Saga of the Sixteenth, Part III: Guns of the First

We boarded the Osprey in our neural underlayer, a black, skintight bodysuit that acted as an interface with our battle armor.  I kept my mouth shut - Linde had explained we wouldn't be using our normal powered armor.  Jyuro had seen fit to outfit us with something called 'Cadre' armor, a term which, when he mentioned it, caused my normally unflappable squad leader to sit bolt upright in her chair, jaw working soundlessly.  She had remained silent ever since, and as we stepped up the ramp, she moved woodenly to one of the huge, sleek pods in the Osprey's bay.

There were four of them, one for each of us, I surmised.  Linde palmed a scanner on hers, and the pod cracked open with a hiss.  My eyes widened, and I heard a quiet gasp from Rev.

Inside the pod was a suit of armor unlike any I'd ever seen.  Our normal Mark IV PCA suits were rough, angular things, an amalgamation of armor plates and black ballistic material designed to protect vital areas and allow for maximum survivability.  They weren’t perfect, but they did their job well.  These suits on the other hand…

Everything about them sang of death.  The sleek, smooth joints, the seamless helmet, the way the matte black coating seemed to suck in all light that touched it were a paean to swift, efficient destruction.  I could take on an army with one of these.

Linde's hand clenched and unclenched.  I filed the gesture away for later, and strapped myself into my crash webbing.  Sonja sat beside me, with Rev and Linde opposite us.  The pitched whine of the rotors rose with a deep, throaty roar, and the assault ramp closed as the Osprey took wing.

Sonja broke the squad's silence.  "I don't remember seeing those in the Armory."

Linde shook her head.  "These are from before your time.  We don't use them much anymore."

"Why?"

Rev grimaced.  "Mostly because these are the only four left.  The Sixteenth used to field dozens."

I raised an eyebrow.  "What happened?"

Our red-haired XO clammed up completely.  Linde's expression was dark.

"The single greatest loss of life in the history of the XVI.  Shadow Moses."

I cocked my head.  "Never heard of it."

"I'm not surprised. It's not...talked about.  But you may as well know the history of the armor you're about to inherit."

---

"Mauser, Winchester, this is Rifle Actual.  Coming up on the IP in T-minus ten mikes.  All Rifles, prepare for deployment."

Winchester Two-Five made yet another futile attempt to school her nerves into some semblance of control.  She stood fifth in line with her squad, Winchester Two, beside a row of drop pods.  The heavily-stealthed C-5 Galaxy - second of a flight of four - shuddered as it hit a patch of particularly nasty turbulence, sending yet another jolt through her stomach.  A friendly hand slapped her shoulder from behind.

"I know this is your first combat drop, Linde.  Trust me, you're not feeling anything all of the rest of us felt on our first deployment.  You're gonna be fine."  Winchester Two-One, a tall, sinewy black-haired girl who reveled in the painfully Irish name of Alicia Deirdre DeVries, had a warm, pleasant contralto that eased the knot in the rookie's stomach.

Linde Van Dyke didn't turn, but briefly covered DeVries' hand with her own.  It was purely symbolic, of course - human contact and Cadre battle armor were mutually exclusive - but it made her feel better.

Alicia closed the private channel, and opened the squad-wide com.  "You heard the Old Lady, Winchesters.  Check your gear, check your wing's seals, and harness up."

Linde's HUD showed no problems with her armor, but she ran through a systems check regardless.  Her battle rifle responded perfectly, sensors and synth-link green across the board, pharmacope dosage full and ready.  Her eyes lingered on the last, specifically a single chemical compound labelled with a red "T."

"Linde!  Focus.  Give me a seal check."  DeVries' voice snapped her back to awareness, and she checked her squad leader's telltales while DeVries did the same.  She'd been assigned as Alicia's wing for the operation because she'd had no time to integrate into the unit - it fell to her to watch her squad leader's back, so DeVries could focus on running Winchester Two's part of the operation.

Linde slapped Alicia's shoulder, indicating good seal, and stepped sideways into her drop harness.  The bulky unit locked into a series of hardpoints on her armor, and Linde took a deep, shuddering breath.  There.  Now she was committed.  No backing out now.

