"There's something going on here. Something behind the scenes, some big secret. Why commission this large of an army, especially one that takes 10 years to grow to maturity? What if your enemy strikes first? What do you do then? The money's good, and that's the only reason I haven't taken off already. But they're keeping secrets from us, and if I hate anything, it's being kept in the dark." –Journal of Raven Branwen, 3 months prior to going AWOL.

Kavaar 83 Days ABG

Waiting was always the worst part. Yang could handle being shot at, wounded, knocked around from blasts, and even some of the worst smells the galaxy had to offer. But waiting? Waiting sucked. Yang was currently sitting atop a hill overlooking a dirt trail this backwater world called a road, using a civilian convoy as bait in the hopes the local insurrection leader would show up. The good people of Kavaar had asked the Republic for help in quelling a Separatist funded insurrection. Kavaar was about as Outer Rim as they come, but as it would turn out, Kavaar has large deposits of minerals and ores that are necessary for building Venator-class starships. The Republic was more than happy to strike up a deal that gave them access to all the metal they could use, and so they deployed a few companies of troops and, in RWBY's case, a handful of commando squads.

RWBY was waiting for Marcus Vahlen to show up, the leader of the insurrection. He had a habit of leading ambushes on civilian convoys, hoping to gut the capital city's supplies. RWBY had been waiting for 4 days, with nothing to show for it. They had been rained on for most of it, but today they had the pleasure of experiencing a sandstorm. It hadn't hit yet, but estimates put it at about 30 minutes away.

"These suits can withstand a sandstorm right?" Yang breached the radio silence, dying to talk to someone, anyone.

"If they can't, the garrison is too far away for us to be picked up in time." Blake said, looking down her scope at the road, the same way she had for the last 4 days.

"Sandstorms are pretty new for us though. Kind of exciting, right?" Yang tried again, hoping for a substantial conversation.

"Six." Ruby warned, trying to get her to quiet down.

Yang surrendered, crawling next to her black and purple clad sister, looking down her own sniper scope.

"Convoy's coming." Blake said, causing Weiss and Ruby to crawl alongside them, snipers out as well.

The squad had a solid defensive position set up, among the broken down ruins of an old stone structure. They had an E-WEB Heavy Repeating Blaster set up, under camouflage of course. Blake had insisted on bringing the extra firepower in case things got hot. They had a sheer cliff face to their back, so unfortunately they didn't exactly have anywhere to fall back to, besides the ruins. The road was in a valley, giving them an easy firing lane. The hill on the other side was covered in trees, which would make the route scenic, if it wasn't in a warzone.

"Do you guys feel bad about using civilians as bait?" Weiss said, shocking Yang with the question. Not because of the question, but because she was breaching radio silence at all to ask a question.

"No, for two reasons." Ruby replied, adjusting her sights as she trained them on the convoy.

"One, we didn't make them take this route. They do it all the time and they're too stupid to figure out another way to go."

She paused a second, as if weighing the words on her tongue, seeing if they were how she wanted to proceed.

"Two, if they didn't want to be involved in a war they should have compromised with the insurrectionists before it got to this point."

"Or they could have gotten off world when it came to war." Blake chimed in.

"I don't know how easy that would have been, these people are poor, just miners and farmers." Weiss responded, slowly pulling the camouflage tarp off the E-WEB before getting on the ground with her sniper out like the rest of her team.

"Easier than us getting off of Kamino." Ruby fired back, ending the conversation.

The lead truck of the convoy exploded in a fireball, bringing the rest of the convoy to a halt. Laser fire began to pepper the rest of the trucks from the hill across from the squad, and from the ditch closest to the bluff, curiously enough.

"Do you think they have a tunnel network to get around? We would have seen them get to that ditch otherwise." Blake asked, clearly disturbed by the fact that untrained rebels had gone unnoticed by the commandos.

"Intel said there weren't any tunnels." Ruby said, scanning the ambush for Marcus.

"Intel couldn't add 2 and 2 together if they had a fucking calculator." Yang retorted, watching the civilians get cut down.

It was a massacre. The rebels weren't doing this just to take supplies from the capital. They were sending a message now. And Marcus wasn't there.

"What are the fucking odds he doesn't show." Ruby grumbled to herself, angry that the squad was wasting time on this cesspit planet.

"Found him! In front of the burning truck!" Blake called out, Yang snapping her crosshair onto Marcus' chest. He was a tall, muscular man wearing a makeshift soldiers uniform, shouting out orders as his men continued to kill unarmed civilians.

