Killing In The Name of

Riana Maren

Killing In The Name Of - Embers

It was an incredibly odd sensation for a Pergrandian citizen to be considered a mercenary under the armed forces of the country they served - but most of the employers Riana Maren were working for did not seem to care. The fact remained that every single body that signed up for the war effort would be more meat for the grinder that could be thrown mindlessly into the battles that were inevitably to come; Riana was no exception to this, despite her position in life. At this point, she was just here, weapon in hand, ready to fight for whatever it was that she planned on doing. Needless to say, this was a state of affairs that played directly to her advantage: there would be plenty of slain enemies on every battlefield that she joined, all to further her own cause. Never mind what Pergrande or Bellum wished, at this point; she would be directly profiteering off the enemies that challenged her. The scientist knew this, embraced it, and would use it to her full gain for every passing moment that someone was glad to use this and line her coffers with jewels. This was the arrangement, and she would enter it with glee. This benefitted her, and thus, the enemies of the Ironheart Pact were going to find swift ends under her intense barrages and the storm of destruction that a battlesuit crafted of the finest alien space metals could have ever brought down upon the heads of unsuspecting savages.

Ah, yes, there it was - the true Pergrandian in her. Savages. The way to refer to the unwashed masses that populated the armies of the Luminous Covenant; unwilling to embrace the ways of the future, they were simply that - living in squalor and horrific conditions, believing that their way of purity and divine blessing was in fact the way to live. Not the Pergrandian way, of course, of creature comfort and scientific advancement walking hand in hand towards a brighter tomorrow; those who rejected that thinking were backwards and unable to see that this was the true way. Riana really had been listening to some of the Pergrandian propaganda playing in the background of the recruiter’s office. Or, in her particular case, listening to the words of the officers around Kapitan Allaina Maren, her older red-haired sister who served in Her Imperial Majesty’s armed forces; it was through her than Riana had come to serve the Motherland in this war, and with no communication to the rest of the family she had decided to embark on this course of action. Whatever her similarly-looking older sibling had truly thought of this particular mood had been held back - knowing Allaina, it was stony silence and disapproval of the fact that Riana was leveraging her position of living in a foreign land in order to benefit from the great pay that was offered for mercenary service in the Pergrandian armed forces. This was the way of the younger sibling, to put herself before all others regardless of the outcome and the glory that might have benefitted her from putting service first. However, Allaina had ensured that Riana had access to everything that she had needed in order to prosper as a mercenary in the armed forces, and Riana was now being sent to the front lines of the first invasion front of the Luminous Covenant effort to press into Pact territory. This was the way it had to be; perhaps if she was positioned better and a member of the true military forces of her homeland, then Allaina could have arranged for a more rear-echelon position where she would not have been committed to the thick of the fighting. However, when speaking with her sister, it almost seemed that such a place was where Riana wanted to be - and if that was the case, then Allaina silently prayed for the soul of her sibling and hoped that this war would allow Riana to come through cleanly and without blemish to her spirit.

Thus, Riana found herself on the eastern plains of Minstrel, shipped there gladly by Pergrandian armoured train; here, the Desierto forces were replicating their invasion techniques as they had raided, pillaged and plundered Joya - now they were doing it to a second nation in order to sate their three desert princes. No matter, considered the red-headed scientist; whatever front she was issued to would find itself pushing forward on the part of the Minstrelian forces. She was not about to allow a single beach-head to collapse under her watch. She had too much power under her command to allow such to happen. Therefore, when she arrived, she was going to do what she did best - take the fight to the enemy, ensure their entire destruction, and beat back whatever wave of invaders that she knew she could.

The armoured train screeched to a halt at the logistics station established near the border patrol wall that had been established as the first real defensive point outside the small village that formed the extreme of the Minstrel east border. Here, a long border ‘wall’ had been established in a rather hurried fashion; what seemed like miles of fox holes fortified with sand bags between them, as well as barbed wire and heavy metal tank traps to deter most would-be invaders. These were positions of great strength that favoured the ranged firepower of the Minstrel militia that had been conscripted to fight in the battle. To that end, small fire teams of brave men and women could man the fox-holes and engage the Desiertan invaders at range before they even approached the village itself. Of course, there was nature to contend with as well; there were rocks, forests, hills, all manner of things that needed to be fought with to ensure the continuance of the defensive line that had been formed to defend the village. Riana thought it was all incredibly silly, and then took a moment to think that this was not her method of warfare; her ways were far more advanced than these fools, and there had to be thought for the fact that these simpletons would need a far more basic method of fighting than she.

