#operation retrieval

[cdrmiller]

from x and x

Marie had always been a good judge of character and even though her trained senses kept her wary of the woman in front of her, there was something she couldn’t quite put a finger on that she immediately liked and trusted. It was that little itch at the back of her mind when she knew she was missing something important. The only thing she knew for certain is that it was imperative to get this woman back safe. You never knew when you would find keys in this war, and her gut twinged at the thought of what, just maybe, she could unlock.

“You are certain you can’t shut it down?”

"It’s a failsafe."

"A Cerberus failsafe," Nico corrected, taking a step towards Marie and holding her gaze to emphasize his words. "That holds a whole other meaning for them....if they cant have it, no one will."

Marie swallowed hard, turning back towards the scientist. "Then what are our options?"

"There is only one option," the woman replied, her eyes hard with fear. "Run."

One deep breath. That's how long it took Marie to steady herself, to play all the scenarios in her head, to decide on the best plan of action. She slipped her helmet back over her hair, snapping it into place and unsheathing the assault rifle from her back before striding towards the door. "How long?"

Kashmira shook her head, as she moved to keep in step alongside the sentinel, tapping her datapad. "Five minutes...give or take."

“Commander?” The voice was steady and serious in her ear. “I take it that alarm means we have worn out our welcome.”

“Your assumption would be correct, Huntsman. I need you and Sabre to find the others and get out. Zeus and I are headed towards rendezvous 7.” 

"On our way. And we found something I think the Alliance will be very interested in."

Her gloved fingers pressed into the palm of her free hand as she involuntarily clenched her fist. If anyone could take care of themselves, it was Maddox, but it wasn’t like him to not stay in contact with her. And if it was coming down to a get out or be blown to bits scenario, she really would have at least liked to hear his voice in her ear. 

“We are heading towards quadrant four. Something is interfering with biotic signatures, causing them to fizz in and out, making it hard to track.”

"Mason.” The use of his real name and her voice dropping an octave underlining her words. “You have less than five minutes. You have to get everyone to the rendezvous point by then. I don’t know what will happen if you don’t make it, but just remember there are no king’s men waiting to put the pieces of humpty dumpty back together this time.”

Static crackled in the brief silence as all those listening took in the weight of her words. None of them were as invincible as they used to be. 

“Understood.”

The two women and their Phoenix bodyguard continued towards the drop coordinates, Marie calling into comms for an immediate extraction. Get the specialist out of here and to safety, that was her mission. She shut out any thought of what could be happening to the people that had become her family and-

A shiver ran up her spine at the distant guttural, unnatural scream accentuated by the sound of metal grating against metal that pierced her ears. Nico halted in his tracks, staring in the direction of the sound, and when he turned back to her, his brows were furrowed in question but his eyes were sure in their agony. His loyalty to her was slowly being shredded by the deeply ingrained pack instinct of Phoenix One. 

Her eyes fluttered shut briefly and another deep, calming breath before giving him his orders. To save them, she had to let them do what they did best. To save them, she had to chance losing them all.

"Go."

And with a flash of blue, he was gone.

[kashdevi]

Operation Retrieval - 5

from x

Kash’s small body quivered, half fear and half adrenaline, under the touch of the pistol’s cold metal at her temple. But to her credit, her voice never wavered.

“Do it, you monster. Kill me now - but you will never take me back alive.”

“Nic! No!” Marie’s dead sprint from down the hall where Nico had left her behind sent her skidding to a stop on the lab’s too-smooth floors.

“She’s still one of them.” His words came out tight through clenched teeth and his trigger finger itched. It would be so easy to end it - right here, right now. All the Alliance intel, everything from schematics to leads had been off so far. It’d be safer for everyone to just finish it.

But, for better or worse, that wasn’t an option.

“Zeus.” Marie’s Commander voice was nothing to play with and even Nico shrank a little. “Lower your weapon. That’s an order.”

Reluctantly, and with a hateful glare, the brute did as he was told.

Though bloody, painful death was somewhat less imminent now, the lingering venom in his body language was not entirely reassuring to Kashmira, who finally looked past the hulking man to take in the Commander behind him.

