"Sheva, why does that crewbot only have one round to deliver?" Valentine could easily see that the single little crewbot was arriving in the main deck lift from Rico's bay in the hangar deck.
"It's not being used to attack. Trust me." Sheva replied as Rico fired the last round from his current rack for the Tac-3 and crouched onto one knee to accept the single projectile from the surprisingly adorable little robot.
"Loading it now. Are you gonna drive for this?" Rico asked as he manually chambered the flak round into the Tac-3 for her.
"Yeah, I got it." Sheva replied as she engaged manual control, aiming the weapon at the distant ships that were now finally beginning to advance towards the Nightfall below the clouds. "Toby, you might want to pull back for this one."
"Why do I get the feeling you're about to impress me?" Tobias asked as he circled around to return to the Nightfall's deck, dismissing his Kakuja and landed alongside her and Rico to observe whatever she was planning.
"I dunno..." Sheva chuckled as she fired the round in a distinctly high, long-ranged arc. "Maybe because I am."
"Rico, what's she trying to pull off?" Rachael asked as she stopped lining up her shot at one of the ships' forward vents.
"I have no clue."
"I see the flash!" Yuuki reported, and they all saw that tell-tale green flash of the round exploding right over the ship in the middle of their long row. "Detonation was 36 meters directly over the bow of the ship. No damage visible."
"Not yet... Wait for it." Sheva chuckled slightly, and Valentine glanced over at Koko's station and realized that Koko was smirking in a way that hinted that she knew something...
And then the ship Sheva had fired the flak round at exploded without warning.
"Sheva, what the fuck did you just do?!" Rachael gawked as the ship sank down to the jungle below with a plume of black smoke and belching flames.
"Hang on... Next one's inbound." Sheva laughed as the ships on either side of the first one were hit almost at the same time by her unknown idea. "Fuckin' sweet, I knew I did the calculations correctly!"
"Sheva... What are you using on those ships that's taking them down with one fucking shot?!" Stella gawked as she used her cyberbrain to replay her own view of the initial ship's destruction in slow motion... Something was being dropped onto them from above, and at a very high velocity too.
"Wesker's orbital kinetic bombardment system!" Sheva was clearly laughing her ass off inside of Rico now, and they all watched the entire fleet getting wiped out in rapid succession by the thirty foot long tungsten projectiles being shot at them from the weaponized satellite. "I hacked into it with Big J and rerouted it's field of fire to hit their entire fleet for us!"
"Okay, that's genius. I am very impressed, indeed!" Tobias started to laugh too, clapping his hands as the last ship exploded from a direct hit to the superstructure itself. "Now, time for us to find the Ogre and that damn facility. Val, are we clear to start searching?"
"All sectors clear, no more threats in the vicinity. We're heading out!" Valentine replied. "Mom, lock in the co-ordinates of the facility. Koko, sync the Maidens with us, they're coming up behind us now."
"Sir! All thirteen ships were destroyed in under a minute! The Nightfall didn't directly fire at them, only that damn mech of theirs and Tobias did any actual combat!"
"That's impossible!"
"Negative, sir! All of the ships have already crashed into the jungle, no outgoing distress signals detected from any of the crash sites yet!"
"Get that damn monstrosity online, we're taking those fucking bioweapons down!"
"Right away sir!"
"There, I can see the facility's surface structures!" Sheva reported from the bow of the Nightfall, standing beside Rico, who was scanning the area for activity while she was scouring the compound with her mask's integrated monocular. "Looks like they've got some sort of flat metal panels in the open, must be for the Ogre to be deployed from underground."
"I agree, those look a lot like the oversized freight elevators we've seen at other known Umbrella facilities. They have a habit of building huge complexes beneath their facilities, usually for research divisions and storage. So I wouldn't put it past them to have build a hangar for the Ogre down there." Tobias reported from the command deck with everyone else. "You two will need to come back inside the ship, just in case they try using any ordnance that could get through the ship's shielding."
"On my way, Rico, you and I will raise a lotta hell once we're good for another Titanfall."
