V. Flashpoint
Another storm started blowing in late that afternoon, tall clouds rumbling just off the coast. Carolina's pacing had finally reached the point where it was annoying even her, so she sat on the beach and just watched the lightning flicker and flare. She'd always been good with downtime, with filling the gaps in her schedule. She revised her mental report of the entire incident ten or twelve times. She scheduled a recovery plan for her shoulder wound, then created a more optimistic version on the off-chance she hadn't fractured the bone as badly as she feared.
"Wow," South said, coming up behind her. Even without turning, Carolina could tell she was more steady on her feet. "That looks really weird."
Carolina tapped on the faceplate of the helmet she'd salvaged from the pilot of the downed Hornet; it was a bit too big, it wobbled around because the seals didn't match the rest of her armor, and the exterior was singed and bore a couple of ominous red stains. "Better than having to worry about a bullet to the head. Besides, it's got an internal power pack. I managed to get a HUD popped up a couple hours ago. Got it patched into our frequency."
South hesitated, then crouched down beside her in the sand. "It looks ridiculous. If Wash hadn't warned me, I'd have thought you were just some asshole. Guess it's easy to forget your helmet's not your face, sometimes."
"Wow," Carolina said. "That speaks volumes about our mental well-being, doesn't it?"
South snorted a laugh. "I don't think any of us took this job because we were particularly well-adjusted. Just a bunch of fucked-up overachiever SPARTAN wannabes. Go, Project Freelancer." She subsided into silence for a long moment, watching the lightning, then added, "North didn't even want to do this, y'know. He said nothing good ever came from projects like this, just wanted to leave it be. You know that?"
Carolina, who had read every Freelancer's personnel report until it felt burned permanently into her memory, said, "Yeah, I know."
Settling back on her haunches, South picked at a damaged bit of armor on one of her fingers. "I talked him into it, because, well, we're pretty kickass as a team, and I knew if the project was run by some scientist dickwad he wouldn't be able to resist twins. Built-in control variables, y'know? Fucking bullshit." She looked up, then; Carolina could feel the weight of her gaze without turning around. "How about you, boss? Why'd you join Freelancer? Figured you'd be out on the front lines, kicking ass and taking names, not skulking around with us assholes."
Carolina exhaled, then pushed herself to her feet and started back toward their makeshift camp. "Get ready to move, South."
"Move?" South scrambled up beside her, practically jogging to keep pace. "Move where? What are we doing?"
A small indicator had started blinking in the corner of Carolina's HUD. She waved to Wash, who was packing up the last of their camp, and waited for him to jog up beside them. "We're waiting."
"Waiting? For what?"
Carolina tilted her head back, watched as her HUD highlighted a speck in the sky, barely visible now but getting bigger and bigger. "We're not the only ones with an interest in recovering armor from dead Freelancers. Once they figured out our guys weren't coming, I didn't think they could resist. Looks like the carrion bird's finally circling."
"Hah," South said, and drew her pistol. "And here I was thinking I wouldn't get another shot at those pieces of shit."
Wash was following her gaze. "Looks like a Pelican to me. You sure that's not the cavalry coming to the rescue?"
Carolina tapped her helmet again. "The HUD in this thing paints it as friendly, so I'm thinking no. It's probably from that big crate of a ship they had landed here before."
South's voice was practically vibrating with excitement. "You're thinking the others are on that ship."
Carolina was grinning, even as she waved them back to set up their ambush, because hell, it was about time something started going right. "I'm thinking it's worth a shot."
"Even assuming they're just sending down a skeleton team to look for the bodies, that's still a good dozen soldiers," Wash pointed out. "Plus a pilot and co-pilot."
"Hey, nothing to worry about," South said. "We're the defenders, and we've got surprise on our hands. They're expecting corpses."
"They're half-right," Wash said, and when Carolina glanced over she caught him tracing a finger over the deep gash in his armor's chestplate. He looked up at her, then shook himself, straightening. "Okay, boss. Call it."
Carolina backed up a couple steps. The borrowed helmet's HUD was bare-bones, but it could still make simple trajectory estimations. "They're coming down next to the Hornet. Plenty of cover out there. The key is that we don't want them to be able to call for help, so we're going to do this quietly."
"Why does she always look at me when she says that?" South muttered.
"They're going to send out search parties," Carolina said, watching as her HUD made recalculations for the Pelican's trajectory, placing it a few meters further east than the initial guess. She waved the others further into cover. "Standard recon. They know we went down close to the Hornet, so they'll likely spiral out from there."
