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"¡No pasarán!"
~Dolores Ibárruri Gómez
Chapter Fifty-seven: Horatius at the Bridge
The harmonic chamber was peaceful, as always. It smelled of lilacs and it hummed with low energy that reinforced its divine solace.
And it didn't bring Janet Ross any peace at all.
"The Avenger is under siege." She paced, unable to help herself even as the others meditated and studied chessboards. "Commander Gallant and his soldiers are in danger."
"They are indeed. Events move apace." Anne Lawrence fiddled with the band in her hair. "What of it? We live in interesting times."
"Advent stands poised to triumph over the world of men."
"We have left that world behind."
"Have we?" Janet narrowed her eyes. "Are we truly more, simply for seeing more?"
"So saith the Messiah."
"Perhaps, then, the Messiah is-"
"Yes, Janet?"
"Geist!" Janet spun on her heel, inclining her head as respectfully as she could. "I was discussing the battle for the Avenger with Anne."
"So I heard." He eyed her critically for a moment: doing that thing he did where he seemed to stare into her soul and her being. Janet bore up as best she could under his gaze. "What is your care? Gallant has many times denied us."
"Geist, sir..." She cleared her throat. "This planet is ours too."
"Hm. It was ours before the aliens came, and it will be ours when they are gone." Geist's gaze got a good bit sharper. "Let them fight with XCOM. Whomever triumphs will be weakened for it, and neither are our friends."
"Geist..."
"Let them fight, Janet. That is all I have to say." Geist ascended to his chair, and he took his seat without a word more. Anne smiled and nodded, subservient as a Templar should be.
Janet could only resume her pacing, watching the psionic window that showed the course of events a world away.
Blam!
The good: Aileen got the first shot of the battle, right out at a soldier who showed himself too quickly between the thin trees that lay between Avenger and the EMP spike.
The bad: she missed.
"Fuck!" Aileen dove behind a fallen log, even as the soldier let loose from the hip on full auto. She covered her head one-handed, using the other to try and work the reload on the Bolt Caster.
"Watch it!" David unloaded a second later, and hot mag-rounds ripped through the woods, spraying splinters and shrapnel. Aileen finished her reload, but she fished on her belt instead in the moment of calm.
"Heads down, jackasses!" And she pulled the pin with her teeth and flung the green-glowing charge end-over-end. Charlotte and Mariah dove for cover, the latter firing from the hip while she did it and clipping a charging muton in the face. The beast sat down hard, clutching at the yellow-bloody mess that had once been the top of its skull-
Then Aileen's grenade detonated, and a noxious cloud of green gas shot out on all sides, driving knives into the lungs of anything unlucky enough to be caught inside.
"Donut!" screamed about a dozen Advent voices at once, all of them breaking with desperation, agony, and terror. "Great tits ahoy!"
"You fucking know it!" And Aileen shot the speaker, ripping him in half with a chest shot. "Stare in awe!"
"Warning: hostiles approaching." Junior stomped in front of her, cannon blazing. "Multiple airborne contacts."
"Airborne?" Aileen slammed another shot into place. "Nessie, Scanning Protocol-"
"Bugs!" Charlotte shrieked a moment later, unloading from the hip on full auto. A swarm of black...things no bigger than Aileen's thumbnail roared through the trees, tearing right through the poison swarm without a care in the world. Junior and David fired too, and a sniper shot - from Cameron or Meysam, Aileen really couldn't tell - arced into the maelstrom, but only a few of the little things went down.
"Watch your head!" David fired another long burst as a swarm came together, coalescing into a vaguely humanoid shape. "Aileen!"
"Fucking-" Aileen slammed the butt of the Caster into the...spectre's face, and it reeled. Well, it could feel pain: she took a step back, hitting the trigger almost before she was lined up.
"Nice shot!" Evidently it was Meysam providing fire support. He put another round into the cloud of bugthings as they collapsed into a puddle around Aileen's feet, still twitching and hissing as they tried to reconstitute with a hole that big blown in their numbers.
