A place for fun and joy! A little bit of Emily Piggot history for the Rifts story I'm working on. (Other history snuck in.)
For people who aren't Rifts-aware, Hermann Voss is actually a bog-standard
VX-500 full-conversion 'Borg, which is basically the gameline's mascot cyborg. (The SAMAS and its variants are its mascot power armor.)
Interlude: Red Type
"This is stupid." The voice had a German accent, though a relatively light one, and came from next to her. It was pitched too softly for others to overhear, which was good considering the content.
Emily Piggot glanced aside at the cape assigned to support her platoon. "Didn't you emigrate after you
unmasked and then picked one too many fights with Gesellschaft?" she replied, in the same quiet tone.
"Ja." The red-colored cyborg next to her replied, without heat. If anything he sounded amused, though since he was masked up behind the demonic faceplate of his heavy armor it was impossible to be sure. "But then I cannot pretend to be normal, and thus what use is a mask save armor for the head?" He had a point. Even underneath the heavy armor that he wore as extra protection, Hermann Voss' body had been wholly replaced by cybernetics he made with his Tinker abilities. He could no longer pass for a regular human, even if she knew that under the demonic-looking face was one that looked just like a human face and did all the things a human face did.
In a way, she found Hermann Voss admirable. For a grunt, service was an offering; you offered your life to your country, and sometimes it accepted. Not Voss. He had made his choices with care, and locked himself out of any other path on purpose. For Voss, service was a chosen destiny. She raised her voice. "THIRD HERD! MOVE OUT!"
xxx
It didn't take long for things to go wrong. Hyakowa died to a tiny thing, with knives for arms, sweeping the first structure. It had dropped from the ceiling and slashed his throat to ribbons before they could do anything. That had been just a taste, though. They'd made it as far as the center of the town, and she could see Calvert's platoon across the square, when there had been at least a dozen cries of "Contact!" and two brief screams. And then the capes had abandoned them as
things converged on their position. All but one. Voss was still there, running at his enhanced speeds between various parts of the platoon, firing both the weapon he'd brought, some kind of energy blaster, and a squad machine gun he'd picked up after her first squad's gun team had been killed by something with five legs and the ability to throw lightning.
Emily put her rifle to her shoulder and fired a pair of three-round bursts into the vaguely humanoid shape in front of her, center mass. It went over, but kept moving, and she dropped and rolled to the side as it spewed flame at her. Her RTO, Hernandez, hit it with a grenade from his rifle's grenade launcher, and that at least killed it. "That was my last grenade, El-Tee!" She nodded, registering it but not really listening to him, and cocked her head a moment.
Shit. She couldn't hear any sound of fighting behind her anymore. She glanced back but couldn't see anything. She should have been able to hear Calvert's people, at least. And her own rearguard should have been...
Something leaped a fence to her side and she brought her rifle around before recognizing the red color. Voss set down two people, who looked...well actually they didn't look any more scared than anyone else, even given the ride. That was Satterlee and...she didn't recognize the other. His face was burned but he was still standing. "Leutnant. I regret to report first squad is annihilated, and Jackson is all that's left of second platoon." Voss' voice was clipped, and his head snapped to one side, followed by a panel in his right leg dropping open and a gun barrel falling out, firing two energy blasts into something that had just came around the corner behind them. "And our position is compromised."
"Fuck!" Her rapidly shrinking command was down from forty to fifteen now, by her count, her command group and the remains of third squad who were near the edge of the perimeter. Firing picked up from that direction and Voss was off again as quickly as he'd come, heading to support them. She climbed to her feet, then looked at the seven soldiers around her and started jogging. "Come on, we need to close it up!"
The sound of helicopter rotors made her look up, but it was distant, closer to Calvert's position. Damn. "Keep moving!" A moment later she heard sharp explosions to her front, louder than grenades. She knew Voss' frame had a limited number of missiles, carried in launch tubes on the back.
xxx
There were seven of them left. They were close to the edge of town. Hernandez was out of ammunition. Jackson and Weathers were both wounded badly with burns but their legs and trigger fingers still worked. van Buren had lost a leg, and was being carried in Voss' one remaining arm; the cyborg wasn't as crippled as a human being would be by the loss, but his own left leg was damaged, limiting him to a human jog rather than speeds more suited to cars. Emily doubted they had more than six mags, her sidearm's nine rounds, and a grenade left between them. Even Voss had warned her he had less than twenty shots left between the two weapons that had been concealed in his legs. The radio had taken some acid meant for Hernandez, but Voss still had his built-in comms so they weren't out of contact. She wiped sweat and blood from trickling cut on her head from her eyes and leapfrogged to the next building.
"Leutnant." Voss said next to her. He wasn't point only because he was carrying van Buren, who despite the acid-burned-off leg and the morphine syrette for pain looked alert, clutching her rifle with conspicuously pale knuckles against her dark skin. She looked like a child being carried by the eight-foot cyborg. "I think it is time to consider other options."
"I'm listening." Emily said quietly.
