From a good distance away, one would’ve been able to see the entire shockwave. Tecumseh was lucky enough to be one of those people – he stared it down as it raced towards him and his team at the speed of sound. It’s hard to describe exactly what a shockwave feels like to boil it down it was powerful enough to knock one of the three on her ass from a few kilometers away.
Tech’s head followed the wave as it raced away from the lift bridge, and watched it nearly pick up the M/V Brighton from its moorings. Alas, no such luck.
Would’ve made life easier, he thinks to himself as he extends his arm. Two hands pull their owner to her feet, face hidden behind a bright gold faceplate. He can only imagine how pissed she is that she got deposited on her bottom by pressurized air alone. The third is staring off at the bridge, motionless. He leans on an empty windowsill, shoulders tense and stiff and raised.
“’Mitri?” Tech asks, pushing aside his desperate want for any sort of sign from Xiuying or Eva that the three didn’t get too caught in that explosion.
“Hmm?” Dimitri’s head turns, his lips pursed tight. Worry lines are etched into his gaunt face.
“Worried?”
“That was a very large explosion.” There’s something different about Dimitri’s accent. It’s painfully Russian, but it has a sort of sing-song tone to it, allegedly reminiscent of indigenous Far East languages.
The smallest of the three pulls herself to her feet, muttering in a strange, Russian-adjacent language the entire time.
<
Dimitri’s head turns to face his smaller compatriot.
“Anastasia?”
But the smallest of the three keeps herself silent even as ice-blue eyes look at her. She’s already said what she wants to say; anymore and her ex might figure things out. Tech steps his armoured figure between the two and each side breaks off.
“They’re fine,” Tech tells the two. Mostly for himself. He wonders if either of them actually heard it as chaos erupts outside.
Hundreds of formerly idle dockworkers scramble in every which way, some looking for an unobstructed view to gawk at the detonation and others looking for a chance to head home early today. Tech can’t quite blame them; he figures they have a clue what might be coming down the pipe.
He doesn’t waste any more time. His TACPAD is embedded into his armoured gauntlet and he dials up the bossman. It rings twice like a cellular phone.
“Mister Sherman?” Davison asks.
“Was that the signal, sir?”
Davison hesitates for a moment. Both know it wasn’t, but both also know that they’re running nearly twenty minutes behind schedule.
“It is now,” Davison says.
“Understood, sir.”
Tech ends the call then and there. The two Russians, or at least Russian-adjacents, look at him for orders.
“You know what to do.”
It’s because they’ve meticulously planned out this whole operation – Dawn’s bit, Xiuying’s part, and Tech’s segment. Just because one went spectacularly off the rails doesn’t mean the other two will too.
Tech covers his face with his segmented helmet; his black visor augmented with angular plates of aether-dipped titanium. It doesn’t restrict his vision enough for it to be a problem. He picks up his weapon, a belt-fed machinegun, 7.62mm and bullpup so the magazine feed is behind the trigger mechanism. He double checks the feed and spies a bullet in the chamber.
He nods and the three all take off – Tech and Anastasia towards the giant, looming M/V Brighton sitting at the 9th pier, Dimitri in the exact opposite direction towards a large, mobile crane that looks like seventy percent steel and thirty percent rust. The places he’ll go for good sightlines.
Each pier is about a hundred meters long, but the building that Tecumseh and co. were hiding in was just past pier 4, giving them only four hundred and fifty meters to reach their target. Tech takes it as a relatively leisurely jog, a way to stretch his stiff legs, but Anastasia stands a hair over five feet – a good nineteen inches shorter than Tech. Accordingly she can’t cover as much ground with each step forcing her to break into what looks like a sprint just to stay level with him. But if she’s complaining – she probably is – Tech can’t hear it.
“Pier nine is three hundred meters further. It will be the fourth on your left.” Dimitri’s voice rings out over the TEAMCOM, through the helmet’s tinny speakers.
It’s the only ship in the harbour and the only place in the harbour with towers of shipping containers stacked up high. It’s hard to miss.
“Wait.”
The two freeze in their tracks and two whip-crack gunshots ring out overhead, separated by a second.
“Two neutralized. You’re clear.”
