Palace:
Cyrus strode through the great hall and watched massive loss of life he ordered. Enemy soldiers, looters, and civilians who tried to over throw Uso's kingdom. Cyrus shook his head at stupidty. Throwing themselves at a wall that wouldn't move. "All companies report." He ordered.
Leon answered, "All teams are operational and ready for orders sir!" Leon answered eagerly, Cyrus's speech lighting a fire under the man's ass.
"Captain. Take Alpha and Beta and sweep the rest building. I need Gamma and Delta to move out and form a perimeter around the building, Epsilon, get this damn fire out!" He called as he exited the great hall to find some stragglers attempting to set fire to more of the building. He drew his revolvers and fired taking each one out. By the time he finished mowing them down he was completely out of ammo. "Shit. Corgan, lead Alpha and Beta teams through the mop up op. I am going to..." His voice cut off as an indicator light flashed red in his suit. A distress signal...
"We have a man down, I am moving to provide assistance." He said as he sprinted and bashed through the wall. He jumped down and with his turbo assisted joints, began running at 30mph...
Ravine:
The distress signal emminated from a huge pile of sand and other debris from the storm. A venerable junkyard of broken wagons; A few trashed junker-bots from the crashed ship; few cannonballs. Some bodies of various dead beast thats been skinned alive by the storm and now a dried sandblasted bones and a hazy cloud of monofiliment wire with various computer components and Daisy Power Armor thats been sandblasted almost clean of marking. Buried and mixed with the sand that settled once out of the wind. If it weren't for the distress signal broadcasting and the storm had moved on and the friction static electric lightening had stopped, It would like she was part of the accumulated junk and debris. Still the air was laden with dust and smoke from the Palace on fire.
Cyrus jumped down the ravine and landed with a thud, landing next to Errowyn. "Honey? I need you to wake up. Come on sweet heart wake up. Errowyn!" He said as he cut her loose. He picked her up and cradle her in his arms plugging himself into her armor to read her vitals...
Her vitals were steady and low as if in a trance to promote the lower rate of bodily functions. her suit oxygen was down to 45 percent in a closed circuit system. Daisy running on minimum power to conserve energy to run minimal life support, broadcast distress.
"Okay..." He said assessing Errowyn's condition. He tugged a line from his suit to her's and linked their power supplies, giving her's a much needed boost. Once their systems were linked. He picked her up and scanned the walls to find a way to scale up. Unfortunately, it was too step to attempt climbing with an injured party. He looked about and found a ton of sheets of metal and stone that had been thrown into the ravine. He lifted Errowyn and carried her up against one of the walls and quickly constructed a makeshift shelter, stone walls holding up a couple pieces of sheet metal. It wasn't much but it would provide some type of shelter. He climbed inside, and continued to cradle Errowyn in his arms, resolutely standing guard.
"Give me room!" Errowyn spoke softly. "Did you remove the monfiliment wire?" She felt the hook up as she was still connected to the SPINE interface.
Cyrus, who was starting to tire from the constant barrage of sand, jumped slightly when Errowyn began speaking. He looked down to her and backed up a little. "Yes monofiliment wire has been removed, and we are sharing my power source. Are you okay?" He asked.
"I am fine." Errowyn spoke softly as the Daisy Aether generators powered up to take the workload of providing energy and recharging the suits back-up batteries. "Got blind sided..." then the ground shook and a few rocks slammed into the roof of the shelter.
Cyrus moved slightly, which put his body between the storm and Errowyn. Sand began blasting his back tearing off paint, and what ever else was back there. A warning light began to beep in Cyrus's headset, but he ignored it. "I know, I watched all that. I looked into your suits logs. Sorry." He said offhandedly as he scanned her body one more time for injuries.
Errowyn shifted so he could get out of the debris being stirred up by the wind. "I scanned the stuff that gotten caught in the monofiliment net or jumble of wire. Most of it is radioactive." Her voice taking on a curious tone. She began to make movements of the power armor limbs to test them out to see if anything was damaged. "So who winning? These Rebels? Or us?"
Cyrus put a hand on her back, one reason was to support her, two was to remove the power line. "I rallied the Ragnarock troops, and we layed the rebels to waste." He said looking down to her. "I was about to lead a mop up operation, but that is when I heard your SOS." He added
"The storm must be dying off then." Errowyn spoke with a bit of surprise. "I am surprised it had gotten through."
"It might have helped that I was near the top of the Palace when I heard it." He said as his intensive scan was completed. He was happy to see that all vitals returned normal. He breathed a huge sigh of relief. "You know you scared the shit out of me?" He asked only half joking.
