Chapter 9 – Chao
June 4th, 2545 (15:17 Hours – Military Calendar)
Prozyion System, Kroedis II
Colisseum-1, 1 Kilometer North of New Palermo
:********:
Turret Gunner.
It was the one position Duncan didn't want. The M41 Vulcan, a light anti-aircraft machine gun that looked partly inspired by a frill-necked lizard in design, was a great weapon to have in a tight spot. Capable of shooting off 500 rounds per minute, it was a comfort to someone used to switching out 32-round magazines every few seconds. However, the gun wasn't an infallible death machine. The main problem he saw was how exposed it actually was on the Warthog's rear gun-mount. Not only would he have to stand up while everyone else sat down, making him the clearest target, he would lack any protection; none except the protective palisades on the sides of the gun. Worse yet, he would have the most firepower, making him the most important target.
He was the most important and the most vulnerable.
"Great." Duncan sighed as he consigned himself to his fate and hopped onto the back of the Warthog. He took hold of the grips and eased himself into the shoulder braces. He pulled back the charging handle and wracked the first of a long chain of 12.7-milimeter rounds into the chamber. By having a triple-barrel rather than one, the weapon allowed its user to put off overheating. The continuous rotation switched out each used barrel before the next consecutive shot, thereby delaying the natural build-up of heat. That was the M41 on the ground. With the Warthog-mounting came a water-cooling system attached to the rotational gimbal that enabled him to shoot indefinitely. That was one feature he hoped he wouldn't have to use too often today, though knew better than to think that would be the case.
O'Reilly peered up at him from the passenger's seat. "Cheer up, boyo. The cap is giving you the chance to show him you've got the grit."
"Just make sure to start it up once you see anyone aiming at us." Stewards added from behind the wheel. "If you don't shoot, they will. No hesitations, got it?"
"Yessir."
He wanted to say 'no'. He wanted to hesitate. This wasn't normal so how could the others treat it like it was? He clung to the expectation that civilians weren't going to get in the way. That faith though was misplaced more for his own sake than anything else.
The best explanation for why Stewards made him gunner was that he wanted to test him. He wanted to see how UNSC special forces training and experience reacted to a situation that would normally tie its hands behind its back. O'Reilly had the same background and was now in Stewards' good graces. At least that meant it was possible, but what had O'Reilly given up to get there? Why did he look conflicted when they started attacking the UNSC? What was his friend forced to bury, and who would he be forced to bury before the day was out?
Every thought tied a solid knot of trepidation in his gut.
Duncan whispered. "You've really done it to yourself now, Sunny Jim."
A commotion up ahead pulled him out of his thoughts to Colisseum-1's gates. The titanic, titanium doors 10 meters to his front were taller and wider than Hayth's. The wall in which they were built ran from one end of the facility to the next. Several squads of NPPD officers sporting riot armor were standing on the upper ramparts. They had all started firing gas launchers down at the other side of the wall. There immediately arose a wave of screams and shouts as plumes of CS-gas streaked into the crowds below. The ground rumbled with what Duncan struggled to believe were not the footsteps of giants but scores of people.
Expecting the way to be clear soon, he chanced peering over his shoulder.
The hundreds of Warthogs, flatbed trucks, container-unit laden tractor trailers and the likes were now assembled behind him. They filled four highways leading to the facility's equal number of southern gates. They were divvied up into groups of a few dozen that would depart in shifts. Those closest to the gates would leave approximately 5-minutes after the AMADDS and NPPD who'd be the first to go out. That way Gator and the 25 police officers going with them would reach their overwatch positions in time.
The Hog Duncan was aboard formed part of a vanguard of three posted at the head of Gypsy's convoy. The two in front were manned by 7 officers with Gage driving the first. Their amber face plates and weapons were probably enough to intimidate ordinary thugs. How they stacked up against militia who'd taken control of a population of 8-million, however, remained to be seen. The seventh officer sat out of sight on the front deck of the boxy trailer unit being carried behind the second Hog. His job, like the gunner, would be to protect the means by which they would transport those fusion cores to a predesignated LZ. From there things would fall to Langley's piloting skills.
As for Gypsy, the platoon was utilizing 8 Warthogs courtesy of AMG Transport Dynamics. Jinx occupied the first two with the one behind Stewards manned by Thurston and Palakiko at the turret. Their Hog had a trailer unit linked to its rear via a connective clamp. That pattern repeated with every two Hogs. The one behind Thurston's was manned by squad Jester with Al behind the gun. The one behind that had Quinn at the wheel with another trailer linked to it. The same went for the fifth and sixth manned by Joker with Haskin at the wheel of the latter and the seventh and eighth Hogs with Ambers on the gun of the last.
"I still think we should use the plains." Duncan said in a last-ditch attempt by his conscience to justify itself. The reply from Stewards was expected.
"Gage explained that the plains were too rocky for safe transportation. We wouldn't get to there in time. Plus, there are bandits planting booby traps and ambushes along the trodden paths there to catch anyone going around the city. Bad paths are bad enough, and so are improvised explosive devices. We'll take our chances with the highways. Does that satisfy your conscience?"
Duncan tried to hide the fact that he'd seen right through him without even turning to look.
O'Reilly harped on. "Think of it this way, Jim. It's easier to bury an IED in a dirt path than to bury one in asphalt."
"Unless they hide it in a car on the street." Duncan shot back.
"If they do, we'll see it coming." Stewards said. "If we don't, they certainly will." He nodded at the officers. "They know these streets better than we do. They'll be the first to sniff out anything wrong."
"And if they don't?"
This time, Stewards turned around to peer up into the worried face of his gunner. Whatever he saw amused him. "Then it'll be their problem since they'll pass it first. We'll keep moving and get what we came for. So, relax while you can. Once these doors open, we won't breathe easy until the Mayweather's sending us into slipspace."
No sooner did he say so that a loud CRACK resounded throughout the facility. A subsequent follow-up of the same sound three consecutive times drew the collective attention of AMG's personnel to the gates.
It was the clamor of multiple security bolts systematically sliding out of place, unlocking the titanium doors.
Duncan watched as the gate ahead rumbled open. Light shined through, making it seem like how he imagined the pearly gates. To add to that affect were the clouds wafting lazily beyond the threshold. Only the clouds were purposed more for torment than bliss, and as the CS gas filtered in, so too did the panicked shouts of the crowds.
Stewards revved up his engine as did everyone in their group. To their left, the larger convoy of Hogs manned by NPPD officers and Gator platoon did the same. Stewards shared a nod with Gonzo then spoke into his comm-link. "Gypsy, take a deep breath before we pass the threshold. Remember, don't stop unless you have to and make it quick. If we lose you, you're dead."
"Got it, boss." Haskin said.
"Tag'em and bag'em!" Al shouted.
"Yeah, just make sure we don't end up bagging you, okay pal? Thurston huffed. "I've still got to 1v1 you on King's Wager."
"Yeah, sorry Thurs, that's not happenin'. You suck without me. No offense."
"All taken."
Duncan laughed a little at the renewed enthusiasm. He'd need it. He watched the doors continue to rumble aside. They soon stopped with sufficient space for a quartet of Scorpion tanks to roll through.
"Stay close captain." Gage said over the comm as he drove out at a steady acceleration.
"Copy." Stewards replied then hurried behind the second Hog.