They start up again and in his peripheral vision Tech sees two men with their brains splattered on the concrete where they lay, small-calibre handguns slipping from their hands. There’s no chance they would’ve posed a threat to either of them, not with the armour they’re wearing.
A gunshot sparks off of Tech’s pauldron and his eyes lock on to a pair of guards, not Ikhwan, perhaps mercenary, with American-style assault rifles – an M16A6 for the left and an M4A4 for the guy on the right nearly identical in all but length. Tech begins to raise his MG but before he can properly sight up the men Anastasia riddles them both, her submachinegun spitting up to twelve hundred rounds a minute. It takes her all of two seconds to completely empty a magazine of forty rounds and the guards flop to the ground. The 9x19mm rounds aren’t strong enough to really tear up a man’s flesh but there’s only so many holes a man can live with in his body and a dozen is far too many.
<
The pair run for another hundred meters and some more until Dimitri says –
“Left!”
And the pair run underneath a sign that indicates that this is Pier Nine in both English and Arabic.
The greeting the pair receive from the locals isn’t friendly – Tech’s armour sparks like a firework show as bullets bounce off of its angles, scouring the titanium plates like fissures in the Earth. Tech spies his assailants – a grouping of mercenary types, self-evident by their aesthetic desire to closely resemble governmental ‘special operators’, heavy beards and sleeveless vests showing tattoos and camouflage caps with American flags and sports team emblems, the Cowboys and Eagles and Giants. The gunfire stops only for a second as Tech raises his machinegun at them and they stand static still. At least ‘special operator’ types are smart enough to get out of the way when a gun is pointed at them.
Tech pulls the trigger and so do they and their bullets bounce harmlessly off his armour and his bullets eviscerate theirs, along with the flesh and bone underneath. His weapon sounds like a fully automatic cannon compared to their piddly little assault rifles and he fires until they finally decide to scatter, some to the left and into the grid of cargo-crate towers and some to the right behind their vehicles.
Anastasia darts left to deal to hedge against any flanking attacks and Tech redirects his weapon’s fire into the vehicles, Jeeps and SUVs that are hopefully armoured.
“Guards on the ship,” Dimitri says.
Tech flicks his eyes towards the ship and on the starboard side and sights a firing squad of sailors armed with whatever it is they could find – AK-type rifles, old submachineguns that are reproductions of weapons from the 2nd World War made on the cheap in developing countries, a few bolt-action hunting rifles, a shotgun, even a flare gun that fires an orange fireball that lands at Tech’s feet and inconveniences him for exactly a second and a half until he moves three feet to the right. Their bullets bounce harmlessly off his armour like pellets.
A fountain of gore erupts from the right side of a sailor’s head – Tech’s left – and the whip-crack report of Dimitri’s rifle rings out.
“Three.”
Sunlight flashes against a scope up high and Tech sees a sniper nested atop the ship’s bridge, too late. He feels the bullet before he hears the report.
A .338 Lapua Magnum round can turn a man’s head into pudding and his chest into a crater. This particular lead round collides headlong with one of Tech’s faceplates and it flattens itself into a lead pancake. Tech doesn’t even blink and redirects his weapon in that figure’s direction and cuts him down from seventy-ish meters away.
Back with the firing squad, Tech sees another man’s head rupture out of the corner of his eye and hears –
“Four.”
From Dimitri and Tech steps forwards, finally turning his machinegun on the sailors and as the 7.62mm bullets fly overhead they display better survival instincts than the mercenaries, ducking behind the steel bulkhead or otherwise scattering.
A mercenary pops out behind one of the Jeeps and pings a burst of gunfire off of Tech’s armour and when it inevitably doesn’t do anything he stops and stares wide-eyed, brown irises behind orange-tinted ballistic goggles, strikingly similar to the one Dimitri wears.
Like any reasonable person, Tech doesn’t take too kindly to being shot at and he turns what’s left of the machinegun’s box upon the Jeep. The bullets cut through its fibreglass body and punch holes in dozens of essential components, causing a cascade of some sort of liquid near the rear of the vehicle. The weapon clicks empty and Tech primes a grenade and tosses it underhand and it detonates, the gasoline leak amplifying the explosion and throwing the vehicle a dozen feet in the air, spiralling end-over-end. He pauses the assault to undertake the lengthy process of reloading his machinegun, depositing the empty belt and box at his feet, clipping a new box to the side of the weapon, feeding the belt in, and racking the bolt and by then a pair of mercenaries have scurried to the left, into the maze.
