Mrs. Sycamore looked up, face bright red from the warmth of her eggs and tea, as the alarms went off. Screeching bursts of sound sprinted from room to room, squeezing through the corridors and blowing unsuspecting eardrums apart.
"All combat personnel, report to Mission Control," boomed the PA system.
"Heavens me," Mrs. Sycamore said, raising a napkin to her face. "They could at least ask politely before rushing us off to our bloody deaths."
Mrs. Sycamore, sadly, had to leave her breakfast unfinished. When she walked into Mission Control, she found herself late. Three other stood at attention in the dim, blue light. Bulky Petrov, petite Zip, and the now-extremely jittery Banks.
Petrov and Zip had gone through a wardrobe change. The Russian wore military fatigues, a swirling pattern like green seaweed and volcanic ash. Pockets, more pockets than Mrs. Sycamore could count, hung from his arms, legs, and chest. The Chinese girl had attempted a whole-hearted imitation of Petrov, wearing a thin, camo t-shirt and olive cargo pants (lots of pockets right there). The mag pistol, black and thick, snuggled against her outer thigh. Banks only wore a pair of aviators.
"G'morning, troops!" Claymore shouted. The four of them looked up and saw XCOM's new commander, minty fresh, jogging down a staircase towards the ground floor.
"Morning!" Zip called, baring her teeth. Banks shook like an overfilled can of soda, and glared at her through his tinted lenses. Petrov nodded. Mrs. Sycamore decided to give a polite wave.
"Well, glad nobody's pissed in your coffee!" Claymore said. "But I'll cut out the pep talk. Right now, we've got a situation." She placed her hands against the hologlobe, fingers flexing as they manipulated it. The holographic projection morphed and shifted until objects formed. Human-sized objects.
There, Mrs. Sycamore could make out a long line of square shapes, some sitting still, others flipped on their sides. Smaller, human-shaped figures scurried back and forth along the flat plain of blue. Every now and then, the area would light up with explosions or small, miniscule flashes.
"What you're looking at right now, is an Advent convoy," Claymore pointed out. "A line of heavily-guarded transports, moving from Stuttgart, Germany, to someplace in France. Destination's not important. The fact that it's absolutely bursting with guns, chow, meds, and material is."
"Someone else made it first," Petrov said.
"Right on the nose, Petrov. A few hours ago, fighters from an unknown faction attacked the convoy, using rockets and old world firearms. They're actually well-equipped, but, as you can see –"
"They're getting whipped," Mrs. Sycamore finished. "And they're prolly crying for help about now."
"You could say that," Claymore said, grinning. "All you need to know is we'll have it made if we pull this off."
The troops nodded, satisfied.
"You said we don't know where they're from," Banks said. "Wh – what if it's a trap? Or they just shoot us on sight?"
"Well, if it's some elaborate fucking trap, Firebrand will land, you'll get your asses out of there, and I'll applaud Advent on their newfound creativity. If not, and they're just a bunch of mean bastards who don't like sharing, then shoot back. Don't shoot first, though, because – well, I shouldn't have to say. Everyone knows that's dumb as shit. Understood?"
Everyone barked an affirmative of some sort. Banks, to his credit, looked a little less shaky. Even Mrs. Sycamore had to admit she felt more comfortable hearing Claymore's familiar, casual tone.
"Good," Claymore said. "Get your gear ready and load up into the Skyranger, quickly!"
A few minutes later, Mrs. Sycamore was snug inside the Skyranger, strapped into her seat and listening to the rhythmic hum of the ship's engines. A shotgun lay in her lap, still covered in the dirt and grime from Operation Gatecrasher. A red ribbon, an untouched, clean strip of crimson across the gun's cut and scratched beige, was wrapped around the barrel. Mrs. Sycamore thought of it partially as a reminder, but mostly as an accessory. A sign, marking it as hers.
Across from her, Petrov and Banks had swapped out their old arms. Petrov had picked up the old saying "Bigger is Better" and carried a bulky minigun. For Banks, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" applied, especially with that enormous sniper rifle he cradled in his arms.
"I'm – I'm staying as far away as possible," Banks had explained. "I'm a good – good shot. I practice on those Advent statues."
