You are being rescued. Please do not resist
The truce was never going to hold.Even the organics knew that.
They had taken advantage of the few days of relative calm to have their ship land on the smooth hills of the New Hypatian western coast, a safe zone for Nomads, resupplying their nearby Base Camp with heavy armaments and specialized equipment. New, shiny toys just like that TAG, mused Robin Hook, watching the imposing form of the Stigmaton take point at the corner of the street beneath her.
She had arrived to the Inb4 landing pad before the other Bakunians, as it often happened, and had already pinged the Brutus node on commander Asunción's comlog. Beside disabling the node, their mission was to recover one colonel Noovan of the Tohaa Errant Fleet, whose small ship had crash landed a few meters ahead. The colonel had already left the damaged vehicle, and was catching his breath on a road ahead of them, coughing out the black, acrid fumes that drifted up from the wreckage.
However, from the vantage point provided by the roof Robin was skulking on, she could see they were not alone: someone was moving near the control building that housed the Node, and from their uniform they looked a lot like the White Banner yujingese they had already encountered at the docks.
Meeting them one time could have been bad luck, two times could have been coincidence, but three times... She relayed the info to the Custodier, leaving the task of pondering the implications of their fateful encounter to her. White smoke was already wafting upwards from the streets, covering the movement of the State Empire soldiers, who had clearly become aware of their presence.
She watched as the sisters of the Observance hurried to reach the high building, setting their sights on the external control panel that would give them access to their objective, while Freya, the Chimera, climbed with her pupniks on the same office complex she was hiding on, stopping crouched down on a terrace one floor lower.
Then, the howl of self-propelled munitions echoed in the deserted spaceport, followed by a fearsome detonation: the Stigmata in the street below was wreathed in orange flames, the sophisticated fire-extinguishing systems failing with sharp hisses of pressurized air. Her enhanced vision immediately highlighted the exposed fuel line of the TAG's flamethrower, and she quickly backed off from the edge of the roof, just a moment before the secondary blast painted the street in violent light, shrapnel shooting in all directions and bouncing off the metallic infrastructure in a cacophony of barely audible chimes.
The sound of gunfire answered immediately from Nomad lines, multiple automatic weapons shooting on a target she couldn't see near the Colonel's position. Seconds later, a second column of smoke rose up in front of the Tohaa ship, while an heavy machine gun provided covering fire to the Shang Ji escorting the colonel towards yujingese lines.
As the smoke curtain started dispersing, the gunfighting resumed: an Hundun shimmered into view on the rooftop of a storage depot, managing to hit one of the Reverends before being struck down himself. The ferocious defense of the narrow gap between buildings continued, as the yujingese soldiers tried to buy time for the exfiltration: hunkered down behind the corner of the alley, an HMG-armed Shang Ji tenaciously returned fire, until finally being forced to back off from his position, wounded.
Robin had been waiting for a chance like that: she nimbly rappelled down the wall, shooting at the retreating heavy infantry, that, taken by surprise, collapsed in a heap of bloodied ochre armour. She then rolled forward to see the shaolin monk that was guarding the far end of the alley, shooting him down before he could prime the smoke grenade he held in his hand.
She had barely sent a 'Path is clear :))))' message on comms, that Freya and her pets surpassed her with a wild and joyful howl, the colorful clouds of her Eclipse Grenades blooming around the corner. Soon after they disappeared in the glimmering smoke, shouts and growls started resonating, followed by the the ring of clashing blades and the thundering of shotguns. Then, all went silent.
She waited, her auditory sensors straining to pick up any sound from the street. Nothing.
Behind her, the fighting around the Node continued, as the Sisters advanced on the entrenched White Banner soldiers. They, however, didn't seem to be facing heavy resistance after having neutralized two enemies lurking inside the control building.
Then, she heard a hushed voice, speaking in mandarin: "Colonel y-you have to come with me, quick! There could be more monsters like that nearby, it's not safe."
Robin unholstered her pistol and rapidly turned the corner, coming face to face with a worried-looking yujingese woman with the word "PRESS" written in chinese ideograms on her vest that was trying to drag away the tohaa officer by the sleeve of his uniform.
"Don't shoot! I'm just a journa..." She managed to say, before an high calibre round knocked the wind out of her lungs with a loud bang. The war correspondent curled up on the ground, clutching her chest, while Robin nonchalantly greeted Noovan
"Hellooo Colonel, we received your distress call, and we're here to take you to Nomad command."
The alien was watching the groaning journalist with an unreadable expression, the dark blood from a wound on his forehead staining his face.
"I assume this was within the rules of engagement?"
"Dunno! She seemed very dangerous to me." Cheerfully shrugged Robin, stepping over the dead and unconscious bodies that riddled that corner of the road; many wore the yellow garb of Yu Jing, but among them were visible the hairy bodies of two Pupniks, and Freya was just a little further, slumped against a wall in a pool of blood. However, she somehow appeared to be still breathing.
Some organics really were impressively durable.
"Node is secured, Robin do you have the HVT? We are converging on your position." crackled the comms channel.
She was about to answer, when two violent impacts on her back flung her to her knees. Her right arm opened up in a crossbow, as she spun to face the attacker: a Tiger Soldier had just landed behind her in a cloud of dust, firing controlled rifle bursts. More bullets found their target, damage reports and alerts flooding her peripheral vision as sparks flied around her. This body wouldn't hold for much longer.
She let loose an arrow, forcing the airborne trooper to duck, and she scrambled back for cover she knew she wouldn't reach. She prepared herself for the shot that, with 87.3% probability, would incapacitate her artificial host. She could use the processing power of her brain to stretch her awareness of that brief instant, but it appeared quite pointless, as she couldn't do much more than hope her core would remain functional.
So she just waited.
An automatic gun roared... But the impact never came.
She looked up, confused.
From the opposite corner of the building, the three white and orange figures of the Reverends greeted her and Noovan, as the Tiger soldier disappeared in an alley, chased away by the bright streaks of tracer rounds. Asunción stretched out a hand to help her get up, while the other women secured the perimeter and started tending to the wounded.
Yeah, some organics were all right.
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