For a moment, it’s quiet. The gunfire has stopped, but far in the background, somewhere, there’s screaming. It feels like it’s coming from the maze, somewhere.
Instead of investigating that, Tech starts towards the Brighton until a man sprints back out of the maze, a small reaper chasing him and she cuts down his legs with a burst of subgun fire.
Anastasia draws her knife from its sheath at the small of her back and twirls it with unshakable confidence and yanks the man up to his knees with her free hand. She jams the blade deep into his neck on the left side with her right hand and her forearm shudders as the blade grinds against bone. She pulls to her right and carves a bloody canyon through flesh and vein and artery and when the blade falls free she wipes it on her pantleg, the man collapsing, blood leaking from his opened throat in waves like water lapping against a beach.
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By now, Tech figures that the sailors still alive on the boat have figured that Tech has stopped firing and heard the man screaming like a rabbit in a bear trap. Anastasia turns her 5’1 figure in their direction and all the guns in their hands drop into the river.
It’s quiet, once again. Anastasia raises her face shield and lowers the jawguard, fishing at her waist for her canteen. Her hair is brown-blonde – either blonde with brown stripes or brown with blonde stripes – and long, long enough for either Davison or her benefactor to have due cause to chew her out of it. But her benefactor is lax about that stuff and Davison doesn’t care as long as the job gets done. She has a round face with a sharp, pointed chin and rosy red cheeks that always make it look like she’s blushing. If one saw her on the street you wouldn’t suspect her a hardened killer.
“It’s too fucking hot,” she mutters, grabbing the canteen and taking a swig. She absent-mindedly tosses it to Tech who catches it out of the air and looks at her until she realizes.
Then there’s movement from behind her. Tech sees it too late; a mercenary emerging from behind the flaming shell of the Jeep, the small woman already in his sights. Tech raises his gun but the merc is faster and fires off a single shot.
No matter all the armour she’s wearing, if that bullet catches her in the head or neck she’s done. Tech isn’t fast enough to step in the way and the bullet races towards Anastasia and sparks as it slams into the plate armouring the back of her shoulder.
<
Tech aims his gun at the merc, as does Anastasia but the merc speaks before either can pull their triggers, staying their fingers.
“Guns down! Govern– “
His pronouncement is profoundly interrupted as his face explodes forwards from the back and what’s left of him drops like a brick.
“That is five. Stop getting distracted. The last one went into the containers. I will watch the crew of the ship.”
Anastasia bunches her lips to the left-side of her face. Tech doesn’t dare remove his helmet lest any more interlopers pop out of the shadows. She pulls her helmet back on and the two advance into the maze and Tech sees her handiwork at every turn; scenes comparable to the crime scenes of Jack the Ripper, or perhaps the work of a particularly sloppy coroner. It also has a backing soundtrack.
<
It’s distant and muffled and at first Tech thinks his eleven years as a Janissary are finally showing their toll. Just the wind, right?
<
Would the wind really be yelling for help? Tech and ‘Tasia share a glance through their visors, and the smaller woman takes off, immediately losing Tech in the maze.
So, tentatively, he heads further into the maze, relying solely on his hearing to decide his next move. He turns right, then left, then straight through a crossroads, then through another, and then a right and then another right and there yelling always goes louder and louder with each turn. There’s another voice too.
“I swear to fucking god, I’ll fucking do it!”
<
“Stay, fucking, stay away from me!”
Tech makes one last left turn and sees a hostage situation unfolding before him. One final mercenary stands tall, holding a dishevelled woman as a human shield. Both stand in front of an open shipping crate, yellow in colour and even through his helmet Tech can smell the scent of purge. Whereas the rest of these mercenaries looked grizzled to the point of comedy this one is fresh-faced and jittery, the handgun he holds quivering, the barrel either aimed at Anastasia or the head of the hostage he holds. Anastasia’s helmet is off, both pieces on the ground – if his finger twitches there’s a good possibility that he’ll put a hole in her head.
