Bill had made good time after leaving Darius to work on his own project, already knowing his destination. The camp was small, but full of mercenaries going about their business. Though subtle, one could see the thin line drawn between the halves of the camp belonging to the Amagai's Badgers, and the Layton's Crimsons. The hostility between the groups was something of a legend among the other mercenary groups in Guild territory.
"Bunch'a goddamn cowards, if you ask me." Bill had once slurred on a drunken tirade. "They'll show up if ya promise'em glory, but soon as things start t' heat up they're gone, an' with all yer hard-earned money too." It was no secret that Bill had trained his Badgers well, but he drilled in no lesson harder than "Never trust a Crimson."
If the rivalries between the different clans in the Guild were to be described as "fierce", the rivalries between their respective mercenaries were to be called "vicious". Each company had worked hard for its long-standing contracts with their clan clients, and they devoted massive amounts of resources to keeping those good relations. The best way most of the companies could gain favor was to go out of their ways to attack and destroy the companies of other clans. Despite the now two-generation alliance between the Amagai and the Layton clans, the Hellions and Badgers had yet to regain each other's trust after a brutal war nearly two hundred years before. Bill remembered many a story his grandfather would tell about his own grandfather, a soldier in the war. He told Bill about bloody, disease-filled trench warfare, of orbital bombardments leveling entire cities, and the humiliating defeat the Badgers had suffered at the hands of the Crimsons, the precursors to Layton's Hellion mercenaries. Ever since that day, Bill had made it up in his mind that he was going to despise all Crimsons with as much hatred he could muster. Save for a few faltering moments he had kept it up to his own satisfaction.
The leader of the Badgers walked up to a long line of mercenaries lined up along a cliff-face, looking down at the city of Garrison. Bill cleared his throat to gather their attention, and they all made a quick about-face on their heels, saluting him. He smiled at his own men, dressed in replica Viper armor. It was frustrating to see them wear the colors of the enemy, but he trusted Darius. He'd known the Amagai youth for only a short time, but something told Bill that the boy had a great destiny, and that if he knew what was good for him he'd follow that youth as far as he could. This time, the boy had told him he'd need his men disguised, and he'd disguised them as well as any man could. He positioned himself where he needed to be, standing in front of a large metal hulk. He brought his fist straight out to his side, and smacked it against the frame of the large vehicle. He began to bellow in a louder, more booming voice than he usually used, and took care to properly pronounce his words through his thick accent. He failed.
"This, Badgers, is a Marshall-Keane design Aerial Transport an' Assault Craft, or an MK AHAC for those of you who can't talk th' big words! Today this craft is gonna be yerr mama, it's gonna be yerr best friend, it's gonna be yer guardian angel, and it is gonna be the biggest goddamn knife you have ever held as it rains down molten lead on those Smitt sonsa*****es like so many cuts to their stomachs, you hear me Badgers?!"
The Badgers stamped their feet and made a gutteral "aroomph" noise, in response to their commander's attempts at motivation. Himself motivated by their enthusiasm, Bill continued.
"Badgers, if you have ever doubted your position in life I think I'd like ya to reconsider yer position! We are standin' on the precipice of glory, of war, an' one helluva bloodbath, boys! We got ourselves a whole mess'a white plastic-wearin' pansies down there waiting for th' gallows! They think they are so great that they could take on the Badgers an' come out on top! Will you let that stand, soldiers?!"
"Hell no, sir!" The Badgers shouted back, raising their rifles into the air.
"And all around us, Badgers, we've got ourselves a regular bunch'a prissy Hellion boys thinkin' that just 'cause their Crimson grand-daddies won themselves a fight that they have got th' stuff to fight alongside the Badgers! Will you show them just how goddamn pathetic they really are, Badgers?!"
"Hell yes, sir!" They shouted back.
"Then get yer sorry asses on this bee-yootiful piece'a machinery here, an' let's go nab us a councilor, boys! This's gonna be one to write yer folks about!"
