So far everything was going down smoothly. The black-haired woman and her kids, as she preferred calling them, were safely set up in the house they pointed out as their stronghold during the last few days and were prepared to defend it.
It was set up to be in-between the lines as the safe house for everyone who was fighting. People should be able to retreat into this house to get new clips of ammo, to catch their breaths, or to get rudimentary first aid.
The fight was in their favor so far. Her kids were keeping the perimeter around the house safe from enemies, while she and North were going around the battlefield. They didn't talk via the radio to give away their plan or their locations which was currently their biggest advantage, and they worked together just as well as they had before. They just knew where one another was and went to the other side of the battlefield or covered the other's back.
It wasn't really surprising that the house they set up mostly had ammo clips for sniper rifles. Primarily for the kids and secondly for her and North.
York was heard over her radio, the volume of which she turned down as much as possible. He was driving around, bringing in new forces and afterwards joining the battle. He was driving and one of the bolder guys with him hopped on the back of the vehicle and fired the machine gun fixed on the Warthog.
That was, until Hargrove showed up and the Mantis Droids started pushing them back. That was when Tucker and the others went on the ship to nail this asshole down. She heard something about Felix falling, but she couldn't pay much mind to what was happening up there since she had to focus on killing the enemy soldiers tagging along with the Mantis Droids.
One or two of them wouldn't be hard to take down, but there were dozens! Attack one and you get turned into Swiss Cheese by the others within seconds.
Growling under her breath, she ordered her kids to get into more of a defensive stance, retreating herself since she needed ammo.
North obviously had the same problem as he radioed that he would be around too.
York said something about needing the same, but for his Magnum and Battle Rifle. Ala confirmed, altering her voice a bit to make it sound even deeper than it already did.
Also starting to retreat, but always keeping an eye on her surroundings, she entered the house and gave the Lieutenants the order that two of them could come down to get an ammo clip for their rifles when she heard shouts of happiness roar over.
"Guys, report!" she immediately shouted into the radio, forgetting about alternating her voice, but she was too worried to even think on that currently.
North, who was standing in the back of the room, was looking at her funny but didn't say something. She could feel his glance boring holes into the back of her head.
"The guys managed to shut down the Droids!" This was Culling, shouting over the radio and causing Ala to cringe. She had an extremely squeaky voice, just like Jensen, which only got worse when she was excited.
"Great!" Mac let herself be carried away by the momentum and cheering too, "Make sure you stay on gua—" The rest of her sentence was cut off when she heard someone screaming in pure agony.
Whirling around, she saw North and York squirming in agony, screaming like they were getting their hearts ripped out alive. That probably wasn't even as worse as the pain they were currently going through.
"North! York!" Sprinting over, she immediately was by the guys' sides.
Both of them were lying on the ground, pressing their hands on their helmeted heads before going limp.
What the hell could cause such a pain until both Freelancers simultaneously lost consciousness? Mac thought hectically until it hit her like a cargo train.
The Fragments!
Immediately she looked for North's neck, roughly ripping down the mesh of his under-suit to find the chip safely implanted.
She felt an odd mix of relief and happiness that Theta still was here, but worry as to why he was causing so much trouble.
However, this worry was cut short since North and York were unconscious and shit outside had obviously hit the fan.
"Mac? What's up down there?" Culling was shouting over the radio.
Ala cringed at the shouting, "York and North collapsed. I don't know what is up, but it's bad." She lied. She knew exactly what was up, but she couldn't blow her cover by telling them that.
"It's bad out here too!" This was Manthey interjecting, "We are getting closed in! Troops are moving in and we're—" the rustling sound gave away that he had just received a clean shot through his skull.
Mac closed her eyes when it sunk into her that she had just heard one of her kids dying, but she couldn't grieve his death right now. She needed to bring the others home safely.
"What's your ammo status?" She asked, noticing a flicker of violet and green. Delta and Theta were rebooting.
"Approximatively half of the initial stock. Full SMG's." Baker was the first to respond, the others giving similar replies.
Mac shortly went over her possibilities before answering, "Okay. When I give you my okay, two of you will go down and get your ammo restocked. Make sure this house here is kept safe since we have at least two injured men down here."
"Understood." Her kids replied.
Then Baker asked, "And when will that be?" he sounded anxious.
