While the train might not hold a superweapon onboard, there was still the atomic material. And more importantly - Isaac had to fight for those standing alongside him.
Meadows lay on one side of the tracks; on the other, the tall, dark trunks of oak trees stood, their branches a sickly brown and barren. The Restorationists charged out in the open across the meadow, while their comrades in the forests took a more cautious approach, firing from within the darkness of the trees. Since Isaac’s fighting style revolved more around close quarters combat, the forests were out of range. He instead moved to the other side of the armored flatcar to potentially use his |Fists of Anji| on any rebel who got too close.
His efforts weren’t needed, at least initially. The machine guns clattered and spat out hot lead in wide arcs that cut down the rebels one by one. Red clouds appeared in the air while crimson rivers flooded the flowers. There was a distinctive whoomp sound as a mortar in another flatcar went off; the resulting explosion obliterated a Restorationist where he stood, while his comrades were sent flying down into a gully.
From the gully, rifle-wielding Restorationists added to the cacophony. Just barely visible through the dying grass, the sharp ping-ping-ping of rifle cracks thundered towards the train car. Flashes appeared when the bullet struck metal. The deafening sound of a sniper rifle came just moments after a nearby machine gunner went limp. While the corpsman dragged him away, another marine took over his place.
Through sheer numbers, some of the Restorationists made it close enough to the train. Isaac poked his head over the metal wall and cocked his fist back; a young boy armed with knives stood mere feet away from the flatcar, caught in the act of trying to climb up its side. Isaac could see the whites of his eyes, the scar on his jaw. The boy saw the raised fist glowing with red energy and, with an amused exhale, just gave a sort of lackadaisical shrug, since both of them knew this was the end. The electric charge of the Fist of Anji sent a shockwave through his body and knocked him into the dirt.
“Cultivator attacking heavy weapons car!” Derry called out. Reed, in the middle of launching sword waves, glanced over, but Isaac was already moving. While gunners laid down fire, Isaac clambered up the neighboring boxcar and headed for the flatcar with the mortar. The machine gunner in his nest gave him a nod as he passed. Bullets whizzed by, but there was so much sound, so much flying steel, so much lead-hot reality rushing towards him that Isaac couldn’t even consider death. He had only conducted raids and infiltrations in his past mission; this was a full-on battle. Isaac could understand Jackson, he could understand Sam, but he now squared off against faceless opponents armed with bayonets and spades and rifles. Isaac was just another faceless opponent to them as well.
He fired an electric charge at an incoming squadron of rebels when he jumped down into the heavy weapons flatcar. Several marines, despite their metal helmets, already had their brains bashed in by the superpowered nunchuks wielded by a burly Restorationist cultivator. When Isaac sent a ranged attack at him, the Restorationist merely knocked it away. He then pressed the attack, his nuncuks appearing like a blurry whirlwind, the heavy weights threatening to cave in Isaac’s head or crush his throat if he didn’t move out of the way in time.
Fortunately, Isaac’s wounded shoulder from Four Eagles was completely healed by now, and all his previous death-defying experiences gave him confidence. When the rebel sent an overhead blow, Isaac rolled out of the way. When, just for a moment, the nunchuks got lodged in the metal, Isaac used the opening to send a fist into the rebel’s temple. Right as he connected, he fired the electric charge. The man dropped the nunchuks and blew backwards over the wall and into the fields, where he would not get up again.
Catching his breath, Isaac surveyed the damage. The mortar had been destroyed, though most of the Stovepipes - the anti-tank rocket launchers - remained intact, along with their ammunition. A few men lay dead, but the majority were just shell-shocked from the sudden appearance of the cultivator. Isaac helped a dazed marine to his feet; the glaze disappeared from his eyes and he immediately got back to work by jumping on a machine gun. Unfortunately, right as he did, a rebel climbed into the flatcar, the pins on the grenades lining his chest already pulled.
“For Kallipolis!” he yelled right as he disappeared in an explosion of heat and orange light. Isaac hauled the marine and one of the armed Stovepipes off the flatcar right as the Restorationist took his own life. The explosion knocked Isaac and his cargo into the dirt and the grass. Isaac could only blink; his ears rang, a yellow glow gnawed at the edges of his vision, and he desperately needed a drink of water. A rebel tried to cut down Isaac with his sword; though it felt like he was moving through syrup, he blasted an electric charge into his opponent’s torso. Isaac didn’t even hear his own attack go off.
He caught his breath as the shellshock disappeared. When he glanced behind him, he eyed the destroyed flatcar in dismay. Outside of the Stovepipe he saved, the train’s heavy weapons had gone up in smoke. Furthermore, the explosion damaged the track beneath it, keeping the train stuck there until the battle died down and the combat engineers with them could get to work. As for Isaac, he found himself on the side of the tracks, fully exposed to Restorationist attack. Fortunately, the marine next to him cut down several opponents with his rifle, while a sudden blast of wind created a barrier for Isaac and the marine to retreat back to Derry’s car. Babs helped the two back on board; when Isaac relayed the news to Derry, he gave a determined frown.
