Avenger bucked through a spot of turbulence. "Brunette, very shy girl. Consuela, I think was her name-"
"You have a type, John." Gallant started for the door. Bradford scoffed.
"What makes you say-"
"I've looked at Mariah for more than two minutes." Gallant spared the XO a little grin. "If her mother was from anywhere north of Tijuana, I'd be shocked."
"Doesn't look much like me at all, does she?" Bradford agreed easily. So easily, Gallant didn't like it for beans. Central cleared his throat as they came into the passageway. "Doesn't act much like me either."
"The way she looks at people. She's got your mind, John." Was he going where Gallant was starting to suspect he was?
"Maybe." Whether he was or not, he had other places to go first. "I've taken the liberty of calling up the barracks. Have you made your choices on personnel selection?"
"Damn straight." Gallant hit the elevator and stormed right in, forcing Kipler and Vermuelen to shift to the sides. The doctor said something polite for greeting, so Gallant nodded to him. "You know I always do."
"You planning on sending her out there?"
"Her? Who's-" Stupid question. Gallant did a double-take as Bradford filtered in beside him. "As a matter of fact, maybe I was."
"I don't think that's a good idea, Commander."
Gallant eyed Bradford very intently, until the elevator doors slid closed. His jaw worked.
Then he hit the stop lift button, and his eyes turned to Kipler and Vermuelen.
"You aren't here," he told them, very firmly. "None of this happened."
"As you direct, Commander." Kipler nodded agreeably, then he raised his tablet and buried his nose in it. Vermuelen politely turned his gaze to the ceiling.
"Commander, it's not-"
"John, we talked about this when she signed on." Gallant glared up at his XO. "She is a soldier like any other, and I won't see her sheltered for nepotistic reasons. No, I don't want her dead and you're within your rights to worry about her, but at the end of the day, she volunteered to fight. If it were your father in your place and you in hers, you wouldn't want the Admiral holding you back." Yeah, Gallant did his research about the personnel he was assigned for his top-secret G-man projects. Rather, Penny had done the research, and she'd told Gallant everything about the ace pilot from a Navy family long before the fall of the original base.
"Sir, that has nothing to do with anything." Bradford shifted his weight. "She takes her risks and that's on her. She did volunteer."
"Then what the hell is it?" Gallant demanded. "Give me one good reason not to send her on this op, Central, and give it to me for tactical reasons rather than personal."
Silence. Bradford's turn to work his jaw.
"...she'll fuck it up, sir." Blunt, to the point, and without a trace of nuance or retreat. "She'll either blow someone up like she did with Mox, or she'll get target fixation and let someone else get killed like in Syria."
"She did well enough in Yonkers." Gallant didn't turn to Kipler for support: as far as he was concerned, the scientist wasn't in the elevator, and thankfully he was wise enough to realize that.
"I've heard some things." Bradford's eyes glittered with something very dark.
"Kelly didn't report anything. No one did."
"Kelly lacks objectivity as an officer. She's letting her personal opinions cloud her judgment of Mariah's utility to the Resistance." Gallant idly wondered if that was the muton calling the chryssalid ugly. "I've got my suspicions and I've heard some people talking. Mariah's not cut out to be a soldier, and irregardless of the risks to her in person, if you send her out again she's liable to blow the entire mission up around our ears."
Gallant tapped his cane on the deck. "She's made mistakes, but no more than-"
"She nearly killed Mox," Bradford repeated stubbornly. "You want to see what happens when Kelly rounds a corner and Mariah, in her invulnerable stupidity, thinks she's a stun lancer?"
Gallant didn't wince, but not for lack of desire. He had more faith in the kid than his XO appeared to, but the scenario hardly struck him as far-fetched.
"She won't get better without the opportunity."
"How much are her opportunities going to cost those around her?" Bradford crossed his arms. "Sir, if I'd had my way-"
"I know. You'd have taken her gun after Syria." Gallant didn't like this situation, and he didn't like it any better the longer he was stuck here in the elevator. What would Penny say? She'd always been able to talk John off of ledges, though the fact that she was a slender Hispanic brunette herself might have weighed the scales a bit. "We don't have many Rangers. And we don't have many soldiers, period. I'm not inclined to turn someone who's undeniably brave away."
