Don't be surprised if this takes up a lot of space, it takes up 16 pages on MS Word.
OPERATION: GOLDEN PHOENIX
The small vehicle came down from the crest of the hill faster than could be read by the casual observer. Consisting of a smooth, rounded fuselage that rode low to the ground, closer inspection would reveal that the vehicle rode on, not wheels, but instead a pair of hovercraft pads. Each pad was capable of exerting between 2 and 6 tons of lift (varying depending upon which type of terrain the craft crossed) and mounted a pair of 40mm automatic grenade launchers on either side of the cockpit. Nicknamed the ‘Wolverine’ because of its power and usefulness as a transport, recon and assault medium, the United Earth Protectorate’s LMPV-M-1 (Light Multiple Purpose Vehicle-Military-Version 1) was currently applying its power and speed to a reconnaissance mission in the hills outside of Cronus, the moniker given to the UEP capital city, based over what was once the Atlantic Ocean. Using power supplied by six massive solar panels easily the size of Rhode Island based on several strategic points around the globe, the colony was entirely self sufficient and contained almost 60% of the remaining Earth population.
But our story does not take place in Cronus, now, does it?
The Wolverine descended from the crest of the frozen mountain peak and hovered to a stop. Currently the pilot observed a small patch of un-frozen ground with reportedly fertile soil, currently occupied by an unknown rural village.
The Wolverine’s job was to mark the co-ordinates for artillery bombardment and leave before it was spotted. Of course, being spotted wouldn’t be too easy for the casual and even the vigilant observer. The specific military version of this Wolverine was LMPV(S)-M-1, meaning it was a stealth vehicle. Painted matte-black and apparently lacking an electronic signature that would show its position on a PA (Passive/Active) Radar Scan and visual observation for anything short of a very accurate, operational pair of thermal vision observation binoculars, the craft was designed to be a high-end, mid-quality, low-cost stealth vehicle.
The Wolverine moved into the green valley, moving carefully amongst shadowed patches, avoiding as many traces of light as possible. Eventually, its methodical progress placed it near the village outskirts. Several scattered huts assembled from various materials occurring naturally in the area.
The Wolverine deployed an EMP-SF (Electromagnetic Pulse-Signal Flare), briefly becoming an obvious signal to any viewers of a vigilant radar. Descending from its current position to the village itself, to attempt to project a casualty rate, the Wolverine reached the town outskirts in a matter of minutes. That’s when all hell broke loose.
The Wolverine reached the outskirts of town in record time and passed through a motion-triggered field of soccer-ball shaped mines, which propelled themselves towards the Wolverine at record speed. A deft motion from the pilot flipped a switch on the instrument panel and disabled the mines in front of and behind him. As the pilot entered the town center, a sudden hail of low-caliber, civilian weapons pinged off the vehicle’s light armor. It would take a lot of gunfire to create a hole large enough to destroy the Wolverine’s stability. Turning in a 360 degree arc and firing the 40mm launchers on either side of the cockpit, the Wolverine shelled through windows and shoddily built walls, exploding on impact with the partially frozen ground.
The Wolverine reached town center under heavy fire only to have, surprisingly, a squad of 6 armored soldiers climb from a hole below a small fountain and open fire with 50-caliber rifles, punching holes through the light armor as the shots ripped through the armor as though the craft was armored with paper. Soon, a large rocket flew from the hole and struck the Wolverine just behind the cockpit, blowing the armor plating off and striking a crippling blow.
The small craft strafed hard to the left and stumbled towards safety when another rocket struck the craft, knocking out its right rear booster pad and putting it into a drifting left-side spiral. The pads eventually quit and the spinning motion put the Wolverine into a 360 degree flip down the road, destroying the avionics and detonating the munitions.
Jeers and shouts of victory ushered from the black-armored men when the orbital strike came down on top of them. The distinctive whine of the 120mm artillery shells piercing into the ground at more than 1400 miles per hour betrayed the actual sound of the shots being fired from high in the upper atmosphere, and within seconds the whole town was turned to a blackened crater.
Watching from his office high in the United Earth Protectorate’s Command and Control Headquarters, based in Cronus (the capital of the UEP) was Lieutenant General Elwood H.M Steele, a fourth-generation upper-rung military veteran, a self made general for more than six years. Steele had monitored the progress of the mission from cameras mounted on an automated OP-52 ‘Eagle’ Reconnaissance vehicle, holding position at 500 feet, well beyond sensor and visual range. Steele crossed his hands on the desk and watched the feedback loop that was being ran on the holo-screen before him. The feedback from the eight minute feedback was conclusive that another area of the earth was lost to imprecise bombardment by the orbital platforms nicknamed ‘Hammers’ that were in orbit and controlled by the UEP. However, as the screen passed the scene where the Wolverine was hit with a missile, he had a revelation and paused the loop.
Sure enough, the insignia on the black-armored soldiers showed them as soldiers affiliated with the Coalition of Free Nations, a group of so-called ‘namby-pamby tree-hugging hippies’ as named by the UEP civilians. In reality, the CFN was a highly trained and elite force of soldiers splintered from the UEP in the early days of the Icing, when the world was plunged into chaos after the surviving members of Earth’s populace crawled from underground shelters to find, lo and behold, a second ice age bestowed upon the planet. When the UEP declared itself a the supreme faction on the earth, and forced the Burns Directive on its populace, a group of radical idealists bent on escaping the earth before it went boom in a very magnificent way, splintered and escaped the Protectorate’s long arm of justice, setting up a capital city over what was once Beijing. For the last several years, the two factions had been duking it out over the remaining natural resources for their own needs, not acknowledging the imminent danger around them that the CFN was originally trying to escape.
Worse still was the fact that intense bombardment had made more problems, destroying what little natural resources remained bit by bit until there was nothing that could be scraped up.
Steele looked at the area where the CFN had surfaced and ordered the OP-59, still maintaining a low circling pattern over the crater, to send out a scanning probe. The Eagle acknowledged and launched one of its small probes into the small hole where the town center once was. The probe sent back a live feed of its exploration to the Eagle, which forwarded the footage to Steele’s nosebleed-altitude office. The small probe disappeared into the dark tunnel, the camera feedback on the main screen showing a shoddily constructed and hastily assembled tunnel leading into a pitch-black hallway below. The probe hovered at the bottom of this hallway near the ladder that led it down and bobbed away down the hallway, a soft buzz coming from the thrusters. The hallway splintered into several other hallways, an intriguing mystery to be observed at a later time, with more probes and a more meticulous observation than a General’s passing glance at the grey walls.
The probe had just rounded a bend in the hallway when the crackle of gunfire overwhelmed the speakers. The screen descended into static and white noise.
“Where’d the feed go?” Steele opened a com-link with the crew chief of the Eagle, Axis ‘Superman’ Gerbera.
“Looks like the probe was shot down. Last one, too.” Gerbera’s response was tired and sloppy, as if he had just woken up- and probably had. Numerous insults had been launched at ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Gerbera because of his habit of falling asleep while controlling the feedback of the probes operating on board his Eagle, Beta Three.
Steele stared blankly at the feedback for a few minutes, then signed into the intercom, an overwhelming flood of white noise that blared right into Gerbera’s ears. Gerbera promptly shrieked into microphone, which caused a shouting contest between Steele and Gerbera. Eventually, both lost their thunder and stopped.
“Alright, alright, let’s get back on topic. Beta Three, I want you to maintain position. If you find a trace of the original pulse, I want you to amplify it and transmit the co-ordinates to Krueller Air Force Base and Sector 04. I want a strike force on that area now.”
“Confirmed, Steele. Beta three out.” Gerbera cut the line and relayed the message to the pilot. The pilot, however, didn’t respond. He was holding a course to a mysterious light in the distance.
“Fredrick, what are you doing?” Gerbera implored.
“Check the scanners and see if you can pick up a signature on that light in the distance.” Fredrick, the pilot, seemed mystified by the light as Beta Three moved towards it. Gerbera slinked back down the stairs and checked the scanners. A few moments later, he climbed the ladder again.
“Scanners are showing nothing at the co-ordinates. This surprises me, because Beta Three’s equipment is the most advanced we have.”
“Interesting… Gerbera, extend the periscope.”
“Confirmed, Fredrick. I’ll check it out now.” Gerbera climbed down the ladder to the cockpit and slipped into the observation bulge which contained the periscope, a 4-foot steel tube. Gerbera placed his face on the plate where the periscope connected to the bulge and pressed a button. The 4-foot pole extended from the fuselage of the Eagle. Gerbera gripped the rubber handles and turned the bulge so that it (and the periscope) faced the mysterious light.
“Confirmed activity; unconfirmed type. What do you think it is, Freddy?” Gerbera radioed up to the cockpit, and the message return was brief and clipped.
“Dunno. D’you think…”
“Think what?”
“You think maybe the DG are down there?”
“Don’t be crazy, man,” Gerbera said. However, Gerbera was losing confidence in his own theory. What if the Drakkengard had actually come back to finish them off? He had to investigate. Gerbera zoomed in on the target.
“Confirmed reptilian forms down there… Red scales… Complicated weapons… That looks like either DG or some kind of biological weapon designed by the CFN.” Gerbera sounded frantic. He was hanging on to a shred of hope that these might not be DG, that it might be something that crawled out of an old nuclear reactor, something, ANYTHING that could prove him and Fredrick wrong. Then he heard three words he would really dread later on:
“INCOMING ENEMY FIRE!” The Eagle jerked aside and rolled 360 degrees, avoiding some sort of crackling ball of energy that singed the bottom of the aircraft.
