I felt refreshed after having showered. Admittedly, it was more like filling up a three gallon bucket and poking holes in the bottom. We didn’t have a huge abundance of water with our support teams, an actual shower would have been wasteful.
“Thanks, Jimmy,” I nodded to the man in an exo suit armor who’d dumped the water into the bucket.
He chuckled, “gotta keep it fresh, man.”
There were little things like this all around our mini-camp. We stopped our advancing lines on occasion in order to rest up our personnel. While we were perfectly aware of how far away Argedwall was, we didn’t need to risk anyone currently in getting there. The Reavers were already doing flybys for them. We were supposed to have had another Reaver made, but the fourth ended up grounded after its engines didn’t start. R&D were still figuring out what happened, but nevertheless the rest of us were making ourselves useful.
Three columns marched on Argedwall. Ours took to the heavily forested hills, more like a rainforest than the deciduous trees we should have seen. Fran and I both thought it looked pretty at first, but now the monotony of color was starting to grow bland. In any case, this would be our lot for the time being. We didn’t draw short straw, though, one of the other teams were investigating another route, coming up and over a nearby mountain.
If nothing else, we intended on setting up an observation post there even if there wasn’t a feasible route to Argedwall from there. The most likely route was actually the third, though, moving wide partly to the north over long flat lands. They’d run into a great number of stealthy biotics, and had taken to a habit of hammering areas with artillery.
Which, of course, Patrick and the Iron Chariots took on with an enthusiasm befitting a true fanatic of explosives.
I walked over the mess hall, looking around at the many familiar and new faces that rushed about. There had been explosive growth in the Legion for some time now, though so far it was mostly people who I trusted. Some I viewed with a measure of wariness, but I had to believe that they’d prove themselves more boon than bane in the coming days.
Namely, the old Hunter’s Order leader was now officially Legion, her small team now forming a fairly potent strike team. Cassandra Vera, a woman I didn’t know well and wasn’t sure that I would want too, had proven herself at least competent in a leadership position.
However, she wasn’t the leader of our column. Ordinarily, I imagine that Matthew would have been the one dictating the ebb and flow of our activities, but we had someone just as good, if not better.
Fran picked that moment to walk up to me, her posture all business, official and clipped.
“Miss Delia,” I nodded, keeping a barely restrained grin from showing on my face.
“Mister Drake,” she greeted in turn, managing to look all the part of leadership, “would you care to join me for a meal?”
“Is that an order or suggestion?” I asked, unable to keep the quirk from the corner of my lip.
Her facade dropped at the same time, replaced by a wide grin, “I can’t, it’s just too silly.” She chuckled, her posture loosening, her newly upgraded suit hugging her body, wings tucked tightly against her back. She kept in suit at all times in the event that she was needed on the frontline for any reason. A suit that was more like a power armor in all, and could retract its heavier, bulkier bits to rest near the back of her body, along with the wings. Anyone else would be imbalanced, but the support the remainder of her armor gave made the awkward set of the weight negligible.
“Come on, grab some food and join me.” She said, though she ended up walking with me as I moved to our small cafeteria-like counter. It was situated in an Ogre, one of five that made up the rough walls of the food-space, spanning a mixture of metallic cloth overhead and flattened earth beneath. Several tables sat in the middle, likely having fit in one of the Ogres. Everything was built to be compact and reusable, a design philosophy that I hadn’t put much stock in until I’d seen how well it could be pulled off.
After I grabbed some food, a mixture of mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, a steak cut, and macaroni and cheese, I tromped my way over to where Fran’s table was. There were a few others there who greeted us comfortably, most of whom were people who were by my side.
“Your wife was vetting us for reliability,” one of them joked while they sipped on a mug of hot cocoa.
“I do have a vested interest in keeping him in one piece.” Fran laughed, letting me feel relieved that people didn’t shy away from her in spite of her command position. Not that she’d let that stop her, Fran wasn’t the kind of person to let a perceived difference in station get in the way of being pleasant.
“You just want me for my body,” I let out an exaggerated sigh, only to get a ‘light’ smack from Fran.
