Chapter 27

"Anyone who said they were not afraid of going over the top is a god damn liar.."

~ Anonymous World War 1 Veteran.

July 9th, 2216

The reunions had been quick, John mused. He sat silently in the red-lit bowels of a troop-transport shuttle, elbows rested against his armored legs, hands clenched together, and head leaned up against them. Seeing them now, after the brief break in contact, it seemed to John that all of the II's - himself included - had aged in the last three months, the very same way a bright-eyed private would enter war innocent, in a manner of speaking, would come home a dull-gazed recluse after seeing untold amounts of death. But the II's hadn't become reclusive, or post traumatic, but rather they carried themselves a different way. Before they had begun their deployments in the Batarian War, they had been innocent in their own, unique way, and had wanted nothing more than to prove themselves to the Ones, but now? Now it seemed that the periods of time between fights were exactly that - brief respites, breaks, during which they simply waited for the next fight to come around. This hadn't been apparent to John – who could positively claim he'd aged as well, just in a different sort of way – until they'd seen that he, in fact, was alive, and was ready to plunge right back into hell with little rest.

John hadn't expected any sort of celebrations, and if he were to be honest, what he'd gotten had been exactly what he had expected: Those that knew him directly – they being Delta Company – gave him a hug and congratulated him on surviving so long, those that knew him indirectly gave him a hearty handshake; several had even mentioned that stories of John's battle against the Batarians on Siler had made their way around the Army, though he dismissed that much, the op had been largely dark, so how could the Army have gotten wind of it?

Now, John sat in the transport cabin in the shuttle that had just taken off from an Alliance Carrier, stationed in orbit. For hours, the navy had bombed and shelled the places of strategic importance in the planet. Hand of God Satellites, Magnetic Accelerator Gun strikes, even a few dozen Space-to-Surface missiles had been launched with the explicit goal of softening up the planet's defenses, they wanted to be done with this place and this war by the end of the week. The only places on the planet that hadn't been scarred by the Alliance's prelude to invasion were the areas of the planet that either had no Batarians, or the ones that were confirmed to have Humans. John knew that the Human evacuations were something the Alliance could not afford to botch, and even though the II's were good, they weren't SIGMAs, not yet, and not officially - they still had a good four years of training to go through, which would make their previous seven look like a cake-walk in comparison. This all meant that while the I's, and the N7, rescued the Humans, and the Marines mopped up what was left of the bases and population centers that had been blown to hell, the II's – all six hundred and nine of them – would assault a series of three other bases.

"You are, essentially, island hopping." Ducard and the other Company Commanders had explained during the debriefing, and after everyone had gotten reaquainted with the only SIGMA II Prisoner of War. "The bases you assault will be hit in order of importance, starting at the lowest end of the food chain and working up to the top." John felt the shuttle shudder slightly, as it entered the moon's atmosphere; the jostling temporarily shook him from his reverie. "Your goal is total annihilation, anyone who raises a weapon against you is hostile and should be treated as such. Alliance Intelligence has long since confirmed it - there are no civilians on this planet, only potential and likely only thing that has changed since the initial briefing is that Arcturus wants us to spare anyone who surrenders, so if rifles go to ground, your bullets go elsewhere."

After which they had been given their intel - expected troop numbers, casualty predictions, the works. Once or twice, unbidden, John had found himself thinking back to the events on the Turian planet and those in the bowels of the Spartec ship. The Captain he'd met, Shepard, there was something about her voice he wasn't able to place. He'd hadn't been able to get a good look at her from behind his shattered visor, but he had managed to catch a glimpse of green eyes, and a voice that held warmth in its professional tone. Hearing her speak had made him know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he would make it home to Sparta, but what confused him was why hearing her speak gave him those thoughts. He'd already known he was getting home - the ship had been cleared out by the Alliance, after all. So what about Shepard made him feel safe? Why did she make him feel safe? How did he even know what safety felt like? Perhaps the most important question - why did her voice sound familiar? Had he met her on Mindoir? Or on Earth? He'd had frustratingly little contact with anyone off of Sparta, so hearing a voice that sounded familiar was, in a word, dumbfounding.

John was once again shaken from his reverie, as the silent void of space gave way to the deafening roar of the shuttle's engines in-atmosphere. "Two minutes!" John heard the Air and Space Force pilot shout, deftly maneuvering it in and out of the line of orbital, suborbital, and terrestrial fire. Even though the Batarians had been shelled to hell, they still had military capability, and though it was limited, they were able to scrape together some anti-aircraft fire, both of the ballistic and directed-energy kind. Explosions, shrapnel, and bright bursts of light and slagged metal filled the sky, turning it from its native yellowish color to the hellish red that was largely synonymous with war and chaos; John knew he'd have to get used to it soon, it would be very unlikely he'd ever see a real sky that wasn't fiery red unless he was on Sparta, or conducting a night-raid.

John's Heads Up Display was synched up with the eight other SIGMA II Trainees in the shuttle, he could see what they saw, and if he cut the video links, he could still see the faint, almost undetectable blue lines that showed exactly where they were looking. John saw, through usage of his optimized armor's many, varied bio-communications systems, that no one on the shuttle was anxious in the slightest. The eight other SIGMAs were either waiting, cleaning their weapons, or – in Craig's case – sleeping. The SIGMA II trainee was literally sleeping through the deafening noise that was reentry. There was no anxiety at all about the upcoming battle,though John knew the opposite to be true, he'd lived around these boys long enough to see their ticks. Everyone was scared of war, afraid to fight, terrified of dying, what separated a SIGMA - or, truly, any career soldier - from everyone else was their ability to compartmentalize, to not let the fear get to them when the going got tough. They didn't shut the fear off entirely, no, it was that animalistic fear of death that often proved to be the split-second, instinctual reaction that was the difference between surviving an attack and succumbing to it.

