Omega [REDUX]

Chapter 39

"HQ, this is Javelin. Current position 30 klicks out from target, ETA 5 minutes."

There was a brief delay before he received a reply, no doubt due to the interference in the area. "Copy that, Javelin. Uploading mission brief to you now. Good hunting."

Kristoff didn't like his mission one bit. Any mission that had to upload a mission brief mid-deployment meant that the situation was volatile, and that intel was coming in by the second. By the time they got to their target area a lot of things could have changed, leaving his squad dangerously vulnerable.

What was worse was that he didn't even know what he was flying into. All his pilot was given was a set of coordinates which didn't make sense, because the coordinates indicated elevation above ground level despite their dropship having no high-altitude drop capabilities. Administrative error? Tactical mistake? He didn't like any of the scenarios running through his head.

"Just got the package, sir," his team's tech specialist reported. He was a replacement for the one who got taken out in Blue Rose, but had adapted well to his new environment. "Uploading it to our HUDs."

His helmet's augmented reality protocols kicked in; a holographic rectangular display materialized on the dropship's floor, despite there not being any actual projection. Images and datafiles began filtering in. "Javelin," the briefing began, "at about 0100 hours there was an attack on a UIF military airship hovering in the troposphere of UIF airspace."

Bits of information clicked in his head. He checked his HUD's clock: 0300 hours. 2 hours since contact; anything could have changed since then.

"The vessel is a Support Cruiser class, registered as a mobile database for UIF information centers. Shipboard sensors and equipment are still transmitting data, despite a successful neutralization of long-range surveillance protocols. However, we can confirm attacks are affiliated with Empyrean."

"Damn," another soldier swore. "Another attack? They're really ramping it up."

"As of this moment, we can confirm they have taken the crew hostage. Multiple squadrons of security crew went down before the rest surrendered. Their forces have completed a full sweep of the ship, and have since retreated to a part of the ship currently unknown to us. You will be deploying at the maintenance landing pad."

Three images in particular were selected and expanded upon his display. They were grainy and blurred at first; the resolution improved after three layers of scrubbing, revealing three distinct shapes. "Onboard signatures and our analysts have also confirmed overwhelming traces of kinesis. Presence of all three Ascendants extremely likely. Detailed analysis of their powers and abilities, compiled by UIF sources, has been included within this upload. Additional intel will be uploaded to you as we receive it. Your mission is to repel the attackers and find out what they're doing aboard. Good luck, Javelin."

No one spoke, but Kristoff knew alarm bells were going off in everyone's head. They hadn't signed up for this shit. Why the hell were they being sent in first instead of their own Ascendants? He wasn't one to back down from a fight, but he wasn't stupid either; even with Elsa, he had lost four people out of his team trying to take down one Ascendant. Sure, he and his team might have a semblance of anti-Ascendant tactics, but how the hell was he supposed to deal with three? If they got ambushed as they deployed—

"We're fucked," someone else vocalized the one thought on everyone's minds.

"That we are, soldier," he said, grudgingly admitting their predicament. "We're in for one hell of a mission."

"Coming up on our drop zone, sir," came the pilot. Kristoff glanced out of the Hummingbird's porthole, watching the body of the Support Cruiser engulf it completely. With a whirr, the pilot disengaged the craft's stealth drive and brought it into a gentle spin, guns facing their drop-off point. Kristoff unbuckled himself from the seat and drew his ASAR-2, his squadmates following suit.

As the craft descended towards the strangely unguarded landing pad, the dropship's ramp deployed with a hiss, and Kristoff raised his semi-automatic rifle to take point. "On me," he whispered through his COM unit, "and keep your eyes peeled. You all know exactly what you're dealing with here."

His heart pounded in his chest, and he swore he felt cold sweat drip down the side of his forehead. Fear coursed through his veins. But he swallowed and pushed his concerns to the back of his mind. He still had a job to do. Keep it simple, Kristoff. Secure a foothold and wait for reinforcements.

With any luck, it would be exactly what he needed.