"Take take take." Ruby called out, as four shots rang out from the hillside. Two of them entered his chest, and the other two snapped his head back, blood spraying the air as he fell down.

The rebels began to scatter to find cover from the snipers as their leader layed dead in his own blood.

"RWBY to Garrison, mission complete. Requesting evac at our position, over." Ruby radioed for their ride out, giving Yang the hope that soon they would be in a more exciting mission.

"This is Garrison, evac has been dispatched. That storm might delay them, so sit tight. Garrison out."

A laser snapped about 3 meters over the heads of the commandos, and another hit a bush to their right.

"Weiss, return fire on the E-WEB. Show these assholes they don't want this fight. Everyone else, open up." Ruby commanded as she snapped the scope and barrel off her DC-17, using it as an automatic rifle.

Weiss began to lay rounds into the ambush sight, knowing that there were no civilians left to even be worried about hitting.

"We got a lot of insurrectionists swarming the road Sarge." Yang called out, firing short bursts into rebels.

"I think that tunnel theory may have been accurate Seventy." Ruby responded, shifting positions. The rebels were starting to zero in on her location. She didn't want to say it out loud, but there was a lot of the rebels.

All four commandos looked up as they heard a dull, low thump come from the opposite hill.

"MORTAR! TAKE COVER!" Ruby yelled as she began to run back to the ruins, the mortar landing 5 meters in front of where the squad had been to kill Marcus.

"WEISS GET OFF THAT E-WEB!" Weiss didn't have to be told twice, sprinting back to the ruins with the rest of the squad. Yang's heart was pounding now, because now she was in a real firefight. It had been at least a week since they had been in an honest firefight.

The E-WEB exploded a minute later, as the mortars got closer. Yang was behind a fallen pillar, feeling her teeth rattle as the dirt around them got kicked up by mortar fire that becoming more and more accurate by the shot. After about three minutes, it stopped.

Yang poked her head over the pillar, surveying the damage. Most of the trees had been stripped of bark, bushes blown apart completely.

"Can anyone think of any reason they would stop dropping mortars on us?" She said hesitantly, bringing her rifle to her shoulder.

"Either they think we're dead, or they're advancing." Weiss responded, sliding a fresh clip into her blaster.

They didn't have to wait for their answer long, as rebels began to run towards them from down the hill. The first one was dropped instantly, and the second one after that, and the third one after that. They were swarming, and Yang had to resist the urge to just start spraying rounds into them, instead relying on her training to fire in bursts, conserving ammo.

The rebels had begun to take cover wherever they could and were firing back on the commandos, a bolt glancing off of Yang's shoulder. She took this as a sign to shift where she was, sprinting to another pile of rubble to hide behind.

"Did we get an ETA on that evac?" She called out as she primed a thermal detonator, lobbing it at where the rebels were coming from.

"Negative Two-Six." Ruby responded curtly, reloading her rifle as a bolt took a chunk off the pillar she was behind.

The laserfire stopped as the wind picked up, causing all the girls to look around and assess their current situation.

"Take inventory on ammo. Weiss, tell me if there's any close air support available." Ruby ordered, nudging the body of a rebel before discharging a round into their head.

The sandstorm was fully here now, as Yang lost sight of Ruby, who was about 15 meters away from her. Thankfully the helmet automatically cut out all the outside noise, but Yang could feel the sand whipping away at her armor.

"Viper 1-3 is available for close air support boss, want me to patch you through?" Weiss responded from somewhere, her disembodied voice being piped into Yang's helmet.

"Yes. If they rush us in this storm we're going to need all the help we can get."

"Behind you Yang." Blake said, causing Yang to turn around.

"You good on ammo Two-Six?" She said, close enough for Yang to actually see, despite the storm trying it's best.

"Yeah, you need anything?"

"Nah. Make sure you keep something for yourself. You don't want these guys taking you prisoner."

Blake moved on to take up position away from Yang. She was right, they had all heard the stories. Death would be much better than what these savages would do to her.

"Contact incoming! They're pushing us!" Weiss yelled, and Yang saw blue streaks of light coming from Weiss' position towards the road.

"Viper 1-3 this is ~ee of team RW~ do you copy?"

Viper 1-3, known by his friends as Elite, adjusted his instruments to try and get the signal to clear up.

"This is Viper 1-3, repeat your last."

"This is Eight-Three of Commando squad RWBY, I am requesting air support. How Copy?"

"Solid copy Eight-Three, please send grid coordinates for strike."

"Requesting fire package Fury in grid location Alpha Alpha Jericho One One Eight. Danger Close."

Viper narrowed his eyes as he began to fly towards the designated location in his Torrent.

