“AHAHAHAH! Meeeow!”
Cait should’ve known Sev had something up his sleeves. Of course having hover tanks would not be enough for him, nor were the new upgrades to the Sardaukar power armor. Because Sev was Sev.
And Sev was currently enjoying himself, cackling loudly over the comms as he piloted his own giant war machine and meowing for some reason everytime he fired his weapons .
Not that she was going to complain about it, sitting in the cozy little cockpit of the weirdly named ‘Mad Cat’ (and not ‘Madcat’, as Sev had stressed several times already). Despite the very sudden reveal of the ‘mech’, the controls were intuitive enough for Cait and the other lucky pilots to operate. Eva also helped, pointing out toggles, levers and buttons that were also conveniently highlighted when the AI mentioned them.
A lever to control the speed, the seat’s haptic sensors controlled the torso movements, joysticks in each hand to control each arm… If not for the Sev-magicked glass revealing the world outside, Cait could easily believe she was in some sort of fancy arcade game in Diamond City.
And when she fired the weapons… Oh, when the mech fired… The not-so-gentle rumble around her cockpit was so different from the crack-shudder of Glossu’s rail cannons. Launching the missiles made the girl shudder deeply in her seat, the muted roars of the whole salvo firing off imparted a primal satisfaction that could’ve easily made her moist if not for how trained she was to Sev’s touch. The PPCs achieved the same result with their much stronger kick, the high-pitched fwooms of the energy cannons sending a pleasant tingle down her spine.
The redhead sent her Mad Cat into a full run towards the disintegrating super mutant army. The mech was much faster, much more responsive than she had thought, keeping up with the hover tanks who were themselves supposedly taking it at cruising speed.
Then she got into optimum range for the autocannons built underneath her cockpit, and as finger-sized Tiberium shards rained into the green giants, along with her next volley of missiles and plasma bolts, Cait realized she would be adopting this beautiful little warmachine and give it all the TLC it would need. She didn’t own much, but this…this would be one of her most prized possessions, and she’d promise a painful death to anyone who so much as scratched the paint job of her new pet.
Which, incidentally was what a few super mutants were trying to do, sending missiles and anti-tank rounds her way. None of them even touched the hull of the Mad Cat thanks to the improved forcefield that bloomed prettily as it drained off the speed of bullets and absorbed explosions. Cait returned the favor with a spray of Tiberium shards, shredding the brutes to bloody lumps.
Sev deserved to ruin her holes even more after this. Fuck it, Cait should get him to break her in this cockpit, to ‘officiate’ her ownership of this mech. It was spacious enough for him to rail her in at least four different ways.
“Hey Cait, don’t butt into 3rd Company’s zone. Three o’clock for a fresh group of greenies.”
Oops, she got a bit too lost in her thoughts there. “Got it, Piper. Thanks.” Cait quickly veered off, easily avoiding 3rd Company who were charging into close quarters for their training as she found herself another designated killzone to enjoy herself.
The mock battle lasted for a full hour, as the super mutants were too stubborn to rout. The mechs and hover tanks cleaned up their areas and capped their quotas quickly, but it was the soldiers and robots on the ground that were using the experience to its fullest. As many of the Companies were brimming with new recruits, it was their first experience in combat, or what passed for it in the Nexus. So officers and sergeants took the opportunity cramming as many improvised scenarios as they could.
Cait had seen the curriculum, they’d be mixing up teamwork and solo objectives, as well as switching between ranged, melee and unarmed fighting, both lethal and nonlethal.
She shuddered as she remembered that the unlucky survivors they’d captured would be sent off to Tleilax. The Blacksite was always hungry for more subjects, and no doubt that most of the super mutants here would be harvested for their organs, to be purified for ingredients to power rituals. Welp, at least it’s a quicker death than what the human prisoners had to go through, especially the slavers and rapists. Sev revealed their fates to Cait when she foolishly asked, and she almost pitied the monsters.
Almost.
A fast-moving ping from her sensors brought her attention back to her cockpit, and Sarah’s slightly concerned voice came through the comms. Listening to the exchange between the younger Wright and Sev, Cait couldn’t help but quirk an eyebrow and turn towards the incoming nuclear missiles.
*****
Scoring top marks had earned Nat and the other students a place in the Kirov’s command room, basically getting front row seats to the extermination happening far below. The stealthed airship kept at a sedate pace that matched the advance of the Nexus’ army and served as a mobile HQ, where a slightly miffed Sarah did her job to coordinate the ground operations. As envious as Lyons might be for being left out, she nonetheless took her job just as seriously as always, overseeing the flow of battle with her staff and occasionally issuing orders to commanders.
Mostly though, Sarah had to keep track of each Company’s performance, particularly with their fresher elements. “3rd Company, why is your right flank slowing down?” She let out a sigh as the reply streamed into her earpiece. “Well, stop the unarmed combat and keep up to your schedule. If your troops aren’t up to snuff, book them more drills and sparring sessions. If the greenies escape because of the gap you’re creating…”
Watching Sev’s top military advisor herding the Companies with threats and curt warnings, Nat couldn’t help grinning and sharing whispers and giggles with the other students who joined her at the higher observation deck. The girl used the time to show off a bit, acting as a tour guide for the gaggle of friends and schoolmates and pointing out bits of unclassified tech and trivia, or even explaining the current progress of the battle below. Nat especially enjoyed the awed look she got from the older students as she unsubtly reminded them of her close association with Sev, as well as her own previous combat experience.