The ride was a lot quicker than Mrs. Sycamore expected. The Skyranger touched the ground, and her blood began to boil. Her hands gripped the shotgun, squeezing it, wringing it as if she were preparing a turkey for dinner.
Another opportunity to get payback.
That opportunity, however, got a little complicated. Because as the door of the Skyranger slid down, Mrs. Sycamore was greeted to an absurd sight.
Gunfire rang throughout the air, bullets pinging through a fog of dust and smoke. Figures dodged within the opaque mixture, falling and firing into the distance. But one shape emerged. An Advent Mec, its paint spattered with soot and explosion marks. Its faceplate had fallen off, revealing a black box, lined with wires and tubes.
The Mec leveled its cannon at the Skyranger, but pivoted as something ran at it from the corner.
A man decked out in desert fatigues tackled the killer machine, leaping out with nothing but his fists.
As he pulled the triggers on his explosive vest, the man screamed two words.
"ALLAHU ACKBAR!"
The hoarse shout was swallowed up in an expanding ball of red and orange fury, along with the man and the Mec.
"You-you've got to be fucking kidding m-me," Banks groaned.
"What do you think, doctors?" Bradford said.
Tygan and Matilda looked up from the examination table.
"It's –" Tygan began.
"Well," Matilda said.
"Interesting," the two of them said, in perfect harmony.
They paused. Matilda rolled her eyes while Tygan turned back towards Bradford.
"I admit, Central, while I had been hoping for at least one specimen to examine after the first operation, this –" He gestured to the body of the Advent Captain, stripped of armor, that lay on top of the table underneath a blue blanket. "– is an excellent find. I must commend the troops for being able to bring back a Captain."
"It's an ugly son of a bitch," Matilda said. Bradford, seeing the Captain's bulbous eyes and distorted facial features, had to agree.
"This is new," Bradford said.
"Absolutely," Tygan said. "Previous conflicts with Advent throughout our operating period have only yielded us the bodies of regular Advent soldiers. Each of who, as you know, was purely human, with minimal genetic manipulation. It appears that no expense is spared for those of higher rank."
Tygan switched on the table's lights.
"While Dr. Fournier and I have not begun to examine the internal structure of the specimen, due to… complications, we have found something equally interesting. Dr. Fournier, if you will?"
Matilda nodded, and produced a chip from her pocket.
"Holy hell," Bradford said. "That's –"
"Almost identical to the one you removed from the Commander," Matilda said. "And with it, we've come a few steps closer to figuring out its purpose."
"Does that mean we could – revive the Commader, Matilda?" Bradford said.
"Call me Dr. Fournier, Central," Matilda said. "And that problem's a bigger mystery than the Bermuda Triangle. Still, we got something else."
She walked over to a nearby monitor and activated it. Plastered on the screen were the two chips, taken from the Commander and the Captain, side by side.
"I was able to recognize the chip we recovered from the Captain," Tygan said. "I actually helped to design it. A theoretical model, but it still has my, well, 'signature' all over it."
"What was it supposed to do?" Bradford asked.
"Supposedly, it was one of the many devices meant to improve our existence. The uses were many – granting communication to the deaf and mute, improving the social impediments caused by mental conditions, and monitoring the vitals of unhealthy individuals. All of it relying on some form of unknown energy, faster than light, that I had never heard of."
"Of course," Matilda interjected. "It never saw medical use."
"Clearly," Tygan said. "As you can see, I was a sucker – born the day before, if you will. Instead of a medical device, the aliens made me inadvertently create a communication grid between the Advent Captains and their subordinates, almost instantaneously. The only mystery is the medium – how are they communicating?"
"Huh," Bradford said. "Explains why attempts to plant spies within their ranks have been unsuccessful."
"And messy," Matilda added.
"Another, more disturbing possibility has been brought up," Tygan said. "That the aliens may have been trying to… communicate with the Commander."
"I'm sure the Commander would have had some choice words for these alien bastards," Bradford said.
"Of course, though not in her current state," Tygan stated. "But I'd have to examine the her chip to come back with a definite answer."
"Got it," Bradford said. "Is that all you have for me?"
Matilda and Tygan looked at each other, then at Bradford.
"There is the –" said Matilda.
"Complication," they both said.
Matilda threw up her hands.