“Ascending to upper troposphere!” Fredrick jammed on the boosters, and the Eagle disappeared, flying high into the sky.
Krueller AFB was abuzz with activity when Steele’s call came in. A few anxious crew chiefs, technicians and Condor pilots paced the area nervously.
“Hey, captain, wanna scope this new grindboard I hobbled together?” Richmond Burns approached Lt. Captain Edward ‘Phalanx’ Irons. Richmond had a triumphant grin painted on his grease-stained face, and he was clutching a large, elliptical board with a Wolverine hoverpad welded to the bottom.
“No, man, that thing looks like a surfboard on ‘roids.” Irons looked at the craft.
“Pshh, suit y’self, Cap.” Burns slapped the grindboard down on the ground and jumped onto it. A pair of locks wrapped themselves around his feet and held him fast. The board lifted off the ground when Burns applied pressure to a pad near the front of the board. Burns leaned forward and threw a sarcastic salute at Phalanx and took off flying. He ollied into the air and performed a wall-ride along the side of a TT-4 Condor, putting a nice long scrape into the grey/black paint-job. Irons spat a curse to God, Buddha, Allah, and any other deity in the world, then ran off in pursuit.
Meanwhile, Burns was tearing out down the base when he ollied off the front of a Scorpion and landed on the fence around the perimeter of the base. He shut off the booster and grinded the fence, then did a 360 kickflip off the rail and engaged the booster, and took off running. He did an axle stall on the tail of a Sparrow, stalled again on a Wolverine, and shut it off, disconnected from the board and got off on a running stop-
Right into Lt. Captain Irons’ big-knuckled fist. Burns slammed to the ground, the jarring blow registered on his helmet as ‘painful’, and spat out a mouthful of blood. Irons dusted off his fist and laughed.
“That’s what you get for wall riding a scrape in my Condor’s paint job.” The other members of Irons’ squadron laughed light-heartedly. There was a long-running gag of the love-hate relationship between Burns and Irons that had started when Irons and Burns had been shot down over Thailand on a training mission. Irons had fallen on top of Burns and, when a retrieval squad had found them, they wrapped Irons’ hands around Burns’ waist and brought them back to base like that.
Some things couldn’t help but be laughed at, and that was one of them.
When the call for the 740th to go into action sounded, however, the squad sobered up and the crewmen ran to the hangars and suited up. The standard outfits for the UEP pilot consisted of a g-suit, a full-face helmet with enclosed radio and visor, a pair of high-top boots and gloves lined with heavy wool. Belted around each soldier’s left thigh was a .44 Magnum semi-automatic revolver used in case a crew was shot down over hostile territory, and in the lining of the right sleeve was a 5” knife used for cutting safety lines. Next came the outer suit; a full-body case of armor that sealed the pilots in and protected them from all but a direct hit from a 105mm flak shell and maintained a heater.
When the soldiers moved out of the hangar in their huge suits and bulky armor cases, they looked like armored snowmen. However, the 740th was taken seriously, even when they were in their flight suits. This meant something big was happening.
The TT-4 Condors were scrambled shortly before 1220 hours that evening, and moved to Sector 04, the top-secret base of the 4th Marshalls Division and 6th Infantry Division.
At 1300 hours, the 740th Airborne landed at the outskirts of Sector 04, the top-secret military facility built over northeastern Russia. Having received a message from Steele prior to the 740th’s arrival, a force consisting of 120 riflemen, 80 rocketeers, a squad of airborne soldiers and 4 six man teams of Marshalls, the elite UEP counter-terrorist unit employed specifically as counter-terrorist (counter-everything, really) and shock troopers that lived by the motto ‘First ones in, last ones out’. With some of the fastest wits and itchiest trigger fingers in the UEP, the Marshalls were loose-wired and easily angered, and the kind of people who were quick to shoot anything who lifted a gun in their direction that didn’t wear UEP colors.
The 232 man task force that made up the backbone of the operation was headed in to hell at that moment was unaware that this op would go down in history as one of the bloodiest engagements to ever hit the Earth, with three factions clashing for dominance in one small area.
The dominance of earth was at stake. This op could well prove which faction would become the top dog in the race to Earth’s control.
“Everyone tied down back there?” Specialist Roger Evers, pilot of UEP Condor Grey Six, called back to the men in his transport. The hoo-ahs and yes-sirs of the men in the back of his transport echoed through the transport all at once.
“Good. Now, please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times. In case of an emergency, the soldier sitting next to you can be used as a puke target. Now that that’s over with, let’s get this show on the road!” Evers tuned into the radio frequency that would be used for this mission. The op leader, piloting the ‘Freedom Bird’, Red One, was Edward Irons, came onto the radio just as he tuned in.
“Alright ladies, everyone follow me. We won’t have an escort, so you’ll have to rely on our command. We’ll be ascending to 15,000 and HALO dropping our forces from there. Airborne and Marshalls will lead the way down. Steele says the objective is to storm the facility indicated on your retinal HUDs (at that moment, a blip appeared on each soldier’s minimap) and to destroy the facility. We’ll waste no more time on a briefing. Go out and knock some skulls for us! Red One, taking off!” Irons moved his craft off the ground and into the air. The remaining soldiers, amongst the best that the UEP currently had to spare, checked their weapons one last time and waited as the thrusters kicked in, jerking each 125-ton aircraft into the sky with surprising speed.
Private First Class Yurik Helgevold was anxious and fingering the safety on his gun on the belowground story of the secret base on the Fertile Crescent, named for the Mesopotamian civilization’s breadbasket in the days long gone, where he and the rest of his unit were stationed on garrison. The first few days underground had been amazing, but the awe quickly wore off and was replaced by boredom as the dull monotony of soldiering wore in. When the Wolverine came through town, Yurik had fallen sick with a 24-hour bug that had kept him bed-bound for the span, and when he found out that the vibrations he had felt above were an orbital strike, he felt more ready for action than ever before.
Intel had reported just minutes before that a complement of UEP soldiers were on the way, and the 124th Blitz Division was spearheading a pre-emptive strike. Command was granted, as usual, to Gregor I.L Umanisky, the senior officer of the group. However, Yurik was surprised to find that he would be in the vanguard, the front line that would be hitting the UEP’s strike force. The 6’11” and 291 pound man stood ready to tear apart a soldier with his bare hands if need be.
Umanisky came into the room that everyone else stood in. If Helgevold was a big man, then Umanisky was a freaking giant. Where Yurik was tall and well-toned, Umanisky was a rock. Standing at 8’4” and weighing in, armor off, at a massive 350 pounds solid, Umanisky was more than capable of grappling with the toughest the UEP had to throw at him- and winning. However, beneath his huge exterior was a wealth of combat knowledge. Having been hit with so many combat sims had paid off, especially in combination with the dangerous cocktail of experimental performance-enhancing stimulants injected into his system- more than capable of commanding an entire army, Umanisky didn’t believe in sending soldiers into battle to kill and maim- he led them personally, not for glory, but so that he could kill and maim along with them. The man spoke with a distinctive Norwegian accent. When he spoke, his gaping mouth was lined with a double-row of razor-sharp teeth.
“Friends, allies, comrades, the time has come to strike the UEP where it hurts most. Today we will stand victorious amongst the corpses of the 6th Infantry Division. Some of you will fall today, but many more will make it back and swell the ranks of the CFN with the stories of your bravery and heroism in this time of turbulence. When the time comes, you will be rewarded well for your actions today. For now, however, live in glory and know that the fight today will ensure your places in history.” Gregor’s short speech inspired huge and raucous cheers from the small audience. They were not out of fear, mostly, but instead out of respect, knowing that when Gregor I.L Umanisky made a speech, at least 99 percent of the facts he stated were going to be true.
Within the hour, Red One was circling at 15,000 above the drop zone, holding his TT-4 Condor steady and on course as the lightly armored transport flew through consecutive puffs of flak from below. Below in the cargo hold, Specialist Aaron Brewster cradled his weapon of choice, the .44 Magnum Von Braun ‘Street Sweeper’ light machine gun, in his lap. The long, black weapon was prepped and ready for action, its belt-fed quad-drum clip filled to the brim with long strands of .44-caliber bullets, its long barrel shining in the minimal red light on the cargo bay. Brewster was wedged in with the rest of his squad of the 4th Airborne Division, sitting against the back of the dual-axle personnel carriers called Scorpions that was stored in the back of Red One’s Condor.
The red lights above flared with sudden intensity, and a rush of air shoved cold oxygen into Brewster’s mouth, along with at least one small insect. Brewster was knocked over onto the floor by the wind. Irons’ voice came onto the intercom.
“Attention soldiers, this is Edward Irons. We are over the target zone and prepped for drop. Go on my mark. Ready positions, guys!” Brewster cursed under his breath and pulled on the harness that held his parachute on, pulled down a pair of goggles and clamped on his helmet, effectively sealing him into the heavy armor suit that would be used in combat. The large suit would keep the machine gunner safe, but he would have to ditch it if he decided to go into small spaces. Of course, beneath it he was wearing leather gloves, a flak jacket, a pair of goggles, a blue bandanna to tie back his long brown hair, elbow pads, knee pads and his dog-tags, but the armor meant security when dropping out of the plane.
Brewster’s squad leader, Master Sergeant Ivan Mossburg, spoke up.
