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"I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
~Winston Churchill
Chapter Eighty-three: Best Laid Plans
"Watch out!" Julie acted before thinking, shoving Sylvie behind her on reflex and hitting the trigger on her amp. Psionic power shot out, forming a solid cocoon at the mouth of the elevator, flexing under the weight of gallons of acid poured with a vengeance. Drips came through growing cracks, steam and smoke rising as they ate into the ground.
"Junior!" Gallant's voice was the only noise that could pierce the roar of pouring liquid and the howl of concentrated psionics.
"Engaging." The SPARK's blurring form appeared through the display, energy surging in its fist as it made its approach from behind the andromedon's back. The exosuit had a moment to pivot, but then a mechanical hand struck it behind the canopy, sending the contraption staggering.
"The tanks! Take the damn tanks!" Julie dropped her shield, staggering forward as blood burst from her nose. Without missing a beat, Sylvie caught her under the arm, nearly hurling her into cover behind a raised skylight. "Thanks, honey."
"Stay down!" Then Sylvie was off, plasma rifle warming up as she fired on the move. Green energy caught the acid lines on the andromedon's back, blowing them open and sending its shit regurgitating onto the rooftop around it. The alien war machine let out a distorted, robotic cry, somewhere between annoyance and warning, before picking up its own fist and doing its damndest to Pacific Rim with Junior.
"The ceiling!" Bradford's voice cut in over the com, targeting data streaming from Avenger's monitors to appear on Julie's visor in an orange bubble. "Grenade!"
"Out!" Father Giovanni's launcher spoke in anger with its signature chuff of impelling charges detonating. A plasma grenade clattered down between the andromedon's feet, beeping gently. The machine pivoted, its pilot seeming to try and peer through the glass.
"Junior!" Julie hit her amp again, an orb appearing around the SPARK and compressing, shoving him into temporal and physical stasis. His link to Avenger cut for a moment, and lights flickered over his body as his software tried to reckon with what had been done to him—
The grenade detonated, and the already acid-weakened rooftop blew downward with a titanic roar. The andromedon tumbled through the open hole, smashing through the second floor in an explosion of metal shards and landing hard on its back down at the base of the building, crunching a welcome desk under its bulk. Acid leaked around it like blood, but the pilot still moved in his carapace.
And for all of that, the stasis shield held Junior in safety, unaffected by the blast.
"Ow!" Julie couldn't say the same. A knife drove into her head as the energy from the detonation tried to overwhelm her psi-link. Gripping her amp in one hand and the railing around the skylight in the other, she fought it away through gritted teeth. "Christ. I need an aspirin."
"I'm coming in." There was something in Lilah's voice now, even if it wasn't her usual energy. Fear flickered in every syllable, dripping from her words like the andromedon's acid. Engines whined in the distance. "Hang on. Please hang on."
"Easy, Firebrand." Julie pushed herself upright, covering her eyes from the light as Franz and Giovanni opened fire down through the hole, perforating the prone andromedon while Junior's shield dissipated and he woke up with a start. "The hostile is down and the way is—"
"Incoming contacts." Bradford's words mated to a red arrow appearing in Julie's vision. "Archons and a dropship."
"…clear. The way is clear." Julie's eyes fixed on the shape of the craft in question, sweeping over the skyline with rocket-propelled alien warriors on each flank. "I had to say it, didn't I?"
"That dropship is registering the contact for a priest and several soldiers." Shen worked her terminal like a madwoman, Julian popping up on her screen to feed tactical data live. "Maybe a shieldbearer."
"Fucking lovely." Gallant eyed the archons' icons. "John, am I seeing shit?"
"No, sir." Bradford scowled at the display, eyes dark with misgivings. "Those aren't just archons. The leader is Vahlen's Alpha."
"The thing that pulled a disappearing act in the Warlock's lair. Because why wouldn't it be here?" Gallant inhaled as surreptitiously as possible. "Well, at least we know where they are. What's Firebrand's ETA?"
"Sixty seconds."
"Right. And the interceptors?" Gallant glanced at Julian.
"Two minutes. The AI hummed for what probably wasn't as long as it felt. "The way down from the building is clear. An alternative evac point could be placed at the junction of—"
"They don't have time for that kind of hollydoodle." Not even Gallant knew what that word meant: his source was that he'd made it the fuck up on the spot. He hit his comm, grinding his teeth in a way that would give any dentist a heart attack. "Menace, get the fuck out of there, do you hear me? Gather up at the north end of the roof and hold the line. No one try to be a hero."