Something exploded over to the right. Aileen thought she heard Liang's voice, and Mox's and Dragunova's, from that side. Gunfire echoed through the trees, enough for dozens of Advent soldiers - and even as she listened, she heard the roar of transport engines.
"We've got to push forward." She scrambled to the nearest rock, working the reload like she did every other second. "Come on! The longer we wait here, the harder it's gonna be to shift them-"
There was another spectre. Aileen noticed it when she rounded the rock and ran headfirst into its outstretched hand.
"Jesus-" Aileen's breath caught as it blew apart, and its component parts swarmed onto her, digging needles into her flesh.
When she screamed, a good number of them went down her throat too.
"Dear Lord." Tygan took off his glasses, staring at the feed from David's helmet as the spectre...
"Man down!" Meysam fired wildly, scoring a glancing hit on the remnants of the spectre's main body. "The LT's down-"
"I'm still reading her vitals. They're erratic, but she's alive." Kipler bit his lip, then redoubled his work on his terminal. "For now."
"Avenger, what the fuck is that?"
"It appears...it appears at first to be some sort of insect hive." Tygan checked his own sensor feeds. "Upon closer examination, I must classify it as a tightly coordinated swarm of nanobots, connected by a central processing unit. If you can disable that unit, the swarm will come apart and lose power."
"And that?" David pointed to Aileen, and the...the...
"My word." Tygan's eyebrows went up. "It's made some sort of...shadow copy of her. The nanobots have analyzed her build and equipment and made duplicates!"
"What do we do?" Kipler demanded. Tygan bent over his terminal.
"Menace, the nanobots will remain guided by the same central functionality no matter how widely they spread. If the mother unit can be disabled, the clone will lose cohesion just the same."
"They're getting slaughtered." Kipler watched the feed with horror in his eyes. "This is a massacre."
"They are the best warriors humanity has to offer." Tygan inhaled slowly. "They will prevail. Of that, I am certain. All we can do is offer what assistance we can."
"Like what?"
Tygan sighed. "At this moment, our job is to figure that out."
"God, it's dark down here."
"Shut up, Kelly." That was not the best way for Shen to endear herself to Jane at the best of times. Now...
Their boots came down on the latticework plating of Engineering, lit up in faint spots by patches of scarlet capacitor light from overhead. Shadows fell long from all sides, and every other step Jane thought she'd step on or kick something by accident. She swore when she banged her shin into a table.
"Quiet," Shen snapped. She plucked up a flashlight from her workbench. "We might not be alone in here. This is the computing and tech center of the ship - and the connection to the power core."
"I thought Power was connected to the Research Division."
"The core is in the Labs, and Doctor Tygan is the one who can boot it up, either there or, now, from the SHADOW Chamber. But this is where the relays and connectors are." Shen shot Jane's shard gun a harsh glance. "Be very careful with your fire in here. You blow the wrong wires across each other and the ship will go up like Nagasaki."
"But the power's out."
"Yeah, but when it comes back on-"
The world ended with a dramatic concussion. Jane flew into Shen's worktable, face coming down hard in a box of wrenches. Her arc blade clattered off into a corner. The back of her head blossomed with agony, and when she felt at the base of her ponytail, her hand came away warm and sticky, even if she couldn't see for shit in this lighting.
"You son of a bitch!" Shen's flashlight flew off to the side a moment later, and Jane heard her scream. She swore.
"Get off!" Jane threw herself back up, and she seized the dark form wrestling with Shen around the throat. She heaved him - and it was definitely a him, with a build like that - around, and she hauled tight, squeezing his throat. "Shen!"
"Bastard!" With blood running from the side of her head, Shen still drove two vicious crosses into the man's face. "I should have guessed-"
He kicked her knee, hard enough she went down. A moment later, his elbow cracked the side of Jane's head, and she stumbled backward, world spinning. He lunged for her, hands going around her throat as he pinned her to the wall.
