Sigma/Star

Chapter 115: Assault on Razul

Porter gripped his controls tightly in the cockpit of the White Storm. It had taken sometime for them to get to the coast, ferrying the Goliaths over one at a time with a stolen boat. The warmachines were too large for the shuttles to carry them, but the aircraft needed to ship them would be so big it would be suspicious for them to hijack it. Grabbing a boat out at sea wasn't too strange, and there were always rumours of rogue pirates out in the oceans, so nobody would come looking.

The snow swirled around the group, their battlesuits working to keep the occupants warm inside. They were on the fringes of the city, able to view it from their perch in the mountains, and were making final preparations before they would begin their invasion. What they were about to do and who they were about to impact was going to be an entirely new venture for them, and something none of them had ever conceived of just a few months ago. Razul was not an enemy city or a foreign one; Razul was an Enian-controlled town, plain and simple, and always had been.

"We're ready Porter." Ardwen checked in through the viewscreens, speaking on behalf of the group as he took over a second-in-command role. Porter slowly sucked in a deep breath, mulling over the strategy in his head. There was a lot of responsibility settling down onto his shoulders, but he knew he had to carry this burden with pride. Each time he had met a new obstacle of late, he had crumbled and folded, stumbling under the weight. This time he would be ready, and he would meet it head on, but it was difficult to take that first step. The words and feelings he had shared with Shotuku and the rest of the group were just that at this moment: words. It would take something entirely different for him to do something tangible and physical.

"Alright, let's move out."

* * * * *

"We need to be prepared." The hum of the shuttle mixed with Ardwen's words as he spoke to the group. They were travelling from the island, their ship controlled by Sigma as they headed for their Goliaths. From there, it would be a trek to the north, a relatively easy one from where their battlesuits had been placed.

Chandana had given the group an intelligence package, a large set of files digitally stored in a small cube. Sigma already had access to them and had begun to ship out the Goliaths almost immediately after Porter had agreed. But the group had not gone over the files together until this moment. A small light shot up from the cube, generating a screen for them to read the documents. Ardwen had been in charge of formulating the best strategy of assault, his abilities still far superior to Porter's in that field.

"Who are we even going after?" Nami's feet swung just off the ground, her body still tiny, even while sitting. She was the only one who had such a problem on the vessel, legs moving back and forth while the rest of them were firmly strapped in. Only Raul appeared a bit overstuffed, just barely fitting into his chair with his larger frame.

The screen flickered a bit as Ardwen frantically searched for the correct file. Finally, he pulled up a profile for what appeared to be a prisoner. "This is a former Enian General, known as Ice Queen Irina." Ardwen changed the image over to a video. Shaky footage began to play, revealing the battlefield where the Jahari had first arrived. Ballistics flew past the camera as the chaos of combat played out. Suddenly, a tower of ice shot up through the air, and the lens on the camera froze, then cracked and shattered, ending everything. "Her abilities with her chi are astonishing, but they came from a very emotional place at one point. It seemed during that skirmish, she lost her husband to Syn, and subsequently went on a bit of a rampage."

Ardwen shifted through more images and files again as he continued: "Due to her outburst of dangerous chi, she was eventually brought down by the military and subdued. She was stripped of her Goliath and contained within a prison unit. From there, they moved her up north to the city of Razul, where she comes from. She's been locked up there since, and has had numerous attempts at therapy administered to her." Psychological reports appeared, detailing the condition Irina was in and her progress. Each paper was written in a fairly negative tone, dismissing most hope that the general's mind could be restored to something normal.