“Alright, Alpha squad of the 4th Airborne Division is to head for the hatch as soon as Irons up there gives the okay. We’re going to drop and rendezvous near a building on the outskirts of the town and wait for the rest of the 6th Infantry to make landfall. The engineers they’re dropping can take enemy vehicles. Also, there’ve been rumors of a secret op for which a Crimson Stripe is being deployed. It’s only a rumor, but I would roll with it for now. If you see him, let him go about his business and go about your own. The crater is going to be steep, so if you can make it to the tunnel without falling all over yourself you’ll be lucky. One last thing. They’ll be shooting as soon as they see our chutes, so deploy parachutes around 2500 and start firing as soon as you can sight the enemy on your HUD.”
“5…”
“Any prayers anyone has to say should be spat now!”
“4…”
“There is no room for hesitation!”
“3…”
“There is NO turning back!”
“2…”
“Anyone showing weakness will be left behind!”
“1…”
“If this is your first drop, pray to whatever deity you do that you make it to the ground! Understood? Good, go get ‘em!”
“Zero. All squads exit via the port and starboard hatches.”
40 soldiers exited through hatches on the left and right side, along with whatever wasn’t tied down. The first through the right side door was Mossburg, followed by Richmond Burns and Aaron Brewster. The 37 other soldiers were quick to follow.
When Private First Class Lorenzo Gonzales stepped out the door and past the engine that held the port side of the Condor in the air, he got a horrible sense of vertigo as his heavily armored suit passed through the exhaust plume and heated up externally, leaving a streak of black scorch marks down the right side of his armor. Disoriented, Gonzales rolled on his back, his head facing the sky, the Condor rapidly fading into the distance. His squad leader called in.
“Hey, Mexican, stabilize yourself; you’re coming in too fast.” Lorenzo rolled over and spread his arms and legs in an attempt to slow himself down enough to lessen the impact of the chute straps slamming into his chest and tugging on his shoulders. He approached 3000 feet and passed near the left side engine of Condor Black Seven, earning a matching set of scorch-marks on the left side of his armor as he passed through the backblast of that engine.
“Gonzales, engage parachute. Brace for impact.” Lorenzo engaged his parachute, which spilled out of the back of his armor in a billowing sheet of cloth. The triangular chute slowed his descent suddenly as the ground came into view, hurtling upward to meet him. Lorenzo breathed a sigh of relief and opened the visor of his helmet to suck in a blast of fresh air when a blast of flak exploded into existence not three yards away from him. The black puff of smoke and metallic shards engulfed him just as his visor shut automatically.
“Lorenzo, get out of there; you’re within the targeting radius of the Lotus Blossoms.” Lorenzo’s squad leader sounded urgent when he said this. Sure enough, six more puffs of heavily concentrated flak and black smoke enveloped the uncovered Gonzales’ form and reports of multiple small breaches in the armor’s surface blossomed into existence on his status indicator. Lorenzo’s pupils dilated as adrenaline seeped into his bloodstream, pushing him into action. At 1000, PFC Gonzales adjusted the interior cushions of his armor and released the chute cords just as flak made contact with them. The three flaps of cloth just hung there in the wind as they were turned to cheesecloth. Gonzales accelerated rapidly as the ground hurtled up to meet him faster than ever.
“Gonzales, you’re coming in too hot. I hope you’ve got your padding adjusted.” The squad leader’s warning came just seconds too late. Gonzales slammed into the ground at 400 miles per hour, his armor cushioning a blow exerting about 600 pounds of force into his face and torso. The blow ruptured the padding, guaranteed to disrupt about 390 pounds of force, spraying gelatin onto Gonzales’ fatigues.
“I’m alright. Alive, but my armor is shot.” Gonzales coughed out some gelatin and released the back half of his armored casing, opening the rear torso and disconnecting the bowl-shaped helmet. Gonzales stood up and brushed himself off, looking at his gel-encompassed form. He went prone seconds later as the Lotus Blossoms, 6-barreled anti-aircraft vehicles using archaic flak cannons upgraded to bang on the UEP’s air armor, came to bear on him. Carrying only the standard-issue BR-32 (Battle Rifle Model 32), he wouldn’t be able to do much damage with the 20 shots of 7.62mm incendiary rounds loaded into his gun. He would have to find some heavier firepower without dying.
He moved towards the projected landing zone just as the Lotus Blossoms opened up opened up on him. The puffs of black smoke were more than just annoyances this time- without his heavy armor, they would be deadly. The puffs of smoke threw metal shards at PFC Gonzales’ calves and buttocks, but none of them inflicted any injuries. He cursed profusely the whole way across the crater as the rest of his squad, already entrenched in the area and firing at the center of the hole, moved to accommodate him.
“About time you caught up, Gonzales, we thought you died back there when you landed in the middle of that AA battery.” The squad leader, Lt. Captain Hiram Jameson acknowledged his presence by pushing his head into the cold dirt. Snowfall had already lain down a small blanket of white powder as Lorenzo pushed his head farther into the black topsoil. The bullets that whizzed overhead were of a light caliber, probably .35 Magnum, the standard for all CFN weapons. However, with smaller bullets came more bullets to a clip, and as such, the toss-up for a lighter caliber of ammunition turned out to make a more effective weapon than the .44, .357 and .50 caliber weapons commonly utilized by the UEP. Gonzales put his head above the small trench his squad had dug and put a few shots downwind, which, by luck or skill, pounded into a CFN soldier. The three shots tore into different sectors of his body- one shot burrowed into his hip on the left side, ricocheted off the pelvis and exit through the front of his armor, imbedding itself in the back on his armored vest. The second shot smashed his lower right leg and tore it clean off, and the third shot found a home somewhere in the foot-soldier’s upper body.
“Look out! Shrikes inbound; heads down!” Five of the CFN supersonic gunships swooped overhead, raking the six man formation with fire from its 30mm cannon. The canny soldiers below, however, spread out and dove for cover as the craft screamed overhead. Their 30mm guns pounded air.
The pilot of Condor Grey 7 was in trouble. His Condor had become target practice for a particularly pesky squadron of Asps. Thus far, his booster and a portion of his wing had been blown off. A 6-inch piece of titanium flak had wedged itself into the rudder; jamming the Condor in a right-turning downward spiral.
“Damn those techies… Why did they have to go and strip this design of weapons?” Thus far his only defenses were the ECMs used to deflect missiles and the trio of rocket-launcher wielding soldiers in the rear drop bay which may as well have been firing muskets at the Asps for all their effectiveness. Grey 7’s pilot pounded the button on the side of his helmet and activated his radio.
“Attention Krueller Air Force Base, this is TT-4 Condor Grey 7. I am under heavy fire and at least 6 Condors are still fully loaded; 3 Asps are giving us some problems. I could use some reinforcements out here; requesting reinforcements from Skull and Cross squadrons.”
“Negative, Grey 7. We can supply Cross but Skull is away on sortie.”
“We’ll take what we can get, Krueller. Get Cross over here as fast as you can.”
“Confirmed. Cross is already en route.”
“Thank God.” Grey 7 shut off the radio. A few minutes later, his radio buzzed to life again.
“This is Cross 1; missiles are hot. Paint our targets.” Grey 7 obliged; painting the targets on their radar; and seconds later, eight grey/black Sparrows swept past the cockpit of Grey 7’s condor and launched missiles. The slower and less maneuverable Asps became target practice for the missiles and 30mm cannons used by the lighter, faster Sparrows.
However, a haphazard and untargeted missile launched from one of the Asps found its mark on Grey 7’s port side engine, igniting the hydraulic fluid that moved and pivoted the engine back and forth. The flames expanded backwards, up the pipes to the main reservoir, effectively disabling both engines. Worse, the Condor had become a ticking time bomb, with only a few minutes on the clock. There was little time to act.
When the missile made contact, Specialist J.D Shaw was sprayed with hydraulic fluid and shrapnel. The force of the spray knocked him over and placed him dangerously close to the edge of the main exit ramp. The square-jawed, 6’9” father of 2 had a moment of fear before he dismissed it. I have my chute; if I fall it won’t be so bad… He sighed and waited for the man on the other side to notice his fall. Unknown to him, however, the man on the other side, Lance Corporal Everett Duke, had already fallen. If he looked, he could see the man falling, his chute engaging and him falling near where Lorenzo and the other members of the 6th were fighting for their lives. So when he called out, Shaw was surprised to find no-one answered his call. Suddenly a spike of adrenaline reached out to him. He heard the tattered bits and pieces of the pilot’s message ordering everyone to abandon the Condor, then saw the pilot himself jump from the cabin onto the ladder and from there out the main door and into the heavens. Shit, I’m in it deep now... Lorenzo’s left leg slipped and he started hanging by one leg out the end of Grey 7. And he started laughing. The situation was ridiculous. Here he was, upside down, hanging from an abandoned Condor like a trapeze artist, practically crapping himself while the battle raged below; and he was worrying about falling.
So he let his right leg slip off the exit ramp and freefell, just as the time bomb triggered. Shrapnel from the craft whizzed past Shaw’s helmet at dangerous speed, and he was showered with fuel, hydraulic fluid and molten steel. The ground soon came hurtling up to meet him amid bursts of flak fire. Shaw engaged his parachute and engaged his suit’s padding and hoped for the best. The chute slowed his descent enough that the impact wasn’t bone jarring, but it was enough to send a shockwave through his whole body and rattle his teeth. Shaw pulled his rifle out of the casing in the back. He lifted the 5.56mm rifle to his shoulder and drew a bead on a black armored soldier. The hot lead literally tore the man apart; all four appendages went flying in different directions.