The com crackled again, and Warmaster Artemis Ketia's voice came through her helmet's speakers.  "All Rifles, this is Rifle Actual.  Let's hit the high points one last time.  Your objective is a complex roughly forty kilometers north of your drop point.  Intel doesn't know what it is, or who it belongs to, but they know it's important.  We may be looking at a facility run by another Officio, so stay alert.  As far as we know, they don't know we're coming.  Keep it that way as long as you can.  If the defecation hits the oscillation, you're on your own until we can mobilize conventional assets to support you, so keep it clean. Good luck, and godspeed.  Rifle out."

Alicia began making final pre-drop checks on the rest of Winchester Two, but Linde heard only a blur of sound.  Her mouth was dry; she swallowed.  Still dry.  She closed her eyes and waited.

After a subjective eternity, the drop klaxon blared, and the massive transport shuddered as the first wave of Puella Magi dropped from the launch bay.  Linde was fifth in line, and her stomach spasmed as the girl in front of her - Winchester Two-Four, Obaseki Osayaba - dropped into the night.

A very large, very angry mule kicked her squarely between the shoulderblades.

Linde had a cannonball's-eye view of the world as the magnetic rail on which her pod was mounted fired her directly at the ground at precisely 425 miles per hour.  Her armor's inertial dampeners absorbed most of the shock, and Linde barely suppressed a whoop as her adrenaline spiked.

----

The impact with the ground should have, by all rights, turned the entirety of Winchester Two into a fine layer of red jelly.  At fifty feet from the icy ground, however, the squad's drop pods each fired a set of quick-burning rocket engines mounted in their bases, so that when Alicia DeVries' pod slammed into the ice, she barely had to bend her legs to absorb the impact.  The front hatch blew off as explosive bolts detonated, and Alicia sprang free of her harness, going immediately to ground.

She keyed her mic.  "Rifle, Winchester Two-One.  Winchester Two is on the ground.  I say again, Winchester Two is boots on the ground."

"Solid copy, Winchester.  Proceed to objective.  Rifle out."

The rest of her squad loped down the hillside towards her.  Their dispersal pattern on the drop had been nearly perfect, almost precisely one hundred meters separated each trooper.  Winchester One, as well as Mauser One and Two, had touched down nearby as well, and the four units advanced toward their objective in a staggered line.  So far, it seemed they'd caught the enemy napping.

"I don't know what all the fuss is about, honestly."  Astrid Nordbø, Winchester Two-Two and Alicia's XO, spoke on the squad-wide channel.  "I mean, it's just a research facility.  I don't understand why this warranted the deployment of the ENTIRE Officio, and why we're being so bloody-"

Nordbø's voice chopped off with a gasp as missile contrails erupted from hidden launch sites along both sides of the valley.  Alicia keyed her mic, and shouted the words nobody wanted to hear.

"SAM launch!  SAM launch!"

----

Forty-thousand feet overhead, Winchester Two-One's alert was received with swift, consummate professionalism.  The sixteen transport planes dumped chaff and IR flares and went as evasive as they could, while the two modified Boeing 737s escorting them lit off their ECM.  It was beautifully executed. It was an intricate, precise dance, as the pilots threw their planes into maneuvers the aircraft had no right to be doing.

Ultimately, however, it was futile.

The missiles streaking toward the transports were not used by any army in the world.  They were absolute bleeding-edge, and they navigated the countermeasures like no missile should have been able to.

Even then, the Magical Girls aboard each transport would likely have survived a hit from a normal SAM, unless the missile struck their Soul Gem directly.  These missiles, however, had been designed with Magical Girls specifically in mind.  As the thermobaric warheads detonated against the unarmored skins of the transports, many of their occupants didn't even have time to scream.

----

Linde Van Dyke bit off a curse as the SAMs detonated amongst the transports.  The huge, lumbering aircraft were ideal for transportation and deployment, but they were also very, very slow to turn.  Eight missiles found their mark, and flaming debris rained from the sky.  Mixed in with the flaming pieces of aircraft were flaming pieces of her comrades - Colt and Mosin hadn't deployed before the missiles launched.

Linde stood transfixed for a moment, before a hand grabbed her arm and dragged her into motion.

"Come on, come on!  We have to clear the drop zone, they'll have us zeroed in -"  Winchester Two-Three, Alexandra Filipov, was thrown from her feet as the world exploded behind her.  Shells began to rain from the sky exploding amongst the troopers.

