A shriek of microphone feedback cuts off any further conversation between Jerry, Syl and their new Cannidor ally, Jaruna. The painful sound of poorly put together audio equipment apparently hadn’t ended outside of Cruel Space.
“I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT! I AM DANZIA ULARKAPA! AND I DO NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT THIS LEVEL OF DISRESPECT FROM SCUM LIKE YOU! GIRLS! BRING ME THEIR GODDAMN HEADS! ESPECIALLY THAT FUCKING MALE WHO KILLED MY SISTERS AND THAT CANNIDOR SLAG!”
Jaruna roars with laughter, violently slapping the thigh of her power armor. “Oh shit, that’s rich. She actually thinks she’s threatening. That’s goddess-damn adorable. Here, you move out with that teleporting shit you do, I’m gonna get this kissless virgin extra riled up and I’ll go straight down the middle, you keep ’em off my back.”
“Sounds like a plan, be careful. I’m looking forward to that sushi... sides, I’d hate to see a cute thing like you hurt.”
The Cannidor waves him off. “Beat it. I can’t grind your pelvis into dust right this second so save the flirting for after. You’re just lucky I’m into feminine men, not every girl would be down for such aggressive cutesy talk. Sides you obviously Syl. He sweep you off your feet too? Wait. Don’t answer. Got shit to do first.”
Jerry dashes away as Jaruna flicks a tongue control in her helmet, switching the PA she’d built into her armor on. It’s painfully loud, but crystal clear, projecting her voice like some sort of ancient thunder goddess.
“LISTEN HERE YOU WORTHLESS SNAKE BITCH. I’M COMING UP THERE TO GET ME SOME FRESH HIDES FOR BOOTS AND A BELT... AND ASSUMING I MANAGE TO SEDUCE THIS BEAST OF A MAN YOU MANAGED TO PISS OFF, FOR MY NEW HUBBY AND SISTERS TOO. SO KEEP YOUR TAILS BEHIND COVER, THEY’RE WORTH MORE THAN THE REST OF YOUR SLITHERY LITTLE BODIES. MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR GODDESS. I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU REGRET THE DAY YOUR CUNT OF A MOTHER PAID A HOOKER TO DUMP A LOAD INTO HER TO MAKE A PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A CLUTCH LIKE YOU AND YOUR SISTERS!”
The ranting goes on for another minute or so as Jerry gets into a new position. Honestly he hadn’t needed to use his after image speed technique, all eyes were on the cover that Jaruna was behind and besides her you could hear a pin drop.
It suited Jerry just fine. His rifle comes up, and he flips the caps on his scope up. He quickly scans the enemy lines. True to her word, a decently sized group of what could loosely be called “infantry”, or perhaps more appropriately, an armed mob, had formed across the formerly orderly dining area. On the second level, the snakes and their actual enforcers really do have some heavy weapons worthy of the name. Crew served lasers, one of the kind you’d use to kill big armored targets... like a tank, or a pissed off Cannidor. Laser repeaters, the machine gun equivalent, and a variety of heavy plasma weapons.
“Jaruna, stand by. Giving you some cover, then I’m going to take out the biggest threat to you.”
“Copy, knock that fucking shitty excuse for a loud speaker out while you’re at it. Please and thank you handsome.”
“My, a Cannidor mercenary with manners. You really do find the most interesting girls to bring home don’t you darling?”
“Brilliant geneticist and business woman, nurse who’s all heart, scary with a knife Yauya huntress, and now Centris’s most polite mercenary. I’d say that makes me a pretty lucky guy when I keep finding all the interesting women on this mud ball.”
“Aww shucks. You’re both gonna make a poor little maiden like me blush. It’s always worth it to be kind and polite with friends and family, and I’m certainly gonna be glad to call you lot my friends, and I sure as shit intend to be your family before too damn long.”
Jerry suppresses a chuckle and enhances his strength to toss the last of his smoke grenades in a few strategic spots. Both sides of the large planter and its burning trees that was now Jaruna’s cover and had formerly been Syl and his own redoubt. Then a few further up the field, aiming to make the Cannidor as hard to accurately aim at as was possible with all the advanced optics available in the galaxy... and the sheer scale of the power armored woman that had just dropped to all fours to expose the heavy weapons on her back.