John closed his eyes, he felt the anxiety forming a pit in his stomach. There was the almost imperceptible flutter in his heart, the adrenaline-like feeling of fear in his heart. He allowed the fear to drown him, for five whole seconds he could feel the unending, crippling feeling of fear, in its truest and most raw form, filling his every orifice, his every sense. But when the fifth second passed, he exhaled, and just as quickly as oxygen fled his lungs, the feeling of fear fled his system. The inhale afterwards brought back the oxygen, but instead of bringing back the intense fear, the new breath of air now brought with it determination. John would complete this mission, he would survive to fight another day, and if he could help it, he would become a true-bred SIGMA II Operative.

I will fight so no one else feels the pain of loss. John thought.

"One minute!"

I will fight so no other soldier under my command is taken by the enemy. He retrieved his rifle from his lap. By god... By species... By my rifle... I will kill the enemies of mankind. He looked up, he saw the same sense of determination in the SIGMA Teen right in front of him; neither needed to remove their helmets to see it, they could say everything they had to with just a glance of their inhuman, golden visor.

When the shuttle lurched to a halt, the child soldiers rose to their feet as one. Soon, the bay-door began opening, allowing the unfiltered light of the desert moon to spill into the shuttle, and they all turned towards it. When the shuttle bay door opened entirely, and the harsh gusts of wind brought with it sand, unfiltered air, and heat, the nine SIGMA II's rushed outside.

Torfan was, according to the debriefing, half desert, half desert-forest. The only water that existed on this planet existed because of an asteroid collision several million years ago, and since Torfan was within the habitable zone, the water the asteroid had brought was enough to kick-start life on the moon. John had an entire three seconds to survey his surroundings. In his immediate vicinity were dozens of Alliance shuttles, all landing and bringing with them many of the Alliance's second-generation Augmented Elite. The ground underneath them was a loose, shifty, beige-colored sand, being picked up and tossed into the air by the helicopter blades of the shuttles. It was thicker and coarser than the sand on Earth, but finer and less heavy than the sand on Sparta, with a dark tan color to provide an even worse visual mask, though the II's' HUDs all helped to minimize the blindness.

A look to the Solar-East, the direction East would be if the local star was North, showed John the ruins of an enormous military installation. For a moon populated almost entirely by thieves, crooks, con-artists and killers, the level of construction he saw was something to behold. The stone-made military base had, at one point, had an outer wall, but the wall John and the SIGMAs had landed south of was destroyed and in ruins, but his enhanced eyesight and his visor's zoom-feature showed Batarians, Vorcha, and even a Krogan or two crawling around the ruins like ants, stumbling about rubble and trying to make a defensive line, desperately and quickly making ready to face the Alliance's augmented war machine.

"Alpha Squad, move!" John ordered, before he keyed into the suit-to-suit frequencies, his voice being broadcast to all SIGMAs in the vicinity, "SIGMAS, MOVE!" He roared, energizing the SIGMAs and needlessly reminding them of what they were here to do.

Over in the desolate military base, one Batarian Sniper with thick yellow skin and a deep gash on his forehead would urinate himself at the sight his magnetic scope provided. Where once there were simply dozens - No! Hundreds - of metallic signatures standing and getting their bearings, soon, one began running, one was joined by two, was joined by ten, and suddenly each and every single augmented, power-armored Human being was running at them, full-tilt. Out of panic, the Sniper pulled the trigger, missing by a mile and pre-emptively beginning the fight that would eventually claim his life, and the lives of each of his surviving friends.

"Sniper fire!" John heard someone call out, as a mass accelerated round buried itself into the sand behind the advancing line of SIGMAs.

"Craig -" John began.

"I've got it!" John got over the team-comms, and without breaking stride, Craig leapt forward into a dive, and when he rolled to a kneeling position, his rifle was shouldered, and after a second, his anti-material round shot forth with a crack like localized thunder. The shockwave of the bullet leaving the barrel kicked up more dust around the SIGMA Sniper, and the dust and sand was picked up by the howling winds and began buffeting the boy as he scanned for any more snipers, no-doubt ordering his suit to sync up with the other snipers so they could get a far wider field of view. "Kill confirmed!"

"Krogan charging!" He heard George call out, as several Krogan began charging head-long to the rapidly approaching falsely-armored warriors.

"Machine gunners, set cover and open fire!" John ordered into the public comms. "Heavy weapons, set up your mortars! I want smoke downrange!"

He got confirmations, and in seconds dozens of cover-spheres were deployed, and the myriad of heavy machine gunners – George not included – set up behind them, before they unleashed conventionally accelerated hell upon the defending, wounded enemy forces; behind the machine gunners were the boys who'd brought portable mortar launchers, they had a myriad of munitions to go with it, but as this base was largely dead and so were its inhabitants, they settled for smoke - it was a very safe bet that most of the Batarians here didn't have thermal or magnetic vision, and whoever was left was too wounded to focus on their any of their senses to find the SIGMAs. Two Krogan fell to the gunfire, as the thunderous cracks of mortar rounds being launched to the air tried and failed to drown out the staccato of gunfire. The other Krogan suffered wounds too casual, or were missed entirely, and they didn't do what the Batarians and Vorcha behind them did, they didn't leap to the ground for cover, they simply charged faster and roared louder, something within them telling them it was time to die, so they might as well go down swinging like their ancestors.

