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"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."
~Nelson Mandela
Chapter Eighty-two: Superiority
"Strike team deployed." Gone was Lilah's fire and her joy. This new person wasn't the pilot who'd served so gallantly for months.
Gallantly. The Commander of the same name blew air through his teeth. Puns, now, Edward?
"Copy, Firebrand." Central let out a gentle sigh as the holodisplay updated, tracking six icons as they spilled from the Skyranger's drop bay and scattered over Cairo. He lowered his voice, leaning in. "And we have confirmation from Betos that the local air defense net has been scrambled."
"Let's pretend we knew that before they jumped, if anyone asks." Gallant cleared his throat loudly, raising his own voice now for the entire bridge. "Eyes on the prize now, people. They're counting on us. Success comes from the top down."
"Sir." Shen saluted. Tygan nodded. Left and right, techs made affirmative noises.
Did any of them believe it?
ADVENT saw something in me. I just have to do what I did for them. Gallant had led combat missions literally all over the world, but after Scotland, this felt like his first op all over again. Don't let those bastards throw you off your game, or Angelis wins.
Angelis was another wildcard. Gallant vividly recalled those dreams she'd spoken to him in, but there hadn't been a single one since the Battle of the Avenger. Had she washed her hands of him? If he'd been in possession of that power, he would have been trying to fuck his enemy's mind up six ways from Sunday every way he could.
Which means she must have a reason for not reopening the contact. Perhaps I frightened her when I shook off her mind control in the battle? Something about hooking Gallant into the psionic network must have given him a resistance to the Elders' abilities, and maybe Angelis realized that now. I'll see her again. It's only a matter of time.
For now, his eyes tracked icons and status reports as five parachutes opened, his team HALO dropping among the streets of what was once a major city. Junior's jetboots engaged, not powerful enough for sustained flight but strong enough to cushion his descent into something that would merely break a human's legs and spine. For him, that was feather-soft.
"Thank you, Shen, for ensuring we have a SPARK to rely on." Gallant shook his head admiringly as the robot immediately raised his helix cannon, turning from the waist in a full circle to cover his organic teammates as they landed and disengaged chutes. "He's like a god damn tank."
"My pleasure, sir." Shen glanced at her terminal. "The Model II isn't long from deployment. Julian's excited."
"Indeed." He was also jealous of the existing SPARK, if Gallant didn't miss his guess, but ever since his turn, he'd done his job well enough. "I calculate a ninety-one point six eight two percent chance that I shall prove a more effective combatant once utilized in a combat capacity."
"Sure you will, buddy." Gallant chuckled in the back of his throat. "We'll have to start tracking SPARK kills. We'll paint them on your chassis like fighter pilots."
"This is Menace." Julie's voice broke the nonsense. "We're all on the ground. No fuckups."
"Understood, Menace." Bradford might have missed Jane's by-the-book attitude, but he must have grasped the frailty of morale too well to scold Julie openly. "Your target is to the east. If our information is accurate, the aliens have a squad already closing in on his position. They'll know you're here, so you won't have a concealed position for deployment on this one."
"Fucking lovely." Julie only keyed her comm afterward. "Understood, Central. We're moving out."
"What's the plan?" Sylvie took her position at Julie's right hand, checking her amp's pull and power. "Someone needs to take point."
"Right." Thank God for her girlfriend—her fiancée, soon her wife, and wasn't that a hell of an idea!—guiding her through all the shit that Jane used to do on autopilot. Or was it autopilot? Maybe the Ranger had felt the same way then as Julie did now: lost, confused, and mildly hungry. "Uh, Ross. You take the lead, call out positions and spots. Schneider, tail her in case of trouble."
"It will be done." Janet hurried forward, a hand on her autopistol.
"Ja, ma'am." Franz took up position at her seven o' clock, trailing by a hundred yards with his unusual shotgun in hand. It almost resembled Vahlen's laser weaponry, but this definitely fired a magnetic projectile. It lacked the clean lines of XCOM's shard guns, but Shen and Central had cleared it for use in the field, so hopefully those twin red-glowing barrels could output equivalent damage. She eyed the red edge of his sword, glowing with the same laserlike energy.