Soon both convoys were driving into a world of gas. The wispy clouds had a closer feel to hell than heaven. Duncan had taken a deep breath beforehand. Despite that it still stung his eyes, he narrowed them to see the many silhouettes running in every direction. The further they drove the more people he saw. There was an outgoing wave of civilians to their right and left, men and women, their clothes dirtied and ripped and their haggard faces written over with frantic desperation. Many were covering their mouths with hands, handkerchiefs, scarfs and the likes while trying to escape the gas. Others fell to their hands and knees to cough and wretch. Unless he was mistaken, there were kids among them. The gas didn't spare them either. Their parents ran with them in their arms or over their shoulders. Some were like ghostly specters in the mist, standing against the human tides while screaming and crying the two names every kid knew best.
He spotted an elderly couple ahead in the middle of their way. They were trying to run but were having a hard time of it. Gage shouted through his helmet speakers for them to move but didn't slow down. In the end it took a man hurling himself into the older couple to tackle them out of the way.
In seconds, the convoys burst out of the smoke into the open. Fully in sight, the highway curved down a gentle decline before leveling out. Several hundred meters further stood a pair of overhanging road signs. Several kilometers past that were the beginnings of New Palermo's suburbs.
Before that though was a settlement that wasn't part of the city but was an establishment onto itself. To both the immediate sides of the highway were a sprawl of tents formed into refuges upon the shrubby plains. The people had waited out here for some time. Looking back, he saw that barely a fraction of the full crowd had gotten caught in the gas. There were as he suspected thousands of people scrambling about in the fashion of a living tidal wave. They crashed against the walls of the facility only to recede from the growing cloud of CS. Every now and again they screamed and scattered at gas canisters shooting into the denser parts of the gathering.
Duncan shut his eyes tight and turned away, but he couldn't close his ears to what was happening.
Reaching the overhanging signs, he finally saw something to take his attention off the sounds behind him.
'Calabria (((((/\))))) 'Ancona
Interstate 294 Southeast ((((/\)))) Interstate 293 South
½ Kilometers' (((((/\))))) ¼ Kilometers'
Gage led Gypsy down the right-hand route to Ancona. Gator platoon headed off with its NPPD guides down the adjacent highway which curved eastward, splitting the two groups apart.
So far so good, Duncan thought. It didn't feel good. At least no one was shooting at them...yet.
He pressed himself closer into the braces of the M41, swiveling the gun from left to right as Gypsy carried on south to the northern edges of Ancona.
:********:
The suburb of Ancona was an urban vastness of curving neighborhoods, greened lawns and gated parks. Undoubtedly among the better places to settle in better times, today the suburb looked more like the warzone that it was.
As Gypsy drove down a street that hooked onto a roundabout, Duncan swiveled his turret across the long aisles of tract housing to his left and right. The houses they passed were luxurious shades of tan, gray or white with Spanish tiled roofs accompanied by front porches with slatted tops. However, the relaxed atmosphere was long gone, buried under the sea of trash that westerly winds pulled over the yards and streets. There was no one outside their homes which were themselves damaged, graffitied, crashed into by empty vehicles and even pockmarked by bullet holes.
The way Ancona matched the burbs he saw on Tribute triggered Duncan's memory. He was reminded of what Stewards had told him. Most healthy-minded people didn't live their lives thinking everything around them could suddenly come crashing down at a moment's notice, that the end of everything they knew was just one lucky slipspace jump away. The people here must have figured that out once the 122nd left Prozyion, deciding to bring about the apocalypse sooner in order to end that anxious waiting period.
That made Duncan anxious as well since he was in the same boat. Now that the UNSC was no longer defending Kroedis II, there was, in no uncertain sense, nothing standing between the Covenant and the planet itself. They wouldn't even need to land ground forces. All they had to do was pull into the exosphere and glass the planet from orbit, and there would be no one in any position to stop them. The idea alone made his skin crawl that at the end of the day it was really that easy.
"Fish in a barrel." He thought aloud, keeping his voice low beneath the crunching rumble of the Hogs' progression. "We're just fish in a barrel."
He was momentarily worried that Stewards, with his uncanny tangent for hearing things one normally couldn't, would respond. But if the captain did hear it, he made no effort to reply, remaining focused as they turned left off a roundabout into another neighborhood.
Their newest turn brought the southernmost skyscrapers of the downtown area into view. With close to 2-kilometers left before they hit their mid-destination, things had stayed remarkably quiet. The few civilians they encountered kept a wary distance. A couple were ruffling ravenously through trash cans or tried in vain to cry out for help.
The air of calm didn't last. Turning a corner, the convoy came into visual contact with the cost of the chaos.
The houses along the newest section of suburb were mansions. They had larger, compartmentalized structures with more decorative villa-like styles of gardened front lawns complemented by extravagant backyard pools. Their beauty ended where the blood began.
Bodies lay on the front yards, men and women, most old and some young sitting in their own personal pools of red while staring blankly at the sky. They lay in open doorways amidst scattered possessions and bullet holes arcing over the walls or into their backs. Worse were the cadavers floating face down in the actual backyard pools, tainting the water a baleful crimson.
Duncan counted close to 20 corpses, none of them armed.
"I know people say eat the rich and all," Thurston said tentatively on the comm. "But it looks like they just settled for shooting them. Man, why not rob and go?"
Al shrugged as he scanned a passing alleyway with his turret. "Makes sense. I don't see why they needed to kill anyone like this."
"It's the veneer of civilization." Stewards said declaratively. "And it just got pulled off. That there is chaos in its purest form."
"What does veneer mean, cap?"
"It's kind of like skin." Quinn explained instead.
"Ooooh..." Al swiveled his turret to examine a bullet-riddled car parked along the sidewalk. "So what, is this like the muscles or something? Muscle is the next thing beneath skin, right?"
"Like always, you're overthinking this. Just focus on those rooftops, would you?"
"Yessir." Al said and bent his knees to level his triple-barrels more with the roofs of the mansions.
Duncan examined the columns of cars parked along the sidewalks and in the driveways, sweeping low to check for anything hiding beneath then high to search for anyone peeking over them. At any sign of an ambush, he would call it out. So far, he didn't have to call out anything at all. The streets were abandoned except for the occasional grocery bag his periphery routinely mistook for a moving person. Ancona, for all intents and purposes, was dead silent.
The silence didn't extend much farther than that. The echoes of gunshots to the south made everyone tense, anticipating the first indication of trouble. Thankfully the distant shots remained confined to downtown.
Every so often he saw a silhouette peeking out from behind window curtains or the sliding glass doors of a front patio. No one on the other said ever moved to open them. He presumed by the size of the real estate that thousands must have lived here prior to the meltdown. Nowadays, it was a ghost town. He didn't doubt that those thousands were still here. They were simply hiding away in darkened homes. Judging by the dozens of bodies strewn outside, they had plenty of good reasons for it.
Little did they know that their last best chance for escaping Kroedis' Armageddon was passing them by. Regardless, they stayed away. Regardless, the AMADDS would probably keep them at bay even if they tried.
Soon Gage was leading them out of the dense amalgamation of suburban life that was Ancona to return onto Interstate 293 via an entrance ramp.
What followed was a 10-minute drive down a series of grounded highways. The lanes were filled with abandoned cars, coned-off construction sites and burning wrecks. They were forced to decelerate to weave their way around them. The issue worsened in underground tunnelways where the low-lit environments were host to denser blockages of dead traffic. It wasn't long before they had to push driverless sedans, hatchbacks and convertibles aside using the Hogs' infamous brute strength. There were plenty of good opportunities for an ambush during those moments yet the roads remained silent.
The quiet began worming into Duncan's best attempts at staying calm. He could feel something was off. They should have seen more people by now.
His worries escalated as they came out onto I-293's clearer expressways. The last one they drove on had a gentle curve that pulled them on a southeasterly course, away from the fabled Selumbria to the southwest. They would head right into the outer folds of the downtown area.