The two offensive lines collided harder than two football teams, John himself got slammed by a particularly nasty looking Krogan with green plates and one eye. The seven foot tall Human was undaunted, he called upon Vi-Contactus to win this battle. With one heavy swing, John's warp-assisted punch to the throat shattered the Krogan's shields and stumbled him, a hammer-fisted smash to the chest sent sent the Krogan back a few inches, and with a particularly debilitating front kick, the Krogan was sent back just far enough to be stunned long enough for John to raise his special forces rifle and bury four rounds in his skull, and one biotic flare devastated his head in a shower of blood and gore, for good measure.

When he confirmed the kill, John didn't hesitate, he was already moving as the Krogan's body started obeying the mating call of gravity. He caught the body and sailed forward with it, using it as a meatshield, deflecting and absorbing the rounds that hit it. With one hand holding the several hundred pound Krogan aloft, the other hand stuck his rifle underneath the Krogan's arm, all the while he kept moving forward, not even flinching as either the Krogan or he himself took rounds during his advance. John fired suppressively as he ran forward, and when his foot hit stone, he blasted the body away with his biotics – noting with pride the chain reaction the biotic detonation caused when it collided with several other bodies.

John sank to one knee, raised his rifle, aimed, and fired, two Batarians fell to his weapon as he unleashed conventionally accelerated death. His HUD flared after a few moments, informing him his shields were reaching a crisis point, that he'd taken a few rounds to the thighs and one to the gut, and also letting him know that more SIGMAs were on the way, so he rolled in to cover and laid prone, weapon aloft, waiting for his shields to recover. He called out he was throwing a grenade and, with assistance from his thermal-vision, he peered into the massive smoke-screen and threw the grenade at a cluster of several enemies, all of whom were firing blindly into the smoke, praying they would hit something. As his friends and allies caught up with him, the grenade exploded, sending a shower of white-hot shrapnel up and about. When his shield bar flashed once to indicate he was full and ready to go, he leapt up and and was on the move again. He thundered up the inclined slope of rubble, killing a Vorcha with a bullet to the brain, before the creature even knew he was there and could have shot him with its pistol.

"John, Drop!" He heard Craig call out, John didn't second guess the sniper and dived forward, leaping straight to the ground the second the word had left the teenage sniper's lips. He heard two thunder cracks later, and Craig told him it was okay to get up.

John felt a bruise form on his jaw from where he'd hit the ground, but he ignored the pain as he climbed the apex of the mountain of rubble. Beyond him, and through the thermal view on his visor, he saw a vast expanse of destroyed barracks, mess halls and other such small, mundane military buildings. There wasn't a single building standing, and for every hot, living being in this base, there were at least three rapidly cooling corpses to count for it. The aliens outnumbered the SIGMAs, but they were clearly outmatched by their opponents, a fact which their panic and fear didn't help at all.

John looked up and saw, on the wall farthest from him, a Batarian. What caught his attention about this specific Batarian was the defiant look in his eyes, the angry scowl on his face, and the bold way in which he stood upright and exposed despite being clearly under assault. He wore armor signifying him as a man of rank, and when John zoomed in on the man, he saw a scowl decorating his face.

For the man's stupidity in leaving himself exposed, John aimed his rifle and fired. He didn't know what the Batarian expected, but he gave him what he deserved, and killed him with a burst of gunfire. The way John saw it, there was an officer standing out in the open, whose facial expressions clearly indicated no intent to surrender - so killing him when he had the chance would put the newly made cadaver's forces into disarray, and make the job easier on the Humans. John watched the man's corpse fall to the ground before he joined his brothers. He lept forward a few feet - taking care not to put any real power behind his jump, lest his muscle suit send him clear to the other side of the base - and upon impact, slid down the rubble hill, keeping his footing only just, before he hit the ground running. His HUD let him know, just as he sprinted forward and slammed his arm into the throat of an unprepared Batarian, that a few dozen green dots were practically flying across the battlefield and were heading for the other side of the base; either someone had had the same idea as John and had decided to act upon it, or those boys had underestimated their power and had leapt too far and with too much strength. Regardless of their reasoning, they adapted instantly and, upon landing, whipped around and began setting up a crossfire, John executed the Batarian he'd clothes-lined and took up a run again. John killed one more Batarian before he and his brothers got into cover, the Batarians, still in disarray, started mounting desperate defenses, digging in in groups of five or six, with no chain of command available to help them mount any proper defense.

John heard the rounds impact in the rubble he was using as cover. He killed his own thermal imaging and brought up a Sub-orbital UAV feed, instead using its own thermal imaging mode. The UAV showed John that the attack was working, the Batarians were confused, they were panicked, and they were focusing upon the three hundred II's that were attacking from the west. John sent a quick, non-vocal message to the secondary attack force, and saw as three hundred more heat signatures suddenly appeared from further to the east, and began storming the base from the north.

"Two-fifteen. Two-Eighty Two here, I just got off the horn, the Carrier's sending down a fighter drone, sending you the control-codes." Craig's voice came in.

"Copy!" John responded, as he broke cover.

Some of the Batarians seemed to be learning that they outnumbered the Humans, and thus they were starting to act cocky, thinking they were the exception to the rule. Some of them were simply walking to the SIGMA's offensive line, guns fired from the hip as they suppressed the Humans. John took down two of the dumber Torfan mercenaries before he felt several rounds hit his shields, they were at the cusp of shattering just as John got back behind cover.

