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| − | '''Book One: ''Phoenix Rising''''' | + | '''Book One: ''Atlantis Rising''''' |
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| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 1]]||[[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 11]] |
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| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 2]]||[[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 12]] |
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| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 3]]||[[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 13]] |
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| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 4]] |
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| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 5]] |
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| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 6]] |
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| − | [[Phoenix Rising: Chapter 1]] | + | |- |
| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 7]] |
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| − | [[Phoenix Rising: Chapter 2]] | + | |- |
| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 8]] |
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| − | [[Phoenix Rising: Chapter 3]] | + | |- |
| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 9]] |
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| − | [[Phoenix Rising: Chapter 4]] | + | |- |
| | + | | [[Atlantis Rising: Chapter 10]] |
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| − | Hello, visitors to this site! Welcome! You may have accidentally stumbled upon a book that is under way currently. If you're here on purpose, then thank you for visiting my book-site! Below is a random chapter from the book that I display here on the front page. The link above brings you to the page that the chapter is actually housed at. If you scroll down to the very bottom, you'll find my work in progress section, where I write the next section/chapter of the book. Because I start writing completely fresh chapters, the work in progress section might end in a fragment of thought, or there might not be anything displayed there. | + | |} |
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| | + | Hello people reading this! You may have accidentally stumbled upon a book that is under way currently. The book is basically about World War Three, in a world where there are eight continents. The eighth is Atlantis, which surfaces in December of 2012. Maybe the Mayan calendar wasn't counting down to this day, but counting up to the day when Atlantis would rise above the oceans once more, supposedly. |
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| | + | Below is a random chapter from the book that I display here on the front page. The link above brings you to the page that the chapter is actually housed at. If you scroll down to the very bottom, you'll find my work in progress section, where I write the next section/chapter of the book. Because I start writing completely fresh chapters, the work in progress section might end in a fragment of thought, or there might not be anything displayed there. |
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| | Please also note that none of my writing here is completed and I go back numerous times to a piece to improve it. The chapter below will be changed multiple times and improved upon, so if you read it now you might wanna check back every now and again to see if I changed anything. | | Please also note that none of my writing here is completed and I go back numerous times to a piece to improve it. The chapter below will be changed multiple times and improved upon, so if you read it now you might wanna check back every now and again to see if I changed anything. |
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| − | Also, please note that any writing I do here is written to entertain, and therefore the story has to fit in with itself, so please excuse any religious or opinionated writing I have here and do not take it into offense. | + | Also, please note that any writing I do here is written to entertain, and therefore the story has to fit in with itself, so please excuse any religious or opinionated writing I have here and do not take it into offense. Please don't copy my work. It's not nice. |
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| | [[Reaper's First Drop]] | | [[Reaper's First Drop]] |
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| | + | And here's a new, alternate account of the war, from the perspective of an elite soldier from an elite Black-Ops Spec-Ops division. |
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| | + | [[Atlantis Rising: Perfect War]] |
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| | + | And another little project of mine. Here, I'm writing about the video game ''Fallout 3''. The setting, premise, and some of the characters are not my creation, but basically I'm taking the game and writing my own addition. |
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| | + | [[Fallout 3]] |
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| − | ==Atlantis Teaser==
| + | An additional project, using the concept and setting of the ''Fallout'' universe again. This is an idea I've wanted to explore: A Fallout game in the Carribean. |
| − | '''14:40 Hours, Military Clock, April 9, 2015, St. Augustine, Florida, USA''' | + | |
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| | + | [[Fallout: Caribbean]] |
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| | + | And a Halo project, told from the perspective of a Marine Fireteam. Just regular soldiers, not Spartans or even ODSTs. |
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| | + | [[Halo: Fireteam]] |
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| − | ''"Hit the dirt!"''
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| − | Captain Matt Kenderson threw himself headfirst to the ground, arms outstretched, as a hail of gunfire tore up the wall behind him. He landed on his hands, rolling up to a standing position and running forward again.
| + | ==Atlantis Teaser== |
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| − | The Russian bird dropped from the purple clouds and tropical rain like a demented ghost, twin chain guns mounted on its pylons churning out a steady stream of 7.62mm armor piercing rounds that chewed up the ground right at Matt's heels as he ran.
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| − | Matt suddenly turned and and jumped from the second-story wall, clutching his weapon in one hand, a grenade in the other. He flailed his arms for balance, hit the ground and rolled to take the force off his knees.
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| − | The helicopter swiveled on a tight axis, swinging around to face Matt.
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| − | But now the bird was exposed. Matt's fellow American soldiers were now up and firing at the armored helo. It would stand for a while, but with 90 men and women all shooting at the same target, it wouldn't last long.
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| − | Less still, as Matt pulled the pin on his grenade and threw it left-handed into the windshield of the helicopter, whose pilot had been distracted by the murderous suppressing fire. Despite the reinforced bullet proof glass, Matt's throw had been powerful enough to wedge the explosive halfway through the windshield, where it stuck until it exploded a beat later.
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| − | The wonders of genetic engineering.
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| − | Matt twisted and ducked into a crater in the ground made by one of the helo's missiles as the fragmentation grenade tore apart the cockpit of the Russian helo and sent the bird plummeting back into the entrenched Russian lines.
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| − | "Yeah Kenderson!" Someone yelled over the comm. line. Matt grinned through the rain.
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| − | Matt rolled back to his feet and sprinted up the ramp back onto the second floor of the famous St. Augustine Fort. He slipped and fell, despite his traction boots, as another shell sank into the walls and exploded. In the 1500's, this wouldn't have been a problem, because the walls were constructed of a sea-shell material that absorbed the force of cannon balls and bullets.
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| − | But now, in 2015, the technology had advanced a bit, and the explosive shells from the Russian artillery blew out parts of the wall with each shot.
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| − | Apparently the Russians didn't take well to having their helicopters shot down, because a Light Machine Gun (LMG) emplacement in one of the trenches opened fire and cut Matt down.
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| − | Matt shuddered as each round took him in the gut, stitching upwards across his chest. Five rounds.
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| − | He flew back and landed against the ground, but immediately got right back up again. None of the powerful rounds had penetrated. It had hurt, sure, but not nearly as much as it should have, thanks to his "Armadillo" armoring.
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| − | The first thing the bullet had to get through in order to do any damage whatsoever to the armor or the user was drill through a titanium-laced bulletproof hybrid of advanced plastics and ceramics. But the kinetic energy would still transfer easily through the hard shell and could still bruise and cause contusions or concussion to vital areas.
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| − | So buried under layers of the hard shell were bladders of "Impact Gel" which absorbed and dispersed the kinetic energy from a round or hit to make it less painful.
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| − | Then there was the whole host of technology that the American engineers had managed to pack into the armor, from the multi-faceted Heads-Up Display (HUD) to the environmental conditioning tubing that ran the length of the armor. The environmental layer could provide a hundred watts of heating or cooling directly to the user's body. No more heatstroke or weakness, no more freezing too much to shoot.
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| − | The helmet contained a military-strength communications system automatic headset that picked up voice commands and uploaded them to the Global Access Command Board, which was a database that housed all strategic and tactical information and listed available support options to the higher ranking soldiers and gave more information on mission parameters and objectives.
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| − | Also included in the helmet were several visor filters, one for thermal imaging, one for low-light, one for infrared, and several others as well as a tactical map and other HUD features.
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| − | The armor plating covered almost the entire body and was the most advanced piece of equipment on the planet.
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| − | So it was with only a shallow ache that Matt got back to his feet and clicked on a Infrared/Thermal/Low-light hybrid image setting on his visor plate, watching the dense fog suddenly lift and peel away from his line of vision, just in time to see one of the 105mm shell-spewing artillery cannon situated next to him open fire. The explosive shell struck Russian armor, incredibly clanging off and exploding two feet above the vehicle. Dang Russian engineers.
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| − | The explosion still caused moderate damage, but not disabling; the Russian Main Battle Tank (MBT) rocked back and forth momentarily, then opened fire with an answering 99mm shell that blew another divot into the fort.
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| − | Matt ducked against the cover of one of the protective battlements, then leaned out to pick off a Russian that was causing significant damage with one of their Fire and Forget missile launchers.
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| − | The man fell, the launcher remained, and another Russian took it up and didn't wait for the lock-on to fire a 102mm shaped-charge rocket at full speed, carving a chunk out of the rock by Matt's head.
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| − | Americans returned fire, their standard-issue M8 carbines proving useful for the 200 meter stretch from the wall to the enemy trenches. The laser-sighting cut through mist like butter, and the powerful 6.8mm hollow-point bullets dug into the targets mercilessly. The Russian automatics just couldn't cope with the murderous fire coming from the American lines. They had plenty of punch and speed, but the Armadillo-clad forces wouldn't go down.
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| − | The Russian Frigate stationed in the bay gave a full broadside, and more Americans fell away from the walls. The Russians packed the punch, and the Americans had the defensive stuff covered.
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| − | "Get that Apache in the air!" Matt screamed, and his comm. microphone instantly relayed his voice command to the pilot. "Kraken, suppressing fire! Target enemy AA emplacements. We need that gunship!"
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| − | In response, a third of the assembled forces turned and immediately began spraying fire from their carbines, and the lone Apache gunship started its rotor.
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| − | Another voice hit the comm; Captain Holly Dayne, callsign "Reaper."
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| − | "Reaper units, this is Reaper One. Redirect fire to artillery platforms and armor. This old fort can't take take it all in."
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| − | Out of the 90 men and women at the fort, Holly controlled the thirty Reapers, Matt commanded thirty "Kraken", Captain Scarlett Miller; the last thirty soldiers, callsign "Phoenix."
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| − | "Somebody get me a line to Naval command, we need support, ''now''. And where's my AT? I got plenty of targets out here, boys!" Scar called to Phoenix, but as Matt and Holly were Captains, the comm. feed was automatically extended to them.
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| − | "They're making a break for the walls! Captain, their coming for the gate!" A hoarse voice called, and Matt instantly saw fresh danger; a column of MBTs were guiding several Russian Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) to the gates, meaning to break them down.
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| − | "Reaper One this is Serpent, weapons primed for armor removal. Requesting permission to engage." The slick voice of the Apache pilot came as a relief, and Holly immediately transmitted the attack coordinates. The large helo lifted up, unhampered by the scattered small-arms fire that ineffectually attempted to drill through the enhanced armor plating of the hull. As it lifted off, an artillery shell narrowly missed it, and the Apache answered with a duo of missiles that detonated in the middle of the armor convoy. It ripped to shreds anything close enough and turned several vehicles onto their sides.
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| − | "Al''right''!" Holly crowed. "Serpent, this is Reaper One, continue to engage targets at will. Watch that AA, over."
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| − | "Roger that Reaper One. Search and Destroy."
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| − | The Apache circled off and around to come in from the flanks, Matt returned his attention back to the battle.
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| − | Scar came in, radioing the news. "I got Naval on the line, they've got some heat of their own, its a little hairy, but they've sent in a pair of fighters. New F-35s, vet pilots."
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| − | "We could sure as heck use them." Holly responded, then, "What's the word on the column down at the beachhead? That armor was supposed to be here two hours ago."
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| − | "Ran into stiff urban resistance passing through the town. Nothing they can't handle, but they've been delayed. At current pace they expect to arrive in another three-quarters hour.
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| − | Matt cursed. "Any other news?"
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| − | "Relief aerial divisions are on the way, thirty minutes out. They need it down at the carrier, though. As for us, we've got two Frig's heading our way, they shouldn't have a problem. Mostly we're on our own. Predator and Sea Hawk UCAVs charged up and ready to go."
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| − | "When our Frigates hit theirs in the bay, it's not gonna be pretty. I'm gonna need to get out there." Matt called again
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| − | "I hear ya. We'll spread around some fire, keep 'em occupied. Shouldn't be too hard." Holly assured him. "Take a squad with you, you'll need it. We've got some C4 in the armory, no use here, if you want it."
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| − | "I think I can find a use for it." Matt said.
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| − | He was interrupted by another explosion that blasted away the artillery next to him. The Apache turned and sprayed bullets at the offender, but it was out of missiles. Seconds later it was out of bullets, too, and it returned to the fort to re-arm.
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| − | "Get going now! We'll hold 'em. I'll make the first break with you and get out around them, to come in from the side." Holly yelled. Matt quickly called out his five best soldiers and had them all prepare for a boarding action.
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| − | "Kraken Five, secure the C4 and load it into something. We'll need it at the Russian Frig. Everyone else, grab what you need, grab yourself a thruster attachment, and meet me at the North Tower!" He immediately sprinted to the chosen tower, meeting up with his five team members.
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| − | Holly arrived a moment later with ten more of her men. "How's the party over on your end?" She asked.
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| − | "That artillery's throwing some heat around. Lost a couple men. You might wanna hit those first, then take out their AA. I hear those F-35 pilots prefer to enter unannounced."
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| − | "Good plan. Now lets blow this joint." She replied, and they both ran and dove over the battlements, landing in a roll to break the fall. Matt was up instantly and charging for the water; Holly followed him to the edge and broke off, using the mangroves to cover her advance, closely followed by her squad. Matt wove in and out of the line of fire, ducking under bullets a second before they were fired, diving through explosions that hit in front of him. Eventually he made it to the surf pounding the shore.
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| − | In the midst of the storm, the water was warm and welcoming. As Matt made his way through the chest-deep water, his squad following behind, one suddenly threw his arms up and went flying through the air, as result of an explosion. He was almost certainly dead.
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| − | Matt slogged in a little further, then dove, putting his head under. As he did so he reached into a pocket of his utility belt, bringing out a small, metallic re-breather. He slid it into his mouth, holding it between clenched teeth like a snorkel, and activated the thruster-pack he had shrugged on. The pack was another of Stephens' ingenious designs. The regular, general purpose Tactical Battle Armor (TBA) could be upgraded and changed out for different pieces, allowing for specific elemental advantage. The latest hydro-thruster pack strapped to his back would propel him at just under 10 knots through the water. The re-breather could supply him with recycled air for 90 minutes.
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| − | He launched himself towards the Russian Frigate stationed in the water. The Frig's powerful 105 and 40mm cannon were chewing the crap out of the fort. His plan was to blow a hole in the side of the Frig and sabotage whatever he could get his hands on, before their Frigs arrived.
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| − | It wasn't gonna be a cake-walk.
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| − | Meanwhile, Holly had gotten completely around the assembled Russians and their entrenchments. She called the team's sniper, having him target a fixed gun emplacement, while several other soldiers unslung ZUES-MPAR single-shot disposable rocket launchers and aimed them silently at the artillery emplacements. "Fire on my command," She whispered.
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| − | Scar was literally holding down the fort. More artillery shells hit and detonated against the walls, bringing down more chunks of sea-shell.
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| − | "Somebody! Get me a line to those JSF pilots!" She called. JSF was a military acronym for Joint Strike Fighter, or the F-35s.
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| − | "Yes mam!" One of her soldiers replied, and patched her a link.
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| − | "Phoenix One this is Raptor, requesting attack vectors, over."
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| − | "Roger that Raptor One. Uploading friendly positions to your Tacmap. Confirm smoke color." Scar said, and a soldier launched a couple of cans of red smoke into the mass of Russian trenches.
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| − | "Roger that, red smoke on the horizon."
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| − | "Attack direction South, clear and hot. Recommend Bunker Buster missiles for maximum lethality." Scarlett advised.
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| − | "Bunker Buster missiles, engaging!" The pilot called, and Scar saw two phantom shadows in the distance, drawing closer. The Russians on the ground were frantically trying to kick the cans away from their position, but to no avail. The red smoke had already mixed with the thinner mist, so it appeared to be a light red-orange color.
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| − | The two phantoms gradually resolved into a pair of F-35 JSFs, coming from the North, missiles at the ready. As Scar watched, a shrill alarm sounded the lock-on, and the missiles launched. She prepared herself for some fireworks.
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| − | Holly held position, listening to the exchange between the Raptor pilots and Scarlett. "Wait for my signal. Hit them when those fighters launch, that way they won't know where its coming from." She called softly to her troops.
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| − | "Aye, mam. Locked on and ready to fire." Reaper Two reported.
