Reaper's First Drop: Chapter 2
Homepage: Reaper's First Drop
Also see: Atlantis
Previous Chapter: Reaper's First Drop: Chapter 1
I drove up to the gates with the captured truck.
“This is nuts”
“I know” I replied.
The enemy guard towers on either side of the metal gate looked down and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just one of their trucks returning from a supply run. They opened the outer blast-door gate but left the inner electrified chain-link gate closed, just in case. Which turned out to be a good move, but not good enough. It was a truck, after all.
The guards at the checkpoint hailed us down, to check our ID, but instead of slowing I floored it, bashing through the check point and into the base. I saw guards fall thanks to Rouge on the .50 cal in the back. Wraith was in the side seat firing a .30 cal out the window. I swerved around a man on a motorcycle and scraped up against the side of the mess hall.
“Oops,” I said as I hit a stack of metal poles knocking them all over the road.
Bullets were flying all around the place. A few even bounced off of my armor, but if they hit something crucial I was too wired on adrenaline to notice. The real miracle was that the whole truck didn’t go up. An APC started backing up to block our way and force us to stop. I accelerated and bashed its rear end, pushing my way through.
“Left here. Left here!” Wraith yelled.
“I know. No back seat driving!” I yelled back.
I swerved around the corner and banged up against the wall.
“What the hell was that man?” Rouge shouted as he rolled around the back.
I couldn’t reply, as I was still dizzy from smacking my head against the dashboard when I hit some crates. Wraith began to fire into the windows, killing anyone stupid enough to look out.
“Speed bump!” I tossed over my shoulder.
“What...ooof!” Rouge gasped.
I hit it going 60. The truck took the jump, the hood rising into the air before it smashed back to earth, right after the back end hit the ground, jarring Rouge off his aim. Metal groaned and creaked as gravity took effect. I heard a snap and looked in my rearview mirror. The front bumper was lying on the ground.
“I think we lost something.” Rouge said calmly over the comm.
“Smartass.” I mumbled
“I heard that. Take a right up ahead.” He said
“No it’s right at the mess hall, left at the armory.” I responded
“No it’s left at the mess hall right at the armory.”
“Left.”
“Right.”
I swerved to the left and heard the alarms finally go off. Wow. Someone was on coffee break. Roughly 16 men ran out of a barracks and stopped and looked at us. Some weren't even holding guns. Wrong move. I didn’t stop, just mowed them over. The car wobbled ever so slightly as it hit flesh.
“Striiiiiiiike.” Rouge yelled mowing down a few that had come out late.
I saw the west gate before us.
“Told you it was right!” Matt snapped.
I didn’t have the time to throw a smart remark back at him. I threw the steering wheel to the right doing a U turn around a guard tower. A rocket hit it just a few feet away from us. Whoever had fired it hadn’t considered the fact that we would have to slow down. The tower fell over ominously, and man jumped out to avoid being crushed under the steel girders. He lived only to become a smear on front of my truck. I back-tracked to the turnoff point and went the right way, but we encountered more resistance because of the delay we had given them to prepare.
Before us stood our target. The comm center. I sped up and slammed into it. Wraith and Rouge dove out just before the impact. I stayed in and ended up slamming around the cab of the truck.
That’s going to leave a mark, I thought.
I dove out of the truck as the heavy steel frame fell over on top of it. It landed on the right side, crushing the truck and catching Wraith in the shoulder. She fell with a sickening crack. I ran to her side and rolled her over.
“Wraith. Wraith don’t die on me now!” I yelled at her
I checked my team diagnostic on my HUD. It said she was alive. She pushed my arm off her chest. I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nice driving, idiot.” she said shakily.
“You know it. Just glad you’re okay. Can you walk?” I replied
“Yeah. Just broke my collarbone.” She said
I helped her up and rushed her to cover behind a nearby building. We had drawn quite a crowd.
“Flatten ‘er and haul ass.” I said to Rouge
He was backing up covering us with his SMG in one hand. With the other he popped the top off a fire grenade. He pitched it into the bed of the truck. The gas caught and blew everything within a hundred feet straight to hell.
