Mackenzie was the first to walk the short distance to the rest of the team, side-stepping around one of the flattened attendants as she came to a stop in the loose circle the team had formed in the middle of the street. Octavia glanced down at the corpse that she had moments ago created, then let out a short breath as she steeled herself and joined Mackenzie, following her a short distance across the street. As she came to a stop in the circle, she raised her amarkai over her shoulder and carefully guided it back into its sheath with the shrill ring of sharpened crystal against metal.
“Look at them both,” Vita muttered, the annoyance evident in her voice, “They’re terrified of us.”
Vita wasn’t lying. Octavia could see the fear written clearly on both Jace and Alex’s faces as they stared across the circle at her, squinting in the rain. The Lieutenant was impossible to read, his featureless rocky head turned towards her as the green energy flowed steadily between the cracks and crevices of his uneven form. None of them moved away when she came to a stop in the circle, but her retinal display picked up on the subtle movement of one of Jace’s feet as he fought the impulse to back away from her.
As they joined the rest of the crew in the circle, Jace was the first to break the silence as he turned his attention to Mackenzie, “That was fucking horrifying. I mean, I’m glad it was only mindless robots that got ripped to shreds like it was nothing but are you sure you got your pet back on her leash, furby?” he asked, the ugly sneer on his face combined with his nickname for Mackenzie immediately setting Octavia’s blood to boil.
“Shut it, Jace. She’s fine,” Mackenzie replied flatly, gesturing to Octavia with an open hand, “See? No problems at all,” she reassured, offering a humorless smile to placate him. Despite the reassurance, Octavia had to bite back the anger that threatened to spill forth.
“All systems operational, Guardian Tiberius?” B’roka asked in a quiet rumble, his head tilting towards her as he spoke.
“All systems operational, Lieutenant Tur,” Octavia replied quietly, offering him a single nod as her gaze swept across the humans across from her.
“Okay, great, love that - but one question. What the fuck was that, Octavia?” Jace suddenly burst out, his offhand jumping into the air while his dominant kept a firm grip on the trigger of his rifle.
“To which are you referring?" Octavia finally barked at Jace, her ears flicking within the confines of her helmet. "The effortless slaughter of twenty enemy combatants or the psychotic breakdown that followed it?”
“Yes!” Jace exclaimed with an expression of utter shock.
“The former was my combat suite activating on the most lethal setting. The latter was the psychological ramifications of doing so,” Octavia replied, the explanation escaping her with far more of a harsh edge than she had meant for, but she couldn’t seem to keep the anger down as she continued, “Don’t worry, the same thing won’t happen to you. As long as you don’t piss me off.”
Jace visibly tensed, finally losing control as he took the half-step away from Octavia. His hand fell back to the barrel of his rifle where he gripped it, his face shifting into the look of a prey animal deciding whether or not they were about to be hunted. Octavia felt the call of the hunter as her eyes flicked over his nervous features in silence.
“Enough, both of you,” B’roka snapped firmly, his head glancing between Octavia and Jace, “We have more pressing matters.”
“Still no luck raising the Scales on the horn, L-T,” Alex reported, fiddling with a radio held tightly in both of her hands as she looked across the circle at B’roka, “Nothing but static.”
“Alright,” B’roka grunted, “So we’re cut off from any support for now. Longsword 1013 set down halfway around the outer wall here, two floors up. We know there are two survivors, and presumably the machines didn’t have a welcoming party ready at the crash site. We’re going to make our way to them, rescue our people, and then find a way to radio for support. Any questions?”
“No, sir,” Mackenzie replied instantly with a shake of her head. Noticing the movement, Octavia gave a small sigh and shook her own head in kind, keeping silent as she did so.
“Nah,” Jace snipped.
“Sounds good to me,” Alex agreed, glancing over her shoulder towards the wreckage of the Longsword they had left behind, “Unless we want to hunker down for repairs, Ricky’s gonna be grounded until we can get some support anyways. That landing cracked the wing mounts pretty good, I can’t patch that.”
“All the more reason to get moving now,” B’roka remarked. He stepped off to the side and glanced down the street in one direction before turning his head to look down the other, a grating sound escaping from him that sounded vaguely like a displeased grumble.
“The elevators in the middle are gonna be crawling with clankers at this point,” Jace remarked as he looked over his shoulder towards the main street leading into the temple city where the main elevator bank was, “Don’t suppose there are stairs?”