The dropship's wheels hit the floor. His squadron bounded out of dropship, scanning the area with their weapons, securing a perimeter. When Kristoff was satisfied he took a knee at the entrance to the ship, holding the angle on the passageway, his eyes darting from left to right. Two other soldiers moved to cover him as the Hummingbird's engines powered up again, whirring into silence as it departed.

It was quiet. Strangely quiet. The Support Cruiser's engines hummed in the background, audible through his helmet, but that was the only sign that anything was running. The ship seemed otherwise dead, eerie, haunting silent. Where the hell is the enemy? They should be swarming over this ship to guard it and prevent incursions.

"What's our move, sir?"

Kristoff brought up a schematic of the surrounding area onto their synced HUDs, and marked out a series of corridors. "Sweep the area and establish a perimeter. We can start taking back this ship corridor by corridor.

It felt really strange to not be in a suit. To never need a suit ever again when she deployed.

Elsa had insisted, however, on bringing along weapons. Her logic was simple: they wouldn't know when they would ever need spare weapons, even if they had powers. Anna still hadn't discovered her power's limits, but Elsa had, and she was convinced that the same kinds of limits would apply to Anna.

So it was some modicum of relief that she felt for the sniper rifle on the seat next to her, meticulously modded with burst-fire, quick-reload and quick-draw modules, optimized and trigger-coded to her hands (and Elsa's) to ensure it couldn't be used by the wrong people. The past five weeks had been hard work, Elsa having been unwilling to compromise their operational capabilities despite the privileges and privacy they had been accorded. Anna had trained and trained, making sure to push her powers as far as she possibly could, all the while maintaining her physical prowess and combat skills. Having a computer in her head was one thing, Elsa constantly reminded her. Learning how to use it was another.

Not to say that she didn't enjoy it, or the time she had spent with Elsa. And it was all about to pay off, in a sense; one way or another, she'd see what she was capable of today. She refused to admit it to herself, but she was nervous to some degree. Especially after she'd read the mission brief.

All three Ascendants? She leaned back in her seat as the drone climbed into their incursion vector towards the outer atmosphere, her augmented senses picking up every hum, every vibration of the engines, but also a comprehensive sensing of the machinery's current state, which was currently somewhat straining from the g-forces but withholding with relative ease.

She'd gotten used to the feeling of understanding technology.

She hadn't gotten used to understand herself just as much. Five weeks of training still hadn't changed that.

"Hey." A video feed Elsa's face materialized in her eyes' HUD, behind the metal plates now shielding her face. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said quickly.

"You're a bad liar."

She smirked, knowing that Elsa could see her face too. "Well I can't exactly admit that I'm completely terrified right now, can I?"

"Nothing's wrong with that." Anna felt the craft shudder through turbulence as Elsa piloted the drone through a particularly rough patch of air. "I know how you feel," Elsa went on. "I was terrified of fighting anyone again, especially whenever I went up against them. Especially knowing I have to kill them, because I can't bring them back."

Anna winced at Elsa's difficulty to properly refer to the Ascendants, no doubt a remnant of her emotional scarring. "I don't know if what we've trained to do is enough," she admitted. "I just—"

"It will be," Elsa assured her. "I know you, and what you're capable of."

"I hope you're right."

She watched Elsa smirk. "At the very least, even if we go down we won't have any regrets, will we?"

Recalling the past few week's amorous activities only served to make Anna blush, temporarily freeing her from the clutches of fear. "God, the things we did the past few weeks…"

"I know, right? Wouldn't trade that for the world."

"Well let's try to make sure we'll have more of those moments."

"Hoo-ah."

Anna felt her ears pop, and yawned to clear the sensation. They were definitely on their entry vector now, and they were bound to deploy soon. "How far out are we?"

"Two minutes out." The feed disappeared from her augmented vision as Elsa disengaged the cockpit controls, standing up and grabbing her weapons. "We're running on autopilot here on out. Prepare to deploy."