The chaos and destruction we had caused gave us cover to get to the other side to the airfield part. We left Wraith in the grass on the side of one of the runways hidden in some bushes. We met up with Siren who had snuck in through the weakly guarded South side.
We had scoped out the 3 hangars. One of them was unguarded but had only fighters which couldn’t fit all of us in one. The other two were guarded but we had to get in one. We picked the one on the far right.
Siren snuck up on two guards sitting smoking on some supply crates, her specialized anti-friction Scythe Armor making no sound. She grabbed one, covering his mouth, and pierced his trachea and several important arteries with her combat blade. I shoved my knife into the others head. I dropped him to the ground were he lay drowning in his own blood. I was feeling good about myself and our picture-perfect sneak routine.
Rouge came around the boxes from were he had covered us from the rear, screwing on a long silencer onto his Pulse R-71 SMG. He slapped me a high five. All of the sudden 7 men swung around the corner catching us by surprise. We fired erratically, Rouge with his silenced SMG, Siren with her silenced SMG, and me with a 9mm pistol with a suppressor screwed on. I really would have to get me one of those.
The fire killed three of them, and hit another in the leg before they got back to cover. Siren jumped over and knifed one of them while Rogue took the other two. The poor soldier who hadn’t made it back lay on the ground, his boots scraping on the ground trying to find purchase to propel him to cover. I shot him in between the eyes.
The firefight was brief but just after we had dispatched them a Soviet SMK experimental tank drove out from behind a building and started to turn towards us.
“Scatter” I yelled
Rouge slipped around the nearby corner and Siren dove behind a nearby boxes under a tarp. I didn’t have time to think just move. I threw myself into the hangar side door. I rolled as soon as I hit the ground just in time to see a shell shred the wall, detonating on the other side of the hangar.
Before me lay a P-72 Northern Federation personnel carrier. It was other wise known as the penguin because of its white and black paint. I heard shots fired in the back of the hangar and dove behind a crate. Rounds passed through the crate and into the ground by my left foot.
'man that was close.' I thought
Matt came around the corner in a crouch with his weapon trained on my head. When he noticed it was me he turned and signaled Siren into the open. He looked at the penguin.
"Hotwire?" he asked eagerly, reading my thoughts exactly.
"Go for it. We'll cover you out here." I responded, and Rogue dashed into the cockpit of the bird.
Siren and I started building a small barricade around the access ramp to the jet. Rogue was inside, playing with some unhelpfully similar colored wires. I beamed Wraith to make sure she was still okay. She had hidden herself in some tall grass and shrubs and was covering the approach to the hangar.
"Um, Wolf? You wouldn't happen to have any explosives on you?" Rogue asked sarcastically.
"I'll pretend you didn't ask that." I shot back, throwing him my outer combat pack.
"God, no wonder you're such a slow hiker. What is this, like 40 pounds?" Rogue groaned.
"Used to be around that. I blew alot more of it in the ruined transport-incident."
"I'm gonna swap out a few wires here, see if I can take the juice from the detonator thingy and wire it into starting the engine. It's locked up tight."
"Oh, God," I murmured. Rogue wasn't the best with explosives. I had the missing eye-brows to attest to that.
"Don't blow us up. I'm coming up to help I am the explosives expert after all. Siren, watch the perimeter. Give me the heads-up if anything interesting happens." I ordered quickly.
"5 man Search and Destroy team approaching the hangar. I don't think they know you're there." Wraith warned us.
"Roger that," I acknowledged as I hurried up the ramp. "Siren, do your stuff."
Three minutes later, Matt had successfully wired the explosive charge to the starter, and Whitney had taken out the S&D team. Silently.
So now, in theory, all we had to do was turn the ignition. Problem? No electronic key. Which is where the explosive charge came in. But the ridges had to be lined up, like on a real key. Solution? Rogue's lock-picking kit.
"Where the hell do you keep that, anyways?" I asked.
"Same place you keep all your extra C4, I'd guess." Rogue responded bitingly. Duh.
"Uh, Wolf, I may need some assistance down here." Siren whispered into her comm.
