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Faren sat alone, the only occupant of the darkened debriefing room, the steel walls, table, and opposite chair lit only by a harsh white light from the bare fixture above. He still wore the mimetic suit from the mission he had just gotten back from, not having been given time to change before being escorted to the room to discuss the most recent operation, and its skin-tight design did little to hide the muscular body beneath. The ones who had decided not to let him clean up before shoving him into the tiny metal room in which he currently sat were not held in high regard at the moment. A cut across the top of his head had bled profusely until just a few minutes before, matting his gray-black fur. Dust and sand from the desert had worked its way into his fur and under his clothes, with the result of irritating his skin and itching like crazy. Trying to distract himself by letting his blue-eyed gaze drift around the enclosed space was only slightly successful. Officially the room had been built to debrief operatives returning from the field in an environment with few distractions. Unofficially Faren knew that this room and the many others just like it that filled this particular building were mostly built to 'interview' prisoners. Of course as a Private Military Contractor, Black Ocean was technically a civilian company and civilians weren't allowed to take prisoners. So technically they didn't take prisoners. They 'captured enemy operatives and held them in comfortable private facilities until they could be transferred to the control of a friendly government'. Currently, however, they found it convenient to use the 'debriefing' rooms for actual debriefing. Ironic. "Please state your identification for the record" came a computer voice from seemingly nowhere, startling Faren out of his thoughts. It wasn't the patently artificial and uninflected computer voice from years past but instead a feminine one that spoke in polite tones. Still obviously not a real person, but not in a jarringly inhuman way. It was a voice used in most clerical operations since focus groups had found that it had a calming effect on people. While Faren would admit that it was somewhat relaxing and encouraged him not to put up his guard, the fact that he knew it was a computer and not a real person put him a little on edge every time he heard it. "Halcyon, Faren. Member of Phalanx squad, Captain of the Rembrandt." he waited a few seconds, idly tapping the fingers of one hand against the table top while the other supported his chin. The action filled the room with the clicking/thumping sound of claws against hollow metal. He had heard military duty described as 'several months of mind numbing boredom followed by a few minutes of absolute terror'. He found the combat exciting and fun rather than terrifying. The bureaucracy was the annoying part. A debriefing after every mission. Paperwork for every little thing you requisitioned. Destroyed a building? There was a form for that. Captured a vehicle from the enemy? There was a form for that. Everything you did had accompanying paperwork that had to be done afterwards. If anything it was almost worse than a government's military since PMCs had to document absolutely everything, cross every 't' and dot every 'i' or risk losing their license to operate. "Thank you Mr. Halcyon, your overwatch officer will be in shortly to continue your debriefing" the voice replied, eternally polite. "Wait wait wait!" Faren yelled hurriedly at the ceiling, but to no avail. The VI voice didn't return to address his concern. Its job was done and moreover it had probably been programmed not to respond to outbursts from the operatives once they had been told their superior officer was on the way. Most of the time Faren didn't mind seeing Caira, the Owl who oversaw his team's operations. She was charming and lovely and took very good care of them. Most times he hadn't just gotten off of a mission in which he 'accidentally' (that was his story and he was sticking to it) helped bring down a 284 story skyscraper. The Wolf's head drooped until his forehead impacted the table with a hollow 'thud' that echoed in the empty room, somehow making him dread the coming encounter even more. Caira was good at her job and she was good to the people she was in charge of, but for better or worse she thought of them like her children. He had little doubt that there was a good long lecture about following orders in is immediate future. A quiet click heralded the opening of the room's only door. Faren knew he should raise his head respectfully and look her in the eyes as befitted a superior officer when she came in but he couldn't bring himself to do it. There was another click as the door closed, followed by a scraping sound as Caira pulled the hollow metal chair away from the table and sat down, set quite a large folder of papers on the table in front of her, and stared at the top of Faren's head, waiting for him to say something. Her petite frame was concealed by a professional looking blouse and slacks in an off-white color. As with most people, she had no shoes on her taloned feet. Her