"Oh, no. You're not gonna ask me to lie out there as bait, are you?"
It felt so good to be doing something, anything, after nearly a full day of forced inaction, that Carolina couldn't hide the grin in her voice. "Tempting, Wash, but no. We should be able to take them out once they split up. Quick kills, nothing flashy, nothing loud enough for them to panic. Wash, there's a perch halfway up that little hill on our six. You see it?"
He turned, then said, "Got it, boss."
"Good. Lines of sight up there are great, and if you stay low you shouldn't be spotted. We need eyes on this one."
He looked past her for a moment, up toward where the Pelican was starting to become visible to the unaided eye, then snapped his attention back to her. "Got it, boss," he said, and jogged to his post. There was just enough relief in his voice that she knew keeping him on the sidelines would be a good call, at least this time around.
South was watching Carolina, and when she spoke it was with a faint hint of admiration in her voice. "When Wash told me you'd been walking up and down the beach all day, I figured you had to be up to something."
"If all else fails, I planted a handful of mines further up the beach. Positions should be mapped on your HUDs."
Wash's voice came in clear over the helmet's radio. "No stone left unturned?"
"Or unexploded," South said. "Where do you want me, boss?"
"Three o'clock, behind that little copse of trees, other side of the Hornet. Wash has better eyes on you out there. And remember," she added, as South sprinted to her destination, "wait for my signal. We don't want to tip our hand."
"Yeah, I know, you can quit channelling North anytime now," South called, and the little snarl in her voice was completely outweighed by the sheer buoying hope that her use of her brother's name implied. This wasn't a failed mission, Carolina thought, not anymore. This was a rescue.
She pushed herself to the edge of her cover, a long, curved piece of metal blasted from the Hornet explosion, and waited. Her plasma rifles were with her helmet at the bottom of the ocean, which certainly wasn't ideal, and sure, one arm was essentially immobilized, but she'd borrowed a Magnum from Wash, her feet were fast and sure, her heart was pounding strong and slow, and her team was standing ready. That was all she needed. That was all she'd ever needed.
"On my mark," she said, as the whine of the Pelican's engines reverberated through her chest. "Quick and quiet, people."
It took less than an hour to secure the dropship.
Most of that time was spent waiting, as excitement gave way to tense anticipation. The comm channel in Carolina's helmet had been registering chatter since the team disembarked, and she patched through the relevant information to Wash so he could coordinate their attacks with periods of planned radio silence. In return, he relayed coordinates in a quiet, even tone, painted enemies on their HUDs, gave careful recommendations on lines-of-sight-he didn't quite have North's eye at this range, but he'd always had a good feel for tactics, especially when he wasn't in the thick of things. South moved quick and quiet, precise, and the few times Carolina saw her shift from cover, it was with an elastic snap to her motions, quick and economical. She didn't get cocky, not that Carolina could see, and that in and of itself was the mirror of Wash's new, unspoken caution. They needed this to go right. They needed something to go right.
The search party took longer to reach Carolina's side of the Hornet, combing out toward the beach in cautious three-person teams. "Six headed for you, boss, on your ten and two," Wash said, in her ear. "You'll have to commit in five. They'll be out of sight of the main group in three, two, one-"
Carolina breathed.
The speed unit was meant for sustained bursts, but she'd found that whenever she was cut off from the hardline to command, it was easiest to power it up only for short clips, transition states, those pesky dragging moments between one footstep and the next. She'd set the unit to automatically activate and deactivate with each footfall, giving her the strange, dizzying sensation of stop-motion, of strobelights. It made her damn near impossible to hit.
The first trooper around her cover saw her immediately, but only stared in bafflement at what must've looked like some sort of bizarre patchwork monster, mismatched helmet and warped, bloodied armor, jerkily staggering up at him.
She caught him across the visor with the butt of her Magnum, accelerated, slammed his staggering body back with a kick into his two friends. She whirled in time to see the second trio round the corner, and only then did she activate the speed unit full-burst, dodging in among their comically slow-moving reaction. Their weapons were barely raised even as she hit and slammed and snapped. The bad right arm slowed her up once, when she forgot herself and reached to throw a punch with her unarmed hand, but the armor kept her from moving it too much, and she had time enough to transfer the momentum to an inelegant but effective headbutt, followed by a sweeping kick.
It was the work of a moment to move back to the original three soldiers and more permanently incapacitate them, and then she was dragging herself back into cover, breathing hard, breathing fast, watching the way the distant lightning flickered and flared around her before she thought to deactivate the speed unit. She was grinning behind the helmet. No alarm sounded.