John took control of the fighter drone, his Smart Watch allowing him to do so without the need for other, bulky controllers. His HUD synched up with the UAV and he saw it came equipped with a machine gun and six missiles. John wasted no time, three missiles were locked onto the slavers with heavier weapons and were summarily fired, taking down one AA gun and two clusters of enemies. The machine gun now spurred to life, tearing into the Batarians from above, and just as they started taking cover so they could locate and destroy the UAV, the SIGMAs from the East arrived.

In mere minutes the Batarians were caught in an incredibly deadly crossfire, fire from the front, the back, and even above were tearing into their numbers, the only place they weren't being fired on from was below, but that wasn't through lack of trying - John had actually asked Ducard if they could appropriate any Digger units to assist in their attack. Fear, terror, and a plethora of profane alien language began running rampant as the slavers realized that their strength in numbers meant exactly nil, and the SIGMA II's burned through the rest of the Batarians after an hour of conflict. Some may call the astonishingly quick battle an anticlimax, but others would just be thankful they survived the fight.

There was a white-noise of activity as SIGMAs all over the base checked any fox-holes or standing rooms, or anything that could be hidden in. No one was taking charge, at least, not on the large scale; squad-leaders were throwing out orders and there was some inter-squad and inter-company communications running, but everyone was just running on auto-pilot as the smoke cleared, the dust settled, and the bodies began their decomposition process. John, after making sure his skin-suit was properly grown into an injury on his left bicep, and ensuring that none of his other injuries were life threatening, stood up to take a look around. The base was still in shambles, and while, to anyone else from any other branch of the military, the skill with which the mission was accomplished would have made for another story to turn to legend, John saw only mistakes that could be improved.

These improvements would have to come later though, right now they had a timeframe to keep - Command wanted them to clear the strongholds as fast as they could, and the war to be over within the week if at all possible, so come hell or high water, the SIGMA II's would make damn-sure they did their part to make the end of the war as expedient as possible.. "Check your injuries!" John ordered his comrades over the local shortwave, taking charge where no one else was. "We have five minutes before we move! The next stronghold is fifteen kilometers to the planetary northwest!"

He received acknowledgments from acting Company-Commanders, who relayed orders to their squad leaders, who relayed orders to their squads, and in scant seconds the teenage warriors were working like a well-oiled machine, the injured taking care of themselves whilst the uninjured squads scoured the ruins, making doubly sure no one was still alive, and executing any of the stragglers. John checked himself over, he had taken one round in the arm, as he'd seen before, but the skin suit had already grown into it, staunching the bloodflow. His largely impromptu armor had taken some significant fire, and some of the paint had been blasted off, but aside from that, he was no worse for wear. He adjusted the slightly loose chest-plate and turned to his Alphas.

"Alpha squad, status check." John said, upon arriving at the small section of Torfanian land that SIGMA II Alpha Squad had claimed as their own.

"Took a slug to the leg." George reported, "not bad enough to warrant cell fluid, but I'm keeping an eye on it." He patted the shredded, blood-stained fatigues, not even wincing behind his helmet.

John nodded, not needing to tell him to make sure there wasn't any shrapnel in the wound, George was smart, he'd already done that. He turned to Craig. "Nothing noteworthy to report, John." Craig said briefly, with a nod. "I am glad to see your vacation did not hamper your abilities."

John allowed him his quip, "gear up, the both of you, we're moving first."

George nodded, knowing John had a plan and trusting him not to question it. He hoisted his machine gun into his arms and checked the large magazine.

"What's the plan?" Craig asked, clamping his sub-machine gun to his thigh and retrieving his anti-material rifle.

"Lesson number one." John trailed off.

Craig nodded, "never expect the same plan to work twice." He quoted his instructor, as he and the the other two II's jogged to the edge of the base.

John nodded affirmative, "The second assault point, they told us that it was some sort of back-water town to the nexus that was the final assault zone. So we can expect much heavier resistance, most likely some urban warfare, and a smokescreen resulting from lot of destroyed buildings."

Craig nodded as they descended the northern wall and made their way out. "What's the plan?"

"The others are marching to the town. We're running." He said, they reached the apex of the rubble-wall and paused to speak. He took one look around the desert surrounding the base, before he found his HUD's objective marker, and pointed them in its direction with his free hand. "Craig, take the SOUAV and send it to the second assault point, that way we'll have an idea of what we're getting into when we arrive." John ordered.

"Understood." Craig clamped his rifle to his back and activated his smart watch without breaking stride.

"Have an idea about how we want to go about this?" George asked as the base behind them grew smaller and smaller, they each sent a thankful thought to whomever it was who created synthetic muscle, even with their augmentations, the speeds at which they were running were largely unobtainable on their own, even with their augmentations; typically, SIGMAs either leapt or ran in their suits, it depended on personal preference and whether or not stealth was something that was paramount to the mission.

"Weather forecasts say it'll rain tonight." John mentioned, his breath not even labored, "so we go in stealth, under the cover of darkness. I want the tallest buildings still standing to be ours, we'll set up sniper's nests in them. Then we'll set up targeting beacons for HOG Strikes, if we do it right, the positions of the strikes will confuse the Batarians, spread them too thin. The Snipers will pick off the spread out groups, and we'll come in and sweep the town and standing buildings for stragglers."

George seemed satisfied with that answer, but one question did pop up in his mind as the three continued running. "Why didn't we look for a sky-car back at the base?"

