Thermopylae - Go Tell The Spartans (part 9)

[x-cable.livejournal.com]

The fighting continues on the island, and Kurt and Elliot track down the person jamming the Trojan Horse. At the training barracks, Alison arrives in time to shield the door (and then the whole barracks), but only with help from Mick that comes at a terrible cost. Nathan, caught outside the shield, keeps fighting, trying to hold the operatives back from the shield until he goes down. Then there's no more left for Mick to give and the shield falls.

And no, that's not the end.


~*~

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by; that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
–epitaph at Thermopylae

~*~

Nathan managed to get back to his feet, again, but they were on him in seconds. Energy blasts coming from every direction, too many to shield against completely, and it didn't matter to the triggered energy-projectors that some of their own were between him and them. Those with physical mutations went right for him, trying to pull him down, going for the incapacitating strikes so that they could get him on the ground and finish him off. Nathan felt something tear down his arm and the sharp, hot pain helped him focus. He managed a telekinetic groundburst, the effect barely several feet in diameter.

It bought him a few seconds. Only that, before they were back on their feet, coming at him again.

Light flared up suddenly, brighter than any of the blasts from the energy projectors, growing from behind him and then before him, brighter than the sun. The only reason he wasn't entirely blinded were the polirized lenses he wore, and as the light died down he saw Alison kneeling in the hallway, between him and the door leading into the training barracks. Sunlight drifted from above, dust swirling in the rays and for a brief, single instant all was calm.

"Here. I'm here." The words echoed down the hallway, the same Alison had been repeating over the comm channel since the moment she'd decided to skip trying to make her way through those fighting outside and had instead taken to the roofs, lasering her way through the ceiling once she'd arrived. Mick was crumpled in a pile behind her, leaning against the door, motionless.

Light poured from her hands again, the gloves burned away when she'd carved through the ceiling earlier. The sonic enhancers in her suit were all activated by now and powering her up as she sent bolt after bolt of solid light down the hallway to try and clear a path for Nathan to join her, the girl with the energy claws the first to be blasted back to rejoin the others she'd blinded seconds before. "Get back here! MOVE!"

"No," Nathan choked out and brought his psimitar around in a low arc, the telekinetic attack sweeping several operatives off their feet all at once. "Shield the door, I can't hold mine!" It was crumbling, he could feel it, and she was the only one who could replace it. Someone blurred at him, the speedster's weight slamming him to the floor again. His head hit stone, and for a moment he was stunned. His telekinesis reacted seemingly of its own accord, flinging the operative away, but even dazed, he felt the shield on the door go entirely.

"Alison." The voice that spoke her name from the door was barely a whisper. Mick looked up at her, his face ashen, and extending a shaking hand. The other was curled protectively - uselessly - around his midsection, blood seeping out at an alarming rate around his fingers. "Like we talked about..."

Looking over her shoulder, it took Alison only a second to realize what Mick meant and what it would imply before a pair of energy claws nearly took her head off, the only warning she had that of a brief glow perceived from the corner of her eye. There were more than five operatives between her and Nathan now, she realized, as she automatically dodged the next hit by way of simply leaning back and then whipping forward - and kept going one leg kicking up, her foot arching upwards to slam into the face of the girl and sending her reeling, for a heartbeat. Claws warping for a moment, the girl staggered back into another who had been trying to get at Alison, buying her a few precious seconds more.

Nathan was down. She was losing count of the number of people now separating them, couldn't even see her downed team mate any more. And there were over fifty children on the other side of that door, along with only a handful of adults who lacked the training to defend them against the oncoming tide. She backed up down the hallway, past the hole she'd made in the ceiling previously, dodging a blast of green tinted energy which slammed into the door behind her. Light danced in front of her then, even as she lifted her hands, fingers splayed open and leaning forward as though preparing to push against a wall. The first second gen to fling himself at her hit the wall of light and bounced back, hard, and she braced herself further. The sonic enhancers in her suit would not be enough to do this. Not nearly enough.

"Do it," she murmured, voice suddenly hoarse, mentally urging Nathan to get back up. "Do it, Mick."

