#imc

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Pairings: Robert "Barker" Taube x f!IMC!Pilot! reader

Warnings: Slight cannon divergence (MacAllan stays on the Odyssey for a bit; it's for the plot trust.), Alcoholism (mentioned), usual IMC stuff, murder, uhh slaughtering of people on G-21 is still happening, Kuben Blisk.

Word count: 2.4k

A/n: guys I've actually been so busy. Sorry to keep anyone waiting haha. Also if you saw this posted a first time, NUH UH NO YOU DIDN'T. (I found out a new piece of lore and it messed EVERYTHING up. absolutely 100% had to rearrange and edit this.) Barker is coming soon lovelies I PROMISE.

Taglist: n/a

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˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙

G-21 is awake with screams and shouts, echoing through your head.

In your peripheral, you can see a few stragglers fleeing, running towards the remnants of the ship. Nobody seems to have noticed.

You keep your mouth shut. 

The BRD-01's still shoot and stomp their way through the buildings, emptying them of civilians.

Blisk begins to speak again, yelling into the comm to be heard over the roar of his Goblin as it tears through the air. He watches in what you think is awe, "Next-gen automated infantry the future, but taking out a bunch of civilians is hardly a test. ”

You don't say anything in reply. He's talking to Graves and Spyglass mostly, but you know he's half saying it to you.

You know what Blisk is saying is true.

The Spectres– they don't sleep, they don't eat, they don't drink. They don't get tired or worn down like a human soldier would. They don't experience trauma that mentally changes them, instead they just follow their orders, emotionally freed from the burden of knowledge that what they do may be an atrocity.

They lack humanity.

There's a roar overhead, and you tilt your head to see a large group of Crow-class dropships fire down lines on the other side of town.

“The terrorists are dropping troops at the north end of the village,” Kuben Blisk says, “deploy three more racks of Spectres!”

The Spectres drop down, feet thumping against soil as they march into the village. 

Chaos erupts within the walls. Gunshots echo back and forth like birds chatter at dawn.

“This will be a good chance to test our new Spectres.” He addresses you over the comms, “gather your men and neutralize every Militia terrorist in the area.”

You nod, immediately turning to give your men orders. Within 5 minutes you're in action, moving through the colony and firing shots at anything you deem non-civilian.

“Sir, I've intercepted an enemy transmission. Voice only. Playing it now,” Blisk comes over the comms again, and a scratchy voice fills the IMC channel.

“Looks like…finally have found our little corner of the universe… we are not ‘terrorists’, we are not part of your damn war…we're falling back to… and, colonists, if you can hear me, do not engage IMC. They can't be reasoned with…”

Graves commands Spyglass to intercept the signal and clarify it.

Within a few minutes, Spyglass has come back with another transmission:

“...We're falling back to higher ground… we're falling back to the carrier… the Odyssey is our only chance…”

“You know that voice, sir?” Blisk interrupts the silence to ask.

“It's the voice of a dead man. Find out where it's coming from.” Graves replies, and you can sense how his entire demeanor has shifted. The Vice Admiral sounds.. deeply off put. By the cam in your top right displaying is face, you can tell he looks it, too.

A carrier descends to the height of a roof, dividing your attention. A few pilots board the jet and suddenly they retreat.

“The Militia has pulled back to the Odyssy, they’ve boarded a carrier,” you say, watching as the jet ascends and nears the high debris on the hill.

“Roger,” Blisk says, “Sending a transport your way. Get yourselves to those terrorists.”

—

The ship slows, Spyglass says in a synthetic voice to disembark. It takes half a second to vault from the open doors and into the bright, smoke-tainted air, before making contact with the ground. Your squad follows suit, however they go down on lines.

“Our first priority here is to kill Militia members and secure the area,” you say into your comms, speaking on a channel designated for your squad, who are currently on another Goblin carrier.

There's a murmur of ‘understood' that ripples through the earpiece.

