Atlantis Rising: Chapter 2
The second chapter of the series.
Previous Chapter: Phoenix Rising: Chapter 1
Homepage: Atlantis
Yes, I realize that chapter 2 is still as of yet outdated and un-refurnished. It's currently under construction and may take a while to finish.
11:46 Hours, Military Clock, December 11, Paris, France
"Your name, please?"
I ran my eyes over the young receptionist. The dark-wood interior of the Embassy was a far cry from the combat zone I had just stepped out of. I looked around quickly, sizing everything up. Polished marble floors, mahogany paneled walls, large, plate glass windows looking deeper into the building and back out to the open courtyards outside. These last had been recently barred over, by the looks of the fresh weld marks on the joints and seals. A bright crystalline chandelier hung from the ceiling. A balcony ran overhead, lining the entire room, with more doors leading off to God knew where.
It would've been a good position for an ambush, except for the fact that it was inside the US Embassy walls, guarded by about a hundred marines and advanced armor and weaponry.
"Kenderson. Matt." I said, stepping forward.
"Campbell, James." Jamie said after me. Scar and Holly gave their names.
"Now how bout some answers, lady?" I demanded. "What's all this about? Why are the French suddenly taking up American citizens?"
The blond receptionist's artificial smile wavered momentarily. "I'm just here to take the list, sir. Please proceed down the stairs ahead and you will come to a lobby where all the other evacuees are currently waiting."
She wasn't paid to answer the questions. I shrugged and motioned for my crew to follow.
The two sneaks vaulted over the high wall, one after the other, carefully timing their approach so that the guards wouldn't see. Contrary to the popular belief, spies did not wear a classic skin-tight jet black uniform. Even in the dead of night, nothing is truly black, bit instead a dark shade of gray. And in real life, spies like these wore baggy suits that tried to break up the outline of a humanoid figure with irregular spacing of different sized pockets. Nothing was symmetrical about these two French SpecOps.
The two assassins clutched their silenced SMGs tightly. If anything went wrong, there was pretty much nothing their backup could do.
The two darted quickly across the lawn, both decked out in olive-drab camouflage fatigues and lightly armored.
A passing guard caught a glimpse of movement out of his eye, but by the time he turned to look the two SpecOps saboteurs had hit the deck, looking like just another part of the shrubbery. The guard returned to his rounds as one of the saboteurs took out a small plasma cutter and started the melting through the brick and reinforced steel while the other covered the first.
This was too easy.
The mass of Americans inside the Embassy was anything but quiet. Single men and women stood holding briefcases, dressed in expensive suits, yelling for lawyers. Families stood in corners, peering oddly at anyone that came too close. A group of drunk teenagers stood in the middle, singing random snatches of song.
And above all the din was a man standing on a desk in the middle of the lobby, dressed in a tailored black suit, with two similarly dressed Secret Service men flanking him. He held a loudspeaker and was attempting to get the crowd under control.
I strode up to him, my crew in tow. I looked him over, then tapped his knee to get his attention.
The man bent over and hopped to the ground, nimbly for such a tight-fitting suit.
"May I help you?" He asked warily.
"Kenderson, Matt. Private First Class, US Army." I said, saluting. "Mind if I ask, sir, what the hell is going on here?"
"Good, good, someone who knows what he's doing." The Suit said. "Major Charles Morrison."
I saluted again, tightly.
"Tensions have been high for some time, leading up to December 12th. Well, today, they snapped. Charles de Fontaine was assassinated. And France thinks America is to blame."
I blinked. "The French president? Evidence?"
"De Fontaine was in America at the time. He was visiting at the White House. Went in, never came out.
I whistled. "That's some pretty heavy evidence."
"The VP ordered a nation-wide collection of all Americans in France. Naturally, we couldn't let that happen. We've sent marine squads out into Paris to track down any Americans still in the city. I'm surprised you didn't meet up with any."
