Eagle X, Mission 20: Quantum Bonds(Editing)

Part I: Scott

Smoke filled the air, obscuring the blood and twisted metal born of war. Despite his exceptional senses, Scott couldn't smell anything but smoke. He had no choice but to let his hard light visor do all the work, the visibility readings fluctuated around forty percent. A trio of figures moved through the smoke, silhouettes identical in their feminine aspect. Their weapons fanned out as they advanced in a quick moving skirmish line. Pale Garden troopers.

Scott hid behind the remnants of an armored troop carrier, and let the squad move past his position. With a roar, he fired his pistol, hitting the enemy in the middle twice and grazing another. He charged them, his own roar joined by a second as he brought his plasmatic edge to bear. Their flexsteel armor was no match for the super heated arc of light played against them. In seconds, Scott alone stood victorious.

A buzzing noise passed overhead, disrupting the blanket of smoke and dust crawling across the ground. For a moment, Scott glimpsed the slate gray sky of the unnamed satellite moon and its massive parent planet dominating the space beyond. Then the buzzing drones made a second pass, chiseling away at the earth with volleys of medium-yield kinetic rounds. The bodies of the disabled troopers were shredded by the barrage, and Scott was taken off his feet. A normal soldier would have been torn to bits. His heavy combat gear ruined, the bullets bounced off of his armored skin. The R.Nano in his blood made him a war machine, but he still felt the assault like getting hit with a hundred baseballs in rapid succession.

"Hitman, where the Shkshk Hssai is my air support?" he shouted.

"I'm trying my best, but, until you get rid of that tower, I can only make short sweeps." Hitman's voice was a nasal trill over the comms.

"I'm getting hammered down here."

Flipping to his feet, Scott stared hard to the east, and his electric green visor did the rest. He locked onto the anti-air defense tower, the beam cannon on top fashioned to resemble a rose in bloom. The target was nearly a thousand feet away and he was still more than two hundred feet out of position. In the distance, he caught sight of Hitman's ship. The turret atop the tower rotated and fired a beam of light across the sky, missing by a hair's breadth.

"Shit! Take out that tower before it cuts me in half!"

"Quit crying," Scott growled. "I'm on it."

Sensitive ears registered the rumble of a nearby armored cycle. Scott smirked as he ran through the dense smoke, letting his ears lead the way until his visor zeroed in on the shape. A driver and passenger moving slowly. They couldn't see either. He closed the distance between them in silence. Scott's youth on Felarnia had been spent among extraordinary men and women born with senses of sight and hearing far beyond his own. At a young age he'd learned to move like The Ghost of Hssai. The gunner on the back of the cycle didn't notice Scott until it was already too late.

Scott leapt into the air, bringing his foot down in a sweep that tossed her from the back of the vehicle. The driver turned around, but he was already on her. In a blur of clawed strikes she was in the dirt bleeding from her shattered helmet and ruined throat. Scott pumped the throttle and gunned the engine in the direction of the tower. He could hear the drones sweeping the skies above and Hitman's guns trying their best to keep the airspace clear.

Spider: Shkshk Hssai? You're invoking Felarnia's dead gods now?

The words scrolled across his optical lenses.

"How do you know about the Shkshk?"

Spider: I asked. Renegade gave me a few books to read.

"Stay out of our business."

Spider: You know I love cat stuff.

"Stop it."

Spider: Massive cat gods? Who wouldn't find them fascinating?