The craft stabilized out. Anna detached the straps on her seat and pushed herself up, moving to the drone's back ramp. She ran a diagnostics check on herself and the weapons she carried, attaching the rifle to the metallic grip on her back, glancing at her body scanners to ensure everything was up to speed.

"Stand straight," she said to Elsa as she reached the ramp. Her vision scanned up and down Elsa's suit, running diagnostics on every component meticulously, even more so than she did with her own body. Everything checked out: weapons and suit mechanisms were fully functional, bio-readings within acceptable ranges. "You're good to go."

"We sure know how to cut it close," came Elsa's reply, prompting Anna to glance at the mission timer. 30 seconds left.

She watched Elsa slam the ramp release. The roaring of the air reached her ears, gusts of wind battering at her bodice, but she held her ground, clenching her fists as the night sky became visible, stars twinkling above the Support Cruiser glided, a tiny dot 38 kilometers below. Anna swallowed, realizing just how daunting this jump was.

"I am terrified, Elsa," Anna finally admitted.

"I know." They took their jumping positions. "On me, in three, two, one—"

They broke into a sprint. Anna bounded on the edge of the ramp and leapt, bringing her body into a dive, throttling towards the cruiser. Her HUD marked out the cruiser's outline, her brain's integrated processes plotting an entry vector. Her bodice's metal plates began to reform into thrusters; she could feel herself making minor course corrections with every second that she fell. The earth rushed up to meet her, growing bigger every moment, her target now within reasonable distance.

Amidst her panic she almost forgot to enjoy how exhilarating it was.

Kristoff's squad received the semi-garbled, noisy but encrypted transmission simultaneously. "Javelin Uni—, do y— opy? I repe—, do you copy?"

"Copy that," Kristoff replied. "Who is this?"

"This is Omega-1. We're coming in hot, ETA 30 seconds."

Kristoff's elite soldiers were trained to maintain discipline, and silence, no matter the circumstances, but he could almost hear the relief from his squad as they got the message. For good reason too; what better way to fight Ascendants than with Ascendants? "Roger that, Omega-1. What's your entry vector?"

"Making a breach via the roof. We're burning in stealthy, so hold your position. We'll come to you."

"Roger that."

Elsa felt the suit's jetbrakes slam into her upper torso as she landed on the cruiser's reinforced hull, just like every simulation she'd been through. It wasn't too loud; they'd reached a sane velocity before touchdown to ensure they wouldn't be detected by hostile forces.

What they were about to do next probably would.

Her boots magnetized upon contact with the hull, giving her feet a firm grip on the metal hull. Anna clamped down a few feet away. Elsa retrieved the breaching charge from her belt and mounted it gingerly on the hull, painstakingly ensuring that it wouldn't fall off

"Remind me how a charge the size of our palm can break through 2 metres of reinforced plating?" Anna asked, keeping her distance.

Elsa stepped back and tapped the datapad mounted on her right gauntlet to trigger the device. Three beeps emanated from the metallic device, before an explosion rocked the entire hull; even Elsa found herself staggering from the shockwave. The smoke and sparks drifted with the air currents, clearing to reveal a clean hole in the ship's outer and inner armor layers. "You convinced yet?"

Anna managed to nod just before Elsa jumped down the hole they'd blown.

She drew her rifle as she hit the deck rolling to break her fall. Two Empyrean soldiers on patrol rounded the corner, evidently investigating the explosion; the silenced AAR1 dealt two quick shots to their heads even before they had a chance to draw their weapons, bodies collapsing in a heap.

"We need to move," she said as Anna hit the ground next to her. "They're bound to send more to investigate."

"Do we split up and scour the ship? We can cover more ground that way."

"Not exactly; you go on ahead, but I still need to cover Javelin. They won't last long against Ascendants otherwise. I need you to recon the ship's data servers and make sure they're secure. From there I need you to sweep to the lower levels. If all goes well, we rendezvous at Javelin's insertion point."

"Roger that."

"And Anna," Elsa said just as Anna turned to leave, retrieving her sniper rifle, "take care of yourself."

Anna turned back, reached over and clunked helmets with Elsa. "Same goes for you."