Mick gritted his teeth, fighting past the pain, and blasted her, with every ounce of sonic energy he could muster. The ache in his bones grew to fiery agony, and he could feel the blood running around his fingers faster. Thank God they'd practiced this, he thought faintly, and then all he could do was focus on keeping it up, on giving her the power she needed to hold the shield.

On the other side of the wall of light, Nathan struggled back to his feet, swaying, and operatives went flying like child's toys caught in a hurricane as golden light exploded outwards from his psimitar. He didn't have the breath to say anything to Alison, to beg over the coms for more reinforcements. Either they were coming or they weren't. Didn't change what he had to do.

#Breathe, little brother.# Askani's voice was hushed, almost anguished in the back of his mind.

He breathed in, then out, ignoring the stabbing pain in his side - and let himself flow back into the pattern. Whirling and striking, power flowing through the psimitar, his will shaping the form in which it emerged. But all of it was in the pattern, all of it flowed. Like water. Move like water.

A whiplash of TK dragged the operatives between him and the shield around and sent them tumbling down the hall, back away from the wall of light. He couldn't let anyone get near the shield, put pressure on it. My ground, Nathan thought disjointedly. My ground, and none of you are having one piece of it...

The leathers never stood a chance, her back soon bared to the sonics themselves, the edges slowly frittering away further even though Alison's skin remained unmarked. Her entire body starting to glow under the sonic barrage even as the shield flared brightly in response, the brilliance soon spilling down the hallway unchecked. Stay up, stay up, stand... Staring at Nathan through the light, and the indistinct shapes whirling around him, Alison repeated the words over and over in silence. All they needed was one small chance, one break in the fight and Nathan could move back, fall behind the shield. And she was powered enough, now, she could tell - and just as she started to speak, to tell Mick to stop and conserve his strength, a voice echoed over the com channel.

Kylun, on the other side of the building, asking for help. The emergency exit about to be as swarmed as the hallway was, from what he was saying, the words echoing over and over in her mind.

The entire wing. She had to shield the entire wing, she realized, and suddenly what had been a power surcharge but moments ago would be barely sufficient as it was to even consider the notion. And Nathan was still fighting, but a few feet away, on the other side of it and she couldn't risk it any more, couldn't even contemplate letting it drop even for a few seconds as operatives started to swarm beyond him steadily.

"I need more." The words were strangled, Alison knowing exactly what she was asking of Mick, what this would result in. "I need to be able to shield the building, Mick. They're coming up on the emergency exit and we can't hold them off there."

Mick took a deep, ragged breath, managed a weak smile. "It's all right, Alison," he rasped. "I know." And he gritted his teeth and kept it up, blocking out the pain, concentrating on nothing but generating sound and pushing it at her. If this was what he had to do, in the end, it was what he would do. The other side of the Spartan coin.

~*~


Too many energy projectors firing off around here, Elliot thought, looking around from where he'd grabbed some cover, mostly to get a good look around and relay intel telepathically to some of the teams. He wasn't sure how much good he was doing. One of the flyers had had him up, earlier, but he'd turned into too much of a burden when the operatives had gone mad, and...

#...someone's jamming the Trojan Horse!# The fear-boosted telepathic call was Nathan's, and Elliot gasped aloud. Oh, fuck no, he thought and opened his mind, trying to scan. What could be...

Something was there. A harmonic on the astral plane, too subtle for him to have picked up immediately, but it sure as hell would interfere with the sort of psionic explosion the Trojan Horse was meant to produce. Elliot gritted his teeth, then closed his eyes and called out.

#WAGNER! It's Elliot, I'm out behind the operative barracks, get over here!#

Kurt was there the next moment, having teleported in the second he registered the telepathic call. "What is happening?"

"Nathan told me. Someone's jamming the Trojan Horse." Elliot still had his shields down, scanning desperately, looking for the source of the harmonic. "It doesn't feel like a telepath, not quite... some sort of anti-psi, shit... I'll need you to get me there once I find them."

Kurt nodded tensely. "I can do that. Just tell me when and where."

Where was this bastard, damn it... Elliot's eyes narrowed as he focused in on the source of the distortion. Mistra training was definitely good for something. #There!# he sent sharply to Wagner, flashing him the image of a man crouched down behind one of the tents, out of the way, a look of obvious concentration on his face.