"Edward, she's going to cause something worse if we don't get a handle on her," Bradford insisted. "I feel it in my bones."
Edward Gallant was, at the end of the day, a Senator's son as much as he was a product of West Point. In an instant, he was weighing the political capital cost of allowing even his number-two man to influence his thinking - especially in front of an audience. He had no illusions that before the day was out, the whispers about this conversation would be flying through the passageways, whatever Kipler and Vermuelen had promised.
But...
"I'm not changing my mind. Mariah's staying on the combat roster - at least until you can find me someone qualified to replace her."
"I'm sure Shen can tape a gun to a GREMLIN and it won't cause as much friendly fire."
"Don't be a sarcastic piece of shit anywhere on my ship," Gallant ordered, giving Bradford a sharp rap on the ankle with the tip of his cane. He huffed a moment later, turning back to the control panel. "Alright. We'll split the difference, at least until I get Mariah some more training time with Kelly and Dragunova. She's still on the combat roster - that is non-negotiable - but I'll pull her from this op."
"Yes, sir," said Bradford, for all the world as if it had been Gallant's command all along. The Commander decided he should monitor that tendency: it seemed like a handy way for his XO to duck responsibility if necessary.
Gallant hit the stop button again, and the elevator lurched into motion. "But I want something from you, too."
"Sir?"
"Dragunova and Kelly aren't the only ones who are going to be working with Mariah." Gallant braced on his cane as the lift came to a bumping halt. "If you're so concerned about her capabilities that you're making me pull her off the active ledger, it's your responsibility to correct the situation."
"Sir!" From his sharp intake of breath and the spark in Bradford's eyes, Gallant might have ordered him to commit harakiri. "Commander-"
"I suggest you apply yourself with the same alacrity you showed when you created this problem." Then Gallant's cane came down hard, and he stormed out of the elevator and toward the bridge, moving so quickly even his healthy underling had trouble keeping up.
"This has to be the strangest pistol I've ever seen."
"It looks like something out of a history class," Nui Tashiro agreed. She reached over into Meysam's lap, and he let her take the odd weapon. The rookie turned it over several ways for a long minute. "Will it even shoot?"
"Let's not test it inside the dropship," Lieutenant Quinn urged. Meysam reclaimed his gun with a dry snort.
"Because we're all fresh with no prior experience." He glanced to the gauss rifle stashed by his side. "Have to admit, that's a new one."
"Not a lot of advanced weapons in the havens," Kang agreed mournfully. The trio had been deployed together, with Quinn in command and that...odd pairing of Skirmisher and Reaper to shepherd the lot. Right now, Mox and Dragunova were silent, the former testing his ionic ripjack while the latter examined her helmet, as if checking its visual settings.
"It'll go through the aliens almost as fast as my little baby here." Quinn held up that crazy crossbow of hers, and her beaming smile stretched up to illuminate her eyes as easily as the rest of her face. "Might leave some bigger pieces behind, but they'll be just as dead."
"Hopefully."
"Coming up on the drop site. We're in full concealment." Firebrand never sounded particularly animated about anything. It was like knowing that she could build a new Skyranger from scratch immunized her to the possibility that danger might befall her pride and joy. Meysam had never understood mechanics very well.
"Alright." Quinn rose, and Meysam did the same. Kang and Nui flanked him, neither nervous as fresh-faced kids but neither entirely calm, either. Only Mox and Dragunova looked anything near steady. Quinn blew air through her teeth. "We don't have a lot of intel on this place. What we do know is that it's a facility critical to the Avatar Project, and that's enough to know we've got to take it down. Probably a standard defensive complement: that's going to mean mutons, vipers, soldiers, and at least one codex for communication."
"Opening drop bay." Firebrand proved a woman of her word a moment later. "Deploy in fifteen seconds." The lines started to descend.
"Watch each others' backs," Aileen encouraged, which fell under the heading of Obvious Advice. "Don't screw up."
"No promises." Nui had probably meant it to lighten the mood, but it was just as well she kept her voice down. It didn't land as well as she'd no doubt hoped.
"What is that?" Meysam wondered, blinking as he saw the ground at night. The Mexican desert was not so dissimilar to his home at first glance, but the fauna... "It's glowing purple and blue."
"Must be some kind of alien plants," Quinn mused.
