Water rained on the titanium-nylon mesh armor covering her back, dripping in mud brown droplets off the waterproof material before pooling underneath the Reaper.

Her gas mask whined as she drew in a breath. There was no other sound, just the whining of air going in and the rasp of it going out. There was a loud, high pitched shriek as well, but it seemed to be coming from inside.

Carlight looked around, trying to orientate herself.

There were four buildings around, surrounding her, formerly bleached white but now covered in mud and blood and scorches.

She was kneeling dead in the center of an intersection, facing to the east and the city slums. Behind her, a broken hydrant sprayed the whole intersection with mucky water.

Two hundred meters out, a pair of Chimera transports ripped right through the sheet metal shacks on the right of the road and disappeared within the wooden ones to the left.

Reapers didn't use Chimeras.

To her left, she spotted the remains on the Kodiak, its rear melted and fused with the street. The Leman Russ a few meters away from the still burning wreck hid the rest of the convoy from her, but she could hear intense fighting and discerned at least three distinct explosions.

Someone grabbed her shoulders and dragged her up. The lieutenant, most likely…

"Sir, wha…" It was not a Reaper, nor a PDF, but a large man clad in Flak armor. He had a combat knife in an ice pick grip ready to go down on her. Blocking was out of the question, that man packed too much strength, so she sidestepped the strike and drew her own combat knife, strapped to her thigh.

Her arm made a wide arc and the man grabbed her forearm just before the blade could dig into his neck.

Knife in the other hand, he pulled Carlight forward roughly and impaled her on the thirty centimeter blade, like her armor were just a t-shirt. The pain spreading across her midsection was unlike anything she'd ever felt. It was somewhere between a dog bite and a shaving accident, only a thousand fold.

The blade dug in just above the Reaper's belly button. One upward move and he would gut her like a fish. Carlight fumbled around for her sidearm, but she had given it to the PDF kid. Her right forearm was still stuck and her knife was in that hand.

There was really nothing she could do to save herself, in just a moment, the man would finish the job and…

Her knee came up and smashed in the hostile's ball sack twice, actually popping one testicle like an egg.

The man passed out before his brain could register the pain.

Carlight wished she could do that now. Instead, she turned right, to the north and the basement Tier 2s were supposed to be awaiting extraction in. It was also the direction of the spaceport and she could see tiny black dots leave the planet in a hurry. The street itself was deserted, but it wouldn't be for long; the gunshots were getting closer.

Oddly enough, she was not bleeding, the knife having apparently dug into something hard enough for it to stay perfectly still and keep any ruptured blood vessel closed.

Every step was painful as she walked up to a pickup truck, parked on the side of the road.

The keys were on and Carlight was thankful for that, she even thanked whoever was out there as she got in the car.

Only after ten minutes of driving did it occur to her that she should try to contact somebody on her headset.

"Sigma Cain actual, Sigma Cain two five, please acknowledge." Talking made her stomach contract slightly and sent waves of agonizing pain around her body.

She waited a full minute before trying again, still without result.

The Tier 2s used much more advanced communication equipment with high level encryption protocols and their own squad-wide channels, so unless they somehow gave her their channel frequency and encryption key… Well, she was on her own.

The LT was the one with the coordinates, but he'd hinted that they were also using Reaper signs to indicate their hideout and the convoy was heading north.

She simply had to find a T2 painted or carved in a building somewhere to the north of this cesspool city.

She drove through the multiple craters left by the earlier MLRS strike, each bumps sending sparks of pain through her abdomen.

Stretching on both sides of the road, the habitations complexes all looked empty; some were barricaded, others had rocket impacts on their fronts and many were quite simply missing whole floors.

The Reapers had not made it this far yet, those damages were already there before the war, only no one bothered to fix it.

The street was filled with debris and wrecks she had to drive around despite her shaky vision and the pain in her abdomen giving her the attention span of an ADHD kid on speed.

This would be a long ride.

0

0

0

The patient had once been a prime human specimen, his thick muscles and many scars clearly identifying him as a soldier.

Not a Guardsman, however; the man had a short beard, tattoos on his face and a straight line of longer hairs on top of his head. This would have him shot by any commissar worth his salt.

Thus, when the boy had been brought to her, Milessa Varn, a retired field surgeon, had immediately taken an interest in him. Nothing sexual, of course, she was nearing a hundred years old and this kid was likely in his late twenties early thirties.

