Atlantis
Book One: Atlantis Rising
Written by Brandon Krupczak
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.
Also check out my friend Jamie Knox's writing here:
"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 DS gestured to Matt, and all of them went and gave one another triple buddy checks.
"Ready when you are, Frost!" Holly yelled over their Team comm.
"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.
"Alright!" Jamie crowed.
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."
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.
"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?
This was war.
Work In Progress Chapter 12
07:01 Hours, March 11, 2015 (Military Calendar), Echo Team, in the Atlantian jungle bordering Firebase Bravo
"We should just kill them. Kill them all and be done with it."
Jason considered, but quickly shook his head. "They didn't kill us," he pointed out. "At the very least we owe them that."
"Their company killed hundreds of us." Achilles spat.
"They took hundreds prisoner," Jason reminded him. "They only killed a third of our troops. And anyways, they thought they were defending their turf-"
"Which they stole from us in the first place!" Achilles growled. He drew his sword and angled it at Matt's throat.
Matt sat back on his elbows and pushed the blade away. His strength was slowly returning.
Jason raised an arm to bar Achilles from stomping on Matt's face. "Hold up," he ordered in Atlantian.
Matt raised his chin defiantly. "Do what you want," he spat. "You'll get nothing from Echo Team." Daedalus translated this into Atlantian, and a look of amusement crossed Jason's face.
Jason spoke, and Daedalus translated it into English, "Oh, but it's not information we want." Jason motioned, and Achilles stepped forward and kicked Matt in the face.
Matt reeled backwards and fell to the ground, raising a small splash of mud. He raised himself back up on one elbow and spit to the side.
Jason withdrew a dagger and crouched to Matt's level, digging the blade into his skin. Matt didn't flinch, but tried instead to regain his feet. Jason motioned again.
This time the blow came to Matt's neck, and he coughed up blood, wiping away the mud with a hand.
"Echo One-two, come in. This is Overlord. Echo one-two, respond!"
The voice blared out from the speakers in Matt's helmet, a foot away in the mud. While Orca team was looking at the helmet, Matt snapped into action. He kicked out with a leg, hitting Achilles in the knee and twisting it to the side. He came up, blocked a hasty swipe from Alexander and drove his knee into the Atlantian's stomach, brought an elbow down onto the back of his head, before he was slammed in the chest by Heracles. The smart-gel cranked up several degrees as it dissipated the force of the blow.
Jason had him in a headlock the second he hit the ground. Matt kicked out diagonally, trying to wrench his head out of the stranglehold, but Jason was too strong. Matt flopped back to the ground and tried to leverage himself out with his feet, again to no avail. He lashed out with an arm, missed, and bruised his knuckles on the hard shoulder plate of Jason's stolen armor.
"Echo One-two, be advised, reinforcements are rolling in. ETA thirty seconds."
Jason looked at the headset. He barked, "Check it out."
Daedalus hurried over to the helmet and checked the GUSS.
"No lie. There's a larger American S&D team approaching, twenty seconds out."
"Team, scatter." Jason ordered.
"But, we can't just leave them here!"
"We need to get out of here. Once we make it to the river, we'll be impossible to track. This is our territory, and we know it inside out. The Americans will have a harder time getting through, especially on vehicles. But you're right; take this one-," Jason pointed to Matt, "And this one too." This time Jason motioned towards Jamie. "Leave the rest."
"Jason, I recommend we take these..." Daedalus said.
Jason smiled. "Get on the bikes and roll out. You've got five seconds."
Heracles lifted Jamie bodily and set him on a bike, clipping his legs to the magnetic restraints, and delivered an extra punch for good measure. Jason dragged Matt by his collar to the bike. Heracles helped Jason secure Matt to the bike, then they set off.
The rest of the team took the other two bikes and set off just after Jason.
By the time the American reinforcements found Malcolm, Holly, Scar, and Carter, the Atlantians were nowhere to be seen.
"Baseplate, this is Orca Team. We are approaching the recovery LZ, do not fire. We have commandeered American vehicles and are approaching fast from the North, five minutes out at our present velocity, over."