Then an explosion rocked the transport, Whitney cursed, and then relayed, "Get the ship going! NOW! SMK right on our heels!"
"Oops." Rogue said unnecessarily.
"You sure this won't set off the explosive?" I asked as Siren sprinted up the ramp.
"Nope." Matt said cheerfully.
"Punch it." Siren gasped as another explosion hit right next to us, and .50 cal bullets peppered the light armored jet.
"Here we go!" Rogue said, twisting the ignition and punching the detonator.
We didn't blow up, so I assumed it worked, and after a heart-stopping pause the engine coughed to life. None of us had received any flight training, but Rogue had the most natural flight ability. He used to joke that he had landed a space shuttle on one of the simulators. Even though the computer said he failed, due to the slight problem of landing in the grass and with half a wing missing.
He'd finish the joke with the age-old expression, "Any landing you can walk away from..."
"...is a good one." He and I both murmured at the same time.
The hangar doors blew inwards and we took off through the smoke and dust. Another shell blew up right in front of us, covering the front of the aircraft in dirt. The SMK sat before us trying stubbornly to blow us up. Rouge pulled the trigger and the twin guns on the nose blew the turret off the tank and shredded the front. We picked Jess up and started to take off. A man ran onto the runway and shot at us. Only to late he noticed we were going to fast to dodge. He threw his arms up just before he became one with the nose of the ship.
"You got idiot on your windshield" Jess said jokingly
"I'm not cleaning that up" Matt and I said at the same time.
Just as the pilots started to get to the fighters to follow us I detonated the present Whitney had left for them. The fighter hangar collapsed in on them, crushing jets and flattening pilots.
An hour later I lay on the floor of the craft, Siren pulling a lucky shot out of my leg. A memento of my stupid truck drive. I applied an E-pack to the wound. The pack supplied the hole with minerals and chemicals that would help the flesh knit itself back together in a third of the time it would normally take. Jess sat in the cockpit. Her armor had been removed and her shoulder had been set, her limp arm hanging in a sling.
She called me up to the front and switched on the transmitter. I heard an Allied pick up code. It was followed by a broken and garbled message. Probably bad field equipment. Not everyone got stuff as fancy as ours. That, and enemy jammers, plus damaged radio checkpoint... oops. The antennae of our plane had been shot off in the fight.
“Alpha Wolf…….This……..repeat……….is Wolf Pack…….overrun can’t blow……sabotage plan ruin……….. need…….do you copy Alpha Wolf….. extraction.”
The signal was being jammed but I was in range. I opened a com channel with them that couldn’t be scrambled.
“Hello we need immediate evac from coordinates 779-03-04-3992” a voice said
“Wolf Pack. This is Lone Wolf. Take cover the Death Angels come in hot and fast.” I said over the channel before I closed it off.
“Saddle up Angels. Its time the regs found out what the face of Death looks like.” I said putting my helmet on.
The engines roared as Matt pushed the ship to the fullest. The constant whine of the propulsion system was starting to get on my nerves. I heard a clack as Whitney pulled the charging handle on the .50 cal in the back, loading a round into the chamber. We pulled over the lip of a ridge and the stabilizers screamed as Matt battled against the laws of nature. Before us lay rice fields with a small compound at the center, surrounded by a small village.
"Wolf Pack pop smoke." I commanded
Moments later a plume of Neon green smoke puffed up from the compound.
"That makes it easy" Matt said
I noticed it was surrounded by what looked like a hundred troops and some twenty vehicles. I tapped his shoulder and pointed to an Olympian Chinese Missile Tank.
"Think again. Evasive maneuvers". I said
I was thrown against the wall on the right and dropped into a back slide into the hold grabbing my helmet and gun as Matt pulled up to avoid being targeted. I grabbed a bar on the wall and pulled myself onto my feet just in time to see an Olympian missile whip right past the door. I literally could have leaned out and touched it.
"Cutting it close are we?" I asked pulling my helmet on.
"Just adding to the adrenaline rush." Matt shot back merrily.