"They come from the same world as the Elders," Mox confirmed. "My people have names for them, but I have no interest in a botany lesson at this time. They flourish in proximity to the psionic energy radiated from high-level Advent equipment."
"Fascinating," Tygan breathed through the com. "Perhaps these plants excrete said energy as well...perhaps we can use clippings for our own purposes somehow."
"Menace," said the Commander, "I don't care if you do or don't bring clippings of silverthorn and athelas back with you. I want that goddamn black spot on my planet turned into a literal black spot on my planet."
"You sent the right people," Quinn replied. She reached out and claimed her line. "Take no prisoners, show no mercy - kill anything that moves."
"Looking forward to it." Meysam slung his rifle, checked the Shadowkeeper, then queued up before Nui and Kang but after Dragunova and Mox. Quinn waited as the Skyranger twitched and slowed, turning almost a full circle and coming to rest over a gas station rooftop-
"Go!" cried the Irishwoman.
"Get out and move fast," Firebrand encouraged in almost the same breath. "Meter will be running, so don't go chasing butterflies down there!"
"What is that woman?" Meysam wondered, as the three veterans jumped. "Under the mask, I mean."
"A hell of a woman, probably," was Kang's response. "I'm picturing a redhead." That was all he had time to say before it was Meysam's turn to drop, and his friends after him.
He distinctly heard the pilot snickering at them over his com.
Cameron Rogers sat in silence.
The man on his left? A trooper. The woman on his right? Stun lancer, so yay. His hands were cuffed - in front of him, oddly, but cuffed nonetheless. He sat on a utilitarian seat, strapped in place with a belt around his waist, and he glared hard at the spot between his shoes.
It was stupid. It was stupid, all of it! There had been no call for the scientist - what was her name, anyway? - to recognize him. Did she have a photographic memory after all? Or was she just hyper-observant and addicted to Advent wanted posters? For that matter, was there even a wanted poster for him anywhere around here?
And the Warlock on top of all that...
"Call a taxi," someone said, as she clambered into the decidedly-not-a-taxi. Cameron spared her a quick glance, but she was only a red-armored officer: not so different from the pair of warriors flanking him. She took up position by the firing steps in the center of the compartment, though she didn't clamber up to occupy the mag-cannon fixed to the top of the box.
A box it was, too: made of alloys alien and terrestrial, reinforced and stiffened to withstand the fire of even new magnetic-based weapons. It had wheels too, because it was an armored personnel carrier, and unless Cameron much missed his guess, its next stop was right in Warlock Town.
The engine roared to life. Cameron kept his head down, but he counted the soldiers in the compartment with him. In addition to the officer, the driver, and his two guards, there were three troopers easing into positions on the low benches around the APC's edges. Too many to overpower, even if he had anywhere to go. Cameron knew grinding his teeth was bad for them, but he couldn't help it. Now what?
They lurched into motion. Cameron tried to compensate as the rumbling next-best-thing-to-a-tank pulled out across the Defense Ministry's yard, joining up with a pair of escort cars he could see through the firing slits left, right, and rear. They were red and white, somehow clean and dangerous at the same time. There seemed to be two or three soldiers in each.
"I'm not really worth all this," Cameron objected. One of his handlers glared.
"Mor balaten," he hissed, rapping his fingers on the handle of his pistol. Cameron had no trouble inferring the command, and he obeyed.
They pulled out into Richmond's streets, no less congested for Advent's arrival than they had ever been. The cars lit up rooftop lights, and traffic gave way as the convoy pressed on. Cameron's heart thundered as he wondered how long the ride would be. He wondered a bit about what would await at the other end of it, but he quickly decided reality would arrive soon enough that speculation was just another layer of self-inflicted torment. He turned to watch the roads instead, eyes lingering on old buildings and monuments as they went by.
Another car peeled out from the throng, taking up position close on the heels of the final car. Cameron eyed it, from orange paint to tinted glass to the open sun roof, and he wondered if it was a particularly unsubtle hidden trail. No matter how he tried to think about something else, his eyes flicked back to the figure behind the wheel. Making out details through those dark windows was a challenge, but Cameron gave it a go anyway.
"Butts?" wondered the officer. Her gaze went the same way for a long moment. She reached up for a handhold, and Cameron fancied he could hear the wheels grinding together in her head.
Then Cameron saw the orange over the driver's mouth, and he sucked in breath.
