Operation Blind Knife [Project Warfighter] [IC]

[The United Remnants of America]

Oreo leaned up against the side of the tunnel, pressing himself into the grime in order to allow the Froxian lamia to pass by him. He was going to be taking up a rear guard position in order to properly protect the unit. While the Remnant medic didn't doubt for a second the Froxian couldn't defend herself and the unit, in a tunnel like this, he felt he could cover them much easier in a confined space. Oreo slid backwards behind Voroshilov, waiting a few seconds extra to ensure her tail had passed before he stepped back into the tunnel, facing the way they'd come. He tentatively stepped backwards once before turning back around and following. "Figured I'd cover the rear, just in case."

Koopa mulled over Voroshilov's statement. It would definitely be interesting, but the techie decided it wasn't in his best interests. While the URA had done some small genetic modification on humans, it was met with limited success and extremely expensive to splice out diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis and Sickle Cell Anemia. The Sentinel rolled his shoulders, stretching as he turned to Kayora, nodding his head, "You ready, girl? Let's go check us out an apartment."

---

Tarzan smiled as Vladimir gave his offer and raised his hand. "I'd love to go first. But I'll probably have to go with Frenchie. I've got kilo of plastic on me, along with some det cord."

Jackie nodded, "Alright. I'll tag along with you, then, just to keep things safe. Ninja?"

Ninja looked up from his scope and back at his CO.

"Are you alright staying here with Ed, Robin, and Royce? Add onto the fire support in case we need it?"

Ninja gave a thumbs-up as he went back to the sight of his rifle, "Yes, ma'am." Ninja knelt down, backing away from the window enough so his rifle barrel didn't stick out of the window, and stared through the scope. As he looked on he reached out and tapped Robin's hip, "Get Ed to find us a table. We should be further away from the window."

Jackie and Tarzan walked towards the door of the room, each operator taking position on either side before Jackie reached to the doorknob and opened it slowly. They assumed it was safe since there appeared to be no one in this building, but they were playing it safe. Jackie looked back at the Namenians, "Well? Are you coming or do we need to do this rescue ourselves?"

[Congreveopia]

Nexus, Basement:

The drone, which had been trying to hang back above the room and stealthily peer in gave up the pretense when Arynka pointed directly at it, and instead hovered down into the open. It had a speaker and microphone —those were standard on pretty much all drones, but the miniaturized microphone couldn’t hear anything over the soft hum (which was pretty deafening a mere centimeter or two from the source) of the motors. This didn’t mean that the drone hadn’t been listening to the conversation; it just meant Nexus had to read lips and body language. He was relying more on the latter than the former with the drone’s poor camera and the basement’s poor lighting.

So, the new woman was a sergeant and part of the STU. Nexus had read that pretty well, but he would have guessed it from the uniform and situation anyways. He’d missed her name. He’d also missed anything Sholokhov had said because the drone was behind her head for most of the conversation, but Sholokhov didn’t look badly injured, and appeared pretty calm. There was some dark liquid on her, but she didn’t seem to be trying to bandage any bleeding. Maybe it was mud, or the fabric of her uniform darkened a lot when wet. The sergeant was pretty calm too, given the way she diverted her attention from the surroundings to take a drink. So, the enemy wouldn’t be imminently moving into this basement for some reason, and the STU knew it. Nexus wasn’t sure why until he surveyed the room further with the drone and noticed the two corpses.

The Congreveopian squad would be down in a few seconds, Nexus realized. There was no point looking around in detail with the drone when high-res cameras with night-vision were about to arrive.

“Friendlies coming through that doorway imminently.” said the drone in the tinny voice of the small speaker, gesturing towards the door by making a brief scoot in that direction.

Leighton, Stairwell:

“-at least two STU in the basement, I didn’t look around much.” said Nexus “And Sholokhov’s made contact with them. They know you’re coming and you’re friendly. They killed some hostiles recently, so be on the lookout in case the building isn’t fully secure.”

“Are they humans, or-” began Thomas.

