Ravens of Eternity

148 The Flow of Blood, Pt Shadows from the gondola above crept across the ground below, not that most Guards or Feds even noticed. They were all focused on the firefight right in front of them.

The chaos of the battle meant that all eyes remained on the enemies only meters away from them. The last thing they needed to do was take their eyes off their enemies. Doing so would have incredibly lethal consequences.

At the lead gondola, Colviss stood at the prow and watched as the fight below played out before her. She watched as many of the Drogar she had trained fell to their enemies. Their fates had long been sealed, and it was a fact that she had come to terms with. They were all meant to die. Or most of them anyway.

It made her wonder why Savoth even paid her to train them. Wasn’t he simply wasting Coin by doing so? It’s not as though a few months of training would have ever turned them into a real fighting force. They were all just civilians playing soldiers.

She supposed that’s what it was all about – their perception of themselves.

Savoth wanted to instill that sense of heroism in them, misguided as it was. It made them that much more malleable.

Guilt washed through Colviss as she realized her role in Savoth’s schemes. But then swept it away as she resolved her will to finish what she set out to do. All she could do was hope that Ra’ventrii was somewhere in the compound.

She raised her rifle up to her eye and watched as one of the Guards down below aimed his rifle at some of the Chosen. Colviss set her crosshairs right on his chest and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

In the blink of an eye, her plasma round slammed into the Guard’s armor and shattered it. The very next moment, it erupted in a ball of red-hot ionized energy. The Guard himself was completely obliterated while his armor was blown into razor-sharp shards of shrapnel.

.....

All those within five meters of him were hit by those shards, and lacerated by their edges.

Felothi ran up next to Colviss, and ducked down behind the protective metal ring at the gondola’s edge.

“Colviss!” he said. “What should we do? We’re stuck!”

“Don’t ask me,” she answered. “I’m not some general. And we’re not stuck. We’re in gondolas, for heaven’s sake. Nothing’s in our way but our own damned selves.”

She aimed at another Guard below and blew him to pieces with a single violent shot.

By this point a number of Guards down below had realized that the gondolas had finally advanced into the courtyard. They fired at them with precise bursts and dented their makeshift armor a good amount.

Some of the flimsier pieces of armor were shot clean off or warped to uselessness.

Colviss ducked down as a few guards shot right at her. Their bullets dented the fortifications she hid behind.

“Well we need someone,” cried Felothi. “Someone to lead us, tell us where to go, what to do. We... we’re just getting killed down there!”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she said. “Where’s Savoth? Why isn’t he leading the attack? Shouldn’t he be down here?”

Felothi was taken aback by her words. His eyes went wide as the realization sunk in.

Then and there, in the middle of all the fighting, Felothi realized everything that Colviss had told him about Savoth was true. Or perhaps he had always known they were true – he just didn’t want to believe it.

But seeing all of his friends dying down below literally broke his heart. They were being slaughtered by the dozens – clearly their numbers meant little. This wasn’t at all the glory he had imagined.

He imagined Savoth at the lead, pointing his blade at the enemy while he and his brethren charged right behind. There was a kind of romance to the picture, as though it was for the greatest of goods.

But Savoth wasn’t here, nor was that glory. And those deaths were beyond sobering. It was clear what Savoth truly wanted out of all of this.

Their blood, his coin.

He looked up at Colviss as she rose back up and fired her rifle again.

“Why are you here?” he asked her.

“Redemption,” she replied solemnly. “Best I can do is give everyone a little dignity before it’s all taken away.”

Then she ducked back down next to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and squeezed it lightly. She looked him right in the eyes with absolute intensity.

It snapped him back to attention, to the reality of the moment.

“Order the gondolas to pick up the wounded,” she told him. “Then take them back down to the maintenance tunnels and get them treated.”

He tried to get up to carry out her orders, but she held him down firmly. Apparently, she wasn’t done.

“And then pull back,” she added. “All the way back.”

Felothi’s mouth gaped wide for only a moment, then nodded in understanding.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

She let him go with a sigh.

“No need for honorifics,” she told him. “Just do what you’re told.”

Felothi nodded again, then walked away to issue his orders to the gondolas. Then, in batches of three or four, they descended down towards the ground into the few spaces where there was room for them.

While all of this was happening, Colviss ejected her magazine, then set her rifle into Maintenance Mode on its settings screen.

She navigated to its engagement settings and tapped on CQC-Medium. The moment she did so, the rifle itself shifted around in her hand. Parts of it automatically folded into itself or tucked aside.

The barrel shortened, or rather, the gun’s frame pulled the barrel inward and converted itself from a sniper to a bullpup. Its parts then re-extended and closed up into a far shorter, but equally lethal configuration.

Its screen reported ‘Ready to Fire’.

So, she quickly reloaded it and jumped over the edge of the gondola.

Colviss landed on the grassy courtyard ground with a heavy THUD, then quickly ran for the nearest fortification as she scanned her surroundings. She rapidly raised her rifle at the ready and fired a burst at the closest group of Shielded Guards.