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“Losing our heavy weapons isn’t ideal, but we’re holding the Restorationist attack from the fields at bay,” he surmised, keeping calm despite the chaos around him. “We’ve still got to dislodge the Restorationists from the forests-”
“Lieutenant, tanks in the forest!” a rifleman called out. The mechanical beasts, their snouts pointed towards the train, lumbered out of the shadows between the trees. They weren’t true tanks, just modified tractors and bulldozers, but the bullets sent by the marines merely bounced off their armored hulls. Once the Restorationists got rid of our heavy weapons, now they send in the tanks. They’re suffering so many casualties, but these Restorationists…they charge without any fear. Furthermore, the rebels now followed their tanks closely, using them as shields as they advanced out of the forest and across the brief clearing lying between the trees and the track.
One of the tanks opened fire. There was a brief whistle that cut through all the noise until the shell exploded just a dozen yards away from the tracks. The tanks, due to their modified nature, moved slowly, but the marines needed to do something fast.
“And only one Stovepipe rocket left,” Derry said. However, Reed crouched next to him. She grinned at her companions as she wrapped a charm around her sword hand.
“You guys aren’t the only ones who’ve been busy,” she told them, then directed marines to lay down covering fire for her. With a simple nod, she stood over the metal wall and launched a sound wave. Rddhi sparks from her sword arched down toward the charm and activated it right as the sound wave departed. The shrieking noise of the guitar rumbled across the clearing, approaching the usual range of her sound waves. However, powered by the charm - it must’ve been the equivalent of a long barrel for a rifle - the wave kept going, bewildered Restorationists only having less than a second to look at it before it reached a tank. Isaac couldn’t believe it; the tank exploded in a storm of steel, sending shrapnel and flaming oil slicks onto the nearby grass. The mass of Restorationists following that tank either fell in the blast or retreated back to the forest in shock.
With a satisfied grin, Reed opened her greatcoat, revealing a whole arsenal of long barrel charms. Isaac sighed in relief, but then something suffocated him. Reed and Babs felt it too, the sudden pressure making them keel over.
Isaac recognized this instinctively. This was the same feeling back in Patuxet, when Officer Symanski used the Reverse Spiral on him and completely negated his cultivation. When Isaac looked at his hands now, the red sparks had been utterly annihilated. The lights on Reed’s sword had disappeared as well.
“A Reverse Spiral,” Reed muttered. “But that’s State Police tech.”
Before Isaac could consider how the Restorationists got their hands on something like that, he peered through a gunhole and gasped. One of the Restorationists advancing with a tank flew something that resembled a kite high above him. However, rather than string, it used several cords, one of them filled with scarlet blood. The cords connected to the “kite”, but it was actually a white flag covered in the black swirl of a Reverse Spiral. Blood flowed upwards, into the swirl, and Isaac’s stomach dropped when he realized the resemblance to the Heart. The “white flag” was in reality a large patch of human skin, with blood flowing through human veins. This Spiral wasn’t alive; rather, somebody had removed the human resources of the body for their own purposes.
And as for the man holding that flag-
“Praise the Skyfather,” Isaac realized. “Reed, that’s Zola!”
A few seconds passed.
“Isaac, who the fuck is that?”
“Zola, remember? My first night in Narragansett, when we got reubens, there was a Restorationist crowd outside the restaurant led by the same man!”
Reed scratched her head. “How am I supposed to remember who that was? That was months ago.”
“...the crowd got broken up by the State Police. If they captured Zola, and now he’s here, with State Police tech…”
The members of Squad 3 and Derry gazed ominously at the approaching line of tanks, the unholy flag above them serving as their vanguard. There were four tanks; each of them fired another round, and the explosions were close enough this time to rock the armored flatcar. Combined with the unrelenting hail of bullets and dwindling number of marines, Isaac struggled to come up with a solution.
Reed eyed her sword then looked at the marines. “Who the hell wants to live forever?”
When Isaac realized her idea, he went to protest, but two of the marines stepped forward. One of them took over the Stovepipe while the other reloaded and cocked his automatic rifle.
And then Reed did something Isaac had never seen before - she willingly removed her greatcoat in combat. She really needed the mobility and speed for an operation like this, though she did place many of the charms (and a few cigarettes) within the pockets of her military fatigues. She cracked her neck and took a quick swig from one of her canteens - Isaac recognized the smell of whiskey.
Isaac watched her preparations with weary eyes. Another round of tank fire went off, but Isaac felt far less concerned about that compared to what Reed was about to do. “Are you sure about this?” he asked; Babs nodded vigorously behind him.
Reed gave him a cocksure smile. “Isaac, I’m not just a badass cultivator swordswoman. I’m also a badass swordswoman, too.”
Derry gave her a confident pat on the back, then communicated his orders to the neighboring boxcars. They sent the orders down the train, and a moment later, every marine was laying down suppressing fire on the route across the clearing Reed had selected. As the rifle and machine gun crashed together and formed one continuous cascade of sound in Isaac’s mind, the Restorationists continued their advance, forming something like a gray tide coming from the west.
After twirling the sword in her hand, Reed leapt off the flatcar. With the two marines behind her, she dashed off to meet it.