“You… aren’t Cerberus,” Kash narrated her thoughts.

Both amused and annoyed, the women had a small stare-down, each sizing the other up in the tense seconds that passed.

“No,” Marie finally supplied. “Are you?”

“No.” Nobody missed the way the word left the small scientist deflated. “Not anymore. Who are you?”

“I’m Commander Miller.” Marie holstered her pistol in a  gesture of good will. She jerked her head in the stoic man’s direction. “This is Zeus. We’re not here to hurt you. What is your name?”

“Doctor Deviyani. Biotech Specialist.” Her tone was curt and formal while big, brown eyes scanned the hulking muscle still looming between them. “Commander Miller, why are you working with a Phoenix? Do you even know what that thing is? What it is capable of?” There was no mistaking her sense of disgust.

Nico’s bristle was palpable, even though Marie was the only one who could hear the stream of foreign curses over comms.

“He’s not a monster,” Marie said, then caught herself wondering just how many times she’d said that, or something similar in defense of her strange collection of ex-Cerberus confidants. “He defected. Just like you.”

“We all did,” Nico finally spoke and both of the women pivoted, looking up to see the large man remove his helmet. “See?"

Serious brown eyes took a long moment to scan him, taking in the dark golden colored irises and making mental notes about the fifty different kinds of tech that made up the constructed creature-man’s well-proportioned face. He was clearly one of the prostitutes - a disgusting but unmistakably lucrative loophole in the Phoenix program - she noted silently. “Not indoctrinated,” she mumbled, not sounding entirely convinced. “And the other abominations you’ve brought to my lab?”

“You mean the ones that came to save your ass? Or would you prefer to rot away inside this crumbling mountain shit hole?” Marie had taken her helmet off while the Doctor was busy trying to make up her mind about Nico so when the attitude and angry undertones of her passionate retort filled the air, it was her turn to go under the metaphorical microscope.

To everyone’s surprise, the Doctor burst into a pleasant, tinkling kind of laughter. Marie and Nico shared a momentary look before Kash had caught her breath, finally letting the remaining tension leave her body as she rested against the metal of a loose control panel next to her. “Ahhh… I suppose you’re right.”

She tapped a couple buttons on the panel. “X2, give me the locations of all visitors and disarm defensive systems. We’re all clear here.”

A few seconds passed, just long enough for a look of concern to pass her face, before a mechanical voice buzzed to life over the panel’s intercom system. “Negative, Doctor. Component systems have been engaged.”

“Engaged?” Kash turned fully to face the panel, leaving her back to the Commander and the Phoenix, and trying to hide the frantic concern in her voice. “X2. Disarm all defensive systems immediately!”

The mechanical voice was monotonous and cold. “Doctor Deviyani. This command cannot be executed. The Zephyr Overload System has been engaged by two hostiles in Quadrant Four. All other defensive systems have been deactivated. How would you like to proceed?”

“Uh. What the fuck is a Zephyr Overload System?”

In a symphony of irony, a deep rumble and palpable biotic tinge radiated out from the lowest levels of the buried base beneath their feet. At the same moment, Kashmira turned to face the pair behind her.

“We have got to get everyone out of here. NOW!”

Marie flipped back to the communal channel, demanding a full team report.

[kashdevi]

Operation Retrieval - 2

(Introducing Kashmira Deviyani - fc:Kangana Ranaut)

from x

Long, slim fingers traced the sharp edge of a flashing control panel and, for just a moment, Kashmira stopped to wonder how she got here.  

It was her version of a Cinderella story when she had left dirt floors and straw roofs for the cool ceramic and sparkling silver steel of a dozen Cerberus laboratories.  She hated everything about space and extra-planetary travel, but apparently, there was nowhere she wouldn’t go for the chance to solve a mystery. And her time with Cerberus had certainly never left her hungry for those – all those pesky, morally-grey areas aside.

