Coven's Rebellion Chapter 15 (Patreon)

Surprise! Coven Chapter! Idk why or where this came from. Actually, nah, the blame is squarely placed at the feet of my adhd. Anyway, hope you enjoy! A second chapter is already in the works, too!

May

Watching the operation from the sidelines in VR was agonising. My heart was constantly in my throat as these incredible people did their best in situations where at any moment, a mistake would mean the end. The team was securing the cargo onto a train currently, so things were relatively quiet, but… god, the fight to get the train has been intense.

Rosa and Amelia were making their way back now— damaged but still functional. Their little raid on the ancient UN black site had yielded a lot of data, which I had some subminds working through currently. The site was so old that it pre-dated the global stranglehold that the UN enjoyed in this era.

I was in my study right now, with a whole host of monitors arrayed around me, and each one held a camera feed. Our silent and terribly efficient cyber warfare team had taken control of a great number of cameras in the blocks around the trainyard. Others were monitoring the feeds too, but I was anxious enough to be jittery, so here I was, adding my eyes to the cause.

Footsteps caused me to jump, and anxiously, I began to search for the screen that had made the noises—

“May?” Siya’s tentative inquiry caused me to twitch a second time, and I looked back to see her head peeking into the doorway of my study.

“Yeah?” I asked, snapping slightly. Quickly, I tuned my emotions slightly—snapping at people because you were on edge wasn’t cool—and smiled. “Sorry, things are tense, yes?”

My friend took a few steps into the room, glancing inquisitively at the screens that surrounded me. “Not the normal array of feeds— oh, is that operation happening now? The Austrian one?”

“Yeah. It’s stressing me out. If we lose those servers…”

Making the decision to cross over to me, she came to a stop behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders. Her thumbs began to knead at the anxious tension in the muscles of my shoulders. “Yeah. A lot of the others are at the tavern, drinking and sitting quietly.”

“This is Eyes-05,” a Synthesised voice said quickly over the operation-wide comms. For Siya and I, the sound played out of little barely visible holographic speakers. “The Ferdinand has shifted course.”

Desmonia’s voice cracked like a whip through the speakers. “What? What’s its heading?”

“Uh… one moment.”

I was already flipping my main screen to show the massive heavy mech as it laboriously turned towards the trainyard. It wasn’t a direct heading, but rather the path it was taking would take it within a block of our people as they got things squared away on the train.

“It’s not heading for them,” Siya said, giving voice to what I’d just realised. “Why is it turning, if not for them?”

Rather than answering, I pulled back to a satellite view and… paused. There were three lines of destruction trailing through the old suburban neighbourhoods. Three new mechs were charging across the urban sprawl, paying no heed to the potential deaths each footfall might be bringing.

“De-Flor’s,” said Eyes-05. “Italian medium assault mechs. They’re faster, but as is implied by the designation disparity, they have less armour and smaller weapons compliments than the Ferdinand. It appears they punched through the Austrian defensive lines in order to deal with the Ferdinand.”

No sooner had it been said, than a wave of missiles shrieked out from the three mechs, each one curving outwards so that the barrage would come in from all angles.

“Oh, holy shit,” Tami swore from atop the train as the missiles scrawled lines of exhaust over the sky.

Eyes-05 wasn’t done. “Drones being deployed. Looks like quadrupeds. Don’t recognise the class.”

“Des?” I asked, speaking into the mic. “What’s the play here? Hide, hope the train doesn’t get hit?”

She was quiet for a second, then two, then five— “Um…”

“Decisive,” I said gently. “Any directions are better than none.”

Her frame visibly shook as she attempted to fight her own doubts. “We make a run for it. The whole train yard is going to be in the line of fire. I hope we’re ready, people.”

“Sixty seconds,” Gael said from her position on top of the train. She was overseeing the fast-charger as it pumped power into the battery banks of the vehicle.

“This is going to be close!” Tami warned, glancing frantically from the one large mech to the three smaller ones.

“It occurs to me that we need them to slow down,” Rosa said as the missiles began to swoop in for the kill.

She was moving before anyone could agree or disagree. Her mechanical legs pumping with frantic, inhuman speed, she left the rail yard at a forty degree angle to the tracks that our train would use to flee— her targets were the three Italian mechs.

“Aw, hell,” Amelia swore, and she began to rush after her girlfriend.