“The city’s in lockdown,” Octavia replied, “Everything but the express elevators is going to be locked. Unless we can find someone with alari clearance, we’re going to be stuck using the main elevators.”
Jace grumbled quietly as he eyed Octavia for a moment. Finally he let out a huff and turned around, walking towards the main road with a hesitant gait, “This is a load of bullshit,” he remarked as he came to a stop by the edge of the street leading into the enormous building.
“I don’t see any other options,” Lieutenant B’roka added as he turned and followed Jace, halting next to him to peek around the corner into the dimly lit street, “Stick close, watch your corners, and keep an eye out for civilians.”
Octavia shared a glance with Mackenzie for a moment before they both made their way over to the corner with the rest of them, Alex following behind them a few paces as she fiddled with the radio once again with an unsatisfied look. As they clustered at the corner, Octavia took a moment to peek into the dim corridor lined with hundreds of doorways and smaller passageways.
“That’s a lot of places for hostiles to come out of,” Octavia remarked quietly as her eyes flicked along each door, her retinal display highlighting each one in the dim light.
“Hopefully most of them will be locked,” Mackenzie added, bringing a hand up to wipe the wet hair out of her face for a moment as an annoyed look crossed her features, “At least we’ll be out of this damn rain.”
“No luck on the emergency channels?” B’roka asked, looking over his shoulder at Alex.
“Nothing, L-T,” Alex replied with a frown, smacking the side of the radio with a palm as she let out a frustrated sigh.
“I suspect the machines have a signal jammer,” B’roka remarked, the frustration clear in his grating tone. With a single nod, he turned back towards the road, “Alright. Put the radio away, Minuteman Jones. We’ll need all hands at firing positions for this.”
With one last annoyed smack to the side of the radio, Alex rolled her eyes and switched the device off before slipping it into one of the deep pockets of her jumpsuit pants. She reached behind herself and procured her rifle, slung over her shoulders with a worn leather strap. Checking the digital display on the side of the rifle, she nodded and called out, “Ready!”
Suddenly realizing that she was missing her rifle, Octavia glanced at the equipment readout in the corner of her helmet display. Without any other options, Octavia reached down to the amaranthian plasma pistol on her hip and gripped it, pulling it off of the magstrip on her thigh with a steady yank. Her helmet flickered as it updated with the targeting and ballistics readouts of her weapon, the power level displaying in the corner with her equipment readout. As the pistol synched with the sensors in the palm of her gauntlet, the heating vents popped open briefly, testing the flow of movement before snapping shut over the power core.
“Ready,” Octavia replied quietly, cupping her free hand under the handle of the pistol as she steadied her position into a low combat stance.
“Try not to get carried away this time, killer,” Jace shot over his shoulder as his gaunt features morphed into an ugly scowl, shifting his grip on his rifle as he readied for the approach. A spike of guilt shot up Octavia’s spine at Jace’s jab.
“Ready,” Mackenzie added with a nod as she shouldered her own rifle, once again wiping the hair out of her face as the rain continued to soak them all to the core. Her fingers brushed against the patch on the side of her head, briefly bringing Octavia’s attention to it before she confirmed that the light was still a steady green. The sight brought palpable relief to Octavia’s mind as her eyes shifted forward once again.
“Okay,” B’roka grumbled, shifting on his feet for a moment before he suddenly stepped out of the corner and raised his rifle, pointing down the road into the dimly lit corridor. Confident that he wasn’t immediately getting shot, he began to walk forward steadily, “Form up on me!” he called sharply over his shoulder.
The squad hastily rounded the corner in a tight formation, keeping close to one another as they followed B’roka down the street with their rifles raised. The sound of the city was a deafening drone that immediately quelled the sound of the rain outside, the steady pitter-patter of the storm instantly replaced by the humming and groaning of machinery within the bowels of the temple city. There were cars in the street, but they were all parked along the side of the road, abandoned in preparation of the Federation’s assault.
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“Where do you think all the civvies are, boss?” Jace asked tersely as he shifted the barrel of his rifle sharply to point inside of a parked bus, only to confirm that it was as empty as the rest of them.
“Hiding,” B’roka replied, “The machines must have ordered them off of the streets for our arrival.”
“How many clankers do they need to pull something like that off?” Jace wondered aloud as he shifted away from the bus and continued down the middle of the street, keeping low and peering into each car that they passed.