“Winchester on smoke grenades, it’s a straightforward fight from here on when the smoke fades.”
“What’s a Winchester?”
Both women are audibly confused at that one, and Jerry mentally face palms as he starts lining up his first shot of the engagement.
“Sorry, I didn't think about it. Communication code. Means you’re out of ammo or munitions."
Another quick scan of the battlefield lets him review the space before him. The plaza was lined by shops to his front, say five hundred meters away, and open air to his left, a similar distance from him to where the store fronts started and a few panicked people could be seen heading deeper into the shops towards emergency exits.
The bottom floor was mirrored, mostly covering its floor space with tables for sitting and eating. The way left led to various types of transport off or up spire, as well as a decent sized air car garage from what he remembered of arriving earlier today. It also appeared to be where the thugs that were forming up on the first floor seemed to be coming from. Breaking off to the right took you deeper into this structure, and you'd eventually break out into the spire's cityscape proper.
The second floor was all broad suspended walkways done up in the same inoffensive off white that seemed to characterize the area, with tannish red tile like material for flooring with some basic contrast. Stair wells existed at regular intervals and some signs on the wall in one language or another seemed to indicate that this space was for winged aliens to stretch out a bit, and that it would be getting further development... three years ago if he had his Centris calendar right.
Some three hundred meters of open air separated the walkway he was on and the not-concrete planter he was hiding behind from Danzia's little outpost, formed of portable barriers, metal primarily, not axiom or hard light energy shields, just heavy chunks of armor for gangers to take cover behind, and the occasional gun shield for their heavy weapons.
Heavy duty support pillars, both for this particular area and the spire itself jutted up through the area like redwood trees for the latter, and over sized I beams for the former. They hadn't been decorated particularly well, possibly in the name of maintenance access to the cables that ran up and down them, safely tucked back in the recessed portions of the shapes. They were far too spread out to actually interfere with much of anything. You could probably fly a gunship into the area and out again and barely touch the stick. The high ceilings made it almost too easy for a pilot that was even basically skilled, never mind an actual professional.
It seemed the only real attempt to decorate that the corporate powers that be had made in this plaza were the regular planters that had been stuck everywhere in what probably made sense as a pattern to someone, but didn't do much except break up the line of sight for him. Some of the larger ones on the ground floor had full on trees, but that size was few and far between, the only one in the immediate combat zone being the one that Jaruna was presently behind.
"Syl, any word from command on reinforcements? What about local law enforcement?"
"HQ says a response team is dusting off at the Dauntless now, they're sending a gunship and a company of infantry, as well as a squad from your special operations unit. ETA is ten minutes. Nothing on the local police bands."
Jaruna snorts. "They've been bought off. Happens all the time, especially when someone like the Cabal's runty offspring wants to make a hit. These girls aren't nearly in that weight band, but their momma's probably someone important and they used her name and some cash to make shit happen."
"Ten minutes is a long time in a gunfight. Sounds like we're on our own for now girls."
"There's three of us, and maybe fifty of them. Seems like a mostly fair fight to me."
"What!?" Jerry can practically see Syl's tail bristling in his mind's eye. "That's not fair at all!"
"You're right, maybe we should let them get more girls. Even things out a bit."
"Past that... I think it’s time we get this party started ladies, Jaruna stand by. Syl, keep something solid between you and them honey, and don't be afraid to use that ring or that pistol..."
Jerry grips the Desert Tech rifle a little tighter as the girls respond and works to slow his breathing while drawing in axiom. His vision. His body. He could enhance it all and turn himself into a perfect weapons platform. He’d been good before, but axiom almost made this shit too easy. He sights straight down the barrel of the laser cannon as the woman manning it adjusts her aim on where she thinks the Cannidor must be hiding.
One heartbeat. Two. Three. Fo-bang.
In the space of half a heart beat, Jerry caresses the finely tuned trigger of his rifle and sends the 6.5mm round hurtling down range, square into the series of lenses and emitters that make up a laser weapon.
“Laser cannon neutralized. They aren’t fixing that thing period. Jaruna, weapons free. Show us what you can do.”
“Oh you know just what to say to make a girl feel special.”