"Absolutely." Rico chuckled as they both went to the Nightfall's own lift and went down to the hangar deck, and Sheva hurried back to the command deck once Rico was back in his bay.
"Anti-aircraft defences detected. Looks like SAM launchers and 20mm MG's scattered around the roofs and perimeter fencelines." Yuuki reported as her display was filled by targetting reticles over the weapons. "There's also a couple of tanks at the far end of the compound, T105's by the look of it. Might also have some BTR-3's too, I just can't see them from our current position."
Tabitha snickered slightly, glancing over at Tobias, who smirked knowingly.
"So they've got some toys. Big deal. I want everyone to gear up for a ripe royal clusterfuck, we're going to bombard the facility with everything we're packing, then we'll drop the soldier-bots to mop up while the dumbasses try to get the Ogre deployed." Valentine announced, just as Sheva arrived in the command deck behind him.
"What about me and Rico?"
"Because the ship's going to be raining hell of it's own, I can't let the two of you go down there, you'd get blown to bits, and last time I checked, I don't like the idea of seeing you splattered over some rubble."
"What about me? Don't you care about me too, Valentine?" Rico's voice was clearly teasing as he spoke over the ship's intercom. "Oh wait... I'm not squishy like Sheva, I can be fixed."
"Since their whole fleet is currently burning in the jungle, are we at risk of being boarded?" Mao asked, but Valentine could only shrug in reply.
"If they manage to get past our weapons, and the shields, just to drop off one chopper worth of troops onto the deck, then yeah, they can board us. I'd wish them the best of luck though. The chances of them succeeding even once are not very likely, but they're also not impossible either."
"Alright, Rachael, Yuuki, light'em up!" Tobias pointed at the facility through the front windows. "Nightfall, engage combat mode."
"I'll handle the big shit, you take out the anti-air shit!" Rachael was already priming the railguns as Yuuki likewise initiated the missiles, mounted machine guns and even smirked as she enabled a large group of soldier-bots to act as security for the main deck on the small chances of them being boarded.
"Rico, you're more than welcome to join in from the main deck, y'know." Yuuki giggled as they both opened fire with varying degrees of loud sounds being heard through the front windows as the outgoing ordnance let loose onto their targets.
"My accuracy margins from this range are not favourable. If I wasn't based on Ion so much, I could easily use a Northstar rifle from this distance..." Rico teased Valentine, who caught on and tried not to crack a smile.
"Just get out there and shoot in their general direction, Rico." Valentine countered the tease in a tone that everyone knew he'd been had.
"T45 it is then." Rico replied, and clearly went to comply with the orders, because about three minutes later he appeared from the main deck's lift armed with his existing loadout of the Broadsword, Goliath and his C66, but instead of the Tac-3 he was carrying the T45 machine gun from his arsenal, and with it, he'd also brought the ammo mounts on his stomach area to carry more of the large drum magazines that went with the weapon. "Sheva, I can handle things for now, you rest up."
"I can handle a one-sided bombardment Rico." Sheva replied sassily, despite the slight panting in her voice after having ran the length of the ship twice now.
"But can you handle running back to me for a third time?"
"I... have an idea for that."
"Oh? Enlighten us all." Tobias seemed to more curious than everyone else, since, like Sheva, he'd run the length of the ship as well today.
"Val... how fast can one of these bots run when they're carrying something my size?" Sheva pointedly tapped her foot over one of the concealed panels for the security-bots they'd seen earlier.
"Fast enough to get you to Rico without a problem. But the crew-bots are faster, since they're not weighed down by weapons and armour plating."
"Then why the hell am I still here?" Sheva smirked, tilting her head slightly. "Rico, call one to pick me up and bring me to you."
"Orders sent, crew-bot is on the way now." Rico replied, still firing his T45 on the main deck. "It'll arrive at the command deck in about a minute and a half."
"Aren't there any closer ones?" Val asked, since if the bot was sprinting, it was coming from at least halfway up the ship for that timer.
"I think it's just walking. Not that I mind, gives me time to catch my breath anyway." Sheva shrugged, and sat on the armrest of Valentine's Captain's chair, idly admiring her view of Valentine's back and intense focus on piloting the ship's movements.