As they drove, Duncan eyed the break away at the end of the forest of northern suburbs that turned into the beginnings of New Palermo's heart. A progressively complex layout of malls, wholesale stores, factories and warehouses replaced the sight of matching houses. Then there were the fires. Several buildings he saw were aflame, consumed in the roots of smoke that plumed up into small mushrooms of smog in the afternoon sky. Hundreds of people were now in the streets. They meandered about or ran headlong into the smashed doors of malls and wholesale stores. At the same time an outflow of persons were continuously storming out, carrying away stolen supplies. Cars driving down the latticework of streets below were forced to navigate around mobs. Several were in the process of being overrun, their drivers getting pulled out of their seats or swarmed by persons struggling to get in.
Some places the mobs actively avoided. What looked like a pair of warehouses below had their doors guarded by squads of UNSC Army troopers. Only they weren't UNSC. The way that parts of their BDUs were missing made that clear. So did the fact that half of them weren't geared up at all, merely armed with rifles that they regularly pointed as a warning to anyone getting too close.
He saw several standing in front of the warehouse that they passed directly over. They looked straight up at him. They appeared pleased though not at seeing him specifically.
Duncan felt that knot in his stomach tighten.
"That's going to be a problem." Stewards said, taking note of them. "Gypsy, eyes up. We're getting into the heart of this thing. There's no telling where they'll show up next."
No one replied. Instead, they braced themselves into the stocks of rifles and turrets as they passed under the shadows of the first skyscrapers.
The towering architecture of the downtown area shared predominantly silver-blue tints that reflected light off their hundreds of floors. The hourglass figure of concave structures, the oblong rotundness of the convex ones and the twisting aperture of the traditionally rectangular buildings lent to the feel of a true metropolis. Once again, the atmosphere of civilization was stripped away by the flames on some of them and the pillars of smoke rising ever higher.
The adjoining streets of I-293 rapidly filled with persons, cars and garbage piles. Shopping centers whose stylistic posters were indicative of the product within were being pillaged or were already emptied out. People flocked into the broken doorways of restaurants and food stores searching for what others had yet to scavenge.
Those on the streets scrambled out of the way of the fast-moving convoy. The turrets swerved from left to right, their triple-barreled presence intimidating anyone that saw them. However, one very haggard old man, his desperation obvious, came running beside them. He was carrying a large plastic bag over his shoulder while waving them down. "Hey!" He shouted. "Wait! Waaiiit!"
They didn't. He quickly fell away, ultimately dropping out of sight as the highway righted itself along a V-shaped avenue.
As suddenly as they appeared, the masses vanished. There was no gradual fading off of the crowds, only an utter lack of people. The streets they passed were empty as if everyone they'd left behind had purposefully avoided them.
Duncan didn't get a chance to think about it before I-293 turned them onto an empty intersection. An overhanging sign showed that it diverged there with 'Downey Boulevard'. At least, it seemed empty until the moment that he spotted them.
Everyone else saw them at roughly the same time. Those whose hands weren't busy at the wheel immediately leveled their weapons on the upcoming pair of barriers.
Standing nearly 5-meters tall, they were more like walls in their own right. They were 5-meters worth of everyday household objects: couches, benches, tables and other bulky pieces of furniture. Trash bags acted as their topmost ramparts with cars and logs of wood chopped using conspicuous precision that served as their foundations. The first wall blocked the intersection's left-hand exit leading onto East Downey Boulevard. The second was the most troublesome since it effectively cut them off from the rest of Interstate 293.
At the speed they were going it was impossible to pull back. The convoy slowed down until they were well within the shadows of the barriers. Gypsy and the police shifted their sights from the east barrier to the southern one, checking for targets. None presented themselves beyond the trash bags at the top.
"Gage?" Stewards called, an unaccustomed hint of trepidation in his otherwise calm voice.
Gage looked around nervously. "These weren't here before. Okay, it doesn't look like they're using these ones. We can still-" He stopped as something seized his attention, pulling his eyes up to the top of the wall directly in their way.
Duncan swiveled the turret in that direction searching for movement. There was none. He swept along the top, waiting for any target to show itself. But in doing so, his blood chilled and his hands tightened on the turret's grips at realizing that the targets were already there.
:********:
They had lay so perfectly still, so silent that no one initially noticed them.
It took close to 10 seconds for the confused turrets and rifles of Gypsy platoon to snap back to the walls and hone in on the dozens of guns aiming back at them.
Atop the walls, behind every individual rifle, was a man or woman staring stern-faced or excitedly at the gathering below. By their appearance they could be distinguished into three groups. A third sported the cut-down Army BDUs that they'd seen earlier. Another third sported a version of the high-collared tactical vests that the NPPD wore. These possessed more arm and leg paddings with silvery face plates. The remainders were dressed in civilian clothes, their only protection being the hoods covering some of their heads. All were unified behind their gun sights set on the convoy.
The second group concerned Duncan the most as he centered his turret on them. He counted 10 of those who, upon closer inspection, had white lettering on their vests that turned the feeling in his gut into a suffocating contortion: 'S.W.A.T'.
No one moved for several long seconds. The stillness was ended by footsteps coming up the back of the southern barrier.
Eyes turned to meet the lone figure trotting to the top from the other side. The closer he came the more Duncan saw of him. He was decked out in that same SWAT gear. However, replacing the helmet was a black mask which switched out his lower face for a skeletal jaw painted on the fabric. His tussled dark hair hemmed in fiery eyes that examined the group. He brought a DMR to bare as he stopped.
"Drop your weapons and step out of your vehicles!" He shouted.
No one moved.
"I said, drop your weapons and step out of your vehicles! Get out and get on the ground NOW!"
Everyone stayed put.
Irritation flashed across the skull mask's countenance. He set his scope on a direct sightline with Gage. "Get out now or we will fire on you! You've got five seconds to comply!"
Duncan could tell he wasn't messing around. He had the forcefulness of someone accustomed to facing serious threats posed to highly specialized law enforcement. It suggested he planned on making good on his own threat. Nevertheless, Duncan was also aware that no one in Gypsy was about to move. Peering back, he saw that they were all silently picking their targets with even the drivers reaching slowly for their pistols.
"FIVE...FOUR...THREE...TWO-"
"Hold it!"
It was Gage. He stood up in his Hog holding out a hand. All eyes locked on him. He stepped down onto the asphalt and kept his hand up while he slowly lifted his face plate with the other.
The skull mask stiffened. The gleam in his eyes dissolved within an all-consuming uncertainty. His DMR lowered away from the man at realizing what everyone else hadn't.
"Randy!" Gage called up to him. "Randy, is that you!?"
Although the skull mask didn't answer, his growing hesitation was instantly recognizable. These two knew each other.
"You shouldn't have come here!" He finally replied. The forcefulness from before was partly gone now, held captive by that tentativeness that kept him from taking aim again. "Why!? Why are you here!?"
"I came lookin' for you kid." Gage replied in an even tone. He looked around at the militia sitting armed but bewildered on the two barriers. He pointed to them. "Randy, don't tell me you're the one who brought these guys together."
Randy twitched with an inner frustration as he broke out into a sweat. "Answer my question, why are you here!?"
Gage kept his calm tone. Duncan still detected the anger barely restrained beneath a profound disappointment. "Randy, don't tell me it was you who did this."
No answer came.
"Come on, Randy, it's a simple question!"
"Why would you care!?" Randy shouted. "You certainly weren't interested in anything other than getting out of Palermo! What were you expecting to find out here in the place you left behind!?"
"I didn't want to find you here! I was hoping it wasn't you! But-…" Gage gritted his teeth to keep his rage from boiling out. "Think, Randy, what-, what your mother say if she found you like this!? If she saw what you did, what you're doing!?"