Regardless, Riana heard her instructions as she departed the train, to report to any of the local Kapitans that would then issue their orders. Riana knew their insignias and uniforms well, and did not need to be told twice; a band of stragglers behind her would be left in the dust as the scientist made her way to the closest command prefabricated building that would inevitably host an officer.

Crossing the threshold to the building, Riana cast a piercing emerald gaze through the room as she began, barely willing to even acknowledge the yefreytori who attempted– and failed– to bar her entry. ”Kapitan. Riana Maren of the mercenary corps, reporting for-”

She froze. Absolutely, without hesitation, utterly froze. The kapitan in question sat behind a small desk, looking over a series of maps of the area; the red-haired woman that was sitting down examined the pile with an ever-familiar emerald gaze, just like her own, and with a bored expression that she knew all too well.

The kapitan looked up, and mirrored the expression that was writ on Riana’s face. Kapitan Allaina Maren could not believe her eyes. ”Riana. I should have known they’d send you here.”

”Agreed. We’ll skip the pleasantries, and in this case, my not quite ham-fisted thought to outwit the local kapitan in order to have my way with my choice of defensive locations that suit my way of combat. Situation report?”

The career soldier couldn’t help but suppress a chuckle. As always, her younger sister never changed; her intelligence was one of her greatest weapons and her equally-large pride one of her greatest weaknesses. Some things never changed, and the fact she was being so open about it proved that she was either being intentionally flippant about the situation in order to secretly get her way as always, or that she truly did not care. It was realistically going to be the second one. Riana was rather good at projecting a totality of apathy. Such was the way of their relationship as siblings, one that had been tainted by the influence of their father.

Now, however, was not the time for such musings.

”The current situation is that we have beaten back three full waves of Desiertan invaders, but they have made precision strikes at distant points on the line to weaken our positions such that too many more spearheads may breach our lines made in the forest,” Allaina began, pointing at a location on the map that Riana was already casting her eyes to.  Yes, she could have seen that on her approach; however, to hear it from someone she at least trusted to know what was going on was somewhat refreshing.

”And if someone was to prevent the next wave of incoming attackers from breaching the edge of the forest, then you would be sufficiently pleased to reinforce that position in future to prevent any further incursion?” Riana asked pointedly. It was such a simple plan, and she was the woman for the job for sure. She was already formulating a battle strategy to manage the invaders.

Allaina looked at her younger sister, that piercing gaze now locked onto the fair-skinned scientist and the mentality that she would inevitably bring to this fight. What was her end goal here? ”Well, yes, in theory, Riana-”

”Consider it done, Kapitan,” Riana said, already turning on her heel to leave the small structure. ”I imagine you have a dozen more mercenaries to brief, either you or your fellow officers, so I shall see you after that forest has been held. Good luck, sister.”

And with that, Riana was good. What a turn of events that she would see the only member of her family that she did not openly loathe, of course. This was the way of things, and Riana would do well to remember that she was not the soldier here - only the hireling. She had to listen to what her sister said, unfortunately, but by then it was already too late. She was in fact going to do her absolute best to follow the instructions she had projected– she had not been given the instructions directly after all– and would go and defend the forest spearhead that had been assaulted repeatedly by the marauding Desierto forces. In this instance, Riana would be the one to put an end to them, and knew that in that moment she would find solace in the fact that she was able to engage her opponents on so many different fronts.

However, now that she was once more out of eyesight of her sister she could begin her combat operations. After all, she had kept her lacrima a secret from her family for so long that such a thing would have to continue purely out of habit; Riana had to wait until she was no longer visible by her sister that she could summon the Ebon Fury to her and become the battle-clad warrior goddess that she had become in her time away from her homeland. In that moment, orange-red particles surrounded her body as a whirling tornado before forming into perfectly covalent bonds, crystallising into perfect metallic lattices that formed the great war-beast that she piloted. Her heads-up display flickered to life as the battlesuit powered up, already feeding her the data that she needed as the wings tested their auto-balancing vernier systems, preparing to carry the mistress of magical technology on to her next destination before she could prepare the ambush that she was already devising for the filthy  Desiertan invaders. If they were going to be put down, it was absolutely going to be here, where she could slay them all like the beasts they were. Unfortunately, their deaths were upon them and they were absolutely unprepared for such. Did she do this for the pride of her family? For brownie points? No. This was for the joy of killing, and for the joy of the jewels that she would earn from this job. She didn’t care about the war itself. Her self-serving ways would never change.