"There is a flight of Air Force planes overhead. PRT Command has refused to give me their frequency, but I have been able to locate it anyways. They are armed with bombs, Leutnant. With your permission, I will attempt to talk to them directly and have them blast open a path for us to clear the town, where a personnel carrier can reach us. We will both likely be accused of insubordination and possibly secrecy violations." Voss' tone was matter-of-fact.
Decision came easily to her. "Do it."
xxx
There were five of them. Weathers had dropped dead from an undetected poison in his wounds in the personnel carrier. Hernandez had his torso crushed by a falling piece of masonry when the bombs had come in nearly on top of them. Emily didn't hold it against the Viper drivers. She knew all about the fortunes of war now. She ached all over and they'd extracted a six-inch-long sliver of stone that had come in just under her ballistic vest from her back. She hadn't even known it was there until she was in the personnel carrier and tried to sit down as the adrenaline drained away. Fortunately it'd missed her spine. The rest of the survivors were trying and mostly succeeding to sleep on cots, except for Van Buren, who had been airlifted straight to the nearest hospital.
There was a yelling voice outside the tent, being answered in English with occasional German. Very
pungent, but much more controlled in volume, German. Pumped up on painkillers and in an extremely bad mood, she undid the flap on her sidearm holster and stalked out of the tent. Her people had been all but abandoned and she was damned if they were going to be denied even a chance to
sleep now. Her tone as she lifted the flap of the tent was a snarl. "The fuck is going on out here?"
It was Eidolon.
Eidolon was actually having an argument with Voss, using the man's cape name. He'd been known as Red Type once, part of the trio of 1989 European cyborg tinkers dubbed Red Type, Gold Type, and Green Type by the press. He had insisted, in the pre-operation meeting, that his name was Voss to her. Maybe it was the painkillers talking but it seemed like a deliberate insult to use his cape name in that light. Voss turned and stood to attention with his working arm. "Fraulein Leutnant. I was just having a spirited discussion with my fellow cape regarding your disposition."
"He was preventing me from interviewing-" Eidolon started.
"You will get the after-action report after my people have had a chance to sleep and not before. Now get the fuck out of my platoon area." Yes, she was talking to one of the highest members of the Protectorate, but they
supported PRT troops in the field, and frankly she didn't give a damn. He wasn't there when everything went to shit. He could wait his fucking turn.
"That's a rather inflated-"
Voss' arm lashed out with lightning speed, grabbing a shoulder, and started pushing Eidolon away. "Herr Eidolon, if I were not out of charges for my weapons I would consider that grossly disrespectful, indeed fighting words, and try to harm you. The Leutnant
is not out of ammunition." It brought a bit of childish glee to her, to see the most powerful cape in the Protectorate being essentially frog-marched away. She turned back and found a cot of her own.
xxx
It was a banishment. They'd dressed it up nicely, but being sent to PRT ENE to keep her quiet about how much of a clusterfuck Ellisburg had been wasn't that surprising. They'd needed a big reward for a really big clusterfuck, especially the initially blown diagnosis that hadn't noticed a slow internal bleed from her left kidney, which had nearly killed her and cost her a kidney. Her old platoonmates and Jackson had been sent with her, to form a new strike team. And so had Calvert, though his team hated him by all accounts. The only man to survive of his platoon, sailors would have called him a Jonah. PRT grunts just called him a coward.
He'd change that in time. Calvert was slick. But slick like an oil spill, not naturally frictionless. He'd have to be watched. But she hadn't expected this. "Voss?"
"Director." The eight-foot-tall cyborg
gleamed with a new flawless coat of red paint. She'd heard it had taken nearly a year for him to repair himself, and that Gesellschaft had apparently sent assassins while he was damaged but failed. "Where else would I be but among comrades in arms?"
xxx
There'd been a lot of hope in the world in 1995, after the Moscow Miracle. Of course, then Leviathan happened, and then the Simurgh, but at least Leviathan was a bit slower than his brother had been, and definitely slower than his sister. Now Leviathan was at Newfoundland, and several of Brockton's capes were there to fight him along with many others.
All Emily could do was listen to the radio. She had thought she would eventually get used to listening to the radio and being unable to exert a direct influence on the action, but she never had. Even if there was nothing she and an M4 could have done to an Endbringer she still itched to be
there, to take action no matter how futile, rather than to listen to the radio and wait to find out if her people were alive or dead. Armsmaster, who she even liked in a way, the way a craftsman might regard a favored tool; disciplined, trustworthy, executed his orders. And Voss, who had long since become her strong right arm.
The truth was she couldn't risk any more of the Protectorate's capes here. Not with Kaiser sure to make power moves soon to demonstrate his new control of the Empire, after the death of Allfather. If only he'd suddenly develop an altruistic bone and turn up to some Endbringer fight and get killed. That'd be wonderful, solve problems. Her tenure as Director had so far been well-received, with aggressive patrolling pushing back the Empire. How much of that was due to Allfather getting old...well, now they'd find out.
The radio poured out exclamations of dismay. Newfoundland was sinking. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The odds were bad. Very bad now. Not many people were going to get away...
"Red Type. No signal."
Damn.
