(A/N) Hey guys, sorry that this chapter is going up so late, no one's fault but my own, just have been so busy in work lately, but that's no excuse. Apologies for the lateness of this update. But, hopefully, it'll have been worth the wait. At the very least, we get another glance at our very elusive villain, Lt Ian Harper. And, of course, a lot of action and violence. Those are always good! Hopefully I'll be able to get the X-Ray and Vav chapter up tonight too!
Just letting everyone know that tomorrow, on Friday, after I post the latest Grifball: Running Rampant chapter, we will no longer be taking applications for writers for that fic, so, and this is the last time I'll be saying it, if you're interested, please apply immediately. Any applications sent in after the deadline will be ignored.
Now, without further ado, enjoy!
Chapter Eighty-Three – The Best Laid Plans
Agent Wyoming
Written by NicKenny
"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, / Gang aft agley," - Robert Burns, To a Mouse
"Okay team, we'll be going in hot. Carolina's team have drawn out most of the Insurrectionist forces, so, with some luck, we'll meet minimum resistance upon landing. Virginia's team will provide cover from their position on the adjacent building," Penn began, standing up back of the pelican, his face serious, the eyes of his team firmly locked on him, his helmet tucked in the crook of his arm. "We're going to have to be quick, this mission requires both a firm hand and surgical precision. We get in there, take out the targets, then get out. Any questions?"
Wyoming raised his hand, his face serious beneath his helmet. "What kind of security are we looking at?"
Penn shrugged, rolling his massive shoulders. "Hopefully the majority of their forces will have been drawn out, but we will probably be looking at several squads of soldiers, and possibly some personal bodyguards, who'll be outfitted with better armour and weapons than the others. And, of course, Harper himself. He's not going to go down without a fight."
Wyoming whistled to himself and shook his head slowly. "That's still a lot of security."
"It gives us a chance, and we're not going to get a better one," Ark broke in from the other side of the pelican, looking up as he loaded his weapons.
Penn nodded affirmatively. "Ark's right, this is the best shot we've got. We're going to have to get in and out before they have time to react, let alone to escape. But if we do, then we'll have won this war. It'll be over."
Ark snorted from his seat, looking up from his weapons once more. "I've heard that before," he grunted, slinging his shotgun across his back, ignoring the glare from Penn as he stood up.
"Okay, I'm not going to be sticking around much longer," their pilot, 479er, suddenly broke in over the radio. "I've just got the green light to drop your asses off, so prepare for deployment, on my mark."
"Understood," Penn replied in his gravelly voice, turning back to his team. He stared at them for a moment before placing his helmet over his head and sealing it, turning back to them just as the pelican's rear doors began to open. "Well?" he asked, a hint of humour in his voice. "What are you waiting for?"
Wyoming groaned, jumping to his feet reluctantly, wondering why every single one of their plans seemed to involve either jumping out of the back of a pelican, or getting shot at. In this case, it would probably include both. "That's it, no need for subtlety, just jump out of the plane and crash headfirst into the building," he muttered moodily to himself, standing next to Georgia as the doors continued to lower, and the building came into view, worryingly far beneath them.
Georgia turned to his British teammate and Wyoming could have sworn that he was grinning beneath his helmet. "There's nothing to it!" he yelled over the roar of the wind. "These suits have been designed to protect us from the impact of a much higher fall! Like, if we jumped off a one hundred and ten story building, we'd probably be okay!"
Behind him, South whistled appreciatively. "Let's hope none of us ever have to put that to the test, right?" she joked, somewhat light-heartedly, although Wyoming didn't reciprocate her humour.
Penn suddenly raised his hand, silencing the banter, and paused for a moment, seeming to wait for the perfect moment before suddenly leaping from the pelican, free falling towards the Insurrectionist-held building below them.
Wyoming just sighed and leapt after him, shuddering slightly as he suddenly became weightless, the city below them suddenly appearing closer and closer with alarming rapidity. His eyes remained locked on Penn's form as they descended, following the team leader's every movement. When Penn suddenly rolled in the air and tucked himself into a ball, Wyoming followed suit, springing forwards immediately afterwards to land with a painful thud! into the roof of the building, crashing through the floor into the room below, which, fortunately, was deserted.
