Viva La Revolucion!

Posted on Tue Oct 23rd, 2018 @ 12:08am by Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Asa Dael & Ahreva Malana
Edited on on Sun Nov 4th, 2018 @ 1:54pm

Mission: Hera v Hera
Location: Meroset 347, capitol city
Timeline: 2395, Battle of Hera's Planet

Asa Dael tossed the PaDD to Ahreva Malana and said “Keep to cover, but keep going towards the next target. If I don’t make it back, toss a grenade or something in the thing until it falls. I’m right behind you!”

Catching the PaDD, Ahreva just shook her head and hurried on. It wasn't like she had any explosives on her. They were the ones that had them. Still, she had other ways of destroying things. Adjusting her sonic pulse rifle, she re-tuned it to disable electronics. She just hoped the systems of Hera's forces were susceptible to it.

With that, the doctor was using all the extra strength the armor had to offer and leaping up the side of buildings to get to a high rooftop nearby. Once there, the doctor grabbed the rope and grappling hook from the back of their armor and threw it as hard as possible into the flesh of the nearby harpy. Using the enhanced strength of the armor, Asa tied the rope to a nearby support column on the building, and threw three sedative-laced small knives into the Harpy as well.

The doctor yelled at Rita, “Hit it in the head! Get free before that thing falls asleep and lands on you!” as they maneuvered the Harpy closer to the building they were on, angling so Rita could land on top of the roof with Asa.

Grasping the harpy’s chicken-footed claw with one hand, Paris grunted as she swung one foot up to connect with the breast of the bird woman. While she was no mistress of unarmed combat, Rita was still flexible and strong, and with the augmented strength of the armor, her kicks packed considerable power, even at the apex of their arc. As the harpy did not relinquish her grip, the first officer lashed out again and again, kicking at the creature even as it’s claws penetrated her shoulder deeper. The lovely lieutenant cried out as she struggled, until her assailant finally could no longer resist the toxins in its bloodstream and drifted closer to the rooftop. A punch to the knee joint of the creature of myth did the trick, and the harpy dropped the golden armored astronaut to gravity's tender mercy.

Rolling with the impact of the landing, Paris came up onto one knee, then rose, her left arm not particularly excited about operating even as the yellow gold of her armor was stained by a bit of crimson at the left shoulder, while it appeared the right shoulder of the armor had protected her from the creature’s claws.

“Ow…” Paris remarked, checking her HUD to track where Malana might have gotten off to. “Thanks for the save, Doc. Come on, let’s get off this rooftop and find some cover before her sisters and cousins show up.” With that, Paris stepped off the side of the building, sliding down the side with her injured arm and instantly regretting her choice and she cried out sharply in pain. Trying to be stoic, Paris took a deep breath once on the ground, then straightened up, doing her best to appear uninjured so as not to undermine unit confidence.

Asa immediately saw the punctures in the armor, the way Paris was favoring her good arm, and heard the yelp the stoic first officer made upon her exit from the rooftop. Asa decided to take advantage of excellent bone mass and made it to ground level in three easy jumps. Upon landing, they glanced over at Paris and said in the same flat tone that had pervaded their speech since accidentally killing the enemy soldier, “You need pain management to get out of this alive. I’m giving that to you now, and if you want to chew me out later, you can. I may even have words for you regarding use of an injured limb. But that can wait…”

The doctor reached into the holster at their hip filled with hypos and medicines and drew out a small injectable container. They quickly went to Rita’s bare neck and pressed the medicine into her bloodstream. In addition to providing immediate relief to the pain, Rita felt a bit of movement come back into her shoulder and a sense of renewed vigor. Without waiting to be asked, Asa said simply, “Battlefront meds. Not great for long term, but we don’t have long term without them. Still, try not to use the arm if possible.”

“Doc… I promise I’ll be the best patient ever later, but if you could just plug the hole and stop the bleeding for now I’d appreciate it,” Paris offered while scanning the area to insure they were not caught unawares while they were taking a vulnerable moment.

"Understood ma'am," the doctor replied, reaching for a tissue knitter on their belt. "This will feel....unpleasant," they said, "swift tissue regeneration often does, but there's nothing for it if we are going to keep you going. Plus, you have a bit of.....claw......in your shoulder. Light only knows what that would do long term."

The tool began whirring, and as Rita's tissues rapidly knit back together, they pushed the claw out of her shoulder and threw it to the ground. The doctor wiped the residual blood off both human and armor and tossed the bloodied rag they had used. "No point making it easy to track you ma'am. Are you ok to move?"