With big brown eyes, open yet unfocused, memories temporarily replaced the dismal scene in front of her. Smells – deep spice mixes and tangy, acidic curries – were the distant and only memory remnants left of her own mother, but somehow, in the haze of years between her modest childhood and her Cerberus integration, Sophia Sinclair had become the closest thing to family.

“You have to go, Kash,” the older woman had once whispered with desperate blue eyes and firm hands as their latest home crumbled down around them.

Crisp, white lab coats were always her kind of ball gowns and the last set up she’d been in love with were both ruined, turning to ash in front of her.  Literally, in the case of the coat.  Sparks from a busted panel caught a sleeve and had things been a little less dire, she might have stopped to grieve.  As awful as it sounded, eventually you got used to the sound of screams but the red emergency lights and droning, automated evacuation messages replaying through the lab’s speaker system had more than gotten under her skin.

“I can’t leave you here.”

“You must.  There’s an evac shuttle off the intake bay.  Some of the civies will meet you there.”

“How? Why? Come with me?”

The world got just a little brighter when Sophia smiled, taking them both back in time.  These were questions they had always in common. Pale fingers brushed across one side of the young woman’s grief-stricken face in a comforting, almost motherly gesture.

“It’s too late for that,” Sophia murmured soberly in a tone that had a way of ending questions.  “Don’t you worry about me.  We do what we must,” she said with a confident nod and Kashmira almost believed it.  “This is how we survive.  But you need to go.  Now. Last chance.”

One leg was caught in a small vice-grip, a sudden weight pulling her out of memories and back into the harsh reality of the now.  Without thinking she bent, scooped up the small child, and pressed the little girl to her chest, whispering reassurances the way adults were supposed to do before a once-upon-a-time lab security guard, now turned life guard, came close enough to pass her off.  

“Is that everyone?” Kash asked nobody in particular, eyes once again busy scanning the set of screens above the cool metal panel she couldn’t abandon.  She wouldn’t look at the frightened collection of huddled humans on the elevator pad just past it.  She couldn’t stand to see her fate written on their faces.

“Affirmative, Doctor,” came a monotonous, cold robotic voice.  “All extraneous liveware loaded for release.”

Somewhere in the back of her overactive mind she made a mental note to tone down the frigid disinterest of the VI’s communication suite – if she lived that long.  Calling people “liveware” just didn’t seem appropriate anymore.

“And our guests?”

“Intruder estimated time of arrival in one minute thirty seven point oh four seconds, Doctor.  How would you like to proceed?”

She finally glanced over the small, straggling band of defectors and wrong-place/wrong-time civilians that collected on the elevator pad and let her small hand find the button to send them into the tunnels below the surface lab, and hopefully, to safety. Cerberus never just let things go and debts always needed to be repaid but she’d be double damned if anyone else had to suffer any more for her failures.

“X2, divert remaining station power and arm defensive systems.”  It was a small kind of comfort that she sounded so sure of herself but, another part realized broodily that she did kind of like the independent living thing, however temporary her taste of freedom had been.  

With a few quick keystrokes the many screens condensed into a large composite as the red-dirt haze of the world outside the lab came into view from a single camera looking out over the only access entrance.  Hormones and chemicals buzzed inside her soft, organic body; a symphony of electrical impulses, each miniscule cell of her connected to another by invisible lightening as fear, anxiety, and a little bit of dizzying thrill overwhelmed her otherwise rational senses when the shadow of a moving figure appeared in one corner of the screen.

Parts of the Phoenix hard-shell had germinated in her imagination before ever making it into production and there was no mistaking the distinctively aerodynamic, yet structurally functional curving angles of the one black figure that stepped fully into the camera’s view.  She knew every bit of tech in the pistol she looked into as the figure raised poised to shoot.  And if there had been any lingering doubt about exactly who – or maybe what – was coming for her, the golden logo on his chest made it clear – just before the screen went dark.

The irony of an organization with a motto of “humanity first” using engineered, brain-hacked bio-monsters to hunt and destroy every sentient (and most importantly autonomous) form of life that knew their secrets wasn’t lost on her dry but present sense of humor.

“They’re not taking us without a fight,” she told X2, knowing full well that the bot didn’t possess the capacity to care.