The Cannidor rushes from behind the still burning planter. Loping along on all fours, scattering cheap tables and chairs before her like they weighed nothing. She begins to open up with her heavy weapons even as Jerry starts shooting in earnest. His MDRX wasn’t full auto, but rapid well aimed shots could suppress just as well as long bursts of machine gun fire, as the snake bitch’s enforcers quickly learned as they weathered the hail of gunfire coming their way.
A few of them go down hard. Others take shots on the armor, or manage to deflect with a shield or similar equipment. Two go up in flames when Jerry scores a hit on the containment unit of the plasma cannon, the last of the heavy weapons that could really fuck up Jaruan’s power armor. He takes a snapshot at the most pissed off looking Nagasha, Danzia almost certainly, who manages to ward the bullet away with a wave of her hand.
“Shit, snake boss bitch is an adept of some skill level.”
“Meh, they all die the same way. Keep up the shooting, these crunchies down here are trying to reorganize after all the plasma fire they just ate.”
More shots leap from the MDRX’s barrel before the bolt locks to the rear with a firm jolt and Jerry drops the empty twenty round magazine. Instead of going for the most obvious replacement he instead reaches down to his war belt. The larger mag pouch there has been marked with a little purple tab, and an embossed “T”.
The Trytite axiom piercing rounds were a somewhat new idea Dauntless special forces had been experimenting with as a way to pierce active shields and other defenses that relied on axiom. If the principle checked out, they could apply the concept all the way up to naval grade shells for the Dauntless’s cannons and Earth style railguns.
The magazine goes in, the bolt goes into battery and Jerry lines up on Danzia. He takes another breath. Another. A half breath... he’s back on the range aboard Camp Pendleton on a sunny summer day in Southern California earning his hog’s tooth with the rest of his MARSOC team.
Just another day for the Raiders. New techniques to learn and master. New ways to control the battlefield. To follow the Marine Corps infantry mission to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver. Raiders were the most badass crew in an entire community of hard or straight up crazy motherfuckers, but they were still just grunts in the end.
The trigger trips the sear and the hammer flies forward, slamming the firing pin into the primer and detonating it. The rifle pushes back into his shoulder and he sees the round fly forward in stereo. In his memory the round flies straight and true and punches a hole in a B-mod target 1000 yards away, a perfect shot.
In his current, surreal reality, the round slams through Danzia’s axiom barrier like it wasn’t even there and mulches her hand. Sure, she still had five left, but it was a victory that made Jerry grin even as he reengaged, picking off an Erumenta adept with glowing eyes and hair made of flames that looked like she was about to hock a massive fireball at Jaruna. The round penetrated her active shield and dropped her like a sack of shit.
With their defenses now questionable, even the leg breakers waiver a bit as the volume of fire on the ground floor intensifies. They’re actively shooting back at Jaruna now, with a few of the smarter terror stricken thugs legging it at top speed away from the marauding Cannidor. If this is the best this gang can do, they really must be small time.
Then again, the EFL had ended up picking up quite literally the cream of the space pirate crop by pure happenstance, and once you’ve been exposed to the top tier of a galaxy’s criminal underbelly, random trash like this failed to impress.
Or so he let himself think. The one true god of war, Murphy, chose that moment to reach down and smite Jerry for his arrogance in Murphy's domain.
A Horchka's brain cells seemed to connect for a few brief seconds. Just enough time to figure out where he was shooting from potentially, and unload a massive spread of grenades, pulverizing the planter and showering him with hot shards of stone.
After a quick relocation, displacing from his previous planter, which was now looking a bit shot up from repeated high intensity laser blasts, he drops another couple of rounds into sensitive spots on heavy weapons, before dashing again. While unlikely to do more than annoy Jaruna immediately in that heavy power armor, high volumes of fire from crew served weapons had a way of making him nervous even when his pregnant wife wasn’t immediately in the vicinity. Unfortunately, they weren’t the only source of heavy weapons on the field.
The massive spider woman lumbering into view giving Jerry a little shudder as he continues to try and pick off the gangster heavy weapons on the field.
“Jaruna, heads up, Brute Archana coming up on the top side.”
“Shit, I forgot about that bitch. You got the fire power you need to drop that sort of monster?”
A quick check of his pouches locates a small case with a couple marked experimental rounds in it. “I have something I can try.”
“Try it, I don’t want to wrestle one of those fucking things in or out of power armor, and they can carry almost as much in the way of heavy weapons as I do!”
