Son of the Thalatte

[Reeves]

Log : 2

Today was our first official operation, a quick extraction and escort assignment. A drop ship flown by Venus would land on Cambridge, deploy us and we would retrieve two Auxesians and leave with haste. It was pretty straight forward and there was no real need to be heavily armed.
I walked up to my equipment container and removed the under-slung shotgun from my rifle, cutting down some of the weight. Marshal suddenly appeared in the large room ordering everyone to move, Proteus darted off first and everyone else followed, while Pike decided he wanted to move out after everyone else.
Venus said something witty the moment we all boarded but I wasn't really paying attention, my mind was occupied focusing itself on the objective and what may or may not take place once we landed. There was a bit of background chatter as the Eidolon Wrath cleared us for launch. I felt a force exert itself onto my gut with the force of taking off, but it only lasted a split second before it was replaced by nothingness again. "E.T.A Twenty." Venus muttered into the comm's. All of us acknowledged it but didn't say anything, glancing around at each other. It might have felt like we had no other choice, but we did truly trust each other with our lives.

My eyes were closed for almost all of the flight, right up until a loud buzzer went off. "No time to sit around and look pretty, light is green start dropping off." Venus said with a touch of mischief to her voice. Pike was the first to hop out once the bay doors began to groan and lower. Artemis followed behind him and I went behind her, everyone else hopping out shortly after.
"Way-point set, Davara move out. No engagements unless absolutely necessary." Marshal commanded standing in the middle of all of us, checking his rifle before taking a tactical stance, sweeping and clearing the way ahead. My purpose was tracking and advanced reconnaissance, so of course I darted forward in a sprint, leaving the general vicinity of the group to assess the situation at our extraction site. "Tacitus, secure the extraction site." Marshal instructed me over the comm's, I could make out the blurry outline of his shadow on the ground behind me, it wasn't a long sprint before I came across our objective, Keeper Raven and another Auxesian who I identified as 'Miri Keating'. I swung my rifle away, the sling clinging to my shoulder kept it from flying off onto the ground and it instead hung on my back and waist. Keating had somehow managed to steal a land based vehicle and get Keeper Raven all the way out here despite being somewhat injured herself, Keating exited the vehicle and dropped to her knees once I got close, Raven hanging from her shoulder. Keating's clothes were practically drenched in blood that didn't seem to be hers and Raven was wrapped in a blanket due to her clothes being terribly torn. I knelt down near both of them and relayed the situation "Objective located, both priority assets severely wounded, prep-" I heard rushed foot steps beside me and quickly yanked my side-arm out of its holster, grabbing the arm of my attacker. Some drunk vagrant trying to gut me with a knife, I buried my side-arm into his stomach and fired, using his belly as a make-shift silencer. His body went limp from the pain and immediate blood loss and I kicked him away. I heard another set of rushed footsteps behind me, and I saw the brief outline of a gun before Artemis practically hugged me and took the bullet in her shoulder. Once she stumbled out of the way I returned fire, putting a revolver round through his head. "Gone loud." I muttered into the comm's. It was technical jargon that I had to discharge my weapon in such a manner that probably alerted everyone to our presence now. A gunshot in the heart of Cambridge wouldn't go unnoticed, not for long at least. I quickly checked on Artemis, the wound was purely superficial, grazed her shoulder but didn't do any real damage, she was still able to heft her heavy machine gun. Marshal and Four came up from behind, pushing stretchers with them, they were quick to stop, pick up our downed allies, load them onto the stretchers and begin our extraction. A vehicle in pursuit of our objective came whirling around the bend, but Artemis let her Machine gun loose on it, riddling the engine block with gunfire, igniting the entire hunk of metal in a ball of flames, thankfully it didn't explode. "Venus, get ready to move." Pike suggested over the squad comm's. We raced our way back, frantically running and pushing the stretchers up the ramp and into the ship, I felt myself suddenly being raised up while the ramp began to close while I was on it. I rolled inside and planted by feet on the hull of the ship, nearly losing balance but managing to put myself into my seat without error. Everyone else was already inside and Marshal quickly gave Venus the signal to get us out of here.

Four, our designated field medic gave both of them the very best medical care he could provide. It wasn't looking good though, one of Raven's twins were in critical condition, while her and Keating themselves were covered in equally severe injuries. Their arms and legs badly bruised. I could hear Four talking to Raven, but my mind was blanked out and unable to hear the words going back and forth. Once cleared fine for now, Keating got up and threw herself into one of the empty seats, strapping herself in.
The flight back felt shorter than the way to Cambridge. Four and Marshal rushed the Keeper on her stretcher out of the bay door for Doctor Glass to provide further medical assistance. The rest of us just remained idle aboard the station, anxious to hear about the status of both of them. When I saw the way the Curator walked by, I knew something had gone wrong and that the medical procedure didn't go as it might have been planned.

Marshal informed me much later that...Raven had lost one of the twins, it felt like I stopped breathing for a few seconds when he told me, but there was nothing any of us could have done, I consoled myself with that fact. Along with that news, Marshal informed us of our new duties, which was to personally guard the Curator, Aria, the Keeper and Keating. Each of us was assigned an individual role. My post was just outside, near the door. Occasionally we would rotate to rest, whenever we did I would swap posts to inside the med-bay near the very same doors I would stand next to outside. There wasn't much I could say or do in the way of consolation, but I would try and be as flexible as possible to any requests they might have, especially in a time like this... no parent should outlive their child.

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On indefinite hiatus because the current state of gameplay sucks - ping me over discord if replies are needed