smallish beak and large dark eyes were typical of her species, the latter causing her to look perpetually inquisitive which, to be fair, she really was. Her feathers were a gray-brown and speckled with black, especially around her shoulders. Faren could feel those eyes boring into him. Finally she spoke first. "Glad to see you made it out ok, a lot of others didn't. On that same note I see you've been busy." she said simply. Faren didn't answer. Caira silently opened the dossier and flipped through a few pages, cringing and clicking her tongue at the worst of it. "Corporate isn't going to like this you know." she continued, still calm and non-judging. Faren maintained his silence. "283 stories. That's quite a few-" "284" he interrupted. He winced then, knowing that he had fallen into her little trap by confirming that not onoy did he know that she was there, but he also knew exactly what she was talking about. "Ah, my mistake. 284 then. And you acknowledge that it was your shenanigans that toppled that wonderful building?" Caira said conversationally, steepling her delicate fingers on top of the assembled papers like some kind of supervillain. Faren sighed as he sat up in his chair to look his overwatch in the eye for the first time since she had entered. "284 stories. That was a three billion dollar structure." she told him matter-of-factly. To drive her point home she took two large photographs out of the papers and held them up side-by-side for him to see. It wasn't completely necessary considering that he had been there at the time both pictures were taken, but she did it anyway. The one in her left hand showed a gleaming tower of glass and steel shining in the afternoon sunlight looking just like the twenty other OPEC buildings in New Baghdad. The one in her right showed the same building. Well, most of it. You would only know it was the same building if you had seen it fall. It hadn't flattened completely on impact but bits of it had flown off and turned smaller buildings around into nothing but dust and ruins and something rather large was crushed underneath it and still burning brilliantly when the picture had been taken. "Yep, that's the one officer." Faren said, pointing at the pictures with an accusatory look. Caira hung her head for a moment before looking back up at him and replacing the photographs in the stack. She spoke a little more quietly and quickly than she had before, finally letting some of her anxiousness show through. "Can you not take anything seriously?" she asked, shaking her head. She reached a hand back to smooth the feathers on the back of her neck which had begun to stand on end. "You know I'm the one who has to try to clean up all these messes right? I swear, Phalanx squad has to have gotten all of the crazies that no one else would take." she said irritably. Faren plastered a look of mock-offense on his face and put a hand on his chest WW. He said jokingly "Why, I am offended. Besides look at Johnson, he's pretty normal". Caira glanced back up at him with a longsuffering gaze. She said "Johnson is on suspension for beating a local half to death with an old laptop computer. The MPs had to taze him six times". "Really? That doesn't sound like Johnson." Faren said thoughtfully. "Dammit Faren, would you focus for a minute!?" Caira demanded, slamming her fist on the table as she finally began to lose her temper and raised her voice. Faren finally shut his mouth and remained silent. He could go on but it would have been unwise at that point. Besides, the normally calm and collected Owl looked seriously worried by this point and that caused him some concern. She crossed her forearms and leaned forward onto the table to stare into his eyes as if she could see the soul beneath. An unsettling thought. "Now tell me exactly what happened. Every detail of the mission from the time you left the garrison." she ordered him. "Every detail?" he asked, "You were there for half of it." "Humor me." Caira told him. With all of the enthusiasm he could muster considering that it felt like he was being forced to reiterate every step of a crime he had committed, Faren went on to give the patient overwatch officer every detail of Phalanx squad's eventful mission into New Baghdad.

Tw_elve hours prior_

With a dozen teams getting their equipment ready for the coming attack on the extremist controlled city of New Baghdad, Black Ocean's hanger three was abuzz with activity. The building was ten stories tall, with the first three used for last minute prep and deployment of ground forces while the rest were reserved for the atmospheric fighters that would be the ground force's support craft. Lifter arms swung overhead carrying crates of weapons or parts, while small vehicles zipped along the ground carting smaller objects to and from the various squads on the hangar floor. It was organized chaos, if one used the word 'organized' lightly. It was actually going very well for being a large room with fifty different privately contracted mercenary squads. Occasionally a few boxes of ammunition would tumble from a stack on one of the many transports or Black Ocean MPs would have to rush in to break up a fight, but otherwise