"I could carry you, y'know..." Tabitha grinned.
"You're too fast, Mishka. Might hurt me in the process." Sheva laughed slightly. "Thanks for the offer though."
"Ordnance inbound! They're finally returning fire!" Yuuki reported, and everyone spun back to their stations in preparation for the first pair of missiles that were screaming towards the ship, only to suddenly veer away just before making contact. "What the fuck?! Was that the shields?!"
"Yeah, they got repelled." Valentine replied. "They're still live missiles though, so they'll fly off in whatever direction the shields send them until they run out of propellant and drop out of the sky."
"I have an idea." Rico spoke up as he reloaded his T45. "If I can grab one before it diverts course, I could throw it back at them as a means to sunder their morale."
"Just one?" Sheva laughed slightly. "You only have two hands, and even I saw how big those missiles are."
"That sounds like a challenge for me while I'm driving, anyone else in agreement there?" Rico chuckled right back.
"Bot's here. Have fun you two." Valentine heard the approaching faint clunks of the crew-bot's footsteps just before the doors opened to reveal the adorable robotic crewman performing a firm salute directed at Sheva.
"Right, you're taking me to Rico directly." Sheva approached the bot and it held out it's arms with a nod of its head before picking her up into a princess carry and gave a nod before turning back to the access corridor... and then sprinted away with rhythmic clunking footsteps.
"... Why was that such an amusing sight?" Tobias was clearly trying not to bust a gut laughing at the robot's hilarious departure.
"Marvin would be proud." Rico chuckled as Sheva arrived and he opened his cockpit for her to jump inside, leaving the saluting crew-bot to return to its post for the next order it received. "Not his Finest Hour proud, but proud nonetheless."
"Val, baby... you intentionally made the crew-bots to be so fucking adorable, didn't you?" Sheva narrowed her eyes at the comms feed in Rico's HUD, hearing Valentine chuckling at her comment.
"Maybe."
"Well fuck you, you succeeded." Sheva pouted, then spotted one of the SAM launchers lining up another shot at the ship amidst the heavy bombardment from the twins. "SAM incoming, unknown trajectory!"
"I got it." Rico replied, sealing the canopy around her and depositing his T45 onto his lower back, the only place it could go since the Broadsword was included into his arsenal's storage chassis system. "Girls, leave these missiles to me, I have an ongoing bet to deal with."
"I left the SAM alone because of it." Yuuki replied with a giggle. "Otherwise those bastards would be red mist and puddles by now."
"Duely noted, thank you." Rico replied as the missiles came streaming through the air headed straight for him, and he'd already calculated their point of contact. "Valentine, disable the shields now!"
Valentine did just that, hurriedly unchecking the shielding controls onto his access panel as the two missiles went right for Rico, which against his better judgement, was the intended plan in the first place. "They're down! Don't fuck up, you're carrying my girlfriend, remember?"
"You doubt your own creation?" Rico teased as he waited out the distance tracker on the missiles. Almost...
"I brought you into this world, I can certainly take you out of it." Valentine countered, just as Rico lunged forward and grabbed both missiles, one in each hand, and easily swung them back around while the thruster was still burning violently. "Shields coming back up to boost their outgoing velocity. Three seconds."
"Fuck it, just chuck it." Rico replied, which earned a raccous of laughter from Yuuki and Rachael at his use of their own joke, and he bodily threw both missiles like javelins right back at the SAM launcher they came from, which destroyed it in the first impact, and killed all of the survivors with the second. "Shields back online, resuming suppressing fire with T45."
As Rico was reaching for his T45, he opened the cockpit for Sheva when he detected her trying to get a look at something through all of the smoke, dust and debris down at the Syndicate facility. "See it now?"
"Not sure, my HUD's not meant for long range like this, and especially not through smoke on top of that. I swear I saw something moving near the two tanks that Yuuki destroyed first..."
"Nothing on thermal, no Virus detected... Are you sure, Sheva?" Yuuki reported right away. "Just some sort of movement, right?"