Another nod, and Kurt simply grabbed Elliot's arm and took them both to the place he'd been shown.

The transit was jarring, but Elliot had the benefit of being really fucking pissed off to keep him focused even as they reappeared. "Son of a bitch!" he spat, lunging at the man even as he lashed out telepathically.

Apparently unaffected, the man raised the gun Elliot hadn't realized he was holding and shot him. In the body armor, thankfully, but it was enough to send him spinning backwards, off-balance.

Kurt stepped in to fill the gap, teleporting behind the man to kick him hard in the lower back, sending him reeling forward and hopefully breaking his concentration.

Elliot staggered back to his feet, teeth gritted, and lashed out again as the man stumbled. This time, he did make contact, feeling the man's thoughts fracturing under the impact. The harmonic on the astral plane wavering, and Elliot hit him again, harder.

He went down, and didn't move. Blood was trickling from his nose and ears, and Elliot winced, swaying a little as the backlash swept over him.

Kurt looked to Elliot, concerned, and teleported over to steady him. "Is it done?"

"I think so," Elliot said tiredly, closing his eyes and trying to reach out to Nathan again. All he got was an impression of blank-eyed faces and light and pain, so much pain... "Oh, God," he choked out. "I think..."

Light blossomed in the distance, a gleaming dome expanding to shield the whole wing of the central building where Elliot knew the training barracks were.

Kurt glanced sharply back that way. "What? What is happening?"

~*~


"Piers, no!" Lorna shouted. The metal around the teke didn't want to respond when Lorna grabbed it. It pulled against her, resisting the normal rhythms of the fields. Running after Piers, she kept straining against the hold that the teke had on the metal. She spun a shield around Piers but had little hope that it would work.

It blocked some of the pieces of metal as Gustafson sent them at him like precision-guided missiles. But three, then a fourth got through, impaling Piers, and he went down hard, shock and pain warring with the feral rage, even as he struggled to get back up.

Lorna ripped the rest of the metal away from Gustafson then and slammed them back into her, driving her back and pinning her to the ground. Another piece flattened out and wrapped itself around her head, leaving her blind but still able to breathe. Lorna ran for Piers. "You okay?"

Piers tried to answer, but discovered quite quickly that all he could seem to manage to do was to choke on blood. Apparently there was a piece of metal through his lungs or something. Funny. He could feel his healing factor kicking in, his body trying to reject the foreign material, and fuck did it hurt...

Lorna saw how absurd her question was immediately, heard him struggling to breathe. She took out what metal she could but knew there was only so much she could do. His healing factor was going to have to take care of most of it. The huge ugly shard in his chest gleamed with a dull menace. "You can't die on me, Piers. Don't you dare." She took hold of the shard and tried to work it out without hurting him more. "Come on, you're not going to die." She glanced over her shoulder to check for threats.

~Reinforcements to the barracks!~ Nathan's voice was a choked, desperate scream over the coms. ~Get your asses over here, damn it!~

Two of the government team members, one wearing the armband of a medic, bolted over to help her. "We'll get him back to the barricade, do what we can," one of them said, looking towards where Gustafson and the other feral, Fraser, were advancing steadily on them. Behind them, Spivak hauled himself back to his feet, seemingly ignorant of his wounds. "Cover us?"

She looked wildly back and forth then got to her feet. "Work fast," she told the medic, her eyes and lips the same vivid shade as her hair. It was the work of a thought to tie a shield around them. "Get him out of here. Don't interfere." Three against one was not Lorna's kind of odds. But it didn't mean she didn't have to worry about not hurting anyone else. The wall where she'd pinned Gustafson before was crumbling away in chunks, presumably the teke getting herself free. Below the concrete, dull rebar offered its services. Now to get close enough to grab it.

First things first. Spivak was closest and as an energy projector able to do damage from distance. She still didn't know what the hell Spivak was tossing around but he'd neglected to remove her makeshift bullets from earlier so it didn't really matter. Finding a chunk in his leg, she lengthened it into a band and tightened it against until the bone snapped. Even as she went running for the wall, she did it against with the other leg. She flung him away like a piece of trash and transferred her attention to Gustafson.

