HALO with a Side of Dragon

With a deft starboard snap of the BAS Abwaschbecken, Frau Lowey gave the members of the squad an inertial push out the engine room door, toward the deceptively distant greenhouse roof. A modicum of sparky ingenuity had rendered the handful of buckled interior shielding plates into rough "surfboards of the aether"; we found ourselves propelled toward the glittering expanse of glass by a combination of the ship's slingshot effect and our personal jetpacks. The purloined shieldplates would serve as protection and camouflage of a sort for us on our quick journey downwards, doubling as battering rams when met with the hardened greenhouse glazing.

Signalling the rest of the squad to a final burst of speed, I directed my surfplate into the largest unsupported pane of glass visible from my angle of approach. My luck held; the glass failed to do so.

In a few short moments I landed in a crouch amid sparkling shards and bruised foliage, my comrades coming to rest in similar poses around me. Lobo's delight at this grounding was palpable; Gotke stared about as if trying to get his bearings in an environment so dissimilar from the one in which he usually hunted. Searra and Max spread out left and right respectively upon the instant, covering our flanks and leaving me to take point as our companions rapidly regained their equilibrium between us.

We shed our helmets gratefully in the airbubble of this construct world, the better to utilise the sense of smell for which we were famous. Oddly enough, amid the scents of ozone, dust, blood and clank, I smelled a peculiar admixture of cat and dragon.

All logic aside, experience indicated that the Abwaschbecken would home in unerringly on the Baron's current location. A few hand-signals, elegant in their economy, and the squad was speeding through the verdant scents of the greenhouse, following after the receding sounds of Frau Lowey's impromptu musical recital. As we went, the intriguing musky-cinnamon scent of cat-dragon became stronger, as did the heated-oil-and-old-steam odour of clanks.

Our primary goal was that of finding and protecting the Baron and his fellow beleaguered adventurers; much to the chagrin of several of our number, this mandate lead to the dodging of a small complement of Steels, patrolling a main corridor. As these mechanical horrors passed us closely by, we discerned this whispered chant from each of them: "... fear the sky ... only one chance ... Wormwood ...." Apprehension grew in me as I puzzled their mantra's potential relevance to the Eighth Chapter of the Book of Revelations ...

Rapidly rounding a corner, we found ourselves in an area intended, perhaps, for preparing the massive greenhouse's harvest for packaging and storage. Whatever its intent, it was an area that seemed designed for crowds to congregate. There was, in fact, one there now, comprised of several patrols of Steels. We had three advantages, and superior numbers was certainly not one of them. But we were behind them; they had not yet noticed our presence; and we appeared to have a rather feline dragon on our side.

The dragon, a female by the scent, had joined us from the overgrown depths of a side room; I had not previously been aware that these huge creatures could move with such stealth. She was surveying the Steels, as if calculating their numbers. Daring to interrupt her count, I tapped her on the scales of one mighty arm, and gave her a "thumbs up" with a grin and a nod toward the clank army. She turned her deep gaze upon me for a moment, then nodded once.

The dragon's roar brought all movement nearby to a stop. Into the silence, I yelled, "WE HUNT!", and the cry was taken up by the rest of the squad.

The Steels began to turn, but we were upon them, tooth and claw, gun and sword. A dragon, four Jagerkin, and whatever sort of ancient being Max was ... this is enough to give even an army of clanks pause.

Unfortunately, they did not pause long. A metallic keening should have accompanied their counterattack; or silence -- either would have been expected of them, and duly ignored. Instead, their whispers continued eerily in the same tempo and timbre as before: "... fear the sky ... only one chance ... Wormwood ...."

We fought, and they came at us like the tide coming in. We drained four of our deathrays, and they still came. We killed thousands, and they still came.

After a time I perceived two new allies fighting the Steels alongside us: one a neat young lady I recalled seeing at a Steelhead town meeting so long ago, it seemed now; the other appeared to be her paler elder sister. Both fought with skill and speed beyond human norm, so although they did not have the rank odour of the Steels, I judged them to be another form of sophisticated clank. The Steels also seemed to have acquired additional troops, in the form of feline clanks, fleet of foot and savage of jaw.

Then the ground beneath our feet shuddered rhythmically as with ponderous footsteps, and the giant clank appeared. With a bare moment's pause, our dragon flung aside the twisted remains of several Steels and fell upon this giant in what seemed a deadly dance. We and the Steels all dodged their huge feet for a moment, then resumed our own dance.

During a short ebb in the tide of battle, I leaped upon a mound of fallen Steels, hoping to locate our allies and judge the numbers of enemy still remaining. Thus I was fortuitously placed to see the arrival of Frau Lowey and young Ash Mason, moving toward the battle as quickly as reasonable tactics would permit. And around the other side of an intervening wall, I also detected the approach of the Baron, guiding O'Toole before him.

There is a moment in any battle when time telescopes; when you see something happening, and cannot stop it, cannot affect it, through simple physics. This was that sort of moment: as I watched helplessly, Frau Lowey's small party and the Baron's approached each other, nearing the same blind corner at the same time, each unaware of the other's presence. This could end badly, to say the least. I fought my way toward them, hoping against all sense to get there before something regrettable occurred.

I lost sight of the events at that corner in the swirling melee of simply getting there. When I, too, arrived at the junction of pathways, the Baron and Frau Lowey were yelling at each other in fine form, oblivious to the ebbing battle around them. As they were yelling in Europan, it was perfectly understandable that O'Toole and Ash were looking confused. Ash especially, as their relief at finding each other was palpable, in marked counterpoint to their angry tones.

Their mutual tirade culminated in Frau Lowey shrieking, "Red Fire, man – are you completely suicidal? Running around in enemy territory with your weapon holstered? Were you even thinking? We just barely missed three patrols in the past twenty minutes! There’s no cover, and your dominant hand is occupied with something other than arms? Never mind what it would do to Europa if – i-i-if you were killed ..." At this point she stopped yelling and started hyperventilating.

My relief at seeing both of them whole (and typically raging at each other) caused a bark of post-battle laughter to well up in me and burst forth. Both the Baron and Frau Lowey turned to glare at me, so I took the opportunity to further derail their ranting with what I hoped would be taken as fond teasing, also couched in Europan, "All right, you two - you can shout sweet nothings at each other when we are home. Now, WE HUNT!"

After a further glaring glance at each other, promising no doubt further words to be had on the subject, each gathered his or her charge and the five of us returned to where the rest of our allies were dispatching the last of the Steels and the kittie-clanks. Our dragon, panting heavily, rested against her fallen giant adversary. It was time to bind our wounds, regroup, and plan our next move.