Equitum Sidereus chapter 7
This will be the final chapter of this story line, and I will soon be starting the sequel… as soon as I figure out a title for it. I hope it is satisfactory, if you read it review it!
"INBOUND INBOUND ANTI AIR ALL UNITS BRACE FOR IMPACT" the pilot of the conquistador yells over the onboard communications of the Conquistador, breaking all of the soldiers onboard into a controlled panic.
"FAWKES! What's happening?" a panic stricken Miala screams while latching onto me. I barely feel like I'm even there, like everything around me isn't really even happening.
That stops the instant the leader of the squad of battle armor soldiers that traveled with us into the city rushes into the room we closed ourselves in and tackles us to the floor.
Then the missile hit the ship. A sharp cackling rattle bursts through the decks of the flying vehicle, followed by a series of explosions and then nothing as my vision fades to black.
"GO! GO! GO!, McCall shoot your damn weapon!" is the first thing I hear as I open my eyes, the acrid scent of burning metal and electronics filling my nostrils as I cough up a lung, Stiffening in pain as I do so.
"Fawkes! Don't talk you've had a few ribs broken in the crash!" a growling yell of "DIE INFIDEL SCUM!" interrupts the medics voice as he looks back towards its source framing the door of the section of drop ship, the medic turns, lifting an assault rifle from the ground as the hunched over, horrifying half robotic attacker runs into the room at an unreal speed, a bladed forearm slamming through the medics back before he could even start shooting. The attack spraying me with blood as the attacker tears his arm blade out of the medic's body sideways. This can't be happening, this isn't real. The man approaches me as he grins his half robotic face menacingly at me; I crawl backwards into the bulkhead of the ship section and continue to deny the existence of this monster.
The cyborg lifts its arm high in the air to slash at me, my life flashes before my vision, Atreus, my home, my parents, my brother, my teammates, McGrath, Everyone I know, I come to the conclusion, for them I am ready to die, but not this way. I open my eyes, the blade only inches away from my face as an armored metal claw grabs the blade arm and hauls it away from me, throwing the ma-thing into the wall opposite me. An ACHELIUS armored soldier, the armor painted the purple and white of a high ranking house Marik legionnaire, looks towards me, tossing a battle rifle to me, he spins and throws a punch as the crazed cyborg lunges at him, the armor powered punch throws the enemy combatant to the ceiling, landing it in an unceremonious lump on the ground, the armored legionnaire steps over to the machine man, it struggles to get to its knees to stand, collapsing as it tries, the legionnaire lifts his armored right foot, using all the force that the armor could muster, he slams it down into the metallic skull of the cyborg, crushing it in a hiss of electronics and forcefully flowing blood. The legionnaire flicks the blood off of his boot before turning to me.
"Fawkes, it's me Elyse, are you combat capable?" he asks whilst kneeling to look into my frightened eyes, my face reflected back at me by the yellow mirrored visor of his helmet, the terror and confusion evident on my face as it stares back at me. "Fawkes! Are you in there buddy?" he says, gently tapping the side of my face with his armored glove, eliciting no response from me.
I can't talk, I try but I can't, my mouth just hangs open, a sputtered exhale the only noise I could produce.
Elyse picks me up and hoists me onto the bulbous right shoulder armor section, my limp frame slipping into the low point next to his helmet.
"Shit… I knew using kids for a job like this was a mistake. C'mon buddy, I got you. We're going to get out of here you understand me. We're going to get back to base and get you taken care of." He says while ducking through the low door of the impromptu medical center, the body of the medic laid still at its entrance.
Outside in the burning haze of the wreckage from the conquistador the sounds of gunfire and the heavy earthshaking din of assault class battle mechs stomping around reverberates through my spine as Elyse moves me to the cockpit of a slightly damaged Timberwolf, settling me into the space behind the command couch, he strips the large plates of armor off of his shoulders and lets the back and chest plates fall into a haughty pile at my feet.
Removing the leg armor he straps himself into the command couch, plugging the interface for a neuro-helmet directly into the back of the power armor helmet, the cockpit closes down and the mech lurches to stand, its two ER-LARGE lasers casting an iridescent green glow into the cockpits space, a bone shaking vibration follows the Timberwolfs single right arm gauss rifle firing off, the mech then stomps off at a fast jog. Keying the radio communications system on Elyse says "This is Legionnaire one-echo-eight, I have commandeered a captured enemy Timberwolf and have injured onboard. All Free worlds league mechs are ordered to retreat to the main base. This kid is hurt bad and scared out of his wits, requesting escort back to the staging area, over." The reply in the affirmative is nearly instant as an ATLAS II and two Hauptmann flank the mech and match its jaunt towards the base. I lift myself up to try and look into the cockpit of the ATLAS-II to see if it was Miala, my head swims with darkness as I fall back to the deck, my consciousness removing itself from reality.
"You four are the pride of the new Knights, the starlight in the heavens of the great Marik empire, stand tall children, for today you graduate from being students of the Atreus battle school to go on the glorious path of knighthood" the voice of elder knight Lester Jyolme sounds in my head as the haze of my mind slowly clears, my eyelids too heavy to open I just listen to the sounds around me.
"I'm not really sure how well he will turn out, he will certainly not be able to fight anymore, the burns to his lungs are too severe to allow in combat. They will never heal properly, though he is very lucky to survive. Now Fawkes here should heal nicely, his injuries are mostly superficial cuts and scrapes, three broken ribs, and cracked vertebrae all easy for us to fix. He should be awake very soon if the readings on the meter are correct, though he is probably going to be hurting for a while. I hear he had a bit of a near death traumatic experience with one of those monstrosities that the… well by now we can drop the acts and all, there's no way in hell these are unorganized pirates, something much bigger is going on here. You and I both know it, so it's time to stop this stupid act of being the strongest force here. They out number us, have a full scope of the land and in reality the only land we have they let us have.