"FUCK!  Mortars!  Move it, People!"  DeVries's voice galvanized Linde, and she pulled Filipov to her feet, supporting the girl with her shoulder as the pair ran from the bombardment zone.  "Astrid!  Find the spotter!"

"Got him lit, Alley!  Reference right side ridge!"

"Five, take him out!"

Linde took a breath and closed her eyes.  Her cerebral implant projected the feed from her armor's sensors into her retinas, showing the artillery spotter highlighted bright red against the trees along the ridge.  She thumbed a mental switch, and her suit's integrated, shoulder-mounted battle rifle swiveled on its servos with viperish speed.  A crosshair superimposed itself on her 'vision,' appearing over the spotter.  Another mental twitch, and a crisp, precise, three-round burst of subcaliber discarding-sabot penetrator rounds punctured the man's helmet.

"Good shooting, Five."

Linde nodded.

The operation channel opened, and Artemis Ketia's shell-shocked voice came through.  "All Rifles, Rifle Actual.  Break contact and go to ground.  We're working on an evac-"

"Belay that."  There was a nearly audible intake of breath.  Jyuro, Incubator of the XVI, continued.  "You will push forward toward the objective."

There was a pregnant pause.  Ketia's voice, when it returned, was tightly controlled.  "With all due respect, Sir, my people just lost almost half their numbers in a matter of seconds.  We have no idea what we'd be sending them into if we push forward.  We need to-"

"We can do it."  Alicia's quiet interruption stopped her Warmaster cold.

Ketia's response was very quiet.  "Think about what you're saying, Alley.  We have no idea what you're up against down there, but whatever it is, it's a hell of a lot more than we expected."

"Par for the course, Warmaster.  When aren't we outnumbered and outgunned?"

There was a long pause, before the Warmaster eventually sighed.  "You're the commander on the spot, Alley.  It's your call."

"I'm the what?"

Jyuro again cut in.  "The Warmaster is correct.  You are the senior surviving member of the strike force."

Alicia blew out a breath.  "Then yes.  Yes, we'll do it."

"Godspeed, then.  And good luck.  Rifle out."

----

Several hours later, Linde lay on her stomach beside DeVries, as her commander surveyed the bunker complex before them.  Their being prone probably wasn't strictly necessary - Cadre armor had unparalleled stealth capability, and was all but invisible to the naked eye with its refractor field engaged - but DeVries was taking no chances.

"We'll have to go through it."  The older girl sounded resigned, and slightly numb.  "If we go around, they'll just airlift them in front of us again."

Linde studied her tactical map.  The bunker was exactly where The Book said it should be, on a low rise in the middle of the valley, blocking any attempt to bypass it.  Under normal circumstances, such an installation would be a non-issue.

Unfortunately, these circumstances were anything but normal.

Of the hundred Magical Girls of the XVI, only fifty-three were still with DeVries.  Forty had been lost to the SAM barrage, and seven more were killed by artillery or ambushes over the past several hours.  Now, with a mere five kilometers from their objective, the surviving girls of the Sixteenth were stalled.

Linde let her eyes scan across the map, then focused.  "Alley?  You seeing this?"  She dropped a marker on the map.

DeVries was silent for a moment.  "Yes.  Yes I am."  Her voice regained some of its life.  "It strikes me that whoever put that bunker has a better mind for strategy than tactics."

"Oh?  How's that?"

Beneath her helmet, Alicia DeVries grinned like a shark.  "Otherwise, he'd never have overlooked THIS."

----

The Sixteenth Officio had long had a policy of disallowing the unregulated use of magic amongst its girls.  This applied both to everyday life, and to missions.  In order to compensate, Jyuro instead commissioned powered armor from the Fourth, designed to be the most advanced made at the time.  This armor did much to make up for the girls’ non-use of their powers.

The Tick did the rest.

Of all the secrets Jyuro held, the Tick was among the most jealously-guarded.  None of the girls knew where he got it, or how it was made, or even what was in it.  What they did know was that it worked.

When the chemical cocktail was released into the bloodstream, it accelerated the user’s thought processes by an incredible margin.  Every twitch, every movement could be carefully considered, measured, and executed precisely as the user intended it to be.  Linde had once seen a pair of Officio girls sparring while riding the Tick; both moved with incredible speed, yet unerring precision.  Each bout ended in a draw, as both combatants had ample time to recognize their opponent’s next move and compensate accordingly.