"It was definitely not the smoke or the fire. It was too fast." Sheva focused her monocular between the two burning tanks, and spotted what she dreaded the most, and expected the least...
"We've got a new Syndicate Titan on our hands! It's not the Ogre!" Sheva immediately reached over her head to yank the manual lever to seal herself into the cockpit as she spotted the Titan standing to full height and run out into the open.
It was a Northstar this time.
"Sheva, I see it! Fuckin' Viper wannabe, do they honestly think they can get up here in the first place?" Yuuki lined up a shot at the Titan, but Rachael's hand shot out to grab her wrist, drawing her gazes to her twin's scarlet eyes.
"It's a Titan. Sheva's the one that gets to make the call on this one. Not even Val can argue with her decision for fighting other Titans."
"I'm detecting a radio signal, they're hailing us." Motoko announced. "Sheva, patching it through to you and Rico now."
"So... The Nightfall. And the big boy Rico himself, with his little Pilot girl too." The thick Russian accent that came through the line in English was female, a slightly older hint to her voice as the distant Northstar model rested the Titan's distinctive sniper rifle onto one shoulder with a pair of wings unfolding behind the spherical cockpit. "I an Lieutenant Sasha Volgovitch, I already know your name, child. Unlike you, I didn't appear on television to stroke my ego."
"Wasn't my ego I was stroking." Sheva's lips widened very slightly into a smile behind her T-15's mask within Rico's cockpit. "So, Sasha, gonna save me the trouble of going down to the hangar deck to do a proper Titanfall? I know what your Titan is based on, and I especially want to fight you the original way, if you know what I mean."
"Hmph... Unlike Viper, I won't need two Scorch to get between us. I'll even do you the courtesy of preparing your weapons before I take off. I already know you have quite an arsenal of toys for the big boy. And my husband's sword too."
"I do not understand what you saw in that obnoxious man..." Sheva taunted as she took over manual control of Rico and dropped the T45 in favour of the C66. "But I'm ready to add that sniper rifle to my toy box whenever you are." Sheva added the last sentence in Russian as she pulled back the C66's intimidation pump, which was a mockery of pump action shotguns and their infamously heart stopping rechambering sound. "Oh, and I'll even drop the ship's shields for you. It's just you, me, Rico and your flying tin can Mike Wazowski."
Valentine grimaced at the idea of a duel on the main deck, but this was a Titan duel, and his own rule of letting it fall into Sheva's control was coming back to bite him in the ass... But, he disabled the shields anyway, and received nods from everyone else that they'd stay out of the duel if they could help it.
Sasha's Northstar rose into the air right away, and Motoko started to scan it as soon as it was out of the smoke clouds, and when the hologram appeared on the main display for everyone to see, Valentine noticed something right away that actually impressed him.
"Magno Core." Valentine pointed at the 'stomach' of the Northstar, where the segmented armour plating was very different than the Ronin back in Nevada. It was similar to the inner plating layer that Rico had beneath his outer hull. "That explains how the turbine engines are powered. Wings for flight, rifle for range, ammo's probably stored in those pods on the bottom of the cockpit ball, doesn't look like she's got more than two dozen projectiles for the rifle. It's clearly not mag nor drum fed. Looks like it's... breech loaded."
"It's a fucking railgun, isn't it?" Yuuki scowled at the dangerous potential of a weapon like that... Case in point the huge plumes of smoke to their starboard side.
"Rico's sonic countermeasures might be able to divert the shots, but I know for a fact his hull won't protect Sheva from a direct shot." Valentine visibly gulped, wishing he'd designed the ship's magnetic shielding differently... and installed them into Rico first. "And I can't shake the feeling that both Sheva and Sasha know that fact... It's not gonna be what we expect it to... I can at least guarantee that as a fact."
"Val, baby, trust me... This won't play out like with the original Viper fight. I have an idea." Sheva spoke directly to Val's earpiece with her DNI instead of the currently open comms line with both the Nightfall and to Sasha. "And it certainly isn't going to cost me an entire Titan and a S.E.R.E evacuation either. I'll be fine, I promise."
