Black Sun
Chapter 17
The moment their group of four entered the train yard, they began taking fire from a large concrete structure not far away. Rounds ricocheted off nearby buildings, passing by with loud supersonic cracks as they came within inches of meeting flesh. Jaune and his friends ducked behind cover, popping out only to provide sporadic suppressive fire and try to keep the Mercenaries shooting at them pinned down.
"Ruby, with me!" Jaune called. "Cinder, Pyrrha, keep us covered!"
Everyone shouted an affirmation that they understood, and Pyrrha and Cinder began to put fire on the concrete building as Jaune and Ruby sprinted out from their hiding spots, bouncing between pieces of cover as they closed the distance. After a few seconds, the two of them made it to the ground level of the concrete structure, and just about came face-to-face with a Mercenary that just a moment ago had been firing at Pyrrha and Cinder. Jaune blasted him off his feet with one shell of buckshot, and as the man tried to crawl away, gasping for breath, Jaune ended him with a second shell to the back of his head, painting his brains across the grass underfoot.
There was no time to reflect on what he'd done, however, as footsteps from the nearby staircase caught his attention. Jaune whipped around, ready to send shell after shell downrange, but he was stopped by two fragmentation grenades rolling down the stairs and stopping a short ways away. His eyes widened, and he grabbed Ruby and dove for cover behind a nearby cement wall just as the explosives went off. The entire building shook down to its foundations, concrete dust raining down onto the two of them. They both stumbled from the shockwave, but stayed upright; a quick pat-down confirmed they were both unhurt, and the moment it was clear that neither of them were in any further danger, they advanced towards the stairs, intending to clear the upper levels.
As Jaune rounded the corner, he about came face-to-face with another Mercenary. Before he could get a shot off, however, a far-off rifle round split the Mercenary's head almost down the middle. The man collapsed in a puddle of blood, skull fragments, and gray matter; Jaune stared at his corpse for a moment before grimacing and turning around, then giving the other two a thumbs-up.
"Dirty work…" Ruby muttered.
"Keep it together," Jaune said as they began advancing up the stairs. "It was them or us."
Ruby said nothing as they continued on. The rest of the area was clear; Jaune and Ruby quickly returned to the ground floor, where Pyrrha and Cinder were already moving towards them, both mid-reload.
"We're good here," Jaune announced as he watched Cinder and Pyrrha both rock fresh magazines into their weapons. "Let's move on, before Kruglov gets killed."
They all nodded, and after a quick once-over to make sure everyone was okay and fully loaded, they kept going.
A few more Mercenaries barred the way, but the four of them were able to make short work of them all. After a few minutes of light fighting, they emerged into a clearing. Jaune looked around, his eyes widening. The area was a disaster, littered with bodies of both Mercenaries and some other faction dressed in environmental hazard suits, which he could only surmise were probably the Ecologists. Discarded weapons and spent shell casings were strewn across the ground, and the burning remains of a helicopter were lying right in the middle of all of it.
"Gods…" Pyrrha muttered. "What happened here?"
"Don't know, and don't care," Cinder growled. "Let's just find this guy before it's too late."
She pushed past the three of them, shouldering her Kalashnikov in the process. Jaune didn't wait up, quickly taking off after her while Pyrrha and Ruby brought up the rear. Together, they stepped out into the open, bounding from piece of cover to piece of cover. Gunshots erupted all around them, and Janue flinched as they came bursting out, but to his surprise, they weren't aimed at his group – rather, they were all clustered around a section of thick brick wall a short ways away.
"Who wants to bet that our guy is hiding there?!" Ruby shouted over the gunfire.
"I guess we're about to find that out for ourselves!" Jaune called back.
As they drew closer, the rounds that had been aimed at the brick wall started passing dangerously close to them, at which point they all began to return fire. A few panicked shouts went up from downrange, and the incoming fire tapered off just enough that they were able to safely make it to a brick wall.