Then she was off, sprinting down the corridor, rifle in hand, metal plates shifting with her every movement.

Kristoff looked the white suited woman up and down as she reached his entrenched position. At first they exchanged no words; she turned to check her corners and made sure she wasn't being followed. Then she took a knee behind a wall and turned to him.

"Kristoff."

"Elsa," Kristoff acknowledged. Where's Anna?"

"She's headed for the data centers. Empyrean almost certainly want something to do with them if they seized this ship."

"Fair enough. What's our next move?"

"I've retconned the areas marked on your schematic," she said, as another portion of Kristoff's map flashed red. "Area is clear; only resistance was two scouts we took down during our breach. No time for them to get off an alarm, so we still have the element of surprise. What about you?"

"It's strange. There was literally no resistance when we landed." He shifted his weight from one knee to the other, thumbing the safety on his rifle. "I don't like it. Any capable force who'd want to secure the cruiser would be bound to have it crawling with reinforcements, scouring the ship for potential intruders or stragglers. Send their Ascendants on board but not secure it better? I doubt even Empyrean thinks they're that capable."

"Maybe they don't necessarily want the ship itself," Elsa deadpanned.

Kristoff raised an eyebrow from behind his visor. "Not wanting the ship? I've heard stranger things, but that is doesn't make a lot of sense. Because if that's the case, then what could they possibly want?"

"I don't know. I intend to find out."

Anna checked every corner she passed as she proceeded down the hallways. After a while she slung her rifle over her shoulder and drew her sidearm, ensuring that her weapons wouldn't jut out from behind a corner and giver away her position. She had her augmentations scan for heat signatures and outgoing signal sources to seek out enemy soldiers.

She couldn't see much heat signatures because the whole ship was hot from all its circuits, so she was better off eyeballing it than attempting to wallhack her way through the corridors. As for signal sources…

Feedback slammed into her, forcing her to stumble and take cover. Anna hadn't been expecting that much dataflow to be present, quickly shutting off her signal receivers and scanning her surroundings. Her head continued to pound, but at least she was well enough to assess the surrounding area for threats.

Nothing. She hadn't been caught off guard thus far.

Mustering her courage and mental will, Anna checked her feeds again. This time the feedback was manageable, and she got a much better read on its source. A huge amount of data was being intercepted around the ship's data centers, so it was logical that the data centers were the source. The load was much higher than any normal routine data dump from UIF servers. But in the middle of an Empyrean attack? That was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

She marked the signal source on her schematic and proceeded.

It was a slow and tense walk to the data centers. The corridors remained eerily quiet; as she got closer to her destination the data feedback intensified, and she found herself unable to triangulate the position of enemy soldiers based on data flows. Not that she hadn't trained to function with only her eyes and ears, but it made everything all the scarier.

Eventually she could hear the humming well enough that she didn't need to track the data feedback anymore. Anna walked up to the cycling door and took cover next to its control panel. "I'm at the data center," she reported through her comm. "Moving in to recon."

"Copy that," Elsa radioed back. "Stay safe. I'm moving through the upper levels."

Anna palmed her metal faceplate, subconsciously making sure she was protected; they'd noticed a tendency for her to forget to put that on when she was training. She checked her limb thrusters were operational. Then she slammed the control panel release, fired off a flashbang from her arm's mechanical storage and counted a beat.

Before the resounding bang had echoed off the walls Anna had stormed the door, her sensors sending short-range sonar waves along the halls. Shouts of alarms reached her ears even as she turned around a wall of data clusters, her aiming reticules lining up with enemy soldiers. She squeezed the trigger in rapid succession, her hands darting from left to right, bodies falling all around her in a frenzy.

Her gun clicked, empty. Anna dived to the side to avoid incoming hails of lead, reloading her weapon in the same movement. When she emerged from cover she pulled off two quick shots, downing her adversaries before pistol whipping another who had gotten too close, her arm thrusters easily smashing through his skull. Bone and metal alike cracked beneath her blows as she continued her rampage.