“Looks like this one might be carrying some sort of mortar? It’s a set of elevated barrels.”
“Fuck, that’s a plasma bombardment array, a light one, but artillery all the same. You need to drop that thing or clear the grah! ...path for me so I can do it before she brings down this part of the fucking spire on us! Fucking dumb ass snakes! If I’d known they were this stupid I’d have charged them even more... or just killed them and turned their asses in for a bounty.”
Bridger’s already loading the special axiom vampire explosive round into the purple mag, on top of his remaining axiom penetrators. AVE ammo was a weird one. A mad cap idea between some of his own bored troopers and some of the nerd squad who liked to watch anime and shitty B movies together. The idea was that the khutha material and lining within the shell would absorb a tremendous amount of energy, and at a certain point, go super critical and detonate.
The trytite sabot that wrapped the shell prevented it from detonating in your pocket, or even worse, in your rifle, was stripped off and discarded as part of the firing process. He only had one of these particular rounds, because the boys were still refining the design. This one, he’d been promised, would be the axiom equivalent of an artillery strike if he could get a shot on a source of axiom rich energy. Like say, an engine. Or a particularly large Brute Archana.
Slowly he wills a little axiom into the round. This part had to be done carefully. It probably wasn’t needed at this range, but he wanted the round to have as much kinetic energy and stability as possible as it pierced into the massive spider horror lumbering towards them. The saboted round had little fins for stability and they could be infused with axiom to somewhat increase speed, reduce air resistance, and ensure stable flight. The trick was doing that without priming the axiom explosive right next to them.
“Alright... here goes nothing. Everyone get to cover, this is either going to piss her off, or it’s gonna make one hell of a mess.”
He slows his breathing, and slowly brings the trigger to the rear. The round goes off and leaps from the barrel like a goddamn rocket, not a mere bullet. The damn thing had to be moving faster than a .50 BMG when it hit the muzzle and shed its sabot coat, and its axiom enriched fins left a spiral of barely visible energy through the air as it raced towards its target. The world seemed to slow down for a few seconds as the round buried itself into the Brute Archana’s torso. He hadn’t aimed for the center of mass per se. He had gone for density, wanting to expose as much axiom rich meat to the round as possible in hopes it would detonate.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
One breath. Another. A third.
The entry wound into the Brute Archana begins to glow. There's a panicked look on the spider woman's face as she has just long enough to realize something very bad is happening.
There's a bright flash which would have burned after images into his eyes if he had looked at it straight on... And the world erupts in a fountain of gore.
Jerry clears his eyes as blood splatters across Danzia and her gang, practically running up to ankle depth before welling and spilling over the sides and down onto the floor below in a tide of red that would have done Moses proud. The tasteful off white of the floor and stairs was now dyed crimson, and there was a literal rain of blood across the area.
“...Goddess damn. I have got to get me some of what ever the fuck that was.”
Jaruna’s awed tone matches the rest of the battlefield, everyone just kind of stops for a second at the display of over the top brutality.
“Slayer eat your heart out.” Jerry mutters, more or less to himself.
“Slayer? What’s that?” Jaruna had very sensitive ears it seemed.
“Human band, they did an album called Raining Blood that’s still a favorite way for troops from my homeland to get ready for battle.”
“Sounds awesome, send me the files once we finish turning these shitheads into smears on the landscape.”
Jerry’s already moving when Jaruna responds. No sense wasting this brief lull in combat. They’d be after him with a vengeance now that he’d shown he was at least as much of a threat as the pissed off Cannidor wading into their midst. After a run across and down he takes a moment as part of his next light speed relocation to dash past Syl. She’s moved from where he’d put her initially to have a clearer line of sight, and seems to be in the middle of making a situation report to Dauntless control, bravely ignoring the droplets of blood splashing down around her.
This wasn’t the biggest attack human soldiers had dealt with, but it was one of the most public, and that meant they needed to come down on the perpetrators like the fist of a particularly angry Thor. Anything less meant they looked like they might be weak or vulnerable, and coming in to save the day was always good PR to the local citizens. He plants a kiss on his wife’s cheek, and is on the move again, looking for a good angle to start visiting some pain on Jaruna’s playmates.
“You good down there Jaruna?”