The first grenade flew through the sunroof, and it came down in the trailing car. It went right under the hood and into the engine, and the muffled bang sent smoke and parts flying in all directions. The vehicle swerved harshly, and the orange car smashed into it hard from the flank, knocking it clear off the road and into a toll exit.
Cameron lunged.
"Do not sling that cone-" The soldier on his left made it no further before Cameron belted him with both fists. The alien-lover crumpled, eyes glazed over, and Cameron whipped his cuffs around as the lancer lunged. She drew her baton in a flash, striking for his head with a wild yell-
Cameron interspersed his cuffs between the baton and the wall, and her blow cut him free.
"Donut!" The officer drew her sidearm while Cameron slammed the lancer's head into the APC's wall, and then he had to lunge before she could put a shot in him. Two of soldier friends jumped into the fray too, and the driver shouted wildly, presumably ordering the third up to the machinegun.
Then Da-Xia Liang fired her second grenade, and the APC bucked as it detonated.
The first warning the soldier ever got was the sudden whisper of wind in the grass. He'd just had time to figure out it wasn't wind when the stiletto came down at the base of his neck between the vertebrae, neatly severing them with just a plunge and a twitch. Yellow blood sprayed as he went down, already dead before his head hit the dirt.
Someone else might have quipped, when the next two soldiers turned. They were fast, at least, snapping their guns around without waiting for more information.
Unfortunately for them, Elena Dragunova was fast, and she'd already thrown her knife by the time the patrol's leader made it around. The blade dug into his shoulder, and Elena yanked the gun from his hands brutally. She didn't have time to use it - time or the desire to give herself a lethal shock from the weapon's in-built security system - but she tossed it as far away as she could and vaulted on the next soldier in a heartbeat.
"Balaten!" he cried, as her fists bore into him. He stumbled, gun falling, and Elena kicked it away. She ripped off his cracked helmet, used it as a club atop his head, and then discarded it when the soldier, in desperation, grabbed at the front of her coat. Elena seized his arm, twisting hard and flinging the man to his knees. Arm still caught up in her grip, she pulled and dropped her weight, and-
Crack!
"Eat pizza!" ordered the last soldier, bringing his recovered gun up. Elena gave him a sidelong look, raising one eyebrow he couldn't see beneath her mask.
Squish! Something metal drove into the back of the soldier's head, and two blades drove out through his helmet's eyes. He hung limply for a moment while his body grappled with the sudden loss of information from the brain.
"Took your time," Elena observed, drawing her temnotic rifle and reclaiming her stiletto. The body fell a moment later.
"My apologies. I hadn't realized how helpless you are without me." Just two months ago, Pratal Mox saying anything like that would have started a fight. Now, Elena actually found herself fighting a grin as she retook the point position. Life was a funny thing, once you pared it all down.
Funnier yet, she couldn't remember the last person who'd made her smile.
"Alright, lovebirds." Aileen hesitated when Outrider made sure to glare over her shoulder. The Specialist coughed, then glanced to Meysam, Nui, and Kang for support. Wisely, none of them wanted to incur the wrath of a Reaper. The blonde coughed, then waved. "Just do your scout thing."
Elena did, hurrying to boost herself over the fence ringing the facility grounds. She didn't like simply jumping through the glowing fields atop said fences, but they didn't seem to trigger any alarms, which struck her as foolish. She'd certainly have put motion sensors on her fences if she'd been a conquering overlord. Was that too expensive, either on funds or resources? What did Advent need money for? Elena was hard-pressed to think of a logical reason for an alien resource shortage either. But it had to be something along those lines, because chalking something up to the enemy merely being stupid had been the death of too many good Reapers she hadn't had the chance to get to know as well as she wished.
Mox followed close behind her, but not so close as to blow her concealment. He had an almost - perhaps more than almost - instinctual sense for war, and without being told, he occupied the right positions to cover Elena's advance, moving at the exact instants she would have waved him up. With less subtlety came the parade after him - Elena supposed civilians would have thought XCOM's recruits quiet, but she winced every time they tried to move at anything faster than a crawl. Only Liang had ever shown any real aptitude for light-footed running.