Another flash of movement; two soldiers had used the tall datacenters as cover to flank her. Anna fired a burst of lead into the first soldier, using her momentum to sidestep the second one. He'd gone for a standard jab, leaving him room to recover and retaliate; she blocked his first punch, deflected his follow-up elbow strike, her arm reaching along his to pull him in close, her other hand sprouting a mechanical blade as she boosted forward, stabbing right through his armor and piercing his flesh as she slammed him into a wall. He collapsed limply.

Her shields flared as additional rounds made contact with her; Anna merely strengthened her shielding and returned fire, shroud barrels sprouting from her shoulders to fire bullets in all directions. Her ambushers fell in one clean swoop, her shield capacitors holding well, weapon barrels smoking from the bursts of fire.

Can't risk that happening again, she thought, as her shields returned to normal. Anna slammed her back against a nearby column of datacenters for cover, pausing for a moment to catch her breath and check her supplies. She exhausted one store of shroud rounds, had a decent amount of standard ammunition left alongside one smoke grenade and 2 more flashbangs. Beyond that, she'd be down to whatever she could conjure up on the fly

She scanned the area for additional hostiles. None that she could detect. She was clear for now, but she kept getting the nagging feeling that something wasn't particularly right. Massive dataflows indicate their primary focus was something to do with the data centers, but only leave a single squadron to guard it? Anna reloaded and took stock of the available ammunition she still had on her, then scanned the area once again. You could never be too careful.

Time to find out what the hell is going on. Her neural interface began to sync with the data centers, her eyes scanning through her data feeds to look out for anomalies. She forced her mind to cope with the massive mental strain, gritting her teeth as she began to sieve through the data.

"You think they knew we were coming?"

"They definitely knew we were coming," Elsa said to the soldier who spoke up. "Who the hell attacks anything without expecting a counter-response?"

"I think he means that they knew exactly how, and where, we were coming from," Kristoff replied for him. "It makes some kind of sense, given the nature of their incursion thus far."

"And it's extremely unlikely." Elsa peeked a corner as Kristoff covered the other angle, before raising her rifle and proceeding. She'd taken point for the squadron; from an entirely practical standpoint, it was better for her to get shot first then anyone else present. "Conspiracy theories are often not the answer."

"Advanced scanning?" another soldier popped up. "Could be that their intel capabilities surpassed our known standards."

"If I know Empyrean well enough they're too focused on developing their 'human progression' philosophy than technological progression," she shot back. "Trust me, I know exactly what I'm talking about."

"They'd also shoot us out of the sky if they spotted us coming," Kristoff said. "No point letting us in."

Elsa checked another corner, and whipped back around immediately, holding up a hand for the rest of the squad. She peeked again, more cautiously this time, and spotted Edmund and Edward holding position at the walkway to the ship's bridge.

"What is it—?" someone began. Elsa held up her hand sharply, silencing him. The Ascendants were bound to be able to hear them through their helmets.

True to her deduction, Edward actually looked up, scanning the area. But by then all of them had ducked behind cover. Elsa slid a fiber optic receiver along the wall she'd taken cover behind, initializing its systems. A video feed popped up on their screens, along with grainy and suppressed audio. Both Edward and Edmund are here, but where's Elaine? I've hardly known them to split up on operations…

"Say what?" Edmund could be heard.

They couldn't hear the response, mainly because Edmund was receiving from an earpiece. But from their body language Elsa could tell that the response was not welcome news for the Ascendants. "You're saying that we've been compromised?" He paused to listen to the response. Elsa's heart sank a little further into despair.

"Get it settled," Edmund began. "Deal with it before—"

His eyes stared straight at the fiber optic receiver, and he paused.

Shit. Realising that her cover was blown, Elsa sent an ice beam along the length of the receiver's cable that lashed out at her adversaries. Eyes widening, Edmund rolled to the side in time, but the blast caught Edward dead center, sending him flying into a wall, sending dust and debris flying next to his plethora of vulgarities.

"Engage, engage!" she could hear Kristoff yelling. "Form up and focus fire!"