"...you!" Jane snarled, enough like an animal she surprised even herself. "You're the fucking spy, Vermuelen!"
He didn't respond. He just pushed harder, and Jane saw stars as her lungs nearly exploded. She couldn't breathe...Shen was still down, scrambling for purchase...
Jane drove her fingers up into Vermuelen's eyes.
"Fuck!" He howled, staggering back into the shadows. Jane sucked in air - and then lunged, not ready but not inclined to let him recover either. Despite his distraction, he blocked her first kick, then knocked her jab away and shot a vicious hook in that threw her six paces left. Jane spat blood, then seized the nearest weapon she could find. It turned out to be a chair, and Jane cracked it into Vermuelen as hard as she could.
"Get him, Jane!" Shen came up then, and she caught the traitor's arm as he lunged for his belt. Shen wove out of the way as he punched for her, and Jane hit him again with the chair.
"Sit down!" Vermuelen threw Shen almost head-over-heels, and she hit the far wall with a deafening bang. When Jane came in for her third swipe, he skittered back, then lunged and caught her arm. He wrenched, and her chair flew and she tumbled on her face. Jane got her hands under her, scrambling up-
The muzzle of a gun pressed itself to the top of her ballcap.
"Mor balaten!" The soldier shoved his gun into Gallant's face, sneering under his helmet. "Mor bala-"
"Run, Commander!" Zhang hit the fellow like a train, flinging him into the far wall hard enough his helmet cracked. Gallant skittered away on his back, swearing as his mangled leg lit up and protested every twitch and move.
"Donut!" There were more soldiers, and their guns turned to Zhang now. Gallant jabbed with his cane, and he got one right in the crotch. The jackass collapsed with a high-pitched whine, and Zhang kicked him while he was down.
"Chilong!" Gallant twisted the head of his cane, and he ripped it in two. From the tool, he drew two feet of shimmering silver steel under a rounded hilt. Gallant threw, and Zhang caught the blade left-handed, driving it into the ribcage of the nearest stun lancer before she had the chance to strike.
Gallant's elbow flew, and he drove it back into the underslung drawer on his nightstand. It popped from the impact, then dropped open. Gallant seized its contents, then hauled himself up, using the wall for support.
"Fuck off!" He smashed the Enhanced Shadowkeeper's butt into a trooper's cheek hard enough the alien-lover toppled in a heap, then leveled the gun two-handed, bracing his hip on the nightstand. Pain was his constant companion, but with the reflexes of Basic and the savagery of a man cornered, Gallant picked out his target in a flash.
Blam! The Shadowkeeper kicked like a mule, and its spray of grape shot eviscerated a priest and a lancer in one blast. A shieldbearer ducked behind Gallant's bed, powering up her suit, only for Zhang to cut her throat before she had a chance. Gallant worked the hammer, then fired again, blowing a soldier into Alien Hell.
"Watch your head!" He fired twice more, covering Zhang whenever guns pointed in the Heavy's direction. In return, Zhang stood like a wall, carving through anyone who got too close. For a minute, they held, painting Gallant's sheets yellow and flinging soldier parts around like cheap confetti.
"Eat pizza-"
"You're a prick!" Gallant ducked the stun lancer's wild slash, then trapped his wrist with one hand. His other stuck the Shadowkeeper under the bastard's chin, and he took great satisfaction in watching his head literally explode. "You're all pricks! Get off my ship!"
Zhang's fist pulverized one face, and he left the reeling shieldbearer for Gallant to shoot. His sword flashed, cutting open a leg and then a shoulder, then driving through the next soldier ear-to-ear. Zhang recovered, then retreated as a lancer came for him, baton whirling. He parried twice, ducked three more times - and then paused when Gallant shot the Adventer the instant he had the angle.
