80 - Interlude: Uprising
"Ready, Bakkra?" the team's leader asked, leaning out of cover to address his squadmate.
"Charges set and ready to detonate," the demolitionist confirmed, tapping at his Omni-Tool.
"Good. Pull back, get your head down, and get ready to open fire. They're not going to be happy when we open this door."
Bakkra laughed bitterly. "They wouldn't be happy if we knocked politely. Might as well knock 'em off their feet."
The squad leader chuckled. "By the Pillars, you speak the truth. Everyone, get ready on my signal."
Bakkra scrambled away from the door, and the small charges set against it, and slid behind a fallen office desk - the closest thing they had to cover in this section of the office.
Seeing the last of his team in position, the squad leader nodded. "Alright. Bakkra, on four, blow the charges. Once the path is clear, everyone open fire. It's unfortunate, but we can't let anyone get in our way at this juncture. Understood?"
Nine Batarians answered the affirmative, and the squad leader nodded again. "Alright. Everyone ready. One."
The team hunched behind their cover, checking their weapon's heat levels and ammo blocks. Bakkra clutched his Omni-Tool close, opening the detonation app and ensuring everything was set up.
"Two."
Dukku, the team's grenadier, pulled two fragmentation grenades from his belt. Bakkra pressed his finger against the 'Detonate' key.
"Three."
The Batarians ducked their heads, averting their eyes from the door. Bakkra's left hand tightened around the barrel of his assault rifle, the T8's unyielding metal frame a small source of comfort.
"FOUR!"
Bakkra's finger slipped away from the Omni-Tool's screen, and a single muffled explosion boomed, vibrations shaking the ground and the strike team's cover. Smoke filled the air. After a half second pause, when it became apparent no return fire was incoming, all ten surviving members of the strike force stood, faced the door, and opened fire. Dukku tossed forth his two grenades, and two muffled thwumps followed by the pinging of shrapnel on steel signaled their detonation inside the control room.
The deluge of gunfire would have been enough to cut down an entire team of Hegemony marines, let alone the relatively unprotected engineers and communications specialists they expected to find in the Propaganda Centre's control room.
But as the smoke cleared, the team found that they'd only been facing a single opponent.
And he was still standing.
The armour he wore, a suit Bakkra recognised as the Hegemony's much advertised and most advanced powered hardsuit, bore not a single scratch, the kinetic barriers flickering heavily, but still active.
For a long moment, there was just silence as the awed Batarian strike team stared at their new enemy. And then he raised his rifle and fired, and ten became nine, Kurn flung bodily across the room by the force of the impact.
As soon as his first shot rang out, the team opened fire once more - a barrage of mass accelerator shells sparking off the high-capacity shields. The soldier in power armour seemed to barely flinch, raising his oversized harpoon rifle and firing it again.
A shard of metal as long as Bakkra's forearm shot from the rifle, speared Dukku through the chest, and threw him into the far wall, where he slumped alongside Kurn's bleeding corpse.
The Hegemony heavy's shields finally faded under the constant stream of fire, but he continued unabated, apparently trusting the bulk of his plated armour to protect him. Bakkra had to admit, it was doing an admirable job at that - kinetic rounds were pinging off the armour or simply stopping dead when they hit, with nothing really getting through.
Bakkra ducked back behind cover as his rifle began to heat up, turning to face the back of the room just in time to witness Nakral joining Dukku and Kurn, slumping against the far wall with what appeared to be a flash-forged harpoon imbedded in his collar.
Dropping his rifle, Bakkra reached behind his back with both hands, retrieving one of the squad's three trump cards - a Turian-made ML-68 Missile Launcher. A rapid-fire assault weapon used for suppressing infantry squads or fending off light vehicles, Bakkra was confident it would be able to deal with the Hegemony heavy.
Slinging it over one shoulder, he took a deep breath and stood, closing three eyes and bringing the weapon's sight to his face.
The Hegemony heavy realised the threat too late, and had only just begun turning to face Bakkra when the first missile launched, streaking across the ten or so metres separating the two before slamming into the Hegemony soldier's chest.
The flash of light caused all four lenses on Bakkra's helmet to tint and the sound dampening to engage at full force, effectively blinding and deafening him for the few seconds it took the filters to disengage, and when they did, he could only be equal parts shocked and amazed.
The powered exosuit had only a small hole in the chest at the point of impact, and large burn marks across the front of the torso. It was, he suspected, something that could easily be repaired by just removing the damaged torso plate and swapping it for a new one.
The operator, on the other hand… well, the charred flesh seeping from the hole in the hardsuit left little to the imagination in that regard.
Bakkra pushed the missile launcher over his shoulder, clamping it once more to his back, and retrieved his rifle, looking around at the rest of his squad.
His squad leader, and four other men, still lived. Kurn, Dukku, and Nakral lay dead at the rear of the room, huge metal spikes protruding from their bodies. Brukk was also dead, his helmet and presumably his skull caved in by a heavy impact.