“A lot,” Octavia remarked sharply as she passed him, pistol in-hand as she reached through her neurolink. Powering down the combat systems for her armor, she boosted the power for her support systems, the sensors working overtime as her visor feed began to populate with more information about the world around them, the dim light giving way to digitally-enhanced vision.
“Yeah, I know a lot, but how much is that?” Jace snapped, jogging to catch up with Octavia and the rest of the group, “Did twenty even make a dent?”
“Oh shit,” Vita suddenly declared as the visor finished augmenting her vision. In the darkest shadows casted from the dim lighting of the elaborate temple city, Octavia’s visor highlighted several attendants lying in wait with defensive positions pointing towards the central elevator banks.
“Hold up!” Octavia declared suddenly, ducking out of the center of the street to kneel behind a parked truck. The rest of the squad noticed her movement and copied her, taking a knee behind the vehicle.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked curiously, peeking over the edge of the truck.
“I don’t see anything,” Jace added with a frown as he peered into the darkness.
“Hostiles,” Octavia replied, “Two barricades on either side of the roundabout around the central elevator bank, facing our way. Looks like both barricades have heavy machine guns.”
“Whatever you say,” Jace replied, the skepticism washing off his face as he shifted his gaze towards Octavia, “So how do we get to the elevators?”
Octavia stood up and peered over the edge of the truck, confirming what she had seen earlier as she gazed into the darkness, “The central elevator bank is still open,” Octavia remarked as her retinal display zoomed in, presenting her with the vehicle-sized doors that were wide open, revealing the freight elevators within. She couldn’t see any attendants within the elevator itself, but the two barricades on the roundabout gave her pause.
“Open, open?” Jace asked, peeking around the edge of the truck to try and squint into the darkness, “Like, all the way?”
“Yeah, big enough for-” Octavia paused as she glanced over towards Jace with a raised brow, “No way,” she spat in disbelief.
Jace turned back towards her with a suddenly shit-eating grin, a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. He was nodding endlessly, the excitement of the motion enough that Octavia briefly worried he was going to nod his head right off of his neck. A short cackle escaping his twisted lips, he stood up and rushed up the street towards the bus that they had passed a few moments prior.
“That could work,” B’roka admitted with a small shrug.
“That could also just be a shooting gallery with us as the little metal ducks,” Alex replied skeptically as she watched Jace rush off to the bus.
“We can’t sit here forever,” Mackenzie replied, peering into the darkness with a curious look, “They’re going to know we know they’re there if we just stay here.”
“Try saying that three times fast,” Vita remarked amusedly.
“Anything is better than nothing at this point,” Octavia agreed with a short nod, “We need to get up to the next level, and if we don’t start moving now the attendants will just swarm us anyways.”
The sound of an engine firing up echoed through the street as twin bright lights suddenly flared on and illuminated the area around them in unforgiving brightness. Mackenzie and Alex squinted, covering their eyes with their hands as they eyed the source. Octavia’s visor automatically polarized, reflecting the direct light so she could turn her head to look at the source. The bus had been brought to life, its engine rumbling quietly in the tunnel as Jace lifted himself off of the floor and into the driver’s seat with an exuberant look.
“Choo-choo, motherfuckers! Last call for passengers on the pain train!” Jace hollered out the open doors, the grin on his face splitting his visage in two.
“It’s not a train,” Octavia grumbled as she stood up, shooting the rest of the team one more glance before she turned and made her way towards the bus quickly. The doors were open, revealing Jace sitting in the driver’s seat with his arms draped lazily over the steering wheel and a pink wide-brimmed bus driver’s cap tucked down to his eyebrows.
“Welcome aboard, ladies and gentlemen, please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times!” Jace bid enthusiastically from beneath the wide brim of his stolen hat.
Octavia rolled her eyes in irritation as she walked towards the back of the bus, settling in near the rear door. She knelt down next to the opening and gripped onto one of the support bars with her opposite hand, getting as small as she could while still being able to shoot out of the bus if need be.
The entire bus creaked as B’roka stepped inside, ducking his head as he squeezed his enormous body into the comparatively tiny vehicle. He couldn’t squeeze himself past the first two support bars, so he slotted himself near the front windows and bent down, bracing the rifle on the dashboard as the humans filed into the bus behind him.
“Haven’t been on one of these in years,” Alex remarked as she glanced around the bus, walking to the midway point with Mackenzie hot on her heels, “Don’t suppose these things are bulletproof?”