"And what're you doing!?" Randy shot back. "You're not one to talk, old man! Where've you been, huh!? You've been hiding behind the walls at that AMG place up north, sitting on your hands and plugging your ears while everyone else out here suffered!"
Gage jabbed a furious finger at him. "Don't you have any idea how many of my guys you and your goons killed!?"
Randy retrained his DMR on him. "Don't you have any idea how many people you're trying to abandon!?"
Gage took a step back as though struck by an unseen bullet. He held up both hands, his tone simmering back to calm. "Listen, Randy, I'm on your side, okay?"
"YEAH, BUT I'M NOT ON YOURS!" Randy growled. "YOU'RE TRYING TO ABANDON THE PEOPLE I'VE BEEN TRYING TO PROTECT SINCE YOU BROUGHT ME THROUGH THE ACADEMY, THAT YOU'VE BEEN PROTECTING SINCE I WAS BORN! WHY!?"
"THAT DOESN'T MATTER!" Gage caught himself. After taking in a few steadying breaths, he looked to the militia on the wall in front of him and pointed them out. "Rand. Listen. There's no chance for them." He pointed back at the Hogs. "But there's still a chance for you. It's right here, on this convoy. If you come, we can get out of here. We can get off this planet."
Randy gave him a scowl that lacked even the faintest traces of familial love. "You want me to leave them like you are? You want me to be a coward like you?" He shook his head and spoke matter-of-factly. "You're not my Chief. You're not my dad. I don't know what the hell you are but it sure ain't human."
Gage's jaw clenched, the first glimmers of water hazing his eyes. His arms fell back down to his side, his left-hand drifting over to his sidearm. "I couldn't forgive myself if-"
"How can you forgive yourself now?"
"Listen." Gage hissed. "Don't make me do this. You're all I've got left and I'm not about to leave you here. You understand me, young man?"
Randy didn't answer.
"Let me rephrase that. Do you understand me, lieutenant!?"
Randy shook his head again. His answer was flat and final. "I don't take orders from you." He nodded at the surrounding militia. "They take orders from me, and right now, I'm about to order them to shoot if your officers and... whoever these guys are don't step out of the vehicles."
The conversation had come full circle. Yet it felt to Duncan that they'd come to an even worse conclusion than before. He could see Gage's face, his glazed eyes staring into those of one who was undoubtedly his son. Even with the mask it wasn't that hard to see the resemblance. They shared the same genetics, not the same intentions and one was far more concerning than the other.
As Father glowered at son, as the NPPD's Chief of Police stared down the rogue subordinate that had shattered his department, a tense silence settled over the intersection.
Gypsy was statuesque, their weapons locked and ready to come alive at a second's notice. The silence grew to such a deafening whine that Duncan heard the beat of his heart rising into his throat. He slowly lifted the turret and bent his knees until it was level with the top of the southern wall.
Gage swallowed hard. His next words were delivered with their own air of finality. "Randy, this is your last chance. Come over here...step into a Hog...and let's go. I'm not leaving you behind, do you understand?"
Randy's hardened demeanor softened somewhat. "You're right." He said sarcastically. "You're not. I'll-"
The thunderous report of an SRS-99 made Duncan instinctively duck. His gaze shot back to the rearmost Hog. It was Ambers, more specifically her driver who slumped over the wheel with half his brain splattered over the windshield.
The second shot went off less than a half-second after the first, thus why Duncan didn't detect it until he saw the Chief of Police slammed against the rim of his Hog. He slid limply onto the asphalt with a golf-ball sized hole in the side of his head.
"Snipers, Beazley take the wheel!" Ambers shouted and swung her turret about to return a steady stream of fire on the origin of the first shot.
It was now a race to shoot first. Duncan set his sights on a wide-eyed Randy who was still staring in shock at Gage's body. He opened fire.
Someone tackled Randy out of the way at the last second. All the same, Duncan unleashed a sweeping cascade. Behind him, the rest of Gypsy followed suit as did the militia, filling the intersection with a crisscross of tracers.
Individual gunfire was drowned out in the overwhelming symphony of bullets being shot, pinging off the hides of the Hogs, pattering holes across leather couches and cracking wooden chairs into bursts of splinters.
Gypsy quickly gained the upper hand. Their military professionalism made them better shots than their law enforcement counterparts. Combined with the ceaseless, 12.7-millimeter wrath of the M41 Vulcans, they exacted quick casualties on the ambushers. The most fortunate militia rolled, scampered or limped behind the trash bags packed with enough thick materials to stop the rounds. The less fortunate, comprising nearly a third of their numbers, were reduced to bullet sponges whose lifeblood drained down into the refuse beneath.
Duncan moved his turret from left to right in his sweep of the southern wall. At first, he only fired above the militiamen in the hopes of making them break and run. They didn't. They kept firing from behind the trash bags. Seeing his mistake, he willed himself to correct it. "They're not civilians." He said to himself. "They're like Innies. Just come on."
But they weren't Insurrectionists, he knew, as he saw his first precise burst of 20 rounds tear apart a man that had risen from cover. The Innies were the ones behind him, covering his back. Now he was the one shooting civilians.
'Militia.'
The memory of what Gage called them rang in his head, reinforcing his grip around the triggers as he blew away a woman armed with a DMR. He wasn't wrong. They weren't Innies but they were hostiles, the ones trying to ambush him...in order to steal the Hogs and drive to the starport for rescue.
For the most recent part of his life, Duncan shut off his conscience and kept the former thoughts in mind while his bullets tore through a row of trash bags, making a trio of men hiding behind them dance as they were ripped apart.
'Militia'.
"Keep it up, Duncan!" Stewards shouted, shifting gears to reverse. "If they kill us here then you'll never see Erica and Noah again! Its them or you!"
That hammered it home. Duncan refused to let up on the trigger. He watched his sweeps trace long arcs of impact craters across the barrier, regularly striking through one or two people trying to fire back. He wouldn't let them. So long as any of them had a gun he wouldn't give them the chance to use it.
Beneath the blur of muzzle flashes spewing from his rotating barrels he saw the officer riding shotgun leap out of the front Hog. He dashed around the hood despite the bullets pattering at his feet and slid down beside Gage.
Dozens of windows in several surrounding skyscrapers chose that moment to shatter. Bullets shot through them and rained down into the intersection; a secondary ambush.
"Reinforcements!" Haskin shouted. "Cap, they're trying to kill the drivers to box us in! We should get going!"
"Hold on!" Stewards peeked out at the officer checking over Gage. "How is he!?"
The officer shook his head. "He's gon-" He was cut short as a burst of AR fire punched holes through his helmet and he collapsed beside the body. A consecutive burst from several different directions caught Gage's gunner in the torso, hurling him free of the turret onto the hood of the next Hog.
Duncan shifted around to fire on one of the rows of windows in the skyscrapers. A long sweep effectively suppressed the militia there in bursts of glass and blood.
"Captain Stewards!" Another officer called. "We're getting out of here! Follow my lead!"
"Copy!"
The second Hog reversed, allowing the dead gunner to slide off its hood before taking off down West Downey Boulevard. Stewards quickly backed up then drove after them. The rest of the convoy followed in succinct fashion, escaping out of the besieged intersection onto a new route, one they hadn't planned for.
Planned or not, they were going at high speeds, ignoring road signs saying '50 kmph' in exchange for racing at twice that.
"We're going a bit off course, closer to Cascade, but we'll need to risk it in order to redirect onto Interstate 297!" The lead officer advised. "Once we reach Exit 40, we can switch back onto 293!"
"How far is that exit!?" Stewards asked.
"About 3 kilometers south!"