"That's just our luck, then." Jamie put in over my shoulder. "We had to jump off a twenty story hotel into a fricken' pool."
"Orders?" I asked.
"Report to Sgt. Carter in the armory. I have a feeling he'll be wanting you to suit up for some action."
Carter was stereotypically gnawing on an unlit cigar. "Alright, boys!" He yelled as we entered, tossing us matte-black padded undersuits. "Get changed. No gawking. Move it!"
The four of us glanced at each other, then turned and started stripping down to our boxers and underwear, pulling on the dark combat suits. Carter waited impatiently, then lead us into the actual armory. Suits of matte-black impact plating armor lined one wall, and on the other were stocked dozens of highly-lethal-looking rifles and weaponry. The room was lit with a classic fluorescent-and-bare-white candor.
Each of us donned a suit of impact-plates. Carter tossed all of us helmets with a built-in HUD and wireless communications linkup.
Jamie strode forward and grabbed two G36c assault rifles, tossed one to me, and started distributing ammo. "Let's move, ladies!" Carter yelled, holding the door open as we and three other fully suited marines marched out, Carter giving us the specs of the armor we were wearing. A prototype. I hated prototypes.
Five minutes later we were in the back of an armored Humvee. Carter was driving. I was on the M60 MG. Jamie was riding shotgun, and the girls were in the back with the three other marines, who as of yet had proved silent and unresponsive.
"What're we out here for?" I yelled above the wind as we hurtled at about 80 miles an hour down the deserted road.
"Two teams got pinned down in a restaurant not far from here. Command estimates about 40 civilians. We're gonna crash the party." Carter yelled back, flooring the accelerator as we drifted out of a 90 degree turn.
I held on grimly to the MG, while in the passenger seat Jamie whooped. The girls got tossed around a bit in the back, but then we were riding smoothly again.
"ETA 30 seconds!" Carter called a minute later. I made sure a belt was locked in the gun and chambered a round, setting the crosshairs where I imagined an enemy jeep to be. Carter relayed a live vid feed to our helmets from a tactical UAV drone. In the rapidly sinking sunlight I observed a blockade around a multi-story restaurant and hotel complex, and flashes of gunfire going in between. A grenade sailed through the chaos, landing beneath a French troop transport truck and shredding all the nearby materials.
I zoomed out from the image and spotted our Humvee, about a block away and rapidly approaching.
I canceled out of the UAV image as Carter relayed firing zones and suppressive positions we were supposed to cover.
Then we hit the intersection next to the restaurant and swung into another 90 degree turn, Carter accelerating off the curve.
Just as quickly he slammed the brakes and threw the Humvee into another 90 degree turn, stopping us mere yards away from the French soldiers. I opened fire with the MG before they even knew what happened, spewing 7.62mm NATO hollow-point anti-personnel rounds at the remaining French troops while Jamie kicked the door open and hopped out, still going about 20 miles an hour. He hit the ground rolling and was quickly followed by the three marines in the back, who were followed by Scar and Holly. Carter got out a second later and opened fire one handed while he primed a grenade in the other, adding to the murderous suppressive angle I was laying down.
The French forces were now divided between multiple targets, and we strafed them mercilessly. Carter hurled his grenade. Frenchies fell from all directions, and the MG grew hot in my gloved hands. I shredded any target that popped up, and Holly lobbed another grenade. Jamie and Scar sprinted for the building while Carter and two of the marines flanked left.
Holly dove for cover as the Frenchies returned fire with some kind of grenade launcher, and the third marine was consumed in a roiling cloud of fire. I winced, ducking behind the metal shield of the MG as the gun clacked to let me know it was out of ammo. I flipped the top open, grabbed a fresh belt, and fed it into the receiver.
While I was reloading, the Frenchies took advantage of the lull in the fire to regroup, and another grenade hurtled right for Holly.
