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Revealed: Chapter 9

I flinched back as a bullet barely missed my head and hit the wall next to me. It was soon followed by a stream that continuously clanged off of the wall by me, reminding me of how stupid it would be to peak out.

"Well so much for your plan." I yelled back at Crane who was on the other side of the entrance to the room. It had not taken long for the Jostens' soldiers to realize that we were picking them off. I had to hand it to Crane, he did manage to pick off five of them.

Crane had discarded the rifle, unable to properly fire it or reload it with just one hand and had switched to his pistol instead. He had worked out a system for reloading that, it would sit in the armpit of his unusable arm while he slid the magazine in. He didn't look all that worried about our odds.

"Just like old time." He beamed and then fired into the room without looking.

"Yeah, sure. Except we're extremely under equipped and they have the nice shiny armor." I really missed my old Spec Enforcer armor, it was state of the art and would allow me to aim around the corner without having to peak due to the in hud targeting reticule that could be synced to a weapon. I still probably would have missed though, but still would have been better.

The firing slowed for a bit, giving the both of us a short opportunity to take a few shots back. I brought my assault rifle up to my shoulder and whipped around the corner. There were still at least ten of them left. There was one with a radio antennae coming out of a pack on his back and he carried a side arm instead of a pistol, he must have been the officer leading this group. I fired a short burst at him, only to have the rounds bounce off of his armor.

He turned to me and fired several shots, forcing me to back around the corner again and hide behind my wall. Crane did the same.

"Damn it." Can't hit anything at this range with this weapon." He reloaded his weapon, but stopped when he put the gun in his armpit and winced. I could see that all of the agitation had caused his wound to start bleeding again. A red splotched had formed on his bandages.

"You should take a break, they can't get us here and Krauss will keep them busy." I told Crane and he nodded. He slid his back down the wall until he was in a sitting position and tended to his wound.

He unwrapped the bandage and I could tell that it was becoming inflamed and tender by the way the area around the wound bulged slightly. There was nothing to do right now and the wound was soon wrapped back up with the same slightly bloodied bandage since we failed to bring more.

Crane noticed me watching and rolled his eyes at me. "Don't worry, I'll get it checked out once this is all over." He suddenly froze and look past me. "If this gets over."

I froze as well and slowly turned around. Down the corridor were more soldiers, about a dozen, hustling towards us. These ones wore white armor, but still had the same green x-visors. There was nowhere to run, they had us out in the open, literally on our asses.

They didn't fire, instead they stopped in front of me. They didn't go to Crane since that would force them to expose themselves to the room. The x's looked down at me, I still had my gun resting in my lap, but it would be futile to try and shoot them.

One of them raised a hand to the side of his helmet to hit the switch to open up the front. I waited in anticipation, I had seen one dead, now I was about to see one alive.

'Hold on." Dog suddenly said, my tenseness. "Different armor color, not shooting at us and look at their legs."

I did and noticed the lack of digitigrade legs. They were human.

The mask of the man standing in front of me slid up and in fact, it wasn't a man, but a woman. She looked down at me hard, scanning me and then Crane with her blue eyes. She wasn't extremely attractive, she sported a broad and sturdy chin and short cropped blonde hair that I could tell was pinned back inside of the helmet. She took on many more masculine features rather than feminine features.

"Who are you?" I spoke first and slowly raised myself, leaving my gun on the floor as to not make a wrong first impression.

She looked as if I had insulted her and then slid the mask shut on me without even answering. The x which had stopped glowing when the face plate was slid back turned back on. She walked past me and looked into the room, the other soldiers that she had brought along with her, stood at the ready, completely ignoring me.

I looked over at Crane who just shrugged his shoulders. Even though I had no clue who they were, I was glad they weren't shooting at us, which was always a plus.

"Let's move, lock and load." The manly woman finally spoke, but not to me. Suddenly there was the sound of a dozen guns being cocked and they all ran past me, right into the fight. They went in in twos firing right at their blue counterparts.

I looked out and watched in awe, there was nothing else I could do. The blue soldiers were caught off guard by the sudden heavy assault from their flanks and several quickly fell, their armor doing nothing against the concentrated fire from the white soldiers. The survivors, despite now being outnumbered and out maneuvered, didn't surrender, they returned fire.

A white soldier that was charging next to the woman took a shot right in the joint of his arm and leg simultaneously, causing him to crumble. Before another shot could take him out, the woman grabbed the wounded man and began to drag him off to the side, while still firing. She dropped him off by an overturned table and then continued her advance with the rest of her group.

Seeing a break in the assault, Krauss broke cover along with the rest of his pack and also charged. The security personnel decided against it and kept firing from a distance.

The hostiles didn't last much longer, every single one was killed. When the last one was cornered and offered surrender by the woman, he put the barrel of the gun under his chin and fired without a second thought. It was chilling to watch, even though he had been twisted into some abomination, he was either extremely loyal or afraid. They were all dead, there was no way to know.

Once the fighting had stopped, Crane and I went in to see if there was anything we could do. I ended up meeting up with Krauss first one of his had taken a bullet to the chest. It was a pretty bad wound, the lung was deflated, probably shredded from the round and there were bone fragments sticking out. I got Crane, since he had the most training and he talked me through the treatment.

"Krauss, go get a first aid kit." Crane barked and the wolf got up and ran off to go find what he could. He turned to me. "I need you get this clothing off of him."