“Dandy,” Paris relied. Standing up straight, she flexed her left hand experimentally, and found that while it ached, it didn’t hurt. Good drugs, she thought to herself. “Good work Doc- now let’s keep moving. Revolutions aren’t going to foment themselves, after all. We’re going to have to make time, so keep up and keep your eyes open- at this speed we’ll be less careful and more vulnerable-“ Paris didn’t finish the statement before a minotaur rounded the corner and seemed surprised to see them in the alleyway.

Without hesitation, Paris raised the rifle, and a burst of three rounds stitched their way up the creature’s chest before driving its left eye out through the back of its skull. As it dropped to its knees, the first officer was already in motion, taking the doctor’s arm in her off hand, and tugging them along as they began to sprint. “Tempus fugit- time for us to be elsewhere, Myx Dael.”

With that, they took off at a rather reckless speed to catch up with Malana.

The doctor felt their face turn green seeing the death of the Minotaur, but understood the need to keep moving as quickly as possible. They ran to keep pace with Rita, feeling slightly dizzy at their enhanced speed. As the duo ran, crowds of men had turned on their captors, screaming “Death to Hera!” while using table legs, shovels, and other impromptu weapons to bash Amazons on the head. Masses of them were being slaughtered, but it seemed to just spur on their fervor. Fury at each fallen man increased the rage in the groups of women and men, and they began to charge their captors en masse as if a single mind controlled them.

Around the next bend was a group of six children standing in the middle of the road, terrified. Asa spotted a covered pergola that appeared to offer relative safety to the young ones, and paused to pick them up, two at a time, and said, “Hide in the bushes,” before throwing them off the street. They did not know if Rita would approve or not, but they were not going to let children stand in the road and get run down. When they turned around, they found the armored back of the golden girl guarding them. Clearly while she had mission priorities, Paris wasn’t about to forget her humanity in a warzone.

Once the children were out of the way, Asa saw they were closing in on the next temple, and their HUD showed Malana pinned down by two assailants. “Plan?” they shouted to Rita over the din of revolution.

“Draw their fire, rescue the civilian, keep moving,” Paris responded, calibrating the grenade launcher on the fly. Reaching over her shoulder, Paris grasped the hilt of the cutlass she’d chosen, the close-quarters weapon favored by ancient mariners of her world.

As the bell-guard closed around her fist, laced with the alloy that was an anathema to the mythical lifeforms who followed Hera’s commands, Paris never slowed. Instead, as they found the cul-de-sac alley where the stone-faced scientist was seeking cover, Rita bounded up onto a barrel and launched herself up, coming down with the machete-like blade braced against her armored breast, using her momentum to drive it through one of the Amazons pinning down Malana.

While the technique was spectacularly successful, driving the blade through the Amazon while Rita’s weight bore her to the ground, between the bell guard and the awkward landing, the first officer was not exactly in any sort of position to defend herself as she sprawled into the alley, tangled with the dying amazon to whom she was now pinned by her bladed weapon.

Asa came running up quickly, standing to obscure the view of what was happening as much as possible from outside eyes. They glanced at Malana, relieved to find her stony exterior remained in-tact, though what was left of her armor had all but been destroyed at this point. Their next glance showed a charging Amazon running at them full speed ahead. Asa feinted to be preparing for a charge, but at the last possible moment, dropped to the ground while grabbing for their last sedative coated blade and slicing at the Amazons heels. The blade struck deep, severing the tendon and the Amazon fell over the now prone doctor.

Under normal circumstances, it would not have been a killing blow, but in the process of falling and tripping over Asa, the warrior managed to hit her head with great force on a nearby cart, and then with her neck at a deadly angle on the ground. The El-Aurian started to stand up and froze when they saw the results of their handiwork.

“I…I…I…..wasn’t trying to kill her,” Asa sobbed briefly. Then, upon seeing Rita stuck on the ground, they rushed over, shoved the dying Amazon out of the way, and helped the XO back to her feet. “Are- are you ok ma’am?” they inquired. Rita noticed the quaver in their voice, and the tremor that was growing ever-stronger in the physicians hands.

I am going to die out here. I am going to die and it’s my own stupid fault because I took a job on the Intel ship that does dirty deeds. I’m not a soldier, and pretending to be one is going to get me and them killed. Stupid girl, Rita had played out in her head when she finally managed to wrench her hand free from the bell-guard of her sword, just as Doc Dael spoke and Rita realized they had passed their breaking point.