Duck! I thought quickly, and Holly heeded. She threw herself against the ground so hard I felt the breath knocked out of her, and the 40mm Napalm-filled hollow grenade whistled right past her left ear. It exploded with a slightly muffled thud a couple yards behind, igniting a hot-dog stand.
I chambered the first round and opened fire again, and the exposed soldiers fell from multiple hits. Jamie crashed through the barricaded front door of the restaurant, Scar right behind him with medical gear in hand. Carter had been steadily advancing from cover to cover, now the 30-something-year-old seasoned veteran vaulted a car that the Frenchies were using as cover and opened fire from behind while I layed down covering fire. The other two marines took peaking shots from overturned vehicles and mounds of rubble in the street.
And then their was silence. No return fire. No screaming. Only the background crackling as the napalm consumed the vendor stand and the muted cracks of gunfire from somewhere else in the city. The Frenchies were all dead or had surrendered.
Sergeant Carter had just earned my permanent respect from having vaulted over the car. I stayed on the MG and tracked the medical helicopter that hovered down to the pavement, ready to evac the civilians. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the two marines cuffing the soldiers that had surrendered, and Carter plucking the tags off the burned marine. Poor guy. He would be the first of many to die in this war.
The French saboteur gave a small grunt of impatience as the plasma knife cut the last brick out of the wall. It was nearly nightfall. A warm, dusky golden glow had settled over the landscape, accentuated by the clear, Wintery electric-blue sky. The leafless trees swayed in time with a gentle wind, and the sounds of machine gun fire and explosions seemed oddly far off. It was almost peaceful.
Then the saboteur kicked in the neatly melted hole in the red bricks, and the two gained entrance to the US Embassy. And they didn't come with plans of world peace.
On the way back, Jamie insisted on manning the MG. Carter drove again, and one of the two marines rode shotgun. Me, Holly, Scar, and the last marine were in the back, and Scar was patching up a small groove in my cheek where a bullet had apparently grazed me. I hadn't even noticed, I was so wired on adrenaline.
Scar was good with the medic stuff. Jamie was the pyromaniacal sniper who loved explosives and large weapons. Holly was my rifleman/grenadier/all-around down-to-earth girl. And I was the techno-computer-battlefield engineering dude. We would make the perfect team, given a little more training and experience. I was still jittery from being shot at, and coming down off the adrenaline high. God, I loved adrenaline.
"Good work, soldiers. You did well. Mission accomplished." Carter said eventually. He sounded reluctant.
"Thankya' kindly, Sarge!" I said, putting on a heavy Southern accent. His lips twitched. I'm not sure if it was possible for Carter to grin, but that was about his version of it, more or less.
We sped through the back entrance to the Embassy, where the garage was. Another M1 Abrams Tank was idling in the parking lot, and a Bradley Assault Transport Vehicle was parked in a corner, next to a couple more Humvees. An unsmiling and serious green-on-olive clad soldier waved us through to the poorly lit parking garage.
A couple minutes later, Carter was leading back down to the Embassy. I stumbled when we entered the main room; nearly everyone was gone, and a slowly moving line lead back the way we had come, to the parking garage where I saw a helicopter landing. We met up with the major at his desk again.
"That's everyone, major." Carter reported.
"Good, good. In about five minutes we'll have the rest loaded onto the helos, and then all we have to do is make it across the country, to the open ocean. The president is sending a carrier fleet to the Mediterranean. We'll hop aboard and tag a ride back to the States."
Just then Holly walked up and tapped my shoulder. "I don't like this. Something's wrong." She whispered quietly.
And then the world exploded. I had just enough time to hug Holly close to me and raise my arm, casting a reflexive telekinetic field around my crew, Carter, and Morrison, before we were enveloped in fire. I remember mentally straining back against the enormous pressure trying to penetrate my shield, and then it broke. Holly and I were thrown back, but I blacked out as we came into violent contact with a solid marble object. So much for psichological powers.