The moment Jaune stepped behind cover there, he found himself staring down the barrel of a pistol. He paused, his eyes widening in shock, though only for a second until the gun was pointed away from him, revealing a tall man clad in one of those environmental hazard suits staring at him from behind the pane of plexiglass that was the suit's helmet.
"You four aren't Mercenaries," the suit's owner said, surprised.
"We're the ones you talked with on the radio," Jaune offered. "We're here to help. Kruglov, I presume?"
"You presumed correctly." Kruglov offered Jaune a hand and pulled him to his feet, then gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. "Am I glad to see you four. Apologies for pointing a gun at you – you caught me by surprise, you see."
"Can the introductions wait until after we're no longer being shot at?" Cinder snapped.
"Yes, of course."
"What's the situation, Professor?" Pyrrha questioned.
"The Mercenaries are after my research," Kruglov spat. "They killed all my men and our guards, and now they want to add me to the pile and steal my research for themselves. Obviously, I can't let that happen."
"And what's in it for us if we decide to help you?" Cinder demanded.
"Cinder," Jaune chastised.
Kruglov held up a hand. "No, no, that's a fair question – nobody should be expected to work for free in the Zone, after all." A burst of machine gun fire suddenly ripped through the air overhead, carving a deep gouge in the building behind them. Bits of cement rained down upon the five of them; Kruglov shook his head in irritation. "We'll negotiate the terms of your payment once I'm out of here. Suffice to say, it will be substantial."
"Now you're speaking my language," Cinder said approvingly. "Jaune, I need you."
"Me?" Jaune asked. "Do you have a plan?"
"I do. I say we let Pyrrha and Ruby escort Kruglov back the way we came, then set up a defensive perimeter at that concrete building. While they do that, we'll draw fire and take out as many Mercenaries as we can, and then fall back to join them."
"Are you crazy?" Pyrrha demanded. "We can't let you two go off on your own like that!"
"You can, and you will," Cinder surmised. "Someone needs to draw fire so Kruglov can escape, and someone else needs to go with him to make sure he gets there. I'd rather not leave just one person with him in case they've cut off that route, so therefore, you and Ruby will watch over him."
"That's-"
"Pyrrha," Jaune interrupted, silencing her. "We'll be fine."
Pyrrha bit her lip, but ultimately nodded. "...Okay. Come on, Professor – we need to be ready to run."
"Of course," Kruglov offered. "Just tell me when."
The two of them and Ruby made their way back to the edge of the thick brick wall. While they did that, Jaune and Cinder approached the other end of it, dropping into a crouch as they did so. Rounds continued to pass nearby, each one causing Jaune to wince as it came cracking by his head. They were safe behind the bricks for now, but the cover was not going to hold forever, and even if it did, they would have to leave eventually.
Cinder pulled her PDA out and switched it off, then angled the screen around the wall, using it as a makeshift mirror to try and get a better look at their opposition. As she did that, Jaune inched closer.
"What do you see?"
"I count six different muzzle flashes," Cinder reported. "So there's at least a half-dozen waiting for us, probably more."
"We've been through worse," Jaune grunted. "Tell me when."
Cinder pocketed her PDA, then took a breath, again shouldering her Kalashnikov. After a moment, she turned to him and nodded.
"Go."
Jaune didn't need to be told twice. He broke from cover just as she started sending rounds downrange, forcing the Mercenaries into hiding. He sprinted from the brick wall over to the rear of the burning chopper; the acrid smoke stung at his lungs, and he forced himself to suppress a cough as he sidled along the white-hot metal, looking for a good vantage point. After a few seconds, the telltale sound of Cinder's weapon faded away, indicating she had run out of ammo and needed to reload. The Mercenaries, in turn, began to focus on her, sending bullet after bullet screaming downrange towards her position. Jaune grit his teeth in anger at the sight of it, but held himself back for now, instead looking for a more advantageous position to flank from.
