"I'll do it, just get out of the way," the tech says, death by gunfire taking a backseat to having some barbarian slag his machinery.
"Lumai, stop! You... you can't turn off our defenses!" shouts one of the techs.
"They haven't stopped him from getting in here, they're only prolonging the destruction," the older man (presumably Lumai) replies. The console's working well enough to identify him, and Lumai begins throttling back the feeds. A hum Hugh hadn't noticed before significantly decreases in volume, and the sporadic explosions from the battle filter through the thick structure.
"There," Lumai steps back. "The defense grid's been powered down. Please let us go. My- my family is up there."
"You? Calling me, a zealot?!" Semo begins to laugh, the notion striking him as rediculous. "You really are a moron."
The Turai moves forward, apparently intending to finish the fight. "Bring it on, moron," Semo says, waving the man closer.
A dip of the shoulder is all Sgt. Putupu needs to see to know the strike is coming. He lunges forward with a rising block, trying to get inside the swing and knock the man off balance with his shoulder. If successful, he'll try to trap the sword arm and stab while he's in close.
Semo and the moron collide, and the clang of blade on blade shocks through Semo's wrists. He rotates inside the Turai's guard, traps his enemy's sword hand between his arm and body, and brings back his right arm to gut the man. The Turai clamps his free hand down on Semo's right forearm before the sergeant can finish his strike. The two men sway and stumble, locked in a clinch, their mirrorshine helmet visors centimeters from each other.
Semo can hear the Turai's heavy breathing, the straining as he tries to keep the sword out of his abdomen. He sees himself reflected in the soldier's helmet and it's something of a shock - Semo has always thought of the Imperium as alien, as the other, and it's disconcerting to see himself clad in their chrome carapace. He thinks of how this fearful reflection must have been the last thing many of his friends at Mesas Negras saw. Semo lets the Turai's sword arm go, grabs the Imperial's shoulder, and impales the Turai through the stomach. The Imperial makes a gahk noise, his body tenses then slackens, and he falls to the ground, bleeding.
Lumai follows Hugh up the ladder and out of the silent reactor pit. The crackle of gunfire is audible inside the Spire now, and Hugh moves cautiously out of the slagged doorway and back up what remains of the stairs. His steps are fairly easy to retrace - Hugh mostly kept to the most structurally sound, largest pathways he could find before and with the slack in bombardment nothing's shifted too badly.
Lumai's puffing pretty heavily by the time Hugh clambers his way over another vaguely familiar rubble pile in a dark, vaguely familiar corridor and sees the soft blue glow of the Spire's Gateway glyphs, still hooked up to the Masters-level reactor device. Hugh spots another light source - cleared debris making way for the light from levels above - and then there's movement across the way, a glimpse of black rifles and the soft clatter of shifting gear. Hugh realizes what's about to happen just as the shouts of "Contact!" hit him like a physical blow. Lumai doesn't get it. Curious, the Imperial tech exposes himself to see what's going on.
Semo's maneuver almost works. Unfortunately, the Turai is fast enough to catch his wrist with his open hand. Normally, Semo would just overpower the man, but he's badly wounded and nearly spent.
The view of himself in the other's visor nearly rattles Semo. He doesn't like the thought of himself being like these alien Turai.
Switching tactics suddenly, he grabs the Turai's shoulder and pulls him forward onto the waiting blade. That's all it takes and the man goes down, his life ebbing quickly away.
It is only now that Semo and give in to his pain and weariness. Slumping to a sitting position on a chunk of rubble, the sargeant fishes the first aid kit out of his pocket. At this point, he really wishes he had one of those healing frisbee things. First, he needs to stop the bleeding, then he'll check the four Turai to see if any of them had one - or anything else useful.
Semo's bandaged himself with his gear and sprayed down a coat of numbing synskin over the more painful wounds when he notices the everpresent hum of the Spire machines diminish. Not too long after, flurries of rifle fire give him a vague indicator of which way might lead out of the bowels of whereever he fell into.
---
Hugh slams into Lumai and feels white-hot daggers in his left thigh while he's in mid-tackle. He goes down clumsily, unable to right himself for a few moments. There's just no more adrenaline left to counteract the rifle slug that managed to punch through Hugh's thigh-plate and into his leg. Lumai whoofs as the impact knocks the breath out of the old man.
"How you like that, bitch!" calls a voice in English from the debris beyond the Gateway. "Your buddies tried that shit on us upstairs!"
"Christ! Stand down, Martinez! What city are the Yankees from?" calls another voice, the baseball query telling Hugh that someone had been teaching the Turai enough English to give the US troops pause.
The worst of the damage repaired, Semo begins to wonder about his next move. Unfortunately, he didn't find any frisbees on these bastards, so he had to make do with what he had.
With little light to go by, sounds are his best guide. The sound of rifle fire reaches his ears, and it is clearly slug-throwers - which means friendlies. Rising, Sgt. Putupu begins to work his way in that direction. The flashlight from his pack provides enough light to avoid tripping over most of the debris.
"Stay where you are!" the second voice calls. "Naves, Murphy, on me." Hugh sees a small group - maybe two fireteams or so - move into the Gate area.