"Roger, Orca." The female radio operator responded, a note of surprise coloring her voice. "We didn't expect anyone to have made it out of the prison camps; what happened, over?"
Aaron struggled to hold onto the bike and operate the radio at the same time. "Baseplate we are currently traveling at more than 500 Stadion per hour through the jungle, a fully detailed report will be on your desk within the hour, over."
"Roger, Orca. Baseplate out."
Matt blinked groggily, sitting up straight. He only noticed they were on the bike after about twenty seconds, and then he jerked fully awake, his hands bound behind him and his legs clipped to the magnetic restraints.
Matt tapped Jamie with his shoulder, which was nearly the only movement he could make.
Jamie struggled awake. "HO-ly sh-" Jamie began, but Matt gave him a warning look.
Heracles, manning the weapons, turned partway around to look at them. After a moment he turned back, uninterested.
Off to the sides, the two other bikes kept pace. Aaron had just radioed something to their base. Matt secretly cheered. Assuming Ford was patrolling the nearby jungle with Predators, and the Predators had the latest electronic listening equipment, the Atlantian's radios, unshielded communications that they were, should register on the receivers and tell Ford exactly where they were.
Jason seemed to read his mind. "Don't bother hoping Ford will find you." He said over his shoulder from the driver's seat. "We've activated the scramblers and jammers - there's no way your general knows where you are in the middle of this jungle, nor will they ever find you."
Matt concentrated, then let the Spectrum view fall over his eyes as his vision jumped into shades of azure, and his eyes clouded over in blue. He probed Jamie's thoughts, and Jamie sent him a message, How are we going to get out of here?
I don't know. Matt responded. But I've got an idea. I'm going to flip the bike. Once it's sideways, the magnetic clamps will automatically disengage. You keep Jason and Heracles occupied with something long enough for us to disappear into the jungle, then we head back for base.
Sounds like a plan. Jamie said.
Probably won't work, but it's a plan. Matt agreed.
Ready? Matt asked. Then the world exploded.
To Matt, the missile appeared to be moving in slow motion. It took an eternity for the deadly explosive to land not five feet behind and to their right, then the bike was picked up by an invisible hand and sent flying through the air, the riders being throttled while they went and flames licking at their boots. Matt tumbled off as the magnetic clamps disengaged and fell into the lower branches of a tree. The bike, minus the occupants, went sailing into another tree.
Jamie's face collided with a branch as he fell through the air, sending him spinning in the other direction until another branch caught him in the middle. This time Jamie managed to grasp and hold onto the branch, gasping and his face bloody.
There was quiet for a moment, obscenely, then the steady beat of rotors, accompanied by the chatter of a machine gun. Matt covered his head and face as bright red traces dug into the soft ground, six unseen .50 cal bullets for every one blazing red, mere feet from the tree they were in.
"Come on we've got to move!" Matt shouted, grabbed Jamie, and leaped to the ground fifteen feet below. They landed awkwardly, then were both up and running away from the missiles. They never made it more than twenty feet; Matt was tagged in the chest with a quick burst of fire, and he fell to the ground. Jamie was quickly drilled in the knee and then the side. Matt looked up to see Spetsnaz troops materializing out of the jungle, and unlike at the psi training grounds, these guys were the real deal.
Three Spetsnaz troops advanced easily to the fallen pair, pointing their rifles casually.
A shadow solidified out of the darkness behind one of the three. The Spetsnaz trooper was dragged back into the jungle with a chilling scream, then was silent.
The other two troopers whirled around with rifles leveled. Another shadow appeared in the form of Achilles, who kicked out one soldier's knee and gutted him with a combat knife.
The last soldier backed into the middle of the clearing, sweeping his rifle in long arcs. Matt reached up and brought the soldier to the ground, pinned the trooper under his knee, and stuck a knife through the Russian's neck.