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| − | "On my mark... Fire!" Holly ordered, quietly but forcefully. At the same moment that her soldiers launched, the F-35 pilots opened up a devastating wall of bullets and missiles. The hail tore holes into the terrain, the shots mildly explosive, and making tatters out of armor. The missiles burrowed into the dirt as well, and three thumps reverberated before they exploded, blowing up from below, casting dirt and pebbles everywhere, as well as bodies from the entrenchments.
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| − | Her own missiles struck artillery, detonating and exploding the caches of shells. Six out of six of the artillery platforms went up in flames and wreathed in smoke.
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| − | "Good call." One of the soldiers whispered, watching the Russian lines scramble in confusion.
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| − | "Alright. Phase two, capture a trench and hold it until reinforcements arrive. Two and Three, move straight in and up. Distract and destroy. Four, Five, and Six, flank left. Seven, Eight, Nine, flank right. Ten stays here and provides cover, then moves up on my signal. Go!" Holly ordered, watching with satisfaction as the soldiers scrambled to obey. She moved up with Two and Three, acting as a distraction.
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| − | One Russian spotted the distraction group a fraction earlier than Holly had expected. He called out to his comrades, and soon half the trench was facing them. Ironically, although it was the ultimate goal, it now put the attackers in an awkward position, with no cover. Advancing would only get them killed.
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| − | "Hit the dirt!" Holly yelled, throwing herself down. A man-portable artillery platform, an advanced mortar, launched from the enemy lines. The shell landed and detonated, casting Black Napalm on the ground, crisping the previously neatly manicured lawn. After all, the fort ''was'' a tourist attraction.
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| − | Reaper Three was caught in the explosive fire. His TBA thermal insulation protected him against the heat for an instant before he was overwhelmed by flame. He screamed hideously, a cry of pure agony. He convulsed, twisting and writhing, before Holly lined up a shot and put a bullet in his face rather than let him die slowly, painfully. The screams mercifully cut out.
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| − | Reaper Two dove to the ground behind the flames, momentarily shielded. The roaring maw continued to consume the prickly green grass, spreading and threatening to destroy the entire fort. That wasn't a smart move on the Russian's part.
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| − | Holly felt a surge of energy as she accessed the power. She felt it spread down her arms, pooling at her hands of its own accord. She had never felt so alive, with this much energy and adrenaline pumping through her system. It felt ''good''.
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| − | ''NO!'' She thought despairingly, tearing back the power as if it were on a leash. ''I'm never going to do that AGAIN!!''
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| − | But the power was too strong for her to control anymore, and they needed it. Truth be told, Holly ''wanted'' to let it out. The power clamped and locked on this thought greedily, as if it had a mind of its own, and gradually forced the energy down Holly's limbs again, pooling at her fingertips, a deep emerald green.
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| − | She forced the power out of her body, directing it at the flaming lawn, and watched as gradually the flames withered and died. Her head set to pain, a steady throbbing, but the power still wasn't gone. She still had too much, and the Russians were beginning to get apprehensive. The flames had just died before their eyes, and here this American was with emerald at her fingers, doing who knew what. Several took up aim.
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| − | They squeezed their triggers at the same moment that Holly acted. An earthen mound rose out of nowhere, the bullets impacted, and then the hill was gone. The hill reappeared in the middle of the Russian lines, casting bodies into the air and breaking various legs and ankles. She let the twenty foot wall of earth stand for a moment, then pulled it back into the ground with a wave of her hands. The collapsing hill caused a minor but devastating earthquake that shook the nearby terrain and caused ominous ripples in the harbor. The lines were devastated; trenches collapsed, earthworks tumbled, and vehicles ripped themselves to pieces. Pandemonium.
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| − | Holly collapsed to the ground, her head in her hands. Reaper Two rushed over to her, picked her up bodily and ran, carrying her over his shoulder, to the nearest trench. Meanwhile, the others of their squad moved up and opened fire on the remaining enemies. More shots rang out from the battlements of the fort, Scarlett and her expanded forces taking advantage of the confusion. Russians fell from two directions.
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| − | Holly was set down gently at the bottom of a Russian trench, her head feeling like it was about to explode in her hands. The price, always a price for it. Always a price. Now, she was feeling pain. But agony would come in about six hours, so great that finally it would force her to unconsciousness. She would wake up, her head would be throbbing. And it would steadily deteriorate until she felt like herself. But for now, all she could do was hold her head and hope that her brain didn't splatter over the inside of the earthen defense. She typed a series of commands into her gauntlet and the liquefied Performance-Enhancing Gel in a slim insulated pouch at her back fed its contents into her armor ports. From their the potent pain-killer/antibody/glucose/steroid-like injection worked its way into her bloodstream.
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| − | Sometimes this whole power thing sucked.
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| − | Matt saw the ghostly figure of the Russian frigate materialize out of the hazy harbor water. Using hand gestures, he chose a particularly rusty-looking patch on the hull, and set K/2 to lay the charge there. He adjusted his buoyancy device, sinking to the silt at the bottom. A moment later Kraken Two signaled the all-clear, himself sinking to the bottom. Matt gave him five seconds, then detonated the explosive with the oversize red button on his gauntlet. A resonant ''BOOM!'' shook the harbor, and a massive jet of water spurted to the surface. The water immediately around the destroyed hull boiled instantly.
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| − | Liquid gushed into the hole, and the frigate listed badly to port. The ocean rushed in and in, spreading in along the path of least resistance, swarming in against the metal, until it leveled out against a bulkhead in the floor. With the water over the top of the hole, no more came in. However, four heavily armed elite American soldiers squeezed through the opening. Already the welcome mat was rolling out; three Russians were descending the flooded staircase. Matt directed two men to neutralize the targets. They could fire their guns underwater, but the bullets would do close to nothing. Instead they advanced with gauntlets at the ready, using their thruster packs for speed. The Russians weren't equipped to fight; much less, all they had on them were sidearms. Engineer crew, probably.
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| − | The engineers backed up so only their thighs were in water, drawing their sidearms. They fired randomly into the roiling salt water, but it was too murky to see anything. They quickly exhausted their twelve round clips and reloaded. A pair of lucky shots pinged off K/3's armor, casting a dulled ringing sound through the water that was quickly silenced. The three Russians heard and called to one another.
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| − | K/4, meanwhile, flanked right, as much as he could on a narrow staircase, and caught the first engineer by surprise. He sprang forward, fist clenched, but instead of a blunt strike, he flicked a mechanism in his gauntlet and a double-edged pointed combat knife sprang out on a metal rod, burying itself in the engineer's Kevlar vest that was his only armor. The Russian cried out as he was pierced with the blade, but he wasn't dead. Four drew back his other fist and rammed it home, five times, before the engineer collapsed onto the floor.
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| − | His two buddies retreated, still firing. Bullets pinged off armor, Four answering with his SMG, and another engineer dropped. Matt's squad advanced out of the water like wraiths, dripping and sodden. Three had taken a bullet in the arm, Four a bullet in the leg, other than that they were fine. Three's and Four's TBA automatically dispensed doses of liquefied P-EG , while Two patched up their injuries.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Alright people, split up, plant your bombs, and rendezvous at the bridge. Our Frigs are gonna get here in twenty minutes, so be ready by then. Unless you like sleeping with the fishies." Matt said.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Sir, message from Reaper One. Says they need some assistance."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Patch me through."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Kraken One this is Reaper. Requesting assistance." Holly yelled above the background explosions and screams.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger Reaper One. We're aboard the ship and are attempting to plant explosives as we speak."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Glad to hear it, Kraken One. If you could do us a little favor, the artillery on the ship is whittling us to pieces out here. There's not gonna be anything left for our guys to save if you don't take it out, ''pronto''."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Got it. I'll see what I can d- hang on, incoming priority call from Fleet Command." Matt said as a beeping tone interrupted him. He answered the call from the Carrier's Admiral that was stationed just outside the harbor. A Grey-haired man of 43, Admiral Dawson still insisted on being in the thick of the action, so it was no surprise when the comm. screen displayed his face posted on a smoke-and-fire-bleached background. The screen immediately split into three, as the comm. call was answered by Holly and Scarlett both.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Captains, we've got a snag. Our position out here has become untenable. They ambushed us, came in from the coastline and caught us with our pants down. The fleet's been decimated, and we can't hold out much longer. They just keep throwing out ships with no pause. We're retreating, repeat, retreating into the harbor. I understand the Russians have a Frigate down their, and we need you to take it out before we're shot to pieces." The admiral swore, then relayed; "They got the ''Cherokee''! Get the boats out!"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "We understand sir. We're doing everything we can, but there's only so much we can do. Rest assured, we'll take out the Frigate." Holly said.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that, Captain. Get it done." The Admiral's comm. line cut out.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Matt, I'm coming in to help. Take out their air defenses and we'll make a pass in the Osprey."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Fine, just try not to get shot to pieces. Scar, same goes for you. Hold the fort, ''don't die.''" Matt answered. They had an Osprey? Since when? "Okay, troops. New plan. You three take out the AA batteries and light artillery. I go to the bridge and convey to the captain just how ''important'' it is for us, and him, to cease fire on the fort. Then we hold out and wait for backup to take the ship. All clear?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | It sounded clear enough, but then, how easy could it be for four men to crawl around on the deck of a hostile Frigate and destroy a bunch of heavy guns?
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Five minutes later, Matt was making his way down a dark stainless-steel corridor on the ship when a three-man Search and Destroy team rounded the corner ahead.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Without thinking, Matt tucked his Pulse R71 SMG into the hollow of his shoulder and fired off a burst, simultaneously strafing along the corridor until he found a bulkhead door. The surprised Russian at the corner jerked back as a trio of bullets shattered and ricocheted off the corner wall. As he pulled his nose back behind cover, his buddies rolled out from cover and opened fire as well.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | By this time Matt had found a bulkhead and had rammed his boot into the door. Three things happened. One, his nerves sent a jolt of pain through his leg into his brain, which he promptly ignored. Two, a large dent appeared in the door. And three, the sound of tortured, twisting metal filled the air. Bullets impacted on both sides of the door frame as the two Russians opened fire, but they missed, partly because they were raw recruits and this was their first firefight, and partly because firing from the hip only works in movies, video games, and really bad novels.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt planted his feet firmly and bashed the door again with the stock plate of the SMG and one hinge broke off the door, causing it to sag wide. Another hit, downward to the final hinge, caused the door to crash to the ground, and Matt dove into the room. He had chosen this room, a washer-dryer room, because the door had smelled of rust, probably from a combination of the added humidity from the washer and poor ship service.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The two Russians dashed forward, eager for the kill, to find Matt at the door with a knife in one hand and a metal pipe about an inch thick and three feet long in the other, which he had torn from the washer machine. The first Russian had his knee taken out with a kick, followed by a grisly snap as it broke, and was dispatched with a blunt blow to the head from the pipe. The second one raised his gun to fire, but too late, and Matt jumped out and pounced with the blade, severing the Carotid artery.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The third Russian had been advancing at a more cautious pace, he shouldered his weapon and fired off a full-auto stream while retreating to the safety of the corner. Matt ducked into another room, this door luckily unlocked, to avoid the hail. As soon as it petered out to a stop, he poked his head around the door. The Russian had thrown his SMG to the ground and was reaching for his sidearm. Matt sprayed an answering full-auto burst that startled the recruit into dropping his gun and the clip, which both scattered across the floor. He dove after his gun, but Matt quickly darted forward and kicked the clip away, using the butt of his gun as a club and swinging a wide arc to the Russian's head. It connected with the soft spot in the temple, causing a fracture and blood.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt scanned the dark hallways for more enemies, breathing heavily. Finding none, he dropped the clip in his gun and reloaded, then continued for the bridge.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly ducked as a massive explosion tore chunks out of the earth in front of her. Huddled against the side of the captured trench, she was relatively protected against the heavy gunfire, and after the reverberations stopped she gave her ears a moment to stop ringing, then stood and fired off a few rounds.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Two out of twelve found targets. It wasn't like in the games, where almost every shot hit. In real life, people died when they were shot.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Neither of the two rounds penetrated armor, but they cut the Russian down to size as one struck him between the legs. Holly winced. That musta' hurt. But her head was feeling better, thanks to a combination of painkiller cocktails from the P-EG.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Then one of his buddies was up and spraying rounds from his assault rifle, before Holly took him out as well. One shot in the arm, one in the chest, two in the neck. The Russians were less concerned over their foot soldier's armoring than their vehicle armor, and even then their engineers didn't focus on survivability, but really big bullets fired out of really big guns. So the Russian dropped dead to the ground.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | In response, another shell struck in front of the American trench, and another American cast up his arms as a flying chunk of rock hit him in the neck, causing him to gurgle sickeningly on the way down. More shells reverberated, and Holly ducked back down. Next to her, one of the squad's special MMG team setup shop at the lip of the trench, the wide-bore .50 cal posing a serious threat on the battlefield.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | It opened fire, drowning out the sound of the rain hammering on the soldiers' helmets. Mud splatters kicked up over the terrain as the bullets hit puddles. Soldiers fell, not all of them regained their feet. Holly gave quick commands, synchronizing a countdown clock. Time to take the next entrenchment, a series of sand-bag bunkers which were really more just wider areas in trenches connected by narrower corridors.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Hit it, people!" Holly yelled, and four MMG teams opened heavy suppressive fire as twelve elite rangers vaulted up and out, towards the next entrenchment.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The bullets whizzed under their legs, startlingly, uncomfortably close. One of Holly's men was hit in the chest; he stopped dead, coughing blood, but the bullet hadn't penetrated, and another American behind him grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him over his shoulder, running again for the trench. The few Russians in the entrenchment were cowering under the heavy fire, and the few that peaked up to get a shot off were taken full in whatever body part was exposed.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The suppressive fire cut out right as the team reached the lip of the trench, and they all jumped in. Twenty Russian infantry versus eight Elite Rangers. The Russians didn't stand a chance.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly took one's gun arm and twisted it around, bringing it in back of him. With a single pull, she popped his arm out of its socket and watched him fall to the ground, not dead by certainly not about to get up anytime soon.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Another soldier came up with a knife in hand. She dodged his first thrust, side-armed the second, and swung a roundhouse punch at his jaw. The soldier jumped back, but he was clipped on the nose, which erupted in blood. He blinked, looking startled, raising a hand to stench the flow. Holly looked at him, saying, "Don't worry, head wounds always bleed a lot," and hit him with a 360 kick to the side of the head. He flew backwards, and another soldier behind her finished him off with his handgun.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The three Russians that were left quickly surrendered, and they were quickly bound with ropes and tossed roughly to the mud to let the rain soak into them for a while as the battle continued.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly gazed over the subdued battlefield, the reddish haze of her infrared filter that cut out the gray rainy mist casting an eerie light, her visor panel dyed a transparent crimson. The battles had cut out, mostly, and the entrenchments on this side of the fort were all but gone. A few more Russians held out in one trench, but they would quickly be subdued by the overwhelming forces. A couple of armored vehicles still roamed around, but they posed little threat. The artillery platforms were all but destroyed, and Matt was taking care of the Frigate. Things were looking good.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Then the corporal ran up to her, saying urgently, "Captain Dayne! Captain! Russians are coming in from the North! they're moving in from the town!"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly swore. Quickly she ran the odds in her head. Out here, her diminished team of eleven able-bodied men and one injured stood no chance if the Russians decided to hit their side of the fort. She needed to get back inside, but that would mean that everything she had just done would be pointless.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Reaper, set some charges in the entrenchments. When those Russians come, they'll find the trenches waiting with open arms... and a couple packs of C-4." She called to her troops smugly. "But hurry, we've got five minutes at the most."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Meanwhile, Scarlett was repelling the latest wave from the gates. They should have upgraded the security of this place. The centuries' old shell walls should have been coated in a layer of Shear-thickening liquid and lined with solid titanium, but they hadn't expected a siege of this magnitude. The gates were still the old, rusty wrought-iron penthouse gates, and wouldn't hold up to any sort of vehicle. Or armaments, either. Small-arms fire could probably bring it down.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Luckily the drawbridge had been replaced with solid wood suitable for driving tanks over, and the dry-moat had been mined. The drawbridge was raised, and no vehicle was going to ram its way through. A couple of shells might splinter the drawbridge, but what then? No vehicle would get inside without being blasted and destroying itself trying to roll down the stepped inclines. Infantry were another story.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The foot soldiers were sent ahead to open the drawbridge from the inside. They quickly jumped down into the dry-moat - and received a nasty surprise as the ground blew up beneath their feet. But there were only so many mines, and after a good number of Russians were decimated along one path, the rest followed suit and took the route cleared by the deaths of their comrades.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | They reached the wall, quickly realizing the lack of handholds on the two-story wall. Grappling hooks were thrown over, to be kicked back down by the American soldiers. All the while the Russians were under fire from American rifles, and as they pressed up against the wall a grenade was lobbed over, with particularly effective results as the grenade chain-reacted and blew up several mines.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | A few of the Russians started climbing. After all, it wasn't that high. Several gave each other leg-ups to higher sections. One man with an SMG shot out portions of the wall as handholds, the cost of which he rapidly ate up his ammunition. By the time he had created a series of holes for his fellows to climb, he was out, and he switched to his side-arm.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Scar knocked the first man to climb the wall back to the ground with a solid boot to the middle, but the Russians just kept pouring in. It wasn't helping that their MBTs and their Frigate were blasting holes in the damaged walls. All they needed was a lucky shot in a weak point to send a whole section of the wall crumbling.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Scar fed bullets into one man climbing up, he fell, taking three others with him. Another was dispatched with a knock on the head, and three more taken out with various kicks and swings. One unfortunate man was hit once in the groin; he doubled over and staggered around for a second as Scar turned and clocked a different soldier with her fist, then she grabbed the gun and used the stock as a bat and brought it down on the first Russian's helmet. He collapsed, but more just kept on coming.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | One young American Sargent strafed laterally to the right, emptying the clip from his assault rifle. Bullets impacted, causing death, injury, and mass hysteria. Every Russian only scrambled all the harder to get up the wall. They seemed to be really focused on this one point for some reason. It was almost as if...