“Shaw, have you made landfall? The force is on the ground.”
“Very good, I’ll meet you at the Airborne trench system. Orders?”
“We are to provide cover for the Airborne squad while the Marshalls move to our position. When the Marshalls get here, we’ll make a run for the hole, and then the Marshalls will meet up with us. From there we’ll give the soldiers below hell.”
“Roger.” Shaw lifted his rifle and tore apart another CFN soldier, whose remains plunged back into the hole.
Gregor was in the command room belowground watching the battle unfolding above. The UEP had brought in air support and taken out the six man team of Asps that were assaulting the Condors dropping troops. And down below, the groups of the 124th that were being sent up in four man fireteams were being slaughtered like cows. Apparently the UEP force, though smaller in numbers than his own, had a better system of operation set up, not to mention better firepower. However, soon their air support would run out of ammo, and the sun was covered by clouds. Gale-force winds and heavy snow were two obstacles aside from hot lead and the lack of a physical designation of a drop zone leading to squads being scattered all over the crater. Umanisky was tempted to get out to the fight and bash some skulls, but he was stranded in this room and an appointed field commander was issuing orders from somewhere near the far side of the crater; attempting desperately to hold command of the CFN while the whole while the UEP was breathing down their necks. He thought that any second now one of the UEP ‘super soldiers’ (the Marshalls) would come roping down the entryway and blast every one of the ill-trained guards in the hall outside the room. At least he would have something to kill.
A few soldiers rushed past outside the room, carrying what looked like a 40mm grenade launcher on their backs. In seconds they were gone, headed for the surface. Gregor wished he could join them.
Operative 121 was pissed off at the time of the assault. When the mission had been assigned, his expertise with explosives and weapons had made him the natural choice amongst the 250 super-soldiers, designated the Crimson Stripe because of their red body armor, to undertake the mission. And when the Marshalls, footsoldiers and a squad of Airborne troops parachuted into the area, 121 thought he would be done for the day. Hearing the news of the northeastern element pinned down by fire from what looked like a long-range RPG launcher, however, the veteran CS operative sprang from Yellow 6, his Condor, and dropped, chute-less, into the area. He found the landing area less than satisfying- a few foxholes had been dug into the frozen ground by UEP soldiers, but the defenses ended there. Only by pure grit and raw determination had the soldiers not given up yet. So 121 lended them his fire support. When he first landed, 121 selected, from the various armaments he had access to, a chaingun which could be attached to the forearm of his armor. He latched the 30mm cannon to his left forearm, supported it with his right, bore sharpened, fang-like teeth and opened fire. The tracers whined off into the blizzard in the direction of the RPG launcher. After a few seconds of sustained fire, the launcher was silent. Then another RPG whizzed past 121 and exploded on the ground behind him, piercing one of the foxholes and burying itself in the far wall of it. From inside the foxhole there was an exclamation of “FUCK!” and a cry of surprise. The soldier, a member of the 6th Infantry Division, hauled himself out of the hole and sighed. There was a cut in his scalp which was bleeding; and he looked pissed off. 121 walked over to the man.
“Are you alright?” His monotone betrayed his lack of care for the soldier.
“Yeah, fine. Get that damn RPG out of my foxhole.” The soldier spat on the frozen ground at the 8 foot tall CS operative’s feet. 121 sighed and picked up a massive, armored foot. He moved in the direction of the foxhole, nonchalantly reached in and plucked the RPG out of the dirt wall. After a quick examination, 121 dumped the rocket onto the ground and stomped it like the butt of a cigar.
“Dud.” 121 stomped off again, this time up-linking with his retinal HUD and turning on thermal vision. He found the heated barrel of the RPG launcher and raised his chaingun. Placing his crosshairs on the launcher, he released a raging torrent of gunfire on the position and watched as the site exploded in a massive fireball.
“Boom.” 121 then stomped off in the direction of the hole.
“What are you doing?” The northeastern element’s leader sighed and went off after him.
“I’m completing my primary objective.”
“Well I’m mobilizing my troops. Now that the launcher is down we can move in.” The element’s leader beckoned his troops. 121 sighed audibly and lowered his chaingun.
“Very well. Do not stand in my way or I will terminate you without remorse.”
The force leader stood speechless, having been shown up by a glorified tin can. As 121’s reverberating footsteps clomped into the distance; the element leader called his forces out of the foxholes and advanced after him.
In the eastern sector, the 4th element was faring no better than their northern counterparts. Pinned down and under heavy fire from an un-seen MG emplacement, the small force was far from help and relying on coordinating air-strikes from their skyborne counterparts, the Sparrows. Every now and again, a Sparrow would pierce the gale-force winds and snow and strafe the estimated enemy position with fire from its 30mm cannon, but within seconds, when the shriek of its engines faded into the distance, the position was under fire again. At least four men were wounded and two were killed out of the twelve total soldiers that were there. Lieutenant Captain Harold H. Pendleton was coordinating the strikes when he heard the message he was dreading; confirming his fears.
“This is Cross Squadron, guns are dry. Returning to base; we’ll be back as soon as we can. With more weapons.”
Pendleton tossed the plastic radio receiver onto the ground and raised his visor, addressing his men directly.
“ALRIGHT MEN, WE’RE IN DEEP CRAP NOW! AIR STRIKES HAVE BEEN CUT OFF FOR A SHORT SPAN OF TIME, SO WE’RE GONNA MOVE OUR WOUNDED TO ANOTHER ELEMENT’S LOCATION!” Pendleton’s bellowing was just barely louder than the gale-force winds. His soldiers, however, got the message. The wounded who were still mobile moved onto litters alongside the wounded and dead. Once that was complete, the whole element up and moved. Just like that, they were gone. The CFN’s confusion was obvious- why had there not been a damage report for so long?
The wounded 4th element moved south to the 9th element’s position. 9th element was somewhere between moving out and beating the remainder of the CFN forces around their team into oblivion.
“This is Lieutenant Captain Pendleton of 4th element. We’re requesting integration into your unit.” Pendleton tried to sound professional but his embarrassment was still showing. The 9th element commander, Matthew Landon, concurred.
“We were sending some scouts your way when they were hit with machine gun fire to ask you the same thing.” Both men guffawed at the coincidence. With Pendleton lost working the radio and Landon pre-occupied with a fight on his own, the possibility of the scouts making it to Pendleton’s position alive was slim to none.
A few hours after Pendleton and Landon joined forces, the teams were assembled around the entryway to the hole. The commanding officer of the remaining forces moved to the front of the crowd.
“Now, I know you’re all anxious but word just came from headquarters that we need to blow this place up AFTER we clear it.” The soldiers sighed; the arduous task of checking every nook and cranny of a base that could be several hundred miles of labyrinthine corridors didn’t exactly tickle their fancies.
“However, intel has provided a sonar scan of the base and has come back with this map.” A new map appeared on every soldier’s retinal HUD, showing the fuzzy outline of a 4-mile wide base stowed entirely underground.
“Alright then. Elements 1 through 4 will take the western to northwestern corner and will consolidate into Alpha Team. Elements 5 through 8 will become Bravo Team and check the eastern to northeastern sector. Elements 9 through 12 will become Charlie Team and check the area between Alpha and Bravo’s search area, from the northwest quadrant to the northeast quadrant.
“Elements 13 to 16 will become Delta team and check the southwestern to southern quadrant. Elements 17 to 20 will become Echo team and search the southeastern to southern corner. The teams will be mixed un-evenly so be careful on this op; you never know what will happen down there.”
Helgevold heard the voices directly above his head while he and the remaining members of the 124th Blitz Division waited on the UEP to come knocking. They had rigged the ladder with pressure sensors that would bust sections of the ladder and plunge soldiers between 35 and 40 feet to the corridor below. Those who did make it down would be met by anti-personnel mines and lots of hot lead.
The first man down managed to somehow avoid the pressure sensors and landed on the ground so quietly that most of the men didn’t notice until he set off one of the AP mines which blew chunks of flesh and gore all over the men standing nearby. Helgevold felt the impact of part of the man’s femur bounce off of his chest. His face looked like he had consumed a bottle of chunky salsa.
When the men on the ladder heard the point man from Alpha team blow up, the soldiers above instinctively threw a hail of grenades and lead down the long hole. The sound of metal on metal below could be heard, and an orange fireball lit the floor below for about half a second. When the dust settled, it was quiet again.
“Next man down! Go go go!” Alpha’s CO moved his line of soldiers down the slope to the hole and into the ladder hole.
The process of moving 232 men divided into 5 large teams of roughly 46 men each down that hole into a sprawling CFN base took less than 5 minutes.
The CFN soldiers who had survived the hail of grenades thrown down were extinguished by the guns of the dropping UEP soldiers. The first man down was Marshall Sergeant Ivan Mossburg, who raked the landing zone with fire from his submachine gun. The weapon hissed and vented steam and brass casings everywhere, but the lead rainfall was undeniable. Anything that wasn’t wearing a red, yellow and blue flag on its shoulder fell under a hail of bullets. Next down was Brewster, who, with his Von Braun heavy machine gun, ventilated the walls, floor and ceiling with a withering hail of 30-06 hollow-tip bullets.
After a few minutes of senseless and indiscriminate fire had come to a halt, the remaining forces descended the ladders. The commanding officer of the force, Battle Commander Riley Pendleton, moved each force to their respective positions.
