All Things Wrong

"We're in position. No signs they've been tipped off. Should be able to get out of here before supper."
"Understood. In position. Pull attention, handle the enforcers. I'll get Jak Zhum."
Bless watched the walls ahead of her. Their target was using a refugee camp as an admittedly shallow front for his operations. Armed "security" patrolled along the walls, little more than bullies making sure no one got too close to what was happening inside.
The reports said that was smuggling, and Bless had seen enough unmarked crates heading in and out to trust that. The real issue came from what they smuggled. Where most cartels traded in drugs and stolen goods, only securing enough weapons to protect their shipments, Jack Zhu—as he'd been calling himself on Earth—seemed to have shifted focus solely to the latter. The Kig-Yar had brought in over fifty crates of ammunition and raw explosives.
But there was little time to keep reviewing the situation in her head. To her right, far around the walls of the complex, Bless heard gunfire erupt. The commotion drew away the guards.
Bless pushed into a sprint, closing the distance and launching herself halfway up the wall before her gloved hand caught hold of the ragtag arrangement of sheet metal. Bless felt the edge press into the glove, barely not cutting through. Scrambling to grab a second hand, she met only metal. "I just had to grab the one spot that didn't have enough room for both hands. Fuck this..." Swinging back, she slammed her free hand forward, fingers bent and braced. The rusty metal yielded before her bones, and she punched out a new hold. Just a few more strikes interspersed with gaps where sheet met sheet, and Bless found the top.
Peering down into the camp below, Bless let out a quiet sigh as she realized the distraction had worked. Jack sat almost alone on a scrapheap throne, eyes locked towards the camp's main gate, clawed foot tapping against the metal beneath him with a quiet clack, clack, clack. Almost alone. On either side of the throne stood security guards—two other Kig-Yar—and in the distance, a human. Jack may have been a Ruuhtian, better at a distance than up close, but the guards were T'Vaoans. All three were more trouble than a lone unarmed human, but T'Vaoans? They were dangerous.
Bless raised her sidearm slowly, taking a few moments to practice panning from one head to the next. Jack first, then the guards, and she'll be gone. She lined up her shot, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger, sliding to the following two targets in rapid succession. Three puffs of subsonic, silenced ammo. Two dead Kig-Yar.
"Two?"
Bless's attention fell back onto Jack, standing behind the quickly fading shimmer of a reactive energy shield. The camp fell silent for what seemed to be an eternity. And then chaos erupted.
Bless dropped down from the wall, the human scrambled for cover, and Jack turned on his point defense gauntlet and raised his plasma pistol towards the Spartan. Hitting the ground running out of a roll, Bless charged, sidestepping blast after blast of plasma. A purple blade flared to life from her right wrist, slashing up to cut Jack's plasma pistol in half before raising to slam through the Jackal's chest.
A searing pain cut across her back. Bless stumbled to the ground several feet forward, her thrust missing inches wide of ending the crime boss.
"Get out of here, Jack. The camp's lost." A voice. Feminine. Human. "A punch like that not coming from a Sangheili?" Bless rolled over to face her attacker and found only the glowing edge of another point defense gauntlet slamming into the ground inches from her face. She pushed into one more roll and kicked herself back up to her feet, dagger and opposing fist both raised.
"Who are you?" The technician stood before her, left arm strapped with a shimmering yellow point defense shield. "Hitmen usually die when I punch them."
Bless huffed out a breath, steadying from the strike to her back. "And unarmed technicians don't usually knock me off my feet, so same question to you. You a turncoat, Spartan?"
"I'm not a Spartan. Guessing you are, though. Jack'll love to hear he's worth such attention from high places." The woman shrugged, gesturing Bless forward. "But, I'll be nice... Name's Elena. We doing this or what?"
"Oh yeah... We're doing this..." Bless didn't waste time vocalizing her response. Fighting would be her answer well enough.
Elena snapped her arm back into place to parry Bless's dagger thrust, faster than anyone had done before except her fellow Spartans. Sparks flew as plasma struck plasma, and magnetic fields tangled. Their arms locked in place.
Elena wrenched to the side, Bless's arm going with it, straining against its socket. A punch around the corner of the shield followed, slamming into Bless's chest, knocking her breath from her lungs and—as her dagger finally sprang free from where it was locked—completing the job on her shoulder with a pop. "Definitely a Spartan."
Bless switched tactics, backing up to buy time to relocate her shoulder. Elena stood back and watched. "I thought you were meant to be indestructible?"
"She's playing with me." Bless wasn't here to talk, and she felt the adrenaline pumping through her. Whatever this woman was on, Bless was stronger. Her aching shoulder already forgotten. She turned her dagger off and pressed forward.
She struck at Elena's face, fist connecting instead with the shield. A follow-up was deflected to the side by Elena's own arm. Bless fell back onto the defensive now, ducking to the left as Elena's shield struck forward, edge-on. She caught the next punch, shoulder jerking as she stopped the momentum of the blow. A kick to her opponent's left shoulder kept the center free, and she followed it up with a punch to the gut.
Bless didn't stop as she let go of the fist, striking with a second kick. She advanced ever onward as Elena stumbled backward, landing three more blows before her fist finally met a barrier of plasma. Her opponent was bloodied, weaker than her, losing this fight. But she was still durable. And strong. And hadn't lost yet. She got a few good blows in on Bless in return.
Bless didn't care.
Thrusting another fist forward, Bless saw Elena react in slow motion. Everything was going slower now. The raised shield left legs wide open, and Bless swept them away.
She dove on top of Elena, slamming blow after blow down onto the shield, screaming her fury. Yellow faded into orange into red.
The gauntlet failed.
A fist launched up from behind the shield, right for her chin.
Bless stumbled back as the punch landed, tasting the blood on her lips. Spitting her airway clear, she braced to punch again, only to feel prickling heat on the left of her neck, diving backward just in time to avoid a spray of plasma searing through the air. "Reinforcements?" Scrambling back to her feet, she saw Elena doing the same. Bless rushed after, the corners of her vision darkening on her target. But a blast scraping just past her leg sent her to the ground. Glancing towards the source of the plasma—crawling to keep the prefabs between it and most of her body—she growled. "Chivomengro."
Chivomengro's Elites had been a thorn in the side of Aurora-6 operations for too long, and here they were again. They seemed to have a borderline religious dedication to keeping the refugees free from law enforcement interference, whether they deserved it or not. It was almost respectable, but here they were again. Another set of criminals left free to roam the streets because of their interference.
Bless ducked behind the prefabs, leaving the camp through the main gates. Half of her wanted to fight, but she managed to knock the thought back. She could do great things when stressed, but taking on a platoon of fully armed Elites? No. She passed Jackal after dead Jackal and then passed through the crowd of her own men. "We're leaving."
They looked her up and down, taking in their bloodied and shaking leader. "Jack's dead?"
Bless injected herself with a cocktail of smoothers, taking a breath as the shaking subsided, only to be met by the returning pain of a near-miss plasma burn. "No."
Category:The Weekly