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As the Dominion armored convoy rolled up the narrows, the quiet settled everyone's fighting spirit down. Though kept on the alert, the soldiers started up their idle chatter to pass the time. Little John didn't have that many opportunities to see the military culture of the ordinary Dominion soldier up close, the fault lay with the abrasive first impressions non-citizens like him got when first meeting the expeditionary forces. They kind of grew on him, seeing how naturally friendly some of the grunts were when they weren't so high-strung or gung ho.
Even the mean bitch Kitty, in her own rough way, was swapping raunchy jokes with some of the specialists.
"Hey Reyncourt!" The driver said, "If you had to fuck a girl, gun to your head, who would it be?"
"Do I look like I swing both ways to you, Corporal Metz?" The judge replied with a disapproving arch of the brow.
"Yeah, you kinda do!" Came the reply, eliciting several barely suppressed snickers from the other soldiers. Even John had to crack a smile at that, as the most inappropriate thoughts involving the judge and a few lovely doves from the Nest crossed his mind.
Kitty picked up the first object within reach, which was a tin cup from the coffee-maker kit, and hurled it at the soldier. The driver squeaked as it bounced off of his helmet, to the adulation of his peers. The judge played along with his game and thought a bit on the best answer. "Easy, Lily Gallagher. No gun necessary."
"Ain't that the one they nominated Miss April?" Specialist Torres, the team's eyebot technician, piped up. He balanced a little drone in his lap as the vehicle rocked from side to side. The man swore under his breath as the screwdriver he was twisting slipped from the open panel, "Motherfucker."
"She kinda looks like you, if you bothered to smile every once in a while." Metz remarked, "Blonde, proportionate, bit of a dom. Might have a chance if you ask her out when we get back to the capital."
"Homosexuality is illegal in the Dominion, Metz." Kitty declared, "Besides, I'm a married woman. Gotta stay faithful to the job or it's gonna fuck me up."
"Ah ah, it don't count if it's two girls and a dude." One rook announced, bumping fists with his friend. He was referring to the legal loophole concerning homosexual behavior in the Dominion. A pair was a direct violation, but a party of three was tolerated in certain circles. The only reason why it was included as a law was to prevent genetic dead-ends, as the breeding program endeavored to keep the population up for the foreseeable future.
"Yeah, you see that's the problem." The corporal said, "You don't get nearly enough RR, so you're uptight. Gotta take good care of yourself, find that little balance between work and play."
"Really? You an expert on women's psychology now?"
"Naw, just you." Metz added with a grin, turning his head to Little John who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him. "Hey Johnny! This pass leading off to somewhere? Damn thing feels like it's stretchin' for miles, and it don't look like it's getting any wider!"
John nodded, "It does, just a quarter of a kay-em more and we'll be comin' out to an old bridge."
"Kay-em? You mean 'kilometer'?"
John opened his mouth to speak, only to be cut off by a deafening explosion that sent boulders raining down on the convoy. Dust clouds covered the entire pass, and the resulting debris blocked off the only route heading out of the narrows. Metz slammed his foot on the brakes and everyone inside snapped into action-mode.
The corporal grabbed a radio and barked at the Centaurs behind him, "Contact! Contact! Back the fuck up, go go!"
Upside, the turret rattled as the gunner traversed to the right and unloaded a burst from the 20mm chain. The patter of small-arms fire shot from all directions above the convoy added to the stress of their situation. Snowball barked and whined, desperate to get out of the moving box of steel. The Dominion anticipated an ambush from somewhere along the route, but still, no one could've been fully prepared for what the Crowes had in store. The convoy did its best to back out of the pass, but the enemy had them sighted and ranged for the launchers. Rockets screeched, detonating all over the pathway until one managed to set fire to the rear vehicle and blocked the exit.
The convoy channel erupted with reports of a vehicle knocked out of action, "Six is down! Six is down! We're boxed in!"
"Forget trying to back out of this shit!" Kitty barked, "Gunner, pop smoke and cover!"
"Roger, popping smoke!" The gunner acknowledged, pressing a button on the panel close to the auto-loader. The canisters launched into the air and exploded into a cloud of white stinging smoke, blanketing the area in a heavy shroud that prevented the Crowe gunmen from getting a bead on the troops. It bought the Dominion enough time to come pouring out of their vehicles to minimize casualties as the Centaurs proved to be mostly good for drawing enemy fire.
"Someone get me comms on some fucking CAS. Tell them to strafe these bastards." The judge put on her helmet and got her mag-rifle ready, "Saddle up, boys! We're shooting our way out of here!"
"Covering fire!" The gunner announced, firing the main gun. A fin-stabilized HEAT shell thundered away and hit the ridge holding up a dozen Crowes, sending them tumbling down the pass and into the narrows.