Her bullets slammed into their shields and detonated with great force. The shield wall itself was blown apart and knocked the Federation combatants meters away. One of them was killed outright from the force of the blast, while the other had his left arm and leg painfully blown off.

He cried in agony as he clutched at his bloody stump of an arm.

The Guard behind the shield wall was also blown back by the force and knocked to the ground meters away.

“Colviss!” cried a Chosen next to her. “Thank the gods! Now we’ve got a chance! Come on, everyone! Let’s kill these apes and their ape lovers! This is for the future of Taloren!”

The Chosen around her cheered wildly. They all popped out of cover at the same time and laid down as much gunfire as they could downrange. Shieldwall teams were riddled by all manner of gunfire from multiple directions.

It was more than they could handle, and were cut apart from the edges. Those who weren’t cut down outright had to retreat back behind harder cover.

That amount of fervor soon spread across the Chosen’s line, and they all unleashed their raw firepower at the Guards and the Feds. They pushed back their opponents and suppressed all their advances.

Colviss joined in on the attack and absolutely devastated the Guards’ front line. She fired burst after burst at a number of shield teams, and blew them all apart.

The force of each explosion was so powerful that one of the Shield Feds and the Guard they were protecting both slammed into a tree behind them. They were crushed to death from the sheer power of the blast.

Other teams were simply blown apart. Their shields were wrenched out of their broken arms and turned into scrap.

All of those she fired at ended up as mangled, twisted bodies.

As their front line suppressed the Guards, their gondolas were able to work quickly. Felothi and all the other gondola crew quickly ran out and grabbed as many of their wounded as they could. They loaded up their gondolas to the brim before they took back to the skies and retreated. Then the next set of gondolas came down to pick up more of their brethren, loaded up, and left.

They continued doing this throughout the rest of the fight, and quietly worked to save as many as they could. All amidst the chaos and insanity of battle.

The Guards’ side also had their own medical evac process. Multiple manned antigrav drones controlled from the tower gathered up all their dead and wounded. They were all brought to the field clinic behind and to the side of Toreth’s field command post.

It was a low, flat space that was somewhat covered by a low perimeter wall. Their defenses were further increased when a couple of Shield teams stationed themselves at the corners.

At the makeshift clinic itself, a number of medics tended to a multitude of wounded humans and Drogar. Many were lacerated with bullet wounds and shrapnel. They were quickly tended with MedGuns tuned to perform rapid healing.

Others had limbs blown off and were bathed in pain. Some of the medics were busy patching them up as best they could, but their flailing and screaming made their jobs all the more difficult.

Some had been blown open and were barely alive. They were in so much pain that they could barely think, much less scream. All the medics could do for them was simply give them a quick and painless end.

After the drones dropped off a fresh batch of wounded, they brought the dead to the temporary morgue off to the side. There, the bodies of those who had died were laid with respect.

And also picked clean of their ammunition, which was destined to go back to the front line.

Filled with as much ammo they could find, they sped back towards the front to redistribute their equipment. As they zipped back, more Guards came from out the barracks and ran up alongside.

Behind them were dozens and dozens more Federation Shieldbearers as well, perhaps a couple hundred or so. Their faces were filled with both determination and fear the entire way there.

In their hands were their Type 7 prototype shields, and they were absolutely determined to get to the fight. As they ran up to the front, they activated their shields with the press of a button.

Each and every one of their shield frames hummed and glowed with energy.

They took no time in joining the second-tier metal shieldbearers that were still active on the field. While they protected their Guards from the front, the metal shields could protect their flanks.

The antigrav Shieldbearers were shaken to their core when they faced the Chosen. All they had between them was a simple frame and plain old air. The terrorists were practically laughing as they fired another volley as they cursed at the ‘stupid apes’ and their ‘useless shields’.

But their laughs died down, and the Federation combatant’s courage swelled as they watched their shields in action. Each one had captured every single bullet shot at them. No matter how much they were shot at, the shields dutifully stopped them.

The bullets floated in the shields’ antigrav fields in metallic clusters.

Even Colviss’ plasma rounds did absolutely nothing. Her slugs floated in the fields as well, their tendrils of plasma lashed at the bullets around it, but otherwise remained stable.

Her jaw was fixed wide open in shock.

“Shieldbearers!” cried one of them. “Activate reflect!”

Then, in near unison, each of the shieldbearers pressed one of the buttons on their handle grip. Their shields emitted a high-pitched whine before they pulsed with a burst of energy, and flung their captured ammunition back in the direction they came.

The results were devastating – the entire area where the terrorists had shot from were blanketed with their own ammunition. Trees and walls and fortifications were shredded by the sheer mass of metal.

Chosen who failed to find cover were riddled with dozens of bullets.

Colviss flung herself down to the ground as her own bullets exploded all around her. The force of their blasts tore apart the fortification next to her. Its pieces flung in every direction and struck a number of nearby Chosen and shredded them with ease.

Over a hundred terrorists lost their lives in that single devastating counterattack.

.....