Fraser, the feral, charged her, but Gustafson, although she was advancing steadily, was throwing chunks of stone and metal at her in a steady stream, tearing apart the barracks behind her. One particular large chunk actually hit Fraser, and he went down - only to start dragging himself across the ground towards Lorna, seemingly uncaring of the fact that his legs weren't working properly.

The stone she had to dodge but the metal was like a gift. Part of it went to bracket Fraser's arms and waist, digging into the ground, spreading out roots like a tree in high wind. The rest Lorna threw back, running in its wake, concentrating on forcing the teke back to the barracks wall again.

The telekinetic shielded, still striding forward steadily. Her expression was still completely blank, but there was blood running from her nose and ears, obvious signs that she was pushing herself too far. Yet there was no evidence that she was registering the pain, no awareness at all. She gestured at Lorna, her TK whiplashing outwards at the X-Man.

Lorna couldn't shield that and went tumbling back with a strangled grunt. She rolled to her feet, screamed and flew back at Gustafson, power be damned. From the feeling her ankle, running was probably out of the question anyway. Let's see the teke shield her own EM field.

The ground around Gustafson tore itself apart, stone and earth flying at Lorna. The telekinetic kept advancing on her, throwing everything she had at her, the obvious signs of how she was overextending her powers getting more and more noticeable. Behind her, Havel emerged from the rubble, shaking himself, and took to the air again, firing off another plasma blast.

~*~


The shield intensified, just as light started to bleed backwards steadily, crawling down the hallway as though taking the measure of it, the breadth and width of the room they had - and poured through the cracks of the already weakened door as well. Numbers and images, the number of feet she needed to cover to the layout of the building and where she was compared to where Kylun would be now. That was all Alison needed, even as she concentrated further, will and need combining to drive her alone as light poured through the walls, slicing through neatly where it needed so as to remain solid.

A radiant bubble grew steadily away from them, visible from the outside as well as Alison crafted a shield larger than any she'd ever done before, the sense of where it was going and what it was affecting guiding her along, a muted comment from the comm channel telling her all she needed to know before she poured more into it so as to make it impenetrable.

~*~

Haroun blinked as the golden dome shimmered into being, a hemisphere of solid light. Haroun knew instantly what it was, what it had to mean. "Alison." he said, his breath choking his throat, the fatigue surging forward in a wave that nearly pulled him under. It was beautiful, a part of him noticed.

Some deaths were ugly, filled with seeping blood and spilled intestines. Some were quiet - a slipping away in the night, an old soldier finally laying down his arms to rest. And some were beautiful - a glowing solid-light dome, a line drawn in the sand. This far, and no farther. A defiant statement, a tip of the hat and a grin for the Reaper.

Haroun pulled the soldier he was carrying back into the medevac zone, heedless of the tears tracing down his own face. If Alison was going to ascend to Paradise, she was going to do so with him by her side. He wouldn't have it any other way. With a wordless scream, he rocketed into the air, headed straight for the glowing dome. And God help anyone who stood in his way.

~*~

I'm sorry. Alison stared fixedly ahead at the knot of people before her, some battering at the shield, others concentrating on a single shape she could still make out through the light, somehow. I'm sorry, I'm sorry... The sound still hitting her squarely in the back, Mick pouring every ounce of sound he could generate towards her, without reserve.

Pain and light. All that was left was pain and light, all he could see were patterns corresponding somehow to the operatives he knew were swarming him from every side. They were getting past him, at the shield, but he couldn't stop them. Too many. Too many, and he pushed the pattern of the Trojan Horse at all of them, desperately, again and again until his head was spinning, until the whole world was spinning and only the fact that the pattern was burned into his mind and his psimitar was still in his hands, the only stable thing in the world, kept him on his feet and fighting.

But he was taking hit after hit, reeling under the onslaught, and the shifting TK shields he was trying to use as armor were fraying, fracturing one by one. It was all blurring, one pattern into another until he couldn't pick out individuals, couldn't identify each target.

Something that felt like a sledgehammer smashed into him from behind, right between the shoulder blades.