“Fucking send me more of these little bitches! I’m just pissed I need to stay buttoned up and I can’t start ripping chunks off of them the old fashioned way.”
Jerry smirks and starts taking rapid shots as he recognizes the pattern that the thugs are vaguely trying to work into. “You say that, but they are trying to surround you.”
“The only thing I’m surrounded by is fear, and dead fools who haven’t hit the floor yet.”
Jaruna’s response was broadcast over her PA again, and some of the thugs visibly stepped back, shaken. Their clear low level in their outfit didn’t mean they were complete morons after all, even if their boss had all the brains the gods gave a goldfish. Probably inherited the position. Or maybe this was some mob boss’s daughter’s first organized crime group to see if she could hack it as a boss. That’d be just his luck, an unending supply of dumb ass snake bitches to kill. Jaruna and maybe Eymali would be happy at the very least, but it’d hardly be an environment to raise children in.
Jerry drops the purple magazine,he’d been judicious about using the rounds, what his company had taken to calling Adept Busters, or AB rounds to differentiate them from the more normal armor piercing munitions. He only had twenty of the trytite tipped rifle rounds at the start of the engagement, and now he was down to five. The normal 6.5 Creedmoor rounds however, were handling the regular flavor of dumb mook just fine.
A slap of the charging handle and the rifle’s back in action, the integral bipod popping free as Jerry hits the ground at a spot with a degree of cover and good defilade on the mob of thugs that were still trying to swarm Jaruna. His rifle barks and explosions of various colors of blood mark successful hits as he tries to pick off threats that Jaruna either didn’t notice, or can’t easily deal with.
A Horchka fumbling with something draws Bridger’s eye. Whatever she’s doing, it’s clearly not good. The alien goes down hard with her heart blown clear through the back of her chest and flung across the room, and a few seconds later there’s a muffled thump and a chorus of screams as the mob around and over the corpse catches the brunt of the plasma grenade she’d been trying to prime.
Jaruna was now wading into the mob with both hands swinging. From the sound of things over the net, she was actually enjoying herself, going in for literal hand to hand. Finally she draws her melee weapon, it was a massive sword that looked more like the prop of a helicopter or something out of an anime than an actual weapon. With her sword in hand, the pitched close quarters battle around her goes from battle to massacre.
Jaruna slams the blade through the crowd in front of her, smashing bone and equipment alike with its sheer weight as much as cutting anything with its harsh, jagged edge. There wasn’t anything fancy to what Jaruna was doing now. Just strength, steel and her merciless lethal instinct.
“Dammit, why are these bitches attacking so aggressively? Did we piss off a suicide cult?”
Jerry mutters to himself as the slab of metal Jaruna calls a sword launches a hapless thug across the room and slams her into a support pillar. The body drops to the floor with a wet smack as Jaruna goes back in for another brutal series of strikes that had him utterly in awe. She seemed to be able to let off well timed plasma bursts towards the topside position even while landing bone crushing blows. Sure, he could take her. Probably. With some prep time. But once a Cannidor got going it seemed like it was hard to get her off her rhythm.
Flashes of coherent light to the left draw Jerry’s eye and he drops his scope into position. Finally, he sees what has the fire under the mob’s ass. Another small group of enforcers were ensuring the rabble didn’t get a chance to take a step back. Offers of decent pay, or promises of a chance to join the Nagasha's crew and other prizes must have lured these girls here, the dregs of the local spire's criminal elements most likely. Rounded out by Jaruna, who these poor fools had originally been ablative shielding for.
That made tactical sense to him, and the repeating lasers burning down a few thugs who tried to leg it more or less confirmed it to him. The original plan was that either the thugs got lucky, or they ate up ammunition that wouldn't be used on Jaruna. And if they did find one or two with decent talent, it was all up a net gain for the snake bitches. If forty of the fifty or so women they'd rounded up died... well. No one would miss them.
The callous disregard for life draws a snarl from Jerry as he increases the magnification on his scope. A press of a button near his trigger lets the targeting computer built into the optic "see", the target, and quickly calculate everything he needs to know, and where to put his cross hair to land a perfect headshot.