Which, since she didn’t remember she was in power armor, felt like I just got punched in the shoulder by a boxer, half-strength. The table cringed and I heard someone utter an ‘gonna feel that later,’ a heartbeat after it happened.
“Ohhhh, I’m so sorry!” Fran cringed, “I forgot I was wearing this, are you okay?”
“Peachy,” I groaned, feeling the sting and knowing I’d earned quite a bruise.
The quietest of the people at the table pulled some kind of packet from his side. The long bearded, mustached man cracked something inside of the packet before glancing back up to me, making a gesturing motion with his chin.
I caught the packet, alarmed when it was cold to the touch.
The man smiled, gesturing to his knees, “Bad knees. Little investments go a long way. I got plenty of ‘em, though, don’t worry about it.”
“I appreciate it.” I said, feeling Fran take the pack and press it against my shoulder.
“Yeeeeikes,” I kept from squeaking from the cold, barely, “that is, uh, yep, that’s cold.”
Fran grinned, though still appeared apologetic somehow, “I’ll ice it again for you later.”
“Can I get more than ice?” I smirked, raising an eyebrow provocatively.
“That may be negotiable,” she teased, “so long as you can get to our planned forward op base before night time.”
“No rest for the wicked,” the man beside me, Anton, chuckled, “speaking of, we should only be like thirty miles out now, right?”
“About, though you guys can rest for a bit longer. The rest of the supply column is running a bit late, setting up the road and auto-turrets.” Explained Fran with a sigh, “they were so sure that they were going to catch up to us, too.”
I grimaced, knowing that Fran had butted heads with the supply line crew more than once, both in preparation and in execution. The only reason why we had even basic amenities here on the forward march was that she’d insisted that at least basic resources be present in the forward line as well, and that the support group have some means of protecting themselves.
Which meant that we had fewer people here on the advancing line, something that the supply-group had thought was vastly inefficient.
Granted, Fran had been able to get advice from actual military personnel on loan from Bulwark who were far more familiar with logistics than some of the people we’d had. That wasn’t to say that they had no idea what they were doing. On many other counts, they’d predicted our needs well in advance, including automated defenses, building infrastructure to support much higher speed transport between New Damond and Argedwall, and going so far as to build smaller outposts as they went.
In that sense, I guess that they were being slowed up by their own thoroughness, but I wouldn’t be caught complaining about that.
We talked pleasantly for another hour before we mobilized again. My shoulder was - predictably - sore, but a mild painkiller took the edge off so I could fully focus on piloting the mech. This was much more important than when I’d had my previous mech, given that any mistaken movement on my part could easily kill someone if they weren’t in anything less than an exo-suit.
When we were outside of the camp, though, things were easy again. There was plenty of space to work with, and after a few minutes we were back up to speed. None too soon, at that, given the supply team had managed to catch up within line of sight now.
The advance this time was wrought with many more biotics, and our increased pace saw to it that we were more of a blender than a spear in the jungle. This was the point where the supply line wanted to be closer, able to run our munitions to us in the event that we were running out.
We’d carried a hefty sum with us on the Ogre’s, but having an endless clip did wonders for our speed in clearing through the jungle. I tore through massive quantities of bullets as I helped to check the area around us for any hidden biotics.
Twice I’d still stepped on the fungaloid biotic, lattice work of flesh sprouting up around me and stabbing at me with envenomed spines. Acid pumped over me even as I ground it to mush beneath my heel. The line would stop for a moment as the excess was hosed off and a new coating was applied, letting my armor shrug off another round without concern. If it weren’t for Richard’s Class giving access to these many acids and poisons, we wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable advancing over territory like this. As it was, though, so long as we could prepare for the eventuality of an acid-type biotic, we were in good shape.
We marched forward, a low hanging branch suddenly seeming to come alive, reaching down and swiping at my head with 12 cm long claws. It happened so fast that I only registered what was going on by the warning the armor gave me.
The claws cut grooves into my mech, shallow, but thus far the most damage something had managed to give me.
The form was large, much larger than the ordinary cat type biotic. It hissed at me, shimmering skin that shifted in texture in color as it bounded off another tree.
My cannon and vulcan tore into the forest after it, scorching and shattering the woodlands between us. And, yet, alarmingly so, the creature got away.
