by Greg Dragon
They stayed near the buildings, using transports and barrels as cover as they crisscrossed their way north towards the chaos. The MLF troops had been notified of the army coming to root them out, as evidenced by the loud shouts that could be heard above the gunshots.
Some of the bravest were moving south in a suicidal attempt to slow the progress of the army. The unlucky ones who came across Cilas and Helga were met with a sharp edge or silent cryogenic rounds.
Helga wondered at Cilas Mec, why he was so good at killing people. The way he dispatched the rebels from the shadows was both horrible and amazing to witness, but when they were out of reach of his blade, she did as she was ordered and took their life.
The violence should have crushed her, but she felt no remorse for what they did. Why should she mourn them? Their handiwork lay in plain sight wherever they went. Dead innocents lay strewn all over the streets, and not just the law enforcement tasked with protecting the town.
There was evidence of everything evil that came with armies conquering lands. There was murder, kidnapping, and obviously torture, and the screaming was driving her mad.
Even the storm spoke to the atrocities, as if the maker herself was sending wind to suppress the MLF. But the maker shouldn’t have bothered, since fate had brought them Cilas Mec.
“On your six,” a weary voice said, and Helga spun to see Raileo wave from behind a pile of refuse. They ran back to him, and she quickly scanned his wound. When her eyes came up, they were to Cilas’s, whose hard face seemed troubled by what he was seeing.
“You’re hull tough, Lei,” he said, slapping the man on the back. “Ate, any–”
A loud roar drowned out all sounds as three fighters flew over their heads. “Oh, schtill—” Helga shouted, but then the explosion sent her and the other two men flying as the payload from the flyby set several buildings ablaze.
“These are the good guys?” Cilas remarked, as he ran over to Helga and helped her up.
“Yeah, really, aerial strikes on a town where civilians are present. I’m thinking we made a mistake by calling them in,” Helga said.
“We have no time, we need to move,” Cilas said. “Tutt, are you good, brother? We’d love to hear from you.”
“I’m in the capitol, stalking, can’t talk,” the big man said, and Helga whispered a silent prayer that he would find Wolf so that they could fly home.
Cilas picked up the push northward, through the rubble and ruin from the earlier flyby. What once were houses were now rocks and twisted metal, with the occasional burned body wedged in between. At one point Helga had to raise her mask in order to vomit from the carnage. She could see in Raileo’s face that he wasn’t prepared for this either, but like her he was a professional, so he did what he could to get past the shock.
It appeared that the flyby had decimated the MLF troops, as they gained the courtyard to the capitol and saw hundreds of corpses strewn about. It was a wide-open area, which offered no real cover on the approach. Raileo Lei found a good place to snipe, where a collapsed building had formed a hill with a gap near its apex.
He struggled up it and settled into the darkness, letting the muzzle of his rifle stick out. “No one will get in whilst you three are in there flushing him out,” he said.
“Thank you, Lei,” Helga whispered and held his hand until Cilas motioned her forward.
There was fighting behind them now, near the entrance of the town, and it was obvious that the flyby had broken the rebels, who were now in disarray. The unfortunate part of ordering the strike was that while it was effective, many more innocents had died than rebels.
It was to the Meluvian’s greater advantage to uproot the MLF and destroy them, but the price it came with was extremely high, and this more than anything else would haunt Helga for the rest of her life.
She and Cilas were staying low, slipping from one pile of rubble to the next. From the capitol, they saw a spark, and then a burning body as it fell from a window. It was Raileo doing his job, and this brought steel to Helga’s resolve.
Quentin Tutt was already inside, but it was a massive structure with multiple floors. She checked her auto-rifle, and the temperature gauge was cool. She realized that she hadn’t had to use it for the last thirty minutes of sneaking through the town.
Cilas, however, had bloodstained gloves, but he had put away his knife in lieu of his own rifle. Together they crossed the courtyard, and ran up a set of stairs, rifles up and at the ready, as they moved silently into the building.
“Tutt, we’re in, on the floor near the courtyard. What’s your situation?” Cilas said.