He found it after a few more seconds of stealthily moving along the rear of the downed helicopter. Several Mercenaries were stationed behind a nearby building, leaning out from behind it to take pot shots at Cinder's hiding place. Without missing a beat, Jaune emerged from cover, his Benelli roaring with every pull of the trigger. A wall of buckshot went screaming downrange, the bursts of nine lead pellets making impact with flesh and bone. Two men fell, their legs riddled with pellets; they writhed on the ground, agonized shouts escaping from them, while a third man took several projectiles to the head and fell without a sound.
Jaune ducked back into cover just as the first retaliatory shots came towards him. He fumbled with his gun, dropping a shell into the open action and smacking the bolt release to chamber a round, then began to thumb loose shells into it as fast as his shaking hands would allow him to. He had barely gotten his second shell into the gun when he heard a set of rapid footsteps on the concrete nearby. His eyes widened just as the first Mercenary came out from around the other side of the helicopter, his assault rifle barking. Jaune scrambled away just in time, and the burst of rifle rounds carved a gouge in the ground where he'd just been sitting, but otherwise left him completely unharmed. He fumbled with his gun, bringing it up just as the Mercenary readjusted his arm. The two men fired at the same time; pain blossomed across Jaune's left shoulder, causing him to grit his teeth and let out a low hiss as the bullet tore through him and embedded itself in the ruined chopper's fuselage. The Mercenary, however, had taken Jaune's load of buckshot directly to his groin, and fell to the ground yowling in pain, his rifle slipping from his grasp. Jaune stood up and advanced upon him, firing the two remaining shells he had loaded in his gun into the man's head, reducing it to little more than pulp.
"Fuck you!" Jaune hissed.
He let his shotgun hang from its sling, then collapsed against the remnants of the chopper. As he sat there, he brought a hand up and brushed it across the fresh wound in his shoulder; it came back slicked with crimson. Thankfully, the wound seemed to be gushing blood rather than spurting it; he was far from an anatomy expert, but at this point, that told him that the gunshot, while serious, hadn't severed his artery, which brought him enough peace of mind to not immediately go into shock from the pain.
"Jaune!"
At Cinder's voice, Jaune looked up, still keeping a hand clamped over his fresh bullet wound. She came sprinting around the wreckage of the helicopter, pausing in shock when she saw him lying there, blood trailing down his arm.
"Hey," Jaune greeted, giving her a weak wave.
That snapped her out of it, and she rushed over to him.
"Let me see it, idiot," she urged. "I cannot believe you let this happen again. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
"You think this is bad, you should see the other guy."
"I don't care about the other guy, I care about you. Stand still, I need to dress this wound."
She pulled out a medical kit, then began to rifle through it, eventually coming out with a roll of bandages and some antiseptic. Off in the distance, Jaune heard the telltale sound of Pyrrha's rifle firing, and tried to spring to his feet, only for Cinder to force him back down.
"What are you doing?!" Jaune demanded. "We have to-"
"You will do nothing until I have bandaged this," Cinder hissed. "Those two have it handled."
"You can't know-"
"Do you trust them?" Jaune fell silent at that, and Cinder stared at him. "They've made it this far, Jaune. It will take more than a few Mercenaries to bring them down. They are in an advantageous position, and they are both excellent fighters. Trust them to handle this for themselves, at least long enough that I can treat you. Please."
"...Fine," Jaune acquiesced. "Just be quick about it."
"I intend to."
Jaune bit back a shout as she poured antiseptic into his wound, then packed it full of bandages.
"Once again, you are lucky," Cinder reported. "It missed both the bone and the artery. Someone up above must be watching over you."
"Apparently not, because if they were, they wouldn't have sent me here in the first place. Help me up."