"Sylvie, push out to the right. Take Junior." That left Father Giovanni. Julie waved to him. "You're with me. Everyone cover each others' backs, and stay close enough to provide support. Sylvie and Junior, work your way along the rooftops to provide high ground support while we advance in Ross and Schneider's wakes down the main avenue. Weapons free on contact."
"Yes, ma'am." Sylvie hurried for the nearest ladder, plasma rifle at the ready now. "Come, robot."
"Moving quickly." Junior thumped off in her wake, jetboots activating again to take him up to the roof before Sylvie had even finished her climb. His BIT hovered in his wake, beeping and booping gently as if it didn't house a heavy weapon hardpoint in its pokeball-style chassis.
"Come on, Father." Julie hefted her own plasma rifle, heart hammering. "Let's get some action."
"Of course." The priest fell into step behind her, hefting his heavy mag-cannon. Wasn't that some kind of a contradiction?
"I thought killing was a sin." Julie shot him a skeptical glance.
"The killing of men is a sin." He smiled thinly back at her. "Many, many things are sins, but this is the world in which we live. God ordained warriors in days of old. I would hardly compare myself to David, but he proves that there is precedent."
"I suppose you're not wrong." Julie mulled that one over. "Well, let's kill some aliens then, for the glory of God."
"Deus vult." Giovanni craned his neck, watching the flanks. "Keep us moving, Magus. I will cover the rear."
"Thanks." Julie picked up the pace, hurrying down the avenue. No aliens, at least not yet. That was worrying, considering what had happened last time. Civilians, on the other hand, flitted across the streets, rushing to get out of the way as they saw armed strangers forcing their way along. Alarms began to blare from sensor towers, along with strings of announcements in multiple languages presumably urging people off the streets and into shelter.
"Menace, this is Central." The old man's voice held steady, and Julie could almost picture the blue glow on his face as he studied the display. "We've picked up multiple enemy interceptors on scopes. You have eight minutes to get our man and get out. At that point, Firebrand will have to leave station to get back herself."
"Understood." Julie's heart hammered a little harsher now. "Who doesn't love timers on critical missions? Jesus…"
"My daughter." Giovanni shot her a look.
"Sorry." She'd taken the Lord's name in vain so many times in her life that it took her a minute to even remember that was one of the Commandments.
Gunfire exploded around the corner.
"Come on!" Julie bent double, racing down the street with rifle upraised. Giovanni paced her every step of the way, spry despite his age, skidding around the corner to take cover behind a parked car while Julie wedged herself against the wall proper, leaning out with rifle already warmed up. Ahead was what looked like a diner, windows shattered with glass lying abandoned across the ground. Purple energy glowed within, motion blurring as red lights blared and magnetic projectiles burned through the air.
"Soldiers!" Julie opened fire at the first sign of motion she caught. Her plasma bolt caught a priest in the back, hurling the perverted thing onto all fours with flames set in his armor. He wailed, a psionic shield rising around him to win him a second chance at life, and Julie pivoted targets, aiming at a stun lancer vaulting from the building.
With a harsh roar, Franz's augmented shotgun vomited two red bolts, both drilling into the lancer's chest. The blasts promptly eviscerated him, nearly cutting his torso from his legs and setting both halves on fire for good measure. His body collapsed, fingers still twitching with the hints of chryssalid DNA, while Franz worked the pump on his weapon, that monocle glowing as targeting data streamed from Avenger right into his field of vision.
"Not just for style, huh?" Julie switched to her amp, closing her eyes and feeling rather than seeing. With her sixth sense, she knew Giovanni was laying down suppressive fire, demolishing walls and windows while Franz picked apart anything he exposed. Janet's psi-energy was…inside the building, mixing it up with ADVENT soldiers in a gory display of spraying yellow blood while she sliced through armor and guns alike, absorbing counter-strikes on summoned shields and points of cover. Her focus, her energy, waxed and waned like the moon or the tides, coming and going to inundate and abandon the enemy wherever she wanted. For a moment, her sheer strength nearly blinded Julie.
