A shorter chapter this time, but the next chapter is going to have some more opportunities for Shiro to use the upgrades to his arm. But be warned, his using the galra arm against Aja back at the gala is going to have some consequences for him next chapter.
1/30/18: Minor edits to mention Tactus and fix some formating errors
Part IV: Ruin:
"Rise so high, in mud you lie."
-Karnus au Bellona
Chapter 30: Mud:
Agea
Mars
February 22nd, 2841
The EMP made a sound like a kid gasping while being pricked by a needle at the doctor's office as it detonated. The strike team's electronics died instantly, gravBoots sputtering as the massive metal starShells were claimed by gravity. Shiro didn't even had time to scream as he and the others plummeted down. Most of the group fell into the mud on the riverbank, but the Black Paladin wasn't so lucky. His ears popped from the rapid change in pressure as he sank into the murky water. He hit the ground hard, and his legs buckled under the weight of his armor as he lodged in the mud on the river bottom. It's too dark for him to see any of the others. He only caught a glimpse of shapes moving over the surface of the water as they fell.
I can't move! Shiro thought frantically as he realized that the starShell was too heavy. He felt like a turtle, half submerged in the mud at the bottom of the river. Despite his heart hammering in his chest, Shiro fought the urge to panic. His armor restricted his ability to move his head, so he couldn't look to see who had landed near him. Coms were dead, although he was willing to bet that if they weren't, he'd probably be hearing a lengthy stream of screaming and curses. Based on what Shiro knew, the only ones Darrow would have discussed this part of the plan with would be Mustang, Sevro, and the Sons of Ares. And since none of them would have ratted their team out, that mean that Cassius had simply been able to predict Darrow's gambit and plan his family's defense of Agea accordingly.
Shiro kept his breathing slow and steady. With the air recycler offline, there was only a limited supply of oxygen left in his suit. He jerked his body around as he tried to get himself off his back, to no avail. He was lodged too deeply in the mud, and his suit had been reduced to a metric ton of useless metal. Removing the excess weight of the suit required the use of internal electronics, which were obviously no longer an option. Shiro could barely push himself up with his arms. But despite his fear, he remained calm. Because while his suit was dead and he couldn't contact the others, there was still one piece of technology that the Bellona hadn't accounted for: his right arm.
Whatever power source the Galra used to create his arm wasn't dependent on electricity. He'd known that ever since he and Pidge had taken the time to analyze it back at the Castle. Shiro never thought that he'd be grateful to the Galra for what they'd done to him, but the cruelty of Haggar and the Druids might end up saving his life today. Shiro took a deep breath to steady himself before he activated the energy weapon built into his hand. Within seconds, he'd burned through the armor on his right hand. With some of the weight removed, he dragged his right arm over until he could cut his left arm free. With both hands out of the armor, he twisted his right arm until he could cut through the piece connecting the right sleeve to the main body of the suit. He flinched as his weaponized hand boiled the water around it.
Within two minutes, both of his arms were free from the starShell. Now that he had more freedom to move, he set to work melting a big enough hole in his chest armor so that he could pry himself out of the starShell. Water began to pour into his suit the more he cut himself free, so Shiro took as few breaks as possible, knowing that his life depended on working quickly. After five minutes, he was fully free as he removed the legs of his suit. He held his breath as he gingerly cut away his helmet and exposed himself to the open water. Once he could move again, he swam away, using the light from his prosthetic hand to guide him. His first target was a few feet away, where he had seen movement while he had been cutting himself free.
He found Darrow carefully cutting away his suit piece by piece with his own razor. Shiro quickly swam over and accelerated the process with a few careful slices with his Galran arm. Darrow nodded his thanks before using the military hand gestures Golds had developed over the centuries to communicate that his rescuer should catch his breath. Shiro nodded and signed back that he would come back and help with the others once he had. The Black Paladin kicked through the current towards the surface. He emerged less than a minute later, and immediately muffled himself to keep from gasping too loud as he sucked oxygen into his empty, aching lungs. The sounds of warfare in the distance and the groaning of wounded soldiers nearby rushed into his ears as he took a deep breath and dove back under.
He passed Ragnar and Darrow on the way down as the duo headed up to take their own breaths of fresh air. The pink glow of his right hand guided him in the darkness as he swam towards the dark shapes of Golds trapped inside their starShells. Sevro had been buried headfirst in the bottom of the river, so Shiro freed him first. Together, the two of them rescue the Howlers next, saving Weed and Screwface before their oxygen ran out before moving on to the others. They were too late to save any of the Grays and had begun to rescue the Obsidians when Darrow and Ragnar descended with fresh pairs of clearly stolen gravBoots. With their combined efforts, most of their men were quickly ferried up with far fewer casualties that Darrow and the others had feared.
"Did Mustang and Tactus get through?" Shiro asked wearily as everyone caught their breath and regrouped from the ambush. Darrow and Ragnar had already killed the Bellona forces that had been executing the survivors above the surface while Shiro and Sevro had been freeing those trapped underwater, so they had a small window in which to recover from their ordeal. I just hope she didn't run into anything like this, he thought to himself as everyone looked to Darrow.
"I think so," the Reaper said. "But I can't hail Mustang on any coms. We must hurry either way. If she is alive and she blows the generators, so our reinforcements can land, then the shield falls, and the Sovereign has a wide window to escape. Right now, she's bottled up." Sevro nodded as Pebble helped the Howler to his feet. Thistle snapped at Ragnar to drop the razor in his hand as he helped another Obsidian from a fried starShell. Shiro winced as he remembered that it was illegal for any color but Gold to even touch the weapons, punished with a slow, painful death if they did. Darrow was bending the rules as far as possible, but Shiro could tell that even the Howlers had their limits to how much they would tolerate. The prejudice against Obsidians saddened Shiro. Despite being an unstoppable killing machine, Ragnar still managed to hold onto a innocence that reminded the Black Paladin of Shay, and it ground his nerves that only a few Golds were willing to look past their preconceptions and see the towering knight as a person instead of the human weapon he'd been bred to be.
Once everyone had been brought up from the riverbed, they went through the suits of those who fell above the surface to see who was still alive. It was a massacre. The EMP attack had decimated their strike force. Rotback had been killed above the surface by Bellona legionnaires, along with the rest of the new Howlers recruited before the invasion. Other than Quinn, who was up in space with Roque, Sevro, Thistle, Clown, Screwface, Weed, and Pebble were the only Howlers left. And of the fifty Obsidian who had accompanied them through the wall, only eleven remained besides Ragnar. They had lost contact with Mustang's strike team, and their starShells were useless now.
When will this all end? Shiro wondered as he watched the Howlers grieve for Rotback while Darrow and Sevro stood to the side. How could humanity have fallen so far that the only way to improve society is through all this death and destruction? The Black Paladin's eyes watered as he kneeled there on the bank of the river amidst the corpses of his fellow soldiers. He was disgusted by the tactics employed by the Sovereign and her defenders, and by the circumstances which forced him into these situations where people who might have been friends and allies died while the power-hungry leadership continued unchecked. But as much as he wanted to join the Howlers in grieving, they didn't have time to mourn. If they wanted to stay alive, they had to keep moving.
There's just one more chapter covering the battle. Then we'll move on to covering the aftermath and how the stuff that happens afterwards goes differently as a result of everything Shiro's affected so far.