And, as she rocketed off towards the forest on her metal wings, she knew precisely how she was going to handle this. After all, with so many tools at her disposal, she had so many options available to her - how could she not proceed to use the most devastating to light infantry and skirmishers? Using their own tactics against them was the best way to do this. Riana knew this sort of thing well. Being blood of one of the local officers was such a handy thing; she’d picked up some basics on enemy infantry and their strategies from simply listening to her. And, the fact was, if a terrain ideal for ambushes and surprise attacks was falling, it only seemed to make sense. Riana knew that Desiertan troops were raiders at heart. They did not fight in phalanx, or in rank and file. They broke apart, engaged in asymmetrical warfare, and made it harder to be hit. Well, two could play at that game, after all.

Riana touched down in a small gap in the copse of trees she had elected to be the prime location to blunt the next invading force; if they were going to advance through this location, then so be it. She would engage them head-on, but not in the way they were expecting. In the next moment, a series of mirage colloid particles emanated from her battlesuit’s generator fields, shrouding her from visual and magical detection; stealth fields were such a wonderful invention. Then, after that, her fingers moved through the air such that four more battlesuits appeared from quantum space. Three of them had more rotund heads and wide visors they used as eyes, plus a wide variety of weapons available to them; one was more humanoid and resembled Riana’s own battle plate, with many wide glowing wing structures attached to its body. Her artificial intelligence, SOFI, was already taking over calculations for their control.

-- M-Doll units on standby. –

The simple update from the subcutaneous intelligence meant that Riana knew she was in business. Like her, the mobile dolls were shrouded from visual detection; whatever affected her affected them, and this was such a perfect use of her strategic assets that she couldn’t help but think this was going to be a perfect way to ambush her enemies. She could place each of these in different locations and ensure that the invaders had no idea what hit them. Engaging in her own version of asymmetric warfare was the perfect answer to the destruction of her foes. If they deigned to come at her, then so be it. Let them. She would answer their invasion with blood.

At that moment, the five mechanical monsters spread out to take positions behind different trees, where overlapping fields of fire could be created. This would allow Riana to draw them in, using one as bait, where the rest could begin to pick them off one by one as the enemies encroached upon what she now considered her territory. The best for this purpose would inevitably be Saviour, her machine created to bolster allies and hamper enemies, and her sword and shield-wielding beast named Guardian. From there, the cannon-armed Pulsar, the blade bit-wielding SOFI-A and Riana herself could then engage every target from ranges and distances beyond that which the enemy could comprehend. Being able to engage on so many simultaneous fronts was such a boon that the scientist could not turn away such an advantage. With stealth on their side, any advance the enemy decided to make would end up blunted as steel hitting stone. Riana would ensure of that.

And sure enough, at the edge of her sensors’ detection range, there they were. The next band of would-be Desiertan hopefuls that wanted to breach the Minstrel barrier, hoping to breach into the village and rape, pillage, loot and plunder their way to success. They were little better than modern-day pirates on land, which was almost a laughable concept. Pirates were far more successful than these losers, which meant that Riana would have no difficulty putting them down. She was tagging each of the targets on her systems one by one, and by the amount of data she was pulling in, there were somewhere in the vicinity of fourty-five targets - and not all of them were human, as she was suddenly discovering; some of them were hunting beasts. In fact, a good chunk of them were hunting beasts. Somewhere in the vicinity of twenty or so, in fact, and judging by the roars and cries of the monsters that the Desiertans had brought along to play, then Riana was going to be in for a very fun time laying ambushes out for all of these idiots that dared to enter her forest.

Their loss.

Riana conjured her magitech rifle, summoning it effortlessly into her hands; she would have to be very, very precise with her first shot, as the first of many desert warriors began to cross the treeline and into her eyesight; a targeting reticle laid itself over one blonde haired, dark-skinned man’s chest as he paused, casting his eyes around to see if any of the Minstrel defenders had made themselves present in the trees. Judging by the fact that there was no ineffective gunfire echoing out, chances were the Minstrel fools still hadn’t shored up the defences of this particular part of their outer wall. Perfect for them, as far as they were concerned.

Then, a spectacular lancing beam of orange-red lashed out, and cut the man square through the chest. The last thing he registered before his dying breath was momentary surprise as the blast caught him, and then the infinite blackness too him. Better this idiot than Riana, she figured.

The Desiertan invaders stopped, took stock of the situation, and began shouting; the general miasma of noise rose to the heavens as the raiders began to fan out and search for the culprit that had just killed their sword-wielding advanced scout. Riana held a moment, then conjured her leg-mounted missile launchers to her; these would be the next best weapon to engage a variety of targets. SOFI-A’s blade bits began to detach but did not fly away from the host just yet; such a shining weapon would be too hilariously obvious in the opening moments of combat. By contrast, Pulsar began to line up its own targets, SOFI running the calculations to cause maximum chaos and destroy the most amount of enemies in the opening barrage.