"Alright, I'm done here. I'm getting a drink," she said. She stormed out of the lab.
There was a pause.
"Doctor?" Bradford ventured.
"Yes!" Tygan said. "Well, before Dr. Fournier's departure, I was about to present our problem."
"Yes, you were," Bradford said, crossing his arms. "You want to elaborate on that?"
"Indeed," Tygan said. "The specimen is still conscious."
"Conscious?" Bradford asked. "How the hell is that possible?"
"Your soldiers beat its skull, its heavily genetically manipulated and armor plated skull, with a simple baseball bat. I'm surprised they managed to dent the helmet."
"Makes sense," Bradford said. "But what about the chip? Isn't this thing in a coma?"
Tygan shrugged. "I do not have an idea. I had expected the same results to occur within this specimen. The flatlining of the vitals, the decrease in brain activity. However, none of that occurred while Dr. Fournier and I extracted the chip."
"This was just, what, Lady Luck smiling at us?" Bradford said.
Tygan adjusted his glasses and scoffed. "Central, luck or ladies have nothing to do with this. As I recall, interim Commander Claymore stated, and I quote, that 'one of the troops crushed the Captain's head in like a fucking piece of paper', end quote. Such head trauma could have caused the chip to malfunction."
"Wait. So you're telling me," Bradford said. "That if we'd smacked the Commander around a bit –"
"I am not implying any such barbaric measures!" Tygan protested.
"Relax! Tygan, I was just kidding," Bradford said.
Tygan coughed. "Of course. Of course – a joke!" Tygan forced a laugh, then clamped his lips shut. He scratched his head and cleared his throat. "In any case, this is the dilemma at hand: we have a soon-to-be-conscious Advent officer in our base, with unknown motivations and intent."
"How did you keep him under for so long?"
"Well, first of all, we're not even sure if it's a 'he'," Tygan chattered. "A preliminary examination of the subject's lower regions –"
"Why is it still unconscious?"
"Sedatives," Tygan said, happy to be on a subject that he was certain of. "Advent Officers can apparently take more sedatives than a large African elephant. Or at least, that's what my model informed me, since we cannot procure a large African elephant due to their extinct nature –"
"Kill it then," Bradford said, already turning around. "It's a security risk."
"Of course, Central," Tygan said. "I will make sure to dispose of it properly."
Bradford nodded, and left the room. Once he was gone, Tygan turned and strapped on his mask.
"This will be messy," he muttered. "But it'll be fun to be back in an area that's my zone of comfort."
He grabbed a syringe, filled to the brim with a clear fluid that sparkled in the light, and then stopped.
"Then again," he pondered. "Vivisection could be possible. Either way, I'll need the saw."
Tygan did just that, and was soon dual-wielding a syringe and a saw. He gazed down at the stiff body with the same amount of care a man regards a steak with.
Of course, Tygan failed to notice a few new details. For one thing, the Captain's chest was now beginning to rise and fall with a new, slow life. Its neck muscles budged slightly, sending spit into its gullet. Eyelids stretched and twitched.
Suddenly, the Captain's enormous eyes, black as oil, flew open.
"HELBETE BETAL!" it screamed, right into Tygan's face. The scientist stumbled back.
The Captain squirmed under the blanket, kicking out and knocking Tygan's saw against the ground with a loud clatter. It then rose, knocking off the blanket and exposing its entire naked body, and ran off.
"Oh no," was all Tygan could say. And the only thought that could comfort him was that the Captain had, indeed, no external genitalia to speak of.
The fighting outside the Advent convoy was messy and brutal. The rebels and the Advent troopers fought like drunken boxers, taking wild haymakers that pounded craters into each other's faces. The XCOM operatives, veterans of Operation Gatecrasher, were a decisive blow in favor of the rebels, a single, red-gloved fist that bashed through Advent's battered defenses and knocked their forces to the floor.
Petrov leaned from his cover, an upturned truck, and sprayed another salvo of bullets, adding his gunfire to the earsplitting percussion that erupted around him. Advent forces recoiled and hunkered down, while beige fatigue-clad rebels and XCOM operatives advanced.