"We'll do our best, sir." Julie's icon waved to her teammates, pulling them into formation while Cipriano ducked low for cover.
Is trading my people for him worth it? Assuming anyone comes home, that is. The questions a Commander had to ask and answer. He'd better be a damn good psi-op, that's all I have to say. If someone dies to get him home, I'm not exactly fixing my personnel deficit, am I?
"Come on, Julie." He watched his team in action, stuck in the firing line while all he could do was lean on his cane and pray. "God, I wish Jane was down there right now."
Jane had never been one to take defeat lying down, and today was hardly an exception. Sure, there was a gun in her face and a pair of stun lancers with batons crackling like Christmas fires at her flanks, but since when had such nonsense been the death of her?
After all, if they wanted me dead, they'd have killed me already. That hesitation was her opportunity.
She kicked the first lancer in the knee. He stumbled, collapsing in an awkward half-squat with his arc blade in the floor. Jane rolled behind his form, as the general hesitated, averting her gun from her own man in an oddly human display for an ADVENT puppet. Jane reached deep into her bag, probing and hunting with desperation in her half-second's window—
Her fingers closed around an alloy hilt.
With a whine of rising power, her liberated plasma pistol spoke in anger. Green light cast an underwater pallor through the horrid flat's stinking corners, painting deep shadows on the walls as Jane shot the standing lancer in the throat and then his recovering companion in the armpit. The general brought her gun up, but Jane was faster, shooting two-handed and putting a beam right into the cloned thing's breastplate.
"Donut!" The general tumbled into the hall, clutching her smoldering armor, but she clearly wasn't dead or she would have shut up. "Get in there! Get her!"
Three shots. That didn't leave Jane a lot of power in the cell. She fired at the wall, laser blasts punching through paneling and thin metal to be met with ADVENT shrieks and the retch-inducing stench of boiling meat.
Mag-rounds filled the room, fired blind around the corner by a soldier with his head tucked in the crook of his arm. Jane scrambled out of the way, covering her own head while flaming splinters blew left and right in flechette-clouds. Glass shattered when a stray round hit the window, and Jane let out a wordless yelp as a shard as long as the distance between the tip of her thumb and her wrist sliced its way down the small of her back. More splinters flew in miniature explosions as troopers opened up through the wall, trusting either in their optics or blind luck as they turned the flat into a killbox.
I can't stay here. There was no universe in which a half-dozen assault rifles didn't turn one woman into a pincushion when she had two hundred square feet to work with and no appreciable cover. She fired at the source of one blast, and her pistol whined in tune with the ADVENT soldier's last shriek: the warning that only one shot's worth of power remained. The idea that she would have time to reload was a worse joke than Commander Gallant at a track event. Two ways out.
She kicked her bag, diving and rolling over it as the general scrambled back to her feet, shouting at her men. The fire lessened up—more proof that killing Jane wasn't on the menu. The aliens probed forward, guns up, targeting the window in their frenzy to box Jane in. She let off her last shot, forcing the general to duck for a split second.
Long enough for Jane to abandon her pistol and seize the hilt protruding from her bag.
She hit the soldiers like a berserker, hacking off one arm and one leg in two strikes and then hitting the power switch on her arc blade. Electric fury consumed the third stun lancer to risk her wrath, sending her to the floor convulsing with shocks and lightning sparkling across her body. Jane recovered, bracing, yellow-dripping blade ready.
The enemy was expecting her to break for the window…so instead, she went for the second way out of the room.
"Go!" Janet Ross took the lead, leaping over the gap left in the andromedon's wake. As soldiers threw themselves out of the ADVENT dropship's bay, she appeared among them in a fury, covered by a psionic shield that guarded her against their spirited defensive fire. "Get to Firebrand!"
"Come on!" Father Giovanni pushed Cipriano forward, turning to unload from the hip all around Janet's position. Heavy mag-rounds perforated vests and heads, shredding the heavy plate of a pair of purifiers and puncturing one of their fuel tanks. The blast echoed and shook the roof, shattering glass for a block and sending dust scattering past Janet's shields and her upraised arms. It also took out one of the dropship's stabilizers, and the ungainly craft wavered in the air, the remaining troops aboard scrambling to jump while they still had the chance.
Heavy cannon fire punched into its alloy skin from above. The dropship's waver turned into a collapse, flames exploding from the cockpit and its stabilizers as it spun toward the Cairo streets, trailing dark smoke.
"That's for Cameron." The Skyranger swept over Lilah's first air-to-air kill Janet was aware of, guns blazing on a strafing pass through the scattering archons. Her drop bay opened, ropes falling on the far end of the roof. "Get moving!"