Picking himself up, grumbling under his breath and muttering about idiots, he quickly scanned the room, determining that he was alone, then glanced up at the hole in the ceiling that he had just come through. Seconds later, Georgia and South's heads both appeared over the hole, peeking curiously into the room below.
"Dude, I'd start watching my weight," Georgia muttered, his voice completely serious, while South sniggered next to him, unable to hide her amusement. Wyoming frowned darkly at the two, when Penn suddenly appeared next to them, jumping down through the hole into the room that Wyoming had found himself in, quickly followed by South, Georgia and Arkansas.
"We're in," Penn murmured into his radio, and Wyoming assumed that the Director replied on Penn's channel only, as his own remained silent. Removing the sniper rifle from the position on his back, Wyoming followed Penn into the hallway, South by his side, Ark and Georgia bringing up the rear.
The next floor was also empty, but Wyoming couldn't shake the feeling that they were somehow being watched, but struggled to find a way to voice his feelings without sounding crazy. However, his apprehensions quickly spread amongst the other members of his team, when the first eight floors where unmanned, the Freelancers not encountering a single person.
"Something's not right," Ark murmured behind Wyoming, and he couldn't help but agree. Virginia's team had had the building under surveillance ever since Harper and the General had arrived, so they had to still be in here, somewhere. However, for the Freelancers not to have encountered any form of security was beyond strange, and more than a little unsettling.
Penn paused suddenly, looking back at them for a brief second while muttering "Keep the radios silent," in his deep voice, before walking down the next stairway, his assault rifle held firmly in his hands. Wyoming, following behind him, saw the team leader freeze, and he followed suit, leaning down slightly so that he could see whatever had caught Penn's attention.
A lone Innie soldier was slowly walking away from them, obviously on patrol, a rifle in his hands. Raising his hand and making several gestures, Penn signalled to his team that he would take him out, and the others were to make their way down the opposite corridor, continuing into the heart of the base.
Wyoming now took the lead, South and Georgia in the middle, with Ark sweeping behind them, as they left Penn to silence the Insurrectionist. A few moments later, they heard a muffled thud, and Penn promptly reappeared, breathing slightly heavier than he had been before.
The five travelled through the building, rarely coming across any Insurrectionist patrols, and when they did the Innies were quickly silenced, Penn, Ark and South making good use of their their hand-to-hand combat skills, while Georgia and Wyoming stood back. Indeed, the only time that they even came close to having their cover blown occurred when they came across a group of four Innies patrolling a floor. The first three were quickly dispatched by the Ark, Penn and South, but the fourth had begun to run the second the Freelancers had appeared, and Wyoming was forced to take him down with his sniper rifle before he had fled the room.
Fortunately, the rifle's blast was covered by a giant explosion coming from outside the building, reminding the team of the fighting still underway within the city, and they began to pick up their pace, fully aware of the importance of their mission.
The twelfth floor down tested their abilities, as it was more heavily patrolled than the others had been, hinting that they were closing in on the leader's location. Rather than eliminating all of the soldiers, which would have pushed them to the very edge of their skills, Penn ordered them to move silently down a seemingly unmanned stairway.
Unfortunately, it appeared that the stairway was, indeed, manned, and the pair of rather surprised Insurrectionists were quickly taken down, South shooting the first through the chest, having placed a silencer on one of her magnums, and the other hurled out of the nearest window by Penn, who relied on the other Insurrectionists to assume any sounds of breaking glass where due to the war being raged through the city, rather than any failed attempts at stealth on the Freelancers' part.
Opening the door quietly, Penn suddenly froze, motioning for Wyoming to make his way over to him. Moving next to his leader, he whispered "What?" and Penn opened the door a fraction wider, so Wyoming could see what had caught his attention.
The door opened into a long corridor, filled with enemy soldiers, including the odd team of Insurrectionists patrolling the various rooms on the floor, occasionally walking through a door into the corridor, then swiftly departing. However, through the crowd, at the far end of the hall, Wyoming could make out a group of men talking, crowded around what he assumed was a large table, no doubt discussing the battle that ensued outside.
One of them was General Thaddeus Allen, the leader of the Insurrection. While Wyoming couldn't see his face, as the general's back was facing him, the frail, almost sickly figure, the cropped silvery hair, the green and grey uniform with tan shoulder pads and the ebony walking stick, held in the crook of his arm, all matched every report the UNSC and Project Freelancer had compiled on the leader of the Unified Revolutionary Front.