"They're not getting through here. They just aren't." Gallant's brow furrowed as he contemplated the field of bodies - and then shot the next idiot who thought his odds were better. "So why on earth are they still-"
Wham! The next figure to come through the shaft wasn't a soldier: this one wore a purple jumpsuit, plastered to a visibly feminine form. She had a mask over her face: one with a visible heads up display inside, one that pulsed with lines of energy like the ones radiating from her body. She had a gun slung over her shoulder, and also an amp like Julie's but sleeker, more angular, more...alien.
And she had bright red hair.
"Oh..." Gallant stumbled for the door, eyes widening. "Oh, shit."
"Commander." Angelis rose to her full height, eyes glowing with power. "It's good to see you again."
"Run!" Gallant fired, and the bullets fairly bounced off Angelis' shoulders. Zhang caught him around the waist, hoisting Gallant up like a kitten and tearing down the hall for the stairs.
"It's no use running." Angelis appeared in the doorway, amp in one hand. Power seared up through her eyes. "Come back, Command-"
"Fire!"
Bullets cracked around Gallant and Zhang - coming from ahead, not behind. Angelis let out a cry as they hit her visor and her bodysuit, forcing her to cover her face and pull back behind the doorway.
"Commander-"
"Thanks, Volk, you bastard!" Gallant fired a few Shadowkeeper rounds too, just for good measure. "We've got to lock down the bridge, now!" He swallowed as purple flashed from the direction of his quarters. "I think you pissed her off."
Blam! Blam!
"Tango down." Mariah worked the pump, then ducked as a bolt of Hell-sent death smote the tree trunk beside her. "Incoming."
Shadow Aileen hit her reload, and Mariah lunged, empty shard gun forgotten. She caught the Shadow Bolt Caster, ripping it from the spectre-construct's grip. Mariah used the gun to bash the lieutenant's evil twin to the ground, then seized her own and slapped a new clip in.
"Get out of there!" Meysam cried, as the evil dark bots shot up into the air again. They swarmed, and his snap pistol fire went wide. "Mariah!"
"Incoming on the right!" Liang and David's machineguns let loose, and Advent screams filled the air. Mariah didn't flinch, not even when a wide MEC missile hit the ground twelve yards away. Shrapnel cut her cheek, and still she didn't twitch.
"Soldier, what the hell are you doing-"
Mariah muted Central's voice - and the spectre lunged.
It hit the ground on all fours, scrabbling as Mariah sidestepped at the last second. It lunged for her, only to press its own chest into her shard gun-
Blam! Blam! Blam! Mariah considered, then hit the trigger again. Blam!
"Good work, Corporal!" Dragunova raced by, bashing a head in with her rifle butt. The remnants of the spectre blew away on the wind, each little bot churning out the last of its life. Shadow Aileen twitched, hissing and fizzing, and Mariah only had to nudge with her toe and the entire construct collapsed into tiny fragments.
"If we had a dozen wildcats like you..." David whooped a moment later, when Aileen coughed and spat black. "Lieutenant!"
"Shut up. I have a hangover." Aileen pushed herself to one knee, and Mariah hurried to her side, firing into the trees when she saw motion. She clipped a viper, two sectoids, a soldier...
"There's a ton of them in there!" Meysam sighted, then fired. He paused to take aim with his wrist, and a moment later the Serpent Suit repositioned him into a higher tree. He perched between the branches for a moment. "We can't push against a fortified position like-"
"Follow me!" Mariah took point, gun upraised. Something blew up off to the side, and someone human screamed in agony, but she didn't waver now, not any more than she had before.
"Are you mental, kid?" But Aileen fell in anyway. "Junior! Charlotte! David! Get your asses on the line now!"
"Covering!" Charlotte opened up, and golden mag-tracers lit the path like angry, death-spewing takes on the tale of Hansel and Gretel.
"Grenade!" Aileen threw, and Mariah diverted her path. Poison gas wafted up around the nearest Advent firebase, and as it dissolved into screaming and wailing, Mariah dove between two tight trunks and found herself in the middle of the next one, surrounded on three sides.