"Watch it!" Sylvie fired high as those archons soared overhead, missile pods erupting from their wings and flanks. "Hedgehog!"
"What?" But Janet got the idea as a hundred miniature rockets shot down for her position. She dove out of the way, drawing on her psionic energy as warheads slammed into the roof, detonating in sprays of alloy shards like fragmentation grenades. The ceiling held under the bombardment, but ADVENT bodies flew left and right, needled by the metal splinters on their fiery trails.
"Christ!" Julie waved Giovanni and Cipriano aboard the Skyranger. "Franz, set up here!"
"It will be done!" Franz's augmented shotgun roared, spitting trails of scarlet hate into the air. Speaking of scarlet hate—
"You!" Janet braced herself as the Emperor Archon descended on her, staff awhirl. She caught its strike on a shield of pure power, gritting her teeth as the beast roared in her face. "You are an abomination!" The moment she had the chance, the Templar lunged with twin blades a blur, slashing at any bit of exposed red flesh she could find. It roared again, recoiling under the onslaught.
Its hand snagged her throat, cutting her air as its claws dug into the side of her neck.
"Janet!" Julie's amp roared with power. She hurled it all at the redhead, screaming as power coursed through her body, drawn from the depths of her very soul.
Not like Scotland. The thought beat like a drum in her head, vicious and martial, a tune that suffused her being with purpose and determination. I'll fucking die here today before I let any one of my people come home in a bag!
The Emperor flailed with a cry, encased in stasis. The shield forced its grip inward, Janet collapsing on the roof with a choking gasp of air. She lay unmoving in the chaos.
"Stupid broad!" Julie abandoned her cover position. As archon rockets rained around her and staffs shot blasts of green plasma-energy, she raced to Janet's position, seizing the Templar around the waist. "You're not retiring that easy, damn it!" She hefted her friend on one shoulder, stumbling back for the Skyranger. "Someone!"
"Got her!" Sylvie appeared from the next best thing to nowhere, sweeping Janet off Julie's grip. "What about you?"
"I'm coming, just go!" Julie waved her fiancée away. She raised her rifle, sighting in on an archon as Franz blew the other from the air. Giovanni and Junior caught Julie's target in a box of flying mag-rounds, driving it closer to the ground with every burst.
"You have one minute until the interceptors arrive. Get moving!" Bradford's voice frayed. "Menace!"
"We hear you." Julie hit the trigger at the moment of truth, her blast hitting the archon in the head and blowing half its skull to kingdom come. The horrid, twisted monstrosity spiraled out of control, jet engines impelling it through the streets to explode on the ground. "Cipriano is aboard, Giovanni and Junior are following. Sylvie's got Ross, and Franz and I can hold the rearguard for just a second to get them secured—"
A metal hand seized her by the neck this time. Julie choked as the Emperor Archon hauled her up until her feet were further off the ground than her head normally was, its face a mask of rage against a world that it wasn't supposed to exist in.
The Emperor's jets flared, shooting it off into the sky with Julie in its grip.
"What's it doing?" Gallant flicked through tactical screens almost before Julian popped them up, his mind racing at a thousand miles per hour and his heart something around twice that. "Fucker's going to drop her!"
"Somebody shoot it!" Bradford clutched the rail, his finger twitching as if he were there with his Kickass Assault Rifle of Death. "Julie, can you read us?"
"Fuck." Gallant winced as the Emperor's signal disconnected from Julie's. The psi-op's altitude reading unwound like a goddamn clock in overdrive. "Can someone catch her?"
"I've got her!" Sylvie's amp flared, psi-signatures high on the scale, and a stasis shield enveloped Julie. "It'll slow her down, but she'll live."
"Menace, you don't have time to waste with this." Shen popped the radar screen up. All eyes flicked to four harsh signatures moving in from the Mediterranean with a vengeance. Even Julie crash-landing on the rooftop in her protective psi-bubble barely drew a glance compared to Death on the wings. "Less than thirty seconds until arrival."
"Franz." Gallant didn't have many thoughts in his head, but he had to make do with the ones he had. His eyes flicked from Franz' position to Julie's the shield already disintegrating as Sylvie slung Janet into place on the Skyranger. "Your spider suit has a grapnel function."
"You want me to give Magus Richardson a lifeline and pull her aboard." For his part, the merc didn't flinch at the idea. "Consider it done. Someone, cover me."