The rooks scrambled out of the Centaur, Kitty roared at John when he tried to get out with them. "No! You're an asset, you sit your fucking ass down!"
"I know how to fight, lady!"
"I don't want to worry about you getting shot while I'm trying to un-fuck this clusterfuck, do as you're told!"
Kitty didn't linger to see if he got the message, she slammed the door behind her as she went out the back. Corporal Metz slapped John on the shoulder when he stubbornly unclipped his seatbelt, "Hey, what the hell did she just say? You got some kind of death-wish, asshole? Stay back and let the professionals handle this shit. You'll just get in the way."
John growled and slammed his fist on the dashboard in frustration, wincing slightly when a stray round left a spider-web crack on the windshield. The bulletproof glass kept the bullet from entering the Centaur, as did the armor. The only thing he didn't like was the fact that the Crowes were toting some bigger guns, and two inches of steel wouldn't be enough to keep all of that firepower back. "Yall sure we're safe here?"
"Safe?" Metz laughed, "Here? You're kiddin' me, right?"
Outside, Kitty utilized all the best that her country's tech could bring. Specialist Torres sent his drones up in the sky to mark and snipe enemies, transferring all that data to the HUD's built into each rook's goggles. Through the smoke, they could see the highlighted silhouettes of the Crowe gunmen and executed their counterattack with ruthless precision. The clansmen weren't just raiding supply trucks this time, they were facing the Dominion's finest. Every fiber in their being itched to prove to the primitive wasters that civilized men may speak softly, but they also carried a big stick. Of course, the Dominion wasn't one to speak softly but the big stick metaphor remains.
The judge saw the outline of a rocketeer readying his weapon. She raised her mag-rifle and blasted his head clean off. The mag-rifle vibrated in her hands as it charged up another round, Kitty searched for another target and shot another gunman. The rooks hugged the walls and surrounding rocks for cover, moving up slowly through the blocked pass till they reached the debris clogging up the narrows.
"Judge, be advised, big-bird is 2 mikes out. ETA 30 minutes."
"Wonderful, fight's gonna be over by then!" Kitty huffed, "Tell those flyboys to haul ass or they'll find nothing but the vultures picking over our corpses! Out!"
"Reyncourt!" A rook cried out in alarm, "Heads up! They're rushing us!"
Sure enough, once the smoke started to clear up, Simon Crowe and his boys leapt into the pass guns blazing. They wanted to make sure that the Dominion convoy wasn't getting out of the narrows alive, per the patriarch's orders, and made a mad dash for the armored cars. The Dominion big guns thundered one after the other, reducing much of the surrounding hills and bluffs to crumbling dust, bringing with them scores of screeching Crowe clansmen.
Simon staggered to the side when he saw Kitty's mag-rifle fire. The high-velocity round launched the gunman next to him backwards and even killed the guy running behind him. Similar streaks of blue and white shot out from the narrows as the soldiers tried to repel the wasters. The other clansmen boldly clashed with the rooks in that tight space, transforming the fight into a messy brawl. They didn't care if they were taking losses, that same savage bloodlust they felt in the attack on Autumntown drove them forward with wild abandon. Kitty shot at Simon just as he closed the distance. The man struck the delicate piece of hardware with a machete, breaking the containment sheath covering the acceleration shaft which caused the rifle to burst in a tiny ball of blue sparks.
The judge uttered a loud curse and took a few steps back. She reached for her sidearm, only to be tackled by the stocky ruffian to the dirt. Simon pinned her down and raised his machete.
Little John saw the whole thing go down from the inside of the Centaur. Corporal Metz was busy on the radio, directing targets as well as coordinating with the other drivers. The rook didn't see Kitty fall, but the Jackson man did. John whipped out his .44 and shoved his whole body out the door. Snowball went after him to protect his master.
Simon was bringing his weapon down on Kitty's head again and again, each blow getting closer to splitting her face in two as it cut deeply into her helmet. The woman was desperately trying to shield herself with her hard-suit gauntlets, but Simon just kept coming. He had this crazed wide-eyed bloodshot look on his face, the type of face most Crowes had in a fight. He enjoyed being on the topside of a scrap, especially when it was a woman.
A shot from John's .44 shattered his machete blade into pieces just as he brought it back for a final blow. The shrapnel lodged into the back of his head and left temple. Blood trickled in streams all over his face and neck. Simon went blind, confused and partially deaf. His arm went limp all of a sudden.
"What the f-"
John squeezed the trigger again, and the man's head launched back, bringing his whole body with it as he toppled over. Once Simon was dead, John shot a few more Crowes to make room and approached the fallen judge. Kitty lay where she had fallen, motionless as though dead. Concerned, the Jackson Railsplitter crouched beside her and reached down to remove her helmet. The visor was split down the middle and blood splattered the HUD screen. Fearing the worst, John slipped his fingers under the helmet and slid it free from her head.