“Absolutely not,” Mackenzie replied as she knelt in the middle of the bus, glancing out both sides before settling on the driver-side windows while Alex set up on the door-side windows.
“Fuck,” Alex added with a sardonic grin, “Well, hold on tight, folks.”
“Don’t drive straight into the elevator, Minuteman Kelly - follow the roundabout once around. Drive straight through the barricades before entering the elevator. Can you manage that?” B’roka asked, turning his head to look at Jace beside him.
“Hell yeah, boss-man,” Jace replied enthusiastically, “Just you hold on tight and let me do my thing.”
“On your go, Minuteman Kelly,” B’roka remarked, offering Jace a single nod before turning his head forward and shouldering his rifle.
“Go!” Jace exclaimed instantly as he slammed his foot down on the clutch and shifted into drive, immediately pulling out of the parking spot and into the street with a violent lurch. The bus peeled onto the street fast enough that Octavia heard the squeal of rubber against cement, the sudden start causing everyone but B’roka to nearly topple over inside the vehicle.
The bus screamed down the tunnel, its wheels continuing to squeal against the cement as it raced towards the roundabout in the center of the city. The bus had more than enough room to pick up speed as they raced through the street, passing lines of parked cars and locked doors as they went. Nothing shot at them as the vehicle rushed onwards, the enormous elevator in the center of the roundabout looming closer and closer.
The headlights of the bus shone over the first barricade as they approached the entrance to the roundabout, illuminating piled sandbags in the middle of the street and no less than a dozen attendants clustered behind it with various weapons, and one attendant clutching a heavy machine gun mounted behind the sandbags. As the bus screeched onto the roundabout the attendants began to unload into the bus.
The world exploded into the sounds of gunfire and bullets ricocheting off of metal as the machine guns peppered the sides of the bus with holes, sending spatterings of metal and plastic shrapnel throughout the bus. Bits of plastic seating bounced off of Octavia’s armor, prompting her to immediately shift the power from the support systems to her defensive systems. The air around her immediately sizzled with energy as the invisible barrier erected around her, the remaining shrapnel bouncing harmlessly off of the air.
The bus lurched heavily as it slammed head-on into the first barricade, sending a spray of sand and debris throughout the road as attendants were effortlessly sent flying from the force of the impact. The noise dulled as the first machine gun was instantly pulverized by the nose of the bus slamming into it, sending the flattened weapon flying in the hands of the attendant as it too was sent on a collision course for the road some feet away.
Octavia jerked as the bus slammed into the first barricade, holding onto the bar beside her tightly with her offhand as they smashed through to the other side. The bus lit up with the sound of return gunfire as the team gathered themselves and began unleashing hell onto the attendants as they zipped past the ones who hadn’t been scattered by the impact. Through the rear door Octavia spotted an attendant in sight and immediately raised her arm, firing off a bolt of superheated purple plasma through the opening.
The shot effortlessly melted through the door and Octavia watched as it impacted the attendant’s chest, melting halfway through the torso before the plasma lost enough energy to fizzle out. The attendant was out of view before Octavia could confirm the kill, leaving the sounds of gunfire behind as they circled the great elevators in the middle of the roundabout. She could hear the sounds of the rest of the team’s guns being reloaded as they scrambled to get ready for the next pass.
A rattle of gunfire from outside began once again as the front of the bus was riddled with bullet holes coming from the second barricade. Their heavy machine gun wasn’t facing the right way, mounted to face the entrance rather than behind them, but the rest of the attendants were firing their small arms at the approaching bus as they scattered to avoid being hit by the vehicle. The bus lurched forward as one of the front tires exploded with a resounding pop, audible over the deafening retort of gunfire.
As the bus began to slip out of control, Jace reached down and gripped the handbrake, pulling hard as he slammed down on the gas and tore the steering wheel in the opposite direction, sending the bus into a controlled drift. The squealing of rubber against cement sent unpleasant shivers down Octavia’s spine as the bus slid across the street, ploughing sideways through the second barrier without slowing down. Bullets peppered every side of the bus from every angle, some ricocheting harmlessly off of the metal while others tore straight through and added to the deadly shrapnel within the bus.
The bus began to tilt as the momentum of the drift carried more than its balance could handle, lifting the bus onto two wheels as it slid around to the center of the roundabout. With a sudden scream, Octavia was flung off of her feet as the bus finally rolled off of its two wheels and came to a sudden halt with the sound of metal grinding heavily against metal. Octavia landed on her stomach against the shattered windows on the ground and she immediately recognized the ground as metal grating rather than cement.