Focus. If any word was her lodestar, it was that. Focus forever.
Through the haze, she felt it: a shieldbearer, warming up his equipment to bolster the rest of his squad.
"No." Julie hit the trigger on her amp, charging her psionic power into a surging lance. It built up like the crackle of lightning, blacking out all light around its purple glow. With a single convulsive gesture, she shoved outward, banishing the null lance to strike down anything in its path: a wounded soldier trying to crawl away from Franz, a sectoid who thought he was clever hiding and preparing his mental powers, and finally the shieldbearer, one heartbeat from activating his suit.
All three of their hearts stopped on the same beat. The sectoid collapsed on the diner floor, while the shieldbearer, still in his unblemished heavy armor, sat down hard behind the register, jaw going slack and eyes unfocused as if he'd simply fallen asleep.
Julie exhaled slowly, reopening her eyes.
Silence descended slowly, marred by only the final burst of fire from a magnetic autopistol.
"Status?" Julie keyed her comm, eyes on the diner as she raised her rifle back into place. "Ross?"
"I live." Janet threw the door open, stepping over bodies left and right. "We have the package."
"I see that." Sure enough, he came out on Janet's heels: a tall, lanky man with a scraggly little goatee and purple eyes under close-cropped dark hair. He examined the field of slaughter intently, inclining his head as Julie and Giovanni appeared from cover and Franz lowered his own gun.
"Cipriano Valle." He held out his hands. "I am unarmed."
"I see your eyes and I feel your power." Julie examined him for a moment. Not as strong as herself, nor as Sylvie, perhaps, but there was room for him regardless. "One such as us is never unarmed, are we?"
"Perhaps not." Cipriano spared a look over his shoulder. "But I cannot do much in these circumstances. I was told you were my ride out of here?"
"Seems that way." Julie glanced for the roof, picking out Junior and Sylvie maintaining overwatch. "Avenger, we have your gift basket."
"Copy, Menace." Now it was Gallant, with a note of relief and another of tension. "Great to hear. Those fighters are five minutes out. Get out of there now!"
"Copy." Julie waved to her team. Hers! What an idea. "Alright, jackasses. We need to hustle. Same teams, now push out. Cipriano, you're with me and the Father."
A Templar valued, above all, her calm and her focus. Power was not something to be thrown about willy-nilly, driven by human emotions that colored that power and twisted it to impure ends. Even the most righteous of anger was still anger, and thus, could still be turned into a tool of darkness. And yet, today, in this place, the one thing Janet Ross could not do was let go of it.
So when she saw a nest of vipers blocking the path…
"This is for Anne!" Without a second's hesitation, Janet threw herself into the fray. Her psi-blades shot out with a hiss and growl, sweeping along at shoulder-height as she sliced through snakeskin and flesh with ease. The vipers recoiled, tongues snapping out as they sought to bind her, but every time something came close, she struck it down with a howl of arisen grief.
Anne and Barta. Nui and Elias. Liang and Cameron. In her own way, Janet had known all of them. She'd lost friends before, but so many, and so fast! No, that would not stand.
"Die." She drove both blades up to her wrists into one viper, the snake hissing and whimpering blood and venom as Janet slowly cut upward, rending lines from its abdomen all the way through its head. The alien's eyes bulged and its shrieks resounded through the streets, but that was quite all right by her.
This must be how the Reapers feel. In another life, maybe she'd have been one of Dragunova's people. The rage was there, and she exulted in it and the power it brought as the viper writhed in her grip, suffering like Anne had—
A red projectile ripped the creature's head off. The body twitched on Janet's impalement for only a moment more, drawing limp as it slid for the ground.
"Enough." Franz caught her arm, his shotgun still steaming where it hung on its strap. "Who made you a torturer?"
"Who are you to scold me?" Janet drew her other arm back, blade an instant from popping out. "You don't know what they took from me."