"...Alright, we'll risk it!"
Gypsy pushed on along Downey Boulevard which proved to be a long, three-laned streetway whose surroundings were mainly dominated by hotels. They were the fancy kind. Angular walls and arched windows matched to an array of colors and decorative amenities. In the place of the usual high-value customers they were used to, the seemingly empty hotels showed themselves to be occupied by very anxious, well-armed occupants.
They opened up all at once. Windows blew out at the rounds shooting through to the convoy passing below. Ornamental bushes were used as cover for AR-wielding militia to get off pot-shots at ground level. The turret gunners split their attention between upper and lower threats. A punishing wave of return fire was dished out at the defensive disposition of each Hog. Windows were blown apart. Bushes whipped violently back at tracers snapping through branches and body cavities with equal ease. Yet they couldn't hit every target. Duncan discerned from the countless individual muzzle flashes he saw at any given second that eliminating the threat completely wasn't possible.
He settled for what he could do. He worked alongside the NPPD gunner ahead of him, softening up the most pressing militia positions for those coming behind to finish off. He concentrated fire into a black sedan to suppress the militiaman huddled behind it, swung hard left to cut down two of four men fighting from a jammed hotel driveway then swung hard right to pour into a pesky rifleman in a guard booth. He repeated the cycle. Center, left, right then center again. He cycled into the maneuver more times than he could bother remembering while they pushed down Downey Boulevard.
The pattern changed at reaching the end. A hallway-bridge between two hotels stretched over the boulevard. The road sign beneath it showed three arrows pointed left, right and forward with the left directing to 'Interstate 297'. He paid little attention to it since at least seven militiamen were gathering in the hallway-bridge to gain a new vantage point. He joined the NPPD gunner in leaning back to concentrate their efforts on them. The hailstorm scythed through both glass and flesh, cutting down more than half of them before they could answer in kind. The rest of Gypsy coming behind finished the job.
They drove on to the expected three-way. It was really an expressway with the outer lanes curving down to the left and right while the middle one bridged straight forward over I-297. They took the left exit, swerving around the spiral until they found themselves gunning southwest down the interstate highway.
The gunfire didn't cease. However, it decreased thanks to the manner in which the multi-laned highway held the bordering buildings at a greater distance. Seeking to work around that fact, the militiamen used the advantages they could find. The myriads of tall, tan apartment complexes lining the edge of their route made for the best vantage points, specifically their many balconies. Those became the greatest reception of rattling returns from the M41s.
Even at ranges of 90 meters Duncan was able to hit his targets. He felt secretly surprised at how easy it was to dispatch their foes. He loathed to admit it, but it appeared that fighting a technologically and numerically superior enemy like the Covenant for as long as he had had actually made him better at fighting his own kind. Operating without the risk of random Jackal snipers and incoming energy mortars, enemies protected with shielding or active camouflage made combat far easier to manage than he initially thought.
The convoy pierced through the resistance to a progress marker: another overhanging sign.
'Exit 40 (((((/\))))) 'Cascade
Interstate 297 Southwest (((((/\)))))) Interstate 297 Southwest
2 ½ Kilometers' (((((/\))))) 3 Kilometers'
Passing it, they entered into a stretch of clear asphalt. The last of the gunfire fell away.
"Are we clear!?" Al dared ask.
Duncan looked ahead. "I-, I think so!"
The sound of screeching told him he was dead wrong. Tires burned rubber as they screamed out from adjoined streets to their left and right. In a blink, the convoy of 9 Hogs was beset by a mob of twice as many vehicles streaming onto the outer lanes. They were a loosely organized fleet of jeeps, trucks and minivans that began working their way over. Their windows lowered, allowing the teams of gunmen inside to squeeze off rounds at them. Gypsy's drivers kept them moving while anyone with a gun returned a similar treatment.
Duncan flinched at a burst that pinged off the side of his gun. He was swinging his turret to face the source when a gray sedan pulled right past him. Its opaque windows were up. Had there been a gunman inside they could have shot him then and there. Instead, the sedan sped ahead to the lead Hog. Coming at level with it, they proceeded to slam into the side of the light reconnaissance vehicle. They pulled out then repeated the action in an onslaught that started pushing the lead Hog off course. They were trying to run the officers off the road.
Duncan pulled his turret back towards the sedan in an attempt to save their only guides.
Just as he was about to get off a shot the sedan crashed again into the Hog, pushing into it more than before. Suddenly a door on the opposite side opened. The driver flung himself out onto the asphalt right before his vehicle erupted into a ball of light and heat. The lead Hog and the trailer unit attached to it instantly disappeared in the explosion.
Stewards swerved hard right around the flaming, mangled wrecks that tumbled forward from the blast. Duncan glimpsed back at the fiery destruction. There were no signs of the officers within the overturned remains. "What was that!?"
"Car bomb!" Stewards shouted. "They're trying to stop us here! Gypsy, keep pushing south! Don't let them get too close!"
As they moved down a bend in the highway, Duncan spotted a red truck roaring in beside them. No one was shooting from it. With the most recent memory of a fireball in mind he worked to keep it from what it was about to try. He knocked out a rear wheel, bursting the tough rubber with even tougher lead. Seeing that the jig was up, the driver made a last-ditch attempt to swerve into them. But Duncan shot out its front tire to kill its momentum outright. Once it fell behind, he poured a quick salvo through the windshield into the driver before he could become a bomber to those coming behind.
The rest of Gypsy had similarly changed tact. Ambers dished out a beating on the windows of a gray coupe whose riddled sides were already enflamed. A quick streak of bullets across the front struck something hidden. A subsequent explosion in the hood blew the entire thing apart at a safe distance.
Al, Kiko and the other gunners engaged in a preemptive shootout against a handful of vehicles not firing back. Their efforts turned one truck into a roman candle, destroyed the wheels of another car and detonated the explosives in two jeeps. The duel devastation had a chain reaction that reduced the hostile vehicles around them to conflagratory wrecks.
In under a minute their assailants were cut down to a third. In less than half that, the last car trailed away in puffs of smoke.
The crew cheered at their luck. They cheered even more as they finally reached Exit 40. Stewards lead the way along the length of the exit. No challengers emerged to meet them in the surrounding apartments and they freely pulled off onto Interstate 293.
The turret gunners shifted from left to right, guarding the drivers who maneuvered little for random pieces of debris or misplaced cars. The plentiful corporate offices rising to their left and right presented no signs of threats.
"I wouldn't get too comfy lads," O'Reilly said, scanning the horizon. "We're not out of this yet. Stay sharp."
"We're too sharp already." Al laughed.
"Yeah-yeah, just make sure-"
THUMP.
Duncan found the sound familiar. He struggled to figure out what it was until he heard a faint whistling that grew rapidly louder. No, not louder. Closer.
Then he saw it; a sphere of light the size of a basketball streaking towards the convoy on a trail of smoke. He only glimpsed it as it flew overhead before screaming right into the hood of Haskin's Warthog. Both Joker's leader and the crew with him vanished in a resonant blast as the rocket exploded.
Duncan witnessed the Hog come crashing down out of the blaze a split-second later. Lacking its front wheels, its smoking chassis bounced off the ground once then grinded sparks across the asphalt before screeching to a halt 10 meters from where it was hit. The trailer unit behind it was fine. The same couldn't be said for its carriers.
"Rockets!" Duncan yelled as he traced the exhaust trail to a rooftop 100 meters ahead to their right. He raked the pair of silhouettes standing there with full-auto fury. They swiftly retreated out of sight.
The convoy ground to a stop. "Secure a perimeter!" Stewards called on his comm-link. "O'Reilly, Grimes, Sandoval, retrieve Hask and his guys and secure them in their trailer! Ambers, get your other Hog to clamp on! We're not leaving anyone behind! Move!"