"Can you make the shot?" Penn asked, and Wyoming merely grunted in reply, although he rolled his eyes beneath his helmet.
"Of course I can make the shot," he replied after a moment. "The only problem is that the noise will bring the entire bloody base down upon us, and I'd rather not have to deal with that."
Turning to South, he motioned for her to pass over her silenced magnum, and took aim at the general, his brain trying to gauge the distance.
"You can't be serious?" South hissed behind him, confused. "You can't hope to make that shot. There's too many people in the way. A magnum doesn't have that can't of range!"
"You're right, there's too many people in the way," Penn murmured in reply, before turning away and raising his hand to his helmet. "Mother of Invention, this is Agent Pennsylvania, requesting a link to the Command Server."
"Penn, what are you doing?" Georgia asked worriedly as Penn began to stride forward, pushing the door open and spreading his arms out wide as dozens of Innies' heads spun in his direction. Wyoming, sensing what his team leader was doing, passed the magnum back to South and raised his sniper rifle, just as F.I.L.S.S.'s voice broke out over the radio.
"Agent Pennsylvania, a connection has been established. You have been given the green light to activate your enhancement."
Penn's body flickered and disappeared from view just as the Insurrectionists began to open fire, appearing a millisecond later in the heart of a group of Insurrectionists, screaming in pain as he lashed out with his fists and sent them flying, carrying his momentum and smashing through the nearest wall as though it had been made of cardboard, disappearing from his team's view.
The Insurrectionists quickly filed through the gap, pursuing their target, although from the many screams that ensued Wyoming gathered that they were having a hard time taking Penn down. Now that the corridor was slightly clearer, Wyoming finally had a viable shot at the General, who was beginning to turn around, the noise from down the far end of the long corridor only now catching the attention of the Insurrectionist high-command.
"So much for not bringing them all down on top of us," Wyoming sighed, peering through the crosshairs.
His finger caressed the trigger, squeezing it almost lovingly, then the rifle recoiled slightly in his arms, the shot echoing throughout their vantage point at the foot of the stairs, and through the sight on his sniper rifle he saw the Innie leader go down in a fountain of blood, the bullet having ripped through his back just as he was in the motion of turning around.
Wyoming's finger squeezed the trigger three more times, and the other men around the general quickly followed their leader into the grave. In two seconds, Wyoming had just won them the war.
His hand flicked up towards his helmet as he opened radio contact with the MoI, taking on the role of team leader in Penn's absence. "Allen is down," he stated, his blood still pounding with adrenaline from the kills, a smile beneath his helmet. "I got him."
"Understood, agent. You orders are now to withdraw and make your way to the nearest LZ. Rendezvous with Agent Pennsylvania if possible. Pilot 479er will be waiting to receive you."
Wyoming's brow furrowed, but South broke in before he could frame his reply. "What about Harper?" she asked, a hint of confusion in her voice. "We can't just forget about him!"
However, before F.I.L.S.S. could reply, a dry chuckle echoed down the stairway behind them, and the four Freelancers spun around to face the very man that they had previously been discussing, flanked by about two dozen Insurrectionist soldiers.
"Yes, what about me?" he murmured, the cold steel-coloured visor of his helmet hiding the manic smile beneath, but Wyoming heard enough in the man's voice to put himself immediately on edge. This man was a psychopath. An utter stone-cold killer.
He had long ago become acquainted with Lieutenant Ian Harper, indeed, every Freelancer had, ever since Carolina's team had gone up against him while destroying the Insurrectionist's armour factory. The Director had ordered each and every one of them to read through Harper's service record in the UNSC, and every recorded appearance of the man since his defection. Wyoming was well aware of Harper's psychosis, paranoia, narcissism and megalomania, but those mental instabilities didn't necessarily make him less dangerous. In fact, it made him the reverse. Unpredictability was a trait Wyoming loathed in the battlefield.
The Insurrectionist Lieutenant began striding cockily down the steps towards the Freelancers, a magnum in his hand, not aiming at any one of them in particular, a trait which was not shared by the Freelancers, who had their own weapons trained solely on him. "You know, I'm not sure whether or not to be complimented by how many Freelancers were sent after me, or to be insulted that your…Director actually thought that this would be enough."