John looked at Craig over his shoulder, "do you know how to drive?" John asked; he wasn't sure about the other companies, but Delta hadn't yet been taught vehicular warfare, and thus, none of the child soldiers knew yet how to drive. Craig shook his head.

"Point taken." George conceded, and the three fell into silence as they continued sprinting to their next target.

The trip had taken a total of one hour to accomplish, plus one more hour to find a decent rendezvous point, but now the three members of SIGMA II Alpha Squad were set up and scouting out the town below them. Their own area was a small outcropping, with Craig having situated himself upon a tall rock, his rifle being wedged in the center of a 'V' shape formed by said rock and another one.

"What have you got, Craig?" John asked, ripping off a finished tube of food-paste from the induction port on his helmet.

"Synching HUD." Craig responded.

John brought up the HUD Sync, and he saw everything Craig saw, almost exactly as he saw it. Two kilometers to the east lie the town they were to hunt. Once their Heads Up Displays had synced up, John saw a group of plain-clothed mercenaries forming a circular barrier around a man standing in their center. With John's HUD he could see the other hundreds of SIGMA Teens slowly making their way through the city, making ready to execute the plan the Alphas had drawn up an hour earlier.

The man in the center began speaking, Craig spoke into his communicator, and a few seconds later, the audio was routed to the Alpha Squad's communicators through one of the SIGMA Teens in a building with a direct line of sight to the man in the center.

"- YOU ARE HERE!" The Batarian roared, with a voice filled with a sense of authority John could all but tell he'd taken through fear, not earned through respect.

"Are we compromised?" Craig asked.

"Only in the same idea as Rebels are compromised on the liberated colonies." John retorted. "They know we're here, but they don't know where here."

"I will give you TEN SECONDS!" The Batarian roared, as a Human and an Asari were dragged out from a shack near him, "if you do not reveal yourselves, I will execute them both, and call in an orbital strike for the area around the next ten miles!"

"Do they know we have orbital supremacy?"

"Inform the Alliance of possible satellite weaponry." John said to George, "Craig, do you have a shot?" John inched his way up his own stone, his helmet had a good view, but he would need a rifle to get a better one.

"Negative, too many enemies in the way."

"TEN!"

He's not consistent. Thought the child-soldier, "are the enemy contacts wearing armor?"

"Only the commanding officer in the center."

"SEVEN!"

"And you have no clear shot on him?" John clarified.

"Affirmative."

"Rifle." John lifted his hand and caught the barrel of the marksman's rifle from Craig's back. John set the rifle up and zoomed in as far as he could, getting just to the edge of the leader's group.

The Batarian had surrounded himself with several of his subordinates, but this town obviously had a small economy, as only one of them had proper armor and equipment.

I'll have to make this shot perfectly... "Craig, confirm that the plain-clothed contacts are enemies and not slaves."

"Enemies confirmed." Craig responded, "AI database ID's them as members of Merc-groups known to operate in this area…" A pause, "their organizations have ties to Batarian slaver groups. We're go to execute."

"FIVE!"

"SIGMA Twos, plans accelerated, be ready to strike on my signal." John said, taking aim at the Mercenary directly in front of the leader.

I'll need to strike at the fleshiest part of their body for lowest resistance. John thought; recalling the lessons on Batarian Biology, he knew that the fleshiest, softest part of the Batarian Body would be located on the part of their body where, relative to Humans, a heart would be located. There were few bones, minimal muscles, mostly flesh, the resistance from said flesh would have minimal effect on John's bullet, allowing it to keep its speed and velocity and pass straight through the Batarian, into the throat of the Batarian behind it.

"TWO!" The Batarian didn't get to 'one', John fired.

Time seemed to slow down as the thunder clap traveled to the town. John's bullet blasted straight through the plain-clothed mercenary, soaring through the shields and then into the throat of the armored Batarian. It had not the energy to exit the Batarian's throat, though this only meant he died faster as the bullet did more damage by bouncing around and getting stuck in his throat. John successfully killed the Leader by shooting him through his ally, and only a second later did the battle begin in earnest, as the SIGMA II's all throughout the town surgically struck at the recognized targets.

John and Craig fired almost in tandem as targets presented themselves, either by fleeing or by breaking from cover to try and enter a building containing SIGMA II's. One thunderclap followed another, each one causing the sick wet slapping sound of a body hitting the ground. For over an hour, John and Craig fired, each time John ran out of bullets, a magazine would be dropped onto his hand and he would fire some more. After a three hour assault, the two found the time between their weapons-fire to be stretching further and further.

With the planet Torfan orbited high in the sky, just about ready to block out the sun and signal night, John and Craig each found themselves tracing the same target.

"Craig, get Delta Six-Two to confirm target's status, possible he may have bled out." John ordered his squadmate, as the tenth minute passed and their target hadn't moved an inch.

"Roger." Said Craig, "Delta Six-Two this is Alpha -" When Craig saw the Batarian's head pop up he hadn't even blinked before his finger twitched, pulling the trigger and launching the anti-material round forward at over one and one half kilometers per second. "2-2, status update." Craig hadn't even paused in his speech to fire the round, which after only a few seconds, slammed into the top of the thug's skull, sending a cascade of blood, gore and bits of bone forward.

John didn't grin, it wasn't that he didn't feel proud for his new friend, or that he was mirthful for losing their uncalled contest, he simply didn't see the point in the action, no matter how much the instinct called for it - no one would see it, so why bother? He did set his rifle down, and stretched his muscles as best he could without standing up.

