Just let it burn
Something was wrong. That was for sure.
And it wasn't just the acrid smoke that filled the air, nor the wail of the burning machinery on Dock 619, nor the loud mating calls of Hypatian walruses. It was the White Banner Army soldiers, rushing out from one of the many yujingese personnel carriers roaming the area.
Why were they here already? And what about that fire? A cloud of thick black smoke blocked the view of the Agile Chipmunk, anchored in a makeshift shipyard roughly one hundred meters away from them.
Asunción ordered her team to spread out.
It was supposed to be a simple data recovery mission, getting info on the type of quantronic locks employed by Brutus on the dock's command consoles. The entire area was firmly under Yu Jing control, but they seemed mainly preoccupied with containing the Hypatian Megalobster infestation, and stopping whoever was continuing to set fire to the port structures.
She sighed, climbing on the low roof of a service building. It was already the second time they had to confront an emergency response team sent for something they hadn't caused. Well, at least this time she had brought some heavy firepower, she thought looking at Elina, one of their two remaining Taskmasters. She was stabilizing her rocket launcher by resting her arm on a stack of crates, while gesturing her two morlocks to take cover.
On the other side of the blazing engines, near the dock itself, the Yujingese were already on the move, covering their advance with smoke grenades, their white fumes blending with the black ashes wafting upwards. All optical scanners pointed in direction of the fire, the Nomads stood still, waiting for something to emerge.
From the noises they heard in the distance, it looked like someone was hard at work to put out the flames, and the roiling clouds of black smoke on the side near the coast started thinning. For a moment, the Custodier hoped that the State Empire troops would just finish their job and leave, without worrying about the deployed bakunians. As to disprove her wishful thinking, an HMG rumbled in the distance, and the Transductor unit beside her exploded in a firework of scattered metal pieces, the armour piercing bullets finding its power core with uncanny precision.
Luckily, the shrapnel from the destroyed remote was too slow to seriously damage her suit, but the attack didn't cease: another Shang Ji manoeuvred to aim a rocket launcher at Elina, that answered immediately with her own. Detonations shook the shipping containers where the fighters were taking cover, but both held their ground. Then, a blurred figure ran on the right side of the wharf, letting loose a panzerfaust shot, that luckily failed to find its mark, embedding itself into the boxes of sequestered goods.
As soon as the echo from the explosions died down, the Taskmaster passed on the offensive, managing to land a direct hit on the ochre heavy infantry. The momentum of the shot sent the soldier flying backwards over the edge of the pier, and, arms flailing wildly, he crashed into the water below.
Coordinating their movement with the Observance fireteam, led by Horqueta with her trusty HMG, the two Nomad squads started advancing, using diagonal approaches to engage the enemies one by one: while Elina dismantled a Chaiyi, the Moira shot a Jujak emerging from the dispersing smoke of the doused fire. The engineer, caught unaware, didn't manage to react in time, and fell beside the blackened structure he had just extinguished. The beasthunter was her next target, his hiding spot exposed to the flanking manoeuvre.
Pressing their advantage, the two teams were ready to advance further, finding an angle on the Shang Ji with the high calibre machine gun, when suddenly an unexpected shot came from a nearby rooftop: an Hundun had been waiting for his moment to strike, catching the Taskmaster and one of the morlocks by surprise. Both were hit by the blast, that hurled the warband against one of the metal crates, while the heavy infantry threw herself to the ground, her armour severely damaged.
Horqueta came immediately to the rescue: from the corner of a building on their left, she started firing on both yujingese soldiers, forcing the Shang Ji to dive for cover, and wounding the Hundun before he could do the same. A small medical zondbot rushed then to lend aid, but it couldn't do much for the morlock's wounds, only managing to stem the bleeding.
Meanwhile, covered by the smoke from the last bonfire, the Uberfallkommando had managed to climb on top of a two-story mall, their movement mimicked on the ground by Cenobite Lavinia, that was covering the backs of her Sisters.
Taking advantage of the scattered cover, the surviving Shang Ji changed his approach, managing to sneak past the nearby enemies to reach view of their Sin Eater, that was standing guard in the backfield. The automatic fire caught him in the open, and mowed him down before he could react.
On the other side of the large building to his right, two figures rushed the bottleneck guarded by the Cenobite: a Shaolin Monk and a Guilang moved past the smoking wreckage of the engine, getting immediately greeted by the blast of her chain rifle. The Guilang, distracted by something on his hacking interface, was caught unaware, while the martial artist managed to evade the shrapnel by rolling to the side, and with a swift movement landed a blow on Lavinia's uncovered jaw with his staff, before a second shot hurled him backwards. The dazed Cenobite managed to take just a faltering step forward, before falling face first on the concrete floor, concussed.
Mother Agatha, who was standing nearby, ran to her sister's side, finding however that a Jujak was advancing towards her unconscious body. Trusting her Optical Disruption Device, she fired a long burst from her rifle, ignoring the return fire. The enemy quickly fell under the barrage of shots, and she signalled on comms she would advance further to secure the area.
Hearing that, Elina got back on her feet, resuming her advance and deploying a Crazy Koala to pin down the hidden Shang Ji. Then, together with Robin Hook, that was advancing from the opposite side of the battlefield, she managed to pick apart a group of monks led by Liang Kai, taken care of by the point blank shots of Robin's heavy pistol.
Just a lone war correspondent separated the Nomad forces from the docks console, but the reporter ducked and dodged shots from both the Chimera on the rooftop and the rogue AI, until the last surviving monk managed to sneak behind the android and engage her in close combat.
Desperate to stop the enemy from advancing, the Shang Ji emerged from behind the crates, his HMG roaring. Mother Wabara was the first to get hit, falling where she stood, grievously wounded. He then turned his attention on the Taskmaster, but the close range shotgun shell impacted him as he was running out, making him falter just long enough for a morlock to turn the corner and empty the clip of her assault pistol on him.
With the last defender falling, Freya jumped from the roof, leaping towards the warcor crouched behind the console; from the shadows nearby, however, another Guilang appeared, stopping her in her tracks with a precise shot from his combi rifle. That, however, wouldn't be enough: unsettlingly silent in her large suit of armour, the Taskmaster creeped behind the enemy lieutenant, getting both him and the warcor with two shells from her shotgun.
While Horqueta's team extracted the data from the docks consoles, Asunción got up from her hiding spot, surveying the destruction around her. It had been a bloody skirmish, one that maybe could have been avoided. She shook her head, remembering battles fought shoulder to shoulder with the State Empire soldiers on Raveneye station.
Soon the yujingese reinforcements would arrive, they'd better hurry to get their wounded and leave.
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