In a moment of sheer luck, Petrov saw one of his bullets ping against the underside of an Advent truck, immediately followed by a great column of flame. Petrov smiled as he saw three Advent troopers, roasting like barbecue coals.
Barry would have loved to do something like that. Barry…
Petrov frowned, redirecting his fire to one of screaming troopers. His heart pounded in time to the bullets' impact, one beat for each time lead met flesh.
Pound.
Pound.
Pound.
The Russian gritted his teeth, and went back to terrorizing the other Advent troops.
Unfortunately, that small few seconds was all they needed to remobilize. From the ruins of a security vehicle, another Advent MEC stepped out. Its paintjob was splattered with black soot and ash, almost like blood. Bullets clattered against its carapace, doing absolutely shit damage Turning, it saw Petrov, cocked its eyeless, smooth mechanical face at him, and started to sprint.
It didn't get far, though. A shot glided through the air, smashing into the MEC's leg. The five hundred pounds of steel fury stopped and crashed to the ground. Its legs kept winding around, flopping up and down like fish lifted from water.
"Heh," Chris muttered into Petrov's communicator. "Easy."
The MEC let out a multitude of groans, digital chirping sounds that buzzed in a harmonious sort of way. As Advent's forces retreated back further, with the sound of gunfire growing more and more distant, some of the rebels moved in to finish the machine off. Two of them beat at the thing's face with their rifles, old Ak-47s and Kalashnikovs, distorting the white metal until it caved in like a candy wrapper. Another rebel, naked except for his pants and boots, mounted it on the back, whooping a war cry before jamming a grenade into its midsection. The three of them retreated, cackling like loons, as the grenade went off, putting the thing out of its misery.
Petrov watched that with a cold kind of satisfaction, and went out to meet them.
"You know how to finish a job," Petrov applauded. "Very good."
"Shucks, mate," the shirtless man said, brown muscles gleaming in the sun. "Weren't for you and your mates, I wouldn't 'ave been able to."
Petrov narrowed his eyes. That accent was not what he expected from these… types. He scrutinized the men. The dust had cleared, and the other two, despite the thick headscarves they wore, had a lighter, fairer complexion than the shirtless man. Petrov glanced back at the shirtless man.
"Wot?" he said.
"Who are you with?" Petrov asked. "We do not know you."
The shirtless man beat a hand against his chest. "HORUS, that's wot we are. Waging the good jihad to beat back the damn devil, that's what we do." The other two men copied the motion.
"Horus?" Petrov said.
"Yeah. Haven't heard?" one of the headscarf wearing men said. "Big bloody revolutionary group in the Middle East? We're the ones that fucked up New Cairo."
"This jihad is… diverse?" Petrov asked.
"Fuck yeah," the shirtless man said. "Chris an' me, we used to bounce around Little London 'fore we heard of 'em. Now we fire a shitton of guns, and give it to those xenos, right up the fuckin' bum!" Shirtless turned and hi-fived the headscarf wearing man who spoke earlier.
"Nice. Let's move. Talk later," Petrov said.
The shirtless man hefted his gun. "Damn right. Damn right we better bloody mo –"
The man's torso exploded in several geysers of red. His head was still contorted into a wild smile as it spun off into the distance.
One of the fighters and Petrov made a break for it. The other was stalled, half out of terror, half because he'd been standing too close to the shirtless man and was now covered in a blanket of blood and entrails.
He tried to pivot and scramble for whatever cover there was, but another burst of fire caught him.
Petrov ducked back behind a rock, pressing his back against the grit. Beside him, the surviving fighter scooted in from the other side. His eyes were wide with fear and adrenaline, bugging out from the slit in his headscarf.
Petrov peeked out from the side of the rock, keeping his head low to the ground. As expected, they saw him, and he was forced to duck backwards as the magnetic rounds came flying.
But he'd seen enough. Specifically, three spots of black, and one deep red. A combat squad, likely trying to flank the rebel positions.
Petrov turned to the fighter.
"You, what do I call you?" he asked.
"Chris," the man breathed. "What about you?"
"Not needed for the plan," Petrov said. He tapped his minigun. "I fire, you move around and shoot when I call your name. Grenades if you can. Clear?"
Chris nodded.
Without warning, Petrov swung himself around the rock. Dust flew, stinging his eyes, but his fingers squeezed the trigger through electrified instinct. The gun coughed, spewing bullets into the air.