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "It's a distraction! They're over here! They're over here!" a private called shrilly. A heavy-set man hoisted a Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) to the wall and began pouring brass casings. He was shot in the shoulder, which spun back. The bullet had unfortunately hit a weak spot on the armor, and the static gel couldn't compensate. The blow chipped the soldier's collarbone and sent the shoulder guard flying, held on limply by the leather strap. The man grimaced and shrugged his shoulder, then fired the machine gun one-handed, holding his busted shoulder with the other.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Scar weighed the chances of defending two simultaneous insurgents at once. Not likely.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Fall back! Fall back! Defend the lower levels! Don't let them get through the doors!" Scar yelled, every syllable tasting of defeat. The American lines scrambled back for cover, some vaulting over the landing to the ground level and sprinting to the cover of the rubble-choked archways that made up the storehouses and barracks and other day-to-day rooms of the fort.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Scar focused a wad of energy and converted to Telekinesis (TK), feeling pressure build in her head. After a moment she let it out, focusing and directing it to the grenade pins attached to her combat pack. She used TK to yank the priming pins out after shrugging off her pack, and tossed it directly to an enemy soldier fresh from the climb.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The startled Russian grabbed it out of instinct, which ultimately got him and his surrounding buddies killed. "It's yours," Scar said innocently, quickly reverse-flipping over the walkway and to the ground, where a hail of covering fire picked off any Russian stupid enough to pursue. The grenades detonated, and a sizable portion of the sea-shell blew apart. Not to mention several other objects.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Scar dove head-first into cover, twisting onto her back as she went and firing between her legs, feeling the slipstream of the bullets ripple the M5 bullet-proof fiber of her non-plated-section armor. Although the term, "bullet ''proof''" didn't quite do the situation justice. Sure, it could stop shrapnel and most bullets, but a bullet to your leg with no cushion could still hobble you till your injury healed if it hit, say, your knee cap. She skidded behind a large broken chunk of shell, and strong hands reached down to help her up.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | As soon as she was through, several of the bigger Americans hauled armfuls of rubble and sealed up the entrances to their makeshift barrier. This was done all around the fort, and any Russian who was unfortunate enough to be ordered down into the pandemonium was drilled with a 360 degree wall of bullets.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Scar felt the cocking lever on her rifle clack and knew she was out of rounds. She ducked behind cover and smoothly reloaded, surveying the amount of ammo she had left. Only three clips. Not good. "Any units by the armory, give me an inventory. How much have we got left?" Scar yelled into the comm. as if it weren't whisper sensitive.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "We've got enough ammo for the standard-issue M8's and such. We're passing out the R-71's now, in case it gets up close and personal. Shotguns, too."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that. What's the count on explosives?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Fresh out of grenades, Captain. We still got some packs of C-4, and I'm sure I saw a remo-deto lying around here somewhere. If we find the detonator and you give me and my boys a minute to rig 'em, I'm sure we can knock together some makeshift grenades. It is a piece of explosive."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Good work. Or rather, get to work on that. While your at it get a cart down on this end with some spare magazines and SMGs. I'm running low on SCAR-H ammunition. Check with me in five."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Captain, I've got Reaper One on the line!" A young lieutenant called.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Patch 'em through." Scar answered.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Phoenix One this is Reaper. Requesting a sit-rep ASAP."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that, Reaper One. We're not doing well over here. We've retreated to the lower levels and have barricaded ourselves in the archways. We're near to empty on explosives, but we've got enough ammo. If someone could get that Frigate taken out, I would be a very happy person." Scar answered, ducking as another shell blew a portion of the wall from behind her.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Okay, hold out for another couple minutes. I'll relay the request to Matt and see if he can't do something about that frigate. I'm not gonna bring my guys to the wall until those cannon are out for the count and we get a little suppressive fire on their armor."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "We'll try. Any word on that division pulling in from the town? We need 'em."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Not yet. I'll get back to you on tha- what? You've got to be kidding. No, no, wait - Take cover!" Holly yelled, which was almost immediately followed by a loud explosion. "This is Reaper One, I've got Russian reinforcements coming from the town! They took out our armor!" A muffled swear, then; "We've got nothing out here. No cover. We need to get inside the fort! Scar, can you open us a way through and make a little diversion?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Wait one, Reaper. Armory, what's the status on the C-4?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "We're good to go, Cap'n."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Good. Get our best grenadiers and tell them to open a hole in the Russian ranks. Reaper needs to get through and back into the fort. Get a couple guys to lay down some smoke for them too." Scar answered.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Aye, mam."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Reaper, wait sixty seconds, then triple time it to the wall. We're taking the fort back."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Sixty seconds later, the twelve soldiers from the Reaper strike team sprinted low to the ground. They reached the wall and started crawling around to the sea-side wall. After another two minutes, Holly found the secret entrance and rapped on the wall three times with her gauntlet. The section of the wall made a hollow, metallic ringing sound, and Scar appeared in the doorway that slid back. The bolt-entrance, in case they needed to make an escape. Now they were using it for the exact opposite reason.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly and her team came in, unbeknown to the Russian infantry.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Good to see you in one piece, Reaper."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Good to ''be'' in one piece, Scar. How's it coming?" Holly asked.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "The Apache is completely destroyed. Took a couple bullets to the tail rotor, and went downhill from there."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Chute?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Negative."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly swore quietly, then continued jogging to what used to be the gunpowder room in the old fort. The entrance to the room used to be only four feet tall, because the Spanish had barely been five feet average, but it had recently been enlarged to seven feet. Inside the room were crates and crates of supplies and ammunition. Most of the ammunition went for the 6.8mm M8 carbines, with antipersonnel and explosive round alternatives here and there. A few boxes were stacked with shotguns, probably about three boxes of five each.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | They came through the opening into the real fort area, where a desperate battle was taking place. The Russians had the advantage of numbers and superior armaments, but the American defenders were entrenched behind cover and were putting up a challenging resistance. Plus, they were fighting not only to win, but fighting to drive out the Russians on their home territory.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly instantly grabbed her rifle and slotted a fresh clip into the receiver. Scar didn't hesitate with her FN SCAR-H assault rifle, either, and they jumped back into the fray. They both quickly negotiated positions easy to fire from but hard to hit from the outside, and were quickly dropping enemy soldiers.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | That wasn't to say there weren't American casualties. The Russians bombarded the American lines with devastating full-auto fire, and quickly chewed away at some of the lesser cover positions. Americans who were caught in the open were hit and fell as quickly as they came out. Only about a third of the ones dropped actually died; the armor systems were some of the most-protective in the world.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Or so Scar thought, until fifteen men fast-roped to the ground in the middle of the fort.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Reaper One! We've got incoming birds!"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Instantly all perceptions of American armor technologies being the best faded as 360 fire nailed the fifteen men, sinking them to their knees but doing nothing else.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The fifteen men raised portable grenade launchers and opened fire, drilling explosions into tight areas and blasting Americans off their feet. The Mk. III saved most of them, but it couldn't protect against direct explosions.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Reaper! Our rounds aren't penetrating!" A soldier's voice cried out in near hysteria.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Phoenix One, we need a solution now! Those guys are gonna tear us to pieces!" Holly screamed.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Another voice rang out as a Sargent accidentally hit the TEAMCOMM. line, "Get back! Get Back!! Hit 'em with the M320!"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Russians crouched behind a stone kiosk that had originally been setup as a gift shop for tourists. The stone was thick and built to model in with the rest of the fort, and it made great cover from the raking fire coming from the American lines.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Get me a sniper out here!" Scar called. "Where's that ZEUS? Armory, what's our stock on explosives?!"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Phoenix, what's the status?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "We're loading up the shotguns with explosive slugs right now. We can't do anything else; we're out of grenades ourselves, though it would be interesting to see how they stand up to it in that armor of theirs. It doesn't seem that they can move all that fast; their armor looks ungodly heavy." Scar yelled back calmly. The last thing her troops needed was their captain out of control.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Alright, good. I just wish we could get it done faster...." Holly trailed off.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Reaper? You there?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Scar, do we have any duct-tape?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Scar swallowed. Holly had called her by name. "What are you planning?" She asked by way of answer.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Get anyone you can spare and have them outfit the M8's with the sniper variants."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Already tried. The bullets don't pierce."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Not a single bullet. Duct tape two rifles together, load the AP rounds, and issue them to all the units. The double-penetration should at the very least drill a coupl'a bruises."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that, Reaper One."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Russians were unprepared for the latest makeshift innovation. The fifteen heavy infantry units were ordered to advance and try to clear the barricades. They spread out, moving towards the walls as quickly as they could, hitting random areas with their grenades. Their was no return fire; the Americans had apparently scattered and run. They would be trapped and would die.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | One heavy soldier had gotten to the lip of a barricade when a single American rolled out from behind an archway. He saw a single raven-colored lock of feminine hair that had come out of the soldier's helmet before he started seeing with tunnel vision, a dark, dull feeling in his gut.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly crouched behind the stone archway, waiting for the heavy soldier to come, a shotgun loaded with Frag 12 tucked under her arm. The Heavies, as her soldiers were calling them, launched grenades into the barricades randomly. Holly grinned. They were stupid as well as slow. If the Heavies were smarter, they would have coordinated a systematic search and destroy pattern with their grenades; as it is, they launched at irregular intervals and launched at wherever they felt like shooting.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The grin quickly faded off her face as an explosion detonated by her left arm, throwing shrapnel into her armor and jamming her mouth into her knee. She spat out blood, then readied herself to roll out in front of the Russian.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | She heard a rhythmic pounding directly behind her, then a momentary pause as one leg was lifted up onto the waist-high section of barricade. She waited another half-second, then rolled.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | As she came up into a half-crouch, a piece of raven-colored hair fell from her helmet, and she blew it away in annoyance. She didn't spare the Russian a second before she cocked the slider, loading a shell of explosive buckshot into the chamber. He heard the clack but apparently it didn't register; he smiled with contempt and brought his gun around insultingly slowly. Holly fired.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The buckshot, it appeared, did indeed penetrate his armor. The tiny rounds all found the same target, exploding on contact and making a meaty mess of the Russian's insides.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | He looked at her lethargically, his pupils shrinking to pinholes, then he suddenly pitched forward over the rail and died.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | At the same time, fourteen other Heavies prepared to meet their maker as Americans jumped out of seemingly nowhere and fired a variety of guns that somehow pierced or utterly destroyed their armor. Three came to rest as groups of Americans appeared with shotguns in hand, or the M-26 rifle-detachable systems that took the place of the M320 dual-shot detachable grenade launchers, firing solid metal slugs instead of buckshot. The slugs hit the armor and cracked ceramic plating at the point-blank range, splinters driving through and cutting vital body parts not meant to be cut.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Some more met their ends in hand-to-hand combat when they jumped over the barricades. As soon as they were over, fully nine Americans leaped out and pinned each to the ground while one put a spread of rounds under the Heavies' chins.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The rest came to the ground when scores of Americans jumped out with two sniper rifles duct-taped together and fired at point-blank range into the helmets.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The other Russians couldn't believe what they were seeing. Somehow the Americans had managed to penetrate their heavy soldier's armor, and all fifteen toppled to the ground, dead. Their was a moment of shocked silence, and only when multiple regular soldiers also fell from American snipers did they jump into the action again.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly surveyed the dead Russian at her feet. In his armor, he was seven feet tall and big as a house. He looked like an oversized hockey player, but with significantly more bullet proof plating and Kevlar pads. Then she turned her attention back to the Russian horde still assembled on the upper section of the fort.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Take them!" She yelled, and watched with satisfaction as her troops assembled to do just that.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Fifteen minutes later, the fort was theirs again. They had a nice string of Russian POW's cleaning up the mess from the recent battle, and the surviving Russians went back to entrenching themselves and laying siege to the centuries-old castle.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "''Getdowngetdowngetdown''!" Holly screamed, running along the top of the fort. Seconds after she had thrown herself to the ground, another of the Russian's huge shells detonated against the fort. The explosion was muffled and absorbed by the sea-shell, but not entirely. A reverberation split the air and sent soldiers to their knees, clasping their ears in pain. The sheer force of the explosion took four men who had been standing too near. The only reprieve they had gotten from this merciless barrage was when the Russians were inside the fort, and the Frigate hadn't shot at it's own troops.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Get me a line to Kraken!" She yelled at a recruit down on the first floor.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Yes, mam!" He stammered, fumbling with his headset. A moment later Matt's face appeared in the corner of Holly's visor.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Kraken One this is Reaper. Requesting assistance." Holly yelled above the background explosions and screams.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger Reaper One. We're aboard the ship and are attempting to plant explosives as we speak."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Glad to hear it, Kraken One. If you could do us a little favor, the artillery on the ship is whittling us to pieces out here. There's not gonna be anything left for our guys to save if you don't take it out, ''pronto''."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Got it. I'll see what I can d- hang on, incoming priority call from Fleet Command." Matt said, and a beeping tone interrupted them.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that." Holly said, putting their channel on hold.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The shining face of Admiral Dawson appeared in Holly's visor, replacing Matt's. The call split to all three Captains.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Captains, we've got a snag. Our position out here has become untenable. They ambushed us, came in from the coastline and caught us with our pants down. The fleet's been decimated, and we can't hold out much longer. They just keep throwing out ships with no pause. We're retreating, repeat, retreating into the harbor. I understand the Russians have a Frigate down their, and we need you to take it out before we're shot to pieces." The admiral swore, then relayed; "They got the ''Cherokee''! Get the boats out!"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "We understand sir. We're doing everything we can, but there's only so much we can do. Rest assured, we'll take out the Frigate." Holly said.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that, Captain. Get it done." The Admiral's comm. line cut out.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Matt, I'm coming in to help. Take out their air defenses and we'll make a pass with the Osprey."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Fine, just try not to get shot to pieces. Scar, same goes for you. Hold the fort, ''don't die.''" Matt answered.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Osprey had conveniently arrived right ''after'' Scar and Holly had taken back the fort, dropping off its full complement of thirty soldiers. It was currently circling around the fort and hitting anything that presented itself with the 40mm dual-repeating nose cannon. The chainguns mounted on each door and the tail gun mopped up any infantry stupid enough to show up. Ammo for it was limited though, and in a couple minutes it would run out and only be useful for transport. Holly called it in.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "We've got a new mission, Big Bird," Holly relayed. "I need you to get me and my troops down to the Frigate ASAP."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "The Frigate? I dunno, mam. I mean, we might make it, but-"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Cut the crap, soldier. We've got a man inside taking out their air defenses. That bird is gonna get me to that Frigate if I have to pilot it myself. Got it, flyboy?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Yes mam! Comin' in for a landing."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Osprey gave a last parting shot from the 40mm, then circled over the fort, making for the courtyard. The heavy rain cut down its visibility, so it was forced to direct its floodlights directly into the storm. It slowly hovered to the ground, and Holly called up a second strike team to go with her and take the Frigate.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The pilot wasn't at all happy with loading his bird down with ten more men than was recommended, but then they never were happy, and 40 soldiers piled into the V-22.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Punch it," a Sargent said, clutching the headrest of the pilot while the rest of the crew found seats or grabbed holds near the doors. A mechanical BigDog robot lay in the center of the cargo hold with an X-Box 360 controller resting on top of it, encased in bubble-wrap.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Corporal, get that thing running. Let's see what it'll do." Holly ordered, pointing at the robot. BigDog was the nickname for it. It was a 4-legged, roughly 4 foot tall robot capable of carrying in excess of 400 pounds over rough and uneven surfaces where the older-generation treaded robots like the MULE and SWORDS couldn't go. Soldiers used it to carry their packs so that they were free to fight unencumbered, and to haul excess equipment like portable laptops, spare gear, and other heavy stuff.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | A .30 cal shoulder-mounted drum-fed repeating machine gun kept enemy soldiers off it, and it was encased in bullet proof plates of heavy armor that rendered it virtually invulnerable to standard small-arms fire. Originally developed by a company in Boston, it was quickly adapted for military use, especially on Atlantis with the mountainous terrain.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | It could 'gallop' at 15 miles an hour without gear stashed on it, and was capable of hopping, ducking, diving, and righting itself after it had turned completely over. A pretty sweet piece of machinery, all in all. And a little creepy, what with the tell-tale buzz of the power outlet on it and the animal-like behavior and ability to regain its balance.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Corporal grabbed the 360 controller, tearing off the wrapping, and quickly turned the power on for the mechanical beast. The screen plate on its front buzzed to glowing color, and a DNA-acceptance-denial system asked for input. The Sargent leaned over and put in a code, letting the machine scan his fingerprint as a precaution against a petty criminal turning it against its owners.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | After the code was accepted, BigDog buzzed up, then put one leg out, righting itself quickly. In moments it stood to its full height, and the machine ran a self-diagnostics. After a moment it spread its four legs out wide to stabilize itself and the articulated gripper arm rose from the top, navigating with the help of cameras mounted in strategic positions on its hull, giving it 360 degrees of awareness.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | BigDog moved to the rear door, ready to be deployed. The pilot announced that they were closing on the Frigate. Holly hoped that Matt had gotten the AA. But she was reasonably certain that he would. After all, what could be keeping him? A few hundred angry, irrational Russian crew members. No doubt heavily armed as well. Don't forget heavily armed. Nothing he couldn't handle, right?