"Alpha 2-2, status is as follows: Clear town of all hostiles, complete." Came the voice of Delta 6-2's squad leader. "Secure any and all slaves and noncombatants, complete, no noncombatants found alive. Rendezvous at town center, ongoing."

"Delta Six-Two, confirm first statement. Town completely cleared of hostiles?" John could almost tell that Craig was gloating, in his own way.

"Confirmed, Two-Eighty Two, we just checked." Said 6-2's leader, "good kill."

"Understood, stand by." Craig looked down to John, "what do we do now?" Craig asked.

"Alliance wants this invasion to be done within the week." John began, "so I want our objective completed within five days. Call it: six hours of R and R, half hour watch shifts." John looked down to George, who was cleaning his machine gun. "George, do you feel up -"

"I do." George hefted the miniature, rapid-fire cannon into his arms. "You two get your sleep, I'll wake Craig up in an hour."

John nodded, and crawled back down the rock and shifted around to lay on his back. This rock certainly wasn't the most uncomfortable thing he'd ever slept on before, once on Sparta he'd fallen asleep mostly devoid of clothes on a bed of ice. After he gave Craig back his rifle, and checked over his own equipment, John laid down on the sandy surface underneath the rocks. He stared at the planet above the moon for a few minutes, watching it cross paths with the sun and blanket the moon-colony in darkness, as his own mind slowed down to catch up with his body. He knew this wasn't his first real extended engagement, he'd had Mindoir before this, and that had taken nearly two weeks, whereas this was going to last only a few days, but this still felt different. It didn't feel bad - far from it, it felt good to be finally working like SIGMAs were supposed to, even if Marines were completely capable of doing this on their own.

What he craved, however, was a challenge. This all felt well and good, but it was easy compared to training with the Ones. They had had the Mercenary wars and the Turians before them, what was the legacy of the II's? The Batarians? Who in the galaxy actually thought the Batarians to be a threat? No, they were only good to keep the Alliance war machine pumping out innovations, to merely test the skills of the II's-in-training. In John's opinion, a real test would be a deployment on Tuchanka, or maybe a campaign against the Turians - not that he held any prejudices, mind, but he did want to find the mercenaries who'd kept him prisoner for a quarter of a year. Though with those two came mostly the same problem: They had no numbers. The Turians and the Krogan alone had strength aplenty, but the Spartecs numbered in the lower thousands, and the Krogan in the lower tens of millions - and with the latters' tactics, they would barely last through an Alliance orbital assault, let alone a ground war.

Had he had to choose someone specific to challenge the II's, to get their blood flowing, their minds racing, their hearts pumping, to truly test each and every single thing they had learned in their lives, he would honestly say the Geth. Tensions have been brewing up between Humans and Quarians, after all, the Quarians were getting really antsy about the Alliance's non-involvement stance when it came to Rannoch and a possible retaking of Quarian territory. The Humans weren't budging, John remembered being told back before this war had broken out, but the fact still remained - the Geth were still something of a threat. They, out of the whole galaxy, were probably the closest thing to SIGMAs outside of the Turian Ghosts, they had numbers, they had near-zero reaction times, and killing one platform did nothing to the collective as a whole - its master program would just go back to its native server.

Of course, they were machines - and machines could be exploited. Perhaps a true test would come in the form of the Citadel Council, or maybe the Terminus systems. John shook his head and closed his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep. It wouldn't do him any good to fantasize about future fights - they would come to him, he just had to focus on the here and now; and the here and now was sleep until his watch shift.

Besides, he knew in the back of his mind that he would eventually kill someone from every known species by the time he died. Why rush it? He'd get his good fight, all he had to do was wait, follow orders, and not focus on that warm voice and kind tone from the bowels of the Spartec's ship.

Hours had passed, watches had been shifted, and now the SIGMA II's were on the march. The sun was only an hour away from being unblocked by the planet above them, and the rain was pouring down. The sand beneath them was hard to walk through, but the II's had walked through worse, and thus, they continued moving forward. Their objective was what Ducard and the other Instructors had called 'the Nexus', it was essentially one of the eight points on the moon where Torfan's illegal smuggling was most prevalent. From what Intelligence had provided, this Nexus and six others had been all but barren since the Humans had shown up on the moon, they had sold all of their 'goods' but hadn't been able to take in any more, most likely because no one wanted to do business with a moon that was certainly about to be besieged.

"Alpha Two-Fifteen, this is Admiral Hackett of the Sixth Fleet, respond." A voice came in over the communicator, shattering the still silence of the Torfan Night.

Many others would have taken a moment to blink, or double take, or attempt to separate the voice from reality, to make sure they hadn't sunk into the monotony of a waking nightmare, but John instead answered without delay. "This is Alpha Two-Fifteen, send traffic."

"Alpha Two-Fifteen -" Said the gruff voice of the veteran admiral, "- UAV Reconnaissance of Nexus Five has just revealed corpses of unknown origin."

"Interrogative: Define 'unknown'."

"Unknown meaning our orbital bombardments didn't make them. All Marine, OD3, N7 and SIGMA One detachments say negative to involvement and we have probable cause to believe that it wasn't in-fighting that created the bodies." The Admiral explained, "in light of these facts we want you to be ready for anything. UAV recon isn't getting any life forms, and the only heat signatures are the myriad fires on Nexus Five's western edge."

John nodded, "Admiral, do we have any suspects for who may have taken out the Nexus?"

"Negative, Two-Fifteen. We have no -" The admiral was cut off, John could faintly hear raised voices on the other end.