Valentine would never admit it for the rest of his life, but in that private moment of reassurance... Her absolute certainty was the only reason he didn't bring the shields back online...
"HOW LONG?!"
"We've deployed Lieutenant Sasha Volgovitch with that Northstar Titan of hers to buy time in distracting the Nightfall with a duel, just like with the Ronin prototype in America. The little girl that's piloting that pretentious Titan of theirs has a thing for dueling other Titans alone. Look at the ship, it hasn't redirected any of it's weapons away from the facility, and yet Lieutenant Volgovitch is clearly flying straight towards the bow of the ship from directly in front of them."
"How long until that behemoth of Madame Wesker's is online?! I want it to take down the ship before they cause further destruction right over our heads!"
"I don't have a definite answer, sir. This Ogre weapon requires munitions to be loaded, and to activate the magnetic cores themselves for the first time... and that alone wil take at least ten minutes. Then we need to deploy it to the elevator itself, and that's also a slow event, so unless Volgovitch can buy us at least thirty minutes, we won't have much of a chance to deploy the Ogre at all!"
"Get Albert Wesker on the phone, right now."
"You and me, little girl. No ship involvement except for you to stand on it. Dah?" Sasha spoke in their radio line as she hovered ahead of the Nightfall's bow with her rifle held in both hands, having already loaded a projectile into the chamber on her way up.
"Good luck with that knockoff. At least Rico's completely original by design." Sheva taunted as she leveled the C66 at the hovering Titan, barely a hundred meters ahead of the ship and easily keeping pace with the Nightfall's circling around the pillar of smoke being given off by the facility below.
"You're under the impression my use of the Titan's name from the game was in imitation of it. Nyet, it's homage to a predecessor, unlike the name my husband's Titan was forcibly given by that fucking Kraut." Sasha replied before cutting off the radio line and charging up her rifle as she broke away from her lazy hovering to begin their duel.
"Full defense systems, Rico. Bitch has a railgun, neither of us are gonna survive a direct impact from that thing." Sheva immediately dodged a swing of Sasha's foot as she tried to fly over Rico's head and kick his Broadsword out of the mount on his upper back. "And she wants your sword back, so I say we clip the bird's wings and give her what she wants."
"Hence your choice of the C66 instead of the T45, despite it also being low on ammunition at the moment." Rico noted as all of his defensive systems came online and he locked onto Sasha with Big J, so even if she flew below the ship's keel, they wouldn't be able to lose track of her. "Motoko and Valentine are sending a scan of her Titan now." Rico announced just as the data was input into their DNI itself, and both of them already knew what their scan's results had found. "I thought I saw those... She's barely got a dozen projectiles on her, and knowing her intention to get the sword, I think she wants to avenge her husband by using it on us the same way I took him out with it in the first place."
"She's only packing half her ammo limit?" Sheva had watched Sasha manually loading the first projectile into her rifle when she initially approached, so that lead her to believe that she also knew her weapon's firepower... "She's not gonna shoot us, is she?"
"Like I said, she wants the sword. She's trying to fight emotionally, and that will be our advantage over her." Rico replied as Sheva dodged another passing kick overhead that targeted the sword. "I say we whip it out at the last second and attack her for her next attempt."
"Good idea, her Northstar's not full-manual like the Ronin, so she can keep this up all day until she gets the sword from us." Sheva replied, since Valentine's note about the stomach hiding a Magno Core also lead her to consider that the Northstar had an AI to assist Sasha too. "And this is one advantage of being a lefty... You're driving now, throw her off."
"Easy." Rico chuckled as Sasha stopped circling around for her next pass when she seemed to notice things shifting around on Rico's back...
Unlike Sheva, Rico was ambidexterous... and so were all of the weapons they used.
"You think letting the big boy swap to a right handed grip will throw me off like that, little girl?" Sasha spoke up in the radio line as she connected it again, then swooped in headfirst towards them. "Think again!"
"Don't need to." Sheva replied with an admittedly cocky smirk.