He was met with a bloodied and terrified expression, the first he'd seen from a cold statuesque woman like Kitty. Her left eye was half-closed, bloody from the pieces of glass and the blade that cut her head. Apart from that, she seemed alright although the fact that she was so close to dying might have some lasting effects.
John was astonished, allowing a wry smile to form on his lips. He hauled the woman to her feet, giving her shoulder a good shake. "Keep your head on, judge. Fight ain't over yet."
"Y-Yeah..." Kitty mumbled, finding her voice. Her face contorted into a quiet smoldering rage, "Let's finish this."
The attack was soon repelled. Dozens of Crowes littered the ground alongside the Dominion dead. The ambushers retreated once more into the woodlands, only to be strafed and blown to pieces by the wrathful Condor gunships. Calling in air support thinned the Crowe clansmen numbers, paving the way for the final confrontation with the patriarch himself. But first, the Dominion convoy would have to lick its wounds before proceeding further into Wintertown.
As the gunships circled around the narrows, the rooks worked quickly to clear the path of both dead and debris. Their fallen were wrapped up in bags, then loaded up for transport to the nearest outpost. The wounded were given the best field-treatment possible to get them back in the fight. For some, the auto-doc built into one of the Centaurs could only do so much for their injuries. Among them was Kitty. She sustained damage to her eye that left her blind in that side, and would remain so unless she sought a more meticulous operation away from the field- which didn't sit quite well as an option for the judge.
She was hurt and she was angry. The loss of an eye, though an obvious impairment and liability to her mission, only hardened her resolve to see it through.
"You're one tough nut, lady." John remarked as he watched Kitty endure the repeated jabs of the needle-like fingers of the auto-doc. He didn't like the thought of approaching her at all that day, but something told him that the abrasiveness she'd once and recently shown went with that bullet he put into Simon Crowe.
Although it may be premature to assume so, there was a subtle change in Kitty's demeanor. She still looked at him with that piercing suspicious glare, but when she spoke to him she wasn't doing it in that provocative high-and-mighty Dominion imperialist tone that once vexed him to no end. Kitty spoke to him coolly now, with a form of begrudging respect.
He deserved it. After all, he did save her life.
"Thank you." She said while suiting up and putting on the bandage over her eye. The judge had administered a good deal of med-x and stims to herself, so that she would have the strength to carry on with the fight. Dominion medicine had its benefits. "No way a waster with a fucking machete's gonna keep me down."
John knew better than to poke fun at her or gloat over the issue, so he just accepted it as it was. "We ready to do this shit?"
Kitty requisitioned a new mag-rifle and a replacement helmet. She eyed the man's choice of arms and shook her head. As a display of trust, she offered him a weapon of his choice from the convoy arsenal as well as some body armor to improve his chances of survival. "Not if you're going to battle with a six shooter and those rags. Pick up a rifle, I'll walk you through it."
Little John wore a silly grin the whole time he got familiar with the mag-rifle and the protective plate that covered the basics of personal protection. All it took was killing the right man at the right time, and Judge Reyncourt stopped being a total bitch. Now she was just half a bitch.
"You sure you ain't sittin' this one out?" John asked one last time, "I've seen a couple o' buddies o' mine who each lost an eye, said it messed up their c'rdination."
"Shut the fuck up, John." Kitty growled as she helped him climb inside the Centaur. "It's just an eye, not my shooting hand. And the last thing I need today is you fussing over me."
"Yes ma'am."
The Dominion convoy, now reinforced by air cover, continued on its way. John did his best to help them avoid more ambushes, managing only to cut their engagements by half. The Crowes were relentless, they didn't want the invaders to get any closer to Wintertown. It got so bad that they started throwing in slaves strapped with explosives, like walking bombs, to delay the Dominion advance. That's where it got complicated for John. He hesitated to shoot at the women and children when they started popping out of random foxholes or tunnels, forced to run out to the convoy so that the Crowes could blow a few rooks up with them.
Kitty and the rooks didn't have such reservations, they cut them down, each collateral kill came with a promise of vengeance. If they found a Crowe clansman, they made sure he was dead on sight.
"If you ain't holdin' back, how am I gonna trust you to hold fire when it's the hostages that pop up next?" John said to Kitty.
The judge thought on his words a bit, then replied. "Would it serve your clan better when you're blown to pieces?"
"You know what I mean, judge."
"Oh yes I do, and when the time comes for us to rescue your family you'll know."
