Cornered Rat

Alternate timeline interpretation written for Weekly prompt 261.
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The Syndicate goons never stood a chance. Three enforcers in tactical gear, their weapons trained on the dusty Venezian street, searched for the enemy. The wrong enemy. The enforcers were so busy searching for Helen Powell’s militia that they never even glimpsed Team Jian shifting out of camouflage on the roof above them. Jake-G293’s go order flashed across the team’s HUD and the Spartan-IIIs kicked off the party
Mary’s rifle cracked twice. The nearest enforcer crumpled into the dust. Jake and Ralph cut down the other two with precise shots while Dyne-G217 darted across the dusty street. Jian’s demo expert slapped a breaching charge on the safehouse door before the guards had even hit the ground. He braced himself against the wall while Cassandra-G006 took up position beside him.
Dyne swiped a finger over his broad SPI visor. “Ladies first.”
Cassandra could practically see the smile he must have plastered over his helmeted face. She clipped his helmet with her elbow. Dyne just laughed and triggered the charge. The door imploded in a shower of metal shards and Cassandra threw her armored body through the shattered frame. She snapped her MA5K up, gunning down a startled enforcer as she scrambled for a table full of weapons. A second criminal writhed on the dirty floor, his shoulder a mess of blood and superheated shrapnel. Cassandra trained her weapon on the helpless man. Her trigger finger hesitated.
“Head in the game, Cassie!” Ralph shoved past and finished the wounded man with a blast from his M90.
"Don’t call me Cassie,” she bit out on reflex. A surge of revulsion curdled in her stomach as she stepped over the bodies.
“Dyne, Ralph, Cassandra, push in and secure the target!” Jake ordered over TEAMCOM. “Mary and I are sweeping around to cut off exit vectors. Captain Venter’s ODSTs have the perimeter. Move!”
Team Jian swept through the safehouse with deadly, practiced precision. Cassandra darted through one room after another. She killed three more enforcers before the safehouse guards could position a proper defense. Echoing shots bouncing through the false transit office heralded Ralph and Dyne’s deadly work just a few meters away. Cassandra tagged her position on the team HUD and hurried onward. Speed was everything. Jian had minutes to spare before their target scurried away. They wouldn’t lose him this time. Simon Lensky was their best lead on his father, Tobias—head of the colonial underworld and one of the biggest thorns in ONI’s side outside the Insurrection and Covenant remnants.
Cassandra tried to ignore the pit in her stomach as she killed another enforcer. This was important work. Meaningful work. She felt guilty for even thinking she might miss the old battles against the Covenant Empire. The ONI briefing was clear: the Syndicate was in disarray, its sprawling organization crippled by ONI’s alliance with Helen Powell’s splinter faction. Helen taking over would place ONI in control of the colonial underworld and cut the Insurrection off from their main source of military hardware. These street fights through colonial slums and criminal strongholds would save millions of lives—wouldn’t they?
Blips on Cassandra’s motion tracker alerted her to an enforcer fireteam sweeping in to flank her. A burst from the MA5K tore through the point man’s tactical gear. Cassandra let the empty carbine hang from her combat webbing. She whipped out her sidearm and put a single shot through the next woman’s head before the rest of the team scrambled for cover. Too late. Ralph vaulted through an office window and then he was on top of them, M90 booming as it shredded armor and flesh and bone.
No time to regroup. Cassandra hurtled onwards, reloading as she ran. She slammed out of the office and into a small workshop lined with utility trucks and civilian vehicles. The MA5K was up and sweeping even as she took cover behind a half-assembled Uberchassis. No enforcers in sight, just half-loaded trucks and their interrupted cargo: crates of stolen military surplus, a motherlode of deadly gear just waiting to be shipped to Tobias Lensky’s revolutionary customers.
And there he was, kneeling behind an Andesian heavy truck in an armored vest a size too big for him. Cassandra knew the face from a dozen briefings: the messy hair, the sunken eyes, the grimy skin. Lensky’s spawn was young—he couldn’t be any older than seventeen—but apparently Tobias had groomed him for an early age to be his personal gopher. The briefing pictures hadn’t captured the wild look burning in Simon’s eyes as he stared down the oncoming Spartan. A scrawny, cornered rat like him should be terrified. Instead he looked excited.
No time to think, no time for backup. Cassandra vaulted over the Uberchassis. Her augmented legs would propel her across the workshop and then she’d have the runt by the scruff of the neck—
Simon’s wild expression intensified. He fumbled with something in his hand and that was the last thing she saw before her world erupted in fire and pain was a crooked smile slashing over her prey’s face. The next thing she knew she was on the ground, tasting dirt and copper as heat slapped over her bloodied cheeks. She rolled and tried to rise, stumbling as pain lanced through her leg. She collapsed, fumbling for her rifle, and only when she tried to consult her HUD did she realized that her face was bare. Her helmet lay a meter away, ripped clean off by the explosion that had engulfed the Uberchassis.
That brat had hit her with an IED.
A heavyset man in a tactical vest hurried over to the Adesian, arms laden with contraband. A young redheaded girl wearing a grungy hoodie hurried after him. Both criminals gaped at the stricken Spartan in shock.
“What the hell, man?” Tactical Vest said, drawing up beside Simon. “This one’s just a kid. Can’t be any older than you.”
“Who cares?” Simon snapped. He snatched a submachinegun from a nearby crate “Her buddies are slaughtering everyone back inside. We’re out of here.”
Tactical Vest nodded. He threw the contraband into the back of the truck before hurrying to the driver’s seat. The redhead girl gawked at Cassandra a moment longer before Simon grabbed her and through her bodily into the truck. He spared one last glance at Cassandra, a curious look piercing those wild eyes for just a moment. Then he leaped back into the truck, pounding on its armored frame and slamming the rear doors behind him. The truck roared to life, barreling through the workshop’s far wall and blasting down the dusty streets. Distant gunfire snapped through the air—uselessly, Cassandra knew. She cursed her own stupidity, crawling to retrieve her helmet even as the workshop burned around her. They hadn’t expected the Syndicate to sport that kind of armor. Small arms wouldn’t put a dent in that beast.
Boots pounded the ground behind her. Ralph and Dyne arrived too late to do anything but help Cassandra limp free as their prize slipped through their fingers once again.