“Somewhat, and insect.” said Nexus “I’ve got no prior intel on either of these designs. I’m just trying to keep up at this point.”

“‘Designs’ probably isn’t the best term to use.” said Leighton “We’re talking about people, not a new type of rifle.”

“I’m reserving changing my usage of ‘species’ until the larger scientific community updates its terminology to reflect these miraculous new developments.” said Nexus.

“Okay, but we’re calling them styles now.” said Leighton, reaching the door to the basement “That’s the best I can do on the fly for something that won’t offend. Keep your weapons non-hostile, people.”

Leighton opened the door and stepped through slowly, keeping his rifle pointed at the ground.

“Sergeant Leighton, Task Force Atlas.” said Leighton “And I assume you are-”

“sorryiwasntabletolipreadhername.” whispered Nexus to Leighton hastily.

“-um, with the STU.” said Leighton, as Nexus put the five different names the sergeant might have on Leighton’s HUD: “Arimka” “Arinka” “Arimbka” “Arimbga” and “Aringa.”

“We’re part of a special forces group inserted to secure Lieutenant General Yaslova.” continued Leighton “My squad was dispatched to find you and ascertain your group’s status, along with anything else you believe we should know. We diverted here to attempt to neutralize the jamming once it became apparent. So, what's your —uh... hang on.”

Leighton turned and put a hand to his headset to evidence that he was listening to some radio call.

John, Room Overlooking Jamming Site, a couple moments ago:

“It wasn’t a precision air strike, or a man-portable missile.” said Nexus, as John carefully peeked one of his highest detail cameras out the window “At this point, I’d be inclined to go with kamikaze drone. Explosive charges would look pretty identical, but I don’t see how someone would have set them with all the -whoops, get your head up; something’s going down, and I want a better visual.”

John peeked up to get his eye on the camera’s viewfinder, and panned around for a moment before noticing the M1113 swerve off its path. He quickly cented that in the camera’s vision and held it until it hit a wall a few seconds later, then ducked back down and continued to aim the camera through the less-precise overlay on his HUD.

“That was gunfire.” said John “What did I miss?”

“The fight was inside the vehicle, not between the vehicle and the people on foot.” said Nexus “Other than that, I’m still uploading the footage… hang on… okay, I think one passenger fired on at least two others, definitely the driver was shot from someone in the rear of the vehicle. Shooter had long blue hair, and the driver’s uniform looked consistent with what we’ve seen of the hostile force. Secure the camera, I want you ready to intervene in what happens next.”

John snapped the camera back into its slot on his chest-rig and readied his rifle. He stepped back from the window into the darker interior of the room as far as he could while still keeping a visual on the ground outside, and waited to see what unfolded further outdoors.

Leighton, Basement:

“A black humvee just crashed outside, according to my marksman upstairs.” said Leighton “A passenger attacked the other occupants, who appeared to be enemy soldiers. Do you recognise the occupant?”

Leighton pulled out his PCU, and showed it to Arynka. A very blurry zoomed-in image appeared of someone with blue hair leaning forwards to grab the steering wheel.

“That’s really the best picture you have, Nexus?” asked Leighton.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Ralph gave a twisted smile as he observed the situation above him, stowing it just before getting to the nitty-gritty of gently sliding the manhole cover quietly aside as he fished-out a long-delay demolition-charge from his pocket along with some stips for 100 mile an hour tape.

Officially, the charge had a two hour delay, but once affixed to a hot-exhaust could be as little as twenty minutes due to the heat accelerating the chemical delay-timer.

Smiling again, he managed to replace the cover over the hole before shimmying down the old ladder, grinning from ear to ear as he came-up behind an unsuspecting Oreo, sandwiched between himself and Voroshilov's volatile tail.

Further ahead, Kayora simply nodded meekly. Her demeanor was not from a lack of confidence, she was just too busy concentrating on what could be behind the door and how to best approach all those possibilites with the least chance of getting shot.
Deadly doors, fatal funnels, clusterfuck corners... many different names, same risk of getting yourself killed if someone gets their gun on-target just a bit faster. Still Koopa was an old-hand, so there was that going for them. Both their guns were suppressed, so no big reason not to shoot unless they stumble upon the STU by blind luck.