~We need help. We can't hold them back much longer. Please.~ The press of people against the shield, energy flares highlighting the attempts to get through was asking more and more of her, and Alison did the one thing left to her to keep it up, even as she realized Nathan had fallen. Silence crawled from her in an ever growing circle, steadily plunging the hallway in a deceptive stillness as she pulled in all the sound around her, from the raging battle nearby to the voices on the comm channel.

The shield still held, Alison and Mick both cradled in light within, the figures without bathed in a brilliance that left them blinded, even as they still tried to mindlessly break through. And then suddenly the sonics which had been the one thing powering her enough to do any of this faltered, rallying for a moment only before fading altogether. The shield wavered, barely holding and Alison closed her eyes, lips moving in the quiet.

Five... four... three...

He couldn't get up. Something was wrong. His body wasn't obeying the commands from his brain, and his legs wouldn't work. But he had to, he had to... Nathan managed to drag himself forward, seeing his psimitar through the red haze of pain. Someone landed on top of him and Nathan cried out, or though he did, but he couldn't hear himself. There were hands grabbing at him, blows and kicks raining down on him, but he dragged himself inch by agonizing inch forward, reaching out for his psimitar.

Two...

She opened her eyes again, the shield dimming rapidly despite her best efforts , the area she had to cover far too large to hold alone for too long on her own. Looking over her shoulder, Alison locked eyes with Mick. He had one hand still pressed loosely to his stomach, and somewhere in all of the sound she was drawing in there was a fluttery heartbeat, struggling to keep going.

One...

Something seared across the shield, nearly breaking through and a portion of the ceiling collapsed, jagged pieces tumbling down on the operatives struggling to break through. Uneven claws of energy stabbed through, the tips hovering a hairsbreadth away from her before withdrawing for a second strike. Light faded rapidly, Alison now trembling from the effort as she desperately tried to keep it up just a little bit longer, eyes still searching through the light to try and see Nathan.

She switched to the command channel, words meant for Haroun alone sub-vocalized softly, over and over again even as the light died away entirely.

Zero.

And the light died.

No.

No, this wasn't going to happen. They hadn't come this far, Nathan thought dazedly, hadn't fought this hard, hadn't lost this much to lose now.

If they got through that door, to the children, it had all been for nothing. Every bit of it, and everything in him screamed out against that.

Not one more child.

Not one more life.

Sobbing silently with the effort, Nathan dragged himself over that last inch, one hand, slippery with blood, closing around the cool metal staff of the psimitar. The patterns were back suddenly, clear and bright as they blasted through his pain-fogged mind, and he concentrated on one. One perfect, elegant pattern, the work of Kritzer's conscienceless intelligence, shaped and refined by Askani's psionic genius.

And he reached out through the psimitar, pushing his mind outwards and grabbed at every telepathic mind he could find. Elliot, still trying in vain to spot for his teammates as they fell, and MacInnis' other two telepaths, one of them lying wounded in the evac area. Four surviving telepaths from the conditioning teams, and Nathan overwhelmed their minds, drowning their resistance in pure power, drawing on reserves he'd never imagined he had.

Seven. Not enough.

But then there was another mind there, joining them, a luminous presence that reached out from across the ocean, from Westchester. Enough to ground him, enough to ground them all and steady the link.

And the resistance that had stopped him before was gone. Nathan closed his eyes, his hand tightening around the psimitar, and surrendered. The Trojan Horse blazed into life, and for one last time, he heard the song in his mind.

#The minstrel fell but the foeman's chains
Could not bring that proud soul under.
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder.
And said "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery.
Thy songs were meant for the proud and free
They shall never sound in slavery!#

And the explosion was soundless, silent white light blotting out the world. Nathan felt the blast radius spread outwards across the astral plane. Sensed it change the minds it touched.

Second-gens crumpled, the imperatives fading from their minds, leaving broken pieces behind. The surviving first-gens - only a few, only a bare handful - dropped just as quickly, but in them Nathan sensed their own minds reasserting themselves as the shockwave passed.

And the children.

Behind the door, he sensed children wake up, sensed color and light return to their minds, filling the emptiness.

~*~

Till, at the upland, as we turned to go
Amid fair meadows, dusky in the night,
The mists fell back upon the road below;
Broke on our tired eyes the western light;
The very graves were for a moment bright:
And this was Death.
--'The Pilgrims', McCrae