Bill turned and jumped into the side of the AHAC, while his men, twenty mercenaries in all, divided themselves between Bill's own transport and its identical twin sitting a few meters away. It took them less than thirty seconds to pile in and report to their Captain to let them know they were all in. In near-perfect unison, the AHAC pilots brought their flying beasts to life, the rotors spinning at speeds too fast to see as they lifted their own massive bodies into the air before drifting up over the peaks. To their left, a second pair of AHACs were making their way along a different route. "There go them prissy wannabe Crimson boys now, Badgers!" Bill shouted into the mic. "They got their sorry asses a head start, an' we're still gonna beat'em to their own dang target, am I right!"
The loud whirring of the AHAC's motors was drowned out by the cheering coming from inside its metal frame, as the mercenaries descended from the high peaks of the mountain. Below them stretched out the expansive estate of Councilor Orville Smitt, his pristine white mansion—more of a fortress, really—embedded in the side of the mountain. On the very top of the complex was an extremely large landing pad, several hundred square meters in total of various spaces for whatever shuttles needed to land. At the moment Bill could only make out two—an offworld shuttle from a diplomat, likely the McCaines, and the Councilor's personal aircar. He wondered to himself if the diplomat would be a problem; sparking a war with the McCaines was something even he wanted to avoid. Skill only brought his Badgers so far when going against mercenaries as psychotic as the Cloud. He considered alerting his men not to harm the diplomat, but decided against it. As far as he cared, it was time they got some payback for the death of Councilor Albus.
As soon as the AHAC gunships were in range, the pilots activated their chainguns. Massive multi-barreled appendages welded to the bellies of the ships slowly began to turn, speeding up until they were a blur, when the bullets finally erupted in a torrent of yellow streaks. The high-velocity rounds impacted the roof with prejudice, tearing through concrete and steel as they struggled to find their marks on the vehicles. After a moment of steadying the ships and closing the distance, the chainguns got close enough to make direct hits on the vehicles, molten lead converting the transports into bubbling scrap in a matter of seconds. Not a minute later and the AHACs were hovering just above the surface of the roof. Bill wasted no time in acting and grabbed his nearest Badger, tossing him out of the safety of the gunship before shouting everyone else off in seconds. He jumped out himself, only to find his men racing for cover as movement stirred on the other side of the roof. Half a dozen men in a metallic white armor were lined up behind barricades, their rifles aimed for him.
"Drop your weapon!" one shouted. "You Vipers are gonna get hell for breaking our truce like this!"
"Well, at least the disguises fool 'em" Bill muttered to himself. He gave no verbal response to the guard himself, instead pointing at them to the pilot in the nearest AHAC. He understood, and a volley of chaingun fire ripped the guards to shreds. Bill stood everyone back up and forced them over to the nearest door. "Get in line you sonsa*****es, single file! We're goin' into hostile territory here, get yer heads in it, and remember, we are Vipers th' moment we set foot in that door!"
He took the lead, and came up to a door leading to a downward staircase. He brought his leg up and smashed his leg into entrance, the wooden frame smashing into splinters as it tumbled down the steps. He crouched and moved down the stairs, his mercenaries tailing him closely, as they went down several floors. The man behind him grabbed his shoulder as he passed a door and whispered "This is the floor, Councilor Smitt's office is here."
Bill nodded, mostly to himself in anticipation of the ensuing violence. He leaned up against the door and reached into a bag strapped to his leg. He pulled out a small length of what appeared to be wire, and attached one end to a visor he then placed on his face. The other end he fed under the bottom of the door, a tiny camera on the end capturing every detail of the other side. There was a small barricade set up, ten guards had taken up positions in various parts of a medium-sized atrium. Two at close range, four behind raised walls near the center, and the remaining four on a balcony at the far end.