The situation on hammer isn't going well either; we are not prepared to handle war like this." The raspy voice of medical agent Lieser reverberates through the room, along with the footsteps of two sets of feet. One wearing light shoes and the other clanking on the steel decking being of assault boots, the metal toe cap clanking as it hits the ground.
"I know, but for now, the operation on the ground has to continue. Since the DELPHI had to leave to go rearm, and group up with the third star fleet, we have to keep higher security on the Sidereus so the kids should be safe up here." The general sighs and the boots clank farther away from me. "Lieser; don't let these children back into the combat area, keep them aboard the ship. I-I can't live with myself if any of these kids got hurt. They may be soldiers, but they are not ready for war by any means."
"I understand sir; I will do my best at keeping them busy. I hope your plan will end our little adventure here and let us go home, we have already lost too many men to this damn dessert hell hole." Lieser replies as the combat boots stomp back out of the room, the hiss from a hydraulic door following the footsteps.
"Fawkes, I know you're awake. And for you I have good news and a lot of bad news. Your commander survived the crash, and the explosion, he ejected from his mech as the city was destroyed. But not before breathing in enough of the super heated air that his longs look like a chain smokers, and the bad news is, everyone aboard the conquistador was severely injured. You were one of the lucky ones, Niles was burned very badly, and Miala has broken an arm and three ribs, as well as a few third degree burns to her legs." Lieser says to me, stopping for a while to let everything he said sink in. I decide to point out that he missed someone.
"What about Hale?" I say, expecting a quick answer, but am met with silence for a moment.
"We don't know. He wasn't in the crashed conquistador when the search team got there, nor was he seen anywhere near the crash during the second search. The battle armor and stealth bomber teams are searching for him. He may have very well have been captured, but we are unsure. When we find out, he will be retrieved, alive if possible. The situation is grave boy, the ARES declarations have been voided, and a nuclear weapon was used to destroy a second dead city down there by our enemy. So once hale is retrieved… this planet will be laid waste to via an orbital artillery strike into its only super Volcano. Hammer was also attacked by these… crazies with a poisonous gas. We think they may be the Blakists that broke away from Comstar. But still something doesn't add up." He says with a large amount of hesitation in his voice.
"I want to search for Hale!" I shout opening my heavy eyes and trying to sit up, my body freezing as pain like I've never felt before flows through my chest and back, forcing me to lie back down and suppress a yell.
"you can't even sit up right now, you are not leaving this jump ship, and it will be a while before you can even leave this room. We will find him, no matter how long it takes."
TWO MONTHS LATER, JUMP SHIP EQUITEUM SIDEREUS
"So you guys found him!" Miala shouts as I walk into the tactical ready room, wincing in pain as my ribs are still tender, I take my seat next to her, the soft memory foam filled leather taking the stress off of my back and ribs, significantly lessening the pain.
"Yes, he has been located. But the agents that removed him from the enemy base report a very big problem, he's still hale on the outside, but it's like he's become one of them, he killed three of the four special operations units, the fourth was able to knock him out and drag him back to outpost seventy two, but… he escaped. Something strange was done to him as he left, and all reports sent to Atreus and hammers haven't been answered. For now, it hurts me to say this, but we will be heading towards Hammer to check the status of the planet. From there" Nils cuts off the general, slamming his bandaged fist into the holodeck in front of him.
"NO! WE CANT LEAVE WITHOUT HIM!" he yells, his face contorted in anger.
"I guess you do not understand me boy. We are already on our way to Hammer; we jumped at 0100 hours when you were all asleep. We will arrive in thirteen weeks, once we can confirm the status of the planet we will be heading out to see the Mercenary review and bonding commission to hire a few mercs to take over operations on the periphery, then we will be heading back to Atreus for a Marik ordered five month R&R. we will arrive at Atreus in approximately thirteen months if everything goes to plan." The General says, waling from the room before any of us could argue with him.
"GOD DAMNIT! This is bull shit man, he can't do this to us, to our team!" Niles yells as his frustration brings tears to his eyes. I don't even speak as Miala helps me stand up and we walk from the room and make our way to my officer's quarters, the unofficial recreation room for my team.
As the door seals shut and locks, I ease myself onto the top of my oversized bed, Miala sits at the edge, staring intently at a picture of the team when we were all going on our first mission together, the picture taken just before we left the spaceport, me sitting in the center of every one, atop a large box of auto cannon rounds, with Miala peeking out from behind me, her hair hiding the left side of her face, the snow dotting the ground around us, Niles sits to my right, a huge smile and a big thumbs up pointing at the camera, Hale, with a serious look on his face sits on the knee of a kneeling BLACK KNIGHT, I smile at the picture before closing my eyes and sighing.
"-ou feel about this" Miala mutters, the first half of the words lost to me.
"What was that?" I ask, enquiring for repetition of the words
"I said, how you feel about all of this?" she says, her voice sad, slumping her shoulders and looking away from the picture to look at me.
"It really sucks. I wish I could do something about it, but- but…I don't know, I feel like it's all out of my hands. I really don't know. How you holding up?" I reply, asking her the same.
"I want Hale back; I want my arm to not be broken… I want everything to just go back to before we started this stupid war… I want to go home." I painfully sit up and pull her into a hug "so do I. but I don't think that's a possibility at this point, I guess we can just hope it all turns out alright in the end." I say, pulling her tighter as tears gather at the edges of my eyes. I really wish I never was chosen to become a mechwarrior, I wish I could just have met all my friends and gotten to actually be a kid instead of a killer, I wish none of this was anything I had to concern myself with.
I wish that we could just have been allowed to be happy and live peacefully back on Atreus…