South snorted next to Wyoming, her voice remaining steady as she replied. "One of us would be more than enough to take your sorry ass out, Harper. It's over for you."
Ark nudged Wyoming slightly, and he noticed that the other three agents were slowly backing away, and he followed suit, slowly exiting through the open doorway, even as Harper and his men slowly followed them, neither party apparently willing to take the first shot, at least until they had determined that their side had the advantage.
The slowly walked backwards through the long corridor, their weapons never pointing anywhere except directly at Harper, looking for the opportunity for an escape to present itself through the corner of their eyes, but to no avail.
"You know, I was hoping California – that's what you call him, right? – would be here for this, but oh well," Harper continued, apparently unaware of the tension felt by both the Freelancers and his own men as the two forces sized each other up. "I guess you can't have everything."
He paused for a moment, looking around as though he had only just become aware of his surroundings. Wyoming took one further step back, and his boot connected with something heavy, causing him to glance at the floor behind him, and he froze as his brain processed the image. In their stand-off against Harper's men, the Freelancers had backed away down the entire corridor, and had finally reached the room that General Allen had stood in before Wyoming had but a bullet through his back.
However, the man that Wyoming was looking down at certainly wasn't General Allen. While he was wearing the same uniform, had the same haircut and body type, and an ebony cane identical to the one Allen used lay next to the body, the man's face looked nothing like him. His nose was too sharp, his eyes brown, rather than Allen's green, and his skin tone was several shades too dark.
A decoy.
"Yes, quite a shame, isn't it?" Harper murmured, breaking Wyoming's train of thought, having noticed Wyoming's moment of sudden realisation. "You came all this way, only to discover that the only person you were after was never here in the first place. So predictable, so easy to manipulate…it's almost sad really."
Ark followed Harper's gaze, and his sudden intake of breath indicated that he, too, had realised that the man they had thought was General Allen, was, in fact, not. He turned back to Harper, his two magnums still trained on the Insurrectionist, and he spoke up. "You're wrong, Harper."
The Insurrectionist Lieutenant let out a brief burst of harsh laughter, and turned to the Freelancer in coral. "I'm sorry, wrong about what?"
Ark seemed to smile beneath his helmet. "He wasn't the only person we were after."
With that he opened fire, but Harper had already dived out of the way, Ark's bullets embedding themselves harmlessly into the wall. The other Freelancers had opened fire, Wyoming quickly dispatching several Insurrectionists before they opened fire, South and Georgia following suit, the three of them diving for cover themselves when the bullets began to rain down on them.
Ark opened up their radio connection, yelling over the noise of gunfire. "South, we're going to need your armour ability online! Message Command right now and try to get a connection established. I'll try to buy you some time!"
With that he sprung out in front of the Insurrectionists, his armour already glowing as he enhancement kicked in, blinding those looking at him. The Freelancers had the good sense to look away, but the Insurrectionists weren't so fortunate, yelling in pain as their retina's burned before Ark's armour ability.
South suddenly started forward, having just received permission to use her armour ability, and her bubble shield sprung around the Freelancers, protecting them from the bullets of the Insurrectionists.
"What now?" she shouted to the others, but Wyoming merely shrugged. This, after all, wasn't his area of expertise. He was a sniper, at the end of the day. Close range battles inside buildings weren't exactly his forte.
However, Ark stepped forward, taking charge. "When you deactivate the shield, we open covering fire, allowing us to escape through the hole that Penn just left. With some luck, we'll either come across him or a staircase that can get us onto the roof. Sync?"
"Sync!" the others responded, reloading their weapons while the Innies continued to pour their ammunition into South's bubble shield, although Harper, standing to the side, was clearly beginning to realise that this was an essentially useless exercise. When Ark gave the word, South deactivated the shield and the Freelancers began firing wildly, distracting the Innies as they made their way towards their chosen escape route.
However, Harper had evidently worked out their plan, and from the second that South's shield deactivated he was already sprinting towards to gap, tackling Wyoming to the ground as he passed through the threshold.
Wyoming landed on his back, winded, his sniper rifle pinned to his chest by Harper's mass, and his struggled against his attacker, who began to unleash blow after blow into the sniper's helmet. Suddenly, a hand grabbed Harper by the shoulder, yanking him off of Wyoming, and Ark buried his free fist into Harper's helmet, knocking the Insurrectionist to the ground, although he quickly got back to his feet.