But the tide of battle was quickly swept away - the helo gunship circled back and pelted the jungle with bullets and rockets. Jason staggered out of the forest and fell to his knee streaming blood from his ears and spitting it from his mouth. His eardrums had been ruptured.
"We need to get out of here!" Matt yelled in Jason's ear. Jason nodded, but it was clear his mind was far away, still surprised by the ambush.
Matt ran in the direction of the deeper jungle, but a wall of bullets cut him off, followed quickly by a growing wall of flames from the incendiary bullets the helo was now using. The helo quickly boxed them in with fire, stalling their escape. Before Jamie could reduce the flames to ash with PK, the first Spetsnaz team walked through the flames, their full-body armor insulating them from the heat. Matt, Jamie, Heracles, and Jason, in possession of only scattered parts of armor, could not attempt the same.
The Spetsnaz appeared to want them alive, for they didn't fire, but instead advanced with batons extended. Matt shuddered as he watched electricity course through the instrument.
The four of them backed into a corner of the wall of flames, instantly beginning to sweat despite the thermal conditioning.
The first soldier swung at Matt. He ducked the baton and drove forward with his foot, but another soldier pinned it to the ground and stuck the baton in Matt's chest.
Agony erupted through his body, and Matt's back arched involuntarily. He fell to the ground after a moment, writhing as phantom electricity sparked through him.
Jason ducked his head, side-armed a swipe, and managed to get a punch in before he was tackled by three Spetsnaz and subdued.
Jamie caught a baton directly to his shoulder. Grinning savagely through the pain, Jamie stretched out an arm and pressed it into a soldier's exposed face in the moment that he had, then they both collapsed, jittering.
Heracles lasted the longest. With his greater size and reach, he knocked aside a baton, jammed his palm into the side of a soldier's head, and broke another's knee cap with a kick. After that, he was stung by a baton to his hip. Instead of falling, Heracles slammed a fist into the Russian's face, ducked, and brought one last soldier to the ground with another punch before he was taken out by five soldiers at once.
The Russian Lieutenant surveyed his catch. "I was hoping for all of them," He told his two personal commandos. "But four will have to do for now. Get them into the chopper. Dust-off in two."
The commando on the right nodded behind his full-face visor, the red-tinted eyes in the mask glowing. The two bent and collected the unconscious four, binding their hands and legs and tossing them into the helo.
Matt shuddered back to consciousness just as they were loading him into the waiting helo.
"Out of the frying pan..." He murmured to himself.
The Russian Lieutenant made a questioning face. Matt spit at him, grinning through bloody teeth when one of the commandos hammered him in the stomach.
"You must be a real hit at the parties." Matt informed the commando, biting back another grin as the commando's armor no doubt translated the sentence into Russian and put it into his ear. The commando's visage remained unchanged behind his mask.
The helo took off, lifting Matt, Jamie, Heracles, and Jason into the air. Matt concentrated, but Holly and Scar were too far away to make out through the spectrum.
The Lieutenant drew a large, wickedly curved knife out of a sheath belted to his chest and crouched next to Matt's head. "If I were you," He said in English, "I would rest up and save my strength. When we land, you and I are going to have a good long talk. In this talk, you will give me the answers to the questions I want. If you do not, the consequences will be rather painful. I think I'll start with your fingers, and after you've had enough of that, I'll go onto your nose, and possibly your ears. After that I get creative."
"If you were me, then I would be you. And if I were you, I would find a rock somewhere and crawl under it. Because now you'll have the Atlantians storming into your base to recapture those two," Matt motioned at Jason and Heracles with his chin, "And an American strike force beating down the doors to get us two."
"You'll have to do better than that." The Lieutenant said, but his air of confidence was gone. "I don't scare so easily."
"Then keep this in mind. When I get loose, and don't doubt for a second that I will, I'll be coming for you. We'll see just how long you last when I boil your stomach acid, and send grains of sand falling down your throat on fire."
A commando answered for the Lieutenant, stepping forward and ramming his fist into Matt's chest again. Matt coughed and spat blood.
"I'll be coming for you." Matt said, then rolled over and fell to sleep.