Then the grass was behind, and another row of fences announced the beginning of the yard. Elena spared a glance up at the imposing block of black with Advent sigils - so much like the black site in Switzerland that it hurt - but then returned her attention where it belonged. Here the yard was smaller, with no rail line running through. She hoped there were no captives inside either, as there was no easy way to pull them to safety as things stood.
"Turret," Elena warned, as she made out one of them mounted over the main entrance. "I have my claymore."
"Leave it," Gallant ordered. "One of the rookies can handle it. They've got grenades for more than practical jokes."
"Let's hope." Elena's faith in rookies was no greater than most veterans'. She rose, hurrying over to the door. "I'll push inside with Mox. We'll lay the charges and-"
She never finished the sentence, because the instant before her hand reached it, the door hissed open. Elena reached up for her knife, hoping to put down the soldiers before-
Roar!
"Oh, shit," Elena whispered, as she came face-to-face with the Berserker Queen.
"No!" Gallant cried. His cane's handle didn't feel very comfortable at all, even if it didn't break under the sudden pressure of his vice-grip. "No, no, we can't-"
"Menace, this is the shot we've been waiting for!" Bradford thought faster on his feet. "Take that thing down!"
"Engaging!" Aileen Quinn reported, and the holodisplay lit up with fire and flashing lights. Gallant hissed through his teeth as Outrider ducked and wove, avoiding strikes that should have crunched her like a bug. She vaulted out of the way as Mox opened fire, and his stream of light rounds tore the beast's attention off her long enough for her to disappear into the shadows. Gallant let out a sigh of relief.
"Keep the fight focused on it," he ordered, trying to loosen his deathgrip and discovering it was impossible. "I want that creature brought down. Don't do anything to draw any more attention to yourselves."
"I should be down there." There might be many things wrong with her basic common sense, but nothing at all was screwy about Jane Kelly's courage. She clutched the bridge rail with knuckles as white as Gallant's own, and her brown eyes burned with miserable fire. "That should be me she's swinging at, not Pratal-"
"Shut up or get out." Gallant wasn't normally that short with anyone any more, but he had no patience for crap at that moment. Ignoring the death glare his senior field operative delivered in response, he flicked his eyes back to the holodisplay. Thankfully, someone other than him was around to handle Kelly with kid gloves, and Gallant spent a moment thanking God for David White and Julie Richardson as the pair tried to ease the Irishwoman down from the ledge of Doing Stupid Things.
"Looks like the garrison is coming around," Kipler warned, from down in the bay at Tygan's side. He grimaced as he read off his display. "I see mobilization from the soldier barracks and the psi-signature of at least one codex in motion."
"Good. The more, the merrier." Gallant reached for the display, pulling up data on everything he could find as he hunted for the loose threads his soldiers couldn't see from the ground level. "Bring them all, I say. Get this mess over with-"
"We meet again, Commander. Have you made the most of the interlude, as I have?"
Dead silence. Even Bradford hesitated, while the display lit up like a Fourth of July show.
"...Menace." It fell to Gallant to break the spell. "Menace, you've got the Assassin incoming."
Author's Note 42: Reaper OP, Plz Nerf
There is literally no logical reason whatsoever that the Reaper's detection circle is so freaking tiny. None at all. According to XCOM, some asshole in a trench coat could be standing two meters behind you RIGHT NOW and you'd never notice, despite the GLOWING EYES on their helmet, the ENORMOUS RIFLE over their shoulder, and the way they do that crazy one-handed ninja dash everywhere they go. One could literally be running circles around me while I type this and I'd never see them. Except that my computer desk is pressed in a corner, so the Reaper would be smashing holes through two walls to do it. Then again, watching how sectopods blithely cause more damage to their bases than XCOM, the Reaper would probably still remain concealed.
Oh, I get that it's all for gameplay. But it's just impossibly stupid from a logical perspective. What? I want logic in a game about telepathic aliens and soldiers with grapnel launchers? Psh.
Odd as it may seem, I don't like Elena Dragunova much in game. The way she rants on...and on...and on...and ON...it's just annoying. I like her voice, I will say that, and she's got that "stone cold badass" vibe, but...there are reasons I prefer Mox. Mox is possibly the most badass character in XCOM 2. What, you thought I was ACTUALLY going to kill him in 33? He's probably the safest character in the fic. Hell, I'd kill Mariah before I killed Mox.
Until then, Vigilo Confido.