He leveled us out just over what looked like the main building, targeted the Missile Tank and launched a few rockets of his own. The Olympian burst open, spreading flaming debris all over the field and burning the surrounding soldiers.
Whitney and Matt opened fire with everything we had. Spurts of water came up as Whitney moved the .50 sending men sprawling in the red-tinged water. Matt blew the front off an APC and Swiss-cheesed a Half-track. I fired a shoulder launched rocket and hit the underside of an SMK. It started spurting flames from the turret and the back but kept moving. It was obviously unmanned as it rolled right into the side of a Scorpion, knocking it over before finally exploding, fully taking the Scorpion and its counterpart with it.
Whitney was dropping men like rocks. The confusion was taking effect. All the enemy knew was they had had the men surrounded when a ship flew in and started taking everyone down, and that they were in an open field with no hope of taking us down. We had surprise on our side and that had cost them dearly. A rocket exploded on the heavily armored front of the ship and flames rolled across the windshield and past the front. Some heat got into the hold scorching my armor.
The ship rolled and shuddered from the explosion, and one wing caught fire. Matt banked sharply to throw off a radar lock or something, and that was when I decided I hated the laws of physics. The centrifugal force sucked me out of the open bay doors as Matt threw the ship into a tight turn to the left.
Hm. Possibly not good... I thought as I plummeted through the air. The rush of adrenaline spread all the way from my toes to the tips of my flailing arms.
Luckily, we had had training for this sort of thing.
Unluckily, the training was meant to include a parachute.
This is gonna hurt slightly. I thought calmly.
I spread my arms and legs out wide, strapping my rifle to my back, dropping the launcher, and making sure my helmet was securely strapped on. The worst part was that I could do absolutely nothing to stop myself from falling. The pure panic that comes with rapidly accelarating through the air with nothing to slow you down was almost overwhelming.
I fell through the ceiling of a building and ended up on the first floor, on what looked like the remains of a table. For a while I had no coherent thoughts, just the pain on my whole back side of my body. I looked up through the 3 holes I had made. I was going to kill Matt.
The door was kicked in and two Russians ran in, hoping to set up shop. I rolled under a counter to avoid being seen, but the two Russians stopped and stared dumbly at the wreck. Then they craned their heads up at the sky, looking through the three holes in the roof with other startled soldiers looking down at them. That was when I struck; when their rifles were pointing down, their guard lowered.
I bounded over to the first one in one quick leap. From behind, I twisted his neck around, wincing at the sound of grating bones. As he fell I grabbed his assault rifle and peppered the other soldier with bullets even as he turned towards me.
Then I was scavenging ammo quickly, grabbed a spare helmet, as mine had shattered in the fall, and raced out the back door as more Russians poured in.
I spun around the doorway into another room and threw myself to the ground as bullets tore through the thin wall. I got up and rolled into a crouch in the doorway sending a hail of bullets into the young soldier that had been sent first. I grabbed him and used him as a weapon, throwing him into two men behind him. I mowed down 3 more men that came at me next but my weapon ran out of ammo. I threw it into one of the men getting up and grabbed the other and bashed his head through the thin wall before pulling the pin on a grenade on his vest.
I turned and ran out into the other room, running smack into another man. Where were they all coming from? I snapped his neck and caught a gun butt to the stomach. I keeled over and caught another to the back. I rolled under a third and knocked the man's legs out from under him. I pulled a knife from my boot and jammed it into his right lung, then whipped it across his neck. I cleaned it and put it up. I started to walk off when a man came from the other room. He was the partner of the man who I had blown up with his own grenade. He should have died too, but it seemed the explosion had just taken the mans left eye and part of his side. He leveled a grenade launcher right at my face.
Oh yeah, I was murdering Matt.
I rolled to the left and just missed the shot. I felt the explosion burn my armor and send a jagged piece of shrapnel across my back, leaving a deep trench in the plate. I sprinted across the room and tackled the man, letting my momentum carry us forward and through the wall. I sat atop him and was about to pull out my knife when I heard a creak and looked around. The first floor of the building was practically destroyed from my violent brawl with the Russians. I saw something give and threw myself to the side through a window. The man was quickly crushed by the three story house. I switched my comm over to Angel Frequency.