A stream of lead clipped one of the Advent troopers, shredding her shoulder and tossing her against the dirt. As her screams crawled through the air, the other troopers scattered, taking positions.
"Chris!" Petrov shouted.
Over the warbling, torrential sound of the minigun, the more precise sounds of a rifle went off. An Advent trooper went down, his face split open like a rotting watermelon. Then another fell, groaning and squirming in a circle of red.
The Captain stood alone. Sparks flew off her armor, shredding her cape, but she still stood. Her mouth curled into a grimace as she steadied herself, before lifting her gun and opening fire.
Petrov ducked back again, feeling the vibrations as the magnetic rounds drilled into the rock behind him. He lifted his gun over the rock, firing wildly into the Captain's direction, hoping to keep her attention on him long enough for Chris to run.
"Blyad!"
Suddenly, his vision went black. His face was tight, being squeezed by something. Then, he felt the smooth, cloth-like material against his face. A hand. Petrov gripped his gun and swung it about wildly, a last gamble.
The Advent Captain screamed something in her choppy, alien tongue, and smashed Petrov's head against the rock. She did it a second time, then a third.
Petrov felt his eyelids grow heavy, felt the pain constricting his head like a collar. The back of his head wasn't solid anymore. It was sliding out and onto his shoulders, onto the ground. His skin, his bone, his brains, falling out in a red and white waterfall.
A bang, loud like a thunderclap. Then, the feeling of something wet against his face.
Petrov opened his eyes and found himself lying on the ground. Above him, the Captain slumped against the rock. Her helmet was split open like a burst bombshell. Orange gunk seeped from her exposed pink flesh, dropping onto his face.
"P-Petrov!" Chris shouted, his voice panicky and shaky in the communicator. "Are you – are – ?"
"Fine," Petrov groaned. He blinked and rubbed the dust out of his eyes. When the pain faded, just a little, he looked back at the Captain's ruined face, and smiled.
"I got front-row tickets on this fucker's face. Fucking art," he said. "Good art."
He laughed into the communicator, ignoring the stretching and groaning in the back of his skull. A nervous titter accompanied it, and soon enough, both men were laughing.
Lily was the first to encounter the Avenger's unwanted guest. She'd been meaning to talk to Tygan about some findings she'd found regarding the Advent Captain's body armor. But instead of finding Tygan outside the research lab, she encountered a –
"MOR BALATEN!"
A naked man?
Lily rubbed her eyes, watching the pink-skinned, bug-eyed creature run past her. It continued down the corridor, providing Lily with a gracious look at its well-sculpted gluteus maximus.
With the image of that glorious ass in her mind, it took Lily a while to realize that she needed to sound the alarm.
"The hell?" Bradford said. The lights in the command center had turned blood red, with the normal sounds of activity drowned out in a typhoon of klaxon alarms.
"A breach?" a nearby tech asked.
"We're in flight, who could've breached us?" Bradford said. To another tech: "Where's the alarm coming from?"
"Deck 4, Research Labs," the tech replied. "It's the chief engineer."
"Put her on screen," Bradford said. Lily Shen's sleek features were soon superimposed on a nearby screen.
"Lily, what the hell's going on?" Bradford asked.
"To be honest, Central, I'm not entirely sure either," Lily said. "But I think we have an… intruder."
"You think?!" Bradford said.
"It's hard to tell," Lily said. "I was distracted, and then – I mean, I only caught a glimpse of it. But it appears to be –"
"CLOSE THE DOORS!" shouted Mr. Nguyen. The Vietnamese operator sprinted through the entrance, a hot cup of coffee in one hand. He didn't get far however, as naked man leaped atop his shoulders.
Mr. Nguyen scrabbled for purchase, but he went down. The Captain bounced from Mr. Nguyen's shoulders and climbed onto the hologlobe, exposing every facet of its primordial body to Mission Control.
"What the fuck?" Bradford said.
"Yeah, that's it," Lily said, covering her eyes.
"Central, we filming some kind of porno here?" a tech asked.
The Captain surveyed the room, its enormous eyes blinking every now and then. It arched its back and started hissing.