“Watching you two Nighthawks play at stealth past me,” he said. Helga almost shot him when she saw the shadows move, and Quentin Tutt, in all black, stepped out into a narrow sliver of light and revealed himself to them. “Lots of contacts inside so I figured I’d wait. The target hasn’t moved, I guess he’s waiting it out. He has bodyguards, probably former ESOs.”
“Fall in,” was all Cilas said, and then all three of them ascended the stairs. On the second floor there was a gaping hole revealing the inside, where the mayor’s family lay executed in a morbid line by a wall.
“How is an ESO capable of this?” Helga wondered out loud, and was met with a quick gesture by Cilas to stay quiet. She regretted this slip-up, but the sight of one of the corpses began to bother her. It was a boy, no older than five, and she wondered why they had to kill him when he had barely started life.
The stairs continued to the third floor, and there they ended at a set of double doors. “Ate, near me,” Cilas said, as he and Quentin exchanged looks. The big man skipped to the opposite side of the door, where he counted down on one hand and then spun and kicked the door open.
Lasers flew by them, one at every second interval for the length of a breath, and Helga slipped inside, staying low. She opened up the auto-rifle on a masked man raising a gun. The other three men were on fire, dead from shots that had come from Raileo’s rifle.
Damn, he’s good, she thought, as she joined the other two men in searching the room for any survivors, and then they were back on Cilas, moving towards a door.
“You know what I was thinking,” Cilas suddenly said, and Helga could see that he had opened up a private chat so that only she could hear.
“That I’m bad luck?” she said, though it was a joke that was based on how she truly felt in this instance.
“No, I was thinking that if we had our PAS suits, this op would have been over within eight hours of us breaking atmosphere.”
Helga didn’t know what to say. He was admitting to being wrong in the only way that he could. She felt herself smiling, and then they were in a hallway, where Quentin exchanged shots with a rebel that was running to escape the building. The man’s shot struck home, but it must’ve struck an area of his tarred uniform where the protective layer blocked it.
Quentin’s shot had struck his leg, and he finished him off as they rushed by. The hallway opened up to a balcony overlooking a large chamber. Below them on the bottom floor was an arena with seats on every side, and in the center was a large chair that sat on a dais, now covered with the bodies of several well-dressed Meluvians.
“He’s on the roof,” Raileo announced, and Cilas pointed to the stairs on the other side of the balcony. There was a high-pitched sound followed by a low, annoying hum. Helga could see Cilas pointing at her but nothing was coming through the comms.
“Cilas,” she tried, but it sounded and felt as if cotton was jammed inside her ears. She scrambled back to her feet but was pulled down by Quentin, who was squatting behind one of the balcony’s columns. What just happened? Helga wondered, looking down to see if any blood was on her coat. Am I shot? I think I got shot, and something exploded near us, taking my hearing.
It was almost funny. She could see the men talking, but it sounded as if they were doing it underwater. She pointed to her ears and shook her head. “You all can probably hear me,
but I am unable to hear any of you.”
22
For the five years that Lieutenant Cilas Mec had been in the formal Alliance Navy, the one thing that remained consistent was that whatever could go wrong will not only go wrong, but it will wait until the worst possible time to happen. It is for this very reason why his drill instructors insisted they embrace it.
“Latch on to inconvenience, death, and all that is bad, because as a soldier, it will follow you throughout your entire career.” That was from his favorite gunnery sergeant, whose favorite expression was, “Open up and say, ‘ah.’” It had been a running joke amongst the recruits, but Cilas understood it, and knew why it needed to be said.
There had only been one mission where he had made it through according to plans. One mission where he hadn’t sustained some sort of injury, and one mission where the things he experienced didn’t take hours of chair time at the psych. This, he would never admit to anyone.
People looked to him as a warlord who had seen and done it all. What they weren’t privy to were the breakdowns and the constant night terrors that haunted his sleep. Cilas Mec was always fighting, if not on a mission then with himself. Helga too seemed to have it bad and did a terrible job at hiding it. He had seen as much in her eyes when they had that talk on top of the statue.