The crew hopped to it. O'Reilly leaped out and ran briskly down the line of Hogs. Duncan got to see the horror etched on his expression as he passed.
"Duncan, keep your eyes on those rooftops!" Stewards ordered.
"Y-, yessir!" He searched left and right, finding nothing at first. Eventually he spotted figures glimpsing over the edge of four of the nearby skyscrapers. He joined the other gunners in suppression fire, forcing the wood-be-assailants back to cover. All the while he stole glances at the sight on the ground.
O'Reilly skidded to a stop in front of the burning Hog with the other two AMADDS. They hesitantly approached the driver's seat.
Haskin by some morbid miracle was the only one still seated. At least everything up to a few centimeters of his waist still was. The rest of his upper half was missing, leaving behind an opened, lower torso of charred flesh as well as a mishmash of intestines and other shattered organs that seeped out onto the seat. The rocket, having struck right in front of him, had burst his body from the waist up like a human balloon. His legs were pushing down hard on the accelerator, as if he were still there trying to keep his crew on the move.
Pained screams told them where the other two riders were.
"Go!" O'Reilly told the other two. "I'll get him out! You get those guys!"
They grimly nodded and left him to it.
Grimes found the first man, the one who'd rode shotgun, lying a few meters behind and to the side of where the Hog had slid along the ground. Most of his left leg was gone and by the look of the blood trail behind him, he had been thrown clear by the explosion then tumbled forward, losing serious amounts of blood along the way. He was looking down at his missing limb and screaming in agony. Grimes quickly set about tying a tourniquet around the bloody stump to stop the rhythmic bleeding, earning more tormented cries from his patient.
Sandoval found the second. The gunner landed even further away. He clutched exhaustedly at several bloody holes cut through the vest on his stomach. The shrapnel embedded in his flesh still hissed with heat. Sandoval picked him up carefully and ferried him back to the trailer.
O'Reilly was also on his way, carrying Haskin's lower half like a disassembled mannequin. He did his best not to let too much of Joker-1's remaining vitals spill out onto the highway. He and Sandoval reached the trailer's doors and yanked them open. They'd rested the living down next to the dead when a rocket struck the ground nearby.
Duncan returned his attention to the surrounding rooftops. There were more figures now than when he last looked. The distinctive shape of SPNKR tubes confirmed their identities by firing a stochastic salvo. The downpour of rockets elicited a quick response from the captain.
"Evasive maneuvers!"
Gypsy's drivers anticipated where the rockets would hit and made micro-corrections, turning, accelerating or reversing out of the way. The tact proved effective once the first wave of rockets struck the highway. The explosions tore ragged chunks out of the ground; all clean misses.
Duncan suppressed as many positions as he could. Despite causing one rocket team to retreat after another, enough fired off a second salvo to cause a problem. The second barrage was oriented significantly towards O'Reilly and the others. He looked on in shock at each rocket that struck near their target. The trio ignored what turned out to be badly aimed shots while they maneuvered the last man missing a leg into the trailer.
It was becoming clear that either the militia weren't good shots or they were trying to contain them. The latter made sense since the earlier ambush made a demand on their vehicles. Logic dictated that the militia had struck out Haskin's Hog with precision in order to delay them. That meant they might be trying to get reinforcements into place.
There was no time. Duncan poured on the fire at every position he could find. He needed to put them under pressure before they left or the militia would just shoot out another Hog to stop them. His comrades on the turrets, probably coming to the same conclusion, started suppressing one position then swiftly shifting to the next the second they retreated.
The strategy swiftly bore fruit in the diminishing rate of rocket fire. They kept up the pace while O'Reilly and the others disengaged the trailer's connective clamp from the dead Hog. They directed Squad Jack's free one over. The driver steered into place for them to attach the clamp to its rear.
"We're good, sir!" O'Reilly said.
"Good, load back up! Everyone, shift into double-columns, staggered formation! We're moving out!"
The rest of Gypsy drove into different positions than before. The second the last of their crew were onboard they raced down the highway, ignoring random rockets and dodging accurate ones. Dodging became easier thanks to the greater maneuverability brought on by their staggered formation. Keeping more distance between each other limited any further retaliation from the rockets for another kilometer.
Soon a new wave of ballistics pelted them from every side. They again returned the favor at another set of apartment complexes bordering the highway. Not wanting to waste time shooting their way through, they accelerated down the final stretches of the uncluttered route.
THUMP
Duncan knew it was coming from behind. He looked back to see a rocket soaring from the top of an apartment towards the rear of Ambers' Hog. "Incoming!" She shouted.
However, the rocket undershot. It slammed into the back of her trailer, consuming half the vessel in flames and briefly lifting it off its hind wheels. Slamming back down, the forward wheels collapsed and the burning weight screeched over the roadway, slowing its carrier. The militia were making a final attempt to stop them.
"Jack-1!?" Stewards called.
"Don't slow down!" Ambers replied. "I've got it!"
She crouched down, clutching the handle of her turret one-handed so that the barrels tipped skyward. She extended her arm to lean over the rear and reached down with the available hand. Her fingers gained purchase on the release latch. "I've got no choice, sir!"
"...Do what you have to, Jack-1!"
"Copy!"
She pulled the latch. The trailer was instantly released from the lock. She eyed the burning unit as it fell behind them then pulled herself back onto the gun.
The last of the gunfire fell away as did the last skyscrapers of downtown New Palermo. They headed south towards the eerie silence and endless tract housing of the suburbs, passing under a sign whose sight came as an overwhelming relief:
'Trapani
Interstate 293 South
¼ kilometers'
:********:
The convoy drove up a road bordered by a rising plain of dry shrubs and reddish-orange desert. New Palermo's plateau wall lay a short drive ahead, as did the chasm. It was a sizable crack in the natural barrier that weaved up to its full 200-meter height, thereby allowing light to filter to the bottom. That was a good sign. It meant any more ambushes they might come across could be spotted faster.
Getting closer, Duncan got a sense for how wide the chasm actually was. The initial opening could fit a full Pelican. Perfect. However, a 2-meter fence stood in their way. It would have had it not been apparently overrun, crumpled and cut asunder. As they drove through the broken gate into the interior they were introduced to a swerving system of wide spaces and narrow passages. They were all thankfully well-lit enough to see the way forward.
The interior was a smooth yet regularly jagged igneous rock formation lined in the converging hues of red, orange, golden-brown and pink. The colors melded together on the jagged and smooth contours to form what looked like frozen ocean waves. Its affect was highlighted in an almost beautiful shine by the sunlight, creating brighter upper areas and lower darker areas for an artistic contrast.
However, 10 seconds in, Duncan saw various bullet holes in the interior wall that made him wary. The same went for the bodies of several security guards lying behind a checkpoint of cement barriers that they passed. Joining them were a similar number of civilians lying dead in front or behind the barrier, faintly clutching at fallen weapons. Moreover, the numerous shoeprints going down the dirt road was cause for concern.
"Eyes up, Gypsy." Stewards warned. "We're almost there."
Having taken the lead on the convoy it fell to Duncan to call out threats before they became a problem. The ever-curving walls seemed to go on forever. Forever was closer to a minute, ending where the passage unexpectedly rose up and widened outward into a large cavity. Yet in congruence with the increased space at the bottom, the part of the interior chasm closer to the top folded inward, diminishing the amount of light getting through.
It made it difficult but not impossible for Duncan to see the storage facility.