He hated doing this really, it didn't seem sporting to use the scope's full capabilities, but these were animals that needed to be exterminated now, for the safety of everyone around them. The range wasn't too long, merely 1500m, but he needed to make a statement. One shot. One kill. A caress of the trigger and the 6.5 round screams across the plaza with a super sonic crack and one of the women manning the repeating lasers drops nearly instantly.
Her companions don't get a chance to react for the most part, a hail of precision rifle fire putting them all on the ground and letting the mob break as soon as they realize there's an opportunity for them to flee. The last makeshift ganger commissar, a Mrega, still the most... confusing of aliens humans had made contact with does her best to get to cover, nearly dodging a shot from Bridger's rifle and instead taking a crease across her ribs and flank that leave her collapsed behind the crew served weapons she'd been commanding. The woman quickly divesting herself of any weapons and hiding as she cowers in fear.
"Jaruna. Let the mob go. They have an out now, so just scare'em off. We don't want to miss the snake bitch and her girls for the sake of killing some random mooks."
"I love it when you talk dirty to me like that. Start moving up, gonna want you to flank these fools while I take the stairs up."
"Jerry! Look out!"
Syl's shout of warning across the comm coincides with some desperate pistol fire from her position that streaks over his head. She was getting good with the oversized hand cannon he idly notes as he tries to mentally process what's happening. Axiom floods his body right after a fresh wave of adrenaline hits and the world slows down as he speeds up.
What had happened is that he'd failed to follow doctrine to relocate regularly and had been made.
A group of enforcers had managed to flank him.
Fast moving types too it seemed.
A Feli, a Nagasha who rippled with Axiom infused stealth just enough to make her annoying to see, and a tough looking Sonir were all coming at him with a variety of weapons. Jerry rolls to his back, and even as he accelerates realizes he's probably not going to be fast enough for long enough to dodge the incoming blow of a plasma sword from the Feli assassin.
An idea comes to him, another inspiration from the TV shows he'd enjoyed as a kid back on Earth. It was risky, but he was already in deep trouble if he did nothing, might as well gamble while he was still able. Jerry channels the axiom into his hands, gloves that almost looked like hard light forming around his mitts and slaps his hands together around the blade of the plasma sword, stopping it as it slashed downward. The Feli looks at him, shock and confusion written across her face turning to deep fear as he wraps one hand around the weapon, yanking it forward, both to take it from her, and to pull her into an Axiom infused throat punch that left the woman gasping and gurgling for air as she tried to breath through her ruined esophagus.
The Sonir comes soaring in next, the bat-like woman’s wing arms had had their leading edges lined with some sort of flexible blade like monowire perhaps, and she viciously slashed at him as he brought the plasma sword up in a defensive stance and let the axiom fade from his hand.
Step left, step right, right again, left. He thinks to himself, dancing around the Sonir's massive blows, buffeted by the air flow off her wings as he looks for an opening. The backs of the wings are armored with another thing material that was no doubt strong.
Strong enough to resist a plasma blade? Jerry didn't want to find out. Instead he channels axiom into his left arm and leans into the Sonir's next swing of her wings from the left, checking the blow slightly. The flexible appendage still wrapped around and cut him across the arm and hip a bit, but it left the Sonir open to a vicious upward thrust that left her dead on the floor with a smoldering wreck where her head used to be.
Jerry comes up to face the Desert Nagasha only to find... she's... waiting? He takes up a fencer's stance as the two slowly start to circle. She'd been waiting for him to take out the thugs, maybe hoping they'd soften him up a bit for her before she dueled him and took home the honor of killing him.
The snake woman cackles with a malicious glee as she twirls her various weapons, plasma, mono edge, even an electric shock prod. Seems she had answered all of the above when she'd been asked what melee weapon she'd like to use. Before she can even begin to introduce herself however, Bridger steps forward with his arms raised overhead and tosses the plasma sword at her like a war ax.
The spinning plasma weapon slices the alien’s top left arm off at the shoulder before clattering to the floor, a safety interlock turning it off. He reaches up on his armor, and draws the Kukri from its sheath. The big curved knives, the trademark of the legendary Gurkhas, were a special uniform item solely afforded to the Dauntless’s special operations troops.
Not because Cistern said so, but because they had the only three Gurkhas out of cruel space, and his Company First Sergeant, First Sergeant Gaje Gurung, otherwise known as Top, had put them all through a special kind of hell to make sure they were up to scratch by Gurkhas standards. The basic training the entire Dauntless crew had gone through was a vacation compared to Top's tender mercies.