everything was running smoothly. Had this hangar's complement of fighters currently been in their docks for full armament and servicing it would have been much more chaotic. As it was they had already launched a few before, for which everyone could be thankful. In a back corner of the massive building Phalanx squad, like all of the others, was running the last checks on their weapons and gear in preparation for deployment. On the wall above their heads was a large hologram depicting three tower shields with spears jutting between and above them. They were named after the ancient Greek formation in which the soldiers marched shoulder to shoulder, each man's shield overlapping that of the man to his left. It was a fantastically effective maneuver but it required that all of the soldiers work together flawlessly or else the whole thing would fall apart. They had earned the name because they could work together so perfectly. However while they were technically a single twelve man squad and were normally employed that way, Phalanx squad was a conglomerate of two man teams who had originally thrown their lot in together so that they could take the more lucrative contracts that required more people. Tandor and Faren, one such team, stood at the back wall. The machines they piloted were hung on the wall like metal skeletons while their pilots cleaned components and argued. 'GUNTZ-class mobile heavy weapon and body amplification platforms' they were called officially. In normal conversations they were called 'Exos', 'Amp suits', or just 'Suits'. They ranged from from thin, lightweight metal tubing with minimal electronics that just returned mobility to otherwise crippled individuals to massive bipedal tanks the size of a building, carrying anti air artillery, 105mm cannons, cruise missiles, and even ICBMs. No one in hangar three used these Supermassive Amp suits, but every other size was in evidence. Faren's suit, named the Rembrandt, was barely taller than he was. It wasn't the smallest AMP suit in production but it was far from the largest. With tactical camoflauge and leg mounted repulsors it was designed for stealth and lightning fast attacks. The struts traveled from the bottoms of the feet and followed the limbs to give each support. One went up the outside of each leg, left arm, and up the back of the head. The right arm, instead of having the normal support struts, had ones that were much heavier duty although they didn't look much thicker than those on the left. These beefier constructions were built to absorb the tremendous recoil of the high powered rifle Faren carried. In the center of the suit's back sat the power supply that would give the user the highly enhanced strength that they were most famous for, allowing pilots to do things like flip cars and punch through sheet steel. The whole ensemble was completed by a special coating with chameleon-like qualities that changed color and texture to match its surroundings. It was a work of art, or so Faren claimed. Tandor's suit was far less reserved. It was like comparing a scalpel to a claymore. The hulking death machine stood over twelve feet tall and encased its pilot completely inside during operation where he would have to rely on real-time digital and holographic displays to navigate. Its primary weapon was a dramatically upsized focus rifle that fed directly to the suit's own fusion power plant. Supplied with such an obscene amount of power the rifle generated a solid laser capable of slicing through unshielded targets with ease and battering an opponent's shields until they shattered under the onslaught. Even the paint job was eye catching. It was done up in tiger stripes, but colored like no Tiger that ever lived. The base coat was brilliant emerald green, with the stripes only slightly darker. Even in a forest it would stand out. 'The Destroyer' he called it. It's pilot was no less unique. At six feet eight inches tall he was two inches taller than Faren and slightly bigger all around. Tandor's coloration was typical for Tigers, tawny brown-orange fur with rakish black stripes. Strangely enough, Tandor wasn't a Tiger. He was Cougar. The stripes were just a dye that he applied daily. He had a certain flare for the dramatic. The rest of the squad's equipment was also lined up against the wall, but Tandor and Faren were the only two in Phalanx squad who piloted Amp suits. The rest used a collection of small arms and explosives. "I'm telling you, this is it. We're taking the city this time and we're going to keep it." Tandor was saying. Faren, never one to be overly optimistic, was not convinced. "They've been fighting over Baghdad for almost three hundred years." he replied. Tandor called back, having climbed to the top of his suit to rub a near-invisible smudge from its shoulder plate, "And they got it a few times. You know. Before they got kicked back out again. Hey, it was completely cleared for a while" "That's because they bombed it flat. Horizontally oriented high-yield concussion warheads." "Hey. That still counts. Then there was the guy who built up all the skyscrapers and stuff." "He was beheaded on the internet when they recaptured the city". Faren