The facility was set within the confines of a section where the chasm had been hollowed out to the sides, creating an artificial cavern. The upper section of the chasm curved back up 20-meters overhead to form a cracked dome. It reduced the incoming light to a jagged line that incidentally divided the main road of the facility into two halves. To the left and right of that road were close to two-dozen portable office trailers far larger than the ones they were carrying. The gray, tan and white rectangles-turned-offices were laid out perpendicular to each other in an organized mazework. It was going to be a pain to navigate.
Those that came before them had taken a look around judging by how the shoeprints diverged off the road into the facility. Then there were also the broken windows of some offices. Not even the few, small concrete buildings near the chasm's far walls had been spared. The question remained as to whether the militia had found what they were looking for or if they were still here looking for it.
The convoy pulled in at the edges of the facility and rumbled to a stop. For a tense 10 seconds they waited for someone to show themselves. The place remained silent, the windows of its buildings dark.
"Gypsy, fan out." Stewards ordered. "I want a 15-meter spread. You see anything, call it out."
A wave of attentive "Yessir" responses answered as the platoon hopped out to sweep the area. They peeked into windows, inspected collapsed doorways and kicked aside office equipment strewn over the ground.
Stewards stepped out and started down the convoy. "O'Reilly, on me. Duncan, you too. Take a break."
"Copy." The two said. Duncan would take whatever breaks he could get for his sore thumbs. They hopped out and followed the captain to the trailer housing Haskin and the two men of Squad Joker. The doors were already open. The gray-haired and gray-eyed Grimes was crouched between two of the four bodies inside. The two confirmed KIAs lay off to the left including Ambers' first driver, Corseago who'd taken a sniper round to the back of the head. Duncan had seen the damage, but at this close he could smell it.
He looked to the captain and saw no traces of his signature smile, replaced instead by an unreadable mask.
"How are we looking?" Stewards asked.
Grimes turned to him, then to the man who'd gotten his leg blown off and was now seemingly resting, though his face had gone pale. Grimes shook his head. "Altman's dead."
A sullen frown creased the captain's demeanor. "The tourniquet?"
Grimes shook his head again. "He'd lost too much blood. The Biofoam wasn't much help either. Same with Corseago"
"... I see...Garrett?"
Grimes, the medic of Quinn's Squad Jester, nodded at the last man clinging to consciousness whose midsection was bloodied by shrapnel. "The shrap didn't hit any vitals. I morphined him but it looks like he can make it."
Stewards nodded, sullen yet satisfied. "We'll get him treated back on the Mayweather. Till Langley's arrived, he'll stay here with you."
"Roger."
Duncan noticed he didn't ask about Haskin. There was no reason to either. A slight cracking sound drew their focus. It was coming from Haskin and the faint vapors still sizzling from his body. The captain took in a deep breath and let it out. He lay a hand on the cameoed fatigues of the squad leader's right knee. He kept it there for a somber moment then nodded off to Grimes and walked on with Duncan and O'Reilly.
They took several steps towards the eastern buildings when a commotion caught their ear. It was the distant, muted sounds of a back-and-forth argument.
"Jack-1 to Gypsy-Actual, we've got a problem, sir." Ambers said on the comm.
The three of them instinctually drew their rifles. "Specifics?" Stewards asked.
"We've got a survivor on the west side, male, big guy. Looks like security for the facility. He's telling us we don't have permission to be here."
Stewards blinked unemotively at that last detail. Duncan didn't see it. Still, he sensed something switch within the captain.
"We're on our way." Stewards said and led them in that direction.
They rounded a few of the office trailers on the west side. The argument drew closer until they rounded a bend into a small plaza setup between four trailers.
Ambers and her squad were there, aiming collectively at a bulky man dressed in the black uniform and cap of a security officer. He was muscularly built and would have been more than a match for someone like Haskin or Quinn. He was aiming his own M6 at the team.
Ambers and the man who stood a head taller than anyone else were engaged in a shouting match over who needed to put their guns down. Quinn's squad arrived on the scene from the other side, guns raised. Seeing two more groups converging on him, the guard frantically turned to aim intermittently between them.
"Put your weapons down!" He shouted. "I said, put your weapons down!"
"You first, pal!" Quinn answered, leveling his shotgun at his midsection.
"You do not have permission to be on these grounds! Drop your weapons now!"
"We're not dropping anything except you if you don't calm down!" Ambers said.
The guard, veins showing in his skull, sweat pouring over his tanned face, refused to concede as the wildness in his eyes grew to that of a cornered animal. "You do not have permission to be here! Drop your weapons now or I will-" The guard suddenly snapped his pistol sights to none other than the captain as he slowly walked towards him, one hand raised in a peaceful gesture.
"Stop!"
Stewards kept coming. The rest of the squad silently watched as he stopped halfway and slowly lay his battle rifle down on the ground.
"Captain, what're you doing?" Quinn asked angrily.
Stewards looked over and grinned at him, saying with an unnatural calmness; "Talking." He turned to the guard. "It's better than having to shoot each other over a misunderstanding, isn't it?"
Quinn said nothing. Neither did the lone guard who scrutinized the captain as he stopped a few steps short of him, making sure to keep his arms raised.
"So," Stewards said as he stared down the barrel of the M6. "Can we talk?"
Confusion washed over the guard's face. He swallowed hard, taking in a couple shallow breaths. "You are not supposed to be here. You need to leave, you and everyone else."
"Actually, we're supposed to be here." Stewards corrected. "You see, we're extra help hired by your boss Mr. Henderson to protect AMG's assets. He said we could come here to take a few fusion cores as payment. I guess you wouldn't have gotten the memo though since your communications are down."
The guard stared at him. "No...I wouldn't have." He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at one of the few concrete buildings. It had an outer deck on its first level leading up to a set of front doors. The guard was pointing to the satellite dish on the rooftop that looked like a giant dog had mistaken it for a treat.
"When the militia stormed this place, they damaged everything. They took everything and everyone they could find."
"Everyone except you." Stewards noted with a sigh. "Right."
"Listen," The guard pressed. "I don't got any orders from my higher-ups to let anyone in here. No matter what you say, I can't just take your word for it. I've got to hear it from them directly. So you better go and call them to confirm that."
Stewards stared unwaveringly into his eyes, a frantic sea of emotion compared to an ocean of calm. "Quinn, can we contact them from here?"
Quinn shook his head. "Not possible, sir. Our comms range can't reach that far."
"What about our radio?"
Quinn looked uncertainly to Ambers who answered solemnly. "Haskin had it, sir, in his Hog."
Stewards sighed again. "...Right."
An audible click returned his attention to the guard as he thumbed down the M6's hammer. "Then you better go back there and get that permission in writing. Otherwise, you're not getting in here."
Gypsy grew tense, ready to fire on demand.
But Stewards didn't demand anything. He looked to be weighing his options. Then he looked past the guard to the concrete, two-story building with the dish some ways behind him. "Is that a facial recognition suite by the doors? I guess we'll need that to get in, right?"
"You should go." The guard pressed more vehemently than before.
"I understand. You're just doing your job." Stewards exhaled one last time. "And I'm just doing mine."
Despite that he was looking straight at them, Duncan didn't see what happened until after it occurred. There was a blur of motion and suddenly Stewards was right in front of the guard, holding his gun arm at the wrist and forcing it upwards as the pistol fired off into the chasm. Stewards kept the other arm pinned firmly at his side. Regardless of the notable size difference between them, the smaller of the two was treating the other as though their places were reversed.
A full second later Duncan's brain caught up to what had transpired. Stewards had rushed him before he could get off a shot and grabbed his wrist to force his gun arm aside. He'd formed his right hand into a spade-like shape and struck. The guard's intimidating height was a double-edged sword; it made his neck fairly vulnerable.
