Parting Gift

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“Natia,” She didn’t turn back to face him, instead shouldering through another cloud of dust kicked up by near miss of a plasma mortar. She had to keep going, she had to get to her. From behind her visor she laid eyes on the wreckage, flames of orange and blue twisting out from the decimated metal. They were dancing over a grave, but Natia-263 couldn’t accept that yet. It couldn’t be happening, they’d made it so far.

“Natia goddamnit she’s dead!” The exclamation was punctuated by the crack of Quentin’s sniper rifle, but the pain in his voice was louder. The whole incident had played out in slow motion. One minute their convoy was en route to evac, slated to regroup with a larger force outside the city, Indra was halfway through one of her tired jokes, the next she was gone.

How could she be gone?

Indra-210 had insisted on riding in the ‘hog behind them, made some joke about her and Quentin needing some time alone. They’d been arguing the whole op, stupid things, minor inconvienences, she was always too hard on Quentin-222, Indra had known why. If she hadn’t been so asinine, maybe 210 wouldn’t have insisted on riding shotgun with the troopers.

She weaved through a burst of plasma fire, the deafening crack of Quentin’s rifle following soon after. They’d all been through so much, they’d fought this war for six years, endured the loss of Pablo on Skjope, and all that was on top of the shared hell that training had been. They were supposed to make it, all of them.

Her shields flared as bolts of plasma splashed against them, their yellow glow encasing her as she rushed to the wreckage, unable to form words as she came to the burnt out warthog. The troopers had melted away, or been burnt to a crisp, but not her, not all of her anyway. Most of Indra-210 remained, most of her armor, though blackened, remained. What was missing was more than enough to confirm what TEAMBIO had already told them, she was gone. Both of her right limbs were gone, as was a good chunk of her torso. There would be no final goodbyes like they’d had with Pablo, she was gone the second she was hit.

Quentin’s rifle cracked again as the other Spartan came in hard beside her, exchanging the anti-material rifle for an SMG and continuing to fire as Natia ran one hand over her friend’s visor, while the second pulled the corpse forward in its seat.

“Natia we can’t we don’t hav-”

“I know.” She cut him off, moving to engage the failsafe on Indra’s suit.

“Asset denial is protocol, or did you forget?” There she went again, angry at him, as if it solved anything. He’d lost a sister too. She couldn’t think about that now. The skirmish around them seemed like nothing more than background noise as she worked her way through the process, just like she’d trained to do. She hammered in each authentication, her hands seemingly moving with a mind of their own as she tried to process what she was doing.

They hadn’t needed to do this for Pablo, they hadn’t had to leave him behind. Her eyes flicked from her task to the map at the corner of her hud, watching as the red dots blinked away with each successive burst from Quentin. She could hear Indra clear as day, ‘for a protocol meant to be carried out on the field, you’d think they’d have made it a quicker process’.

The longer it took the more painful it was, it felt cruel. The world around them shook, and intense heat washed over them as another mortar landed far too close for comfort. They had to go, she had to put it all away, and focus. With the quick key-in of the authorization, they were set. Natia leaned the still body back into the seat, and swiped two fingers across the visor in a final goodbye.

“Armed, get ready to move.” She ordered, freeing the MA5B from her back and rising from her crouch. Her eyes swept the area for targets, settling on a jackal marksman sighting her up with his carbine. Unfortunately for the avian sharpshooter, she was far faster. The MA5’s reticle lit up red as she let off a quick burst, another red dot fading away from her TACMAP.

“Ready.” Quentin answered, returning the SMG to his thigh.

She began shuffling back, each few steps another burst, another felled alien. Wordlessly Quentin joined her, retrieving his rifle and reloading with haste to take out the Elite Major who’d taken issue with his squad being systematically slaughtered. The second the hinge-head crumpled into a heap, a new hole in its head, they turned and ran. Time was running short, and they had quite a bit of ground to cover in order to be clear of Indra’s last gift.