He turned and relayed this information to his own troops, and quickly spat out orders for them to follow. They lined up behind the door, each reciting their own personal task to themselves in a mix of fear and excitement. Bill counted down, three… two… one…
The door burst open, a puff of smoke from a grenade immediately obscuring the vision of the guards within the atrium. Bill's men rushed in, their thermal goggles giving them a clear view of the two closest men. They fell in a hail of bullets, their blood slicking the clean tile floor. A spray of bullets came from the remaining eight guards, their random shots finding their mark in the neck of a young man standing next to Bill. The Captain's eyes shot open as he cursed every word he could think of as the young man's corpse collapsed on him. He fell to the floor on instinct, and dragged the young body with him behind a bench for cover. Another Badger, disguised as a Viper, came rushing in with a grenade launcher. He stood in the open and fired his weapon with precise aim, its payload detonating on the balcony. An unlucky guard's white form was replaced by a red and black outline on the wall behind where he once was, and the other three were sent scrambling as the floor collapsed beneath them, one escaping to the room beyond the atrium while the others fell. Their bodies crumpled up at the end of the long fall and remained still.
The grenadier immediately paid for his rookie mistake as the four standing guards returned fire, a hail of armor-piercing bullets punching through his entire body. A terrified scream escaped the boy's lips before he was catapulted backwards through the doorway he entered from. Bill cursed again, wondering how his own elite could make such obvious mistakes. He took action for himself this time, propping himself up over the wall and picking out one of the men behind a large palm tree. He squeezed the trigger, and a three-round burst snaked through the guard's skull. A guttural sound welled up in his throat, and his body fell in a single, fluid motion. The remaining three men saw their comrade fall and began to move backwards, still firing randomly as they sprinted for the door. The Badgers began to whoop and holler as they gave chase to the white-armored guards, a hail of bullets cutting them down long before they reached safety.
A cheer erupted from Bill's men as they celebrated their victory, but their Captain descended on them quickly. "Hey, hey, cut the chatter, Vipers! You may've just beat their asses, but one of 'em got away! He's gonna warn th' others, an' now we've really got our work cut out for us. Already lost Tracy an' Max, I'd better not see any'a you pull stupid mistakes like they did, all right? It's gonna cost you your life, like it cost theirs."
A commotion of agreement and ashamed apologies came from Bill's men, but they regrouped quickly and formed up into two groups of five. Bill led one of the teams alongside him as he moved up to a door into the next room. He peered in to see that it was a featureless white hall, with a similarly-colored carpet. Above him was a small walkway, presumably the route that guard had taken back to his comrades. Bill wondered if the Councilor knew about their attack yet, and unconsciously began to move a little faster, as he ordered the other team down the hall.
Five Badgers crouched low and moved down into the hallway, the eccentric art on the walls catching their eyes. They came to the first door on the right and abruptly stopped; a hush fell over them as they listened. On the other side Bill made out something like a faint whimpering. The team by the door lined up in a breaching position, and waited for the one at the back of their line, a behemoth by the name of Arthur. Arthur strode to the doorway and crashed the frame in with his first kick. Bill watched as the team rushed into the room, shouting obscenities and orders not to move; he thought he heard a voice attempting to protest, but a moment later an ear-piercing volley of gunfire cracked into life. Bill left his cover and rushed into the room to see the source of the commotion. The room was sort of dining area, about 40 square feet and longer than it was wide, and in the usual style of Smitt decorating. His five troops were gathered in a semicircle around a pulpy mass that was once a man. Bill approached the corpse and kneeled beside it to check its ID. He only needed to look for a moment, before he found a triple-chevron pattern, colored red blue and yellow, all bright and adorned with trim on the sides.
A feeling of dread spread through Bill's body as he came to recognize the symbol as the McCaine's clan. He instantly regretted neglecting to warn his men as he realized what was about to happen. His legs shook a bit as he stood up and turned to his men. "What th' hell've you done, boys? Get out! Get the hell outta here before"—
Though he never explained just what they were running from, his men found out for themselves when the wall beside them exploded with the force of a small bomb. A chunk of rock struck Bill's helmet, disorienting him; he thought he heard another explosion outside, and the distraction lasted long enough for a large leg to spring from the debris and force itself into his stomach, launching the mercenary across the room into a wall. He hit the wall with a loud thud and slid down, looking up to see the smallest of the team, a young recruit named Ashley staring at a blade that had just pierced her heart and come out the other side. Another kick detached her from the sword, and the mysterious attacker stepped out of the smoke onto her fresh corpse. He was a stout man, about five and a half feet tall, covered in a distinctive armor. The matte black underarmor was covered by multiple bright orange plates, though the most distinctive parts were his helmet and insignia. The orange helmet covered his entire head, with no part of his face visible. A small plate jutted out in front of where his eyes would be, to keep room for the hardware that ran his heads-up-display inside. The insignia was also bright orange, and proudly displayed on his chest, shoulders, and back. It was a puffy cloud, starting from a pointed tail and drifting off into a more rounded shape on the other end, full of various spirals to give it more form. This was the insignia of the universally-dreaded Cloud mercenaries.