George made to speak, but John cut him off, the eerie silence of the Torfan Night, and the white noise of the unending rain served only to make the situation all the more tense. "Admiral?" He sent.

"Alpha Two-Fifteen, double time, Warp Signatures detected within the boundaries of Nexus Five, possible Rebel Presence." The Admiral said quickly, "radiation readings show no nuclear weapons but Warp Traffic is high, say again: Warp Traffic is high."

Either they're bringing something in... Or moving something out. John thought, Torfan could be a Rebel staging point, they might get a lot of weapons shipments from here, and now that the Alliance is hitting the place hard, they want to clean house. "Solid Copy, Admiral, possible Rebel presence in Nexus Five. Alpha Two-Fifteen out." John looked behind him, still marching were hundreds of SIGMA II's, all being cast in the dull aura of rainfall, as it hit their armor and splashed off.

"Listen up!" John called out, his voice broadcasting into the communicators of all present. "Command has reason to believe the Rebels have a presence in Nexus Five, our target. They want us to get there ASAP, before they escape! Double time, let's move!" And with those words, all present broke out into a sprint, and though they all moved far faster than before, not a one of them broke rank during the mad dash.

The march that would have taken three hours took a solid fifteen minutes, once the SIGMA Teens had broken out into a sprint. John had expected devastation when the city came into view, and while he had gotten exactly that, he hadn't entirely expected what he would find. From a distance, the Nexus Five invasion site simply looked like a city that had been placed under mortar fire for the better part of eight weeks: The buildings were shattered, some had toppled entirely, the ground had enormous pock-marks, obviously from where the Kinetic Rods had impacted, and there was an all around air of dread, made all the worse by the city's illumination, both by the raging fire on the city's western side, and the lightning to the north. Had John been a normal Human, he could have compared it to a Hollywood disaster movie, but he wasn't, so he didn't, instead, he scanned the city's skyline with his visor, finding two dozen good points for sniper's nests, both for friendly forces, and not so friendly forces.

"Alright, SIGMAs, I want us to spread out. No more than twenty to a group, no more than three to a squad. We're searching this city, I want to know what happened here." He sent the locations for the Sniper's Nests to all present squad leaders, "Snipers in these positions, provide overwatch." He waited a moment and got acknowledgment flags from the squad leaders who had heard him, "Two-Sixty Six, Two-Eighty Two, with me." He ordered, before the three nodded and made their way down into the distant city.

"Two-Fifteen, I'm not finding any Snipers." Craig said, scanning the buildings with his rifle. "Addendum: Aside from fires, I'm not finding anything that gives off heat... Even the buildings, they're as cold as ice."

"It is raining." George mentioned, as foot hit concrete and the SIGMA Teens passed through the city's limits.

"I don't think the rain has anything to do with it. Matter of fact, the rain is rather hot, compared to Spartan and Earthen rain, it's just barely registering on my scope." Craig mentioned, "but when it hits a building, nothing."

"Keep your rifles raised, SIGMAs." John said, silencing the two, "I don't think we're alone here." What John and the other SIGMAs had no idea of knowing was that his statement rang entirely true, far more true than he would have liked, as evidenced by the sniper scope aimed directly at his Titan Helmet.

From the building the sniper was perched, he had a full field of vision over the entire Nexus Sight, the only disadvantage being that he was being pelted by the constantly pouring rain. The Sniper stared deeply at the advancing SIGMA Operatives, the finger of a bullet-marked and largely torn and shredded skin-suit pressed against the trigger.

"No." Whispered a voice into the Sniper's communicator, "Overlord's Orders: The SIGMAs aren't to be touched."

"Confirmed." Said the Sniper, "orders?" He looked back to the invisible figure behind him, whose outline was made visible by their synced HUDs.

"Overlord doesn't want any casualties on their end, it'll draw attention, so we have to work around them. We need to extract."

"Another Entry Point will be sure to alert them to our position, and he doesn't want our tech to reach the Dog's ears, yet... How do you propose we extract?" The Sniper asked, looking back through his scope, as he felt the rain cascade onto his back, each raindrop feeling like a small BB falling onto his armor and rolling off.

Several minutes passed, as the two Snipers sat in their den, trying to come up with a solution to their problem. Finally, the Sniper spoke, "how much electromagnetic interference does a Kiloton Grenade create?" He asked, visibly moving his rifle as he adjusted his aim, to look at something the Spotter could not.

"Not anything enough to mask warp-rads." The Spotter responded, staring at the advancing Twos, they were just reaching the battlegrounds where the others had just left, via localized warp to Destination Omni.

Silence, "but what if it detonated alongside a full-blown EMP? Could it -"

"Contact."

"What do you see?"

The Spotter was silent for several moments, "Cerberus."

"How did they find us?"

"They've got one damn intuitive man on their side." The Spotter said, absently. "But we must wonder, are they here for us, or their 'Vanguard'?"

"It's got to be us, Torfan wouldn't piss off any big players, so it wouldn't serve useful for their Vanguard project." The Sniper said, "this could be our break."

"Elaborate."

"We instigate a fight between the SIGMAs and the Operatives... This will reveal Cerberus' existence to the Alliance, and given our intercepted comms chatter, they'll be pinned as allies to the rebels... The Alliance will hunt down their best and only friends." The Sniper explained, setting his sights down on a lone Cerberus operative, "and Cerberus will know that Overlord knows about them."

"It's a risky move."

"But the battle between the... Six hundred plus SIGMAs and twenty five Dogs will mask our escape." The Sniper's finger rested on the trigger, "just say the word."