Elsa broke cover, drawing her assault rifle, simply holding the trigger down and letting it spew hot lead at Edmund. His skin morphed to stone, but his ability to do so was hindered by the bullets chipping away at him. As her ammo counter ran to zero Elsa ejected her clip, dodged Edmund's retaliatory lunge and slammed a fresh clip into the weapon.

Edmund, forced down by the resulting hails of lead from the rest of the soldiers, hunkered down to solidify. Elsa began to fire again, but caught a burst of flame in the corner of her eye just in time. Even as she conjured her ice shields the blast knocked her off her feet.

"YOU AGAIN!" Edward leapt into the air, body ablaze, sweeping the ground where the soldiers stood, prompting them to dive to the side to avoid to blaze. Edmund recovered, firing off a huge boulder towards Elsa, who recovered just in time for her to encase her body in icy armor and punch right through the rock.

It was a mistake; Edmund had lunged at her in that split second, snarling as he did. Her heart sank as his fist connected with her torso, sending her smashing through at least three walls of steel and a full sublevel down.

Movement.

Anna disengaged her neural interface from the datacenters and scanned the area. Her motion sensor had triggered. Something was stalking her.

And if their analysis of the remaining Empyrean Ascendants had taught her anything, that could only suggest one person. She kept her eyes peeled, her muscles and mechanisms tensed to fire, her hands clenching into fists.

A bright flash of metal. Anna turned and swung, elbow thrusters firing, her fist catching Elaine in the chin. Her attacker's momentum sent Elaine into a spin before she crashed into the metal floor, sliding along it for a few feet. Anna had barely drawn her rifle to pull off a few shots before Elaine had recovered, leapt off the floor and lunged straight towards her, arms morphing into gleaming blades. Anna blocked the blow with her rifle, rolling onto her back and kicking Elaine over her. She quickly took a knee, and as Elaine slammed into the bulkhead behind her, Anna's shoulder sprouted the net launcher, firing off the solid steel net that clamped itself over the Ascendant.

Elaine grunted, trying to free herself with brute force, before glancing down at Anna. "Not bad for a newcomer," she said, a grin on her face.

Anna stared back at her, snarling behind her visor. "Cut the crap. I'm not here to chitchat."

"You're feisty, I'll give you that." To Anna's surprise, Elaine's body turned to liquid metal, allowing her to ease herself through the net's holes, landing on the ground with her signature agility as she reformed. "But you're nowhere near as good as me."

A blur of movement; Elaine fired off a metal spike straight at Anna's faceplate, but it never reached its intended target. Anna simply caught the spike midair. She took grim satisfaction at the look of shock on Elaine's face as she tossed the spike aside and brought her rifle up to bear, pulling off three quick bursts as she advanced. Elaine staggered under the impact of the rounds, despite dealing no damage to her as she absorbed the metal, but it was all the opening Anna needed to thruster herself in and slam the rifle butt onto the side of Elaine's face. She could see the dent in Elaine's cheek as she followed up with a flurry of attacks, sending Elaine back into a wall.

Then Anna missed a single punch, her metal fist slamming through the wall.

Elaine's blade arm came right at her face, ricocheting off her faceplate, but not before leaving a gash that Anna's nanocells scrambled to repair. Shards of metal sent Anna staggering back, and before she could recover Elaine's leg had slammed into her torso, sending her flying backwards. Her thrusters engaged to stabilize her, and Anna blocked the subsequent blow from Elaine, using her thrusters to deliver a powerful jab to Elaine's neck.

The dent cut off her airflow, forcing her to choke; Anna's right arm weaponized into a railgun, absorbing the shard Elaine had embedded in her earlier and loading it as a shell.

Elaine didn't have time to see Anna smirk before she fired the gun point blank. She crashed through the wall, smashing through datacenters and landing in the next room.

"How's that for being somewhere as good as you?" Anna taunted, stepping over the debris.

Elaine spat blood as she stood up. "Oh don't worry," she replied, smiling through crimson teeth. "I'm just getting started."