”Five,” Riana whispered. In response, though the foe could not see it, the generators of her battlesuit began to glow a brighter orange-red, showcasing the power running through its mechanical veins. True strength was just within her reach now.

”Four.”

The Desiertans began to approach, swords brandishing in the low light of the forest. They were trying to find an enemy unseen, something that they could not hear - though their hunting beasts seemed to be sniffing. A lion sniffed the floor and a large white roc, the vicious bird of prey, were both moving to find a scent that their eyes simply could not detect. Riana could see the monsters approaching, and knew they would be the first to have to die.

”Three.”

The rifle was replaced, in the next instant. The cumbersome and heavy magitech hyper cannon whirred into existence, the shoulder-carried high-output energy weapon able to strike a multitude of targets - and in this case it would be better to simply wipe out the enemy force than to engage them one at a time. Riana knew this to be true. With such high target density, there was no point holding back. She would slaughter every last one of the encroaching invaders.

”Two.”

The beasts grew closer. One bird, as far as Riana could see, locked eyes with her - but she did put her faith in her stealth system. She knew it would hold against visual and magical detection - but could they smell the lubricant, the machine oil? It was entirely likely. No matter what, they were foreign, and perhaps the sound of servomotors whirring at high frequencies could be picked up by their ear. It was unfortunate, but Riana knew she could handle herself.

”One.”

Deep breath, Riana Maren.

The next moment was a spectacular light show of orange red, the intense whoosh of missiles discharging their propellant and energy blades flying through the air to find positions. The forest found itself splintered and cracking under the inimitable force of energy blasts - a veritable fusillade of energy flying forth at the Desiertan foes. The heavy cannon roared biggest and loudest, felling multiple trees and sending dirt scattering as the blast carved a full hole through the tree line and evaporated its intended recipients. A circus of missiles carved up the air, detonating against any fleshy foe that it could find. Behind her, the blade bits of SOFI-A’s mech unloaded their criss-crossing lines of energy fire, coupled with Pulsar’s need to fire alternating full-power shots. The sheer magical drain of Riana’s onslaught was not lost on her magical reserves, but the amount of enemies that fell in that instant was insane. Fully three-quarters of the invaders dropped in that initial barrage alone, swept up in a cyclone of high-output energy blasts and missiles. Animals roared as their death came upon them in ways that their unthinking minds could not truly comprehend, and men and women alike screamed as they were consumed by the unfeeling fire of destruction rewarded to them by machines.

What was left was followed up by the blade and bastion-wielding Guardian dashing forward at high speed, cutting veritable swathes through her enemies. SOFI-A and Pulsar were not too far behind either, engaging what was left of the targets; they were able to make short work of such pushovers. After all, Riana had crafted her attacks well. Her power generators– and by extension, those of her creations– were sufficiently powerful enough to carry her through any combat engagement and, as she was rapidly discovering, now that stealth was no longer a requirement, she was able to deploy so much devastating firepower by dint of her summons alone that she felt that this was not a challenge.

As her artificial intelligence deployed the machines to carry out the final act of annihilation that swept the Desiertans away with little input on Riana’s end, she found herself thinking about the act that brought this down. They had not sent strong enemies in to face her, at all. In fact, they’d committed little better than children to this particular offensive, which, while insulting, meant that the complete erasure of the raiders from Earthland would serve as a warning to the others. Let that be the message they took. The scientist cared not - their deaths were simply fodder for the rest, to allow the meat grinder of annihilation to continue on.

Riana took that moment to remove her helmet and survey the destruction to the landscape her energy weapons had created; at least ten trees just in her immediate vicinity had fallen, some of them onto the corpses of those that she had killed; the air was thick with the scent of ozone as the magical particles she conjured burned the very air around her. Screams still echoed as one man found himself stabbed through the heart - one pair of robotic arms on Saviour’s part holding him down and a blade then skewered through his chest. These were calculating, unfeeling machines. Whatever was required to end every single one of these fools would happen. SOFI knew the intent behind her creator’s wishes - kill every single one of them, and that the machines would do.

This was not sport. This was indiscriminate murder, where Riana would inevitably allow herself the luxury of the erasure of her foes time and time again until this war ended, one way or another. She sighed quietly to herself before she put her helmet back over her head, letting the seal lock itself back and pressurise her suit.

Maybe next time they’d send her something harder to kill.