"Did that snake take it?" Franz glared through his monocle. "Focus on the mission, soldier. You're wasting time we don't have to spare, and you're giving yourself over to exactly what the aliens want you to be."
"Don't lecture me." Janet ripped her arm free. "Your sanctimony is amusing."
"And your sadism is not." Franz reclaimed his gun. "We have a job to do, so I suggest we stop screwing around and do it. Unless you want to be left behind here?"
"Is that a threat?" Janet scowled under her helmet. "I outrank you, newcomer."
"Then I suggest you act like it." Without another word, Franz seized Janet's point position, leaving her in the dust as he advanced toward the coveted two-story rooftop three blocks away that held their evac point.
Son of a bitch. Janet glared in his wake. I traded Anne for a coward. I hope he does us a favor and eats mag-rounds.
On some level, she felt bad about the thought. That was the level that sympathized with him, most likely the level that Geist wanted her to embrace. But she had no pity left for aliens, nor for those who would act like they deserved the fair treatment ordained by the rules of war. Life was a conflicting mess now, wasn't it?
"Four minutes." Bradford's voice, dispassionate but professional, served to shake her from her trance. "Quit fucking around, Menace."
Janet sighed. Shaking blood off her gauntlets, she took second place behind Franz. Maybe he was an asshole, but she wasn't going to shirk her duty just for the pleasure of watching him eat plasma.
Even if she wanted to more than she was comfortable admitting even to herself.
"Ross has some stuff to work out." Gallant made a quick note on her record. "Someone get in touch with Geist. See if he can talk to her. Either way, I'm giving her a mandatory referral to the Infirmary for some therapy."
"Good idea, sir." Bradford kept his eyes on the display, tracking the icons that showed all their hopes and dreams for the near- and long-term futures. "Franz is pulling his weight."
"For a mercenary." The term wasn't entirely accurate, but Gallant would be damned before he stopped using it for something as stupid as logic. "That shotgun kicks ass."
"There was a bit of a business in the Resistance trying to replicate Invasion-era XCOM and alien designs." Bradford pulled the weapon's specs up for him and Shen to ogle. "We had a few personnel with units like this back in the day. Some of them must have wound up in god-alone-knows whose hands."
"And Franz got one of them." Gallant rubbed his chin, feeling his stubble while his heart beat erratically. "Julian, those interceptors?"
"Three minutes." The AI hummed quietly. "Menace has almost reached the extraction point."
"Christ. We might make it." Gallant immediately regretted the words, but what else was there but to own them? It would be good for morale. "A smooth operation so far, but we shouldn't lose focus at the tail end."
"Wise words, sir." Bradford keyed his comm. "Alright, Menace. You're almost there. Get to that roof."
"Hot damn." Julie stepped over the carnage in Janet's wake, suppressing a low whistle. "Yikes."
"It is a lot." Cipriano strode through the blood spatters for all the world as if they weren't staining his boots possibly beyond repair. "Are we far?"
"No, it's right there." Julie nodded to the next building. Janet and Franz held position by the elevator that accessed the roof, autopistol and shotgun pointed as they held down the flanks. "Sylvie?"
"Coming!" She raced over the left side roof, dropping down to ground level with a soft grunt. Junior followed, his own noise from impact a hell of a lot less gentle. "Let's get out of here."
"No arguments." Julie pressed the elevator button. She aimed her plasma rifle as the doors opened, but no surprises lurked in the shadows. "Brilliant. Junior, take the high road."
"Moving." He backed away from the team while they piled into the elevator. Julie pushed Cipriano to the back, ensuring she and Giovanni held the front while the others waited for them to clear out. Juunior's jetboots activated as the elevator doors glided shut.
Almost there. Julie let out a relieved sigh. This could have gone a lot worse. A new recruit, several confirmed kills, no wounded nor dead… Jane would be proud. I bet Central is proud too.
The elevator dinged gently, the doors sliding open.
Open to reveal an andromedon, acid cannon already spewing hate.