“Doctor? Listen to me, because I need you to be here with me now. You have saved my life more than once today. In order to do so, blood has been shed and lives taken. I know. I know. This is not what you signed on for, I know, and you don’t want to be here. But these people rioting in the streets need our help. They need our help and we’re the only ones here. The humanitarian option doesn’t work on most of our opponents, and-“ Rita bodily flung the physician out of the way as a spear clanged off her thigh armor, denting it painfully. Firing a short burst, a minotaur dropped from the rooftop to fall into the alley with a rather revolting sound.

Stepping over to where she had spun the frail physician, Paris offered her left hand to help the doctor up. “There are no heroes here, Doctor. There’s just us, so we’ll have to do. And we aren’t noble or above it all- we’re here and these people want us dead, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let that happen. When this is over we can feel all of this and deal with it. But right now, if we don’t stop her, all of our shipmates are going to die. These people will live out generations in slavery, and my home planet, the seat of the United Federation of Planets, will be overrun by these very troops whom I’m putting rounds through in the streets of this alien world.”

“So for now, Doc, I’m sorry. But duty calls, and on the side of the angels, there’s you, me and she makes three. So deep breath, focus on the mission and let’s keep moving.” The expression she’d worn through the speech was one of grim heartbreak. Rita Paris was good at many things, but concealing her emotions was not one of them. Regret and shame were clear on her face, but she couldn’t protect them all if she had to literally carry a shell-shocked doctor on her back. Right now she needed back-up, and she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to get these two out of here alive. Her speech was as much for herself to hear as the two charges she was trying to protect.

“Un-understood, ma’am. Can we go now?” the doctor asked, studiously avoiding looking at the body of the Amazon they had attacked.

Sensing Rita’s assent before it was even given, they fell back in the middle spot between Malana and Rita as the trio made their way through the streets. The group approached the shrine, and a power structure was visible from above again as they made their way down the streets.

Malana tinkered with her rifle a bit as she walked, trying to get it working again before just slapping it back on her back. Rather than get upset about not having a weapon, she just grunted and picked up a few rocks.

This time however, the defenders of the shrine were expecting assault from above, having had a prime view of the surrounding area. Four harpies sat atop the roof and Amazons prowled the exterior. A small uprising of men and women combined were raging two streets over from the shrine, and a small detachment of Amazons had been dispatched to put down the revolutionaries before the band endangered their charge.

“Ma’am, I’m having a terrible idea…can we work with the revolution? At least use it for a bit of cover fire? We aren’t going to get off this hill otherwise…” the doctor concluded.

Long and hard, Paris stared at the shrine, running through possibilities in her head. One plan after another was discarded, until she checked a setting on the rifle, pointed it at the structure and pulled the trigger, although there was no apparent effect.

“No, Doctor. We don’t endanger the civilians if we can help it. We’re still Starfleet,” Paris declared as she led the trio into another side street.

Moving to circle around the shrine, the first officer moved through the alleys to where the resistance was being slaughtered by yet another Minotaur. Raising the rifle, a shot rang out, gaining the beast’s attention as it passed through its shoulder. As it turned its attention to the Starfleet officer, Paris switched to auto and put a short burst through the head and shoulders of the rampaging behemoth. As it collapsed in the street, the citizenry fell upon it with their sticks and rocks and crude farming implements. The golden-armored avenger strode through, wasting no time to tarry with the locals, who were jubilant at the fall of their oppressor and excited to embrace their saviors.

Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, Paris worked the comm unit on her left wrist. “Paris to Thor. I’ve painted a target in the city- give me two micro-missiles at that location. Fire now, on my authorization,” she ordered. Swinging the rifle back into her hand, she ejected the spent clip and slammed home another, hoping against hope that she would not run out of ammunition on this mission.

Behind them, two missiles screamed out of the sky, and the shrine exploded, once in a fireball that consumed it, then again in another that seemed to be overkill.

Recoiling instinctively from the blast, Asa read the PaDD and pointed directly across the valley where the hills began rising again, “2700 meters from here, but the next target is halfway around the hill. We should try to stay to the outskirts, although they are bound to expect us coming no matter what we do at this point.”

“Not like we’ve left a trail behind us,” Rita smirked, chucking a thumb over her shoulder at the smoldering plumes of smoke they had left in their wake. “All right. 2700 meters…. Stupid big city. All right Miss Malana, as our slowest member, you set the pace. So let’s start making time, shall we?”

"As steady as a mountain," was Malana's only reply as she kept up at a reasonable pace.

With that, the trio set off at a jog, with Paris in the lead. Along the way, more and more encounters with revolting citizenry were encountered, and at one point a mob of citizens turned to assault the landing party, assuming them to be more of Hera’s troops who were simply as yet unseen. A spray of rubber bullets into the leading edge of the crowd slowed them enough for the trio to make good their escape, but it demonstrated that Hera’s grip on this planet had most certainly slipped. And whether they took out the psionic collection relays or not, the locals were none too keen on worshipping their dark mistress any longer.