A group of officers from this Reaper regiment had dropped into her clinic a few days after she'd been asked to take a look at the soldier's wound, they had asked if he could be brought back and Milessa, being a simple underground doctor, had answered no. In fact, she had fixed most of the physical damage; ruptured artery, cracked vertebrae and crushed airway, but the brain damage from the twenty minutes or so he had been dead were far too complicated and expensive to fix.

For all intent and purpose, that man was as alive as a vegetable.

The men, seeing this, decided to simply take the soldier's belongings and told her to get rid of the body. To pull the plug.

The old doctor wanted to do just that, and she did, she removed all life support systems that kept the heart beating and lungs breathing.

It should have been a simple thing, the soldier's body would stop functioning without a brain telling it what to do.

It refused to.

Somehow, a small portion of the soldier's mind still worked, enough to keep the body alive anyway. Varn had never seen anyone survive with such extensive brain damage, and she had seen a lot of near miraculous things in her time.

If the kid wanted to live, who was she to argue? Ten minutes after trying to kill him, she was sanitizing her apartment's kitchen and scrounging around for tools and instruments she could use for brain surgery.

A laser cutter, a spoon, a hydro-spanner, tweezers, sewing needles and a lot of vat-grown cerebral tissue were all she could acquire. It would have to do, as real material were not available to civilians like her.

"Well, friend," She spoke, taking a swig from her bottle of Scotch, "hope you're not afraid of needles." And she began shaving the man's already short hairs.

Reworked the Reapers' concept because I had lost sight of the main goal; ordinary guys with cheap gear winning with sheer tactical brilliance and constant training, so I'll be bringing a few changes.

First, the armors:

TA-78 "Cypher" Light Recon Armor, uses the same concept as a Flak Armor, except minus the shoulder pads and with Wraithbone weaved in. It will keep the operator alive through most indirect hit, but combat effectiveness afterward will depend on the power of the weapon.

TA-91 "Wolfhound" Medium Combat Armor, meant for extended combat and versatility, it is similar to the mainstream Carapace armor in composition, but closer to a power armor in protection, thanks to the thin waithbone plates added to the ceramite and the Mesh armor under layer. It sports a shoulder mounted mortar, gold plated joints to prevent corrosion and, in some of the most advanced suits, invisibility systems.

TA-103 "Crusher" Heavy Assault Armor, meant for Ogryn, Astarte and any other oversized recruits, the suit uses large plates of ceramite with wrathbone or adamantine plates to provide protection, but also uses more advanced and cost effective armor technology, like reactive armor, fire-retardant gel layer, impact-cushioning liquid undersuit and a strong magnetic field that reduces the power of some plasma weapons or outright negate some of the weakest ones.

All Reaper armors are outfitted with top level communication equipment and a basic HUD that does not aim or spot target for the operator, but does help in every small task. They are also outfitted with synthetic muscles weaved in the suit itself, helping the soldiers carry their equipment and reducing damages for blunt force impact and high falls.

The weapons:

XC-13 "Hedgehog" Carbine, an adaptation of Tau pulse rifle, it fires the same stabilized plasma ammunition, only at a greater rate and with less power.

P-97 "Defender" Standard Issue Sidearm, small, light and highly customizable, the P-97 works on the same basis as the regular needler pistol with a few upgrades, mostly cosmetic.

XRB-15 "Raging Bull" Assault Rifle, powerful, easy to produce and effective at medium and long range, the XRB-15 is not as popular amongst special task forces compared to its very widespread use by frontline troops. The assault rifle uses the same technology as needler rifles, only with more focus on stopping power and less on discretion. It can kill most foot infantry in a burst or two, but performs somewhat poorly against heavy infantry and vehicles.

M-17 "Ice Pick" Battle Rifle, based on the Tau pulse rifle concept, the Battle Rifle does not compare with the XC-13 when it comes to rate of fire, although it is much more powerful and accurate. The M-17 is quite popular with Designated Marksmen or troops operating on open terrain.

M-35 "Scythe" Enhanced Battle Rifle, even more powerful and accurate than its little brother, the EBR lacks a burst fire mode and is much better suited for sniping roles, although some prefer the instant kill ability to a higher rate of fire.

SR-20 "Iron Dove" Sniper rifle, using the same concept as the famed Exitus rifles, only cheaper, the SR-20 can punch through most type of armors and is effective against almost everything, making it the primary choice for sniper teams, although its bulk and slow firing rate makes it impractical for any other task.