OPERATION: GOLDEN PHOENIX
The small vehicle came down from the crest of the hill faster than could be read by the casual observer. Consisting of a smooth, rounded fuselage that rode low to the ground, closer inspection would reveal that the vehicle rode on, not wheels, but instead a pair of hovercraft pads. Each pad was capable of exerting between 2 and 6 tons of lift (varying depending upon which type of terrain the craft crossed) and mounted a pair of 40mm automatic grenade launchers on either side of the cockpit. Nicknamed the ‘Wolverine’ because of its power and usefulness as a transport, recon and assault medium, the United Earth Protectorate’s LMPV-M-1 (Light Multiple Purpose Vehicle-Military-Version 1) was currently applying its power and speed to a reconnaissance mission in the hills outside of Cronus, the moniker given to the UEP capital city, based over what was once the Atlantic Ocean. Using power supplied by six massive solar panels easily the size of Rhode Island based on several strategic points around the globe, the colony was entirely self sufficient and contained almost 60% of the remaining Earth population.
But our story does not take place in Cronus, now, does it?
The Wolverine descended from the crest of the frozen mountain peak and hovered to a stop. Currently the pilot observed a small patch of un-frozen ground with reportedly fertile soil, currently occupied by an unknown rural village.
The Wolverine’s job was to mark the co-ordinates for artillery bombardment and leave before it was spotted. Of course, being spotted wouldn’t be too easy for the casual and even the vigilant observer. The specific military version of this Wolverine was LMPV(S)-M-1, meaning it was a stealth vehicle. Painted matte-black and apparently lacking an electronic signature that would show its position on a PA (Passive/Active) Radar Scan and visual observation for anything short of a very accurate, operational pair of thermal vision observation binoculars, the craft was designed to be a high-end, mid-quality, low-cost stealth vehicle.
The Wolverine moved into the green valley, moving carefully amongst shadowed patches, avoiding as many traces of light as possible. Eventually, its methodical progress placed it near the village outskirts. Several scattered huts assembled from various materials occurring naturally in the area.
The Wolverine deployed an EMP-SF (Electromagnetic Pulse-Signal Flare), briefly becoming an obvious signal to any viewers of a vigilant radar. Descending from its current position to the village itself, to attempt to project a casualty rate, the Wolverine reached the town outskirts in a matter of minutes. That’s when all hell broke loose.
The Wolverine reached the outskirts of town in record time and passed through a motion-triggered field of soccer-ball shaped mines, which propelled themselves towards the Wolverine at record speed. A deft motion from the pilot flipped a switch on the instrument panel and disabled the mines in front of and behind him. As the pilot entered the town center, a sudden hail of low-caliber, civilian weapons pinged off the vehicle’s light armor. It would take a lot of gunfire to create a hole large enough to destroy the Wolverine’s stability. Turning in a 360 degree arc and firing the 40mm launchers on either side of the cockpit, the Wolverine shelled through windows and shoddily built walls, exploding on impact with the partially frozen ground.
The Wolverine reached town center under heavy fire only to have, surprisingly, a squad of 6 armored soldiers climb from a hole below a small fountain and open fire with 50-caliber rifles, punching holes through the light armor as the shots ripped through the armor as though the craft was armored with paper. Soon, a large rocket flew from the hole and struck the Wolverine just behind the cockpit, blowing the armor plating off and striking a crippling blow.
The small craft strafed hard to the left and stumbled towards safety when another rocket struck the craft, knocking out its right rear booster pad and putting it into a drifting left-side spiral. The pads eventually quit and the spinning motion put the Wolverine into a 360 degree flip down the road, destroying the avionics and detonating the munitions.
Jeers and shouts of victory ushered from the black-armored men when the orbital strike came down on top of them. The distinctive whine of the 120mm artillery shells piercing into the ground at more than 1400 miles per hour betrayed the actual sound of the shots being fired from high in the upper atmosphere, and within seconds the whole town was turned to a blackened crater.
Watching from his office high in the United Earth Protectorate’s Command and Control Headquarters, based in Cronus (the capital of the UEP) was Lieutenant General Elwood H.M Steele, a fourth-generation upper-rung military veteran, a self made general for more than six years. Steele had monitored the progress of the mission from cameras mounted on an automated OP-52 ‘Eagle’ Reconnaissance vehicle, holding position at 500 feet, well beyond sensor and visual range. Steele crossed his hands on the desk and watched the feedback loop that was being ran on the holo-screen before him. The feedback from the eight minute feedback was conclusive that another area of the earth was lost to imprecise bombardment by the orbital platforms nicknamed ‘Hammers’ that were in orbit and controlled by the UEP. However, as the screen passed the scene where the Wolverine was hit with a missile, he had a revelation and paused the loop.
Sure enough, the insignia on the black-armored soldiers showed them as soldiers affiliated with the Coalition of Free Nations, a group of so-called ‘namby-pamby tree-hugging hippies’ as named by the UEP civilians. In reality, the CFN was a highly trained and elite force of soldiers splintered from the UEP in the early days of the Icing, when the world was plunged into chaos after the surviving members of Earth’s populace crawled from underground shelters to find, lo and behold, a second ice age bestowed upon the planet. When the UEP declared itself a the supreme faction on the earth, and forced the Burns Directive on its populace, a group of radical idealists bent on escaping the earth before it went boom in a very magnificent way, splintered and escaped the Protectorate’s long arm of justice, setting up a capital city over what was once Beijing. For the last several years, the two factions had been duking it out over the remaining natural resources for their own needs, not acknowledging the imminent danger around them that the CFN was originally trying to escape.
Worse still was the fact that intense bombardment had made more problems, destroying what little natural resources remained bit by bit until there was nothing that could be scraped up.
Steele looked at the area where the CFN had surfaced and ordered the OP-59, still maintaining a low circling pattern over the crater, to send out a scanning probe. The Eagle acknowledged and launched one of its small probes into the small hole where the town center once was. The probe sent back a live feed of its exploration to the Eagle, which forwarded the footage to Steele’s nosebleed-altitude office. The small probe disappeared into the dark tunnel, the camera feedback on the main screen showing a shoddily constructed and hastily assembled tunnel leading into a pitch-black hallway below. The probe hovered at the bottom of this hallway near the ladder that led it down and bobbed away down the hallway, a soft buzz coming from the thrusters. The hallway splintered into several other hallways, an intriguing mystery to be observed at a later time, with more probes and a more meticulous observation than a General’s passing glance at the grey walls.
The probe had just rounded a bend in the hallway when the crackle of gunfire overwhelmed the speakers. The screen descended into static and white noise.
“Where’d the feed go?” Steele opened a com-link with the crew chief of the Eagle, Axis ‘Superman’ Gerbera.
“Looks like the probe was shot down. Last one, too.” Gerbera’s response was tired and sloppy, as if he had just woken up- and probably had. Numerous insults had been launched at ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Gerbera because of his habit of falling asleep while controlling the feedback of the probes operating on board his Eagle, Beta Three.
Steele stared blankly at the feedback for a few minutes, then signed into the intercom, an overwhelming flood of white noise that blared right into Gerbera’s ears. Gerbera promptly shrieked into microphone, which caused a shouting contest between Steele and Gerbera. Eventually, both lost their thunder and stopped.
“Alright, alright, let’s get back on topic. Beta Three, I want you to maintain position. If you find a trace of the original pulse, I want you to amplify it and transmit the co-ordinates to Krueller Air Force Base and Sector 04. I want a strike force on that area now.”
“Confirmed, Steele. Beta three out.” Gerbera cut the line and relayed the message to the pilot. The pilot, however, didn’t respond. He was holding a course to a mysterious light in the distance.
“Fredrick, what are you doing?” Gerbera implored.
“Check the scanners and see if you can pick up a signature on that light in the distance.” Fredrick, the pilot, seemed mystified by the light as Beta Three moved towards it. Gerbera slinked back down the stairs and checked the scanners. A few moments later, he climbed the ladder again.
“Scanners are showing nothing at the co-ordinates. This surprises me, because Beta Three’s equipment is the most advanced we have.”
“Interesting… Gerbera, extend the periscope.”
“Confirmed, Fredrick. I’ll check it out now.” Gerbera climbed down the ladder to the cockpit and slipped into the observation bulge which contained the periscope, a 4-foot steel tube. Gerbera placed his face on the plate where the periscope connected to the bulge and pressed a button. The 4-foot pole extended from the fuselage of the Eagle. Gerbera gripped the rubber handles and turned the bulge so that it (and the periscope) faced the mysterious light.
“Confirmed activity; unconfirmed type. What do you think it is, Freddy?” Gerbera radioed up to the cockpit, and the message return was brief and clipped.
“Dunno. D’you think…”
“Think what?”
“You think maybe the DG are down there?”
“Don’t be crazy, man,” Gerbera said. However, Gerbera was losing confidence in his own theory. What if the Drakkengard had actually come back to finish them off? He had to investigate. Gerbera zoomed in on the target.
“Confirmed reptilian forms down there… Red scales… Complicated weapons… That looks like either DG or some kind of biological weapon designed by the CFN.” Gerbera sounded frantic. He was hanging on to a shred of hope that these might not be DG, that it might be something that crawled out of an old nuclear reactor, something, ANYTHING that could prove him and Fredrick wrong. Then he heard three words he would really dread later on:
“INCOMING ENEMY FIRE!” The Eagle jerked aside and rolled 360 degrees, avoiding some sort of crackling ball of energy that singed the bottom of the aircraft.