“Alright, that’s a problem.” I murmured, turning to the man beside me in power armor who’d given me the ice pack.
“Whatever it was, it’s fas-” the man began, before suddenly dropping to a knee. Where his head just was, something small and brown blurred past him. Three more followed, one low enough that it still hit his shoulder. I turned, mech already estimating where the attack would have come from.
We watched as the form of the biotic shimmered and danced back out of view, lines of bullets, a tracer every tenth shot for me, chased the creature.
“You alright?” I shouted, concerned for the man.
He grunted, “yeah, only stuck in the armor a bit. It’s not at the Spindles level of bullshit - thank God for that.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I nodded, glad for that little detail, before immediately broadcasting to the Legion. “Heads up, we’ve got another new biotic, this one might be Gen 2, another stealth type. Uploading what I got on my feed. These things are fast too, ranged attacks, hit and ru-” I felt thunks against my mech and looked down to see little scuff marks where something had hit me, “-hit and run tactics. Fuckers can’t punch through the ML-Mech’s though.” I ground out the last of the statement, looking up to see the tail end of the creature as it vanished again.
“Noted, Advance,” I heard Fran’s voice, not showing an overt amount of concern over the recent development, “business as usual, everyone. We’re not far from our prospective encampment, we’re sending flares up soon. Argedwall will have a group coming up to our position to meet and greet, so watch your fire.”
“Heard,” I stated, watching the area around us, trying to discern any kind of hint before this new biotic attacked.
The flares went up, the sudden bursts of light flickering down through the leaves.
At that moment I wouldn’t have even needed my suit to see the bastard. The light that filtered down through the leaves from several angles seemed to flicker off of the creatures body like glistening emerald, something that the creature realised a second too late.
One short burst of firepower later and the creature was in two pieces, immediately dead.
“Add on, apparently the flares screw with their active camouflage somehow.” I couldn’t help but be pleased, “keep an eye out for anything shining like a really big gem, it’s probably one of them.”
“I don’t think anybody is gonna miss that,” the man next to me dryly chuckled, moving up behind me as we pushed further into the undergrowth.
When we found the body, we had to admit that this thing was definitely related to the cats. It had a feline body, though it rippled with muscles, and it bore what appeared to be a mane that was far stiffer and larger than what it should have had. The bushy fur extended well past its neck, though with the body in the state it was in, I couldn’t tell exactly how much further it would go. The tail itself drew a great deal of my attention, too, much longer and powerful looking than I would attribute to a cat.
It was also tipped with a dozen barbed looking spikes, some empty sockets beside the larger ones where new spikes had begun to grow in with alarming speed.
I heard the underbrush nearby rustle, and immediately brought up my weapons. Reflex demanded that I fire first, but the reminder that there could be friendlies out here now stayed in my hand.
Oh, I wish I hadn’t.
A mass of twisted limbs surged forth from a slinking position, only a meter in height from the ground.
At first, anyways. As it surged, first limbs cracking into my armored body, I couldn’t help but recognize that the limbs seemed to shift and reconnect, a veritable carpet that had to have been a dozen meters long reconfiguring right before my eyes. Halfway between wood and bone, I saw several limbs position themselves parallel to one another, even as it wrapped up around me.
I punched out, cracking through it and sending several gore-laden bits streaming to the ground. It abandoned those pieces, falling away with little ceremony, before a spiked limb struck my side hard enough to send a shudder through the mech. Annoyed, I crushed it in my arms, pulping it, only to realize it was moving its body around and out of harm's way.
A second strike, only this time my mech recognized damage. It had punched through six cm on my back.
The man I was with let loose with his automatic rifle, focusing on the main mass of the weapon.
I pulled on the pieces that were still trying to slip away, making sure not to move too much. I trusted the Legionnaire beside me to be able to do damage, I just needed him to present an easy target for him.
The third strike was even weaker than the first.
It changed targets in a heartbeat, latching onto him and bringing him into an embrace. My sensors picked up on it, recognizing that it was trying to yank him onto my back to prevent him from being able to easily attack me.
I did what seemed to make sense at the time.
