2/18/18: Minor edits to accommodate the rewrite of Hic Sunt Leones.
Chapter 2: Fight or Flight:
Agea
Mars
March 16th, 2841
"Shit!" Shiro cursed as he ducked behind an overturned table to avoid the incoming hail of gunfire. He knew it was only a temporary respite, as he saw dents appearing in the underside of the metal surface, but it kept his head from being blown off in the first five seconds of the skirmish. The Black Paladin was worn out, exhausted, and bleeding from four different wounds. Right now, he just needed a minute to breathe. Is that too much to ask? He wondered to himself as he returned fire. As he crouched back down behind the table, he nodded to Roque and moved back into the room in search of better cover.
It had been almost five hours since the Jackal's ambush at the Triumph, and already the man's newly dubbed "Boneriders" were on their tails. Their initial goal had been to reach the nearest landing pad and capture a ship to escape the planet, but they found out the hard way that the Jackal had all the landing pads within the city limits on lockdown. They lost two of the adult Golds in the ambush before they escaped back into the city. After that disastrous failure, their goal changed to getting out of Agea so Mustang could send an extraction team. Roque and Victra had contacted their ships in orbit and designated Mustang as acting commander of their respective fleets until they could get into orbit to take command of their ships themselves. The ArchGoverness of Triton and the other Golds who survived the massacre did the same.
After four hours of constant running, the group had taken shelter inside a Pearl Club that was undergoing renovations. They'd barely been in there for fifteen minutes when Antonia, evidently blinded in her rage at the loss of her leg, made a public broadcast on the HC revealing the truth about Darrow for all to hear. Shiro didn't even know how the younger Julii sister had even gotten ahold of the footage of Darrow's carving, but that was another matter for another time. Right now, the group needed to focus on staying alive, because within minutes of the broadcast ending, the Jackal's dogs had found them. The remaining adult Golds had deserted the group after that, and had presumably told the Boneriders where to find them.
Roque and Quinn slipped further back into the room with Darrow's comatose body and the gaggle of Gold children while Shiro and Victra provided cover fire with scorchers salvaged from the ambush at the landing pad. While they kept the Boneriders focused on them, the ArchGoverness of Triton stepped out of the shadows and slit the squad leader's throat. Two down, Shiro thought as he put a round through another Bonerider's head. Twelve to go. The lights in the room flickered as a stray scorcher shot ricocheted against the wall and destroyed one of the overhead lights of the Pearl Club. Shiro fought the urge to rush forward and kill them all with his bare hands, reminding himself that he no longer had the cybernetic arm he'd been fitted with during his time as a prisoner of the Galra, and that his new flesh and blood arm that Mustang's late father had ordered carved for him couldn't burn through solid metal.
Shiro fired blindly behind him as he and Victra sprinted through the doors leading from the club's atrium into the main lounge. He cried out in agony as a bullet tore into his left leg. He slammed his hands on the control panel for the doors and dropped to his knees as they slid shut behind him. Victra fired her scorcher at the control panel, frying the doors shut and buying the group time to catch their breath and set up an ambush. Victra pulled Shiro to his feet and put her arm under his shoulders and helped him walk over to the rest of the group. But right now, they didn't know the terrain, and they had trapped themselves in a confined space with no visible exits.
Shiro grimaced as he looked down at the trail of blood dripping out of the bullet hole in his leg. It doesn't look like the bullet hit the bones, he thought to himself with relief as he examined the blood spatters near the bullet as they limped past where the ancient projectile had lodged itself in one of the lounge chairs. As they limped towards the barricade of tables the ArchGoverness of Triton was leading the children in setting up, Thesalia au Raa, the granddaughter of the Ionian ArchGovernor, left the group and put shoulder under Shiro's free arm, giving him a better support so Victra could sweep the room for an exit. Roque and Quinn leaned Darrow against the wall and headed towards the doors to reinforce the entrance. When they reached the barricade, Raina helped him sit down next to the Reaper, then tore off pieces of her dress to bandage the wound in his leg.
Her brooch depicting the four-headed lightning dragon of House Raa, was ruined, having narrowly stopped a bullet aimed for her neck back at the landing pad. Her gray dress was caked with blood stains from both the ambush and the massacre at the Triumph. While her father had fought off the Jackal's dogs, she'd tried to run around the fountain, but Vixus slashed her legs as he walked past to attack Shiro. Disoriented, she'd limped forward and wept before Antonia came to finish her off. Thankfully, Shiro had cut off the younger Julii sister's leg while Victra carried the nine-year-old to safety. And now, Shiro thought sadly as she finished bandaging his wound, there's not a good chance she'll live much longer anyway. Victra returned few minutes later, panting and out of breath.
"No good," she reported. "I found a service entrance, but Boneriders and Praetorians were already closing in. I used that pulseGrenade we stole from the landing pad to collapse the entrance and limit their options. We've got them in a bottleneck, but until we can stop them, we can't get out." She said this just as Roque and Quinn had finished barricading the doors and returned to their miniature fortifications.
"Any word from orbit?" Quinn asked as Roque went through the group's inventory of weapons and equipment with the Tritonian ArchGoverness. Shiro shook his head.