"When I am out there and cleaning up." She muttered with a dark expression.
"Sorry? Come again?" Fayes asked.
Mac exhaled deeply, "Nothing. Stay on guard for my go and make up a schedule on who is going when to restock. I have to log out of here for a moment." With that, she changed the channel so her helmet would broadcast her voice directly. She was sure the Fragments were back online by now.
"Theta, Delta." Both of them appeared, looking rather confused.
"Hello, soldier. May I ask how you knew—"
Mac held up a hand to stop Delta, "Sorry to interrupt you, Delta, but I need to keep shit short here." With that she walked over and pulled out the Domed Energy Shield Unit from North's Armor.
"What are you doing with that?!" Theta protested, appearing in front of her face.
"I will need that to get out and keep their asses safe." She replied, reaching around her back to pull out the camouflage unit before stopping herself to add, "Whatever happens here, I need you to promise me to not tell anything to these two. You got me?"
The Fragments looked confused, but nodded.
Mac added to her previous statement, "I really need you to keep quiet about it, no matter what happens out there or what you see. Because if the guys know, it will affect them… especially North. Okay, Theta? Delta?"
Looking to each of them, they again nodded silently.
"Okay." She said while exhaling deeply, pulling out the camouflage unit and shoving the Domed Energy Shield Unit in.
It took a moment, but eventually she could see her armor color start to change until she was wearing her usual white and blue armor again.
That was when she heard Theta gasp, "Ala?!"
"Yes, Theta." She replied with a sad smile, "It's me. This is why I need you to absolutely not tell North until I am going to because it could affect him. You understand?"
"But—" Theta wanted to argue, but was caught off by Mac.
"Theta, please."
The Fragment shut up at that, adding after some moments with a tiny voice, "But you promise to tell him soon?"
Ala, albeit wearing a helmet, threw him a small smile, "Promise, Theta. And please, call me Mac from now on until North knows, okay?"
Theta nodded at that.
Delta had watched the exchange silently, not saying anything until Mac promised to Theta to tell North who she really was sometime soon, and they continued with preparing for battle.
Standing back up, the black-haired woman walked over to the ammo storage and started to refill her SMGs and her two sniper rifles.
"Okay, guys, let's get going. Theta, I need you to run the Domed Energy Shield. Delta, can you manage my Speed Unit?"
She looked to Theta, who nodded enthusiastically at her question.
Delta confirmed with an "Affirmative."
"Okay, then. You can temporarily install yourself on my hard-drive. You can delete pretty much everything except for my Private folder. And that one isn't going to be touched or looked through." She ordered, the Fragments agreeing.
In the end, there was plenty of storage room for both of them and all of her stuff. She wasn't Tucker with his tons of pornography on the storage unit, at least.
When both Delta and Theta flickered back online, she continued, "We need to first lessen the number of troops closing in on us currently and second buy the Lieutenants sniping up on the roof enough time to restock and regroup." She explained, fixing the sniper rifles on her back and pulling out her two SMGs while walking outside the house.
"Let's teach the enemy not to fuck with us." She said in a dark tone, "I'm counting on you guys. Let's keep the talking to a minimum since speed and stealth are our most important weapons."
Both A.I.s nodded and Mac switched on the main channel, "Guys, restocking starts now. Whatever happens, don't follow me and don't stop shooting when I am getting in the line of fire. We have to keep this place clean of enemies!"
"But you will be shot then."
Ala definitely had taught them well to think through her plans with her and find any flaws.
She smiled, "It's okay. I have someone watching my back, so don't worry."
Mac knew that Theta heard her saying that and immediately she could feel energy being drained from the suit for the Shield, followed moments later by another drainage when Delta started up the Speed Unit.
"Okay, let's speed up the party here a bit."
Delta got his clue in bringing the Unit up to his full potential so Mac could use it. Theta followed suit, starting to block bullets whizzing past her.
With incredible speed, she was through the first row of enemies within seconds, firing her SMGs and mowing down the soldiers like grass.
It looked horrible and she absolutely hated it, but she needed to thin out the lines of soldiers in order to keep themselves safe. Carolina and the others couldn't come help too quickly since they were extracting the Blood Gulch Crew and the rest of the army still needed some moments to show up.