Sasha's eyes widened behind her helmet as she realized what Rico was about to do, so instead of going to grab the sword she lowered her trajectory just enough to change to a flight driven tackle around Rico's torso and sent them careening across the main deck punching and jabbing her knee into whatever she could make contact with after accidentally letting go of her railgun during the initial impact.
"Rico, you good?" Sheva shook her head as she fought off the angry pilot on top of Rico, unable to get free from her current pin over her left arm and leg. Rico gave an annoyed sigh in reply as Sasha punched his armoured canopy with each hand alternatively, with the accompanying shuddering thuds with the impacts on the hull.
"She's surprisingly heavy for such a thin chassis."
"She's using her jet engines to push down on you. She's not heavy, she's just adding resistance." Valentine reported in the comms line. "Dad's gonna tell you how to get out of her pin."
"No, Toby, please... I got this." Sheva immediately refused. "This is my fight!"
"Your fight... My war." Toby didn't like to admit it, but Sheva was right. Those were forty foot robots, he was six foot seven. Even for him there was quite a risk factor. "And I do recall that I'm not the only person aboard this ship with revolvers as sidearms..."
"Left arm's pinned by her fat ass. Gun's on my left leg." Rico reported. "And my missile pods can't tilt forward enough to hit her, let alone the risk of literally blowing up in our faces..."
"THAT'S IT! RICO! BLOW HER FACE OFF!" Sheva yelled in triumph as Rico chuckled slightly.
"Don't say I didn't warn you."
Sasha couldn't get to her husband's sword from her current position on top, so she resorted to pummeling the cockpit while forcing the left-handed brat's arm and leg to stay pinned beneath her jet-assisted pin. She would tear her out of the damn thing and tear her in half right in front of her cocky Titan and freakshow family too!
So the last thing she expected was for a sudden explosion to send her flying backwards across the deck with several blaring alarms about hull damage as the brat's Titan got to his feet ahead of her and retrieved her husband's sword from his back... left-handed. It was the girl, not the Titan.
"Here. We already know you want to use it on us the same way we did for your jackass husband. Otherwise you'd have shot us immediately instead of trying to kick us in the head like that to knock the sword out of the mounting bracket." Sheva's voice came through the radio line as the sword was casually tossed onto the deck of the ship between them. "Or you could make a move for your rifle instead, in which case I'll cut you down with the sword. Unlike both you and your husband, I have more than one weapon at my disposal, including a dedicated sidearm at all times."
"You still think I'm like a Northstar from the game, don't you?" Sasha laughed darkly as a pair of pods on the top of her cockpit opened to reveal she had six missiles, all with blue warheads. "This isn't a Flight Core, child."
"Sheva, whatever you do, do not let that hit me..." Rico already knew what those missiles were, and had suppressed the blaring alarm in his system that would have blocked Sheva's view on his HUD. "EMP missiles. The ship will be fine, but I would be forced to do a reboot, and yes, it'll hurt like a bitch for you too."
"What about her? Can't we divert it back at her?" Sheva was not expecting something like that, and couldn't figure out a way to determine the firing system of Sasha's pods. Were they single fire? homing? rapid-fire like a real Flight Core? Would they dumb-fire in a straight line? Fly erratically? Too many unknown variables to think about, and there was also the problem of the EMP charge damaging the Magno Core that was concealed within her own arm... or worse, her DNI, which was in fact directly connected to her brain.
"She's too close, I wouldn't be able to react in time." Rico replied. "She's only got six, so she's not going to fire foolishly, even in her known emotionally driven state. She's gonna want to make sure we're unable to avoid a hit."
"Oh, that lack of reaction shows me you two weren't expecting me to have these." Sasha suddenly reopened the radio line. "So fuck the gun, fuck the sword, I'm just going to pluck your fucking nigger hide out of that lifeless hull myself and throw y..."
Sheva never heard Rico and Valentine screaming for her to stop.
A/N: Before anyone gets caught up on what Sasha just said, I want to make it very clear that her racist comment was intended to insult Sheva, nothing more. I actually didn't want to include it, but couldn't find a replacement insult that would have the same driving force behind it as such blatant racism would.