I began to pull away the soiled clothing that he was wearing. Under, the wound was bubbling with each gasp he took. The wolf was barely conscience as each breath caused him to arch his back in pain. I had seen plenty of wounds like this on the field and they required immediate attention.

"We need to seal the wound, try to dry it off as much as possible."

I looked around for anything and ended up tearing a piece of my shirt. It was hardly sterile, but it was best to treat him now and worry about an infection later. I wiped at the area around the wound as best as I could until Krauss arrived with a large red back with a white cross on it.

"Here." He handed Crane the bag, obviously worried about the well-being of his pack member.

Crane opened up the bag with his good arm and pulled out a tube of medial gel. He handed it to me, I knew what to do with it. I pulled out a large clean bandage and squeezed a healthy amount of the gel onto it and applied it to the wound.

The gel was, surprise surprise, made by J&H and utilized nanobots that would go into the wound and attempt to patch up tears and wounds while sealing it to prevent air and bacteria from getting in and festering.

Once the gel made contact with the wound, it began to make a sizzling noise and the bandage immediately hardened as the wound became airtight.

Meanwhile Crane had pulled out a large syringe and had pulled off the back plunger part of it. He moved over next to me and began to feel around the wolf's chest. He stopped and then stabbed the needle into the chest, a spurt of blood came out of the exposed end of the needle followed by a rush of air. The wolf's breathing became noticeably better, but it was till ragged.

"He still needs surgery." Crane began to wipe blood off of his paw and turned to one of the security guards that had watched the entire procedure. "Does this station have a surgical ward?" I was seeing a part of Crane that rarely came up, all business and no slacking. As soon as there was someone dying that he could potentially save, he got serious.

The man was caught off guard by the short corgi. "Uh, ah." He sputtered, trying to get his thoughts together.

"Well?" Crane yelled. Most of the people in the room had stopped if they weren't already heling the wounded to see what the commotion was.

Another man came up who sported a few bars on his shoulders and spoke. "Yeah, they've already been notified and are awaiting patients." He looked down at the dying wolf with a bit of pity. "Let's get your friend down there." He grabbed the sputtering man and had him grab one of the tables that was on wheels and turned it into a makeshift gurney. Being the worst out of everyone that was wounded, the wolf was wheeled away first and Krauss went with them.

"My father wants to see you." I didn't even notice the woman come up behind me as I watched the table get rolled away. I jumped a bit and turned around. She was right there with the helmet open with another soldier right beside her.

"Your father?" I asked.

"Yes, my father, Bill Hawthorne." She said gruffly and crossed her arms.

Surprised would have been an understatement. I never would have guessed that this woman, who just led an assault was the sister of Francis. At first glance, they didn't seem anything alike.

Crane stood next to me. "Well, there's really not much else to do. We did come here to see him."

"Okay." I said. "Lead on."

She huffed and started to walk off. Crane and I followed her out silently. She led us out of the room and down some hallways towards the opposite end of the station of where Francis' ship was docked. It appeared that most of the fighting took place on this side. There was a lot more damage and we even passed a spot where someone had used some sort of explosive. A piece of the wall had been clown away, revealing a mess of wires and pipes and scorching the rest of the hall in a 5 meter radius. If there were any bodies, they had been moved.

People had left their hiding places and were now assessing the damage. Most didn't even see us go by, but a few stopped and stared, unsure of what we were. Some looked hostile and some looked scared, but no one did anything to get in our way.

Francis' sister brought us to a hall that had offices lining either side, there was a noticeable increase in the amount of guards as well. Some were the station, most were in the heavy white armor. They stood erect and still, completely emotionless with their helmets on. I wondered how well trained they were, watching Francis' sister in action gave me an idea, but the level of professionalism they showed peaked my interest.

We came up to a large executive type office where two soldiers stood at either side. The sound of an argument was leaking through.

"I know you did this. Stop denying it." A gravelly voice of someone who had at one point smoked for years boomed.

"I don't know what you're talking about." A calmer and cleaner voice answer back.

"Bullshit! That was a J&H frigates, men in J&H security armor coming from a trajectory that would have brought them here from Jupiter. YOU!"

"Anyone can buy a ship and some paint."

Francis' sister opened the door and led us in. An aging man in a suit stood behind a desk and an image of another old man was on a screen on the back wall. They didn't even notice us coming in.

"How do you explain this?" The man, whom I presumed to be Billy, or Bill Hawthorne held up a picture to the screen. "Fucking thing isn't human. Only your facilities have this kind of capabilities."

The man on the screen raised an eyebrow when he saw the image. "There was the incident on Mars. That proves that you're wrong."

"Bullshit." Mr. Hawthorne repeated in a louder voice. "You were behind it, we've got evidence."

"Sure you do." The man looked past the agitated old man and looked at Crane and me. "We'll talk about this later."

"Don't you dare." Mr. Hawthorne roared, but the feed cut out and the screen went blank. He stood there stiffly, and whirled around. He saw us and instantly relaxed. "Captain Anderson, Sergeant Crane glad to see you well." He spread open his hands in a gesture of welcome and his tone much more welcoming. "Sorry you had to see that, but business isn't going so smoothly as you many already know." He brushed his silver hair back with a hand and sat down with obvious effort.

"It's definitely been an interesting day." I agreed.

He smiled and looked at his daughter. "Teresa, darling, go get your brother. There is much to discuss. Yes, much to discuss."