"Don't move!" one of the men says to Lumai. When the Imperial still slides back on his ass, the man butchers Lumai's native tongue with "No dance on ground stop!" Lumai either figures it out or is confused enough to stop backing away.
"Sergeant, this one's indigenous."
"Cover him," the sergeant says, bending over Hugh. "Cooper, bring that alien doohickey over here." To Hugh, the soldier's kind of blurry, but he picks out an almost-comically large nose and intelligent green eyes, the only not-filthy things on the sergeant's face.
More movement around Hugh now. He can feel the punctured armor lift from his leg and more shadow, presumably from Cooper.
"Shit, sarge, this guy's beat to hell. I don't think I can use the thing on him, I don't know what's broken."
"Hey," the sergeant waves his hand in front of Hugh's face. "Who are you, how'd you get down here?"
---
Semo heads towards the gunshots, which quickly subside. After a few minutes he thinks he recognizes some of his surroundings from before the cave-in. Sure enough, he spots the Gateway's blue glow as well as seven Rangers. Four of them are sweeping the area in pairs, but they haven't spotted Semo yet. One has his rifle trained on an older man in a technician's suit, while two more are bending over Captain Verrill's supine form.
"I'm Charlie 40 - Captain Hubert Verrill, US Army," Hugh manages to spit out. "This man is my prisoner...and..."
He idly reaches for his radio, and finds it smashed. Must be from the tumble with Lumai. Or jumping down onto the console. Or the fight with Greene.
"...you've got a Samoan in turai armor running around here, that's Sgt. Putupu. I hope he's still alive...we split up...Mellish is a goner...Greene too..."
Hugh trails off as what he's thinking steadily distances itself from what his mouth is actually saying. He's felt like this before. The memories aren't helping.
"All... All right, sir," the sergeant says. "Cooper'll bandage your leg, give you some morphine."
Coopers stows the appropriated frisbee and starts dressing Hugh's leg wound.
"People! We've got another friendly down here wearing hostile gear. Confirm your targets before firing! Martinez!!! That goes double for you!"
Semo makes out the sergeant's command from his cover. Seems the captain's getting them up to speed.
Sarge tries his radio. "Hotel, this is Kilo 20. Come in, over."
The response is scratchy and altogether inaudible. The sergeant swears and fishes a vox from a pouch. He fiddles with its controls and tries again. This time the response is clear.
*Kilo 20, this is Hotel, sitrep.*
"We've secured the Gateway and we've found Charlie 40 actual. We have one prisoner. Requesting instructions."
*Copy that, Kilo 20.*
The morphine or whatever they're using now hits, and the pain slides off Hugh like a warm shower. The cotton balls dampen his brain a bit, but it's a marked improvement. The next thing Hugh knows he's got the vox near his head and the sergeant's saying, "Sir, command wants a sitrep. You good for that?"
"Hotel, this is Charlie 40, central power's down and we have the gateway. Specialist Mellish is dead. Specialist Greene...got him this time for sure. I repeat, Greene's dead. How is...how is the rest of the operation going? I busted my comms. Over."
*Copy, Charlie 40. Enemy artillery is down, we have secured the area around the tower, but Hotel and Foxtrot are encountering heavy resistance in the upper quarter of the Spire. If that Spire Gateway is secure and powered, dial Atea and send your authorization codes. Golf will dial back out, resupply, and reinforce you and Kilo at the Gateway. Contact us once you've resupplied, Captain.*
"Wilco," Hugh replies, then hands the vox back to the Sarge. "Get that gateway working," he says, half delirious, "and get me some dramamine, I feel like I'm gonna lose a whole buffet."
Watching the whole show from the sidelines, Semo notes that the fireteam seems to have accepted Capt. Verrill. Everything appears to be in order, so Semo takes off his helmet and steps out into the open, arms held out to his side, hands empty.
"I'm Sgt. Putupu, Delta. How's the Captain?" He walks slowly toward Hugh so as not to spook anyone.
Warned as they were by Hugh, the Rangers don't pepper Semo with friendly rounds, although a few do stare incredulously at the sergeant's tattered appearance. "Hold fire!" the Ranger sergeant calls when Semo shows himself. He leaves Cooper with Hugh; the medic does have some extra Dramamine for gate sickness and Hugh eagerly takes it and a few swigs from a canteen.
"Sergeant Putupu," the Ranger leader greets Semo. He's nowhere near Semo's build, with sunburnt skin covered by Boranai's everpresent dirt and dust. Semo notes that the sergeant, like a few of his men, has appropriated various Turai equipment.
"I'm Sergeant Bernstein, Kilo 20. You guys look like you saw some heavy shit down here. You need medical?"
"Pleasure, Sergeant Bernstein," Semo replies. "Yeah, I wouldn't refuse it. That quad of Turai I ran into down in that lightless hellhole back there did a pretty good job of carving me up." He ambles off in the direction of whoever looks like a medic.
"Hey, Hugh, how you holdin' up? Was that robot guy back there really Greene?!"
Admiral Duck Sauce