Taking a break in an alleyway, Paris ran her gloved hand across her sweat-soaked face, shoving her shock of short blonde hair out of her eyes. “How about a little pick-me-up, Doc? My get up and go seems to have gotten up and went.”

With an attempt at a smile, Asa said, "I hear that starts to happen around 200 or so," while reaching for a tricorder to confirm Rita was not suffering any serious injuries. "I would tell you that if we don't properly treat your arm within the next six hours then it's going to be a bitch to fix through physio and a series of small surgeries, but it's not like there is anything we can do for it out here. Still, no more than six doses of these meds in 24 hours, and this," they said, injecting more into the Lieutenant Commander's' neck, "makes two."

Malana inspected the wound as well this time. "Hold still for a moment for me as well, Commander." She had ground the rocks she had picked up into a powder and now she mixed them with a bit of her saliva to form a sort of plaster or concrete and she used that to patch the holes in Rita's armor. Within moments the cement had set into a rock hard patch and Malana grunted at her handiwork.

Turning to face both and show the PaDD to the two women, Asa pointed to a small dot near to their current location. "Decision time- there is a rail to take workers and materials all the way to the top of the mountain- where the main temple is. There is no way to know if the track is in working condition the whole way, or who may greet us at any point. However, it's a hell of a lot faster than legging it. I'm in good enough condition to run, but I'm enhanced and uninjured. What say you?"

Pulling out one of her three tricorders, Malana scanned as far as she could, searching for the power supplies that gave Hera her power, as well as Hera herself. She then turned the tricorder towards the general direction of the other targets the teams were to hit. "From my scans, it seems most targets have been hit and forces have been sufficiently scattered and distracted that I recommend we take the risk. In fact, I no longer detect the presence of Hera's primary source of power."

Peering up at the mountain and the rugged trail that led around it, Lieutenant Commander Paris shook her head. "I don't think I have that run in me. And those harpies will just keep after us, and I'm on my last clip already. I don't know about fighting my way up the mountain, but running the rail like that as a shortcut? I might just put you down for a commendation for original thinking, Doctor." That was an Academy joke, and had been ever since Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru. "I'm no soldier, but running is something with which I'm very familiar, and quite able."

Off in the distance, an explosion was heard, a loud one followed by cracking and mild tremors felt even this far away. "Sounds like our shipmates have been busy as well. Your plan is sound, Myx Dael, lead on. I must say, you make an excellent navigator."

Scanning again, Malana nodded. "All targets have been hit and with only the..." Suddenly, a low rumble from the main temple could be heard, reverberating across the land. "It seems our hostess is upset," Malana commented dispassionately. "Shall we go entertain her?"

“Cranky goddesses whose revolutions are underway because I made the call are my favorite first contacts,” Rita Paris quipped. “I wonder how Ensign Jurot did with her meeting?” Another rumble shook the ground slightly, and Paris turned an eye toward the mountain. “Not well I’d wager, given her diplomatic skills…”

With a nod and gesture towards the direction the party should take, Dael began wending their way through the underbrush towards the rail line. “Do we need to get in touch with the rest of the away team ma’am, or should we carry on and tell them where to meet us? A little extra weaponry might not be the worst idea…”

“With all the chaos, I suspect it might not be the worst idea.” Reaching for her classic communicator, Paris snapped her fingers as she realized that she left it with the Commodore. Tapping the wrist comm, she encrypted the signal, then sent a text message to the Thor to be prepared to dust off the away team at the spaceport by coordinating with Lieutenant Commader sh’Zoarhi. When the spaceport mission was complete, Paris ordered the Thor crew to ferry the other half of the landing party to the main temple in 18 minutes. Since Hera’s chariot fleet was supposed to be taking off in 13 minutes, and if the other away team did not succeed, the Thor already had their orders to destroy the spaceport with extreme volcanic prejudice.

Glancing back up, weariness tried to settle in, as shock over the day and the attendant adrenaline had their way with the explorer of another age, thrust into combat with myths older than she was. Seeing the expectant and vulnerable face of the young immortal and the impassive expression of the alien scientist, Paris drew herself upright, took a deep breath and nodded to them both, her exterior the soul of confident command.

“Last leg of the journey, people. Let’s go make a house call on a cranky immortal who really should have learned better people skills by this millennium of her life. Shall we?” With that said, Paris set off in the direction of the base of the tram system the Doctor had located, which would enable them to make an unconventional approach to the tyrant’s lair.