If it wanted to pull someone to my back, then I’d just need to make sure that wouldn’t be feasible.
I fell backwards, crunching through the distracted mass of whatever the hell was attacking us. It shuddered, a low keening sound that almost sounded like a whisper the only thing that answered us as it went limp.
“Thanks,” he breathed, “I did not want to join that party.”
I laughed, breathing a sigh of relief as I rolled over onto my side, brackish grey and silver gunk sliding off of my body. “Threesomes not your style?”
“Hah!” He laughed loudly, pulling the still grasping talons - more like rose-branch spikes - from their hooked positions on his armor. “I count myself a refined gentleman.”
It was then that I remembered his name, “Graham, I’ll buy you a beer later.”
He shrugged, “we get those free. But you can drink it with me later. You’re my good luck charm so far,” he gestured to the indentation I’d made on the ground, “looks like this thing had a center of mass.”
I glanced down, seeing that, indeed, there was a geode-looking thing that appeared more like a smashed grape than anything else at that moment. “Gross, but good to know.”
“Legion, we got another one,” Graham broadcasted this time, “sending info, yet another stealthy bugger.”
I shook my head, looking around at the artificially brightened forest. We marshalled our line, other people in power armor or mechs marching to form a line alongside me, scattered across a hundred meters. Our reserves were pulled up and our current line was brought in. There were over two hundred of us present, armed to the teeth, the light of the flares sending scathing light through the canopy.
We were clad in black and red, predominantly, gleaming like shades in the ambient low light.
As one we resumed our march, and I had to admit it was alarming how much more deadly we were. Anytime one individual discharged a weapon, a dozen more would follow, covering an area in diverse and deadly assortments of firepower. The handful of times where something would sneak up on us, or wait to be underfoot, we would have plenty of others on hand to rip and tear the offending biotic to pieces.
For one of the first times, I realized the potency of the Legion, the inexorable death-march that we visited upon this hapless biotic infested jungle rendering ordinary biotics obsolete. A pair of Carriers loomed ahead of our line, but the power-armor operators simply pulled out mortars with guided tracking and bombarded them with virulent acids until our mech pilots punched through softened armor with piercing rounds.
Every fight made us what we were now, and it was empowering to know how far we’d come.
When we finally made it to our forward operating area, it was just before sun down, and blooming flares lit up the sky light as bright as day.
“Alright guys, till the soil so our supply-guys have an open field.” I said to the team, by extension under my loose direction unless Fran dictated otherwise.
When she said nothing, the mech-pilots let out eager cheers.
The firepower that we unleashed then could be heard for miles, churning the vegetation and many more biotics than we’d expected to find so close by. For a solid two minutes that was all that was abound, before our support team reached us. Half of the mechs took up positions on the perimeter, while the other half dragged large metal wedges with small implements attached to them through the ground. The Ogres, this time, didn’t advance into our clearing, and the banks of soil and mulch that we’d created was steadily moved outwards in a circular pattern and stomped down on, creating as sturdy a base as we could manage.
This would be redone in no small part by our construction teams, but this would at least give them semi-flat ground to walk on.
“Non-biotic contact,” one of the mechs on the outskirts called over on the comms, carefully keeping his weapons down, “looks like our greeting team got here before out support lines.
I chuckled, marching forward, my own mech still dwarfing any of the standard mechs. I didn’t even feel the tug as Fran’s magnetics locked onto my armor, hooking her in something of a static orbit beside me. A small set of wings flared behind her, and her armor completely covered her now, looking every bit like a battle-ready valkyrie as her new Class dictated.
Eleven mech-suits loomed from the murky blackness of the rainforest. Ten of them were silvery-grey, bearing some heraldry that was different on each of them. My first thought was that they looked almost like a knights coat-of-arms, and seeing the crusader-esque theme of their suits, I had to admit that it looked the part.
The leader had a dull-golden suit, though it was far from being needlessly ostentatious, they’d be easy to pick out amongst their fellows. His mech was no less battle-hardened than the others, bearing its fair share of scrapes, dents, and minor damage.
“Hail!” The leader called, “I’m Peter, Lord-Knight of The Wolf from Argedwall. You all must the The Reaper’s Legion?”