AM-500 "Falcon" Anti-matériel rifle, firing 1.00 CAL self-propelled rounds, the AM-500 is meant to punch aircrafts out of the sky, rip light vehicles' engine blocks to shred and pierce just about any kind of cover at ranges usually thought impossible to reach for a sniper. In the hands of an experienced marksman, it can decimate whole companies.

M-404 "Scimitar" Shotgun, firing a hail of magnetised silicon pellets surrounded by plasma at every shot, the M-404 is often found attached under carbines, assault rifles and battle rifles, it can also be used as a stand alone automatic shotgun. Though excellent at close quarters and breaching situations, the plasma surrounding the pellets tends to disperse quickly, making the weapon useless at longer ranges or around electro-magnetic fields.

MG-61 "Grinder" Squad Automatic Weapon, chambered in .50 CAL boltgun ammunition, the MG-61 packs less punch than a regular bolter, as it is chambered in pistol ammo, but it makes up for it by filling the air with steel at every squeeze of the trigger and packing a massive drum magazine, allowing Reaper heavy weapons specialists to pin down just about any kind of foe.

MP-11 "Hornet" Tactical Machine Pistol, using the same pellets as the M-404, although fired individually and at an increased rate of fire, the MP-11 can perforate soft targets like paper and fire on a full clip for two minutes without running out of ammunition, making it perfect for crowd control and close combat.

There are many attachments available to Reaper operators, but one of the most popular is the "Icarus" laser, an under-barrel attachment that emits a diffuse yet extremely dangerous ultraviolet radiation that burns the retina of whoever looks at it and can cause serious burns to any exposed skin.

The Reapers can also use any weapons available on the black market or develop new ones on the field to suit their purpose.

Now vehicles:

Wasp All Terrain Vehicle, a light one man quad designed to go through terrains even an hovercar would be having trouble with, it is rumored to be impossible to overturn, thanks to its built in gyro-stabilisation system, and can keep up with just about any other land vehicle, although it offers all the protection of tissue paper.

Scylla Light Tank, a six wheeled tank built for speed instead of power, it packs a computer guided missile launcher that allows it to shoot a bird in flight from a mile and while heading in the opposite direction, making it excellent for hunter-killer purpose and artillery.

Gecko Light Assault Vehicle, capable of transporting six soldiers and packing a swivel mounted burst cannon, the Gecko is best suited for fast deployment and fire support.

Charybdis Infantry Fighting Vehicle, essentially a tracked Scylla, the Charybdis focuses on firepower and anti-infantry duty, although is still carries a pair of missile launchers to complement its 90mm autocannon.

Spectre Main Battle Tank, Reapers rarely ever use tanks and the presence of a Spectre on the battlefield means they really want someone dead. The MBT uses the most advanced tank technology available, combining Tau, Eldar and Human manufacturing technique, it can go toe to toe with any other tank of its class and win every time.

Kodiak Heavy Battle Tank, based on the Baneblade, the Reapers built only one of those and its presence is a clear sign that something big is happening. Nearly impervious to standard anti-tank weaponry, the Kodiak can plow through tanks like a bulldozer through toy trucks, its only handicap when compared to other tanks of its size is the absence of secondary weapons outside the turret mounted machine gun and main gun. The Reapers reduced the amount of guns especially so they could increase the punch and firing rate of the main one. No known tank can best the Kodiak in one on one combat, but the thing is quite vulnerable to aircrafts and gunships.

Locust VTOL, a small and agile aircraft using twin tilt engines to switch between hover and regular flight, the Locust acts as a gunship, interceptor and quick insertion vehicle. It is based on the Valkyrie dropship, but has less armor and better avionics.

Hammerhead VTOL, a large and sturdy transport vehicle using the same tilt engine system as the Locust, only much bigger. The Hammerhead is based on the Thunderhawk, but it is not obvious at first sight, given the heavy Tau and Eldar improvements added to the design. It is not as armored or powerful as the original, but carries 105mm canons, heavy bolters and burst cannons all ready to rain death on ground units that don't sparkle.

They will rarely field their own vehicles, however, preferring to use local guards regiment equipment, making the supply lines easier to maintain.

The way Reapers were going before was based on Ghost Recon, I've already said that, but I lost track of the story's main idea along the way, closer to Rainbow Six or Modern Warfare, so expect less BFGs (Big Fucking Guns) and more BFIs (Bright Fucking Ideas) from now on.

I will not retcon anything, canonically, Top Dog has reached the same conclusion I did, fielding his troops became too complicated and cost too much, so he had the R&D boys re-work the whole thing.