They had earned the oversized war knives, and the right to wear them in their dress uniforms. Anyone could carry a kukri. Anyone could learn to fight effectively with them. No one could use them quite like the Gurkhas, or the few men and women trained by the Gurkhas, could.
Honor demanded that he end this snake bitch with one of the finest hand to hand weapons humanity had ever devised. Sure he could shoot her. Could have bisected her with the plasma sword just now, but this was going to be so much sweeter. He smirks at the now five armed woman who shrieks a battle cry at him in the hissing tongue they called a language.
Instead of letting her take the lead however, he accelerates himself again, the snake’s first blows striking the after image of his movement as he stomps both boots down onto her tail before grabbing her middle right arm at the elbow and lopping it off at the shoulder.
He’s not the only one who can use axiom however, and he quickly has to dodge or block a flurry of blows, dancing around the snake as her tail thrashes around, smashing stone with the strength it contained.
The razor sharp hunk of weighted steel, specially forged by the same traditional smiths who’d been making Gurkha blades since time immemorial, claimed yet more blood off the snake woman, cutting deep into flesh and bone alike. He finally manages to get behind her again, and imitating his Yauya fiancee yanks her head back and severs it cleanly from her shoulders before leaping clear of her thrashing corpse.
As the Desert Nagasha’s body continues its death throes behind him, Jerry is struck by the need to invoke an ancient war cry. What he’d just done. With the weapon he’d used... it wasn’t his war cry. Not really. He wasn’t a Gurkha after all, just trained by one, but after blooding the kukris of his company for the first time in battle, he figured Top would forgive him taking this one small liberty.
He hoists the Nagasha’s head and the bloodied blade high in the air, and enhances his voice with axiom so the whole damn plaza can hear him clearly.
“JAI MAA KALI! AYO GORKHALI!”
Hail to the goddess of war and destruction. The Gurkhas are upon you.
Discarding the head of his slain adversary, Jerry quickly recovers the plasma sword. No way in Hel's realm would he miss the opportunity to get his hands on a working goddamn lightsaber. He couldn't let the bad guys have all the fun with one of these after all. He tucks the weapon into a pouch and reassesses the area.
Immediately around him, the Nagasha’s mega dead, her head now tossed casually into the pile of her coils. The Sonir is similarly eliminated. The Feli’s still gasping and gurgling for breath. She’s likely going to drown in her own blood if he doesn’t intervene. The feline alien reaches out for him feebly, mouthing what appears to be an apology. It’s the eyes that awaken some sort of mercy in the pissed off Marine. Big green kitten eyes with plenty of tears. She’s regretful, but not just because she’s almost certainly about to die. She’s also very, very scared.
“Fine... fine! I’ll help you. Just... hold still.”
Jerry goes into his kit for a general purpose axiom medical patch and pumps a fair bit of his own energy into it as he wraps it around the Feli’s throat. The general idea of the patch is it would more or less partially restore whatever damage it was applied to and at least hold everything together long enough to get actual medical attention to them. Still experimental, but no time like the present for a field test for some very severe trauma. The Feli's breathing immediately stabilized, even though she couldn’t speak still. Bridger gets her into a comfortable position and zip ties her arms behind her back and her ankles together.
“Cooperate when they take you and I’ll put a good word in for you okay?”
The Feli nods eagerly as Jerry rises and gets back in the fight, immediately trying to locate Jaruna first and foremost.
The ground floor is completely clear save for the bodies and craters. The rabble had already broken when Jerry had opened up an outlet for them, so they'd fled just as quickly as they could. Jaruna on the other hand was already up on the second floor. She'd clearly taken some heavy impacts from a mix of weapons on her power armor, including some explosives, but the Cannidor woman was still bellowing her challenges and war cries as she choked one Nagasha to death and dumped a spread of plasma shots into a leg breaker who'd been trying to get the laser cannon functioning again.
Jerry cleans the kukri with a caress of axiom, returning it to its sheath before drawing his MP7. The little sub machine gun is perfect for this sort of work, being a mix of an oversized pistol from hell and a precision automatic weapon with natural armor piercing properties. No Axiom needed, nothing special this time. Just copper and lead propelled by the finest gunpowder humanity could produce.