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt's armor had seen better days. It was scuffed and dented over the entire surface, scorch marks and bullet scorings over the chestplate. He had accumulated the multitude of damage in various scrimmages with the Russian S and D teams. Twice he diverted from his path to let groups of thirty men thunder past in response to calls from the endless grunt workers and engineers aboard the vessel. After all, it wasn't designed to be incredibly spacious.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | In five minutes Matt had walked stem to stern, and he at last sighted a staircase to the upper deck level. With fifteen Russians guarding it. Crap. What he needed was a distraction.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt pressed a hand to his headset, dialing K/2's personal FOF ID. He answered, "Kraken two, reporting. Whats the status?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger, Kraken two, this is Kraken-one. Where are you, exactly?" Matt whispered.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Currently approaching the engine room, sir. It's under heavy guard."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "What else is new. The access staircases are guarded as well, I can't make it to the deck. I need a distraction. Something explosive."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "I can do that, sir. When and where?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Open your TacMap. See the corridor just off the main crew chamber?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that. I got a coupla' grenades left."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Hit 'em off on my mark, once you're there tell me."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Wait one, sir." Matt heard a burst of silenced gunfire in the background, then "I'm moving now."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt was about to reply, but then a team of three Russians rounded the corner and spotted him. Crap.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Russians barked orders to each other, then opened fire without waiting for him to come quietly. Their bullets weren't silenced, and cut holes into the metal corridor, some of the stronger ones ricocheting around the hall. Matt felt numerous impacts on his armor, and his suit automatically dumped some of the boiling impact gel in his chestplate that was keeping him alive. He swore and ducked around a corner. The Russians were inexperienced; they didn't call for help, instead rushing straight around the corner. Matt tripped the first with a simple shove and tackled the second, plugging off a few rounds from his sidearm at the third.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The third man clutched his leg to his chest and jumped comically on one foot, screaming in pain from the bullet-hole in his thigh. The first Russian's face collided with the bulkhead. Something broke. Not the bulkhead.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The second Russian crashed to the ground with Matt right on top of him. Matt packed him once with a fist, then turned him over and used the man's shoelace to tie him up and a strip of cloth from the man's fatigues to gag him. He tossed the man quickly into a separate room, slammed the door, and went to take care of the first Russian. The man appeared to be unconscious, but he moaned thinly, and Matt gave a kick to the diaphragm to stop it.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The third Russian was going to be more of a problem. He was limping backwards, shouting and waving while he fired erratic bursts from his assault rifle. The thundering of feet echoed in the hallway. Matt swore twice more, then dragged his butt down the corridor and sprinted all-out away from the source of feet.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Russians were more experienced and called ahead, and soon their were thirty men after him. But that mean that there would be only a couple guards on the stairway. Matt started coordinating his running, circling gradually back to the staircase. His path was blocked by a Russian equivalent of a Sargent, but Matt ran forward directly at the man, jumping in the air and driving both feet to the man's chin. It snapped back, the man fell, and the path was clear.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt paused for half a second to catch his breath, than sprinted on again as more soldiers came out behind him and bullets pockmarked the corridors. The stairway was dead ahead.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt swung around the final corner and was surprised to see five rifles pointing at him. He recovered instantly and ducked under the swinging stock of one, coming around and clocking another one in the mouth, grabbed his neck and pinned the man's arm behind himself, using the human shield technique that always seemed to work in the movies.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt crept backward, silently warning the other Russians not to fire.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Kraken one this is two, in position,"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Hit it! Now!" Matt yelled into the headset, and almost instantly muffled explosions detonated throughout the crew chambers.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Russian soldiers yelled as the ship listed to port, and one of them fell. Matt had braced himself, and he used the distraction to throw his shield at the nearest obstacle. He dove for the staircase and grasped the railing on his way down, swinging himself around to the stairs. He looked up and began to climb, jumping rapidly, taking the steps two at a time. He reached the top of the Frigate, noting the heaving sea and rain-slicked deck would make the Russian advance next to impossible. He sprinted off to the Bridge before he realized that in the poring rain and frenzied water, no one could tell he was American. The Russian armor had about the same color as his own. He slowed his pace down to a jog, like the rest of the men aboard the deck. The massive artillery cannon stood out in harsh relief against the black-gray background.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The first barrel fired its shell, recoiling back into the cannon itself from the force. Then the middle barrel fired, doing the same, and finally the third barrel emptied. Smaller medium cannon pelted the wall with 60mm shells, trying to bring it down. The AA batteries were fixed atop the bridge, and there were SAM sites at either end of the deck.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Kraken Three, come in. This is One."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Status, One?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Where are you right now?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "On the deck, moving towards the aft SAM site."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Alright. Good. I'm heading to wards the bridge to take out the batteries. once you get that SAM site, make your way to the next one and we'll meet there. If you beat me there, destroy it."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that, Captain."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt took up his SMG, tucked it against his shoulder, and kicked in the door to the bridge, weapon leveled.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | He met with two targets - Russian Heavies. Crap.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Really not good. Matt swore, fired, and backed out of the landing quickly. They had Heavies guarding the bridge? Not fair. That just wasn't fair. There had to be some kind of war jurisdiction on it.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The Heavies quickly advanced, one behind the other. The only way Matt could do this was hand-to-hand. His bullets wouldn't penetrate. So hand-to-hand it was. Hand-to-hand and maybe a dab of supernatural power.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The first Heavy reached the doorway. Matt stepped sideways, using his momentum to sling-shot the door into the Russian's face. Solid metal colliding with equally solid composite armor at thirty miles an hour. It probably didn't feel great. The Heavy stumbled back, crashed into his partner, and sent them both flying into the stairs. The men above couldn't hear anything through the pouring rain and howling storm.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt was on them in seconds, his gauntlet blade already out. The first Heavy was struggling to get up. Matt kicked him in the jaw, then bent and delivered a second blow from his armored fist with a six inch blade protruding from beneath. The blade skittered against the helmet plating, but the kinetic energy still transferred, and the man was sent reeling. Matt fired a couple of shots from his R71 SMG one-handed to keep the man down for a second. Now for the second one. Relatively uninjured.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt looked around for a blunt weapon of some kind. If he used his gun, he'd bend or shatter it quickly. The Heavy gripped the staircase guide-rail for support, trying to lift himself up. Matt had a sudden burst of inspiration, planting one foot on the wall and ripping the rail from the steel bulkhead, out from underneath the Heavy, who collapsed. Matt twirled the makeshift staff in the air once, bringing it down between the Heavy's legs. Despite the armoring, it still must have hurt like crap.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The first Heavy struggled back to his feet. Matt arced the metal rod around, snarling and grunting with the weight. It was as thick around as his forearm. The rod connected forcefully with the Russian's head, and for the second time in thirty seconds was hit with a solid metal object traveling at high speed into his face. Matt's blow was powerful enough to crack the face-plate of the Heavy.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt turned to the second Heavy. He was on his feet again. How was it possible? He was supposed to take on ''both'' of them?
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt gathered a ball of energy floating around in his body and focused it into a wad, feeling pressure build in his forehead, channeling it through his fingers, directing it past them and at the Russian's head.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The concentrated energy rammed the guy in the face-mask. The energy was focused in a direct blow, and the blow caught him under the chin. The guy was, after all, almost seven feet tall to Matt's 6 feet. Matt heard a grisly snapping as the head flew back, cracking the vertebrae. Matt shuddered, momentarily forgetting about the first Heavy and what needed to be done.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | His lapse cost him precious time, and almost death. The Heavy found his weapon; a heavy shotgun, loaded with devastator slugs. Ouch.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The man could barely see through his cracked faceplate! How had he found the gun in the dim half-light with that handicap? This was ''totally'' not cool.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ''WHY ME???'' Matt thought. If he backed away, the Russian would turn him into a headless doorMatt.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | So Matt did the only thing he could; step in closer. Matt grabbed the guard's wrists, feeling cold gauntlets. The Heavy grasped at him in turn, and Matt felt the cold gauntlets wrap around his head, squeezing his throat.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ''Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap...'' Matt thought.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Why did he have to get the big guy?
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt flailed desperately, lashing out with fists and feet. They connected with various body parts and armor plates, doing almost nothing.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Someone called shrilly in his comm. Or it could have been out loud. He couldn't tell anymore.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt only struggled harder as his vision narrowed down to a tunnel dot. He was going to die. He hadn't thought it would be like this. Not like this at ''all''.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Suddenly the immense pressure lifted from his throat. Matt collapsed to the floor, everything a blur.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | When he felt like he could stand, he pushed himself to his knees. His vision was still blurry but slightly less so, and he could half-way clearly see the FOF transponder identification on his visor HUD.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Captain, this is Kraken Five, reporting."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Not possible. You're dead. I saw you die!" Matt coughed out. "You were hit by that shell!"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Well, I appreciate the attention, but I guarantee I'm 100% ready to go."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt looked to the ground. The Heavy groaned and clutched his head. The piece of railing was at Five's feet. "How'd you survive?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "I'm not completely sure. I felt the explosion behind me, but it felt like it was on the other side of some semi-physical barrier. I was thrown forward, because apparently the kinetic energy broke through the barrier and I was carried into the harbor. My comm.'s broke and so's my thruster pack, but I'm quite alive."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Of course, I would have unconsciously lifted a psi-shield when I felt the round coming." Matt said, nodding.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Whatever the case, sir, I believe we still have two AA batteries to take?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Roger that, soldier. Stick close to me."
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "This is it!" Holly called to the troops assembled around her. "Either Kenderson took the AA or he didn't. Doesn't matter. We're landing hard and fast. BigDog's going ahead of us, clear a drop zone, and we come down all guns blazing. Clear?"