"I tried calling Tactus before the Boneriders showed up," the Black Paladin answered. "Too much interference. All I could make out was that there were skirmishes breaking out aboard our ships. Assassination attempts… Saboteurs… The works. We're on our own." As he climbed shakily to his feet, he grimaced as Raina's makeshift tourniquet bit into his leg above the bullet wound. It can't end like this, he pleaded silently, desperately hoping that his fellow Paladins might miraculously travel to the future and save the day. His eyes welled up with tears as he thought of everything he still had left to lose. The friends he'd made in this era, his boyfriend, his had been fighting in the arena and in space for two years now, and it seemed like this would be how it finally ended. Trapped in an empty nightclub while they waited for the armed killers to break in and kill them all. The sound of a welding torch cutting the doors began to drift into the room, signaling to the survivors of the Jackal's massacre that they were running out of time.
Without a moment to lose, they began to arm themselves for battle. Victra and Quinn went and stood by the door, razors in hand so they could attack from the sides and rear of the Boneriders' formation. Roque and Tridenti au Norvo positioned themselves along the sides of the room, halfway between the doors and the tables and armed with scorchers, while Shiro and some of the older children waited behind the overturned tables with old slug-throwers as their last line of defense. If I'm going to die today, he told himself. At least I'll go down fighting.
As the crack between the two doors began to glow red with the head of the Boneriders' implements, the hiss of the welding torch was abruptly silenced by the sound of gunfire from the other side of the door. Backup finally arrived, Shiro thought to himself as a series of howls echoed through the air vents between the two rooms. There were a few more gunshots, followed by the familiar sound of razors slicing through flesh, and then, there was silence. Everyone held their breath, unsure of what to do or what had just happened. Did their friends defeat the Jackal's dogs, or had the Boneriders beaten their rescuers back? Their answer came a minute later in the form of a knock against the door.
"Hail, Reaper," a young woman's voice called out through the door. Shiro's eyes widened as he recognized the voice. It belonged to Milia au Trachus, one of the Golds from Darrow's army at the Institute. He'd only met her in person a few times, aboard the Pax the day of the Iron Rain and in Agea on the day of the Triumph, but her voice was unmistakable.
"How do we know this isn't one of the Jackal's tricks?" Victra retorted. They heard Milia sigh through the door.
"Honestly," Milia replied in exasperation. "After everything the Jackal did at the Institute do you really think we'd ally ourselves with him? We're here because the Reaper needs our help and we don't give a fuck what Color he is." Shiro felt nervous as everyone looked to him to decide how to proceed. Once again, the burden of leadership was on his shoulders. Even if Tridenti and the children didn't know of his status as the Black Paladin, they still looked to him for leadership. And with Darrow incapacitated, Victra and Roque looked to his outsider's perspective for guidance. Guess I've got no choice but to step back into the role, he thought reluctantly as he nodded for Victra to open the door.
With a swift kick, the Julii heiress broke the lock on the door and forced them open with her bare hands. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the shooting to start again. But no gunshots came. Instead, Milia stepped forward, wolf-skin cloak around her shoulders as she offered her hand to Victra. Shiro's eyes threatened to pop out of his head in shock when he looked through the door to see dozens of Golds from Darrow's army crowded in the Pearl Club antechamber as they scavenged weapons and gear from the dead Boneriders.
"We contacted Mustang as soon as the footage of Darrow's carving hit the net," Milia explained as she walked into the room. "She told us about the poison, what antidote we needed, and where to get some. We killed the rest of the Boneriders after you lot left the landing pad and snagged one of their coms. That's how we knew you were all here." Behind her, several Golds came in carrying food and medical supplies. Shiro helped pass them out to the children while Nyla, another Gold from the Institute, treated his leg wound. After making sure that the bleeding had stopped, she sealed up the bullet hole with a resFlesh gun.
"That still doesn't explain why you're here," Victra commented icily. Milia's eyes betrayed hurt at the accusation, even though Shiro could tell she understood the reason for it. As she finished patching up Shiro's leg, Nyla stood up and turned around to face the older Gold.
"Look, Julii," Nyla snapped. "We don't give a shit what Color Darrow is. We're here because even when he was keeping the truth from us about what he really is, he ate with us, hunted for us, cooked with us, dug shit pits for us, fought for us, bled for us, killed for us, and was even willing to die for us. There's riots and uprisings breaking out across Mars after your sister released his Carving onto the web. The Hierarchy can burn to the ground for all we care, because the Reaper needs his army. That's all that matters." Victra nodded appreciatively as she went over and helped Shiro to his feet. Meanwhile, Milia removed a syringe and moved toward the Reaper's paralyzed body.
"Come on, boss," she said as she crouched down and injected the antidote into Darrow's chest. "Time to get you back on your feet."
One thing I wish had been different in the books was giving some more time in the limelight to some of the prominent members of Darrow's army. I love Pax, Sevro, Mustang, Tactus, and the Howlers, but I would have liked to have seen Milia and Nyla some more, get to know them better, see what side they were on in Morning Star... So I'm giving them that limelight here.
I made up the name of the ArchGoverness of Triton and Romulus au Raa's daughter for the purposes of this story. As a little reference to The Little Mermaid, I picked Tridenti, the Latin word for trident, and Raina, because 2/3 of the Raa family members seen in the series have R names so I felt it fit. I have no idea if the Norvo family holds the ArchGovernorship of Triton, but since they're the only Gold family mentioned as being from Triton, I'm going with it for now until Pierce or Iron Gold prove me wrong.