Essentially, the Tick gave a soldier a gracious plenty of the most valuable commodity on the battlefield:  time.

Thus it was that the soldier who stood watch over a certain part of the bunker’s outer fortifications, alert and ready in his powered armor, never had a chance when Alicia DeVries rose out of a fold in the ground before him.  He was good, very good, in fact, trained and experienced to the pinnacle of skill.

But Alicia was riding the Tick.

Alicia watched as the man ever-so-slowly brought his rifle to his shoulder.  She floated in a daze as her body vaulted the low wall, and her hands gripped the rifle’s barrel.  She saw the leg sweep coming a subjective thirty seconds before it arrived, and had already leapt over it, bearing the soldier down on his back and cutting his throat with her combat knife.

She watched her tactical map as the survivors of the Sixteenth surged out of that same fold in the ground, the one the area’s commander had overlooked when placing the bunker.  The one that took the girls directly to the wall, without ever coming into sight of the guards.

The girls ghosted silently into the bunker, quietly killing any unfortunate soldier they came across.  They were in their element - this is what they did.

Eventually, one man looked up at exactly the wrong moment, and managed to snap off a shot before Astrid’s blade bisected his gun, then his head.  The now-alerted soldiers turned to face the girls who’d somehow managed to infiltrate the bunker, and pandemonium ensued.  Battle rifles flamed on full automatic, men and Magical Girls cursed and fired and died.

Linde ran past open doors, the speed of the Tick giving her time to target each unprepared individual within each room, putting a burst into every head as she passed the door frame.  A subjective hour, and thirty seconds of real-time, later, the fighting was over.

The girls of the Sixteenth left the bunker behind as quickly and quietly as they’d come.  Behind them, over seventy-five power-armored soldiers - and four of their own - lay cooling in the night.

----

Even Alicia was getting jumpy.  Ever since they’d left the bunker behind, the girls of Rifle hadn’t encountered any sign of resistance.  After the constant, harrying attacks of the previous hours, the sudden, unexplained silence set everyone on edge.

Alicia and Linde were once again belly-down on a low ridge, this time scanning the target compound itself.  There was no sign of movement on, or outside the walls.  No lights shone within, either, lending the whole place an eerie, desolate air.

Alicia stood.  “Alright, People, move in.  Twenty meter spread, and keep your eyes open.  We’ve lost too many already tonight - I don’t want to lose any more.”

The last forty-nine girls of the Sixteenth Officio Assassinorum moved as one down the rise toward the gates of the compound.  As they reached the base of the hill, a single, slight figure stepped out.  Linde’s battle rifle tracked her, but Alicia threw up a hand.

“Hold fire!”

The girl stopped in front of the gates.  The moonlight gleamed off a gold-tipped staff of some sort, and set off highlights in her light-brown hair.  Her white-and-blue costume, coupled with her weapon, identified her as a Magical Girl.

She bowed slightly.  “Hello.  I appreciate the effort you’ve all made to get here, but I need you to leave.  Now.”  Her voice was pleasant, even friendly - but there was a note of steel beneath.

Alicia pulled her helmet off, and regarded the girl across the snowy field.  “If you know how hard we’ve fought, you know how many we’ve lost.”  The girl nodded, sadly.  “Then you know I can’t let their sacrifices be in vain.”

“You won’t retreat, then?”

“I’m afraid not.  Now stand aside.”

The girl shook her head.  “I cannot.”

Alicia pulled her helmet back on.  “Then I apologize for the necessity.”

“As do I.”  The girl lowered her staff, pointing toward Alicia.  Something on the shaft moved, like the bolt of a rifle, and a series of pink rings appeared around the staff.

Alicia had had enough.  “Open fire!”

“Divine Buster.”

The world went black.

--------

I sat back in the seat.  “Jesus Christ, Linde.  What the hell happened?”

Linde grimaced.  “Apparently, Alicia tackled me just before the blast hit.  I don’t remember any of it.  I woke up in Medical a week later.  They had to regenerate half my body.”

“And the others?”  Sonja’s voice was quiet, fragile.

Linde didn’t respond.  She just bowed her head.

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom.  “Touchdown in five.  Welcome to Big Shell.”

Linde looked up.  “Anyway.  All that to say, that’s the legacy you carry when you wear this armor.  The Cadre does not retreat, nor does it surrender.  We complete the mission, at any cost.”

We finished the flight in silence.