just shook his head and ran another cleaning patch down the barrel of his rifle, a smile on his face. The question of whether or not the progressive government managed to maintain control of the city or not was academic. Phalanx was being paid to take the city, that was it. He carefully removed his sniper rifle's cooling sleeve and wiped down the inside with a rag, giving it a thin layer of oil. It was a weapon of a custom design that propelled variably sized projectiles down the barrel with an extremely powerful, and expensive, electromagnet. The setup cost more than a starfighter but it was definitely worth it for a weapon that would reliably put a hole of your chosen size in just about anything and could shoot anything made of metal as ammo. It was also extraordinarily heavy and without the assistance of his suit he had a hard time moving it around much less shouldering and firing the thing. A tone echoing through the hangar indicating an incoming message over the loudspeakers. One by one, each section of the hangar went silent. It wasn't because of their respect for authority or wish to clearly hear what command had to say. They were private contractors, they would have kept right on with their normal conversations but special dampers built into the walls in anticipation of just such a rowdy group soon silenced everything but the voice from the speakers. If the gestures now aimed at said speaker were anything to go by, many of the contractors didn't appreciate being silenced. "Attention all Black Ocean operatives. Complete final preparations and proceed to your launch locations. Thirty minutes to launch. Repeat, proceed to launch locations, thirty minutes to launch.". This message prompted cheers all over the hangar, although they were still eerily noiseless in the confines of the damping fields. Suddenly it was even more chaotic than before as everyone quickly strapped on their remaining equipment. A different voice came through Phalanx squad's personal radios. It was Caira, their overwatch officer, calling them from her comfortable air conditioned office. No one begrudged her the luxuries. She was the one who kept the group together and watched from above, giving them warnings about enemy troop movements and target locations. "You heard him, everyone to your positions. Watch your backs out there." a series of acknowledgements followed as he and Tandor climbed into their suits and everyone else got into transports. Faren turned around and stepped backwards into the Rembrandt, which immediately clamped on at his touch and adjusted itself to fit comfortably. The front of Tandor's suit opened and swung down like stairs, leaving him to simply walk up them and drop into it before the hatch swung closed once again to seal him inside the veridian behemoth. "Ready?" his voice came in over the built in comm system in Faren's suit. "Yeah. Wait, wait. Oww." he exclaimed, hissing between his teeth as the part of the suit that was supposed to support his head and neck clamped painfully over his right ear. It was the work of a few seconds to extricate it and get the armature into the correct position. He rotated his ears experimentally and found that, to his relief, this time they moved freely. "Alright, ready" he spoke over the comm. "Good. Can't have Tandor going in without his support." Caira's voice said in his ear just as they headed toward the towering hangar door where the squads were lining up to wait for launch. Tandor said "Good to hear your voice Mom. Sure you don't want to come with us?". Caira replied back and Faren could practically see her smiling in amusement. "No thank you, I'm perfectly happy behind my screens with my coffee. It's fresh." she added, for Tandor's benefit. His fondness for coffee was well known. "Low blow, Mom. Low blow." he told her. Just then the hangar doors ground open to admit a blindingly bright blaze of sunlight and a wave of dry heat. The sand couldn't get in, fortunately, instead beating against the door's magnetic containment field. A necessary measure to keep grit from gumming up all of the delicate machinery inside. Once again the voice came over the building speakers although this time it also came through the comms in the various vehicles. "As a final reminder to all personnel, no explosives as permitted during this operation. Avoid damage to infrastructure as much as possible. Row one, squads Adamant through Afrit. Launch in three. Two. One. Launch. Row two, squads Axel through Cairo. Launch in three. Two. One. Launch. Row three. Squads-" the voice continued as such and Faren tuned it out until he heard their name being called. "Row eleven, squads Phalanx through Python. Launch in three." Faren's hands flexed and he reached over his right shoulder for the hundredth time to feel that his rifle was still there even though he knew it had to be. "Two." there was a high pitched whine of repulsors and Faren lifted a few inches off of the ground before settling down again. Repulsors good. "One." he saluted toward Tandor in his suit a few feet to the left. Tandor responded with the traditional friendly middle finger. "Launch." Faren shot through the hangar's mag-con field and into the