After pushing through a few ambushes later, the Dominion convoy finally reached the frost-flecked mountainside shelter of Wintertown. By then, the forges and the great-mines had gone silent. The armories had been emptied of weapons and ammunition. Whatever was left of the Crowes holed up and fortified their positions along the red brick walls that lined the outer perimeter. All the big guns they could field were set up on the guard towers and crudely welded pillboxes. All the explosives were primed in key choke points. After enduring their attacks for weeks, Kitty had had enough of the clan. She didn't say it out loud, but John's family came second as a priority.
Whatever was going to happen that day, it would end with the death of every Crowe clansman. Their entire generation, wiped out.
The Dominion spared no expense in carrying out the operation. Condor gunships unleashed their deadly payload to soften up the Crowe defenses for the ground units to storm later. It was a tactic that worked well for them for years, this time it wasn't so different.
"Someone ring that bell." Kitty declared.
"You got it, judge." The Centaur gunner acknowledged, "On the way!"
The armored car rocked back violently once he pressed the trigger. The walls came down as two other Centaurs fired their main guns in quick succession. Dust and debris puffed out in a nice red ball of fire. With the way forward cleared, the convoy infantry dismounted and stormed the heavily bombarded town to take the Crowes' territory. They were a mixed bunch, those soldiers. Some wore power-armor, others with hard-suits, some others just went with simple kevlar.
Wayne Crowe stepped out of his office, clutching tightly a frayed old rope. He'd just finished tying up the old woman, Mama Jackson, to a post when he heard the soldiers blast their way through Wintertown's defenses. In between a stream of curses and obscenities, the patriarch bellowed orders for his ragtag bunch of clansmen to get stuck in with the rooks. Unfortunately for him, the Crowes weren't at all that courageous when faced with certain death. They were on the receiving end of a massacre now, and whatever shred of bravado they had in them evaporated in an instant.
They ran.
"Hey! Come back 'ere ya yellow-bellied bastards!" Wayne roared, whipping out his pistol to shoot at a few of his cousins. "Fight like fuckin' Crowes!" The young men screamed as they toppled to the snow, the rest paid little heed. They scrambled for the tunnels, only to be strafed by an inbound Dominion Condor.
The big .50 cal turrets, all rusty from age, fell silent one after the other. Whoever was stupid enough to put up a fight didn't last long. Soon, the patriarch and a handful of his loyalists remained.
Wayne swallowed his pride and dropped his gun, hoping that the act would spare him a few precious moments to pick up a crooked cigarette from his front pocket. He was aware of the rooks closing in on every side, his boys were dropping like flies around him. Even when they surrendered, the soldiers were executing them on the spot.
He smiled as he took a long drag from the gray fumes. It turned out that the old woman was right after all.
"Wayne Crowe, I presume?" A mean-faced pretty lady with a bandage across her eye called him out.
"Who's talking?" Wayne retorted spitefully.
"The law." Kitty said as she raised her sidearm and pulled the trigger.
The big man clutched at his belly and felt the gaping hole left by the tumbling bullet. His guts spilled out in an obscene tangle of red ropes, while blood trickled from the corner of his lips. The strength left his legs, sending the patriarch to his knees.
"Ya g'damned whore-!" Wayne rasped.
The gun barked a second time, blasting a penny-sized hole through his left eye and a fist-sized wound in the back of his head. Wayne's body shuddered twice, then bent over in a prostrated pose that served as an adequate metaphor for the Crowes' sound defeat at Wintertown.
"Secure the area." Kitty declared, "I want every Crowe around here dead and the hostages accounted for. Move it!"
Little John and Snowball went up to Wayne's office, finding the poor crippled matriarch lashed to the wooden pillar and in a much worse state than she arrived in. To John's horror, he realized that his dear Mama had been rendered mute. Wayne had cut off her tongue as punishment for antagonizing him with her prophecies. If he wasn't mad with the Crowes, Wayne in particular, he was furious now. Had Kitty forestalled her judgement on the patriarch, John would've endeavored to find the most creative of endings for the Crowe bastard. Alas, he was dead now and Mama Jackson would have to go home a broken woman.
"We can do something about that, y'know."
John slowly turned his head to the door as he gathered up Mama in his arms. Kitty was watching him, saw the state the Jackson woman was in. He didn't notice the faintest hint of pity in her cold gaze, he was too full of hate and anguish to care.
"What did you say?" The man growled.
Kitty folded her hands over her waist, standing her ground as John loomed over her. "We can fix her. Whatever the Crowes did to her, it can be healed by our doctors."
John was incredulous, "Can you make her tongue grow back?"
"That, among other things." The judge nodded. She turned her heel to walk away.
"And here I thought you didn't care much about the hostages. Why the change of heart?"
Kitty didn't answer.
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