“Are you sure that you want to do this?” she asks, far too calmly considering the circumstances.
Tech figures that it’s best if the mercenary doesn’t dome Tasia; he starts forwards towards him and his armoured clomping grabs the man’s attention. Instead of firing, he instead drags the hostage backwards, deeper into the crate. Tech notes that it cuts off any potential flanking routes; he figures that the sniper is on his way. Smart.
And as Tecumseh nears, closing the gap to Anastasia’s side, he notices another. Behind the man sit dozens of people, and as they try to get out from behind the mercenary the sound of metal chains rattle.
From far away, a gunshot’s report echoes through the hallways; the mercenary flinches and presses the barrel of his handgun into the woman’s temple.
< Tech only recognizes the language as not-Arabic. Trafficked, most likely. From her dark skin Tech figures she’s from the Indian subcontinent. Where, exactly, he doesn’t know. India has ten thousand languages. < Tech looks over at Anastasia, her steely-blue eyes wide if only for a moment. In that moment, she hatches a plan. Tech can see the gears turning in her head. < For a moment, its silent. The mercenary freezes up. One of Anastasia’s small hands winds up in front of Tech and he lowers his big machine gun. To boot, Anastasia lays her subgun on the ground at her feet. < Her Hebrew is just as good as her English. Better, even. < < Anastasia takes a tentative step forward, her hands empty in front of her. The mercenary breaths heavily, almost gasping for air at this point. < < < A grin creases Anastasia’s lips. Almost friendly. < The mercenary’s grip on the hostage loosens but the gun remains aimed at her head. < < < < < Both sides share an awkward laugh. Anastasia takes a deep breath. Tech knows that she knows that it’s coming down to crunch time. Make or break. < <> The mercenary spits back. < Tech and Anastasia share a glance. How? < < “What’d he say?” Tech asks. “He says that this is because of someone in the government,” Anastasia replies. Tech refocuses, points his helmeted gaze towards the mercenary. “Do you do this job often?” < “What’d he say?” Tech repeats. “He won’t talk to you,” Anastasia responds. So in response, Tech stands up straighter. He digs in his feet the best he can into the concrete, and the barrel of his MG rises to the mercenary’s knee level until Anastasia puts her hand on the gun’s forward iron sight. “Tecumseh, put down the gun.” “No.” “Then let me do the talking.” “He forget his English lessons?” Anastasia ignores him and takes another step forwards. < The mercenary thinks for a moment, for two. Tech knows he’s seen more and by this point he’s weighting if spilling the beans is worth it. < < < < The mercenary hesitates. Then, all at once, the gun he holds lowers itself and his grip around the poor hostage falters. She scrambles free and rushes forwards towards Tech and she catches the poor woman in his arms. She feels like skin and bone. The mercenary tries to catch his breath with deep, deep inhalations. < The rest happens in slow-motion to Tech because he sees it out of the corner of his eye. Anastasia reaches for her sidearm and she draws lightning quick and fires three times. Two shots hit him in the chest. The third goes through his skull and permanently affixes a look of surprise to his face. < Why’d she do that? He asks himself this knowing he won’t get an answer. So he refocuses his priorities. He taps his TACPAD – the line is still open. Dimitri probably heard everything. “Mitri, you there?” “What was that about?” “Hard to say. Get down here as fast as you can.” “Are both of you okay?” “We are.” Tech exhales again. It’s very hot out and the armour isn’t helping matters. “But the ship was carrying live cargo.” Something shifts in his hands. The woman wraps her hands around his armoured figure. He must look like some sort of rescuing angel to her, something mythologic. < “Where are you from?” Anastasia asks, all signs of rage gone from her face and voice and body language. The woman looks at Anastasia, then at Tech. He gets an elbow in his side and that spurs him to remove his helmet. The woman’s eyes widen; the two have similarly dark skin tones. “Bangladesh.” The woman’s accent is supremely heavy. Must be a maid, or someone who was going to be forced to become a maid. Tech nods understandingly. “Are you, help?” the woman asks. Her English is serviceable. Tech smiles about as warmly he can muster for a complete stranger. “Yes, ma’am. We’re here to help.” She