Cinder obliged, pulling him to his feet. Jaune picked up his shotgun, then hurriedly reloaded it before taking off, running for where Ruby and Pyrrha had holed up, Cinder following after him. As they approached, the stench of spent gunpowder and blood filled his nostrils, and he braced himself before rounding the corner. To his relief, however, the only corpses lying at the base of the concrete structure were all dressed in the trademark blue body armor that signified them as Mercenaries.
"Pyrrha, Ruby!" he called. "You two alright?!"
"Jaune?!" Ruby called back. "Where were you?!"
"I…" He hesitated. "...I got hurt, but I'll be fine, Cinder patched me up already. Are you both unhurt?"
"We're good. So is Kruglov. Hang on, we're coming down."
Jaune breathed a sigh of relief as he watched them descend the stairs, Kruglov in tow. The professor paused only to pick a rifle and ammo off one of the dead bodies, and Pyrrha did the same, replacing her spent .308 ammo with fresh rounds stripped off a different Mercenary. As she loaded rounds into her empty magazines, she turned towards Jaune, drawing in close to take a look at his shoulder before shaking her head.
"Crazy fool…" she muttered. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
"Cinder already asked me that," Jaune reported. "And no, I just got caught with my pants down. It won't happen again."
Pyrrha nodded, then turned to Cinder. "You fixed him up?"
"I did," Cinder retorted. "No need to act as though I haven't done so before. In fact, this is my second time doing so, and the first was much worse than this."
"It was?" Pyrrha turned back to Jaune. "You didn't mention you'd been injured before now."
"I hate to interrupt," Kruglov said, "but we should probably head back before night falls and more Mercenaries come looking for their fallen comrades."
"Good point," Ruby agreed. "Where are we going, anyway? Not the bar, I assume."
"Correct. Follow me, I will lead the way."
Kruglov ended up leading them to some kind of metallic, dome-shaped bunker in the middle of a nearby swamp. Guards with machine guns were stationed outside its walls, but that did little to put him at ease, given that he could see mutants in the distance – Snorks, it looked like, running through the ankle-deep and no doubt radioactive swamp water. He shuddered as he watched one pounce on another pig-like mutant – a Flesh, he recalled – and begin tearing it to ribbons with its teeth and claws, all while the Flesh squealed in agony.
"Gods, I can't watch that…" He turned towards Kruglov. "You seriously live here?"
"Of course," Kruglov replied. "The swamps are the best place to study the Zone, since so much of its ecology converges here."
"What do you mean?" Ruby asked, curious.
"The swamps are home to many different kinds of mutants, not to mention all the different Artifacts and Anomalies scattered throughout. In addition, this is the best place in the entire Zone to get readings on things such as radiation as well as the waves being emitted by the Brain Scorcher."
Pyrrha perked up at that. "About that – we were told you might be able to help us with learning more about the Brain Scorcher. Based on what you've just said, I take it that's true?"
"That depends on what you intend to do with that information," Kruglov said as they all approached the big steel dome. "I assume you're like almost everyone else in the Zone, and you want to see it turned off entirely. In that case, I may be able to help you."
"You may be able to help us?" Cinder asked, raising an eyebrow. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means we're very close to making a breakthrough, but there is still work to be done. I will explain more once we're inside."
They finally made it to the dome, the guards outside allowing them all through without incident. Kruglov threw open the door, revealing a decontamination chamber awaiting them.
"Everyone inside," Kruglov said. "Sakharov won't let us in unless we've been cleaned."
"Sakharov?" Jaune asked.
"Our head researcher in the Zone," Kruglov explained. "Think of him as the leader of the Ecologists. He's a brilliant scientist, but a bit paranoid, not to mention older than most in the Zone. Don't expect him to leave this building unless he has to."
"Understandable, I suppose…" Pyrrha muttered.
"Hm, a paranoid old man who prefers to let others do the grunt work for him," Cinder mused. "Sounds familiar."
"You ought to know, considering what happened to the last one we knew," Pyrrha growled.
Cinder glared at her. "You may not understand it now, but I did you a favor, getting rid of him. He would have used you for his own ends, nothing more. Ozpin was not a man to be trusted."
