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| - The special task SPARTAN-III team that still clung to its old name of "Jian" had a bad reputation, even amongst other SPARTAN-IIIs. Felix had heard from plenty of his S-III subordinates that it had been no accident that the SPARTAN-III program's only traitor had come from that unit and that its two remaining operatives were a pair of unreliable, unsociable loose cannons. And with Rosch back in the field, he got the feeling he was about to learn why they'd earned the nickname "ONI's attack dogs". "Lieutenant Commander, meet Team Jian," Rosch noted as the Pelican lifted off from the FOB. "From this point on, you'll be assuming temporary command of them as we continue our operations together." Felix had made a point of removing his helmet within the enclosed troop bay after being told he was meeting Spartans, but neither of the Jian operators had found any reason to afford him the same courtesy. "Hey Commander," the shorter of the two said, his voice dripping with informality. "Who's the new guy? Why the hell didn't anyone tell us one of the cyborgs was joining this party?" Rosch, seated next to Felix, responded to the question with a raised eyebrow. The taller operator cocked his helmeted head, and the short one fell silent. "SPARTAN-G299," Rosch commented to Felix. "It's best to overlook the insubordination in his case, but only because he's one of the best close-quarters operators I've ever seen." The short one--G299--raised his head. "OK," he muttered darkly. "So maybe it was in the status update and I just didn't get around to reading it. I still don't think we need him for this crap." "Sorry about Ralph," the taller of the two said, but there was a twinge of coldness in his voice. "He doesn't play well with other people." "I noticed," Felix commented drily. He was privately thankful for Rosch's advice, because Ralph's rudeness had taken him aback. Every other Spartan he'd ever met, no matter what program they belonged to, had always treated him with respect and camaraderie, an acknowledgement of the unspoken bonds all Spartans where supposed to share. They were one big family, as some of Felix's fellow Spartans had put it, but clearly Jian--or at least Ralph--saw itself as outside that family. The tall one didn't continue the conversation, which had the unexpected consequence of making Felix feel uncomfortable. The two S-IIIs were most likely conducting a private conversation of their own over their helmet link, and with Ralph's alien hostility now on the table Felix was beginning to understand how non-Spartans thought of the armored supersoldiers. "Rough around the edges, to be sure," Rosch remarked. "But they're the most dependable commandos I've ever worked with. There's a reason I made sure they were assigned to my command the moment I was given field duties again." Felix had the feeling that the other, unspoken reason was that no other commander could handle the hostile, introverted team, but he didn't voice it. "When we reach the hospital, the ODSTs and militia will form a perimeter around the building," Rosch explained after an awkward silence. "Nothing will get out of there without being targeted by everything we can bring to bear. In the meantime, you three will insert via the roof and sweep the place from top to bottom. With the aerial assets we have here, you should have a complete view of what goes on in there at all times." "We got a floor plan?" the tall S-III asked. "So we aren't blind if something takes out our comms?" "It's already been uploaded to your helmets' onboard computers," Rosch replied smoothly. "The Lieutenant Commander will be assuming command of you both from this moment on, so I expect your full cooperation with him." "Understood," the tall one said crisply. Ralph just grunted. "We're coming up on the hospital now!" the pilot reported over the intercom. "Perimeter's been established, Commander, they're just waiting for your orders." "Excellent," Rosch said into his headset. "Once Jian's been deployed, I'll assume direct command of the operation." Felix casually affixed a silencer to his assault rifle, realizing that he was now, if only temporarily, a member of the ostracized Team Jian. He hoped it wasn't an omen of things to come.
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* David Kahn had not come to be known as the most lethal mercenary in the galaxy on mere hyperbole. He had shot, stabbed, and crushed his way through more battles than most UNSC battalions had witnessed over the course of the entire Great War. Warlords, crime bosses, and politicians had fallen to his assassin's bullets, men and women who had been deemed untouchable by their friends and enemies alike. He'd taken so many wounds and pumped so many augmenting drugs into his body that he sometimes wondered if he even counted as a human any more. And he was at his limit. When he'd completed his contract for the Syndicate and used his pursuers to start a gang war throughout New Madrigal, he'd planned on skipping town within hours. But the UNSC's unexpected lockdown had caught him completely off guard, as had their rushed evacuation of the civilian population and deployment of an assault force. For once in his long and bloody career, he had made the mistake he most often ridiculed his many would-be rivals for making. He had miscalculated. He had underestimated the lengths at which the UNSC, or rather ONI, was willing to go in order to tie up a loose end like him. The irony was that he had spend the better part of his life striving to make himself a living legend, someone that could not be ignored or forgotten like any other pitiful merc within the underworld, and now that infamy he had craved was going to be the death of him. He was slumped in a small treatment ward on one of the hospital's lower floors, taking stock of his hopeless situation and treating the panoply of injuries he'd managed to collect since the fighting in New Madrigal had begun. Cuts, pulled muscles, and shrapnel wounds riddled his arms and legs, making it a painful chore to even walk, let alone outrun fresh squads of ODSTs at every turn. His expensive, specialized firearms had long since run out of ammo, forcing him to scavenge the third-rate gear carried by the city's militia and gangsters whenever he stumbled upon their corpses. With a grunt of pain as his overtaxed muscles cried out in protest, he yanked a bandage around one of the joints on his battered armor's elbow piece and allowed himself a moment to slump against the operating table. He hadn't given in to despair--he would never do that, because he aimed to keep fighting even if the building were in flames and the UNSC's entire division of Spartans coming down on him--but right now he simply couldn't see a way out of this situation. A faked surrender? This task force was out for his blood; to give up would simply make their task of killing him that much easier. A break for the countryside? He'd have to somehow hijack a Pelican or Hornet to have a chance at that, and even then he'd be intercepted and shot down before he'd made it two miles. Just hide out and wait for them to give up? As if he hadn't been trying to do that already. There were no contingencies or back-up plans he could fall back on now. The only thing he could do was live in the moment and trust in his finely honed skills and his body's ability to keep moving long after it should have shaken itself apart. He was not alone in this hospital. He knew that because he'd taken cover from a handful of patrols that kept passing through the halls--patrols that were not UNSC. As of now, he was in the middle of debating whether or not to reveal himself and seek their help, a prospect that might net him some food and shelter but would leave him exposed to all manner of betrayals once his benefactors realized he was the one the UNSC was so desperate to kill. For now, all he could do was hole up and wait until the UNSC sent in kill teams or lost patience and decided to simply blow the entire hospital into the next star system. Grabbing the assault rifle he'd palmed off a dead ODST, he limped towards the hallway. If he was going to keep this up, he'd need to scrounge up a new batch of painkillers. Hopefully the gangs hadn't completely looted the place after this ground war had gotten going.