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The men nodded and muttered. Of course it was clear. Drop down, kick enemy butt, secure a few POW's, and disable the artillery before calling for extraction and blowing the ship to the scrapyard.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Red light!" Someone called as the red drop light came on. ''Yes, thankyou, we see that,'' Holly thought.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The soldiers packed in around the three drop points. 40 men coming down three locations, it was going to be a mess unless BigDog could clear the path. It was waiting in the middle of two rows of men at the back of the Osprey, next to the cargo door. It was wired to three static-line parachutes that would deploy automatically, easing it to the deck at a reasonable yet speedy pace. It's normally cargo-holding body had been refit with a swivel-mounted dual .45 cal machine gun, plus the .303 repeating nose cannon, ironically enough, at its tail and forehead.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The rear bay door opened. BigDog ambled forward, filling the crowded deck with it's characteristic buzzing sound. The noise had been known to cause panic among any who had crossed it before. A second later, a green light flashed once, and one of the Osprey crew moved the robot forward with the X-box controller. He was playing a game. Holly shuddered. War had become all fun and games, until one of her soldiers got hurt. Most of the time badly.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | BigDog jumped over the side. It flew most of the way to the ground, before it's specialized chute deployed. Since robots didn't have blood, they couldn't black out from G-force, and so were able to fall almost all the way to the ground before their chutes opened and caught them in the air.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | BigDog hit the deck. Hard. Its legs gave out and its mechanical body collapsed from the force of gravity. Holly bit her lip. The robot seemed too... ''human''. Even machines weren't perfect, but the way this particular machine reacted to imperfection was eerily Homosapian. She knew Matt and Scar agreed with her. This robot's descendants would take over the world.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | BigDog's repeating MG was running its ample mouth even before the robot was completely upright, the operator pulling the right trigger just like on a real X-box. But that was a weird comparison. ''This'' was real. Playing X-box was the virtual thing.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The robot quickly cleared a line as it scampered nimbly along lines of boxes, picking off anyone to slow to get out of its way. At one point the operator sent it jumping onto a higher box, hitting another combination of buttons and watching his imagination at work. The robot jumped up on top of the box, landed on two legs, and sprung back up, its swivel MG turning and firing on a group of braver, or stupider Russians. It looked so Matrix.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | It landed on four legs and rolled behind another crate as a trio of Russians opened fire. BigDog jumped on top of that crate as well, jumping off again, and hit the ground, rolled, and came up firing. Two Russians fell; the third closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and held down the trigger of his SMG. He opened his eyes only when he heard a click and felt his gun stop firing. By that point, BigDog had dodged the stream of bullets and maneuvered around to the Russian's side, balancing a little precariously on two legs. The effect was worth it though; a 6 foot long metal monster crouched at your elbow, .45 and .303 machine guns aiming at you. The Russian turned and fled, and with him the rest of the men on deck broke ranks and retreated.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly nodded to the pilot. The LZ was clear and mild. The pilot hit a button and the doors slid back. Instantly a cascade of about 20 rounds hit the hull. Holly, first in line, was hit three times, and sent to the ground with an ache in her fourth rib, shoulder, and knee.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly scrambled back to her feet, the next man in line helping her up. ''No, don't think that you were just shot three times and you're still alive. Just don't think about it now, and make a mental note to thank Stephens insistently the next time you see him.'' Holly thought. The light was green. Holly jumped.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The air whistled as it ran past her, cupping her in the stomach like a physical blow and blowing the few chunks of hair hanging out of her helmet all around. A giddy joy rose in her, insanely.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly plummeted faster, each second without a chute accelerating her descent. She sucked air through her oxygen mask, and the lack of carbon-dioxide made her even more giddy. She felt hysteria building up and had to keep herself from laughing out loud. That was all her men needed, their Captain giggling like a girl from elementary school on the comm. lines.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | She checked her altimeter. 500 feet, then her chute should deploy.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | 400.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | 300.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | 200.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | 100, and then - nothing. What? What happened? Holly frantically twisted around, checking for a chute.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Uh, everything alright, Cap'n?" One of her Sargents asked, noticing her lack of a parachute.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Negative! No chute! No chute!" Holly screamed above the wind. Everyone on the comm. cursed quietly.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | No parachute. The bullets must have damaged the thing. She tried her backup. Nada, nothing.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ''Why me? Whymewhymewhymewhymewhyme?'' Holly wondered. She felt strangely calm now. No sense of fierce pride in jumping from an Osprey. No elation at falling really really fast. Not even despair, though even if she hit the water, it'd be like hitting concrete.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly heard frantic screaming on the comm.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | ''Holly, your thrusters!'' Holly thought at first it was another hallucination, but then she realized it was the Sargent on the comm. again.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | "Your thruster pack, Captain!" the Sarge yelled. Holly looked down and noticed that she was wearing Stephens' prototype armor again, the one with the built in thruster pack that was made to fire on max burn while jumping so that the user could get twenty feet in the air.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly didn't think about whether or not it was going to work. She hit her thruster controls, and sunken jets erupted out of their ports and hit the air with a sharp crack.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly closed her eyes, as her perception of movement was a little skewed at the moment. So she was a little surprised when she opened her eyes again, seeing her arms and legs flailing, flame jetting from her back, and she was falling, directly towards the deck of the Frigate. Slower than she had been going, of course, but not slow enough. She needed to hit water. Even then she'd probably black out from the sheer force of the landing. But landing was too gentle a term. Even crash-landing couldn't accurately describe it.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Holly angled her body horizontally, and the jets in her backpack propelled her slightly forward as well as helping to slow her down. She felt like Superman, and she had the crazy notion to extend her arms in front of her as if it would help make her faster. But the jets were running out of juice; she couldn't tell if she'd make it into the water or nail the lip of the deck. She closed her eyes again. When she opened them, she was barely over the water, but she was over water. And only 100 feet from it.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The wind in her face, tugging at her boots, her face stretched to comical proportions by the air. Then training took over, and she crossed her arms and legs, protecting her vital organs, and angled her toes into the water.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The crash was amazing. Like being hit by a truck. It jarred her whole body and she felt like every bone was shattered. The air was knocked out of her, and her vision blacked for a second. Her oxygen masked ripped off; no matter, her diaphragm was so screwed it wouldn't be able to contract for a while. She opened her eyes, and discovered that she was thirty feet underwater with no air in her lungs. She kicked frantically, propelling herself up, but it did almost nothing. Her thruster pack sparked to life for an instant, jetting her fifteen feet forward, before it died; out of fuel.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | She kicked and pulled and kicked and pulled, but it wasn't going to be enough. Her lungs cried out for air. The darkness was returning to her vision, coming in at the edges as if a little hesitant. But in a second it would expand and cover her whole field of vision.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Why like this? After everything, why'd she have to die like this?
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | She couldn't go anymore. Ten feet from the surface, Holly couldn't go anymore. Her muscles just wouldn't respond. Luckily she didn't have to know how much it hurt to suffocate. She blacked out completely, her body giving up and preserving her brain for another couple of minutes after her inevitable death.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt still couldn't believe that Kraken Five was alive. He had taken a shell directly beneath his foot. Regardless of any shield, he should have been dead. But he was here, and they were storming the bridge.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt put his back to the wall beside the bridge door, and Five quickly negotiated the lock by smashing it and the hinges. Five grabbed the wheel in a vice-like traction-glove assisted grip, and Matt helped him turn the unyielding wheel to the 'open' position.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt kicked open the door, movie style. It fell down and crashed to the ground off of its broken hinges. He fired bursts into whatever target exposed itself, and with Five's help all nine of the bridge crew members were either dead or captured and cuffed to various sturdy-looking instruments. Matt left Five on guard, taking an extra helping of C4 explosives, and set off for the two AA batteries located next to the bridge on either side.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Six minutes later, all four AA locations were painted with enough explosives for a Fourth of July celebration for a whole neighborhood. Matt found a big red button on his gauntlet, and slid back a small protective covering. He entered an input code and pressed the button, watching with satisfaction as each piece of equipment exploded in a consecutive line. He tuned in to Reaper's comm. line. They had just sent down BigDog.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt looked out over the deck and saw it tearing apart squads and formations. He half-smiled to himself as he heard Holly's voice ordering everyone to jump. Then he saw the Osprey and several dots falling from it into open space.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | A minute later, almost all the dots had parachutes hanging above their heads. Almost. Not all.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | One dot had no chute. Matt knew with sickening certainty that it was Holly's.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt moved without thinking, as if in a dream, sprinting all-out to the side of the deck. He jumped down the staircase, past the two Heavies, and jumped over another railing to get to the main deck. He landed in a crouch to absorb the impact of the fall, then sprinted forward again, weaving in and out of crates stacked two-and-three high. He ducked under a Russian's swing, dodged an arc from the butt of a rifle, and jumped clear over BigDog as it galloped forward, one of its photographic receptor eyes swiveling to follow him. Matt watched Holly's dot all the time; she had now jettisoned the chute and was using the built-in prototype thruster pack on her armor to slow her descent.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt ran a quick calculation in his head, rounding the numbers, and realized it wasn't going to be enough lift force. Then again, it didn't take a genius to figure that out. Holly was instinctively flailing her arms to maintain balance in the air, but of course it didn't do anything much. Matt reached the edge of the railing in the same moment that Holly crashed through the thin surface of the water. Someone screamed in his comm., sounding urgent. He didn't have time for that.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt dove without thinking, automatically assuming a diving position that would cause the least splash. He pinwheeled his arms once for balance, the waves opening to let him slip through. As he hit water, his body surged with an undeniable feeling of power. It was the same thing every time he entered the water. This feeling of grace and power.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Then he was back to worrying about Holly, drowning beneath the waves that were obligingly parting around him.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | He kicked on his thruster pack to max burn, jetting through the water at 10 knots. The seconds ticked inexorably away; they seemed to move too quickly as he clung to each one.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | A dark shape solidified in the water. Matt cried out in relief, sucked in a breath of air, and dove again, thinking it was Holly.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Five seconds later he was nose-to-nose with a Bull Shark. The things could swim into water up to four feet deep. Usually sharks stayed away from harbors and the shore, because the sand messed with their gills and their was too much activity. This one didn't seem to have that problem, because it was right here, now.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt tried to see through the murky water, but now the waves had turned against him. They were aggressively kicking up silt and clouding his vision, and the shark was drawing nearer, curious.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt watched in terror as the ocean killer cocked its head to the side and circled him in what looked like a non-threatening pose but was actually the textbook sign of a shark attack. Who was he, to think that he was master of the ocean? He looked like an arrogant, over-confident squid next to this monster.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt had no weapons besides the blade on his gauntlet, and that would be pathetic to even attempt attacking the shark. He could do nothing. The shark drew nearer, and Matt could see the feral gleam in its black, heartless eyes. It seemed to be smiling. Its jaws could clamp down with something like 1000 pounds of pressure per square inch. That would most likely pierce his armor. And if it didn't, it would crush him.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | The shark disappeared into the murky water. Matt knew that it was going to try to flank him, and come in from the sides or rear. But he couldn't help himself from staring at the hole in the clouded mud that the shark had disappeared into.
| + | |
| − | | + | |
| − | Matt shook his head, jetted to the surface, caught a breath, and then dove deep to the bottom. At the surface, the light from above would outline him. The shark was expecting him in about the middle depth. He dove all the way 20 feet to the bottom, holding his breath and snorting to relieve the pressure in his ears. Navy SEALs were trained to hold their breath for six minutes. He'd been under for seven minutes now with only quick stops to replenish his lungs. He could feel his strength waning.
| + | |
| | | | |
| − | He felt weird with his helmet on underwater, but all the electronics were waterproofed. He called up Holly's vitals on his visor. He didn't like what he saw. Why'd she have to have the malfunctioning parachute? Couldn't he go save someone without the added stress of liking them?
| + | ''"Soldiers, you will be deployed via fast-rope. You will rappel down to the ground and await the indicator in your HUD before beginning. As soon as you see the signal, you may begin. Good luck, recruits. Up first: Echo Squad! Squad Leader, make sure your squad's gear checks out."'' |
| | | | |
| − | The shark erupted out of nowhere, coming from above. It dove at Matt's head, aiming to have a snack of his face. Matt cried out instinctively, but only bubbles escaped his lips. He lashed the water with his fist without thinking, which connected with the shark's nose. The shark snorted comically, shaking its enormous head, and turned off. Matt knew it wasn't done yet, but he had no intention of waiting for it. He kicked out and cast up a large cloud of silt as a smokescreen, then thrusted off to Holly's splashdown. | + | The DS gestured to Matt, and all of them went and gave one another triple buddy checks. |
| | | | |
| − | The shark tried to follow. Its gills were sand resistant, but not sand-proof. The silt worked its way down its gills and into its open mouth. The bull shark snorted again and peeled off from the chase.
| + | "Ready when you are, Frost!" Holly yelled over their Team comm. |
| | | | |
| − | Matt jetted forward, literally. He was back in control. He felt the ocean around him, and it carried him forward.
| + | "Roger that, Aura." Matt yelled back. Each of them had callsigns. His was Frost. Jamie's was Scorch. Scar was Flare. Malcolm was Spark. Holly was Aura. "Alright. Squad, move out! Go, go, go!" Matt barked. |
| | | | |
| − | He was still holding his breath, and about thirty seconds later he saw a dark figure on the bottom of the ocean. He knew it was Holly.
| + | Scar attached her rappel harness to the line and jumped out the side, one hand on the rope above her, and the other below and slightly behind her butt, the "brake" hand that controlled how fast the line went. Malcolm followed, then Jamie, then Holly. Matt was the last one out, as befitting his status of Squad Leader. |
| | | | |
| − | Matt dove to the very bottom, his lungs about to burst from lack of oxygen, scooped up his friend in his arms, and thrust off to the surface.
| + | Scar landed, disengaged her harness, and let it drop to the forest floor. A crew would come later and get it. |
| | | | |
| − | Could he make it? His head was pounding and his brain was slowly shutting down areas as it ran out of oxygen. His muscles would barely respond. His stomach was roiling and his lungs and heart were working overtime to recycle the oxygen-depleted blood through his body. The surface was right there! He could see the light patterns against the waves. But was that really it? He was beginning to go crazy, his brain playing tricks on him. He could have sworn the bull shark had returned for round two. He saw great, oily tentacles rising up from the silt, millions of suckers big as head coming after him. He couldn't tell if he was really being strafed with gunfire from above and whether or not sonic depth charges were detonating right next to him.
| + | Soon the entire squad was on the ground, and Matt quickly led the squad under cover of the trees. As soon as the V-22 Osprey was out of sight, they doubled back and went after the bird. They kept the lines from the rappel - there was always a use for thirty feet of tough nylon. |
| | | | |
| − | Matt saw the darkness around him close in, eager for the kill. He wouldn't let it. With his final spurt of energy, Matt shoved off, using an ancient form of psi known as Hydrokinesis, and cleared the surface just when he too blacked out, at the mercy of the ocean.
| + | The countdown timer in Matt's HUD read D + 15:07 when Matt raised his fist, the sign to halt. With slow, exaggerated sign language, he indicated for the team to spread out and climb the trees. Jamie went with Matt in one tree. Scar went by herself, and Malcolm and Holly shared a third. |
| | | | |
| | + | "Frost, requesting permission to re-format to a sniper?" Scar whispered over the Teamcomm. |
| | | | |
| | + | "Roger that, Flare. Permission granted. Scorch, outfit yours with the AR. Aura, you're our grenadier. Get the XM320 on there." The XM320 was a single-shot 40mm grenade launcher that could be attached to their carbines. Matt put one on his. Malcolm preferred a straight-up assault rifle. |
| | | | |
| | + | Beside Matt, almost completely invisible in the heavy jungle shadow, Jamie lay prone along two branches, with his AR balanced on a third branch with a clear line-of-sight to the ground. |
| | | | |
| − | ''"Scar!!"''
| + | Matt slid down from the tree. "Spark, get down here and help me create a barricade. We need to push any incoming squads into one firing lane. Scorch, Flare, give me a dot." In response, Malcolm slid from his tree, and both Scar and Jamie highlighted the firing lane that they had access to with red laser-dots. Matt took armfuls of brambles and thin, thorned vines and dumped them to the left and right of the lane, in between the trees, to create a natural-looking wall that would influence the squads to find an easier way through. Right through their lane of fire. |
| | | | |
| − | The shell hit and detonated three feet to her left. She and two other soldiers were cast like toys into the air, an invisible force punching them in the gut and shrapnel spraying their exposed faces.
| + | Matt strung triplines further out into the jungle with the Nylon cables, attaching them to frag grenades. |
| | | | |
| − | Scar sideflipped through the air and came to the ground on her feet, a little shaken and numerous scratches across her face, but otherwise fine. The two others were not so fine. One was on the ground, wheezing from a projectile that had lodged in his chestplate, and the other one was clutching a hand to his side, blood welling up beneath. Scar called for a medic, but the armor system was already dispensing painkillers. As the medic arrived, he took out a small, frozen gel pack.
| + | Matt's countdown ended. "Alright people, we can now shoot at and be shot. Let's wrap this up." Malcolm laid the last armful of brambles in place, and then they both scampered up into their separate trees. There were five other squads in this particular mission, all within a square mile. It wouldn't be long before they had some hits. |
| | | | |
| | + | Five minutes passed, and no one came. The squad was getting impatient. "Spark," Matt whispered. "Be the rabbit. I need you to go along the lane and see if you can draw some fire, then sprint back here. We'll cover your approach. I'd do it myself but I'm not fast enough." |
| | | | |
| − | Another of Stephens' great designs, the packs acted as a Vitamin E/platelet enhancer when frozen, accelerating tissue regrowth, and a combination pain-killer and antiseptic-antibody when liquefied.
| + | "Roger that, lead." Malcolm said, grinning. "I've always been one for the suicidal frontal charge." He slid down his tree, landing in the brush below. Before he had even gone two minutes, the sound of gunfire erupted through the forest. "Frost, I've got multiple targets here. They've got me pinned, I could use some assistance!" |
| | | | |
| | + | Matt looked to Holly. She nodded, slid down, and circled around to the right to counter-flank the guys surrounding Malcolm. "Spark, help is on the way. How long can you hold?" |
| | | | |
| − | Scar covered the medic while he helped the two soldiers down to the sick bay, loosing blasts from her FN SCAR-H assault rifle. An armored transport pulled up; Scar hit it with a 40mm from the grenade launcher attached to the barrel. It bounced off, up into the air, but had no propulsion to keep it there, so it fell back down before exploding. The APC was torn apart on one side, the explosion rocking the entire thing on it's axles, but men were already starting to climb to their feet around the damaged vehicle.
| + | "I've got good cover, I'm inside a shallow cave-thing in the ground. I can hold out a while." |
| | | | |
| − | Scar layed down the rest of the clip, feeling the powerful 7.62mm rounds as they escaped from the rifle. She ducked back and slotted a fresh magazine into the receiver.
| + | "Roger that. Keep your head down, but keep the attention centered on you. And watch out, they'll try to advance. Watch your flanks." |
| | | | |
| − | Retaliatory fire chipped off blocks by her head, and Scar lobbed a C4 charge over the wall. With the frantic yelling, Scar popped up again and strafed their lines with her 20-round clip, and when the bullets stopped flying she hit the oversized red button on her gauntlet after targeting the C4 charge she had thrown on her HUD. Her vital-sign monitors showed a flare in her heartbeat as the explosion flew up, a great roiling cloud of flame. The sonics blasted against her eardrums and the shock wave cast her back and down half a step. A tank withstood the blast for half a second before the flames melted the armor and found the fuel, casting another explosion and broken hulk to the ground.