"Enough," Jaune said sternly. "We're on the same side now, or did you forget? Stop antagonizing each other."
Both girls gave each other one last glare, then turned away from each other. Jaune sighed tiredly, running a hand through his hair as he did so.
Every day, it was something new with the two of them.
His thoughts were interrupted by Kruglov closing the door behind them all, and a fine mist washing over them. Jaune winced, the moisture clinging to his clothes and body armor, and did his best to shake himself dry as the secondary door leading into the dome opened. Kruglov led the way, stepping past them.
"Follow me," he said, "Sakharov is in the back."
The four of them obliged, trailing after Kruglov as he stepped into the building. It was surprisingly cramped on the inside – Jaune counted just a few basic rooms in the entire thing; there didn't even seem to be enough beds for the scientists and the guards combined. He could only surmise that the scientists lived here, and the guards had accommodations elsewhere, for what little that mattered.
Kruglov led them to the back of the dome, to a pane of plexiglass. He knocked on the glass a few times, and on the other side, an old man in a lab coat emerged from a side room and approached, curiosity etched across his face.
"Professor Kruglov," he greeted. "You're back late."
"Ran into some trouble with the Mercenaries," Kruglov answered. "These four helped me make it back in one piece. I owe them all my life. I promised to pay them handsomely for their assistance."
Sakharov blinked, surprised, but nodded nonetheless. "Very well, then. We have more than enough funding to accommodate them. Your research, however… it's still in one piece?"
"Right here."
Kruglov reached into one of the pockets in his suit, pulling out a thumb drive and showing it to him. For the first time, Sakharov grinned.
"Excellent, excellent!" he proclaimed. "Yes, I can arrange payment for them right away."
"Actually, sir," Jaune said, stepping forward, "we were hoping you could answer some questions for us first, about the Brain Scorcher?"
"But of course," Sakharov said with a nod. "Ask away."
"How do we turn it off?" Cinder bluntly interrupted.
Sakharov blinked, but thankfully, didn't seem dissuaded by her sudden direct question. Instead, he brought a hand to his chin in thought.
"We've been studying the Brain Scorcher for a while now," he explained. "We've determined that it works by interrupting the brain waves of anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in it. The actual scientific mechanism of it isn't important, and is probably far beyond your purview; all you need to know is that it took a lot of readings and dissections of Zombie brains before we were able to figure out a way to counteract the effects of the Brain Scorcher."
"What is the Brain Scorcher, anyway?" Ruby asked.
"It's a machine, we know that much," Sakharov replied.
"So then there must be a way to turn it off," Pyrrha surmised.
Sahkarov nodded. "Indeed, there is. We've been able to steadily dig up some more information regarding it in the time since we've been in the Zone. As it turns out, the control center for the Brain Scorcher is located nearby, in an underground lab called X-16. If someone were able to get there and either destroy the controls outright or simply switch them off, then it would solve the problem quite handily."
"Great, more of those underground labs…" Ruby muttered.
Jaune put a hand on her shoulder in solidarity, then turned back to Sakharov. "Of course, this begs the question… if we need to get close to the Brain Scorcher in order to turn it off in the first place, then how do we do it without having our brains scrambled?"
"That is the question, isn't it?" Sakharov mused. "Fortunately, we have recently made several breakthroughs, and now believe we are very close to developing something that can, at least temporarily, block the harmful radio waves emitting from the Brain Scorcher."
"You are?" Jaune asked, surprised.
"How close are you to completing it?" Cinder demanded. "And, for that matter, what is it?"
"It is a helmet, of sorts," Sakharov explained. "It offers no ballistic protection to speak of, but just from testing one of the prototypes, we know it can ward off the harmful influence of the Brain Scorcher. Specifically, it works by-"
"I think that's good enough for them, Professor," Kruglov interjected. "No need to bore them with the science of it, they just need to know if it works well enough that they can get to the Brain Scorcher and shut it off safely."