Her SMG clips soon were empty, half of the enemy soldiers already incapacitated. She tried to keep the casualties as low as possible, but there were deaths to mourn still. She was well aware of the fact that most of the soldiers were nothing more than kids who were probably hired freshly out from basic, but right now they were enemies and she needed to protect a mismatched group of guys and girls she called family now.
While stuffing away her SMGs and pulling out the Katanas on her back, she ordered Delta to return to York by uninstalling himself from her storage unit and to inform her about the guys' health situations and when they were about to wake up.
Delta did as was asked, soon informing her that they were still deeply unconscious but that their vital parameters were okay.
Running towards the remaining soldiers who soon started to either run away or fire at her, she started taking down those who were still fighting.
Her Katanas were specially enhanced steel with Nano-technology and other modern shit she didn't understand, but they were practically unbreakable. And her sheaths were a special minimization-application she managed to bribe Kyle into giving her. The handle was secured with some kind of Vacuum in the sheaths, whilst the blades were compromised and minimized so that the blades themselves weren't even reaching the upper part of the blades when they were unsheathed. It was an incredible technology of the aliens, actually.
Theta still was successfully keeping away the bullets from Mac, mostly letting them fly off to a place where nobody was standing around. Some of the other bullets were redirected to other attacking enemy soldiers and took them down successfully. It wasn't their goal to kill them, but to make them give up.
Whirling around, she stabbed one of the soldiers in the leg, one of the others got a cut to his right arm that severed the muscle and incapacitated him.
Some of them received a heavy hit on their helmet or necks with the handle to incapacitate them. There were other soldiers who weren't that lucky, which led to them either having slit throats, cut off heads, limbs, or a clean stab through their heart. She would stab them upwards, the blade entering on the front underneath the chest plate and piercing the heart with deadly accuracy.
The soldiers were dead before they were able to realize what had happened.
Soon, no enemy was to be seen.
Ala stuffed her Katanas away after wiping them off haphazardly, pulling out her knife and ending the guys who were in the throes of death and not able to survive anyway. Some of them hadn't been fortunate enough to die quickly. Not because Mac was a sadist, but because she didn't have the time to kill them immediately because she had to save her life.
Coming back to the house, she pulled out the Domed Energy Shield Unit, putting it back into one of the Unit slots in North's armor and pushing in her Camouflage Unit.
Minutes later, she was clad in her actual armor color: dark blue with white trims. That's all she could manage without an A.I. supporting her.
"Theta, Delta."
Both Fragments looked up, Theta also having uninstalled himself from Ala's storage unit in her armor.
"I again need to know that you aren't telling them," she motioned to the men still lying there unconscious, "Anything of what you learned. I need them at their best behavior here in this fight. And, yes, Theta," She smiled at the little Fragment, "I will tell North, okay? But for now, I need you to keep quiet about what you found out here, okay?"
Theta nodded sheepishly, but complied.
"Thank you, buddy." She smiled.
Now walking over, she put the two men in the special stance you put unconscious people in. Soon after, she heard Carolina over the radio.
"How are you guys down there?"
"We're fine, although York and North broke down because of some reasons I can't quite determine." Mac explained, hearing the soldiers again hollering with joy.
"That's because Epsilon shattered himself to run the Meta Suit to bring us out." Tucker sounded worn out, sad, and his voice was coarse.
Ala nodded at that. Given the connection of the Fragments, it was pretty likely that they would react to that kind of action from one of their brothers.
"The Fragments are gone." Carolina stated, a bid sadly and Mac sighed to that, "I didn't want to, but I had to fire an EMP just before we got out to incapacitate several mini droids on the ship who threatened to take down the Pelican."
Tucker started again, obviously having big trouble coping with what happened back there, "We lost them. I didn't mean to, but we lost them." He started babbling.
"Tucker." Mac interrupted the babbling aqua soldier gently, "It's okay, nobody blames you. Let's discuss that back in Armonia. You will be fine." She explained kindly.
Tucker made a noise like he was about to cry.
Mac was sure that Wash was with him and would support him until they're back in Armonia.
Addressing Carolina, Mac continued, "We need to bring the guys back there to get them checked up for cranial damage. It looked pretty violent when Theta and Delta inadvertently inflicted their pain on the guys."
Carolina confirmed that and logged out.
Mac then ordered her crew to gather up and to bring with them those who hadn't survived their troop's fight.