looks like she’s on the verge of collapsing so Tech helps her to a shaded area and sets her down. He can hear Anastasia yelling out instructions. “If you can stand, find someone who cannot! If you cannot carry anyone, find someone who can! If you see someone who is still in chains, come and find me!” Tech turns away from the woman until she grabs his wrist. “Wait. Americans.” “Pardon me, ma’am?” Calling Tech an American would be a capital offense under any other circumstance. She coughs. “In the container. Two Americans. Young. Children.” Tech looks over and sees Anastasia carrying a young, young woman out of the container. The girl is thin and lanky and about as tall as Tecumseh is, towering over the diminutive woman. She’s filthy and Tech can’t make out anything useful from a glance. A third figure staggers out of the container behind them, just as filthy, but shorter and masculine. His hair is shaggy, perhaps because he’s been inside a fucking shipping container for God knows how long. Anastasia practically drags the girl over to him. “Americans,” she says through clenched teeth. < Now close-up, the girl’s honey-blonde hair shines through the grime, and she has a thick mane of it to boot. Her eyes are a gentle green. She looks like she’s been trapped under rubble for a week. He can see the bags under her eyes despite the thick layer of, whatever it is, covering her skin. “You’re Americans, correct?” Tech asks. The girl undertakes a herculean effort to raise her head to meet Tech. Her spine straightens despite the pain on her face – her muscles must’ve been locked in a hunchback position for a while to end up like that – and she looks Tech in the eye. “Yes, sir. We are.” He can’t quite place her accent. From the southern United States for sure. Oklahoma? Maybe Alabama. Debutante, very formal, almost aristocratic. She has the world’s worst case of cottonmouth ever recorded. “My name is Jasmine Anderson,” the girl says. She looks around and lays eyes on the other American, sitting on the ground, gulping down the remaining contents of Anastasia’s canteen. Tech brought a spare and he offers it to Miss Anderson who takes it ravenously. She downs both quarts in seconds and exhales deeply, practically a wheeze. Who knows what she was breathing in while confined. “Thank you, sir,” the girl says. “May I ask you a question?” Something strikes Tech; she’s awfully formal despite everything that happened to her. “Go ahead, kid.” She closes her eyes for a moment and inhales through her nose. Gotta be one hell of a question. “Are you and her, um…” For some reason the word Tecumseh expects is ‘Together.’ She points at Anastasia to boot, who is currently plopping a dead body atop a concerningly high pile of other dead bodies. “…are you two, well…” Its like she can’t bring herself to ask the question. “Don’t push yourself, lass. You’ve been through a bloody lot.” Tech puts a bit of juice into his accent to sound friendlier and more authoritative. Someone she can trust. But she shakes her head, blonde streaks loosening underneath a prison of grime. She looks like she’s trying to dislodge the question from a cranny in her brain. “Are you two Janissaries?” Tech looks back at Anastasia, hoisting yet another body atop the pile. It must be a dozen high. She’s put her helmet back on to deal with the smell. Official policy of all Janissaries is to not call yourself a Janissary. Anyone who does is either lying or deeply unprofessional. It’s an old term from the Napoleonic era, colloquially granted by Napoleon’s enemies. But it’s a popular term with an evocative name, especially among the laypeople. “Yes ma’am,” he says. The official term is… “We’re New Modern Soldiers. We’re working for the Coalition’s Special Activities Regiment.” Jasmine’s eyes go wide. Saucers in their tired sockets. “You’re Janissaries too?” Tech hardens his face, despite his heart dropping nearly to his stomach. He refuses to let it reveal anything about anything. He gently pats Miss Anderson on her shoulder. “Get some rest, ma’am. Everything will be just fine when you wake up.” And Tecumseh Sherman stands and walks out of sight, away from the kids who are apparently Janissaries and the pile of bodies and he pinches the bridge of his nose between his eyes. His shoulders feel like they belong to Atlas. He inhales deeply, one-two-three, and exhales deeply, one-two-three. He taps his TACPAD, pulls up one ‘Dawn Howard.’ He can hear Dimitri calling his name over the radio. He’ll have to wait a moment. She’s going to fucking hate this.