Assault (Red vs Blue)

40: The End

40: The End

Present Day: Temple of Communications (The planet Chorus)

Church stood with his friends, frozen in terror as they watched three hulking figures drop from the Staff of Charon. It only took a second for him to realize that the figures were Mantises; the ground crumbled beneath the androids as they landed and opened fire. For a moment — just a brief moment — the cobalt clad soldier thought they had won. He should've known it was too good to be true. Nothing was ever that easy for them.

Panicked yells from Kimball could be heard over the comms — followed by a whole chorus of voices trying to give orders which most notibly included Washington and Carolina. Church could pick up on bits and pieces of the other freelancers' voices as well, but more of them were being drowned out by the screams of the colonists as they tried to escape the heavy artillery. Even the lieutenants and Dr. Grey could be heard in the midst of the chaos.

"You imbeciles just couldn't do it, could you?" Hargrove growled into the speaker. "You all couldn't just simply lay down and die!" Two more large figures dropped from the ship. "And since that was the case . . . If I'm going down, than I'm taking every last one of you with me!"

There was a brief moment of silence before Grif yelled in frustration and began pacing. "Damn it! We were so close! God fucking damn it!"

"Carolina, Tex; somebody! Are you guys okay down there?" Church frantically contact either soldier. "Someone answer me!"

"We're here," Carolina finally responded. "We're all right for now, but I don't know how much longer that's going to last."

Tex chimed in then. Her voice was pained; either she'd gotten hurt again, or the patch job on her previous wound had failed. "Church, it's bad. Hargrove's dropping androids all over the place. They're starting to surround the temple and we're pinned down."

"We were able to handle one Mantis," Wash continued, "but trying to take on this many is gonna turn into a bloodbath."

"Isn't there any way we can get some extra help? What about the Director?" Tucker asked. "Doesn't he have some fancy equipment he could send in to help us out?"

Suddenly, the Director's voice could be heard over comms. "Unfortunately, I will not be able to assist you at this time. The control of the Mother of Invention has been temporarily seized remotely by the U.N.S.C. — there is nothing I can do. So I say good luck and godspeed; hopefully everyone will make it through this battle and I can retreive you all when I'm able." And then his transmission went silent.

"Damn it," Church hissed under his breath. Just then, a thought occurred to him. He suddenly remembered something he'd thought about before the mission started. He'd been hoping he wouldn't have to use what he'd thought of, but it didn't seem like he was going to have any other choice. Church hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "It won't end that way if we can shut them all down at once."

"How are we gonna do that?" Doc asked.

"We can override the controls. But there's just one problem. In order to do that, we need to go to the source," Church explained, then pointed up.

The group all turned their gazes to the sky at the Staff of Charon, which loomed almost directly above them. Church could already probably guess what the others were thinking, but they didn't have a choice. It was either they got onto the ship, or everyone was going to die.

"You're joking, right?" Tucker asked after a moment. "Seriously, please tell me you're joking."

"Not in the slightest. Tucker, if we don't do this, everyone we know and care about is gonna get killed. And so are we," Church informed him. "I don't know about you, but I think enough people have already lost their lives because of this asshole. We need to stop him before we lose anyone else."