Blam! That was the officer, always the first target. Mariah's second shot kicked her shoulder just as hard, going overtop of the bruise that had to already be there - but the impact was far more devastating to her poor victim, a priest who never got the chance to put herself in sustenance.
"Mor balaten!" A stun lancer's baton knocked her gun down, and Mariah caught his wrist on the backswing, driving his weapon into the tree hard enough it stuck. She punched the soldier, cracking his visor, and before he could scramble back up, she had the Ionic Axe in hand. It cut his head from his shoulders in one swing.
"Watch it, dumbass!" Aileen fired, and a muton roared, clutching the hole blasted through where its black heart ought to be.
"All call signs, this is Central."
Blam! Blam! Mariah's gun ran dry, so she reclaimed the axe from the still-twitching corpse it was embedded in, hitting a soldier with the hilt and then kicking him in the crotch. She axed his falling body a moment later.
"Your lead elements are five hundred yards from the spike. That signal is only getting stronger, and the aliens are bringing in more elements to stop us from reaching it. Don't let this turn into Stalingrad."
Mariah side-kicked a shieldbearer into a heavy weapons emplacement, and he let out a strangled squawk when he found the live hand grenade she'd stuck into his pocket. The one detonated - and then the other, obliterating a hundred square yards of forest and immolating every alien caught inside all at once.
"You!"
Mariah yelped as a hand caught her from thin air, one that hoisted her well up off the ground.
"I might have underestimated you, Daughter of Bradford." A purple face appeared from the air, set with surprised and hateful eyes. "Like these trees, you have grown strong. And also like many of these trees...it is time for you to be felled."
Gunshots rang through Avenger's companionways. The radio was full of panicked traffic from the field team and the bridge crew alike. Shit was strewn everywhere from the crash.
"Perfect. My kind of day." She hurried up the ramp, checking her helmet and her air lines. She double-checked her comms gear, the sealant in her pressure suit, and her sidearm. Ballistic, unfortunately, but she'd had the damn thing for years and it had never let her down.
"Come on, baby." She took a seat at her instrument panel, and she ran through her preflight check in more of a hurry than usual. "Everything's green...topped off on fuel, that's nice. That's very nice. Let's make meaning of our name, huh, baby?"
"What the hell are you doing?" came the cry over the radio as she gunned the engines. She let out a dry laugh.
"Avenger, this is Firebrand requesting permission for takeoff."
"Firebrand-"
"Kiss mine, Central." She hit the throttle again, and the Skyranger lifted up off the hangar deck. A moment later, she worked the rudder pedals to turn, and then she was lined up for departure.
"Kiss mine," she repeated, trying to sound more confident than she felt. "Let's kick some ass."
"Is that..." Tygan watched the security feed, clutching the back of his chair with steadily whitening fingers. "Who is that, chasing the Commander?"
"I don't know." Kipler kept his head down, typing steadily. Tygan shot him a glance.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to come up with something I can do to shift the odds. I-"
Bang!
"Oh, no." Tygan pulled up another camera feed. "That alien craft has landed a transit pod on the roof. There's some kind of general emerging with an honor guard in tow. They're coming in."
"No. No!" Kipler typed faster. "Maybe I can seal the doors and keep them from getting in..."
"Work on that." Tygan opened another directory. "There was a project we had going...the WRAITH Suit...maybe if we can accelerate our prototype-"
"You're really looking into science files at a time like this?"
"I don't know what else I can..." Tygan trailed off. "It's gone."
"What is?" Kipler blinked. Tygan hurriedly hunted through directories.
"The WRAITH file. It's...it's gone! It's..." He bit his tongue. "The Enhanced Bolt Caster file. The Ionic Axe. They're gone too."
"How is that possible?"
"I don't..." Tygan paused as he went back to the root menu. "The folder on Enhanced Munitions just vanished."
"What?" Kipler blinked. "The...the aliens must be hacking into the system and deleting our developments-"
"They can't. The Avenger is a hack-shielded closed network. The only units permitted access are inside the ship: stationary emplacements. And they're all offline."