“Ascending to upper troposphere!” Fredrick jammed on the boosters, and the Eagle disappeared, flying high into the sky.
Krueller AFB was abuzz with activity when Steele’s call came in. A few anxious crew chiefs, technicians and Condor pilots paced the area nervously.
“Hey, captain, wanna scope this new grindboard I hobbled together?” Richmond Burns approached Lt. Captain Edward ‘Phalanx’ Irons. Richmond had a triumphant grin painted on his grease-stained face, and he was clutching a large, elliptical board with a Wolverine hoverpad welded to the bottom.
“No, man, that thing looks like a surfboard on ‘roids.” Irons looked at the craft.
“Pshh, suit y’self, Cap.” Burns slapped the grindboard down on the ground and jumped onto it. A pair of locks wrapped themselves around his feet and held him fast. The board lifted off the ground when Burns applied pressure to a pad near the front of the board. Burns leaned forward and threw a sarcastic salute at Phalanx and took off flying. He ollied into the air and performed a wall-ride along the side of a TT-4 Condor, putting a nice long scrape into the grey/black paint-job. Irons spat a curse to God, Buddha, Allah, and any other deity in the world, then ran off in pursuit.
Meanwhile, Burns was tearing out down the base when he ollied off the front of a Scorpion and landed on the fence around the perimeter of the base. He shut off the booster and grinded the fence, then did a 360 kickflip off the rail and engaged the booster, and took off running. He did an axle stall on the tail of a Sparrow, stalled again on a Wolverine, and shut it off, disconnected from the board and got off on a running stop-
Right into Lt. Captain Irons’ big-knuckled fist. Burns slammed to the ground, the jarring blow registered on his helmet as ‘painful’, and spat out a mouthful of blood. Irons dusted off his fist and laughed.
“That’s what you get for wall riding a scrape in my Condor’s paint job.” The other members of Irons’ squadron laughed light-heartedly. There was a long-running gag of the love-hate relationship between Burns and Irons that had started when Irons and Burns had been shot down over Thailand on a training mission. Irons had fallen on top of Burns and, when a retrieval squad had found them, they wrapped Irons’ hands around Burns’ waist and brought them back to base like that.
Some things couldn’t help but be laughed at, and that was one of them.
When the call for the 740th to go into action sounded, however, the squad sobered up and the crewmen ran to the hangars and suited up. The standard outfits for the UEP pilot consisted of a g-suit, a full-face helmet with enclosed radio and visor, a pair of high-top boots and gloves lined with heavy wool. Belted around each soldier’s left thigh was a .44 Magnum semi-automatic revolver used in case a crew was shot down over hostile territory, and in the lining of the right sleeve was a 5” knife used for cutting safety lines. Next came the outer suit; a full-body case of armor that sealed the pilots in and protected them from all but a direct hit from a 105mm flak shell and maintained a heater.
When the soldiers moved out of the hangar in their huge suits and bulky armor cases, they looked like armored snowmen. However, the 740th was taken seriously, even when they were in their flight suits. This meant something big was happening.
The TT-4 Condors were scrambled shortly before 1220 hours that evening, and moved to Sector 04, the top-secret base of the 4th Marshalls Division and 6th Infantry Division.
At 1300 hours, the 740th Airborne landed at the outskirts of Sector 04, the top-secret military facility built over northeastern Russia. Having received a message from Steele prior to the 740th’s arrival, a force consisting of 120 riflemen, 80 rocketeers, a squad of airborne soldiers and 4 six man teams of Marshalls, the elite UEP counter-terrorist unit employed specifically as counter-terrorist (counter-everything, really) and shock troopers that lived by the motto ‘First ones in, last ones out’. With some of the fastest wits and itchiest trigger fingers in the UEP, the Marshalls were loose-wired and easily angered, and the kind of people who were quick to shoot anything who lifted a gun in their direction that didn’t wear UEP colors.
The 232 man task force that made up the backbone of the operation was headed in to hell at that moment was unaware that this op would go down in history as one of the bloodiest engagements to ever hit the Earth, with three factions clashing for dominance in one small area.
The dominance of earth was at stake. This op could well prove which faction would become the top dog in the race to Earth’s control.
“Everyone tied down back there?” Specialist Roger Evers, pilot of UEP Condor Grey Six, called back to the men in his transport. The hoo-ahs and yes-sirs of the men in the back of his transport echoed through the transport all at once.
“Good. Now, please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times. In case of an emergency, the soldier sitting next to you can be used as a puke target. Now that that’s over with, let’s get this show on the road!” Evers tuned into the radio frequency that would be used for this mission. The op leader, piloting the ‘Freedom Bird’, Red One, was Edward Irons, came onto the radio just as he tuned in.
“Alright ladies, everyone follow me. We won’t have an escort, so you’ll have to rely on our command. We’ll be ascending to 15,000 and HALO dropping our forces from there. Airborne and Marshalls will lead the way down. Steele says the objective is to storm the facility indicated on your retinal HUDs (at that moment, a blip appeared on each soldier’s minimap) and to destroy the facility. We’ll waste no more time on a briefing. Go out and knock some skulls for us! Red One, taking off!” Irons moved his craft off the ground and into the air. The remaining soldiers, amongst the best that the UEP currently had to spare, checked their weapons one last time and waited as the thrusters kicked in, jerking each 125-ton aircraft into the sky with surprising speed.
Private First Class Yurik Helgevold was anxious and fingering the safety on his gun on the belowground story of the secret base on the Fertile Crescent, named for the Mesopotamian civilization’s breadbasket in the days long gone, where he and the rest of his unit were stationed on garrison. The first few days underground had been amazing, but the awe quickly wore off and was replaced by boredom as the dull monotony of soldiering wore in. When the Wolverine came through town, Yurik had fallen sick with a 24-hour bug that had kept him bed-bound for the span, and when he found out that the vibrations he had felt above were an orbital strike, he felt more ready for action than ever before.
Intel had reported just minutes before that a complement of UEP soldiers were on the way, and the 124th Blitz Division was spearheading a pre-emptive strike. Command was granted, as usual, to Gregor I.L Umanisky, the senior officer of the group. However, Yurik was surprised to find that he would be in the vanguard, the front line that would be hitting the UEP’s strike force. The 6’11” and 291 pound man stood ready to tear apart a soldier with his bare hands if need be.
Umanisky came into the room that everyone else stood in. If Helgevold was a big man, then Umanisky was a freaking giant. Where Yurik was tall and well-toned, Umanisky was a rock. Standing at 8’4” and weighing in, armor off, at a massive 350 pounds solid, Umanisky was more than capable of grappling with the toughest the UEP had to throw at him- and winning. However, beneath his huge exterior was a wealth of combat knowledge. Having been hit with so many combat sims had paid off, especially in combination with the dangerous cocktail of experimental performance-enhancing stimulants injected into his system- more than capable of commanding an entire army, Umanisky didn’t believe in sending soldiers into battle to kill and maim- he led them personally, not for glory, but so that he could kill and maim along with them. The man spoke with a distinctive Norwegian accent. When he spoke, his gaping mouth was lined with a double-row of razor-sharp teeth.
“Friends, allies, comrades, the time has come to strike the UEP where it hurts most. Today we will stand victorious amongst the corpses of the 6th Infantry Division. Some of you will fall today, but many more will make it back and swell the ranks of the CFN with the stories of your bravery and heroism in this time of turbulence. When the time comes, you will be rewarded well for your actions today. For now, however, live in glory and know that the fight today will ensure your places in history.” Gregor’s short speech inspired huge and raucous cheers from the small audience. They were not out of fear, mostly, but instead out of respect, knowing that when Gregor I.L Umanisky made a speech, at least 99 percent of the facts he stated were going to be true.
Within the hour, Red One was circling at 15,000 above the drop zone, holding his TT-4 Condor steady and on course as the lightly armored transport flew through consecutive puffs of flak from below. Below in the cargo hold, Specialist Aaron Brewster cradled his weapon of choice, the .44 Magnum Von Braun ‘Street Sweeper’ light machine gun, in his lap. The long, black weapon was prepped and ready for action, its belt-fed quad-drum clip filled to the brim with long strands of .44-caliber bullets, its long barrel shining in the minimal red light on the cargo bay. Brewster was wedged in with the rest of his squad of the 4th Airborne Division, sitting against the back of the dual-axle personnel carriers called Scorpions that was stored in the back of Red One’s Condor.
The red lights above flared with sudden intensity, and a rush of air shoved cold oxygen into Brewster’s mouth, along with at least one small insect. Brewster was knocked over onto the floor by the wind. Irons’ voice came onto the intercom.
“Attention soldiers, this is Edward Irons. We are over the target zone and prepped for drop. Go on my mark. Ready positions, guys!” Brewster cursed under his breath and pulled on the harness that held his parachute on, pulled down a pair of goggles and clamped on his helmet, effectively sealing him into the heavy armor suit that would be used in combat. The large suit would keep the machine gunner safe, but he would have to ditch it if he decided to go into small spaces. Of course, beneath it he was wearing leather gloves, a flak jacket, a pair of goggles, a blue bandanna to tie back his long brown hair, elbow pads, knee pads and his dog-tags, but the armor meant security when dropping out of the plane.
Brewster’s squad leader, Master Sergeant Ivan Mossburg, spoke up.