*
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* "They've surrounded the building," Cassandra reported to the assembled clinic staff. "Nimue says nearly every asset they have is converging here right now." "Wonderful." Over the past few days, Doctor Stern had passed through such a storm of unending disasters that he'd reach some calm bay on the other side where nothing seemed able to perturb him much any longer. "Because I was having such a good day already." "What's the big deal?" demanded one of the paramedics. "It's not like we've done anything illegal. We're just doctors." "Oh, believe me, they'll come up with something," Stern remarked calmly. "Failing to comply with evacuation orders. Unauthorized possession of military medical supplies. And that doesn't even begin to factor in our patients." He indicated the patients in question--three men and two women--who were arrayed in stretchers throughout the emergency room. "Gangsters and insurgents, all of them if we're not mistaken, and I don't think the Hippocratic Oath will fly with whoever's in charge of this little occupation." "Then we ditch 'em," Howard Raines snapped from where he and two others were keeping the door covered with assault rifles. Raines and his team were all that was left of the security detail that had guarded the clinic back before it had been riddled with bullets and leveled by a UNSC airstrike. Apart from Raines and the two with him, there were two more guards out patrolling the hallways around the emergency room. "Either that or we cuff 'em and hand them over to the soldiers when they kick our door down." "None of us will be abandoning our patients," Stern said firmly. "We never did it back on Cordial Harmony and we won't do it here. As for surrendering them, well, at this point I'm not sure how much grace that will buy us." "And I guess we'll have some trouble explaining her black market goodies as well," Raines grunted, gesturing at Cassandra's battered, stripped down SPI armor. She couldn't have left it back in the ruins of the clinic, not after everything she'd gone to in order to get it back. No matter how much it might implicate her if the UNSC caught her, it was still her only tie back to her old life as a SPARTAN-III. With a sigh, Raines lifted his radio to check in with the patrol. They'd all known the stakes when they'd decided to stay in the city, Raines and his team included. Cassandra had spent enough time in the galaxy's seedy underbelly to know better than to write off all mercenaries as thugs and bandits. After all, her best friend and the boy she was fairly sure she loved were counted amongst those "thugs and bandits." Cassandra's ear-mike crackled and Nimue's calm, quiet voice trickled in over the speaker. "They've landed," she reported. "On the roof. Just three of them, but one's heavy. Very heavy." "Got it," she replied. "Thanks, Nimue." The girl just clicked her mike once in response. "The UNSC's strike team just touched down on the roof," she told the clinic staff. "Nimue says there's just three of them, but one's heavy." She took a breath. "I think it might be a Spartan." A chorus of panicked obscenities filled the room as Raines snarled into his radio: "Michael, Kendall, pull back here, now!" "Alright," Stern murmured. "Stay calm. We hunker down here, and don't give them a reason to fire on us. If there's only three of them, they might just let us go." There was a solid knocking on the emergency room's door. Immediately, Raines and the other mercenaries had their weapons trained on the door frame. "Michael?" Raines called out. "That you?" There was no answer. "Fuck this," Raines spat. "Everyone, get ready for contact." "No!" Stern yelled. "Don't you dare shoot at them!" Cassandra had already slipped her helmet on and brought her submachine gun to bear. Several of the clinic staff, doctors or no, pulled out sidearms and braced themselves to defend the room. And then the door was sent flying inwards, knocking Raines and one of his men to the floor. The third didn't even have time to fire before a black blur cannoned into him and launched him into a nearby table. Cassandra aimed, but didn't fire, as a large man in battered ODST armor slumped against the shattered door frame, blood leaking from multiple wounds. "Hold your fire," he panted, his voice strained and hoarse. "I need treatment. Now."
*
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* It was a risk, but Kahn had decided to take it. As long as he let on that he was more wounded then he actually was, the medical team the two mercs he'd jumped a few halls down had promised were in here would have the skills and equipment needed to keep him going for a few hours more. And more importantly, the UNSC's troops might be hampered by his proximity to civilians. So he let himself slump to the floor, casually dropping his rifle fall from hands that were calculatedly limp. It was time for a new game plan.
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