harsh sunlight and buffeting sand of the Iraqi desert. Tandor was close behind him although the extra mass of his suit meant that it took him a moment longer to get it moving. Ahead they could see the other squads already moving ahead through the burning desert sand. Faren motioned the rest of Phalanx along after the others. For this mission he and Tandor would be flanking while the bulk of the force attacked from the front. Together they moved through the desert in a loop around the city. Together with a small force of other Amp suits, they had to get behind the New Baghdad forces and wreak havoc, make them split their attention between the main force and the mechs attacking their rear. Each element of the flanking maneuver would attack at whatever angle they saw fit. Since Faren and Tandor could only move as fast as their slowest element, the Wolf in his smaller suit jumped up onto the larger mech's shoulder and pulled the sniper rifle off of his back, bringing it to rest on Tandor's shoulder. Not for the first time, he wished that the Cougar would have painted his suit in a reasonable color that was less likely to get them killed. He peered through the scope at the still-distant city as they plodded toward it. The skyline of New Baghdad was rather impressive considering it was in the middle of a heat blasted desert. Funded by oil sales (still an extraordinarily valuable commodity even in an age predominantly powered by fuel cells and nuclear reactors), the city had become extremely prosperous in the last hundred years thanks to a change in government after Old Baghdad was leveled by bombing runs. The new leadership had actually stabilized the area reasonably well. Only the outskirts of the city had any buildings under ten stories. The rest were almost entirely skyscrapers, most of which were well over two hundred stories. All that progress had come to a screeching halt when the city had fallen under control of radicals just over a week ago. Hence the reason they were even in this miserable furnace called Iraq. "See anything?" Tandor asked, "Aside from the anti-air they're putting up, I mean. Looks like the fourth of July up there". He was right. Flack cannons and SAMs had opened up all over the city, filling the sky above with clouds of shrapnel and streams of missiles. After noticing movement off in the distance, Faren looked closer at the tops of the buildings they were moving towards. "Oooh yeah." he said. "Turrets on roofs and balconies, along with rocket troops. And of course the triple-A's." he added. Anti Air Artillery wasn't normally a threat to anything on the ground since they were designed not to aim that low. If they had been modified, however, they would be a big problem indeed. Something a ways off from the city caught his eye and Faren turned the scope in the direction for a better view. It was too far out to belong to the extremists and it was freaking huge. He started laughing hysterically when he saw what it was, and couldn't manage to stop the first time Tandor asked what he was laughing about. It took him a minute to compose himself enough to activate the video feed on his rifle scope so that what he was seeing was projected onto a panel on Tandor's command console. Once it was, he burst out laughing as well. Off in the distance, intermittently obscured by clouds of dust rolling across the barren landscape, was a Supermassive Amp suit. "Ah, I see you've found the Desert Thunder." Caira said. When Faren activated his scope's livefeed function it broadcast to one of her screens as well. "It's run by White Lancer squad out of hangar six. Considering the conditions in this part of the world, Black Ocean has helped them keep it in remarkably good condition". It ambled forward on four enormous spider-like legs and weighed who knew how much. Aside from numerous weapon emplacements studded along its shoulders to take down enemy missiles and aircraft it was equipped with long range missile launchers and, most impressively, a huge back mounted cannon. The missiles wouldn't be high explosive since they were under strict orders not to harm the city infrastructure but airburst munitions or some other anti-personnel loads weren't out of the question. Whatever its loadout was, Faren was happy to have the metal monstrosity on their side. "So this is looking easier and easier" he said, swinging his rifle around to bring the city back into scope. Looking at New Baghdad through the magnification, Faren could see that the frontal assault had begun. With the main element starting their attack from the other side of the city, all attention had been drawn to them and away from the small army of Amp suits. Tandor spoke up from within the confines of his suit. "What do you think? Give them something else to look at?" he asked, hefting his focus rifle. The Destroyer made a few clicking noises and the whine of its reactor raised a few octaves as the pilot turned up its output. Faren said "Let me see how long it takes them to notice us". It wasn't what Tandor wanted to hear, but the Cougar had no appreciation for the art of war. At this range, Faren's rifle would be the only thing with a hope of accurately reaching any of