"You must have missed one."
"I didn't." Tygan double-checked to be sure he hadn't. "They would have to be using an interior machine hardwired into the network, and the only ones that are online are mine and-"
Dead silence. Tygan's breath fled as he even contemplated the end of the sentence.
"Richard?"
Slowly, he turned. Slowly, he met Kipler's eyes, already shaking where he stood.
"Mine...and yours, Doctor Kipler."
Mariah kicked, but the Assassin didn't release her. She made an annoyed noise in the back of her throat, but she didn't drop or fling Mariah, content to choke the life out of her. Or, maybe not: one-handed she drew her sword, lining up her stab.
"You have heart." The Chosen pressed the tip of the blade to Mariah's throat, even as she squirmed, fighting the grip that turned her world fuzzy and indistinct. "Know that you die with honor, as a warrior-"
"Please remain still."
"Not again-" Then the pressure was gone, because Junior tackled the Assassin like a four-ton linebacker, and he drove the purple skank into the dirt with all his strength. She thrashed.
"Oh, God!" But Mariah scrambled to her feet, reclaiming her weapons in a flash. She gunned down two more Adventers, teeth set.
"Menace, this is Central. I need a sitrep."
"They've got a lot of shit in these woods!" Julie Richardson bounded in from the left, hands glowing and blood already coating her armor. "They're moving in with light infantry on the east side and heavy muton units down the center."
"Mechanized on the right flank. Counting MECs and some old-fashioned cyberdisks, supplemented by codices."
"That's fine and all, Cameron." Mariah inhaled. "But we're handling it." Blam! "Every bit of it!"
"Good to hear, Menace. You're three hundred yards from the spike."
"Copy, Central-"
"And...Mariah..."
"Oh, balls!" Liang and Dragunova burst from the trees, nearly bent double. "Run for your lives!"
"Run?" Meysam leveled his rifle. "What the hell is-"
"An imperfect decision was made!" Mox appeared on the girls' heels, and Cameron with him. The Skirmisher caught Dragunova the instant she started flagging, and his grapple went off. "I am not pleased with the results!"
"Wait!" Aileen took aim at the Assassin. "Let me at least-"
Blam!
"Lieutenant!" Mariah dove, catching Aileen as she stumbled and dropped to one knee, clutching the bloody wound blasted in her chest. Red and black smoke peeled off into the air along the bullet's flight path.
"Too easy. Try taking cover next time: it helps."
"The Hunter's got a bead on our position!" Mariah ripped the front plate off Aileen's armor. She winced when she saw the wound. "Charlotte! Get your ass over here!"
"Coming!" The blonde started over, staying lower now that she knew what to fear. Mariah put pressure on the wound, heedless of Aileen's blood staining her hands.
"You're going to be okay. You're gonna be fine-"
Bang-hiss!
"Goddamn it!" Mariah covered her eyes, howling as the Assassin's device scoured her gaze. The world went white...and her ears rang...and...and...
"She's out!" That was David, very faintly. "The Assassin has slipped into the woods-"
"Leave her! Push it forward while we have the-"
A tree flew as if in challenge, crashing down to Mariah's left. The world shook, and from the forest...
"...the chance." Mariah gulped as the Berserker Queen burst forth, letting out a titanic roar of hate and challenge. Around her knees...
"No. Oh, fuck, no." Charlotte ground to a halt. Mariah's throat went dry.
"...an imperfect decision..." Mariah sucked in breath as about twenty chryssalids swarmed into the clearing, letting out their chirping, hateful, searing war calls as they thundered along on their needle-point legs. "What the fuck, guys?"
Lily Shen grabbed for a weapon, and her hands found a screwdriver. It wouldn't be enough to stop Vermuelen, not in time to save Jane's life, but...