You don't say it. The thought of saying it out loud leaves a sour taste in your mouth. Yet, you know it's wrong and you don't speak up or say what you think: leave the civilians out of this. 

Militia soldiers, especially the many untrained grunts, stand no chance against your squad's superior force. As the IMC's highly trained Counter Strike and Suppression Force, you and your soldiers have undergone grueling training over the course of many, many years. 

Your squad is much like a special forces team, working separately to most IMC operations in an effort of early suppression or a motion to cease fighting by pulling the weed at the root and attacking before they ever knew.

Meanwhile the Militia grunts have hardly undergone a year of training, and it shows. You try not to dwell on the lives or training of the soldiers you slaughter, in hopes of shielding yourself from the truth and detaching yourself from the act.

“According to Spyglass's heat signatures, there’s a few terrorists holed up inside that ship and they're planning on stealing vital data from the Odyssey. Get yourself on that ship and stop them!” Kuben shouts through the communications device.

You fight your way to the ship, firing a few rounds before eventually, you become uncontested in your push.

The ship is large, still white and in relatively good condition for its age and situation.

High above you, there's a platform that you know would get you to the control room quickly. However, it would be only you, and your team wouldn't be able to follow you up.

“I'm going up there,” you say, turning your head slightly to your soldiers, “find a way around and we'll rendezvous as soon as we can.”

“Be careful up there, Cap,” says Dax, hand clapping your shoulder. Nodding one final time you aim your wrist to a nearby building and grapple onto it.

When you look back down, your soldiers have begun moving to find their own way inside. You inhale briefly, and you can see a trail to the platform that you need to follow. Launching yourself from the rooftop, you make a connection to a sheet of metal hanging off of a few cables. You place your hand upon the metal and begin rushing along it, feet pushing you on an angle as you wall run.

The interior is dimly lit, all the lights having been killed or stripped in the 15 years it’d been since the Odyssey went missing.

It takes you awhile to find your way. Winding corridors seem endless and the sounds of battle only echo in these chambers the farther you navigate. 

You push open a door, one marked above in grainy, faint letter ‘Control Room’ spells an answer to your search. It takes a data knife to hijack it open, but when it finally creaks apart enough to let you through, you enter with a pistol raised and ready to fire.

There's a strange blue-ish glow from a computer screen as well as a few blinking lights on some other monitors.

Slowly, you make your way towards the main monitor. As you near, you can see the body of a data knife as it juts out from a connection port.

It's almost done downloading, less than 5% remains. It'd be done in a minute or less. You can pull it out now, the files won't download all the way, they'll become corrupt, or, you can leave it.

Silence surrounds you for a moment. The civilian downloading off the ship is still in here. You inhale deeply, trying to calm your nerves.

The civilian, if you had to guess, was James MacAllan. He would logically be the only one with unrestricted access to files such as the ones he was downloading.

If you make a move on the data knife, he’ll likely take advantage of your vulnerability in the moment.

There's a crack of gunfire somewhere outside and you jump, whipping your body towards the noise. Seeing nothing prompts you to blow a long sigh past your lips. Slowly, you lower your gun, placing it back in its holster.

A transmission crackles through your device, it’s Blisk, “Pilot, have you reached the control room? What's your status? Give me a sitrep.”

Do you relay the fact that James MacAllan is still in the room with you, or do you let him go?

Swallowing hard you look back to the data knife, which is now done downloading, then down to your comm link, before doing a final sweep across the room.

“I haven't found an entry to the control room yet. Over.” 

Silence follows, and you're left to think about the weight of your actions. You reach down and place your hand on the data knife and remove it, turning it over in your hands before placing it down on the counter.

You step away from the monitor, moving towards a door leading out of the room, when a voice stops you.

“Why did you do that?”

Your body goes rigid. Instinctively, your hand goes down to your pistol that you've already put away. Your fingers find the handle and you rest it there.

Very slowly, you turn around and come face to face with an older man you recognize easily to be MacAllan.