their targets anyway. The first things to draw his attention and his fire were the flak cannons that decorated the roofs of every one of the cities many skyscrapers. Columns of greasy black smoke rising from craters all around the city attested to their grim effectiveness against the air support Black Ocean had sent. Faren's finger tightened on the trigger and the rifle kicked back against his shoulder but there was no noise, no distinctive cone of dust thrown up by the passing projectile. All of that was thanks to some very high tech trickery embedded not only in the rifle but in the projectiles as well. It reached its intended target almost instantly, going several times the speed of sound. The anti air installation that it hit immediately erupted in orange flames before exploding spectacularly as the remaining ammunition in its magazine detonated. Despite one of their guns bursting into flames and going offline, the soldiers didn't pay much attention. With a frontal assault combined with air attack they already had more than they could deal with. Four smoking flak cannons later, they started to get suspicious. By then, however, the Desert Thunder was within visual range of the city. That got their attention. Suddenly half of the turrets and mortars turned on their mounts and began firing toward the huge Amp suit. Explosions flared against its armored shell but as they died down there was no visible damage. Even with the artillery now being brought to bear against it, the Thunder's shield was holding the barrage at bay. By now, most of the flanking group was in range of the city. Faren rapped on the metal canopy of Tandor's suit with his knuckles. "Go ahead. Just remember, don't hurt the buildings." he said forcefully. Tandor grinned, invisible in the cockpit of his suit, while he shifted his grip on the focus rifle and held it steadily at his hip. No need to shoulder it to fire accurately, there were digital targeting systems built into the cockpit display. The power levels had already been adjusted appropriately. Now the beam would be hot enough to incinerate flesh on contact, but wouldn't do more than blacken the steel supports of the buildings without concentrated effort. The bulky weapon wasn't pinpoint accurate by anyone's standards, a fact that Tandor demonstrated handily when the first burst from his beam weapon sliced diagonally across a smaller building on the city outskirts. Windows shattered from the heat and when the beam faded out a clear black line was left to mar the brick front of the structure. Faren slowly turned his head to look down at Tandor's cockpit and he could practically see Tandor slowly looking up at him with an 'I didn't do it' look on his face. Faren just shook his head and rested his cheek back on his rifle's stock. Their employer couldn't have expected the city to come out of this completely unfazed anyway. A few broken windows seemed a small price to pay for one of the most profitable cities on Earth. Tandor waited another few minutes to let them get closer, all the while listening to mortar fire and rockets explode against the Thunder's shields, still holding strong, before firing again. Faren, however, was under no such limitations. He was shooting steadily now with one shot every five seconds. No longer needing to fire in silent mode since the enemy definitely knew where they were by now, each shot created a sonic boom as it left the barrel and either put a smoking hole in a heavy weapon emplacement or decapitated an extremist. Neither of the Amp suited contractors were very gentle on windows, with shattered glass raining down on the streets below. Caira was soon back on the comms, and none too happy about the damage. "Holy crap you two. Do you have to break every window you see?!" she asked irritably. Faren said "Lighten up, Mom." as another shot tore a cone of dust up from the desert and sent most of an enemy soldier tumbling over the edge of a building and down to the ground far below. "I'll 'lighten up' when I know that they aren't going to dock our pay for this. Hovertank ahead, eight hundred meters." Caira said, pointing out the armored vehicle just as it swung its main cannon toward them. Normally Tandor's focus rifle would have been able to cut through an unshielded antique tank, but with its output scaled back to keep it from damaging the infrastructure that was no longer true. Faren quickly shifted his aim down from the many targets on the rooftops where he had been picking off some of the mortar crews (although it got harder the closer they got) and sent a hasty shot toward the tank. It wasn't a great hit but it managed to knock out its left bank of repulsor engines and drop half of the vehicle to the ground, skewing its aim and sending the cannon round that was meant for them up harmlessly into the sky. A more carefully aimed second shot hit dead center and struck the ammunition magazine, turning the tank into a flaming pile of debris. "Target terminated." Caira said. "Wait, something's wrong. We're getting a lot of interference up here. Is everything alright---? *zzzzSHHZ*" the comms broke down into screeching static. Faren's ears pinned back against his head and he took one hand off of his rifle to adjust the tuner on his suit's holographic interface. It worked for a few seconds, just long enough to get bits and pieces of Caira's panicked voice. "Massive power surg----video feed offli----EMP of some ki--?