They had only half their team; an ESO team should have at the minimum six operators. Eight was the sweet spot, and twelve—four being on reserve—for planetside ops like this. Here they were four, and as they stood by the door leading to the roof, he took inventory of their condition.
What is going to happen with this team, once we return to space? he thought. Helga, his unofficial second, had been shot in the head and lost some of her hearing. The helmet stopped the bullet, but she was delirious and not hearing them when they spoke. Raileo Lei, barely out of cadet academy, had been hit by over fifteen bullets. While only one had slipped past his armor, the blunt force trauma would have him in a healing tank for weeks.
Quentin Tutt was older than he was, and had seen as much action, but he did so on the frontlines of the armored Marine Corps. Cilas often wondered at the big man’s resolve. He was thoughtful, wise, endearing, and soft-spoken, yet when it came to killing men, he was frighteningly efficient.
They all were in their own way, even Helga when she was inside of a cockpit. But Quentin was hard to read, and having this older veteran along brought back pleasant memories of Cage Hem.
As to his state here, leading them to a roof where their target was trying to escape, Cilas felt a calm acceptance of his fate. It would be two ESO leaders exchanging shots, and he could very well lose this fight.
“Lei, you made it,” he said, rushing down to help the recruit as he struggled up the stairs. “Stay here with Ate,” he said. “Tutt and I are going to breech. If we get into trouble, you will know, but your job is to keep both her and you alive. Do you understand?”
“I do, Lieutenant,” he said, and took ahold of Helga’s pack, as if in preparation to pull her back from following the two older men. Cilas glanced over at the darkness where Quentin Tutt stood, breathing heavily. He nodded once and the big man walked to the door, spun, and back-kicked it open before tossing in an XLB-1 bomblet.
Rain blew in, obscuring Cilas’s mask, but the detonator went off on the bomblet and it popped up into the air, sending light everywhere. Anyone not prepared for it would be blinded for a minute, which normally gave the invaders time to dispatch them before they could recover.
Cilas stepped into the light with the shade on his mask activated, and put single rounds into two men scrambling for their weapons. There was the humming of a Hovex APV, a sleek Meluvian transport hovering just off the edge of the rooftop, where Joran Wolf and two similarly dressed men were grabbing a rope to climb into it.
Quentin Tutt sprinted past Cilas to kneel, take aim at the rope and split it with one shot. Wolf fell, but he landed nimbly while one of the other men missed the roof. As he plummeted to his death, the last man—who hadn’t yet ascended the rope—started firing a pulse rifle back at the doorway.
Two shots struck Cilas’s chest where the armor saved his life, and he dashed behind a generator that provided the building with power. Now it served as a shield against the surviving gunman as the transport started to circle the capitol, trying to avoid the Nighthawks.
Cilas spun in time to trap Wolf’s arm as he swung a knife towards his neck. He was a big man, as tall as Quentin Tutt, and he wore a mask that covered his nose and mouth. His hair was white, which would fool anyone else that he was older, but Cilas remembered Joran Wolf from the Aqnaqak and his reputation as a warrior.
How in the hell is he back here? the Nighthawk wondered as he pushed the man away from him. His knife was out now, in reverse grip with the blade resting on his forearm. The two men circled one another silently as the gunfight continued on the other side of the generator. Wolf, it seemed, had given everyone the slip and had somehow flanked them while he ran to escape the pulse rifle.
He feinted a blow to Wolf’s neck, but the man trapped his arm and delivered two thrusts of the knife to his abdomen. The first blow would have gutted him if not for the graphene layer of his jacket, and the second glanced off, shredding the material as Cilas thrust his hips backwards and to the side.
When Wolf’s arm extended for that second thrust, Cilas’s turn ended with him grabbing that arm and driving it down to his knee. The aim was to disarm him, but Wolf slipped his grasp, looking down at the wound that should have disemboweled the Nighthawk.