"Whoa," Wash said, then went back to coordinating South's elimination of the final search party. Carolina held position, though she was already feeling the heightened-metabolism effects of the speed unit, and the ration bar she'd crammed in her supplies was calling her name. The pilot and co-pilot were likely still aboard the dropship, though, and that meant the potential for a tricky fight in close quarters. The more time they could buy on that, the better.
"Okay, ready to go," South said, sounding winded. "No alarms?"
"No alarms," Carolina confirmed, and started moving up, cautiously, on the dropship's position.
"You okay, South?" Wash said, and when she looked toward his vantage point, she could see him picking his way down the hill, sticking to cover. "I saw that one guy-"
"Fucker panicked, tripped over his own feet, landed on me," South said, and coughed. "I'm gonna need to wrap these damn ribs en route."
"Let's worry about that once we're actually en route," Carolina said. "Final count, Wash?"
"Four teams of three," he said. "Shouldn't be too many left on the dropship."
Carolina came up alongside the dropship, pressing in close. "Pilot's got a direct line in to their command," she said. "We've gotta do this fast, or he'll get word out. How long before our friends out here are missed, Wash?"
"About thirty seconds," he said, and then he was coming up beside her, flattening his back against the bulk of the Pelican.
"Cutting it a little close," South said. She was half-hunched over, but still moving well, quick and efficient as she pushed in on the opposite side of the Pelican's rear entrance. "Call it."
In lieu of response, Carolina opened the Insurrectionist comm channel. "We've retrieved the objective," she said.
The pilot's voice came in. "Shit, already? All three suits of armor?"
"Looks like their command bugged out," Carolina said, and tried to keep her voice from shaking, because three suits of armor meant they weren't expecting to find six bodies here, and maybe, just maybe, that meant they knew where the other three were. "We're good to go, here. You want to give us a hand?"
The rear hatch was opening, and Wash was moving into position, raising his rifle. Carolina had time to hear the pilot say, "Wait, hang on, who is this?" before Wash stepped out of cover and delivered a quick, precise burst of fire. The pilot gave a choked gasp, then crumpled.
South and Wash jumped aboard the ship, but the co-pilot's chair was empty-probably went out to rubberneck at the prospect of three dead Freelancers, Carolina figured. With one last look back toward the approaching storm, she jumped in behind the others.
"Clear," Wash said, unnecessarily, and they stood for a moment in silence, taking in their conquest.
"Never thought I'd say it," South said, "but I'm kinda missing Four-Seven's shit right now."
Carolina sighed and pushed past her to the pilot's seat, closing the rear hatch and starting the pre-flight checks. She'd rated as an acceptably mediocre pilot, good enough to play backup, but she'd be noticeably shaky on approach and landing with this thing. Couldn't be helped.
There was a clank from behind her, and she half-turned to see South dragging off her chestplate, still hunched and breathing hard. Wash was hovering awkwardly at her side, and Carolina watched long enough to be sure South hadn't been hiding any worse injuries than a few cracked ribs, then turned back to the controls.
She typed in the quick code that indicated intermittent communications failure-with the jamming signal that had been blocking communications with the Mother of Invention, surely that wasn't much of a stretch-and requested the quickest course to dock. Their destination wasn't far, mere minutes away. On some level she'd suspected the Insurrectionists hadn't gone far, but she still felt shaky with relief at the confirmation. Standard protocol required a voice-check identification, and she and Wash dug through their helmet recordings to cobble together a disjointed and staticky, "Confirmed" from the deceased pilot.
"I can't believe that worked," Wash said, in a small, dazed voice.
"Hah," South said, and sucked in a breath at some too-sharp motion. "Don't kid yourself. We're not in the clear yet."
"It's a start," Wash said, sounding a little hurt. "It's a chance. That's all we ever wanted."
"Well, great," South said. "Because that's all we've got. A chance. Trojan Horse only worked because they had a fuckton of soldiers inside."
"With the element of surprise-"
"I don't know where you learned math, Wash, but three soldiers does not actually constitute a fuckton."
"Stow the chatter," Carolina said. "South, get yourself patched up. Wash, get what you can from the computer. We're gonna need every advantage, and if we can bust through this jamming signal and reach the Mother of Invention-"
"Right, boss."
Pre-flight check complete. Carolina took a breath, steeled herself, and fired up the engines, punching through the clouds, leaving the snarls of lightning and echoes of thunder far, far below.