While most mercenary companies working for the clans were actual companies, the Cloud was more of a home-grown force. The McCaine took their strongest, most clever, and most insane citizens and captives hostage, brainwashing them and driving them to a frothing insanity. All they knew was their duty to the clan, protecting their charges and eliminating their targets with ferocity and precision that no other clan could match in one-on-one scenarios. Therefore, a single mercenary was usually deemed sufficient to guard a person of moderate or lower importance within the clan hierarchy. However, the necessity for Cloud mercenaries to be completely insane had its drawbacks. When a target a Cloud was ordered to defend was killed, or any other form of mission was failed, it had a tendency to go berserk and destroy any and all living beings it could find before committing a very showy suicide by way of a thirty-pound bomb strapped to their backs. It was in the best interests of anyone nearby to prevent this from happening.
Though he had taken a moment to enjoy the slaughter of the young recruit, the Cloud wasted little time in continuing his rampage. The blade he held in his hand was a marvel of technology, a sword taken from the planet of New Bethlehem. The craftsmen there were legends for their ability to produce wares with attention to the most minute of details. In the case of a weapon such as a sword, this included making sure that it was capable of slicing open even the strongest of armor, while still being light enough to wield efficiently. The blade proved its worth again when an upward stroke vertically bisected another Badger, his scream cut short by the stroke through his vocal chords. The last sound he made was a pathetic hacking sound as his two sides hit the floor.
By now Bill had recovered, and quickly drew a pistol from his side, which he fired repeatedly at the Cloud. The mad killer took a blow to the shoulder, his armor reflecting the shot entirely; only a dent in the armor hinted that a bullet had made contact. "Damn." the old merc thought. "Must be solid amagium." After the first round the Cloud ducked, letting the bullets fly over his head as he drew a pistol of his own. A single shot hit Bill's hand, which flinched from the blow and forced him to drop his weapon. Bill immediately identified the Cloud's helmet as the source of his inhuman accuracy, guiding the mercenaries movements to perfectly strike his enemies. The veteran clutched his bleeding appendage and ducked behind a chair at his end of the table while Arthur approached the Cloud from the side, his own rifle firing wildly.
The Cloud rolled backwards, dozens of bullets impacting harmlessly on the floor. He thrust forward with his sword and brought it through Arthur's stomach. The big man gasped and choked a bit, but his agony was ended when the Cloud put a bullet into his brain. He quickly removed the sword, and Arthur fell back against the wall, his face in shock. The last two Badgers in the room poured bullets at the Cloud from one side, their bullets impacting on his nearly-impervious armor. The McCaine's wild mercenary ducked and leaped into the air, flipping over the two and landing behind them, his weapons sheathed. His hands shot out and found purchase on one Badger's head as it was jerked to the side. His neck snapped loudly, and he was tossed away as if he were a ragdoll. The last of the team aimed her shotgun at the Cloud and fired a spread shot. Multiple pellets impacted harmlessly against his armor, but three or four made their mark on the weaker underarmor. The black areas of his suit were splotched in his own red blood, as the Cloud stumbled back from the impact of the pellets. The woman pulled the trigger and fired again, but by now the Cloud had already weaved to the side and drawn his sword. He lunged forward and pushed the blade up through her abdomen and released it, leaving it hanging there as his hands grabbed her shotgun and spun the barrel to face her. A loud bang erupted through the room, and a mix of gray and red splattered the ceiling.