“Ah, ESO BDU’s,” he said, nodding his approval. “Next time, I go for your neck.”
Cilas feinted again, but this time he committed to a strike immediately after pulling his knife back. Wolf blocked the deathblow with his own knife, a feat that was so ridiculously difficult that Cilas almost lost his composure.
The traitor was a master, but so was Cilas, if he was being honest, and mastering a parry that met knife to knife was just one of those things that some men did for show. He, on the other hand, had trained to avoid the knife rather than take it on his own. So when Wolf parried, he stabbed again for the big man’s neck, and as expected that too was deflected, followed by a counter stab that Cilas blocked with his free hand.
For fifteen long seconds this sequence of stabbing continued, with either man unable to cut flesh, whether from the armor or his rival’s skill. It would have been a sight to behold if it was somewhere else other than on the highest rooftop in the town, with wind and rain threatening to blow them away.
On the other side of the generator, Helga and Raileo had ducked back inside, hiding from the rebel who kept firing on the door as if his bullets could punch through the metal. Quentin Tutt had gone to the shadows, though to the shooter it looked as if he had joined his comrades inside the building.
He had deceived him however, running inside, but was out just as quickly then slipped off the side of the roof. Gripping the edge, he moved around it like a spider weaving a web. When he was behind the shooter he scampered up and threw an arm around his neck. Holding him steady against his own body, Quentin brought his knife up and plunged it into the man’s chest.
When the dead rebel stopped firing it distracted Wolf for a second. It was all Cilas needed to get an opening, and he stepped into his knife and headbutted him.
The wet cracking sound should have been enough to tell him that Wolf was finished, but Cilas had started a progression he had trained until it was reflex. From the headbutt he caught Wolf’s arm then stepped back, pulling it with him and bringing his head down into his knee.
The final move had him step behind the now unconscious man, trapping his arm and taking him down to the ground. There he removed Wolf’s belt and used it to bind his hands behind him. He checked his pockets, tossing anything he didn’t recognize, and then proceeded to bind his legs and gag him.
After completing these motions, which were as smooth and fast as he’d practiced them,
Cilas realized that the shooting had stopped, so he lifted up Wolf and stepped out from the generator. In the distance the army was approaching, and the MLF had been routed and were scattering into the forest.
These were cornered men, with their only way out being through the Nighthawks, and this made them more dangerous than he could ever imagine. Cilas still heard the humming of that circling transport, which surprised him since Wolf was done and the other men were either dead or dying.
The bomblet’s light was dying, and he realized that this standoff had lasted less than a minute. He glanced over at the Nighthawks and saw that Helga Ate was missing. Quentin was kneeling next to the door and Raileo Lei had his rifle hoisted, staring off in the distance.
Has that man finally lost it? Cilas wondered, then shouted, “Lei. Where is Ate?” He felt a twinge of panic that she had gone off to do something stupid, and he knew that he should worry when he saw the look on Quentin Tutt’s face.
“Up there,” Raileo said, as he pointed above the trees, and Cilas saw that the transport was now flying wildly above the town.
“She’s in the transport? How?”
“Ran and jumped. It was the craziest thing,” Quentin said.
Cilas put a gloved hand up to his mouth. He felt his breath stop as he saw something fall from the transport as it careened off towards the center of the town. That something was a person, and it wasn’t flailing as it fell, leading him to believe that it was a corpse.
He wanted to hope that Helga had somehow managed to kill the pilot, but with her hearing gone and the possibility that she was hurt, he began to think past his grief and to how they would recover her body.
“Why did you let her do that?” Cilas shouted, turning on Raileo Lei. “Your job was to protect her. How could you let her run off?”
“Sir, she…she’s thyping strong. I tried to hold her but she cut her pack and took off,” he said, and Cilas saw the discarded backpack lying next to where he leaned against the generator. He checked his anger—an enormous effort—there would be time to mourn, but for now he had to secure the mission. Perhaps the Meluvians would find her and kindly allow the Alliance to bring her home. He did not want to return to Rendron with another Nighthawk missing in action.