"Wolf, answer me dammit!" Rogue was yelling over the comm.
"As soon as this is over, I'm gonna kill you." I moaned from my place on the ground. The adrenaline started to dissapate a little and the pain in my back returned.
"Roger that. Wasn't my fault though. Did you see what that first missile did to the ship? If I hadn't spun like that, you would have lived to become a fiery ball of not-fun."
"Just pick me up." I said rolling to my knees and pulling the helmet off to spit out some blood. All the chit-chat was just a playful distraction to take my mind off of the fact that I had just fallen from 3,000 feet and taken out an entire house.
Rogue, with a little wobbling of the wings, picked me up from the demolished house. As we picked back up into the air, I noticed the distinct lack of enemy AA fire. "What the hell did you do? Drop a nuke on them?" I asked.
"Uh, something like that. You know that extra C4? I'm sorry you missed the fireworks, but we sprinkled some of that along the front line. Nice effects."
We picked up Wolf Pack. They started loading in when I noticed the flaming sword insignia marking them as British SpecOps (Special Operations) unit.
"Bloody hell that was one helluvan' entrance" The leader broadcast over the team comm.
"Jesus, no, its the bloody BRITS." Matt groaned over our private comm. I had to resist the urge to snicker.
"Who are you boys?" The Brit asked in a heavy British accent.
"In the name of the queen." Matt joked. This time I couldn't help but laugh. I tried to play it off as a sneeze, but Matt noticed and went on.
"Tea and biscuits aye old bean." He continued
"Shut it. I'll check his teeth for you." I whispered. That shut him up but I saw him shaking with laughter.
"We are the first Death Angel squad to hit the fields. What happened to you guys?" I asked the Brits.
"We were going to hit a bridge and slow down the mechanized units of the NF. Intel told us that there was virtually no men in the area, but when we got to the bridge a whole mech Battalion was guarding it and another 4 battalions were heading across the bridge. Something's not right over there. Sat. photos showed nothing, then they pop up. Bloody Hell, mate, you ain't much older than 16. What's your rank?"
I drew myself to my full height, more or less 6 feet. "I am Major Jamie Campbell of The United States Reaper Division, Team Echo." I said, activating my FOF transponder so he could confirm it. Checking his FOF, I realized that he was a Master Seargent, pay grade E8 out of 11 ranks, where as I was an officer, pay grade O4. Matt was O2, First Lieutenant, and the rest of the Reapers were O1, Second Lieutenant.
Which meant he was under my command. Sweet.
"As the ranking officer of this battlefield and with communications jammed so that contact with a higher rank is next to impossible, that means I call the shots." Several of the Brits didn't look too happy about taking orders from a kid, but Matt was impossibly smug over the comm.
"Right now our priorities are to regroup with any other squads still alive out there and meet at a fallback point in order to coordinate for your extraction."
The Master Seargent saluted, years of military discipline hiding his true expression, but even he had to ask, " 'Your extraction'? Don't you mean our?"
I grinned. "No, Seargent. Once the Regs are outta the way, the Reapers are gonna party. I'm rerouting you to support division in charge of evac after our op is done."
"Yes sir!"
I picked up my helmet the side was burned and the face plate was shattered. I had scorch marks on my right side. I looked at the rest of my armor. It was pretty scuffed up. I looked for my knife but couldn't find it. I realized where it was.
"Rouge, you owe me a knife." I said.
"You sound mad." he replied
"Your very perceptive." I said sarcastically.
"How bout I don't tell the girls about that time in Thailand where you-"
"How bout we don't. They don't need to know and it might be harmful to your health."
The rest was spent in quiet reflection on the last 5 days. We had crashed. Drove a truck through an enemy base and into a building. Blown up said building. Hijacked an enemy ship. Saved some SpecOps and all without losing but one man. We sure did some damage all by ourselves. I think the Angels had made a good entrance. But that was only the beginning. We were going to have to get better, stronger if we were to survive this war.