Inside yourself, you're not even sure why you did that, either. Why did you betray the IMC, allowing something so vital to be placed into the hands of the Militia?

Why did you lie about being in the control room?

Why didn't you seize the data knife?

Your silence stretches on. The cogs in your mind turn as you begin to question yourself and your loyalty.

“I'm not sure,” you finally say, still staring at MacAllan.

Even if that's not entirely true, you still say it. Deep down, you know why you did what you did.

“The Militia would take you in if you came with me,” he says, reaching to grab the data knife and pocketing it. 

But that seems too far. You.. can't. You are terrified to throw everything away. To not say goodbye to your friends. Or to defect to a cause you know close to nothing about, know nobody in it, or if they'll win this war or if you'll die.

“I can't,” you reply.

He nods slowly, thinking, “If you ever reconsider, do it. Before it's too late.”

James MacAllan leaves then, and you watch as he exits through a door in the back. It closes and the room is placed into silence.

You wait a minute before radioing in that you've made it to the control room and it's deserted.

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James MacAllan made it safely to the Frontier Militia. They were waiting with Crows to take him and his people away. Or at least, that's what you'd been told.

None of your superiors were happy. You could feel it, it rippled like airwaves to shock your system.

Standing now, in a room of some of the IMC's most important people, you could definitely feel it.

“After a failure such as Troy–” General Marder's eyes flash pointedly to Blisk's, then yours, “we must consider Spyglass’s scans that indicate the classified the Militia has in its possesion. They may have some very useful information against us. All stations should be preparing for the possibility of incoming troops. They could mobilize anywhere and strike when we are least expecting.”

There's a few nods in the room.

“If I know MacAllan, he’s stolen the plans to Demeter. But, we must also wonder if the Militia terrorists will go after more defected IMC personnel,” Graves chimes in, crossing his arms. “I have a strong feeling that his next move will be on an old wingman of his. I have no doubt. "

“I suggest you initialize a search for this supposed contact, and mobilize troops to extinguish any other ex-IMC members you recall,” says General Marder.

Graves nods– he knows this. He already has a person in mind as to who MacAllan will go to. An old friend of both of them, from times before his best friend's betrayal.

“Captain,” Graves addresses you, and your attention is seized, “I want you to deploy with a few IMC squads to neutralize a target I believe is highly sought by the Militia.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The sooner we act, the better,” Blisk admonished, gaze sweeping the room.

“Then I believe we can call this meeting adjourned,” Spyglass says, his robotic voice filling the room as he steps away from the table.

The room dispersed soon after, and you reported to Vice Admiral Graves as soon as it was over.

Together, he leads your conversation outside the room and on a walk through the ship. 

“I come to inquire about the objective, sir.”

He nods, “his name is Robert Taube.”

You nod again. Like you know who that is. You've definitely heard the name– scratch that, you think you’ve heard it, but the face that might match doesn't come to mind.

“As soon as we've come in range of Angelia, I want you and your soldiers to depart to Angel City immediately and locate Robert Taube. Locals may call him Barker.”

“Is he an IMC defecter, sir?” You ask, boots falling in a tone of near-sync with his own.

“No,” Graves answers vaguely, tapping his fingers against his wrist.

He doesn't say more. Not for the minute, at least. A silence settles. You can tell something weighs heavy on his mind, but you don't dare question nor bring light to the idea.

Finally, he completes his earlier sentiments: “Barker was dishonourably discharged for his alcoholic tendencies after the Titan Wars.”

You hum. So Barker liked his booze. Mentally, you made a note to keep bars in mind when in your search.

“I suggest you go tally your men and inform them of their next task, Captain. You are dismissed.”

With a fluid motion, your entire body faces him as you stop in the hall. A final salute signals your departure.

He disappears one way, and you turn to walk the other. On your wrist, you contact your team to meet in the hangar in 15 minutes.

˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙·̩̩̥͙＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊·̩̩̥͙

𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤? 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠! 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝!

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