| + | "You got it, Frost." Malcolm said, and tossed a grenade out the opening of the cave. It exploded, and Malcolm heard someone groan. "Yeah, bring it!" He shouted. |
| | | | |
| − | She looked up, and saw Holly's Osprey hovering over the Frigate. Good. That would buy them a little reprieve. They might even win this battle.
| + | Holly took up a firing position, sighted through her scope, and tagged a soldier in the back of his head. He dropped like a load of rocks, asleep by the time he hit the ground. Return fire peppered the rock she had been hiding behind, and two soldiers broke off to get her. But Holly wasn't there anymore. |
| | | | |
| − | Specks that were people began falling from the distant Osprey, and all of them deployed chutes. Except one.
| + | A soldier fell as rounds tore into his inner thigh. He dropped to the ground, not out yet but with a crippled leg. He hobbled behind a piece of cover as Holly filled the air with bullets around the second soldier. A grenade rolled to a stop next to her, and at this she turned and fled back the way she had come, then darted back, and got the attention of the two remaining soldiers pinning Malcolm. |
| | | | |
| − | Scar muttered a curse, then yelled to her Sargent. "Get a boat out there! I don't care if you've gotta lash logs together, just get something that floats and send it out now!"
| + | At the momentary distraction, Malcolm bolted out of the hole, sprinted from rock to tree, from tree to bush, from bush to ground, and drew the soldiers down through the firing lane, followed a second later by Holly. Jamie adjusted his grip on the AR as the two squadmates ran down the path. 30 seconds later, the first soldier popped into view. Jamie waited until the last soldier appeared, then nailed the one closest to any viable cover. |
| | | | |
| − | She called up Matt's comm. on her visor, but he wouldn't respond. She called up his helmet-camera on her screen and saw that he was running, sprinting, to the edge of the deck. He was going to jump!
| + | The steady thrum of the AR set Matt's head pounding, and he opened fire on the last one in the line. Then Scar fired, and a round slugged the first soldier in the chest. |
| | | | |
| − | Matt hit the railing and dove, pinwheeling his arms, and splashed into the water. Scar's concentration was disrupted as a three-round burst impacted against her back-plate, and she fell forward. Two of her men dove forward, assault rifles pumping in covering fire. Scar shook her head, clenched her teeth against the pain, and stood.
| + | Jamie's target fell from hits to the leg, side, and shoulder. He wasn't quite gone, but almost. Jamie finished him off with another quick, sustained burst. |
| | | | |
| − | Fury washed over her, a kind of unstoppable... ''Rage'' took hold, and she raised her left arm, no longer in control...
| + | Matt's soldier dropped to the ground, out for the count with five rounds in his chest and more in his left arm. |
| | | | |
| − | Pressure built in her head. A hazy red clouded her vision. She sighted a phalanx of enemy soldiers taking cover behind the destroyed hulks of two tanks, and pointed to them with all the authority of fate.
| + | Scar's target took the heavy caliber bullet in the chest and sat down with the force, hard, landing on his butt and jarring his head. Before he could recover, Scar punched another round into his chest. He spun halfway around and ate dirt. |
| | | | |
| | + | Four down. The last soldier turned to flee, but Holly popped out of the shadows and nailed him with a grenade from her XM320, which cast training rounds into a wide arc everywhere, painting the nearby forest a vivid crimson. |
| | | | |
| | + | "Alright!" Jamie crowed. |
| | | | |
| − | The two soldiers had been kneeling behind cover, blasting away before they were blasted at. They saw their Captain take three rounds in the back; that had to hurt. Phoenix nine took the initiative and dove forward, covering his officer, while Phoenix Twelve rose and sprayed a barrage of lethal fire from his Squad Automatic. The Russians who had been firing pressed the attack; thee of them ran forward under cover of the battlements and began setting up plastic explosives. Phoenix nine leaned over and tossed a frag, which the Russians kicked away.
| + | Matt disengaged his spent clip and slapped a new one in. "Let's hope the other squads come running for the noise. One down, three to go, gentlemen." |
| | | | |
| − | Then Scar got up. "Captain Miller," one asked. "Are you alright?"
| |
| | | | |
| − | She didn't answer, no longer herself. She set her jaw, trembling with power. The two soldiers looked at each other, slowly backing away from Scar. Red haze clouded her vision, and she pointed out the phalanx of Russians taking cover behind the tank. Her targets. Another moment and the tanks abruptly, inexplicably burst into flame. Almost completely solid metal. Spontaneous Combustion. The tanks melted, and the men behind them screamed, consumed by the enormous heat. Some of them jumped away as the metal became way more than scalding-hot; most were not so lucky. As the metal conducted the flame's energy, they were flash-fried, glued to the tanks. They died before they realized what happened.
| + | The next squad was slightly smarter. Instead of running pel-mel into the contested area, they sent one scout on ahead through the firing lane, and the rest hung back and encircled the target area. Too bad for them, Matt's squad had moved from the one killing field and into another close-by clearing, where they could easily spot the would-be flanking attack. |
| | | | |
| − | Scar still wasn't done. She flipped over the battlements, and the men who were attempting to set up the plastic explosives cowered against the stone. One stood strong, presumably the Sargent, and stared Scar down. Scar raised her arms, crackling with energy, and loosed flames to either side of the three men. The Sargent squinted and backed half a step, his two men dove behind him. Scar stepped forward and socked the Sargent solidly in the mouth; the man fell with two less teeth than he had. The two cowards, Scar kicked each in the jaw, then bound their arms and legs with cord from her webbing gear. Quickly, expertly, Scar tied the Sargent and hauled them next to the wall.
| + | "Open fire!" Matt yelled, and the two soldiers in sight twisted around, trying to find the source of the noise. One was slugged by a heavy cal. sniper shot, and the other fell to the combined fire from Jamie's AR and Matt's carbine. |
| | | | |
| − | The red distortion lifted from her vision, and she growled to herself, disappointed. She wanted to destroy them ''all''.
| + | Holly and Malcolm, still on the ground, rose out of a cover of leaves and dead brush and moved around behind the three soldiers left that came running. Standing up, they nailed two with one salvo of fire. |
| | | | |
| − | Then she shook herself and returned to normal, then jumped with the assistance of the thruster pack wired into her armor and hit the battlements. She climbed over, panting slightly, both from fatigue and the recent psi. Lances of pain shot behind her eyes, and her face contorted as she silently struggled to remain conscious. Always a price...
| + | The last one hit the dirt and rolled under a log. Holly and Malcolm pursued. |
| | | | |
| | + | "Negative! Disengage!" Jamie yelled, and opened fire into the brush to their left. |
| | | | |
| | + | Holly hit dirt. Malcolm followed half a second later with three rounds stitched across his back. He wasn't out yet, but his entire suit was getting quickly more rigid. |
| | | | |
| − | Matt cleared the surface at twenty miles an hour.
| + | He turned onto his back and fired in the general direction of where the shots had come from. Holly sidled around to him and took out a fake med-pack, wiping clean the Training Rounds and administering an electric shock through the armor. Malcolm's suit unstraightened a little, and Malcolm crawled back into better cover. |
| | | | |
| − | He rose several feet in the air before gravity re-asserted control over his body. Matt sucked great draughts of air out of the sky. He splashed back down a couple seconds later after flailing about in the air. He coughed wetly, once, twice, then a final time, clearing his lungs of liquid. His thoughts were once again lucid and clear.
| + | Jamie was still firing bursts from his AR at the last squad. Matt held his fire; there was no clear target in view, and to give away his position would be stupid. Scar attached a flash suppressor to her rifle, and started shelling the squad's general position. |
| | | | |
| − | Then he remembered the girl laying in his arms, and he adjusted his thruster pack so that it would keep him floating at his hip-level, which was just enough for him to reach into his med-kit.
| + | "Watch flankers." Matt advised, seeing shadows moving behind her. Scar turned and nailed one soldier who had tried to flank her, and Matt caught another with a grenade. |
| | | | |
| − | "Hang in there. We'll be fine." Matt said, starting his work of reviving Holly, using the energy fed to him by the sea.
| + | Matt slid to the ground as Jamie covered him, landed, and ran in a half-crouch to Holly. He saw a rifle barrel poke out of a bush, saw a blast coming their way, and tackled Holly to the ground. The burst nailed him in the calf and he rolled up into a crouch. |
| | | | |
| | + | Matt rolled off and came up firing. Jamie suppressed the soldier that had just shot at them while Matt took him out, Holly and Malcolm covering his flank. |
| | | | |
| | + | Then Scar took multiple sustained bursts from the last soldier from the other squad, and toppled from the tree. She was out cold. Fury ignited in Matt. Toppling her from the tree was not necessary, and she could have injured herself. He and Holly outflanked the soldier and drilled him to the ground with long automatic fire. |
| | | | |
| − | Holly awoke just as the inflatable speedboat slowed to a halt. Matt handed her up to the waiting hands of two soldiers, and after they put her down they reached out again for Matt. He grabbed hold of one and strong hands pulled him aboard, exhausted and lethargic. They pulled him aboard, and he saw the rest of his crew that he had left on the Russian frigate. One of his men gave him a thumbs-up, and Matt hit the button on his gauntlet, watching the frigate burst into flames and list to port.
| + | They split and threw themselves behind rocks, Matt reloading as he went. There were two left on the other team and three left on his; Malcolm had been drilled again in his helmet. |
| | | | |
| − | Holly looked over and gave Matt a silent look of thanks. | + | Jamie's AR barked again and again. With his suppressive fire, Matt darted from cover to cover and distracted the two soldiers long enough for Holly to creep around and take the first one out. The last soldier sprayed fire everywhere, panicking, and continued even as Matt, Jamie, and Holly's combined fire drilled him into the ground. |
| | | | |
| − | "Alright people. Mission accomplished. Let's head back to the fort, grab something to eat, and then hit the sack for a while. I think it's safe to say the commies won't be coming back anytime soon." Matt said. | + | The DS broke through their comm. lines, "Cease fire. Echo team, you have won the mission. We will collect you shortly. Hold position." |
| | | | |
| − | "Amen to that." One responded, and Matt slumped against the side of the boat as he and his team jetted for the shore. | + | "Roger that." Matt responded. "Alright, lady and gentleman. We won!" |
| | | | |
| | + | The survivors of Echo Team gazed around at all the unconscious forms before them. They may as well have been dead. It was only now that Matt got the first hint of what a war could really be like. He would have to do better, make sure none of his crew got hurt, ever. This was one simple mission, and two of his own had gone. What would have happened had they been live rounds? Scar and Malcolm, dead, blink of an eye, without ever seeing their attackers. What was this going to come to? |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | + | This was war. |
| | | | |
| − | Scar was just tying down the last of the soldiers as a Russian PT boat came rocketing towards shore from the frigate. She scrambled to find cover and called to one of her men, but then a comm. screen opened in her visor and she saw Holly's Sargent grinning back at her. "It's us in the PT boat, ma'am!" He yelled over the clamor of jubilant voices in the background. "Explosives set, and most of the baddies on the ship are out for the count."
| |
| | | | |
| − | "Good work, Sargent. Return to base, grab some z's, then get yourself a shovel and start scooping rubble."
| |
| | | | |
| − | "Sounds like fun, Captain. Wouldn't miss it."
| + | ==Work In Progress Chapter 14== |
| | + | ''' |
| | | | |
| − | Scar terminated the comm. The cleanup op wouldn't be fun, but it was necessary. The Admiral and his fleet would be coming in to the harbor in about half an hour, and Scar would have to get a team out there to assist in the Navy action. Maybe Holly and Matt would go while she stayed to supervise the cleanup and in case another attack was launched, though it was doubtful. She liked dry ground more.
| |
| | | | |
| − | One thing was certain, though. They had won, driven off the strike, and emerged victorious.
| + | "You guys have got to check this out." Malcolm said as they boarded a cargo lift. "So the new shipments of Croc Armor have come in while you two were away, but the boys have been working overtime developing some gear strictly for the Shock Forces. I've gotten to work fitting our new armor with all our old custom stuff, but with some new toys." |
| | | | |
| − | ==Work In Progress Chapter 5==
| + | "What kind of toys?" Jamie asked, yawning. Upon arrival back at Firebase Bravo, he and Matt had been debriefed, taken several hot showers, and stuffed their guts with the contents of several MREs. Life was good. |
| − | '''22:07 Hours, Military Clock, December 5, 2012, Yale University, Conneticut'''
| + | |
| | | | |
| − | "Somethings wrong." | + | "Dude DWAI. You'll see in just a sec." |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm Pierce shifted uncomfortably under the harsh lab lighting. He held before him one of the most powerful microscopes in existence, yet it still couldn't reveal to him half the mysteries of this one bone sample.
| + | The lift sank several stories into the ground, to where Ford had had a Research and Development Lab excavated and lined with a fast-drying concrete substitute while Matt and Jamie were gone. |
| | | | |
| − | "Where did you say you found this?" Malcolm asked.
| + | It was the classic Malcolm workshop scene, with tables and workbenches lining the walls, equipment strewn all over the place in differing states of organization. But for some reason the lights were dimmed to half-intensity, throwing the room into deep shadows. |
| | | | |
| − | "I didn't," replied his assistant, James. "Friend of mine, down in Florida. He said he had gotten his hands on something new and wanted you to take a look."
| + | They got off the lift and stood for a second. Matt inhaled the stale air and examined the sets of armor that lay draped over tables, gauntlets and shoulder pauldrons dismantled. |
| | | | |
| − | "Well he was certainly right about one thing. This fragment is like nothing I've ever seen. Where did he find it?" | + | "I don't see anything." Jamie said after half a minute. |
| | | | |
| − | "He claims that he and his family were just taking a stroll down the beach in Daytona, around 11:00 AM. Next thing he knows, the sky goes completely gray, all rainy and stuff, and before he knows it a miniaturized tsunami is breaking down on his head. Funny thing is, on the news this morning-" | + | "I do." Malcolm said, unable to contain a grin. |
| | | | |
| − | "Yeah, I saw that too. Slight tremor down in Florida. Huge wave, like four stories tall, but really narrow and localized. No one knows what caused it." Malcolm interrupted, flicking on a small flatscreen TV mounted on a wall. The news was still screaming the same story. | + | Matt looked harder. "Oh. Clever." |
| | | | |
| − | "Well, my friend saw the wave and ran for the hills, rightly so, but forgot his camera or something. Anyways, he comes back about an hour later, and this er... body was washed up on shore. He took this sample and sent it to me in advance." | + | "What?" Jamie asked. |
| | | | |
| − | "The structure is without a doubt of the Dinosauria. From what I'm reading here, this has largely the same build of ''Velociraptor mongoliensis''. But the size is several classes too big. It looks more like a ''Deinonychus antirrhopus'' tail segment."
| + | Matt reached out with one hand and gently probed the flickering semi-shadow before him. It laughed, so Matt grabbed the camouflage cloak and pulled it off. |
| | | | |
| − | "That's just the teaser. Wait till you see what I've got next." James assured him.
| + | The figure laughed again. Matt could now see the armor in greater detail, but the invisibility mechanism still worked amazingly well. |
| | | | |
| − | "Well don't just leave me ''drooling'' with anticipation." Malcolm said sarcastically. "What've you got?"
| + | Scar and Holly tapped some controls on their gauntlets from inside their new armor and solidified into the visible spectrum. |
| | | | |
| − | In response, James reached into his lab coat pocket and tossed Malcolm a small vile. "You're not serious?" Malcolm asked incredulously, reading the label. "Where's the rest of it?"