Jane Kelly scrambled up the stairs and over to her flat. She tapped her key against the sensor, hurrying inside as soon as the lock clicked.
"Finally!' She sat on the bed to unzip her boots and stow them back in her bag. She massaged her feet for a long minute. "How does anyone…"
No point to getting lost in this. Jane shed the rest of her clothes, pulling on a leather jacket and old world-style jeans then matching them with athletic shoes, much better for running and stabbing. She put her hair back in its ponytail, slipped her cap back into place, then hurried to the mirror to adjust her makeup. She'd gone for glamor earlier, now she removed everything as fast as possible and scrambled to switch to a dirtied, scarred look. Irina was much better with this stuff than she'd probably ever be, but twenty minutes was enough to at least not resemble Jenny O'Hare anymore. Speaking of, she chucked that fake ID in one corner of the room and fished out the next one, Samantha Greene.
I don't have all damn day. But she also had to do a good enough job to not be caught if someone managed to get a picture of her previous disguise. As soon as her makeup was done, Jane seized her backpack, checking that it still had all of her shit where she'd left it. Perfect. Just perfect.
Irina will do a sweep later. As strong as the temptation to go back and check on the aftereffects of her handiwork personally was, it was also a one-way ticket for sure. Out of the city, now. Hurry!
She shouldered her bag. Her legs already hurt, and they'd hurt worse when the day was done, but that was a small price to pay for thumbing Angelis' eye. Sure, it wasn't the most devastating blow she'd ever dealt the aliens, but it was something.
And it has nothing to do with Gallant. That was another thought she could take to the grave: she'd done this on her own, not relying on the Commander who was also a war criminal as far as she was concerned. They should have put me in charge instead of him.
That was a possibly unfair thought. Gallant was very good at his job, and not even Jane's hard feelings could make her ignore that. Was she really as competent as him? There was always a chance, but the odds weren't great. But that was why she wasn't trying to fight the same kind of war XCOM was anyway—her victories would be smaller, but she was leaning into the strengths she had.
Still, though, I suppose I miss his voice in my ear. Until she'd been without it, she hadn't fully appreciated how enormous her commlink's influence on her operations had been. And he isn't all bad. The night before the Forge drop flicked through her mind's eye as she reached for the doorknob. It's a shame, really, about his record. There's a good man buried in that mess. If only he hadn't let the aliens take advantage of him so easily—
The instant before her fingers touched the knob, the door blew apart.
"Shit!" Jane tumbled head over heels, collapsing on her back against the wall. She spat hair and dust, ripping a splinter from her hand before she'd consciously realized it and a half-dozen of its friends had her pincushioned on her cheeks and palms.
"Mor balaten!" Two stun lancers burst into the room, electric batons upraised. Jane's eyed widened, but it wasn't because of them or even the soldiers lining the hall as backup.
"Miss O'Hare, you're under arrest." That general stood in her doorway, blackened by the residue of explosion but still on her feet, now with helmet thrust in place and her rifle aimed pointedly. "Or should I call you Jane?"
Author's Note 82: Did You Really Think I'd Kill Dourde That Anticlimactically
If Julie and Jane are among my favorite characters in the fic, Dourde is solidly in the runner-up category. The idea of an ADVENT officer being slowly enlightened to a higher way of thinking, without changing sides, until she becomes something of XCOM's most worthy opponent over even the Chosen, is IMO quite fascinating. I think there was room for the game to implement a system where enemy commanders could learn your tactics and adapt to them as the game progressed, similar to Shadow of Mordor(I'm aware of this game's influence on the Chosen themselves) but it would have been a radical departure from gameplay. I'm picturing something like the co-commanders in C&C Red Alert 3, with the aliens having, say, one officer per region, but as those officers do battle with you, they gain traits and preferred units, developing their own character and, if they meet with successes, being promoted to take leadership over more regions. That would add a new dimension to assassination missions too, wouldn't it?
In any event, the next chapter promises to be an action extravaganza. I hope you're not too attached to anyone, mwahaha! After CH79, you know all bets are off.
Until next time, Vigilo Confido.