----up from the city?!---" again it degenerated into static and Faren shut it off altogether. Tandor said "Well that was unpleasant. Can you see what's happening?" they were close enough now that his weapon emitted an almost constant stream of brilliant white light, and as he swept it across the rooftops one could see people burst into flames from the intense heat. It would have been a disturbing sight to anyone unused to such things. Faren had been watching for any signs of whatever was producing the interference but so far nothing had caught his eye. "Nothing yet-" he started. Then everything started to go weird. All of the lights on Tandor's suit and his own heads up display dimmed and flickered as the ground started to shake. "What the-?" Tandor said. After that it all went down hill. A huge bolt of red light arced by overhead and slammed into the Desert Thunder, which had so far proven impervious to everything the enemy could throw at it. Whatever that blast was turned out to be the exception. When it struck it immediately stripped away the Thunder's shields, ripped violently through its torso, and exited through its back unhindered. The Supermassive mech was done. Its legs crumpled underneath it as they lost power and it toppled over in what seemed to be slow motion due to its size. A series of explosions on its back marked the failsafes in its reactor detonating to prevent it from going critical. Faren turned the comm back on. "Can anyone hear me? They've got some kind of weapon in the city and it just knocked out a Supermassive in one hit. Anybody?" no answer, probably because communication was still being jammed but he had to try. At least whatever it was hadn't fired again. It probably needed to build its energy back up for another shot. "Tandor, keep them busy out here. I'm going in to see what that thing is." he told his friend as he dropped off of the shoulder of his suit and activated the repulsor's in his. The Wolf shot off across the landscape, skating a few inches above the sand on a cushion of air. There was a shimmer as Faren activated his camouflage generator and a few seconds later the shimmer was all that remained. It made him nearly impossible to see, especially in the desert where the heat rising from the sand produced a nearly identical shimmer naturally. What ground based weapon would have caused that? he thought to himself. The answer, as he would find a few seconds later while leaping from rooftop to rooftop with bursts from his suit's maneuvering jets, was none. In the center of the city blocked from view on all sides by skyscrapers was a ship. It was a regular civilian cargo frigate, or at least it had been originally. Attached to the top of its hull was a turbolaser cannon from a capital ship. They had somehow landed the ship in the city without anyone noticing and were running the weapon directly from its power core. If he had to guess, Faren would say that the ship also housed the powerful jammers that had knocked out all their communications. Fortunately the core had never been designed for that kind of output and in addition to having to charge up between shots, the first one had apparently broken something. Now techs were swarming over the thing trying to bring it back online. Faren's first impulse was to open fire on the gun or the ship but he though better of it. Even if his rifle could go through that armor (which he had the feeling it wouldn't), what was the likelyhood of hitting anything important on something so large? No, he would have to do it another way. One of the SAMs would probably at least hurt it but only if he could convince the computer that the grounded ship was a valid target. Then he was struck by another thought. There was a very large, very heavy skyscraper next to the ship. It would be relatively simple to cut some of its supports and send the whole thing crashing down. But they were supposed to avoid doing any damage to the buildings. The turbolaser turned a bit to one side as if aiming before the barrel drooped slightly and went offline again. That brought him out of his internal debate. That thing was going to go active again and it was going to tear through the assembled Black Ocean forces like so much paper. Faren wasn't about to let that happen. Making his decision, he leapt off of the building on which he stood and applied a burst of jets to slow him down just before hitting the ground already running. He set his rifle for silent firing as he moved and soon he arrived in front of his chosen building. First step. It took a few dozen shots to sever the building's main supports at ground level. That alone wouldn't bring the tower down of course. With modern engineering the skyscrapers were meant to remain standing through hurricanes and tornadoes, fire and flood. The next step would hopefully deliver enough shock to topple the weakened structure. Faren ran to the elevator on the ground floor, jammed his fingers