I saw the exact moment that Tami and Dawn glanced at one another. I saw the silent communication, and my face fell into my hands. Oh no.

“Great,” Desmonia grumbled. “I’m down to five.”

Siya was laughing softly to herself, so I looked back up and saw that Tami and Dawn were heading straight for the Ferdinand.

Tami

God damn, but these combat frames could fucking run. My metal legs were a blur beneath me, and so were Dawn’s as she ran along beside me.

“What’s the plan?” she asked, not at all out of breath— which, yeah, I guess that made sense, since neither of us had to breathe.

“I don’t know,” I replied, looking up at the fucking enormous mech. “Do we even want it to be destroyed?”

That seemed to pull her up short, and her pace slowed a fraction as she thought. “Uh… Actually, I don’t think so. It’s a pretty fucking huge distraction…” Her tone shifted gears, and I could hear that juicy, juicy Dawn-style grin in it when she said, “What if we help it with those missiles?”

“I don’t think we will make it in time to help with the missiles,” I said sceptically.

“Of course not,” she said, and suddenly turned down a side street.

I had to screech to a halt, throwing sparks with my feet as I turned and followed. “Hey! Dawn! What the hell?”

“It’s my turn!” she laughed gleefully, jumping several metres to land atop a two storey building. When I made it there, she was on top of a downed dropship that was embedded in the building’s rear.

She disappeared around the back, and as I came to a stop outside the rear hatch, she was ripping a huge gun from its mount. “I saw this dropship on the tacc-map, figured there might be—”

Whirring gunfire cut her off, and we looked up into the sky to see long, erratic trails of tracer rounds, all originating at the Ferdinand. All over it, small turrets were doing their level best to whittle down the overwhelming number of missiles. The missiles weren’t taking the barrage lying down, though. They began to swerve and jink their way towards the finish line like Olympic runners discovering that the starting gunner had been replaced by an angry man with big bullet-spitting miniguns.

To our utter shock, all but three were gunned out of the sky. The three that hit, hit hard.

Red-hot clouds of violence erupted from the impacts, and the mech staggered. For a moment, I thought it would tip over, but somehow it kept upright, even when physics should’ve put it on the ground. Man, I wish I had that ability.

“Okay, so we didn’t stop those ones, but…” Dawn said, trailing off as she turned her attention to directly above us. Another round of missiles was coming in.

Suddenly, May said over the comms, “Hey, Dawn. I’ve told Eyes-02 to link with you. They can provide targeting assistance. Tami, there’s extra belts of ammunition in the ship.”

“Thanks, May!” I said, as Dawn lifted her weapon skyward. She dropped to one knee for the extra stability, and then let loose.

The sound was deafening, and it took my combat frame a second to kick in with the audio dampeners. Holy hell, that was loud.

With incredible precision, her bullets tore apart three missiles in quick succession. The ambush caught the stupid little brains of the weapons completely off-guard, and for far too long, they continued on their initial trajectories without any of the dodging and weaving they’d done before.

Oh, crap! I needed to— turning, I leapt for the dropship and using its tail, swung down into its belly. A few dead soldiers were laying broken at the bottom of the hole that was created by the main cabin or whatever it was called. I ignored them—I’d seen a whole shitload of broken bodies today—and quickly scanned the compartment. There! Sitting strapped to the wall were three big boxes with Italian markings on them, but I recognised the UN-Standard calibres well enough.

Taking one in each hand, I hopped back out and rushed to Dawn’s side. Falling to my knees, I slid the last metre and dropped one box in favour of the other, which I got ready to load into her weapon just as it ran dry. My efforts came to a screeching halt when I realised that I had no fucking idea how to load this thing, but very helpfully, some holographic instructions began to point the procedure out to me. Even then, I was pretty damn slow in getting the ammo into the gun, so the third wave of missiles was almost past us by the time Dawn was able to fire again.

A fourth wave didn’t come.

Whatever Rosa and Amelia were doing, it had caused the three Italian mechs to decide they had more pressing matters than the grizzled, bruised, and beaten titan that was the Ferdinand.

Dawn swung her new gun over onto her back, where it was clamped in place by magnets. “Okay, Tami.”

I looked at her, and she turned to stare at me. I swear, I could see the smile she threw me. “Time to climb that mech.”

“Like… climb it how I normally climb you, or are we going to be less friendly?” I asked, matching her gremlin energy with my own.

“We’re exclusive, Tami. Don’t fuck the mech.”