| + | Malcolm hit the lights, and the room lit up. |
| | | | |
| − | "The boys are bringing it up now. That little sliver of bone there isn't anything compared to what you'll find in the full body." | + | "Awesome! I want one." Jamie cackled. |
| | | | |
| − | "They've recovered the full body of a supposedly extinct Dinosaur, possibly one of a previously unknown species, with pigmented tissue samples?" | + | "Pretty sweet." Matt agreed. "How does it work?" |
| | | | |
| − | "Based on the preliminary reports, and the smell, this thing's only been dead for maybe, a couple days." James said. | + | "Unfortunately it sucks up power like a wild hog." Holly said, detaching a power cable from her back. "So the armor can't support it for much longer than a minute in combat situations unless its plugged into something." |
| | | | |
| − | "James, I could kiss you. But I won't." Malcolm said teasingly. "This is it, man. Or first big deal. Oh, man, when the junkies down at the Pentagon hear about this..." | + | "It's none of the 'Oh, I'll take a miraculous video of whats behind me and put it in front of me and for some reason it looks like I'm invisible' crap." Malcolm explained. "That would require the entire exterior of the armor to be covered in video screens. Instead, the armor's on-board computer gets a general bearing of its surroundings and then tells its new photo-reactive armor plates to change color and shade depending on what it registers. Like we said, the computer system and the photo-plates suck power really fast, so you can only do it for about a minute on one power cell." |
| | | | |
| − | A heavily laden cart was wheeled into the lab room and set next to Malcolm's lab table. Malcolm started calling out rapid-fire commands. "I need a full set of tools in here. Get the obsidian stuff. I need all non-essential workers out of here, a full analysis of the tissue sample. And get one of those new MRIs in here. And someone get a vid feed. Bossman will want to see this for himself."
| + | "What's the cape for?" |
| | | | |
| − | A pair of clean-suit clothed workers gently picked up one side of the six foot long tray and layed it under a purple filter light. Studies had shown that the purple lighting was the easiest on the eyes in terms of strain. That was a good thing for Malcolm as he stared at the body for the next five and a half hours.
| + | Malcolm winced. "Cloak. Camouflage cloak. It's to break up the humanoid figure. Our eyes identify things by shape and color, so if we blur the outline of your body and minimize the difference in color you're practically invisible." |
| | | | |
| | + | Matt crossed to the worktables and inserted his arm into a gauntlet, then pulled a switch and a blade jumped out of the side. "Nice." |
| | | | |
| | + | "Yeah. Retractable gauntlet blades, your custom elbow spikes, high-density non-standard issue gel bladders, M5 fiber gloves in the gauntlets, steel knuckles, integrated sonic pulse emitter in the helmet speakers. And then some of the newer stuff, we've got optional gauntlet attachments, custom-fit for each of us. Jamie's, Scar's, and mine shoot flames. Yours, which is a much smaller attachment, can send an electric shock through the gauntlet and anything you're touching. Holly's shoots a gas grenade loaded with tear gas. Of course, the rebreather and visor in the helmet will make you impervious to gas attacks." |
| | | | |
| | + | "Thank heaven." Jamie snickered. "Finally, a piece of equipment that's been Matt-proofed." |
| | | | |
| − | The man-sized body of the Velociraptor was heavily bloated with gas. It had indeed been dead for a while, but certainly not anywhere near 65 million years. Malcolm picked up an obsidian-bladed scalpel and delicately slit the Raptor across its stomach, noting a peculiar ridge with a red line down the center that ran all the way down the lateral line of the animal. Three of them. The center one, larger and thicker than the others. It could be nothing other than scar tissue. Probably from another animal.
| + | "Somehow, I knew you would say that." |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm noted the anomaly aloud, knowing that the voice-activated tape recorders would capture the sentence.
| + | "And I did." |
| | | | |
| − | This was completely insane. It was a whole new species. Well, an old one. It was unmistakably of the genus ''Velociraptor'', but the species was completely different. For one thing, this specimen was as big as he was. 5 foot 11 inches according to his measurements. And it was much stronger than a human. Its middle "Killing Claw" was as big as his fist.
| + | "Yes you did." |
| | | | |
| − | The pelvic bone seemed specially adapted for jumping, and the quadriceps were corded and powerful. The cranial compartment was uniquely large for a dinosaur. That and the fact that it had probably died just days ago.
| + | "Okay." |
| | | | |
| − | There were funny little quills poking out of the back of the creature's head, but other than that they shared none of their smaller cousins' feathered appearance. It looked for all the world as if this thing had come straight out of Jurassic Park.
| + | "Alright then." |
| | | | |
| − | This was possibly one of the greatest finds of the century in paleontology circles. Amazing. What had caused the abnormal growth in the specimen, as compared with its smaller cousins?
| + | A few seconds passed in silence. |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm had a theory. It was a commonly known fact, even though the general public didn't like it, that the ''Velociraptor mongoliensis'', which died out at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, was about 3 feet tall and five feet long, built for speed, and covered in feathers.
| + | "Awkward." Scarlett stated. |
| | | | |
| − | This specimen had died less than 48 hours ago. Its skeletal structure was built heavier, with more supports. This thing could take a couple impacts. And the muscles were dense and heavily developed. Claws were sharp and serrated on the inside curve, for gutting things. The teeth were large and had razor points, and the jaw muscles could provide 2,000 pounds of pressure per square inch. That wouldn't feel great if it clamped down on your leg.
| + | "Right. Anyway." Malcolm rolled his eyes. "Mark Two armor, really cool stuff. And it came in just in time, too." |
| | | | |
| − | The creature was definitely warm-blooded. Its four-chambered heart had an extensive system of arteries, capillaries and veins.
| + | "Meaning?" Holly asked. |
| | | | |
| − | But this creature had obviously died under stress. The three claw marks on the belly weren't the only signs. The blood, which was currently in a semi-solid state, showed increased levels of the hormone adrenaline in the Raptor's system, and several other claw and bite marks could be seen around the tail and neck. Something had tried to snack on this creature.
| + | "We're about to get sent out again. All of us, to go mop up that Russian detention outpost you two were at. It's a joint operation between us and the Atlantians - first official mission together, just to kinda test the waters." |
| | | | |
| − | Basically it was an advanced version of a Velociraptor. The lack of feathers in the forearms suggested that over the 65 million years since its ancestors had died out, these things had slowly lost the use for feathers, which indicated that they lived in a warmer climate. And the salt-content caked on the skin, plus the fact that the Gulf current had washed the beast up in Daytona, indicated that it had come from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and that it lived tropical. Due to some enhanced mineral that was apparently abundant in its food source, this thing had been able to grow to the size of an average man.
| + | "So they're sending five Shockers and how many Atlantians?" Scar asked. |
| | | | |
| − | But the heavy Dromaesaur claws hadn't vanished, and neither had the enhanced hip structure that allowed the Raptor to jump eight feet in the air, based on its muscle-to-weight ratio, and for the leg to rotate 270 degrees in all directions except towards the other leg.
| + | "Well, a bit more than us five. And you're not gonna like it." |
| | | | |
| − | The thing's eyes were of stunning quality. Much better than a man's, better than any of today's predators. | + | The five of them packed their new armor and weaponry into armored crates, and Malcolm lead the crew back up to the ground floor, and from there they commandeered a Humvee for the short cross-camp drive to the armory. |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm blinked wearily. He'd been at this for five hours. Even he needed to sleep sometimes.
| + | Inside the semi-enclosed courtyard was a flurry of pre-mission activity. Soldiers, dressed in the head-to-toe matte black version of the newest Mk II armor, jogged from place to place, securing ammo crates, inspecting gear, loading vehicles. |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm stifled a yawn and closed is inquiry file on the computer. Resetting the microscope, cleaning his tools off, packing up his case, Malcolm yawned again and walked out the lab's door, sliding his access card along the reader to unlock the door.
| + | Ford stood on a raised platform just outside the armory wall in one corner of the courtyard surveying the proceedings. He was dressed in cut-down CROC armor and an eyepiece instead of a helmet. From time to time aides dashed up to him carrying messages, then just as quickly disappeared. Carter stood at his shoulder, helmet in hands. |
| | | | |
| − | James came out to meet him. "Hey, Malcolm. How'd it go?"
| + | When Ford saw the five 'Shockers,' he motioned them over. The 13's, who had been dubbed thus by the Marine Shock Forces, felt it their due to come up with a name in return. Hence, Shockers. |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm sighed. "That thing's like nothing I've ever seen before. It's of the ''Velociraptor'' Genus, but the species is different. It retains the heavy Dromaesaurid claws yet has a distinct lack of feathers along its forearms and body, as it's cousins do, suggesting that it lived in a warmer climate where there was no need for insulation."
| + | "Guys, suit up. We're going in first to soften up the AA, and then when the main strike force arrives, we breach buildings, grab all the sensitive material we can find, then high-tail it out when the bombing starts. Clear?" Carter asked. |
| | | | |
| − | "Lives, present tense. This thing died only about two days ago. Right?" | + | "Yes sir!" The crew responded as one. |
| | | | |
| − | "True. Anyways, I'm beat. Make sure the specimen is put on ice to prevent further decay and locked up tight." | + | "Right. We'll be dropping in out of the new HALE rocket pods - High Altitude Low Entry Shock n' Awe drop pods. Just like the video games." Carter continued. "AC-130 flies by and drops us off, waits till we hit the AA, then drops down and provides support fire." |
| | | | |
| − | Five minutes later, Malcolm was walking back to the parking lot where his Mercedes was parked. It was four in the morning. City life was just starting to pick back up after the 2-3:00 AM quiet period. Still, everything was pitch black dark, illuminated only by the densely packed stores and street lights.
| + | Ford nodded. "We'll be dropping you guys in addition to Orca Team, so you'll have some more numbers to fill out the ranks at first. Find and destroy as many AA emplacements as you can, then call it in and sit tight." |
| | | | |
| − | It was classic, really. Single rich kid, dark alleyway, walking back to his car. Although Malcolm kept a small Sig Sauer handgun for personal defense locked up in his car, that was no use to him out here. Not to the man holding a gun to his head.
| + | "Right. Let's get this show on the road." |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm didn't know who he was, but he knew what the man wanted. His wallet, carrying a few twenties and a hundred. His gold watch, surely worth half a fortune on the shadier markets. His coat, maybe. Times had been getting worse again after the credit problems in 2008 and 09, but so far it hadn't come to this.
| + | "Yeah, lets go plan some more cliches on the plain ride." Scar rolled her eyes. |
| | | | |
| − | Now a very large-looking handgun was being pressed into Malcolm's head.
| + | "At least it made sense this time." Malcolm pointed out. |
| | | | |
| − | Now, the problem with this stereotypical scenario was that Malcolm knew his way around a street-fight. He'd never taken personal defense lessons or anything, but he had been born with an innate ability to fight.
| + | "Hey!" Matt laughed. |
| | | | |
| − | "You know the drill. No sudden moves or I'll blast out your brains. Now, I want your wallet and your watch. Now!" The robber ordered.
| + | The five of them split up into the locker rooms in the armory and helped eachother into their armor. It took about ten minutes to gear up in their armor, then another five while they signed out and inspected their custom weapons, each enhanced to fit the user. Matt's HK UMP-45 had been modified for higher muzzle velocity, and Matt had custom-ordered his own magazine design that held thirty-five instead of twenty-five rounds, and was fatter and wider instead of longer. Matt had also kept the SMG's distinguishing .45 ACP rounds for increased stopping power. |
| | | | |
| − | "Okay, okay, it's fine, no one has to get hurt here," Malcolm said calmly, unconsciously patronizing, speaking quickly to draw the man's attention to his face and away from his hands, which were raised up. A supposedly non-threatening gesture.
| + | The rest used XM8's in various configurations, with the exception that Jamie swapped his MP7 for a M1014 combat shotgun. |
| | | | |
| − | "Shut-up!" The gunman said, swaying and obviously drunk, or high, or both. "I said give me your money!"
| + | Now that the Mk. II armor had an integrated anti-armor missile weapon system, Matt didn't need to carry a rocket-launcher or grenade launcher, but instead strapped an MP7 to his thigh, a Magnum under his shoulder, and an electric-flanged mace across his back. |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm risked a step closer, until the gun barrel was wobbling right against his head. "Okay, okay, here you go-" Malcolm said, displaying his wallet, until suddenly he dropped it and smacked the would-be perp in the head with his one hand, grabbing the gun barrel and twisting it aside and behind the robber's back with his other. Malcolm yanked, hard, causing the gun to drop, and then drove his weight into the unbalanced criminal. They both toppled to the ground, Malcolm on top.
| + | "I love this new armor." Holly said once they had joined back up and were piling into a Humvee that would take them to the runway. "They updated all the joints and improved the exoskeletons, so it feels like you're floating." |
| | | | |
| − | Malcolm drew back and rammed the guy into the ground, several times. He brought the man back up and slugged the guy in the face so hard a tooth popped loose.
| + | "I wouldn't say floating, but we can actually move, yeah. Sixty pounds of armor, another forty or fifty pounds of ammo and equipment while we're fighting." |
| | | | |
| − | While the guy was down, Malcolm looked around quickly and yanked a piece of a gutter from the side of a building, using it as a club and sending the criminal back down and out into a drunken haze of black.
| + | They exited the Humvee and boarded the AC-130, strapping themselves in for the two-hour flight to the Russian encampment. Atlantis was a big place. |
| | | | |
| − | The police arrived minutes later, both as a result of Malcolm's phone call and the neighbor's complaints of a noise in the area.
| + | "We should meet up with an Atlantian Zeppelin about ten miles out from the base, set up a zip line, and Orca will ride across to our bird." An operator told them over their helmet's internal comm. "We've got two hours till the drop, so make yourselves comfortable." |
| | | | |
| − | The wailing sirens illuminated the stretch of alleyway that Malcolm had been sitting in.
| + | Matt pulled an oxygen mask from its cradle behind his head and slotted it over his face. They would be going high enough that it would be hard to breath. His full-helmet had its own internal air scrubbers, but they could recycle air for a maximum of 20 minutes, and anyways he didn't want to use up his oxygen reserves just for the flight. |
| | | | |
| − | "You'll understand we have to take you back to the station. Just until all this is cleared over with the higher-ups and everything." The very reasonable cop put in to Malcolm.
| + | For the next hour and a half, the crew alternated cleaning their weapons, adjusting their sights, fine-tuning fore-grips and mounted grenade launchers and high-intensity halogen flashlights, and taking cat-naps. |
| | | | |
| − | "But I didn't do anything!" Malcolm complained indignantly. "Can't you just cut me a break? It's five in the morning for crying out loud."
| + | Carter roused the crew fifteen minutes prior to their scheduled rendezvous with the Atlantians. Each of them went through their final pre-launch equipment checklist, making sure everything worked correctly, then checked eachother's gear. |
| | | | |
| − | The officer took it with a lowered cap and stubbornly insisted that Malcolm come with him in the police cruiser.
| + | Matt felt his heart speed up as the AC-130 pulled into a steep dive. They would have to get lower if they wanted the zeppelin to be able to keep pace. |
| | | | |
| − | Minutes later, Malcolm was rolling to a stop outside the county station. He reached for the door handle that wasn't there and sighed. Oh, this should be fun.
| + | "Alright, boys and girls, time to get suited up." The operator said as the red light blinked on. The six of them slid full-face helmets on over their padded skull caps and made sure the oxygen tanks were fully charged. It would suck to black out from the G's taking away the oxygen from your brain, and end up dying because you couldn't hit a control at the right moment. |
Hello people reading this! You may have accidentally stumbled upon a book that is under way currently. The book is basically about World War Three, in a world where there are eight continents. The eighth is Atlantis, which surfaces in December of 2012. Maybe the Mayan calendar wasn't counting down to this day, but counting up to the day when Atlantis would rise above the oceans once more, supposedly.
Below is a random chapter from the book that I display here on the front page. The link above brings you to the page that the chapter is actually housed at. If you scroll down to the very bottom, you'll find my work in progress section, where I write the next section/chapter of the book. Because I start writing completely fresh chapters, the work in progress section might end in a fragment of thought, or there might not be anything displayed there.
Please also note that none of my writing here is completed and I go back numerous times to a piece to improve it. The chapter below will be changed multiple times and improved upon, so if you read it now you might wanna check back every now and again to see if I changed anything.