“So you see, there? 3rd’s gonna fully wrap around and hit the super mutants in the back. So they’d get less kills now, but once they get into position, that rear part is all theirs.”
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She pointedly ignored the Minutemen colonels standing nearby and poorly hiding their blatant eavesdropping of her explanations. Such unsubtle attention was something Nat was very used to as one of Sev’s most favored people, after all.
Something was going off-script enough that Cabal’s harsh voice filled the command room. “Picking up communications on local public frequencies. Message is clean of occult infohazards. Contents are of interest to Nexus command.”
Silence fell onto the room as the surprise event drew everyone’s attention. “Play it,” Sarah said with a stern nod.
The static-laced voice of a young woman took over the room’s speakers. She sounded a bit strained, but otherwise spoke clearly. “Warning, Nexus forces. This is the Enclave city of Ithaca. Our leaders have approved and will launch our nuclear arsenal towards your location shortly. I repeat, this is Enclave Ithaca, an unwarranted nuclear strike has been ordered on your armies by our leaders. Please…please don’t punish us because of them.”
As the room reeled, Sarah immediately flipped to a different channel. “Sev!”
Cabal’s voice returned, and Nat felt a pit forming in her gut. “Detecting energy spikes from Fort Cornell. Confirming the launch of six rocket-propelled projectiles. Focusing eyebot group IC9… Readings indicate significant radioactive payload in each projectile, estimated five kilotons. Estimated time of impact, seven seconds. Six. Five…” The tactical hologram showed fast moving blips quickly entering view.
Stamping down on her nervousness, Nat looked at a frowning but otherwise calm Sarah who was holding a very fast conversation with Sev on the other end.
The blips zoomed to points around the Nexus and super mutant armies, and the hologram seemed to blink as the nuclear warheads detonated and wiped out nearly all hostile contacts. Nat’s eyes were apprehensively glued to the hologram as she checked and double-checked the display for any missing Nexus contacts.
*****
“Fucking hell…” Zoey cursed through gritted teeth as the explosions flung her about and slammed her into at least two of her comrades. As awesome as Sardaukar power armor was, it was still not heavy enough to keep her on the ground no matter how much she braced after the abrupt warning. Zoey felt her back crack and snap from the violent impacts, and her left arm broke when someone else flew into her.
Thankfully the helmet’s environmental sensors reacted quickly to the atomic flares and roars, darkening her visors and muting outside sound to uncomfortable but bearable pinpricks and rumbles. More importantly, as she endured the pain of broken bones and possible paralysis, Zoey was thankful that she was still alive and breathing. Her HUD warned her that shields were down, but armor integrity remained fully intact, though her back midriff and left arm was definitely broken in a few places.
As the violent turbulence faded along with the lights and sounds, the general comms came alive with the sounds of swearing and panicking before the commanders restored order and called out for a headcount.
“Z-Zoey…Spikes…nngh…wounded, but alive.”
Once everyone was accounted for, Zoey found herself being one of eighteen troopers being seriously wounded. XO Sylvie sounded pissed as always as she tallied the damage, but softened noticeably when she instructed the wounded to keep still and await help.
As she lay on the ground, her visor reverted to full transparency to offer her a smoking, freshly blasted wasteland. Twisting her head a bit, the trooper found the ashen remains of super mutants piling up on their blasted shadows. She also spotted some of her new comrades of the 1st Company stalking about, a pair of them jogging towards her with healing guns in hand.
With pain still throbbing in her mind, it finally hit Zoey: She was alive.
Holy shit. She had survived a nuclear blast. The Nexus got nuked, and everyone survived with nothing more than painful wounds that would soon be fixed by a few blasts of a healing gun.
“Thank you, Sev,” Zoey gratefully exhaled, forgetting she was still in the general channel until the voices of other troopers gave their own praises to Sev. It took Commander Edward cutting in to shut everyone up and have the channel clear to receive further orders. They’d get their chance to properly thank him during payday, after all.
Zoey was healed up with no issues and returned to join her Company in giving the battlefield a cautionary sweep. It took little conversation with her more veteran colleagues to find that a great insult had just been inflicted on the Nexus. Someone had ruined their training, and more damningly, obliterated the prisoners Sev had already allotted for Blacksite Tleilax.
While she didn’t- couldn’t fully share their outrage, the important part was that someone had tried to mess with Sev, and that sort of behavior was very, very unwelcome in 1st Company. Zoey was more than happy to join her comrades in calling for an immediate retaliatory strike on the offending Enclave city.
No more than ten minutes after her broken bones were healed, she embarked on a Quetzal to take part in the immediate punishment of the Enclave forces in Ithaca.