The Spotter stared at the Cerberus Operatives for a few seconds. Shorter than the SIGMA Operatives by a good foot and a half, the Cerberus Operatives made up for their size and numbers differences with raw firepower. Their 'Intuitive' benefactor, Christopher McGraw, had certainly spared no expense when it came to outfitting his little toys, the Spotter could see at least three weapons he couldn't readily recognize, and one that he could, but just barely.

The Cerberus Operatives were obviously searching for something, the way they fanned out and scanned everything in their way. They wouldn't find him or his Sniper, however, they were the only ones left in the entire city, and they couldn't be spotted by anything less than a precision heat-scope, which could only be feasibly fitted onto Recon Satellites.

If the Cerberus Operatives got into a firefight with the SIGMAs, they would most assuredly be killed by them, there was no question about it, the Cerberus Operatives, while good, were nothing compared to veteran SIGMA, which these men certainly al were. The ensuing firefight would reveal to the Alliance Cerberus' wet-work arm, and with the data the Alliance's AI's could salvage, would give hints to their naval power. The specifics of Cerberus' leadership, most specifically Jack Harper and Chris McGraw, would be forever lost to the Alliance, but the implications of Cerberus' existence would get the name blacklisted throughout known space. Or, at the very least, the Alliance would start poking around and looking for answers, and Cerberus would have to batten down the hatches for a few years - halting recruitment for their still horribly meagre excuse for a security force.

In the end, the decision made itself, and when one squad of Cerberus Operatives were within sight of a squad of SIGMAs, the Spotter gave the order: "Fire, fire!" The silent, magnetically accelerated, anti-material round surged forth from the Sniper's rifle at several thousand meters per second.

The round buried itself just a centimeter to the left of one of the SIGMA's outstretched feet, the SIGMA immediately flung himself to the ground, taking cover behind a nearby skycar as his allies turned their rifles to the left, to greet a stunned group of Cerberus Operatives. The SIGMA's surrounding allies all opened fire just as the Cerberus Dogs began retreating, two of the five in their squad were torn apart after their shields were overloaded, and within moments, the battle began in earnest.

From the position the two had, the Sniper and the Spotter could see as the Cerberus Forces were almost universally discovered by the Alliance forces. In minutes, the city was filled with gunfire as the massively numerically superior government forces engaged the black ops soldiers, who gave as good as they got. The Spotter noticed, however, that the SIGMAs seemed to be moving differently than was par for the course, they didn't move as if they had been trained differently, but rather they moved more fluently. Not a single movement was wasted in their battle, each and every movement, action, and decision was meant to be crucial, the way nothing was wasted – not even spent magazines – looked foreign, almost, even to a veteran operative. Had the SIGMAs started training differently?

Spotter decided he would have to bring this up with the Common Man, as he slowly crawled back behind the sniper, and once he was safely inside the ruined building, he retrieved a small silver orb from their tactical operations bag.

One button push was all it took for the Spotter and the Sniper to disappear from the world, as if they had never even existed in the first place. In their wake they left a war steadily on its way to climax, as SIGMA II Recruits fought savagely against clearly outmatched Cerberus Operatives. The SIGMA II's had very quickly learned of their numerical superiority, and almost instantaneously had switched their tactics from defensive retaliation to offensive assault; in so doing, they had forced the battle that would have taken an hour, to finish itself within a quarter of one.

John S2-15 found himself standing above the corpse of a Human soldier. The Human wore advanced, powered armor, with synthetic muscles and skeletal-servos, the whole nine yards, but the colors and weapons were what confused him most. The weapons fired at velocities he hadn't been prepared for, and injuries were being reported all across the battle zones, and the colors, black white and gold, he couldn't recognize them for any military, mercenary, or private military company out there.

John sighed as he felt the chilly feeling of Cell-Fluid running through his veins and the rubbery, stretching feeling of his skin-suit growing into his wounds, the only one of which John felt warranted concern was the one in his left leg, but the cell fluid and the skin suit would keep him on his feet until he got to a medic.

"Area clear." Said George, before he lowered his massive gun and looked at the corpse. "What do you think, John?"

"I think we got lucky..." John said, looking over the readings his smart watch gave him, "these things... Their armor is supposed to self destruct upon user incapacitation... But it's not, and..." John put a round in the head of the Human he stood above, there was no explosion, no reaction, nothing. "They're most certainly dead." John thought a moment, "they aren't Rebels. Rebels don't have this good gear. But they aren't Mercenaries, either. Mercenary gear is meant to be made for intimidation, not function."

"So... Military?" George asked.

"I -"

"Perhaps they're independent." Craig commented.

John looked to the soaked sniper, "how do you figure?" He asked, over the pouring rain and a brief flash of lightning.

"Look at their weapons... Magnetic accelerators... A sort of mixture between Citadel and Human tech. Council weapons made by Human conventions." The child soldier explained, only sparing one glance to the dead Human beneath them. "They aren't mercenaries, they have more funding... Only someone with a lot of money would outfit their operatives with experimental weaponry."

John looked back to the corpse, a minute passed and the gunfire ceased, followed by the confirmation that all contacts were killed. "I want all the corpses gathered up at the Extraction Point. After we finish scouting the town, we extract with the bodies." He said, he received nods from his squad mates, and within minutes they were back on the job, scouting through the town, looking for answers where there were none.

A/N:

So, has anyone been playing The Phantom Pain?

I have.

I picked it up on the first, and then the next thing I know, all of a sudden it's today (the fourteenth of September).
I regret nothing.

-PFB