Impending death brought clarity. So did Julie's new view of the sky. Pulling herself to her knees by the skylight, hemmed in by the andromedon's hole and the scattered bodies of however fucking many ADVENT and aliens had died here in the last minute or two, her gaze fixed on the faint dots appearing on the horizon. Lean, lethal, and deadly, then came on with a vengeance and a rage.
They brought Purpose as much as Clarity, two things Julie had to cling to in the depths of darkness.
Not like Scotland. Not like Scotland.
"Lieutenant Schneider, belay that order!" She pulled herself to one knee, already sighting in with her rifle. The Emperor Archon landed between her and the Skyranger, one hand outstretched as if in challenge. "The bastard's just going to seize your line and kill you if you give it the chance."
"Julie!" Gallant's voice resounded desperately in her ear. "If you don't do something, you're gonna get left behind!"
Clarity. Purpose. In that fraction of a second, Julie wondered if Gallant felt it too.
"Firebrand." Julie's heart hammered, but there was nothing else for it. A Ruler between her and evac, and only seconds to make the choice? "Firebrand, go!"
"What?" Sylvie's eyes, so distant in the dropship's bay, shot wide. "No, Julie—"
Not like Scotland. Not again.
"That's a direct fucking order!" Julie fired, her blast catching the Emperor in the flank. The beast snarled, rockets flying from its haunches. Julie threw herself away—away from the Skyranger, drawing the enemy's attention off from her friends. From her family.
"No!" Sylvie's voice shattered into a shrill, chaotic shriek of horror. "You can't—"
"Firebrand, you have to go, now." Gallant understood. At least someone did. "If you don't, I'm giving your controls to Julian."
"Sir." Lilah was crying. Of course she was! Julie would have cried too.
"It's going to be okay." Julie breathed as deeply as she could, what with the chaos enveloping her on all sides as rockets blazed in the sky, arcing for her position. "I promise, it will be—"
The Emperor's warheads descended like hellish rain. Grenade-size projectiles detonated left, right, and center, blowing holes and scuff-marks in the heavy metal roof. Detonations punched into Julie's ears with a vengeance, driving knives into her brain that would take days of sleep to pull out.
Days? How optimistic. Julie's eyes fixed on the Emperor, now surging at her while what ADVENT soldiers had survived the crash fought to their feet, firing from the hip at the Skyranger as its engines whined and its lean shape rose skyward. I don't even have minutes—
A psionic shield encased the Emperor, locking it in a bubble of stasis. It howled, battering madly at the wall, but for a moment—a crucial moment—it was secure and ADVENT was none the wiser.
"Julie!" Sylvie's eyes glowed with power somehow impotent, her amp searing with light as she reached futilely from the back of Lilah's drop bay.
The lean shapes of those interceptors swept toward the rooftop, weapons glowing green with plasma firepower.
"This is Firebrand. Coming home with the package." Cold professionalism, now: maybe that was a healthier way to cope with grief than anything Julie had associated with the hotshot pilot until today.
"Richardson…" Gallant cleared his throat, almost imperceptibly. "Good luck, Julie. We'll find you as soon as we can."
"Thank you, sir." Julie let out a sigh of her own. "Take care of her. And Matthias."
"Count on it." And she did, and would. If Gallant was nothing else, he was a man of his word.
The drop bay door rose. Without line of sight, Sylvie couldn't hold the Emperor for long.
"Sylvie, I love you. We'll meet again." ADVENT could track comms as well as anyone given time. Without waiting for her lover's response, Julie plucked out her earpiece, hurling it across the battlefield. She abandoned her plasma rifle too, but tucked her amp firmly into place.
She rolled over to the hole in the roof, dropping to the ground level without hesitation long before the Emperor could recover.
Jane flew knee-first into the first soldier to try and block her path, pitching him into the opposite side of the hallway so hard cracks shot out around him. She elbowed his helmet into the wall next, spinning low to slice at the knees of the frantically retreating soldiers around her. They raised their rifles, but she hauled her victim along with her, nearly slinging him over her back as a living shield. In the tight confines, any shot taken by the soldiers had a high chance of hitting one of their own. Jane, however, had no such concerns, and she slashed one-handed at anything that moved. The soldier on her back thrashed, almost in a daze, as she cut through his companions on all sides.
"Take this!' Sweat ran down Jane's face as she launched herself into a high kick, hurling their shieldbearer back into his friends like a bowling ball. She braced on the wall with both feet, tossing her bullet sponge into the fallen mess and darting for the far end of the hallway before anyone could recover.
Before the soldier she'd abandoned realized she'd bitten out the pin on his grenade first.
