Stormfall - Chapter 2

The group holding me at gunpoint didn’t immediately open fire. After a few long moments, one of them called out. “Flash?”

A wave of relief washed through me. It looked like I would live to see another day after all. What joy. “Thunder.”

“She’s one of ours.” The man called out. Most of the lights blinding me flicked away and scanned our surroundings. They were still alert, though I was out of any immediate danger from the squad. 

The sight of the Stormfall mercs made some of my tension fade away. All of them wore similar armor to me, though they looked considerably less banged up. Their familiar patches of a titan dropping through a storm were unmistakable.

Each of them stood tall with large frames. Stormfall’s PT wasn’t a joke. I was already kinda small, and standing next to the hulking brutes made me feel even smaller. It was a familiar sensation that usually annoyed me. It was oddly comforting this time around.

“Squire Joy, separated in orbital drop.” I introduced myself first.

”Sergeant Velos.” The one who originally called out approached carefully and called back to the squad. “Anyone know her?”

“Windrunner’s new Squire, I think.” An unfamiliar voice called out from one of the mercs. My Warden’s callsign coming out seemed to put Velos at ease. “Saw her practicing once in a Titan duel.”

Sergeant Velos modded to me. “Tag?” 

I pulled off a chain from around my neck and held up the small silver coin dangling from it. It was stamped one one side with the titan dropping logo of Stormfall, and the other had my information. “Here.”

Sergeant Velos scanned the tag with the scrutiny of a man who’d been tricked in the fog of war one too many times. “Looks authentic.”

I eyed the group and pulled the chain over my head once more. ”Who’s in charge?”

”That’d be you, ma’am.” Velos’s eye twitched behind his visor. Still, his tone shifted to the politeness reserved for a superior.

“That’s just…” I shook my head, picked up my rifle once more, checked the mag out of habit. “Sitrep?”

”Drop went sideways.” The sergeant waved a hand toward his squad. “Those of us on the ground were fine, but an EM burst hit at the worst possible time.”

“I noticed.” I looked out toward the stormy sky. It was growing worse. The rain had picked up and was hitting hard and fast. “How bad?”

“Only the initial shock and five Titans made drop. The rest of the Brigade’s stuck in orbit till the EM storm fades.” 

That put what—almost a third of the brigade with boots on the ground? Less, actually. No way all 3,000 Shocktroopers survived with the drop going so badly. Not that Stormfall’s soldiers were incapable, but that assumption was from a purely pragmatic point of view. “Comms?”

“Fleff!” Velos called one of the men over. “Orbital are down. Captain Thorn has temporarily taken charge. The other two Captains are MIA.”

Flef was large and stocky like the others, though he had much more equipment strapped to him. Standard Stormfall radioman from the looks of things. He handed me a puck shaped comm unit. “Short range still works.”

I grabbed the radio and hooked it onto my belt. From there, it took a bit of twisting and turning to get it hooked up into my helmet in place of the original, fried comm unit. “How are the Titans?”

“Broadsword sustained heavy damage and is back at base camp. Artist, Priest, Siren, and Windrunner are MIA.” Sergeant Velos nodded his head toward north-ish. “Ginsen Square is back that way.”

Five the other twenty five were just sitting around in orbit, eh? That put us in a terrible situation. “Orders?”

“IFF transponders are down across the city, slowing our advance to crawl. We’re to scout possible locations of the interference and take care of it.” The sergeant jerked his thumb toward the same direction my Warden went.  

Captain Thorn must suspect jammers rather than ambient remnants of the EM storm. What was the protocol here? I dredged up the boring books Cyra made me memorize. Linking up with her would be the better call at the moment. “I’ll accompany you. Windrunner went that way.” 

“Roger.” Sergeant Velos turned to give orders, though froze and looked back at me. His eyes flashed with an unasked question. 

”Keep charge of the squad.” I was always better at following orders. Besides, I didn’t want to create any more strife. 

He nodded and called out to the squad. “Moving!”

I fell in line behind their tight knit formation. They gave me space. Not hostile, but not necessarily welcoming either. No one liked it when someone with a higher rank popped out of the sky. Especially an unknown like me. It hadn’t been long since I joined the Stormfall Company.

We headed through the wrecked city streets. Even without signs of combat, this place was in shambles. Storms and other natural disasters hadn’t been kind. It’d been a long time since this planet had been abandoned, and its age was definitely noticeable.

We hustled through the streets keeping low and in cover. Thankfully, we were entirely uninterrupted all the way up until the scrap-mech Cyra took down. It stood in a heap leaned up against a building. The squad’s lights flashed across the rusty body of the mech.

”Pilot’s definitely dead.” The entire cabin of the thing had been brutalized by Cyra. “I saw Windrunner tear through here from my drop spot.”

”Fleff, mark its location.” The sergeant called out to one of the squad members. Command would want to know this was here. At the very least, there might be some parts they could salvage and use to jury rig repairs for Broadsword. Speaking of…

“Hold for a moment.” I dropped my rifle into its sling and grabbed onto a gap in the scrap-mechs armor. The sharp metal pressed into my glove uncomfortably as I hauled myself up onto its leg. From there, I jumped up and latched onto a set of rungs sloppily welded onto the mech’s side.

The metal rung groaned underneath me, but my attention was immediately stolen away by something else. The light on my helmet flashed across the brutalized cockpit, illuminating patches of blood that’d seeped out through the gaps of the cockpit.

