[Tshombesha] Du hast mich

"Copy, proceeding to extraction"

Avera signaled Marija to hustle, keeping low in case any other Eclipse personnel still in the area attempted a potshot.

As they got closer, Avera asked a question "Ever see a Mantis gunship deliver CAS up front, Marija?"

"No"

"Let's just say you're in for a treat." She said. For all of Eclipse's reliance on subterfuge and deception, sometimes a good old fashioned gunship can get the job done.

With the extraction zone now in sight, she radioed the comms "Overwatch is clear, anyone else still unaccounted for?", before turning to Marija.

"Yes?"

"Not bad for a first sortie kid."

Through the foggy onset of fatigue, the ice cold tracery of adrenaline ramming itself through his veins, the instinctive flinches and twitches as accelerator fire skipped off the surface of their own little mobile bunker, Cass heard Dunn's words. And for a moment, for one blissful moment, Cass realized the Centurion said he did not, in fact, suck ass. That he was good at his job.

It was a fucking nice feeling.

Too bad he didn't get a chance to actually enjoy it. A bullet slammed into their shield, and he snapped his Vindicator to his shoulder. Tight, three round burst, shots rang out he couldn't see through this fucking rain and

and then he was being hauled up onto the roof by his cowl, stumbling back into the already crowded troop hold of the Scarab. Offering a hand to the others mutely, instinctively, pulling them back up in turn. The rooftop was cleared in seconds, the last of the Suns piled into the ships. Chatter rang back and forth, between holds and pilots and Pacey and the others, you could hear it, tinny and soft from the helmets of the men and women around you between the rasping breaths, the nervous laughter. The area was clear.

Cass's hands were shaking. The gauntlets rattling against the gun's casing.

He squeezed them into fists as the doors closed, as the rooftop fell away, as the doors slid shut like the jaws of some saurian predator.

He was alive. He was alive. He was alive they were alive and life was good.

The scream of contragrav turbine pierced the storm, passing over their flight ceiling. He didn't see it when the pods detached and arrowed down through the clouds and wind, down to the slums below. He didn't see it when they split open, and the dozen needletipped metal spears scattered, filling the air.

He didn't see it when it was born, raging snake wolf bear bull of fire that tore it's way through the core of the overgrown shantytown, that gutted everything left behind. Scoured it down to bare and blackened earth.

Rain fell on an ashen field, on cinders and soot, and the smoke billowing up to mingle with the thunderheads before it was hammered back down to earth.

His hands were still shaking. But he was alive, they were alive

and so life was good.

-Fin