Charging forwards, he ducked underneath Ark's first blow, kicking the legs out from under the Freelancer, only to meet South's fist connecting into his chest as he rose, then received a spinning kick from Georgia to the back, knocking him down to the floor once more. Wyoming passed them by, hearing the dozens of Insurrectionists behind them, full aware that they were at the disadvantage here. The other three quickly followed him, leaving Harper and his men behind, and soon found a staircase, fleeing up it with pounding hearts as the voices of dozens of soldiers echoed behind them, punctuated by Harper's occasional manic laughs.
Bursting into the sunlight, the Freelancers finally finished climbing the stairs and reached the roof, and in the distance 479ers pelican was visible, rapidly approaching the building. Sprinting towards the edge of the rooftop, Wyoming could almost make out the pilot in her cockpit when suddenly a burst of gunfire rang out behind him, and he toppled forward, searing pain spreading through his thigh.
Turning around as he fell, he manage to offload two rounds into the Insurrectionists firing at them, but his injury had thrown his aim off, as he had been trying to hit Harper, who was standing there, smug as could be, holding a smoking gun.
Georgia bent down, helping Wyoming to his feet, pulling him behind an air vent as Ark and South returned gunfire, trying to hold back the Innies until 479er had arrived, but their position seemed bleak, as they would have to break cover to make it to the pelican.
Suddenly, with a roar, Penn appeared above the group of Insurrectionists, unarmed, but Wyoming knew him well enough to know that that was when Penn was at his most dangerous. The Insurrectionists around Harper were swiftly dispatched with a casual brutality, the other still locked in a firefight with Ark and South, and Penn and Harper began to exchange blows, Harper's speed and dexterity matching Penn's sheer strength, but Wyoming was still aware that more and more Innies were making their way to the roof of the building.
They had to leave, now.
Georgia helped him make his way over to the pelican as it began to descend, dragging him on-board and harnassing him into his seat. Ark and South quickly followed, after letting off a few more bursts of fire into the mass of Insurrectionists, while Penn and Harper continued to grapple, neither able to get the upper hand.
The pelican began to rise, and Ark spun around to the pilot, confused. "What about Penn?" he yelled, worried for his teammate, but the pilot only gave a tired wave.
"No need to worry about him, he'll make his own way on-board," she replied dismissively, and sure enough, Penn suddenly appeared in the centre of the pelican, shaking slightly as he fought to control his reactions to the pain of the teleportation.
"What are we waiting for?" he yelled, clearly unhappy with the way the mission had turned out. "Get us out of here!"
"Roger that," their pilot replied, and the door behind them began to retract, but Harper wasn't done with them yet, having obtained a rocket launcher from a colleague. Only Wyoming was still looking down on the building, but he barely had a second to shout out a warning before the missile crashed into the side of the pelican, rocking them, causing Penn, Ark and Georgia to lose their footing and crash into the ground.
Wyoming, no doubt, would have shared the same fate had he not been strapped in at that point, but South, who had been standing nearest to the rear door, crashed headfirst into the floor when the ship had been hit, bounced, and rolled out through the still open door into the empty air.
Georgia yelled unintelligibly as she fell out of the pelican, and Penn struggled to his feet, ordering F.I.L.S.S. to get the Command Server to plot his next jump to South's current location, but the almost instantaneous reply seemed to stun him.
"I'm sorry, but South's helmet's tracking systems appear to have been damaged in her fall, and we cannot establish a connection or plot her coordinates."
However, Ark, from the second F.I.L.S.S. mentioned the word "damaged", had already started forward, leaping out into the air after South. Wyoming quickly lost sight of him, restrained to his chair, but Georgia and Penn sprung to the edge, watching him sail down after her.
"Clever son of a bitch," Penn murmured, almost appreciatively, before disappearing, reappearing a few seconds later with a gasping Ark and South in his arms. Both appeared to have suffered from much of the same experience Penn himself had gone through, going through the agony of dematerialisation and instantaneous rematerialisation, and Ark glanced up at the blue Freelancer, trembling.
"How can you put yourself through that?" he asked, shaking, barely able to prevent himself from retching.
Penn just shrugged, turning away. "It gives me an edge," he rumbled, before opening the connection with the MoI and reporting that all agents were on-board. They were going home.