"For God's sake," Bradford muttered. He reached back, popped the lock of a small box, and removed a smooth pistol. He raised the pistol and fired.
The shot went wide. The Captain screeched, muscles rippling, and sprinted towards the nearest exit.
"Contain it!" Bradford ordered. "Don't let it get away!"
The techs did their best to obey that order, but the odds were stacked. It was 18 untrained technical personnel against a single, genetically modified Advent Captain. Anyone could predict the outcome.
Men and women flew in the air as the Captain punched and kicked its way through the crowd. A hapless engineer tried to beat down the Captain with a fire extinguisher, only to be sent reeling back as the Captain concussed him with it. A pair of technicians flew into the hologlobe, before rolling onto the floor.
Then, having cleared out most of the room, the Captain ran off, its hindquarters bidding XCOM's nerve center a fond farewell.
"Get bloody fucked, Jimmy!" Mrs. Sycamore screamed. Her shotgun roared in agreement, pounding a hole into an Advent trooper's stomach.
"And this one's for you, Gerald!"
The shotgun bellowed again, disarming another Advent trooper figuratively and literally.
One of the rebels glanced at Mrs. Sycamore and then at Zip.
"Merde. I can't tell who's weirder. You with your cat ears, or that screaming grammie," she said.
"Thank you?" Zip said. She gave a nervous smile, unsure of what exactly the strange woman was saying in that jumping, lyrical accent of hers.
The woman, thankfully, ignored her comment. She moved on with the rest of her group, leaping over crates of cargo, Advent corpses, and burning trucks towards the last remnants of the security force.
Zip stood and surveyed the area, looking for a target. Quickly, she caught sight of a lone trooper. He was retreating, clomping down the length of one of Advent's large, black flatbed trucks.
Zip drew her pistol from her hip, like Claymore told her. She looked down the sight, just like Claymore told her. Then she fired.
Unlike what Claymore had told her, however, Zip missed every shot. Magnetic bolts smashed into the floor of the flatbed truck, beating circular divots into the metal and motivating the trooper to move faster.
"Commandant, hilf mir!" screamed the trooper in a hoarse, hysterical voice. He raced faster down the truck, almost reaching the end. Zip sighed in disappointment. She hadn't killed a single thing today.
"Hilf –"
The trooper stumbled back, cut short by a rifle being shoved in his face. A burly, barrel-chested rebel, swathed in bandages and a bulletproof jacket, leaped atop the truck, bringing his rifle down against the trooper's head.
The trooper begged and tried to shout out again, but couldn't muster up the energy. Instead, a stream of babbling came from his mouth.
Zip looked at the scene, filled with unease and a little nausea. Memories flashed in her head. Sounds, almost similar to the ones the trooper was making, but with a bit more of a feminine screech.
More rebels climbed on top of the truck, punching, kicking, and beating the trooper with their rifles. The trooper kicked and screamed, rolling around like an upturned beetle. The sound of his armor hitting the floor repeated in a machine gun burst pattern.
Zip knelt to the ground. She felt like throwing up. Still, she grit her teeth and looked up at the roiling mass of people.
With a deep breath, she pulled out her pistol again. Aimed down the sight, and fired.
The bullet flew straight, whistling through the German wind and smashing straight into the Advent trooper's skull. The head imploded, hanging apart in tattered strips and showering the rebels' shins with blood. The trooper's arms and legs sputtered in the air for a brief second, then fell limp to the ground.
The rebels looked up, awestruck at having been fired upon by their presumed ally.
"Fucking bitch!" shouted one, raising her firearm at Zip.
"What's with the fuckin' trigger finger, mate?" one of the rebels groaned.
The others muttered as well, with a few others raising their guns in Zip's direction.
Zip froze, still on her knees.
One of the rebels, the same burly man who first struck the Advent trooper, walked over to her. Zip started to back away.
"Don't you fuckin' move!" shouted one of the rebels. She fired a few shots in the air. "Sit your ass down!"
The burly rebel reached Zip. He looked down, an outraged expression on his face. Zip's head barely went passed his blood-spattered pants.
"What were you doing," the man asked in a low voice.
"I'm here to help y –"
The man smacked her. A swift, fleeting motion that blew air across Zip's scalp.
"I asked what you were doing," he said.