"I have survived worse." Errowyn was glad that someone came looking for her. At least to get her unburied from the sand, rubble and other debris. "Thanks for coming." She patted his armored clad shoulder. Her mind was racing to what made the earth shake. A few more rocks tumble down into the ravine.
"Like I wouldn't come running after you." He said smiling. His expression darkend however when another rock slammed into his back. "The shaking... Is it being caused by the cannons? Or is there something bigger going on?" He asked nobody in particular.
"Cannon only effect building when their projectile hits something. This was way deeper in the earth." Errowyn spoke running scans around her.
At that point a new voice crackled over there comms. "May...yday.... Thi...Rapha..."
"Shit...Errowyn, can you clean this up?" He asked straining to listen in.
Errowyn tapped into the radio communications and began to process it. "Sounds like an emergency from Raphael. I thought he was on tight leash?" Running systems checks as fast as she thought of them and sent the nueral commands to the Daisy Power armor.
"Raphael, this is Cyrus. Where the hell are you?" He called to Raph.
"Cyrus? I thought yo...in ... Mountain." Raphael replied.
"No, I used the cannon and shot myself out. Get to the point, what is wrong?" He asked.
"The Mountain...going to Blow!" Raph replied.
Errowyn looked at Cyrus. "It felt like it already did... unless there is more one spot?" Keeping out of the radio frequency, using another frequency to talk to Cyrus.
"What are you talking abut Raph?" Cyrus replied.
"There's...no time...listen to me! I am calling for danger close fire mission." Raphael replied.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Cyrus answered.
"If...don't, everyone will die!" Raphael yelled over the comm.
"What he is babbling about.. Fire mission? We have no big guns unless from the Iceberg...." Errowyn spoke softly. Her suit cleaning up the radio signal. She could listen in, but only Cyrus could hear her talking.
Cyrus continued. "Raph, just explain the..." He didn't get any farther before Raph began yelling.
"Damn it! The rebels have filled the mountain with more than 2 tons of blackpowder! And it has been lit, they are going to drop the mountain on the city, I need an orbital bombardment on my coordinates NOW!" Raphael yelled.
Errowyn eyes widen behind her mirrored visor. "It's not going to work. Even with a ship bombardment wont penetrate a mountain. Better off getting people out of the city would be much safer."
"There is no time... The Iceberg can make the shot. They have AP munitions aboard. A few well placed shots the Mountain will come crumbling down ontop of Raph's head..." He said somberly, "Get the Iceberg on the line..."
Errowyn interrupted, "Not if the fuse is lit.... then we don't even have the time to get the ship in position to fire those AP rounds. If we do. It will just loosen up the mountain rocks to scatter more debris in a farther arc and range."
"No, but we can blow the cannon..." Cyrus muttered. "If we blow the cannon, it will detonate all the ordnance inside my side of the mountain. Once the cannons's supplies blow, the entire mountain will imploded. And all my men, plus Raph will die..." He said quickly
Errowyn just shook her head. "I will see if I can raise Iceberg with the mission." Errowyn spoke, Switching out of the loop to focus all of the Daisy communication to reach the Iceberg. She rapidly got in contact with the Captain of the Iceberg. Explained the situation to him.
Captain of the Iceberg looked thoughtful and began giving orders to his crew in the proper sections. Soon several high powered "Smart Missiles" Shot from their launchers.
Errowyn joined in the conversation with Raphael and Cyrus. "Raphael. You need to get out of there. You need to lay a trail of radio guidance beacons. You have about ten minutes to have it completed."
Raphael chuckled softly. "There is no time. The fuses have been lit. The explosins you feel are the few I get away from the source. I have to keep doing this to keep the mountain upright. I will have Cyrus's techs leave the beacons. Someone has to stay behind..."
Cyrus sat there quietly, stunned into silence.
"Nice knowing ya, Raph." Errowyn spoke without emotion. All business. She looked at Cyrus. "I am sorry." She spoke to him privately after cutting out of the loop.
"I..." Cyrus couldn't speak. "We have to do something."
"We need to get back to town, warn Uso and crew to vacate in case something goes wrong." Errowyn spoke, feeling another tremor. "Damn that is some good gunpowder!"
Cyrus reopened the channel to Raphael. "Raph, at the 2 minute mark you get your ass out of there. Do you hear me! You get your ass out of there brother." He spoke with anger. "Why do you have to play the damn hero!" He said trying to hide his emotions. He looked to Errowyn. "I am going to kill every last one of these fucking rebels..."
"He aint stupid. He knows how much time he has." Errowyn turned her attention to the storm as it was definitely losing it power. "I think it best we rejoin those at the palace." She shouldered her way past him into the dust laden air of the ravine.
