OOC thread
A sudden blast pierced through the darkness, the accompanying bang cutting through the silence and leaving the squad's ears ringing. Rome, a burly Orc hauling heavy pauldrons and a light machinegun, stepped through the hole punched through the wall. "It's clear!" he said, and the rest of the squad filed through the hole after him, creeping down the concrete corridor.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" Knives asked, a diminutive, dark-haired Elf in light armor who carried an M4 and, as her name suggested, had over a dozen knives strapped to her armor, each specialized for one of a million different situations. Lights from her helmet flickered about as she glanced around the tunnel, as unlike Rome, she couldn't see in the pitch darkness of the underground tunnel.
Behind Knives came Prefect, their Lizardfolk leader, also carrying an M4. "About sixty or seventy percent sure," he said. "These labyrinths always make you go down before you can go up and up before you can go down. Confuses the Hell out of rookies."
Ember, the team's Human comms expert, stepped through next. He favored the AK-47 for its famed indestructibility, plus it was way easier to scrounge replacement ammunition from fallen enemies since the gun was so common in Denderan. The less he had to spend on bullets, the more he had for booze and hookers. "You sure they didn't make a straightforward maze, to confuse the Hell out of veterans instead? Seems to me like veterans are the ones you'd aim to confuse."
"Can it, Ember," Prefect said, "you can whine all you like once the mission's done."
"Yes, sir," Ember said with a bit of sarcastic defiance, while the final member of the squad crept silently through the crack behind him. Shiver, the Drow sniper, favored a submachinegun when he wasn't using his rifle to pick enemies off at extreme range. He almost never said a word.
So much so that Shiver was the only one not swearing when, a moment later, the corridor began spinning in circles around them, twirling about a couple of times before locking back into place and leaving them all dizzy and disoriented. "How many spins? I count four," Prefect said.
"I thought it was three," Ember said.
"I counted five," Rome said.
"Four," Shiver said.
"I'm with Ember, I say three," Shiver said.
"Goddammit," Prefect said, "I hate the spinny traps." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He didn't have long to decide. The base's alarm system would no doubt have informed their enemies of their location when they set off the trap. If it was an even number of spins, they should keep heading straight, but if it was an odd number, they'd need to turn around in order to go the same way they'd been going in the first place. "Keep moving," Prefect said, "straight ahead, hurry."
"Too late!" Rome called, crouching for cover and opening fire as a pack of Orcs turned the corner, opening up with their AK-47s. The team crouched down and returned fire. Those Orcs too stupid to retreat behind the corner for cover were immediately cut to pieces, but the others fired bursts from the safety of the corner which caught Rome in the shoulder. He grunted and laid down a stream of fire while Prefect tossed a grenade around the corner. While the Orcs fled from the blast, the squad charged towards the corner, seizing the vital cover for themselves, Rome peering around and firing on the retreating enemies. "They're running," Rome said.
"Move, fast!" Prefect said, "we need to punch through before reinforcements show up!"
Grunting through his wound, Rome sprinted down the corridor, firing blindly at the enemy, seeking more to keep them running for cover than to cause any actual damage. The rest of the squad was only a half-step behind, firing the occasional burst from their own weapon to keep the heat on the fleeing enemies up. The corridor forked up ahead, and Prefect took the path that the Orcs hadn't, hoping to avoid a guardhouse where the Orcs might rally. As the squad ran down the corridor, a door sealed shut behind them. "That's never a good sign," Ember said.
"There!" Knives said, her lights locking at the end of the tunnel where something was moving across the floor, "can you see it?"
Ember and Prefect squinted, their eyes even less adapted to the dark than Knives', but Rome said "yeah, I see it," while Shiver nodded. An ooze crept its way through the corridor, the mindlessly crawling through the base and devouring every organic creature it came across, like a giant and gluttonous amoeba. For the millionth time, Knives cursed whichever scientist had figured out how to get these roiling vats of chemical death to move.
Rome opened fire, the bullets penetrating a few inches into the thing before being flung out and ricocheting across the corridor. One of the bouncing bullets caught Ember in the hand, and he howled in pain, blood trickling out of the wounds. "Oh, yeah?" Rome said, pulling out an incendiary grenade, "well eat this!" He pulled the pin and tossed the grenade, which sunk a bit into creature and then exploded, and now the thing was on fire as it continued towards them.
"Rome, stop helping!" Ember shouted.
"Gimme a C4," Prefect said, and Rome pulled off a brick of C4, stuck a detonator in, and tossed it to Prefect. Prefect sprinted forward towards the ooze, slammed the C4 on the ground, and then ran back. The creature was now only about twenty feet away from the squad when Prefect said "blow it! Detonate the charge!" Rome pulled the trigger, and the C4 exploded, the blast splattering the burning ooze across the walls, knocking the squad off their feet, and leaving a hole in the ground. Prefect was the first to recover, and he quickly pulled Shiver to his feet, pushing him towards the hole. "Get down there, hurry!" he said, pulling up Knives as well. Rome had recovered on his own and jumped down through the hole, and gunfire chattered up as he did so. Prefect hoped he'd found some cover while he pulled Ember to his feet, the red-haired Human groaning in pain as Prefect's clawed hand wrapped around Ember's wounds. Prefect didn't have much idea what to do about that since they'd lost their medic to an Orc crossfire a few rooms back. Hopefully Ember would manage until they got back behind their own lines outside this base.