between the doors, and forced them open. No elevator. Good. He stepped forward and dropped down to the bottom of the shaft, forcing open the doors to the sublevel. This floor was all machinery and piping just as he had expected. Each one of the skyscrapers had its own generator to supply power for the building. In order to power that many floors the generators were quite large and powerful. Faren stepped up to the nearest console and flicked the monitor on. He was immediately bombarded with a screenful of meaningless gibberish. Of course they couldn't have just had a button for what he wanted it to do. It would have taken a year of training just to understand the code running across the screen, much less write his own. Fortunately Faren had a modern alternative. He grabbed a small black object like a flattened rectangle from his belt and plugged it into the console's available multi-purpose interface slot. The on-screen gibberish slowly began to compress and disappear as the hack module did its job until finally all that remained was the word "Command?". Much better. "Reactor overload. Maximum yield." Faren spoke loudly and clearly. There was a moment of silence as the module processed his command. The screen flashed three times and without any more warning a two minute timer popped up on the screen accompanied by a strange buzzing sound from the generator itself. That prompted a hasty retreat back up the elevator shaft. Aside from one nearby soldier who got a little too curious and wound up with a broken neck, there was no more trouble as Faren got to a safe distance from which to watch. The gun was up and running again, already turning toward its next target as Faren watched from a rooftop some distance away. "Three, two, one" he said quietly. Right on que, and just as the turbolaser was warming up to fire, the base of the building exploded. As the generator overloaded it collapsed the tower's sub levels in a shower of concrete dust and displaced sand. No longer having any support under its base and with its support beams having already been cut the building had nowhere to go but down. And down it went, glass shattering, steel bending. It partially telescoped in on itself but most of the structure fell over on top of the frigate. The turbolaser was crushed and the energy it had gathered to fire caused it to detonate spectacularly, shooting flames from under the collapsed tower that had flattened it. With the frigate's jammer destroyed, the comms were once again alive with voices trying to figure out what was going on. Faren tuned his radio to the frequency he had been assigned and was rewarded with Caira's voice. "What happened, are you guys ok?" she was asking. Faren replied "I'm fine". Tandor said the same. "Then would anyone care to tell me what happened? There's smoke coming up from downtown and I seem to remember more buildings a few minutes ago." she demanded. Tandor said nothing even though he must have known that Faren had something to do with it. "I'll... tell you when we get back." the Wolf said hesitantly.

"And that's what happened." Faren said in the debriefing room. "After that we cleaned up. Once they lost their heavy artillery they couldn't compete with us". Caira had been taking notes the whole time and now looked up at him with sadness in her eyes. "It really was you then." she said. Then she leaned in closer and dropped her voice to just over a whisper. "The client is furious. He's demanding the ones responsible". Her face was conflicted. Faren didn't know what else to say. He had done what he had to do. If there had been any other option he would have taken it but he wasn't about to leave that gun where it was for any longer than he had to. "Well... what do I do? You always get us out of these things." he said. Caira had managed to keep them out of trouble many times in the past thanks to her connections and negotiating skills. This time however, she just shook her head. "Not this time. There's nothing I can do. I think... I think you two should go. The rest of Phalanx already left. You and Tandor were the ones who caused this, they'll go after you. Just catch a ship off planet". Having always been the most rational one, the fact that Caira was now suggesting that they flee the planet was shocking. Faren leaned forward to put his face just a few inches from hers. There was worry and sincerity in that face. "Are you serious? It's that bad?" he asked. She nodded, "Yes, but I don't think they'll follow you off-planet. They're mad but they're also businessmen. They won't waste money on revenge. And don't worry about me." she said, anticipating his next question, "They know we were out of contact at the time. I'll be safe". They both leaned back into their seats and Caira stood up, gathering the myriad papers from the table. "Goodbye Faren." she said "Good luck". "You too" he replied as she stepped out the door, leaving it open. He stood up from the chair and stepped out the door to jog down the hall toward their hangar where he hoped Tandor still was. They had to move quickly if they were going to get away from Black Ocean before their employer could carry out some kind of revenge for his transgression.