The explosion shook the hall and floor, sending soldiers scattering to their knees. Jane blew along the hallway, springing over struggling soldiers and stabbing anything that seemed to have an organized thought in its head. She hit the corner at a dead run, sword trailing behind her with yellow spraying like a comet's tail, tugging the brim of her cap low as she sprinted for the nearest fire escape.
"Hold it!" The general appeared around the corner, racing in Jane's wake with a pistol drawn. "Kelly, stop!"
Jesus. How is she still moving? Any other officer would have been in a daze after that grenade—to say nothing of the building that had exploded around her!
"Get fucked!" Not exactly eloquent, but she couldn't think of anything more literary on the spot. Jane sprang through the nearest window and onto the fire escape, practically vaulting over the rail and catching the ladder with one hand and foot. She swung her arc blade, severing the lock that kept the ladder off the ground, and in a rush of screaming metal, she fell earthward.
"Shit!" The jerk nearly ripped her arm out of its socket, but her descent came to a stop a few feet shy of concrete. Jane relinquished her hold, sword still in hand as she tore out into the alleys, shooting a glance over her shoulder at that high window. The general's form appeared, pistol upraised, but she was too late. Jane rounded the corner, feet hammering down as she pushed past civilians with gaping, pale faces.
I have to get rid of the blade. Where, though? Sewer. I can lose pursuit there too, make my way south to the meet-up point. First, she had to break contact. Were those stun lancers she heard behind her? If I can make it three blocks, I imagine I can—
She felt the impact, but no pain. The sensation felt a lot more like a playful poke: the sort of thing David would have done to her, pushing his finger into the base of her neck just to get a rise. Jane clutched at herself, feeling a tiny object embedded in her flesh. She stumbled as she ripped the thing out, the world turning hazy…
Jane collapsed on the street, the world spinning around her and the heavy weight of worlds landing on her mind. The object clattered down in front of her, emblazoned with an alien symbol and defined by a long needle now coated red like Jane's palm.
"Don't move!" Gold-plated boots appeared at the corner of her spinning vision. Through the whirling, rushing haze, the sound of a cocking mag-rifle still registered. "Unless you want me to put one in your leg, stay still, damn it!"
Blade. The word was hard to hold, but the concept simple enough. Jane twisted on the ground, fighting with limbs weighed by thousand-pound chains only she could feel. She reached, her fingertips brushing the hilt of her arc blade where it lay—
"I'm impressed, General Dourde." A tall, heavy boot kicked the blade aside. Jane sucked in a struggling breath as the Hunter loomed over her, blotting out the sun. "That was a reasonable shot even by my standards."
"Thank you, sir." This General Dourde marched to Jane's side, leaning down while she let her rifle fall on its strap. "You taught me well."
"And with my spare tranquilizer pistol!" The Hunter actually whistled, popping an orange starburst into his mouth a moment later. "There's a reason I let you have that one, you know. It sucks."
"Bastards…" Jane beat feebly on Dourde's boots as the gilded general reached for her. "Fucking…evil…"
"That's enough." Dourde caught Jane's hands. Jane fought with everything she had, but inexorably, inevitably, Dourde hauled her wrists together behind her back. Jane's breath came in short, her vision swimming, but she still felt the cold kiss of metal cuffs. "Stop fighting. Go to sleep."
"That's right, Jane." The Hunter crouched by her head while she struggled feebly, her thrashing more of a gentle rocking now as her eyelids began to sink. "Rock-a-bye Kelly, lost on the ground…"
Jane managed to spit on his boot.
"I like you." The Hunter patted her cap almost affectionately, and Jane no longer had the strength to buck away. "Come on, Major. We're going to take a little trip somewhere you aren't going to like."
Jane fought. Really, she did, with everything she had, clawing at the cuffs and Dourde's gloved hands alike. But she didn't have enough left. The venom had done its work.
The darkness swept her away at the same time Dourde heaved her off the ground.
Author's Note 83: God Damn Mission Timers
Timers can go straight to hell in less than 12 turns. I never play anymore without the Time Turner second wave option enabled, and frankly I think it makes the game FAR more fun. In my D&D campaigns, I actively shy away from negative reinforcement as a gameplay mechanic unless my hand is well and truly forced, explicitly because of the comparison between how EW handled player crawling(Meld) and XCOM2's use of turn timers.
That said, the timers can create some cinematic moments. It wasn't Julie, but I had a soldier I had to leave behind for somewhat similar reasons to this once. Rescuing her was a blast, if I recall correctly.
And then there's Jane…I'm sure she'll be fine. Right?
Until next time, Vigilo Confido.