“We’re in!” She exclaimed suddenly with wide eyes as she reached through her neurolink and searched blindly for the connections in the atmosphere around her. They were cluttered and uncomfortable, nowhere near as user friendly as an amaranthian network, but she was relieved when she found that all of the connections were simple enough that she could follow them to their sources. With a simple mental order, she connected to the elevator and forced the door to begin closing.
“Everyone still alive?” Jace called over his shoulder, still strapped into the driver’s seat and currently suspended horizontally in the rolled-over bus.
“Debatable,” Alex groaned, picking herself off of the ground. Her organic arm had been torn to shreds, the skin littered with cuts and lacerations where she had landed in the broken glass from the fall. Her blood dripped freely off of her limb, staining everything she touched with bright red.
“Alive,” B’roka replied sharply as he crawled to his feet and poked his head out of the door, using the floor as cover as he reached over the lip and began to fire his rifle towards the enormous shutters slowly closing behind them. Burst after burst of hot lead streaked towards the entrance, keeping the attendants from approaching too enthusiastically as they returned fire, bullets pinging against the thick undercarriage of the bus.
“Mack?” Octavia asked, a lance of worry rushing through her as she suddenly looked around, searching for the human.
“Wounded,” Mackenzie replied through grit teeth, laying in a heap at the bottom of the bus amidst bloodstained glass shards. She was clutching her gut tightly where blood steadily oozed out around her fingers, staining her flight suit as she tried to hold the wound closed.
“Mack!” Octavia screamed, hastily scrambling across the seats until she came to a stop next to the wounded human. Her face was contorted into a focused expression of pain, as she tried to keep the pressure on her stomach.
“Medic?” Mackenzie replied hopefully, her eyes flicking up to Octavia’s visor with a hopeful smile.
Octavia was already moving into action as she flicked open one of her bracers to access the hidden compartment within. She immediately gripped a small canister and reached down, pushing Mackenzie’s hands away to get a better look at the wound. It was nearly impossible to see through the outpour of blood and the stained material around it, but as she shifted the power away from her own defenses and into her support systems her helmet visor shifted the focus and highlighted the wound clearly through the obscuring material.
Without wasting a moment, Octavia shoved the canister roughly up to Mackenzie’s stomach and slotted the nozzle into the bullet wound, causing her to cry out in pain. Depressing the button on the canister, a pressurized hiss filled the air as the contents of the canister deposited into the bullet wound, quickly filling the hole with its contents.
“First aid foam?” Alex asked as she rushed over, pulling her backpack off of her shoulder as she hastily fished out her first aid kit.
“Amaranthian version,” Octavia clarified automatically, shaking her head once as the wound finished filling up with the thick blue foam, barely visible through the blood. A moment passed before the foam expanded and visibly hardened within Mackenzie’s stomach, “Has nanosurgeons in it, the same type we keep in our blood,” she explained, pulling the empty canister away from the wound as she focused every ounce of her willpower on keeping it together while she fixed Mackenzie.
“Here,” Alex added, holding out a bandage, “Will she be okay?”
Octavia took the offered article and reached down, unzipping Mackenzie’s flight suit from the neck to the crotch. She peeled the bloody suit open to get a better look at the damage, confirming that it was only the one bullet hole. Satisfied, she let out a relieved breath and nodded as she reached down with the bandage, carefully applying it to the foam-filled hole, “I’m not going to let her die,” Octavia remarked sharply, “Humans already heal faster than any other Federation species, the nanosurgeons will make it so she doesn’t even have to form scar tissue.”
Even though Octavia knew that what she was saying was true, she couldn’t help but feel as though she was trying to convince herself as she stared down at the dazed human she was tending to. The foam was doing its job and the bandage was in place, but still she couldn’t help but think the worst as she reached down and grabbed one of Mackenzie’s hands, holding it tightly in her bloodstained gauntlet. She gazed down at Mackenzie’s pained expression, a lance of an indescribable sensation shocking her to her very core, setting her skin alight and ice in her veins.
Octavia barely registered as the gunfire above her stopped as the sound of the enormous shutters closing echoed through the elevator chamber. The metallic bang echoed up and down the shaft, reverberating and causing her ears to twitch as the sound managed to penetrate her audio filters and send a sharp sting through her head. The sound was immediately followed by a gut-wrenching sensation as the elevator began to rise through the city, steadily making their way towards the next level.