"Eight-Three I am low on fuel after flying support for Eight Battalion. Not only that, but you are calling in a Danger Close airstrike in a sandstorm. I will not be able to verify where my rounds are going. Please reaffirm that these coordinates are correct."

There was a few seconds of pause before Eight-Three showed back up in his ear.

"Roger that Viper 1-3. Send fire package Fury at grid location Alpha Alpha Jericho One One Eight, Danger Close."

"Roger. Danger Close incoming in 30 seconds. Keep your heads down. Viper 1-3 out."

Weiss was not having a good time. Due to the sandstorm obscuring her vision and messing up her sensors, she had ended up having to engage rebels in close quarter combat more than one time. She pulled her gauntlet blade out of a rebel's neck, quickly bringing her rifle up and delivering two shots to another's chest.

"FALL BACK! DANGER CLOSE IN 30 SECONDS!" Weiss heard Ruby shout in her ear, and began to sprint towards the cliff face, getting as far away as the trail up the hill as she could. She felt a sharp pain in her left shoulder, but kept sprinting regardless.

"HEADS DOWN!" Ruby called as the world exploded around them.

Weiss woke up in a daze, her ears ringing as her vision began to settle. The storm had subsided, as she could clearly see Yang bring a brick down into the head of a rebel in front of her.

Was someone calling her name? She could faintly hear it, but it sounded so quiet, quieter than her own thoughts. Fuck her shoulder hurt, what had happened to her shoulder.

Someone grabbed her and flipped her onto her back, and Weiss instinctively slid her vibroblade out of its housing in her gauntlet, aiming for the neck. Her hand was stopped by another gloved hand, covered in a gauntlet.

"Fuck's sake Weiss, now isn't the time to lose your shit. Evac's here, we're leaving"

She heard Ruby's voice inside her head, and slowly put together that Ruby was crouching on her chest, holding her fist from plunging a blade into her neck.

"Oh-Four's out of it, I need you two to cover me." She barked out as she grabbed Weiss by her shoulders. Dragging her towards the gunship that Weiss had only just now noticed was hovering over the ground, bay door open, waiting for them to board.

Her shoulder screamed in pain, resisting the fact that she was being dragged by her injury.

"I know it hurts Weiss but I have to get you out of here. We can fix that la-" Ruby was cut short by a laser round sinking into her chest, knocking her to the ground. She sat up, DC-17 in hand, Anti-Armor attachment on.

"Motherfuckers!" She yelled out as she emptied the explosive round into the man who shot her 20 meters away, blowing him and three other rebels into dust.

Yang ran over and helped drag Weiss into the gunship, before shooting out into the rebels, covering Blake as she ran towards the ship. A laser round glanced her head, hitting hard enough to almost knock her to the ground, but she recovered and quickly mounted into the gunships bay.

"CLOSE THE DOORS AND GO, WE'RE ALL HERE!" Ruby shouted as she emptied another Anti-Armor round into the rebels.

The gunship began to pull away, and as it rose up, Weiss finally got a good look at the damage Viper 1-3 had delivered onto the hill. Well, it used to be a hill. The ruins were gone completely, the hill a collection of massive craters.

"Mission success. Good work RWBY." Ruby said proudly as she took her helmet off, the door closing, the squad being delivered to safety.

A/N: Back for another chapter. It's been far too long since I did one of these. I don't plan on getting back to any form of regular schedule, but I think it'd be good for me to write these, and I enjoy doing it. I've decided to pretty much depart from the storyline Karen Traviss wrote, as that was killing my motivation to write these. Next chapter will feature JNPR more than this one did, but I thought it would be good to keep it all on RWBY for this.

Team RWBY

RC-1183 Ruby, Sergeant Rank

RC-1104 Weiss, Private

RC-1170 Blake, Private

RC-1126 Yang, Private

Team JNPR

RC-1390 Jaune, Sergeant Rank

RC-1163 Nora, Private

RC-8051 Pyrrha, Private

RC-2223 Ren, Private

Team SSSN

ARC S-11 Sun, Captain Rank

ARC S-07 Scarlet, Lieutenant Rank

ARC S-12 Sage, Sergeant Rank

ARC S-10 Neptune, Lieutenant Rank

Other

Qrow Branwen, Mandalorian Warrior. Former Training Sergeant in the GAR

Taiyang Xiao Long, Mandalorian Warrior. Former Training Sergeant

Summer Rose. Mandalorian Warrior. Former Training Sergeant

James Ironwood. Mandalorian Warrior. Former Training Sergeant

Vode An

Heil96, out.