Zip bit her lip. She'd been hit before. This time was no different. Go slow, be clear. Then it'll be alright.
"I," she said. "I wanted to… help that man. He didn't… deserve to be… hurt."
The man's hand went down again.
"You could've killed one of my troops," he said. "With your stupid –" He stopped. He finally saw her ears.
"Oh," he said, with a tone so dull it didn't even sound surprised. "You're city folk, aren't you." Again, louder. "You're city folk right? You with the enemy, right?"
Zip tried to muster a response, but stopped cold when the man unhooked something from his hip.
The rebel cocked the pistol now in his hand.
"Guess you're just another traitor on my tally, hm?" he said. "Guess –"
The man was cut off by a voice. A loud, warcry, brimming with blood and vengeance.
"WHO IN GOD'S GREEN EARTH IS HITTING MY BLOODY COMRADE?!"
The burly rebel turned just in time to meet the shotgun stock head on. A sickening crunch sound issued from his face, and he toppled onto the top of the truck. His pistol fell to the ground.
Behind him, Mrs. Sycamore looked at him, an expression of fury and outrage on her face. Zip could swear she saw her eyes flash red.
The man swore, rubbing his nose. Before he could get up, Mrs. Sycamore grabbed his face and jammed it into the ground.
"APOLOGISE, SONNY," Mrs. Sycamore screeched. "APOLOGISE TO MY FRIEND."
"Frck!" the man groaned. Then, as Mrs. Sycamore pushed down harder: "Frrckn sht! Mm – mm srry!"
Mrs. Sycamore let go, and grabbed him by the shoulder. Without a word, she punted him off the truck with a kick up the ass. The rebel landed in a bruised heap onto the ground.
"Hey, bitch!" cried one of the rebels, still a little dumbstruck from what just happened. "Wot you tryin' to –"
"I GAVE TEN OF THOSE GOOD FOR NOTHING ADVENT SCAMPS A DAMN WHIPPING. NOW MY BELT'S FUCKING WORN. YOU WANT THAT WORN SIDE, DEAR?!" Mrs. Sycamore hollered.
The rebel shut up. Mrs. Sycamore turned and grabbed Zip by the arm.
"Move on," she grunted to Zip. "We did what we came here for. Let's get what we need and leave."
"Y'all ready?" Firebrand barked over the loudspeaker.
Zip and Banks both let out a grunt as they pushed the last supply crate into the Skyranger's cargo net. Mrs. Sycamore turned and gave the cockpit window a thumbs up.
"Move it, folks," Firebrand said. "We don't want to be here when the Advent cleanup crew comes."
Banks and Zip loaded themselves into the Skyranger. Petrov stood up, shaking a bit. He rubbed a hand against the back of his head, still slick and covered in bandages.
"You alright, dear?" Mrs. Sycamore said. She slapped Petrov's hand away. "You musn't scratch at the compress. It'll only make it worse, dear."
She grabbed Petrov's hand. "Come. Let's get a move on."
Petrov rolled his eyes, but walked along with the old bat. They were on the skyranger's ramp when they heard footsteps behind them.
"Yo!"
Mrs. Sycamore turned around and saw a young man, dressed in a headscarf, aviators, and desert camo standing behind her.
"What do you want," she said, without humor or cheer.
"Hi, nice to meetya," the man said. He turned to Petrov. "Yo, mate. You got room for one more on this bird?"
Petrov furrowed his brow. "Why aren't you going home?"
Chris scratched his head and chuckled. "Well, you saved my ass. Couldn't save Jonesy or Mic, but what could we have bloody done? Think I owe you one."
Then, looking back and forth, he leaned forward and whispered to Petrov.
"Plus, the rest of that cheeky bunch are a bunch of old cunts," he said.
Petrov snorted. Mrs. Sycamore stared, not sure what to think.
"Fine," Petrov said. "Get in."
The Skyranger bounced into the air soon after, one passenger heavier. It began to fly towards the Avenger, following the slowly descending sun.
Beneath it, a dark-skinned man in military fatigues lowered a pair of binoculars. He barked a command, and soon, dozens of engines were roaring. Several pickup trucks began to caravan away from the warzone, heading in the opposite direction of the Skyranger.