“Alright, Alpha squad of the 4th Airborne Division is to head for the hatch as soon as Irons up there gives the okay. We’re going to drop and rendezvous near a building on the outskirts of the town and wait for the rest of the 6th Infantry to make landfall. The engineers they’re dropping can take enemy vehicles. Also, there’ve been rumors of a secret op for which a Crimson Stripe is being deployed. It’s only a rumor, but I would roll with it for now. If you see him, let him go about his business and go about your own. The crater is going to be steep, so if you can make it to the tunnel without falling all over yourself you’ll be lucky. One last thing. They’ll be shooting as soon as they see our chutes, so deploy parachutes around 2500 and start firing as soon as you can sight the enemy on your HUD.”
“5…”
“Any prayers anyone has to say should be spat now!”
“4…”
“There is no room for hesitation!”
“3…”
“There is NO turning back!”
“2…”
“Anyone showing weakness will be left behind!”
“1…”
“If this is your first drop, pray to whatever deity you do that you make it to the ground! Understood? Good, go get ‘em!”
“Zero. All squads exit via the port and starboard hatches.”
40 soldiers exited through hatches on the left and right side, along with whatever wasn’t tied down. The first through the right side door was Mossburg, followed by Richmond Burns and Aaron Brewster. The 37 other soldiers were quick to follow.
When Private First Class Lorenzo Gonzales stepped out the door and past the engine that held the port side of the Condor in the air, he got a horrible sense of vertigo as his heavily armored suit passed through the exhaust plume and heated up externally, leaving a streak of black scorch marks down the right side of his armor. Disoriented, Gonzales rolled on his back, his head facing the sky, the Condor rapidly fading into the distance. His squad leader called in.
“Hey, Mexican, stabilize yourself; you’re coming in too fast.” Lorenzo rolled over and spread his arms and legs in an attempt to slow himself down enough to lessen the impact of the chute straps slamming into his chest and tugging on his shoulders. He approached 3000 feet and passed near the left side engine of Condor Black Seven, earning a matching set of scorch-marks on the left side of his armor as he passed through the backblast of that engine.
“Gonzales, engage parachute. Brace for impact.” Lorenzo engaged his parachute, which spilled out of the back of his armor in a billowing sheet of cloth. The triangular chute slowed his descent suddenly as the ground came into view, hurtling upward to meet him. Lorenzo breathed a sigh of relief and opened the visor of his helmet to suck in a blast of fresh air when a blast of flak exploded into existence not three yards away from him. The black puff of smoke and metallic shards engulfed him just as his visor shut automatically.
“Lorenzo, get out of there; you’re within the targeting radius of the Lotus Blossoms.” Lorenzo’s squad leader sounded urgent when he said this. Sure enough, six more puffs of heavily concentrated flak and black smoke enveloped the uncovered Gonzales’ form and reports of multiple small breaches in the armor’s surface blossomed into existence on his status indicator. Lorenzo’s pupils dilated as adrenaline seeped into his bloodstream, pushing him into action. At 1000, PFC Gonzales adjusted the interior cushions of his armor and released the chute cords just as flak made contact with them. The three flaps of cloth just hung there in the wind as they were turned to cheesecloth. Gonzales accelerated rapidly as the ground hurtled up to meet him faster than ever.
“Gonzales, you’re coming in too hot. I hope you’ve got your padding adjusted.” The squad leader’s warning came just seconds too late. Gonzales slammed into the ground at 400 miles per hour, his armor cushioning a blow exerting about 600 pounds of force into his face and torso. The blow ruptured the padding, guaranteed to disrupt about 390 pounds of force, spraying gelatin onto Gonzales’ fatigues.
“I’m alright. Alive, but my armor is shot.” Gonzales coughed out some gelatin and released the back half of his armored casing, opening the rear torso and disconnecting the bowl-shaped helmet. Gonzales stood up and brushed himself off, looking at his gel-encompassed form. He went prone seconds later as the Lotus Blossoms, 6-barreled anti-aircraft vehicles using archaic flak cannons upgraded to bang on the UEP’s air armor, came to bear on him. Carrying only the standard-issue BR-32 (Battle Rifle Model 32), he wouldn’t be able to do much damage with the 20 shots of 7.62mm incendiary rounds loaded into his gun. He would have to find some heavier firepower without dying.
He moved towards the projected landing zone just as the Lotus Blossoms opened up opened up on him. The puffs of black smoke were more than just annoyances this time- without his heavy armor, they would be deadly. The puffs of smoke threw metal shards at PFC Gonzales’ calves and buttocks, but none of them inflicted any injuries. He cursed profusely the whole way across the crater as the rest of his squad, already entrenched in the area and firing at the center of the hole, moved to accommodate him.
“About time you caught up, Gonzales, we thought you died back there when you landed in the middle of that AA battery.” The squad leader, Lt. Captain Hiram Jameson acknowledged his presence by pushing his head into the cold dirt. Snowfall had already lain down a small blanket of white powder as Lorenzo pushed his head farther into the black topsoil. The bullets that whizzed overhead were of a light caliber, probably .35 Magnum, the standard for all CFN weapons. However, with smaller bullets came more bullets to a clip, and as such, the toss-up for a lighter caliber of ammunition turned out to make a more effective weapon than the .44, .357 and .50 caliber weapons commonly utilized by the UEP. Gonzales put his head above the small trench his squad had dug and put a few shots downwind, which, by luck or skill, pounded into a CFN soldier. The three shots tore into different sectors of his body- one shot burrowed into his hip on the left side, ricocheted off the pelvis and exit through the front of his armor, imbedding itself in the back on his armored vest. The second shot smashed his lower right leg and tore it clean off, and the third shot found a home somewhere in the foot-soldier’s upper body.
“Look out! Shrikes inbound; heads down!” Five of the CFN supersonic gunships swooped overhead, raking the six man formation with fire from its 30mm cannon. The canny soldiers below, however, spread out and dove for cover as the craft screamed overhead. Their 30mm guns pounded air.
The pilot of Condor Grey 7 was in trouble. His Condor had become target practice for a particularly pesky squadron of Asps. Thus far, his booster and a portion of his wing had been blown off. A 6-inch piece of titanium flak had wedged itself into the rudder; jamming the Condor in a right-turning downward spiral.
“Damn those techies… Why did they have to go and strip this design of weapons?” Thus far his only defenses were the ECMs used to deflect missiles and the trio of rocket-launcher wielding soldiers in the rear drop bay which may as well have been firing muskets at the Asps for all their effectiveness. Grey 7’s pilot pounded the button on the side of his helmet and activated his radio.
“Attention Krueller Air Force Base, this is TT-4 Condor Grey 7. I am under heavy fire and at least 6 Condors are still fully loaded; 3 Asps are giving us some problems. I could use some reinforcements out here; requesting reinforcements from Skull and Cross squadrons.”
“Negative, Grey 7. We can supply Cross but Skull is away on sortie.”
“We’ll take what we can get, Krueller. Get Cross over here as fast as you can.”
“Confirmed. Cross is already en route.”
“Thank God.” Grey 7 shut off the radio. A few minutes later, his radio buzzed to life again.
“This is Cross 1; missiles are hot. Paint our targets.” Grey 7 obliged; painting the targets on their radar; and seconds later, eight grey/black Sparrows swept past the cockpit of Grey 7’s condor and launched missiles. The slower and less maneuverable Asps became target practice for the missiles and 30mm cannons used by the lighter, faster Sparrows.
However, a haphazard and untargeted missile launched from one of the Asps found its mark on Grey 7’s port side engine, igniting the hydraulic fluid that moved and pivoted the engine back and forth. The flames expanded backwards, up the pipes to the main reservoir, effectively disabling both engines. Worse, the Condor had become a ticking time bomb, with only a few minutes on the clock. There was little time to act.
When the missile made contact, Specialist J.D Shaw was sprayed with hydraulic fluid and shrapnel. The force of the spray knocked him over and placed him dangerously close to the edge of the main exit ramp. The square-jawed, 6’9” father of 2 had a moment of fear before he dismissed it. I have my chute; if I fall it won’t be so bad… He sighed and waited for the man on the other side to notice his fall. Unknown to him, however, the man on the other side, Lance Corporal Everett Duke, had already fallen. If he looked, he could see the man falling, his chute engaging and him falling near where Lorenzo and the other members of the 6th were fighting for their lives. So when he called out, Shaw was surprised to find no-one answered his call. Suddenly a spike of adrenaline reached out to him. He heard the tattered bits and pieces of the pilot’s message ordering everyone to abandon the Condor, then saw the pilot himself jump from the cabin onto the ladder and from there out the main door and into the heavens. Shit, I’m in it deep now... Lorenzo’s left leg slipped and he started hanging by one leg out the end of Grey 7. And he started laughing. The situation was ridiculous. Here he was, upside down, hanging from an abandoned Condor like a trapeze artist, practically crapping himself while the battle raged below; and he was worrying about falling.
So he let his right leg slip off the exit ramp and freefell, just as the time bomb triggered. Shrapnel from the craft whizzed past Shaw’s helmet at dangerous speed, and he was showered with fuel, hydraulic fluid and molten steel. The ground soon came hurtling up to meet him amid bursts of flak fire. Shaw engaged his parachute and engaged his suit’s padding and hoped for the best. The chute slowed his descent enough that the impact wasn’t bone jarring, but it was enough to send a shockwave through his whole body and rattle his teeth. Shaw pulled his rifle out of the casing in the back. He lifted the 5.56mm rifle to his shoulder and drew a bead on a black armored soldier. The hot lead literally tore the man apart; all four appendages went flying in different directions.