The Cloud looked around for more enemies to slay, and was met by a loud roar from the other end of the room. Bill shoved his body into the end of the long glass table that served as the main seating area for everyone in the room, and it rammed into the mercenary, pinning him up against the wall. Bill jumped up on top of the table, which held his weight by some miracle, and ran down its length firing bullets at him. The Cloud's head moved from side to side in inhuman fashion, the bullets either harmlessly impacting this helmet or the walls around him, but his sensitive underarmor was never touched. As Bill got closer, he found that his gun was empty, and instead pulled out a combat knife and threw it at the Cloud. This was a poor choice in judgment, as the Cloud immediately lifted his sword and deflected the knife, and then threw his own weapon at the Badger. Bill had no choice but to duck, which brought his own head within reach of the Cloud. The mercenary wasted no time in grabbing the first place he could reach, Bill's ear, and dragging him close enough to deliver a solid punch to his nose, cracking it open and sending a stream of blood pouring out. Bill attempted to defend himself in this odd position and threw a left hook, but the Cloud caught it and twisted the arm away, forcing Bill to roll off the table. The Cloud threw the veteran mercenary into the wall and pushed table away. He darted for his sword, but Bill charged after him and tackled him as soon as he grabbed the weapon. The two were on the ground, each attempting to get to the top position. After a quick scuffle the Cloud was the first to reach this position, and brought his blade down in stabbing motion at Bill.
The older mercenary's eyes opened wide, as he deflected the blow with his combat knife. As they rolled past it he had managed to grab it, and was now grateful for it. The Cloud's blade retreated, and struck again closer to his stomach. This time Bill was too slow, and the blade punched into his abdomen. His face twisted into a horrible expression as he attempted to push through the pain, and swing his knife up at the Cloud's hands. His foe quickly moved his hands away from the blade, which presented Bill with an opportunity. He immediately dropped his knife and grabbed the sword instead, and lifted it out of his body in a fluid motion. He swung it at the Cloud, and with a lucky strike sliced his left arm open. The Cloud jumped to his feet and backed away; Bill responded by using his other arm to grab his combat knife and toss it at the bodyguard. It landed in his thigh, blood flowing out from the underarmor. The Cloud staggered a bit before removing the dagger, wielding it against Bill. The old mercenary had gotten up once more, now holding a hand over his wound while wielding his sword with another. He made the first move and lunged forward, but the Cloud slipped under the blow and moved forward, slicing the knife across Bill's cheek, nearly cutting it entirely open. A sudden adrenaline rush encouraged the Badger, and his free hand hit the Cloud with an uppercut that knocked him to the floor, a large dent in the hardware bulge of his helmet. Bill regretted his lucky shot almost immediately, as his hand was nearly crushed against the incredibly strong amagium.
He wanted to check if it was broken, but lacking in time moved forward and swung down with his sword at the mercenary. But the Cloud moved too quickly, and a spinning kick caught Bill's leg and pinned him to the ground. The Cloud landed, planting one part of himself on top of Bill's leg while leaning on his sword arm, leaving him defenseless.
The Cloud lifted his knife, and brought it down. Bill waited for the impact, but watched in awe as the knife went slightly to the right of his face and slipped into the floor beside him. He looked back up at the Cloud and saw the dent in his helmet. "The damage must be screwing up his vision." the old veteran realized. With his free hand he grabbed the Cloud mercenary's pistol out of its holster and shoved it up into his neck, firing a pair of shots. A soft gurgle came from underneath his helmet before he collapsed. With a pained wheeze Bill shoved the corpse off of him and slowly climbed back to his feet. He found that his leg had been injured by the takedown, in combination all the blood he was losing from his stomach wound. He would need to finish the mission and link up with the Hellions quickly. He looked around the room and counted five Badgers. He felt a bit worried as he stepped out into the hallway, suddenly recalling the second explosion. He looked at the way he had come from, to find the blast radius of a grenade had gone off. The scorched bodies of his Badgers lied in grotesquely impossible positions all around the blackened hallway, their features warped from the intense heat. Bill shook his head and gave a silent prayer for his lost men. He leaned against the wall to take a breath and began to limp down toward the Councilor's room.