Apparently the 'powered' part of 'powered hardsuit' wasn't just to allow the operator to lift it.
"Good work, Bakkra," his leader said, sighing heavily. "If only we'd seen this coming… we could have prepared sooner."
"Sir, we couldn't have known," one of the twins put in - it was impossible for Bakkra to tell which, as both were wearing their helmets, their faces concealed. "Let's just move up, send the message, and get out."
"Rukkar, Vik, Bakkra, sweep the room. Abrul, Davrul, watch our backs. We don't want any more surprises."
The five troopers nodded and spread out, the twins heading back the way they'd come, quietly stepping over the corpses of their dead comrades, and the others moving forward, through the blown-open door into the Propaganda Centre's control room.
The room still smoked from the explosions that had opened the way, and the floor and walls were dotted with pockmarks from shrapnel and stray fire. Fortunately, Bakkra noted, much of the equipment was stored inside cabinets and under desks, where it had been largely safe from fire.
As his two team mates spread out, checking each side of the room, Bakkra moved straight forward, crossing to the far wall to look out through the window, at the compound below.
The two Judak Nurr APCs that had been used to ram the facility's gates were still in the front lot, totalled by the impact and subsequently used as cover by the strike teams. At some point whilst the teams had been inside, one of them had caught fire, if the plumes of smoke and orange glow from the roof hatch were anything to go by.
A hint of movement on the edge of his vision caught his attention and he turned, scanning the area.
A number of metal shapes were bobbing up and down behind the far wall of the compound - the helmets of a Hegemony Enforcer team, no doubt.
He grunted. "Heads up. Looks like enforcers, down in the courtyard."
Rukkar and Vik moved from their sides of the room to the window, rifles raised and ready. Their enemies, visible only by the bobbing of their heads, reached the gate, piling up on one side.
"They're getting ready to breach," Vik observed. Turning to his leader, he asked, "Sir, what should we do?"
"Give me a few more moments, and the transmission will be out. Hold your fire for now - if we're lucky, we'll be able to escape out the back before they catch up."
Vik nodded and turned back to the window.
Bakkra crouched down underneath the windowsill, only his head poking out from above, and his teammates did the same - concealing themselves from view and providing some small amount of protection.
Unfortunately, the Enforcers apparently had other ideas. Rather than rounding the corner and advancing in pairs, as would have been protocol, only a single trooper stepped through the gate, hefting a heavy weapon of his own.
"ROCKET!" Rukkar called, diving backwards away from the window. Bakkra didn't hesitate to follow, throwing himself across the floor of the room.
Barely a second later, yet another explosion lit the control room, smoke and shards of glass flying everywhere. Bakkra crawled forward on his hands and knees, ears ringing, until he reached one of the consoles, slumping behind it for cover.
"Files are uploaded!" a voice called, indistinct due to the ringing in his ears. "We need to clear out, now!"
Through the smoke, Bakkra saw two silhouettes in the doorway, and stumbled towards them. Another explosion sounded behind him, the blast wave throwing him across the room, his rifle slipping from his hands and clattering uselessly on the floor.
His head slammed into the wall, barely cushioned by his lightweight helmet, and his vision blurred, losing all focus. His legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed, dropping to the ground.
The metal beneath his head seemed to be shaking rapidly, the clunk of footsteps agonizingly loud in his ears. He rolled over onto his back, groaning in pain.
Vision swimming, he barely noticed the black metal boot descending towards his face.
---
When Bakkra returned to wakefulness, all he could feel was a weightless sensation, and searing pain in his wrists and ankles.
He tried to open his eyes, but sharp stinging pain across the left side of his face dissuaded him from that course of action. Slowly, he opened just one eye, feeling just a dull throbbing across his face.
He attempted, in various combinations, opening his other eyes, but opening his lower eyes brought back the stinging pain and his upper left eyelid simply refused to move, as if swollen shut.
Resigning himself to a bare fragment of his usual vision, he took in his surroundings. Judging by the pain in his limbs, and the silhouettes in the darkness, he was in chains, hanging almost naked from the wall of a cramped and filthy cell. All four walls were dirt-caked and grey, stained in places with dark brown fluid that may have been blood.
The loincloth he'd been provided, a mockery of his decency, hung loose from his frail frame, doing nothing to ward off the cold inside the cell.
He recognised it - not the cell in particular, but the type. The Hegemony called them Forced Rehabilitation Centres, but they were more commonly known, especially amongst the Judak Nurr, as Drought Pits.
The Hegemony's most infamous torture method, usually reserved for only the most heinous criminals against the Hegemony. For members of the Judak Nurr to be subjected to that kind of punishment...
Bakkra chuckled momentarily before a coughing fit overtook him. Suspended from his chains, he shook violently, coughing up blood. The red liquid splattered on the floor of his cell.
Well, at least I know we got on their nerves.