Prefect dropped down himself just before Ember did, and the other three members of the squad were already fighting. They were in a garage, a dozen jeeps and APCs lined up, which both the squad and the Orcs were using as cover. Rome had jumped inside the turret of one of the APCs and was using it to spit out covering fire for the rest, preventing any of the Orcs from hopping onto turrets of their own. It was only a matter of time before Orc reinforcements arrived, however. The base guards were tightening the noose about them, and Prefect decided it was time to abort. "Ember," he said, "get the doors open!" Prefect pointed one claw at the doors at the far end of the garage, "we need to get out of here."
Ember surveyed the garage, until finally his eyes locked on a panel near the entrance, a half-dozen Orcs taking cover nearby it. "There!" he said, "we'll need to clear those out."
"Shiver," Prefect said, "pop those Orcs, then keep Ember clear while he gets the doors open. Knives, get in the driver's seat of the APC," he pointed at the APC Rome was busy shooting from, "be ready to drive us out as soon as we're all in the APC." Knives nodded and fired through the windshield of the APC, hopping in and then tearing the ignition apart to begin hotwiring it. Prefect opened fire on the Orcs near the panel, but Ember wouldn't get close when the Orcs had such an advantage in numbers, even if they were mostly just angry young men with guns. A frag grenade would damage the panel, possibly making it inoperable, so Prefect tossed a flashbang instead. When it went off, Ember sprung from cover and raced towards the stunned Orcs, gunning them down, while Prefect and Shiver mopped up from afar. Black blood made the concrete slippery when Ember ran across it, pulling a few switches on the panel. The doors began grinding open, a beam of sunlight splitting the room and blinding everyone inside momentarily.
Shiver began pulling back towards the APC, while Prefect stayed to cover Ember while he sprinted back. As soon as Ember passed him, Prefect began backing towards the APC as fast as he could, firing through the rest of his magazine on full-auto to keep the Orcs at bay while he slipped inside the APC, the doors shutting behind him. Knives floored the gas and the APC lurched forward, speeding out towards the sunlight while Rome continued spraying bullets from the turret.
"Hey," Ember said into the comms, "we're coming out in an enemy APC, please do not blow us up." Then he tuned his radio to the enemy comm channel he'd broken into the night before. Hopefully these half-trained halfwits wouldn't communicate that one of their APCs had been hijacked long enough for them to get out of range of the AT troops in the base's watchtowers. "Looks like we're good so far," Ember said, "there's a lot of confusion, bunch of them are talking over each other...Oh, damn," and a second later Rome shouted to Knives that rockets were incoming, and she swerved to avoid them. One rocket struck just to the side of the APC, sending it onto its side and dumping Rome from the turret.
The squad spilled out of the APC while machineguns just a few hundred yards behind opened fire on them. They weren't far from the safety of their own lines, which opened up in response to the base, but Shiver was cut down almost immediately. The rest of the squad sprinted towards the safety of the sandbags that marked their side's territory. Knives' legs were cut out from under her, and Prefect threw an arm around her shoulder and dragged her the rest of the way there, while she moaned in pain and the ground was torn up by the bullets around them. Rome and Ember helped pull Knives' wounded body across the bags while Prefect leapt into safety. "Two men down, out of six," Ember said, gasping, "that was a disaster."
"We're not getting paid enough," Rome said, clutching at his shoulder and slumped against the sandbags, his head pulled down to keep him well out of the line of fire from the enemy base.
"But we got half up front," Prefect said, "we'll have to refund if we want to renegotiate. I think it might be wiser to just leave with what we have while we still can. What they paid us isn't worth one-tenth of what we lost in there anyway."
"I can't believe we're still alive," Ember said, as the medics arrived, running to Knives to patch up the wounds on her legs. Fortunately it looked like the bullet hadn't hit any arteries.
"Yeah, we keep trying to crack this base, we won't be much longer," Prefect said.
---
Guild Lord Dolgar strode down the halls of the facility in the Arc Mountains. Goblin engineers stepped around the Orc and his escort of assorted demihumans as they headed towards the main chamber, a missile silo that was still only half-finished. "Everything should be operational within the end of the month," Dolgar's aide was saying, "despite our setbacks with the bombing, the new engineering crew has really pulled through."
"Excellent," Lord Dolgar said, "give them all a 10% bonus. I wish we could spare more. I appreciate people who can work hard in a crisis."
"Yes," the aide said, "as you can see, the wiring is nearly finished. We can begin testing the electrical systems by the weekend."
One of Lord Dolgar's other aides had been chattering away on her cell phone, but now turned towards him. "Lord Dolgar, Commander Ogrinn insists on speaking with you."
Dolgar took the phone from the aide and asked "what is it, Commander?"
"Lord Dolgar, I must request that you send us air support in the Rann Hills," Commander Ogrinn said, "we're taking heavy casualties and making no progress in dislodging the Orcish Brotherhood. They're completely entrenched!"
"This is the third time you've asked me for air support we don't have," Dolgar said, "we need all the planes we've got fighting Colonel Ville's troops."
"Without some sort of support, this campaign will fail and the Orcish Brotherhood will spread back like a weed," Commander Ogrinn said, "you need to give me something, my Lord, or I cannot give you victory. No one can! I cannot even give you a stalemate, not for long, not with our supply lines as long and vulnerable as they are now."
"I have nothing to give, Commander," Dolgar said, "everything is needed in other theaters, where the need is even greater. And yet you must win. The Orcish Brotherhood cannot be allowed to run amok in the Rann Hills any longer."
"I can only promise that I will try, my Lord," Commander Ogrinn said.
"If you fail," Dolgar said, "burn everything behind you. Leave the Brotherhood nothing to claim but ash."