That wasn’t what caught my eye, though. No, that honor belonged to scratches around the cockpit’s breached armor. They weren’t very deep, but white marks crisscrossed all around the breach like some wild animal had dug into it. They were fresh too, based on the scratched away soot and char from VGL’s main rail cannon.

I stepped onto a dented rocket pod that never had a chance to fire and moved in front of the cockpit. It was difficult to make out what was what after it’d been ripped apart by Cyra, but there was a discernible lack of a body. Or, at least, most of one. There were a few tattered bits of flesh and an arm left behind, but the main bulk of it was gone.

I’d seen breached cockpits before, of course. They were never pretty. Unless the entire thing got pulverized, though, there should still be signs of a body. I leaned back over the street and dangled from the side of the Titan. Water trailed down my armor and dripped down to the street below. My flashlight barely pierced the veil of heavy rain. 

“Something wrong, ma’am?” Sergeant Velos called out from below me. The squad around us had spread out and scattered around cover in firing positions. 

“Pilot’s missing. Looks like some kind of wild animal.” I leaned back in and ran a finger against one of the claw marks. The metal wasn’t just scratched like I initially thought. It was gouged. Whatever came through here could rip metal.

”Should I call it in too, sarge?” Fleff, the apparent radioman of the group, asked.  

“I bet command already knows, but go ahead—“

I tuned out their conversation and instead half crawled into the ruined cockpit. The jagged metal screeched loudly against my armor and sent a chill down my spine. Still, I didn’t let the skin-crawling noise stop me. 

It took a minute to figure out what I was looking at. Quite frankly, the scrap-mech probably wasn’t in the best condition even before Cyra got to it. The layout of the cockpit didn’t match any pattern that I knew, and as the Squire to a Warden, I was well versed in piloting Titans.

First thing I checked was the power systems. The batteries were entirely destroyed. What wasn’t directly hit by Cyra’s attack was overloaded by the electricity from the giant shock knife VGL carried. Nothing salvageable. That was fine though. I was more so interested in any data the thing would have. 

I found the black box of the Titan under the ruined seat of the cockpit. It was half burnt, but the hard case was built to take a beating and live to tell the tale after. I pulled a knife and cut away some padding to fully extract the thing, then I tossed it out of the mech and jumped off.

Just as I hit the ground, I pulled into a tight roll to bleed off the momentum of the two story drop. I sprung up right after and grabbed my rifle on instinct. The slick metal of the weapon was as comforting as usual.

“Find what you were looking for?” Velos split off from the rest of the squad, picked up the black box, and offered it to me. 

“Hopefully. Fleff, is it?” I called out to the radio shock trooper. “You ever hacked a Titan black box?”

The man approached and looked over my newest acquisition. “I can’t say I have, ma’am.” 

“Unfortunate.” I definitely hadn’t. If I could find my Warden, VGL had onboard programs to crack one. For now, though, it was useless weight that’d just slow me down. I cracked open the case with my knife and extracted the hard drives. I stashed the rest of the black box in a nearby alley just in case.

“You ready to keep moving?” Velos asked.

”Almost.” I almost deployed Black Dog, though barely managed to hold myself back a step. “Um—I’m creating a construct. Don’t shoot it.”

”Roger.” Velos’s expression twisted slightly. He hesitantly nodded his head and backed away, giving me a familiar look that I’d long grown used to. It was equal parts mistrust and wariness.

I shoved that to the back of my mind and mentally reached into that dark void. The black, molten white stone flashed in response. The white fire, slightly weaker than it was earlier, swayed and melted off the stone. It regrouped around the circuit marked one instead, and the black stone disappeared. 

Black Dog melted into reality just next to me. Literally. Flames that gave off no light bloomed and he stepped out of them like some monster from the depths of the abyss. The shaggy wolfhound’s fur glistened with white fire for a moment, and steam hissed from where the rain impacted him. The white fire abruptly cut out and shaggy body stopped hissing.

“Don’t shoot.” I stepped in front of the wolfhound, though it was ultimately a useless gesture since he was so much larger than me. Even with my warnings, the squad shifted around me. Nobody raised their guns, but the tension was thick enough it could be cut with a very dull knife.

“It’s friendly,” Sergeant Velos called out in support of me. He looked just as uneasy as the rest of them, though he led with action instead of just words. He dropped his rifle fully and raised a fist. 

“Quite the welcoming party, Joy.” The deep rumble of Black Dog’s voice washed through me. None of the others reacted, so he must’ve just been talking to me through our link.

”Only the best for you.” I patted his head roughly and nodded toward the mech. “Can you get a scent?”

”To track it?” He glanced around the area. The Stormfall PMCs shifted uncomfortably when his burning gaze landed on them.

”No. We’re in a time crunch.” I wanted him to memorize it so he’d be able to tell if a similar creature was around us later. If it could rip into metal, ripping into a human wouldn’t be a problem. And since it took the pilot’s corpse, it was definitely a carnivore of some kind. “Just in case we run into it again.” 

Scenting was only half the reason I deployed him once more, anyway. Quite frankly, I wanted as many eyes open as possible. Black Dog’s senses were all around better too, so he could help watch for signs of movement or an ambush.

He nodded his head and left my side to walk around the area. His long, tendril-like tail swayed and moved along the ground. Sparks of white fire occasionally trailed off and hissed against the pavement.

Once he finished, he moved up beside me and bumped me with his head. I nodded to Velos and pushed back out onto the street. “Let’s keep moving.”