“Shaw, have you made landfall? The force is on the ground.”
“Very good, I’ll meet you at the Airborne trench system. Orders?”
“We are to provide cover for the Airborne squad while the Marshalls move to our position. When the Marshalls get here, we’ll make a run for the hole, and then the Marshalls will meet up with us. From there we’ll give the soldiers below hell.”
“Roger.” Shaw lifted his rifle and tore apart another CFN soldier, whose remains plunged back into the hole.
Gregor was in the command room belowground watching the battle unfolding above. The UEP had brought in air support and taken out the six man team of Asps that were assaulting the Condors dropping troops. And down below, the groups of the 124th that were being sent up in four man fireteams were being slaughtered like cows. Apparently the UEP force, though smaller in numbers than his own, had a better system of operation set up, not to mention better firepower. However, soon their air support would run out of ammo, and the sun was covered by clouds. Gale-force winds and heavy snow were two obstacles aside from hot lead and the lack of a physical designation of a drop zone leading to squads being scattered all over the crater. Umanisky was tempted to get out to the fight and bash some skulls, but he was stranded in this room and an appointed field commander was issuing orders from somewhere near the far side of the crater; attempting desperately to hold command of the CFN while the whole while the UEP was breathing down their necks. He thought that any second now one of the UEP ‘super soldiers’ (the Marshalls) would come roping down the entryway and blast every one of the ill-trained guards in the hall outside the room. At least he would have something to kill.
A few soldiers rushed past outside the room, carrying what looked like a 40mm grenade launcher on their backs. In seconds they were gone, headed for the surface. Gregor wished he could join them.
Operative 121 was pissed off at the time of the assault. When the mission had been assigned, his expertise with explosives and weapons had made him the natural choice amongst the 250 super-soldiers, designated the Crimson Stripe because of their red body armor, to undertake the mission. And when the Marshalls, footsoldiers and a squad of Airborne troops parachuted into the area, 121 thought he would be done for the day. Hearing the news of the northeastern element pinned down by fire from what looked like a long-range RPG launcher, however, the veteran CS operative sprang from Yellow 6, his Condor, and dropped, chute-less, into the area. He found the landing area less than satisfying- a few foxholes had been dug into the frozen ground by UEP soldiers, but the defenses ended there. Only by pure grit and raw determination had the soldiers not given up yet. So 121 lended them his fire support. When he first landed, 121 selected, from the various armaments he had access to, a chaingun which could be attached to the forearm of his armor. He latched the 30mm cannon to his left forearm, supported it with his right, bore sharpened, fang-like teeth and opened fire. The tracers whined off into the blizzard in the direction of the RPG launcher. After a few seconds of sustained fire, the launcher was silent. Then another RPG whizzed past 121 and exploded on the ground behind him, piercing one of the foxholes and burying itself in the far wall of it. From inside the foxhole there was an exclamation of “FUCK!” and a cry of surprise. The soldier, a member of the 6th Infantry Division, hauled himself out of the hole and sighed. There was a cut in his scalp which was bleeding; and he looked pissed off. 121 walked over to the man.
“Are you alright?” His monotone betrayed his lack of care for the soldier.
“Yeah, fine. Get that damn RPG out of my foxhole.” The soldier spat on the frozen ground at the 8 foot tall CS operative’s feet. 121 sighed and picked up a massive, armored foot. He moved in the direction of the foxhole, nonchalantly reached in and plucked the RPG out of the dirt wall. After a quick examination, 121 dumped the rocket onto the ground and stomped it like the butt of a cigar.
“Dud.” 121 stomped off again, this time up-linking with his retinal HUD and turning on thermal vision. He found the heated barrel of the RPG launcher and raised his chaingun. Placing his crosshairs on the launcher, he released a raging torrent of gunfire on the position and watched as the site exploded in a massive fireball.
“Boom.” 121 then stomped off in the direction of the hole.
“What are you doing?” The northeastern element’s leader sighed and went off after him.
“I’m completing my primary objective.”
“Well I’m mobilizing my troops. Now that the launcher is down we can move in.” The element’s leader beckoned his troops. 121 sighed audibly and lowered his chaingun.
“Very well. Do not stand in my way or I will terminate you without remorse.”
The force leader stood speechless, having been shown up by a glorified tin can. As 121’s reverberating footsteps clomped into the distance; the element leader called his forces out of the foxholes and advanced after him.
In the eastern sector, the 4th element was faring no better than their northern counterparts. Pinned down and under heavy fire from an un-seen MG emplacement, the small force was far from help and relying on coordinating air-strikes from their skyborne counterparts, the Sparrows. Every now and again, a Sparrow would pierce the gale-force winds and snow and strafe the estimated enemy position with fire from its 30mm cannon, but within seconds, when the shriek of its engines faded into the distance, the position was under fire again. At least four men were wounded and two were killed out of the twelve total soldiers that were there. Lieutenant Captain Harold H. Pendleton was coordinating the strikes when he heard the message he was dreading; confirming his fears.
“This is Cross Squadron, guns are dry. Returning to base; we’ll be back as soon as we can. With more weapons.”
Pendleton tossed the plastic radio receiver onto the ground and raised his visor, addressing his men directly.
“ALRIGHT MEN, WE’RE IN DEEP CRAP NOW! AIR STRIKES HAVE BEEN CUT OFF FOR A SHORT SPAN OF TIME, SO WE’RE GONNA MOVE OUR WOUNDED TO ANOTHER ELEMENT’S LOCATION!” Pendleton’s bellowing was just barely louder than the gale-force winds. His soldiers, however, got the message. The wounded who were still mobile moved onto litters alongside the wounded and dead. Once that was complete, the whole element up and moved. Just like that, they were gone. The CFN’s confusion was obvious- why had there not been a damage report for so long?
The wounded 4th element moved south to the 9th element’s position. 9th element was somewhere between moving out and beating the remainder of the CFN forces around their team into oblivion.
“This is Lieutenant Captain Pendleton of 4th element. We’re requesting integration into your unit.” Pendleton tried to sound professional but his embarrassment was still showing. The 9th element commander, Matthew Landon, concurred.
“We were sending some scouts your way when they were hit with machine gun fire to ask you the same thing.” Both men guffawed at the coincidence. With Pendleton lost working the radio and Landon pre-occupied with a fight on his own, the possibility of the scouts making it to Pendleton’s position alive was slim to none.
A few hours after Pendleton and Landon joined forces, the teams were assembled around the entryway to the hole. The commanding officer of the remaining forces moved to the front of the crowd.
“Now, I know you’re all anxious but word just came from headquarters that we need to blow this place up AFTER we clear it.” The soldiers sighed; the arduous task of checking every nook and cranny of a base that could be several hundred miles of labyrinthine corridors didn’t exactly tickle their fancies.
“However, intel has provided a sonar scan of the base and has come back with this map.” A new map appeared on every soldier’s retinal HUD, showing the fuzzy outline of a 4-mile wide base stowed entirely underground.
“Alright then. Elements 1 through 4 will take the western to northwestern corner and will consolidate into Alpha Team. Elements 5 through 8 will become Bravo Team and check the eastern to northeastern sector. Elements 9 through 12 will become Charlie Team and check the area between Alpha and Bravo’s search area, from the northwest quadrant to the northeast quadrant.
“Elements 13 to 16 will become Delta team and check the southwestern to southern quadrant. Elements 17 to 20 will become Echo team and search the southeastern to southern corner. The teams will be mixed un-evenly so be careful on this op; you never know what will happen down there.”
Helgevold heard the voices directly above his head while he and the remaining members of the 124th Blitz Division waited on the UEP to come knocking. They had rigged the ladder with pressure sensors that would bust sections of the ladder and plunge soldiers between 35 and 40 feet to the corridor below. Those who did make it down would be met by anti-personnel mines and lots of hot lead.
The first man down managed to somehow avoid the pressure sensors and landed on the ground so quietly that most of the men didn’t notice until he set off one of the AP mines which blew chunks of flesh and gore all over the men standing nearby. Helgevold felt the impact of part of the man’s femur bounce off of his chest. His face looked like he had consumed a bottle of chunky salsa.
When the men on the ladder heard the point man from Alpha team blow up, the soldiers above instinctively threw a hail of grenades and lead down the long hole. The sound of metal on metal below could be heard, and an orange fireball lit the floor below for about half a second. When the dust settled, it was quiet again.
“Next man down! Go go go!” Alpha’s CO moved his line of soldiers down the slope to the hole and into the ladder hole.
The process of moving 232 men divided into 5 large teams of roughly 46 men each down that hole into a sprawling CFN base took less than 5 minutes.
The CFN soldiers who had survived the hail of grenades thrown down were extinguished by the guns of the dropping UEP soldiers. The first man down was Marshall Sergeant Ivan Mossburg, who raked the landing zone with fire from his submachine gun. The weapon hissed and vented steam and brass casings everywhere, but the lead rainfall was undeniable. Anything that wasn’t wearing a red, yellow and blue flag on its shoulder fell under a hail of bullets. Next down was Brewster, who, with his Von Braun heavy machine gun, ventilated the walls, floor and ceiling with a withering hail of 30-06 hollow-tip bullets.
After a few minutes of senseless and indiscriminate fire had come to a halt, the remaining forces descended the ladders. The commanding officer of the force, Battle Commander Riley Pendleton, moved each force to their respective positions.