With a second to draw in Axiom again, Jerry's running faster than the eye can see across the cat walks. He'd just made Jaruna's acquaintance after all, and he'd be damned if he left her hanging without help.
"Jaruna coming up on your left. Syl, one prisoner up here for pick up once we’re done taking out the trash."
"Glad to see you're in one piece, I was already tearing into the first of this lot when Syl shouted her warning. Then you shouted that war cry and sent all sorts of naughty shivers up my spine. What’d it mean?"
"Oh I'm not letting trash like this kill me. Besides, you promised me sushi, and I'm not about to miss a chance to take a meal with a lady who can actually enjoy something close to human cuisine. You want to know what I said, ask me again at dinner."
Any response Jaruna intended to make is cut off by a roar of pain as a close-in plasma shot penetrates some of the thinner armor at one of her joints. Joints have been the weak point of all armor since the days of plate mail on Earth, it seems some things never change.
Even with her elbow theoretically shredded, the Cannidor has more than enough strength to deliver a tremendous overhand blow to the Horchka that attacked her, leaving the poor woman's head somewhere around her pelvis.
Not letting himself get too distracted with Jaruna's martial skill or absurd brute strength, Jerry begins to deliver high volumes of automatic weapons fire to the various combatants left standing.
There's not much to do really.
A Cannidor shock trooper was a force of goddamn nature, and Jaruna had leveled Danzia's gangers like they were palm trees in Florida during hurricane season.
That still left Danzia herself. Jerry scans around quickly as he comes to a stop before looking up on a hunch.
There, wrapped around one of the main support pillars, was a furious Danzia, lining up what looked like some sort of rocket launcher from hell at Jaruna and himself. Jerry doesn't even have time to pull in axiom to do something. He simply takes a firm two handed stance with the MP7, and donates a five shot burst of ammunition to Danzia's forehead. They land within a second of each other, a tight grouping about the size of a quarter, at the range and angle, even Jerry admitted it was an excellent shot.
The snake woman drops to the floor unceremoniously as Jaruna throws the last thug standing like a javelin through a plate glass window.
Her power armored feet lumber up next to where he's standing by the cooling corpse of the snake woman. Where she pops the seal on her helmet once again. Jaruna leans over, and spits on the body.
"Well, that was anticlimactic. Quiet, easy. Danzia must have hated it as her brains exited the back of her skull without so much as a goddamn whimper. Nice shooting human."
The Cannidor stomps over to the strange looking rocket launcher, which Jerry now recognizes as an Endless Barrage, a rocket launcher with a magazine that contained several thousand missiles that were shrunk down via axiom technology. An interesting piece legally in that you could own the magazine and own the launcher, but putting them together was illegal.
"Damn, didn't expect her crew to have the kind of cash for one of these bad girls. Break that thing down into two pieces so it's legal and let's take it with us. Hate to waste something that fun on the cops. Sides. Never know when you can use approximately a thousand goddess damn missiles at the pull of a trigger."
Bridger raises an eyebrow, smiling up at the towering leviathan of a woman. "Us now?"
She chuckles, a low rumble that almost had a purring texture to it. Or more like a lion chuffing.
"If you think I'm not getting a piece of you after seeing all that, you have a lot to learn about this galaxy Jerry boy. Sides, I reckon you saved my life a few times and what better way to repay you than crushing your pelvis and getting you some adorable army stomping, planet conquering, life taking, heart breaking Cannidor daughters? Am I right?"
Jerry doesn't get a chance to respond, as Syl hits him like a meteor right around then, nearly knocking him off his feet as she smothers him with kisses, frantically checking him for wounds all while talking to control.
"Yes, the situation's contained. Right. No. Send the troops in to secure the area but all hostiles are ah... neutralized I think is the word. One prisoner, some of the other hostiles may still be alive. Right. Three friendlies in the area. Myself, my husband Commander Bridger, and an allied Cannidor mercenary who came to our aid. Yes. We need a medevac. Now!"
All the man can do is wrap his arms around his wife and hold her as human troops race into the area from all angles with weapons ready. He lets his eyes wander upward, luxuriating in Syl's embrace.
At that moment, Jerry was sure of one thing.
They needed to get the hell off this goddamn planet.