He was choking violently now as he fought to clutch at his throat, terror mixed with agony evident on his pained expression. Stewards wouldn't release him. The captain calmly squeezed the man's wrist until everyone heard the creaking of bones ready to break. The guard winced and finally dropped the M6. Stewards then gradually forced him down to the ground, staring into his panicked eyes like those of an impatient child being sat down by a patient father. The guard yielded and collapsed onto his knees.
Duncan was speechless. It was like watching David and Goliath but with the sling replaced by a disproportionate amount of strength.
Moreover, he'd only ever seen anything close to that kind of speed a few times in his life from persons much bigger and with much better armor.
Stewards released the guard's hands to let him grip desperately at his throat. Seeing the man gasping for air, he walked past him, patted him on the shoulder and grabbed the scruff of his collar. With that, Stewards began to pull the much larger guard along the rising path to the relay building like a man with a suitcase.
"Let's go."
The rest of Gypsy looked knowingly at each other then headed after him, their weapons raised for any more threats. Duncan trailed apprehensively behind them. He saw O'Reilly walking next to him and whispered over. "What did he just do to that guy?"
"He broke his windpipe." O'Reilly said plainly. "Not the first time I've seen him do it either."
Duncan tried his best to ignore the increasingly pained gargling up ahead. "...How was he able to do all that?"
O'Reilly looked him over uncertainly for a moment. "Do you believe in curses, boyo?"
"Curses?"
"Yeah."
"...Why?"
The Irishman nodded at Stewards who was continuing on casually to the building despite the struggles of his slowly suffocating charge. "For now, let's just say it's part of his curse, alright?'
Duncan sensed that the answer was primed more towards dissuading further questions than answering anything at all. He nodded and kept moving. Still, the strained gargling from the guard wouldn't let up. He felt a twinge of guilt banging on the sealed doors of his conscience.
They reached the relay building and came up the front steps onto the outer deck. The box device to the right of the doors bore the red cyclopean eye of a facial scanner. Stewards hooked his arms under the guard's underarms and pulled him over. He turned his charge around, bringing him close enough for the process to commence. The semi-sphere emitted a grid of red light that moved over the man's suffering expression. A second later the device dinged and the doors slid open.
Quinn and Ambers entered first, their teams trailing them while they took aim at everything inside.
Duncan and O'Reilly got onto the deck just as Stewards laid the guard against the outside wall close to the door. Without another consideration, the captain walked inside.
O'Reilly went in. Duncan stopped. He spent the longest second staring at the gasping man. He knew next to nothing medically and that no one who did know was going to bother helping. The thing he did know how to do, the act that would bring the guard some relief, was something he inwardly detested but found himself doing all the same. He slowly raised his MA5B. The guard, choking, saw what he was thinking. Duncan watched the tears well up in the man's exhausted eyes then roll down his cheek as the guard raised a trembling hand between the barrel and his face.
Duncan's grip tightened. He felt compelled to do it and would have were it not for his resurging conscience which gripped him tighter than his rifle. A hand rested on the top of his AR and pushed it down. He turned to see O'Reilly looking worriedly at him from inside the doorway.
"Save that for the guys that can shoot back, alright? Till then, hold onto your ammo. You might end up needing it."
Duncan swallowed. He reluctantly nodded, pried himself away from the scene of the gargling guard and headed in with O'Reilly. He silently thanked him for saving him from what might have been a horrible mistake.
The inside was dark. However, the multi-colored lights of the numerous buttons and keypads running along the far wall let them know that it was a control hub. The consular stations along with their inactive screens emitted enough light for them to navigate around the lounge of couches at the center. They diffused along the consoles, checking their functions.
"Looks like we've got a camera system here." Thurston said, throwing himself into a seat in front of a station. "Let me see if I can find a directory."
Typing through a series of interfaces, he arrived at a scrolling list of location names. "Ah, found it." He pressed 'Enter' on an option near the bottom. Four separate feeds blinked onto his screen showing four different angles of the inside of the same building. The walls, concrete, were lined with what looked like food aisles. Stacked on the shelves and fastened in place were the rectangular devices they were looking for. In the darkness, the vacillating orange-yellow glow coming from alcoves in the sides of each individual fusion core lit up the space.
Stewards leaned in next to him. "Where is that?"
"Core Storage. Two buildings down in..." He pointed east. "That direction." His next round of typing elicited a bleep from the console. "And the doors are open."
"Good. Gypsy, we're headed over there. First we'll drop by our trailers to pick-up the body bags then get the cores."
"We won't be able to take as much as we planned, sir." Ambers said. "Not after I lost my unit."
"We'll take what we can. I'll patch in with Langley to have her meet us at the gates in 15. She's hopefully refueled by now. Thurston, keep your eyes on the cams near our exit. Kiko, stay here and cover him. We've got 10 minutes people, then we're out of here."
The platoon did as ordered, leaving Thurston and Kiko inside. On the way-out Duncan saw that the guard sitting beside the doors was staring up lifelessly at the chasm. He closed his eyes for him before jogging after the others.
They came to the convoy, took out the body bags piled inside their trailers and carried them to the Core Storage Building. The warehouse was one of several concrete warehouses in the facility. They stopped within range of the motion sensors on the front doors which slid open in response.
The lights flickered on simultaneously. Gypsy moved to the hundreds of cores stacked on the shelves. Each looked like a yellowish-orange lava lamp nearly the size of a person. They carefully removed those on the bottom shelves and slipped them into the body bags. The thick plastic, as Stewards had explained, would help contain the radiation of the plasma energy stored inside. The added padding would also limit the chance of them getting rattled up enough to detonate.
Planting his core in the bag, Duncan was less than ecstatic at the idea that all of these cores could go off if even one was damaged. That could very easily blow the lid off the warehouse. Taking out the entirety of Gypsy was the least it could do. Then again, that was likely why AMG had chosen this location. If the cores ever detonated en masse, the blast would be contained within the isolated chasm. The citizens of New Palermo would be safe. The same couldn't be said for every soul hired to watch over the cores within the storage facility.
The 13 AMADDS left for the convoy and carefully hoisted their findings into the 3 remaining trailers. Arriving at Haskin's trailer, Duncan found Grimes still there guarding the four downed men as well as the rest of their vehicles alone. Having put what remained of Haskin, Altman and Corseago into body bags already, Jester's medic helped him pull the first of the cores into the back.
"Duncan," Stewards called on the comms.
"Yessir."
"Stick with Grimes and stay close to the convoy. We can't afford to lose any more Hogs, copy?"
"I copy, sir." He was relieved to not have to carry anything else. The cores were unbearably heavy. Using baggy body bags on them definitely didn't help. He nodded off to Grimes and headed out.
While the others left carrying the next round of bags, Duncan stayed behind to patrol around the Hogs. He maintained a close vigil on the nearby offices, scanning windows with his rifle. No targets appeared in them or in the corners that he examined during his walk.
After a minute he stopped to take a break. Then he noticed something about the main road. Other than the militia's old shoeprints and the new boot-prints from Gypsy, there were two pairs of what he recognized to be footprints. No boots, just feet. The two prints were different: one pair was smaller than the other. They were fresh and headed towards the exit. Considering they were new, that meant that whoever made them had walked past the convoy when no one else except Grimes was around.
He followed them with his rifle leveled. Soon he reached a spot where the two pairs of prints went behind Quinn's trailer. He braced himself against the side of it. His AR raised, he stepped out.
There was nothing there.
He cautiously checked the entry latch on the doors to be sure that no one had tampered with it or possibly gotten inside. As he did, he noticed a pair of shadows as they moved in from behind him accompanied by the sounds of approaching footsteps.
Chao - Chaos