Memento Mori (Exalted/40k)

The Tension of Silence

Years Ago

It was not often that your battles began quietly. Murder was loud in Gunmetal, fighting words exchanged and guns drawn at dusk. It was fast too, a car roaring by and barrels spitting death from the windows, a sudden hail of lead through the flimsy sheet metal walls. Today your work had you engaged in an exception to those well worn Metallican expectations. It sat uneasy across your shoulders and coiled around your trigger finger in a damnable itch.

Your gun lead the way, matte finish making it a shadow within shadows, the bulk of its new silencer dragging on your old reliable unpleasantly. But your focus lay on the edge of the hab-block roof in front of you and the gap separating it from the warehouse roof that you needed to reach. The man behind you with the plank huffed under his burden, trying to stay quiet as you reached the edge. He knelt and laid the plank across the gap, then pulled out his own weapon and screwed on a silencer of his own.

You didn't have long until the spotter came back on his patrol.

You both crossed, crouching behind the rumbling air purifiers and piping laid across the roof of this warehouse building. The first man found you as he came around a curve of pipe. Your gun popped. His blood sprayed across your face as he fell into your arms, his head a ruin. The corpse was eased down and you continued after your colleague. At the crossroads in the piping you looked at each other, nodded, and split. He was heading for the north facing anti-vehicle emplacement and you were heading for the southern.

After working your way through the maze of the roof, the back of the armored emplacement emerged from the steam and darkness, two men at the end of the path. One standing, smoking, a las-rifle on a sling around his shoulders. The other seated behind the heavy stubber, leaning back with his hands behind his head. You stood with your back against a ventilation machine and let out a breath. Your heart held steady and you inhaled. Bending around the machinery, you shot the standing man.

He crumpled, dropping across the second, who did not have time to shout as you turned the top of his head into bloody chunks. The second man's body jumped, gurgling and they both sprawled across the gore strewn innards of the emplacement. Your exhale ended and the smell of blood and voided guts and cordite filled your nose. You sighed.

You turned away and reached up to your comm-bead. The fizzing zap of a las-weapon startled you, your gun up and pointed into the maze. Working your jaw, you turned back and hurried through the tangled machinery. You found a similar tableau of battle at the northern emplacement, except for two key differences: your colleague was dead with a hole burned through his forehead, and the man with the las-pistol that had killed him was leaning against the emplacement and pawing at his chest for a vox unit.

Unlucky, the both of them. Two shots to the chest ended the life of the survivor and shattered the vox. You knelt beside your former colleague and closed his wide eyes. A shame. But you did not have time to dally, and did not know who might miss him. You stepped back into the maze. Paranoia kept your eyes sharp as you walked back over the plank and onto the roof of the hab-block. The roof access stairwell yawned open for you and you descended.

You raised fingers to your comm-bead again, tracing over the Takara branding on its housing.

"Clear."

The silence after your signal was broken by the sound of heavy engines roaring, armored trucks pulling up onto the north and south sides of the building. Their cargo of men unleashed a hail of bullets into the warehouse. You could hear plascrete and glass shatter as your steps echoed down the stairs. Up and down the stairwell, you could also hear people in the hab-block wake up in panic, pouring onto the stairs to seek shelter. The sight of a running gunman sent many lurching back, clearing the way for you. Near the bottom, a man didn't see you coming and you smashed an elbow into the back of his head. As he caught himself on the railing you slammed through the door at the bottom, and emerged into the lobby to a crowd of people milling around in confusion or seeking cover.

Nobody else got in your way as you made for the emergency back exit and burst onto the streets. Already the warehouse the Takara goons had been tearing into was boiling over with return fire from the Doru enforcers, but their weapons were unable to pierce the armor of the heavy trucks and the Doru were swiftly being picked off. A voice clicked onto the comm-bead, clear and congratulatory.

"Excellent work, Mr. Reeve. Truly, my men would be out of sorts without your expertise." Your paymaster said, smooth like butter. You slowed to a walk, ducking into an alley. Already, people were rubbernecking to watch the unfolding gun-battle behind you.

A life of practice with bosses like him kept your disgust out of your voice. "That's their problem. Now, about our business arrangement..."

This man paid the rent, nothing more.

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A short little scene that came to mind @Maugan Ra, showing off our guy's natural precision and talent for silence. Makes sense to me he might have some chances to practice stealth on some of the commissions he's had.