"ROV-R!" Lily lunged, and Vermuelen's head snapped up. His finger tightened on the trigger of his mag-pistol-
Zap! ROV-R shot down from the ceiling where he'd been waiting, and electricity coursed over Vermuelen's arm. The South African cried out, and that was the chance Jane needed to headbutt him in the gut.
"Gotcha!" Lily stabbed with the screwdriver, and she drove it hard into his shoulder. Vermuelen twisted, shoving the pistol up between her eyes-
"Fuck you!" Jane clapped his wrist hard, and the gun spun off into the darkness, sliding under a far table. She got a punch to the face for her trouble, and the brave Ranger crashed into the far wall. She was brave, yeah, but not indestructible - and she hadn't had a chance to rest since Canada. Lily could see her strength failing, flowing out of her in tune with the blood running through her hair.
"You won't get this ship off the ground!" Vermuelen punched Lily, and she crashed back onto her table. She spat, then jumped back up, weaving under his determined assault to get a shot into his cheek. He stumbled - stumbled right into Jane's hook kick.
It wasn't enough. Vermuelen caught her leg before she could recover, pitching the Irishwoman onto her face. Lily caught him around the throat, but all she earned was a Judo throw right onto her head. She rolled away, slamming into Julian's machine hard enough she suspected she'd knocked his hard drives out of place.
"Fucking! Traitor!" Jane was up, and she and Vermuelen boxed, fists flying. "I should have let Aileen knife you!"
"You talk too much," Vermuelen snarled, as he punched Jane again. He grabbed her by the hair, then drove her face down on Lily's worktable. Jane thrashed.
Lily kicked out the back of Vermuelen's knee.
"Get him!" She scrambled to her feet as Vermuelen went down. Jane needed no further urging, and she threw herself on him in a storm of blows. Weak as she was, she could only daze her opponent, but that was all Lily needed anyway. It bought her a moment.
And when Vermuelen blocked Jane's last punch and countershot into her gut, his attention was distracted from the enormous wrench Lily swung two-handed.
"Bastard!" Jane kicked the corpse, even as Lily threw the gore-stained wrench off into darkness. The Irishwoman clutched her ribs. "If I was in tip-top shape, I'd have mopped the floor with him, no sweat."
"I know, Jane. I know." Lily glanced around. "Where's his gun? If more Advent come in here, we might need-"
Bang!
"Jane!" Lily lunged as she went down, clutching the wound in her chest. Lily caught her shoulder, feeling for the hole. There was a lot of blood...a lot...
"ROV-R! Medical..." Lily flinched as the GREMLIN released nanobots. They sealed the wound and poured into it, and Jane let out a hissing sigh as the painkillers sunk into her system.
"Shen..."
"Lie still. Don't move-"
"Shen!" Jane thrust her shard gun up, and Lily's breath caught. She hesitated.
Then she took it, and she rose, bringing the gun around-
"Don't even!" The command came out sharply. Lily stared down the barrel of a pistol from across Engineering, and the voice - and the darkened shape under the emergency lights - robbed her of her faculties. "Throw that away now, or I shoot her again."
"I..." Lily couldn't speak, not for a long moment. "...Jiaying?"
Author's Note 57: So, We're Finally Here
This was one of the first scenes I thought of for Season Two. Everything to do with what's happened and will happen here in Engineering, I had it in mind close to the beginning of Season One. Yes, that means I have a lot of the overarcing scene concepts for S3 figured out already. I have some for 4 too, but that's different since, unless we get a lot of length creep in S3, Season 4 will be 50% finale sequence and that draws on game plot a lot.
Yes, the appearance of an Avatar before you've even hit the Forge or the Gate is kind of unlikely. And XCOM has *not* completed the Encrypted Codex Data research, nor - clearly - skulljacked a codex, and I'm not bypassing those plot points. However, I thought it would make a kickass season finale boss fight, so bite me. Canon is my plaything, and I will happily violate it the instant doing so gives me something more exciting than I would otherwise have.
Three more chapters. Are you ready for what comes next?
Until next time, Vigilo Confido.