Also, please note that any writing I do here is written to entertain, and therefore the story has to fit in with itself, so please excuse any religious or opinionated writing I have here and do not take it into offense. Please don't copy my work. It's not nice.
And here's a new, alternate account of the war, from the perspective of an elite soldier from an elite Black-Ops Spec-Ops division.
And another little project of mine. Here, I'm writing about the video game Fallout 3. The setting, premise, and some of the characters are not my creation, but basically I'm taking the game and writing my own addition.
And a Halo project, told from the perspective of a Marine Fireteam. Just regular soldiers, not Spartans or even ODSTs.
The DS gestured to Matt, and all of them went and gave one another triple buddy checks.
"Roger that, Aura." Matt yelled back. Each of them had callsigns. His was Frost. Jamie's was Scorch. Scar was Flare. Malcolm was Spark. Holly was Aura. "Alright. Squad, move out! Go, go, go!" Matt barked.
Scar attached her rappel harness to the line and jumped out the side, one hand on the rope above her, and the other below and slightly behind her butt, the "brake" hand that controlled how fast the line went. Malcolm followed, then Jamie, then Holly. Matt was the last one out, as befitting his status of Squad Leader.
Scar landed, disengaged her harness, and let it drop to the forest floor. A crew would come later and get it.
Soon the entire squad was on the ground, and Matt quickly led the squad under cover of the trees. As soon as the V-22 Osprey was out of sight, they doubled back and went after the bird. They kept the lines from the rappel - there was always a use for thirty feet of tough nylon.
The countdown timer in Matt's HUD read D + 15:07 when Matt raised his fist, the sign to halt. With slow, exaggerated sign language, he indicated for the team to spread out and climb the trees. Jamie went with Matt in one tree. Scar went by herself, and Malcolm and Holly shared a third.
"Frost, requesting permission to re-format to a sniper?" Scar whispered over the Teamcomm.
"Roger that, Flare. Permission granted. Scorch, outfit yours with the AR. Aura, you're our grenadier. Get the XM320 on there." The XM320 was a single-shot 40mm grenade launcher that could be attached to their carbines. Matt put one on his. Malcolm preferred a straight-up assault rifle.
Beside Matt, almost completely invisible in the heavy jungle shadow, Jamie lay prone along two branches, with his AR balanced on a third branch with a clear line-of-sight to the ground.
Matt slid down from the tree. "Spark, get down here and help me create a barricade. We need to push any incoming squads into one firing lane. Scorch, Flare, give me a dot." In response, Malcolm slid from his tree, and both Scar and Jamie highlighted the firing lane that they had access to with red laser-dots. Matt took armfuls of brambles and thin, thorned vines and dumped them to the left and right of the lane, in between the trees, to create a natural-looking wall that would influence the squads to find an easier way through. Right through their lane of fire.
Matt strung triplines further out into the jungle with the Nylon cables, attaching them to frag grenades.
Matt's countdown ended. "Alright people, we can now shoot at and be shot. Let's wrap this up." Malcolm laid the last armful of brambles in place, and then they both scampered up into their separate trees. There were five other squads in this particular mission, all within a square mile. It wouldn't be long before they had some hits.
Five minutes passed, and no one came. The squad was getting impatient. "Spark," Matt whispered. "Be the rabbit. I need you to go along the lane and see if you can draw some fire, then sprint back here. We'll cover your approach. I'd do it myself but I'm not fast enough."
"Roger that, lead." Malcolm said, grinning. "I've always been one for the suicidal frontal charge." He slid down his tree, landing in the brush below. Before he had even gone two minutes, the sound of gunfire erupted through the forest. "Frost, I've got multiple targets here. They've got me pinned, I could use some assistance!"
Matt looked to Holly. She nodded, slid down, and circled around to the right to counter-flank the guys surrounding Malcolm. "Spark, help is on the way. How long can you hold?"
"I've got good cover, I'm inside a shallow cave-thing in the ground. I can hold out a while."
"Roger that. Keep your head down, but keep the attention centered on you. And watch out, they'll try to advance. Watch your flanks."
"You got it, Frost." Malcolm said, and tossed a grenade out the opening of the cave. It exploded, and Malcolm heard someone groan. "Yeah, bring it!" He shouted.
Holly took up a firing position, sighted through her scope, and tagged a soldier in the back of his head. He dropped like a load of rocks, asleep by the time he hit the ground. Return fire peppered the rock she had been hiding behind, and two soldiers broke off to get her. But Holly wasn't there anymore.
A soldier fell as rounds tore into his inner thigh. He dropped to the ground, not out yet but with a crippled leg. He hobbled behind a piece of cover as Holly filled the air with bullets around the second soldier. A grenade rolled to a stop next to her, and at this she turned and fled back the way she had come, then darted back, and got the attention of the two remaining soldiers pinning Malcolm.
At the momentary distraction, Malcolm bolted out of the hole, sprinted from rock to tree, from tree to bush, from bush to ground, and drew the soldiers down through the firing lane, followed a second later by Holly. Jamie adjusted his grip on the AR as the two squadmates ran down the path. 30 seconds later, the first soldier popped into view. Jamie waited until the last soldier appeared, then nailed the one closest to any viable cover.
The steady thrum of the AR set Matt's head pounding, and he opened fire on the last one in the line. Then Scar fired, and a round slugged the first soldier in the chest.
Jamie's target fell from hits to the leg, side, and shoulder. He wasn't quite gone, but almost. Jamie finished him off with another quick, sustained burst.
Matt's soldier dropped to the ground, out for the count with five rounds in his chest and more in his left arm.
Scar's target took the heavy caliber bullet in the chest and sat down with the force, hard, landing on his butt and jarring his head. Before he could recover, Scar punched another round into his chest. He spun halfway around and ate dirt.
Four down. The last soldier turned to flee, but Holly popped out of the shadows and nailed him with a grenade from her XM320, which cast training rounds into a wide arc everywhere, painting the nearby forest a vivid crimson.
Matt disengaged his spent clip and slapped a new one in. "Let's hope the other squads come running for the noise. One down, three to go, gentlemen."
"Open fire!" Matt yelled, and the two soldiers in sight twisted around, trying to find the source of the noise. One was slugged by a heavy cal. sniper shot, and the other fell to the combined fire from Jamie's AR and Matt's carbine.
Holly and Malcolm, still on the ground, rose out of a cover of leaves and dead brush and moved around behind the three soldiers left that came running. Standing up, they nailed two with one salvo of fire.
The last one hit the dirt and rolled under a log. Holly and Malcolm pursued.
"Negative! Disengage!" Jamie yelled, and opened fire into the brush to their left.
Holly hit dirt. Malcolm followed half a second later with three rounds stitched across his back. He wasn't out yet, but his entire suit was getting quickly more rigid.
He turned onto his back and fired in the general direction of where the shots had come from. Holly sidled around to him and took out a fake med-pack, wiping clean the Training Rounds and administering an electric shock through the armor. Malcolm's suit unstraightened a little, and Malcolm crawled back into better cover.
Jamie was still firing bursts from his AR at the last squad. Matt held his fire; there was no clear target in view, and to give away his position would be stupid. Scar attached a flash suppressor to her rifle, and started shelling the squad's general position.
"Watch flankers." Matt advised, seeing shadows moving behind her. Scar turned and nailed one soldier who had tried to flank her, and Matt caught another with a grenade.
Matt slid to the ground as Jamie covered him, landed, and ran in a half-crouch to Holly. He saw a rifle barrel poke out of a bush, saw a blast coming their way, and tackled Holly to the ground. The burst nailed him in the calf and he rolled up into a crouch.
Matt rolled off and came up firing. Jamie suppressed the soldier that had just shot at them while Matt took him out, Holly and Malcolm covering his flank.
Then Scar took multiple sustained bursts from the last soldier from the other squad, and toppled from the tree. She was out cold. Fury ignited in Matt. Toppling her from the tree was not necessary, and she could have injured herself. He and Holly outflanked the soldier and drilled him to the ground with long automatic fire.
They split and threw themselves behind rocks, Matt reloading as he went. There were two left on the other team and three left on his; Malcolm had been drilled again in his helmet.
Jamie's AR barked again and again. With his suppressive fire, Matt darted from cover to cover and distracted the two soldiers long enough for Holly to creep around and take the first one out. The last soldier sprayed fire everywhere, panicking, and continued even as Matt, Jamie, and Holly's combined fire drilled him into the ground.
The DS broke through their comm. lines, "Cease fire. Echo team, you have won the mission. We will collect you shortly. Hold position."
"Roger that." Matt responded. "Alright, lady and gentleman. We won!"
The survivors of Echo Team gazed around at all the unconscious forms before them. They may as well have been dead. It was only now that Matt got the first hint of what a war could really be like. He would have to do better, make sure none of his crew got hurt, ever. This was one simple mission, and two of his own had gone. What would have happened had they been live rounds? Scar and Malcolm, dead, blink of an eye, without ever seeing their attackers. What was this going to come to?
"What kind of toys?" Jamie asked, yawning. Upon arrival back at Firebase Bravo, he and Matt had been debriefed, taken several hot showers, and stuffed their guts with the contents of several MREs. Life was good.
"Dude DWAI. You'll see in just a sec."
The lift sank several stories into the ground, to where Ford had had a Research and Development Lab excavated and lined with a fast-drying concrete substitute while Matt and Jamie were gone.
It was the classic Malcolm workshop scene, with tables and workbenches lining the walls, equipment strewn all over the place in differing states of organization. But for some reason the lights were dimmed to half-intensity, throwing the room into deep shadows.
They got off the lift and stood for a second. Matt inhaled the stale air and examined the sets of armor that lay draped over tables, gauntlets and shoulder pauldrons dismantled.
Matt looked harder. "Oh. Clever."
Matt reached out with one hand and gently probed the flickering semi-shadow before him. It laughed, so Matt grabbed the camouflage cloak and pulled it off.
The figure laughed again. Matt could now see the armor in greater detail, but the invisibility mechanism still worked amazingly well.
Scar and Holly tapped some controls on their gauntlets from inside their new armor and solidified into the visible spectrum.
"Awesome! I want one." Jamie cackled.
"Pretty sweet." Matt agreed. "How does it work?"
"Unfortunately it sucks up power like a wild hog." Holly said, detaching a power cable from her back. "So the armor can't support it for much longer than a minute in combat situations unless its plugged into something."
"It's none of the 'Oh, I'll take a miraculous video of whats behind me and put it in front of me and for some reason it looks like I'm invisible' crap." Malcolm explained. "That would require the entire exterior of the armor to be covered in video screens. Instead, the armor's on-board computer gets a general bearing of its surroundings and then tells its new photo-reactive armor plates to change color and shade depending on what it registers. Like we said, the computer system and the photo-plates suck power really fast, so you can only do it for about a minute on one power cell."
Malcolm winced. "Cloak. Camouflage cloak. It's to break up the humanoid figure. Our eyes identify things by shape and color, so if we blur the outline of your body and minimize the difference in color you're practically invisible."
Matt crossed to the worktables and inserted his arm into a gauntlet, then pulled a switch and a blade jumped out of the side. "Nice."
"Yeah. Retractable gauntlet blades, your custom elbow spikes, high-density non-standard issue gel bladders, M5 fiber gloves in the gauntlets, steel knuckles, integrated sonic pulse emitter in the helmet speakers. And then some of the newer stuff, we've got optional gauntlet attachments, custom-fit for each of us. Jamie's, Scar's, and mine shoot flames. Yours, which is a much smaller attachment, can send an electric shock through the gauntlet and anything you're touching. Holly's shoots a gas grenade loaded with tear gas. Of course, the rebreather and visor in the helmet will make you impervious to gas attacks."
"Thank heaven." Jamie snickered. "Finally, a piece of equipment that's been Matt-proofed."
"Awkward." Scarlett stated.
"Right. Anyway." Malcolm rolled his eyes. "Mark Two armor, really cool stuff. And it came in just in time, too."
"We're about to get sent out again. All of us, to go mop up that Russian detention outpost you two were at. It's a joint operation between us and the Atlantians - first official mission together, just to kinda test the waters."
"Well, a bit more than us five. And you're not gonna like it."
The five of them packed their new armor and weaponry into armored crates, and Malcolm lead the crew back up to the ground floor, and from there they commandeered a Humvee for the short cross-camp drive to the armory.
Inside the semi-enclosed courtyard was a flurry of pre-mission activity. Soldiers, dressed in the head-to-toe matte black version of the newest Mk II armor, jogged from place to place, securing ammo crates, inspecting gear, loading vehicles.
Ford stood on a raised platform just outside the armory wall in one corner of the courtyard surveying the proceedings. He was dressed in cut-down CROC armor and an eyepiece instead of a helmet. From time to time aides dashed up to him carrying messages, then just as quickly disappeared. Carter stood at his shoulder, helmet in hands.
When Ford saw the five 'Shockers,' he motioned them over. The 13's, who had been dubbed thus by the Marine Shock Forces, felt it their due to come up with a name in return. Hence, Shockers.
"Guys, suit up. We're going in first to soften up the AA, and then when the main strike force arrives, we breach buildings, grab all the sensitive material we can find, then high-tail it out when the bombing starts. Clear?" Carter asked.
"Right. We'll be dropping in out of the new HALE rocket pods - High Altitude Low Entry Shock n' Awe drop pods. Just like the video games." Carter continued. "AC-130 flies by and drops us off, waits till we hit the AA, then drops down and provides support fire."
Ford nodded. "We'll be dropping you guys in addition to Orca Team, so you'll have some more numbers to fill out the ranks at first. Find and destroy as many AA emplacements as you can, then call it in and sit tight."
"Right. Let's get this show on the road."
The five of them split up into the locker rooms in the armory and helped eachother into their armor. It took about ten minutes to gear up in their armor, then another five while they signed out and inspected their custom weapons, each enhanced to fit the user. Matt's HK UMP-45 had been modified for higher muzzle velocity, and Matt had custom-ordered his own magazine design that held thirty-five instead of twenty-five rounds, and was fatter and wider instead of longer. Matt had also kept the SMG's distinguishing .45 ACP rounds for increased stopping power.
The rest used XM8's in various configurations, with the exception that Jamie swapped his MP7 for a M1014 combat shotgun.
Now that the Mk. II armor had an integrated anti-armor missile weapon system, Matt didn't need to carry a rocket-launcher or grenade launcher, but instead strapped an MP7 to his thigh, a Magnum under his shoulder, and an electric-flanged mace across his back.
"I love this new armor." Holly said once they had joined back up and were piling into a Humvee that would take them to the runway. "They updated all the joints and improved the exoskeletons, so it feels like you're floating."
"I wouldn't say floating, but we can actually move, yeah. Sixty pounds of armor, another forty or fifty pounds of ammo and equipment while we're fighting."
They exited the Humvee and boarded the AC-130, strapping themselves in for the two-hour flight to the Russian encampment. Atlantis was a big place.
"We should meet up with an Atlantian Zeppelin about ten miles out from the base, set up a zip line, and Orca will ride across to our bird." An operator told them over their helmet's internal comm. "We've got two hours till the drop, so make yourselves comfortable."
Matt pulled an oxygen mask from its cradle behind his head and slotted it over his face. They would be going high enough that it would be hard to breath. His full-helmet had its own internal air scrubbers, but they could recycle air for a maximum of 20 minutes, and anyways he didn't want to use up his oxygen reserves just for the flight.
For the next hour and a half, the crew alternated cleaning their weapons, adjusting their sights, fine-tuning fore-grips and mounted grenade launchers and high-intensity halogen flashlights, and taking cat-naps.
Carter roused the crew fifteen minutes prior to their scheduled rendezvous with the Atlantians. Each of them went through their final pre-launch equipment checklist, making sure everything worked correctly, then checked eachother's gear.
Matt felt his heart speed up as the AC-130 pulled into a steep dive. They would have to get lower if they wanted the zeppelin to be able to keep pace.
"Alright, boys and girls, time to get suited up." The operator said as the red light blinked on. The six of them slid full-face helmets on over their padded skull caps and made sure the oxygen tanks were fully charged. It would suck to black out from the G's taking away the oxygen from your brain, and end up dying because you couldn't hit a control at the right moment.