"Ah… very well," Sakharov said, sounding disappointed. "Anyway, we've finished a few prototypes already, and are about to finish the final product."
"What's the difference between the two?" Jaune couldn't help but ask.
"The prototypes, obviously, are not as effective as the final product will be," he explained. "They will still block the harmful radio waves, but only temporarily – they are good for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, all things being equal. The final product, on the other hand, will be good for up to an hour."
"So you're saying that, really, it'll only be safe for one of us to head into the labs."
Sakharov's brow furrowed. "Well, no. The prototypes are perfectly safe-"
"But only for about twenty minutes. Given our last few excursions into the underground labs, I don't trust us getting through this one that quickly." Jaune let out a grunt, running a hand through his hair. "Frankly, I don't trust us making it through in an hour, either. But if that's the best we've got, then it's the best we've got."
"You can't seriously mean to send only one person in there?" Pyrrha asked, raising an eyebrow. "That'd be a death sentence. They'd be going in alone with no backup."
"I know. Frankly, this is one of those situations where I don't think there's a good option available." He let out a sigh, then turned to Sakharov. "I take it you've only got the one good helmet?"
Sakharov thought for a moment. "Once we finish the first, we can probably modify the prototypes to match. But that will take time."
"Then that's what we'll do," Jaune declared. "I don't like the idea of sending one of us in alone with any of the prototypes. Whoever goes in is going to have to have the good helmet. If all it takes is time, then I don't see why it can't be all of us."
"True," Cinder agreed with a nod. "Very well. What needs to be done to finish the project?"
"We just need a few more readings from close to the Brain Scorcher," Sakharov said. "The only problem is that it's dangerous – lots of mutants and zombies out in that area. And unfortunately, it will have to be just Kruglov and one other person – any more than that would attract too much attention from the mutants."
"Then I'll go," Jaune said.
"You will do no such thing," Cinder reprimanded, giving him a glare. "You just got shot, Jaune. I understand that you are altruistic to a fault, but you need to rest up and heal from your gunshot wound. And frankly, I think we are all sick of you being so selfish as to continuously put yourself into harm's way like this. Give someone else a chance to jump into the fire."
Jaune opened his mouth to argue, but ultimately thought better of it. Instead, he merely nodded.
"Okay," he said. "So who's-"
"I will go," Cinder volunteered. She motioned to Pyrrha and Ruby. "You two make sure he doesn't do anything crazy."
They both nodded. Cinder took a breath, then turned back to Kruglov.
"Let's get going," she said.
Thanks to Ickbard for the help with this chapter/story!
I have to say, man, it feels good to be back and writing this story. I really do love it. It's just a great time all-around, it's got all the stuff I like and nothing I don't. At this point, the only thing missing from it is a genderswapped Adam Taurus, lol.
Anyway, I don't really have much to discuss besides that, unfortunately. I'm legitimately trying to think of something, but I really can't, so I'll probably make this a short AN this week. Thanks for reading, and I hope you all enjoyed!
I have launched my first piece of serialized web fiction. It's called An Angel's Retirement, and you can read it over on Spacebattles, Royal Road, or or/HFY. In each case, it's been posted under my name, Obsequium Minaris. Links are below:
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forums . spacebattles threads / an-angels-retirement.1137358/
www . royalroad fiction / 79445 / an-angels-retirement
Synopsis: Captain Eric Anders thought his time in the military was over when the war with the Iprenians ended in a ceasefire. He was content to sit back, collecting his monthly pension and drinking his sorrows away. But everything changed when the government saw fit to drop one of its very own super-soldiers into his life. Suddenly, he finds his retirement interrupted by the need to babysit a socially-maladjusted killing machine who has known nothing but war for almost her entire life.
As it turns out, the war itself may be over for the two of them, but the wounds it left behind are very much still present...
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