I only noticed then that his coat-of-arms looked like a regal wolf’s head, a single glistening blue light in one eye, and a red one in the next.
“My name is Fran, I’m the leader of this expeditionary force of the Legion. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She gestured to me, my queue to introduce myself.
“Daniel, right-hand of The Reaper,” I nodded to them, “don’t worry, we don’t stand much on pomp and officiality around here. Come on over, guys, we’re clearing a spot, but you shouldn’t get harassed by biotics at least.”
“Oh, thank the gods, he’s not an asshole,” I heard someone in the back of their group murmur, and could just about feel the entire group of knights chuckle.
The lord sighed, “you may come to regret saying that. We can be… irreverent at best, at times.”
Fran chuckled, “that tends to happen when you fight on the frontlines all the time.”
I murmur of agreement went through them as we moved forward, and I could feel a moment of respect pass over them as they looked at the work we were doing already.
“You’ve got a fair number of mechs yourselves,” one of the men beside the lord nodded, “lots of ammo, too. We heard you loud and clear on the way here.”
I noted then that most of them had a minimum of ranged weaponry, leaning instead towards a grisly assortment of melee weapons, throwing weapons, and devices that I could only imagine were far more suited to close quarters combat than at range.
“I can’t help but notice you all don’t seem to have much in the way of ranged weaponry,” Fran didn’t mention that we had a veritable train of ammunition coming through for us.
Peter nodded slowly, his helmet retracting from his head, “we ended up specializing, perhaps too much. We had something of a… tenuous balance between needing repairs and keeping our people safe. Mechs ended up being our go-to solution, albeit admittedly at the cost of much else.”
“Well, we can talk about that and much more later.” Fran could tell that the subject was complicated, “for now, we’re setting up our base, but in the meantime, we have some information we’d like to go over with you and compare notes.”
“Where’s this Reaper fellow?” One of the others suddenly asked, “we’ve got a betting pool going as to whether or not he’s as scary as he sounds.”
Fran’s helmet receded, showing her exceedingly amused look, “he’s dealing with Sunvilla now. Though from what I hear he’ll be joining us along with the rest of our team in the morning.”
“I see.” The man nodded, before he and the others joined in allowing parts of their mechs to open. “So, is he a front-line type or a behind-the-desk type.”
“Jones,” Peter’s tone was cautionary at best, “please mind yourself.”
I laughed, thick metal plating around my head and torso sliding away, “I don’t know exactly how to answer that, but maybe telling you guys some stories would help?”
The man looked amused at that but before I could begin, Peter cut in, “please, don’t feel like you need to encourage him. We can wait.”
Jones cringed, “don’t make it sound that bad.”
“It’s fine,” I waved the notion away, “we’ve got time before anything resembling a command center is up anyways. I guess the best thing to start with is how we both got our classes.”
There was a good bit of surprise at the mention of classes, and perhaps that we’d gotten ours at the same time. “You see, the Obelisks just came down when Matthew - that’s The Reaper’s name, by the way - came up with this crazy as hell idea that I went along with.”
As I told the story, I embellished a few details, and could feel Fran shaking her head in bemusement as I did so.
“So, there were were, sneaking up through the hills, carrying a big ass launcher and this freaky looking missile. It's dark, and there are biotics all over the place. We get there, I give him my launcher and he shoves this missile in and fires it, guiding it down through the tunnels of the hive and deep underground.” I leaned in then, making an aggrieved face, “what he didn’t tell me was that it was a small nuclear bomb that we were toting around.”
Laughter exploded along with incredulity, “I knew that would work!” Jones cheered, and then paused, “but, wait, how did you guys get a hold of one? They were banned when I looked.”
“They were why it was banned,” Fran added dryly, “the Obelisk’s administrator conscripted them into being its bounty hunters for a while in recompense.”
That got more laughter out of them, and we spent the next half an hour exchanging stories.
Though, I had to say, Argedwall had to have been a tough nut to crack if even half of what they’d said happened to them was true.
It was too soon to say for sure, but I could see the Legion and the Knights of Argedwall get along just fine in the future.