[Die Erworbenen Namen]

EdRoNinRoy -Support team

Ed immediately put down his LMG and crouched low to the ground as he moved across the room. He picked up the table, and pulled it a distance away from the window, then nodded and sat against the wall, his LMG lying next to him. Robin sat down in the chair, and aimed his rifle out into the distant hospital, screening the road with his scope.

VladSaMaxSarShinj

"Alrighty, then. Okay, boys! Suit up! Strike Team Able, move out. Baker, you're up next." Vladimir pulled his mask up, clipping it around the back of his head to the helmet, then gave the boys the thumbs up. They turned around and left the room, holding their silenced guns in their hands. In less than five minutes, they had left the building on the left, and were moving silently down the street, keeping close to the building and crouched down. In a minute, Rob could see them on the ground.

[Monfrox]

"Sergeant Arynka. This is Corporal Abutovic. Are you our knights in shining armor?" The tanned woman asked, giving a slight grin.

Sholokhov sat up and got off the pile of debris she fell into. "Yeah. Here to get you guys out."

"No can do. Orders were to not leave without the General."

"We've already got several other teams taking care of that right now."

Sergeant Arynka feigned annoyance. "Replaced already? Some first mission this is."

"Well, I'm sure there'll be other opportunities. Now uh...did anyone grab my rifle?" Sholokhov turned to Leighton before he handed over the small tablet to the Sergeant.

Corporal Abutovic was currently occupying herself by being down at the other end of the service tunnel as it was just big enough for her form to fit in. The tunnel itself led out to a garage, but they had improvised a way to get her through before without making too much noise. Now, she was just securing their escape route. Sergeant Arynka looked over the picture. There was only one sort of woman she knew with bright blue hair like that.

"That's our Looie. First Lieutenant Dragunova: our CO and Squad Leader. We got separated when we got within range of the ECM jammers, and were ambushed by the insurgents. I'm sure our 4th member is still around, but we haven't been able to get into radio contact. The VHF frequency was for emergencies, but the jamming affected both that and our encrypted capabilities. Since then, we've just been trying to reorganize and eliminate the jamming stations. Got the last one just a minute ago. Still, we gotta go get the Lieutenant since we know where she is first."

---

Out in front of the hospital, it was all very quiet as the two insurgent guards chatted it up. A low whistle caught their attention, though.

"What the fuck...?"

"The wind?"

"I don't know, man. Maybe another one of those ninjas?"

"You mean tall, blue, and busty back there wasn't alone?"

"Fuck, I dunno! Let's just make sure-"

The insurgent in the back had his sentence cut off as a bullet struck his skull. His buddy looked back for a second, which was his reactionary mistake. A black blur of movement from the shadows of the old bushes around the front of the hospital overtook the man as he tried to get his gun up. Within that second, the blur had knocked him back into the garage and followed through.

---

"Didn't I already tell you that I'd be the last one to go?" Voroshilov said, a bit annoyed with Oreo. "Get up there, and hurry. We don't know how long we have to get this done." She looked back to the others. Well, they sure were taking their sweet time.

[The United Remnants of America]

Oreo sighed. "Fine. But don't bitch when something shows up down here and you're all alone." Oreo pressed himself back against the tunnel and shimmied back to his former position in front of Voroshilov.

Koopa on the other hand, stacked up against the door and motioned to Kayora to move to the opposite side. He quietly motioned with an open hand and did a countdown. Three. Two. One. He closed his fingers and put his hand on the door's handle, twisting and pushing it open, but not going in yet, instead allowing the breacher on the opposite side- Kayora, to do first peek into the room they were moving into.

---

Ninja's face pulled back from his rifle scope, "Woah." Ninja glanced to his side. Jackie's second squad of herself, Tarzan, and some of the Namenians had already left the room in tow of Vlad's first team. "Shit." He lowered his face and spoke through his throat mic. "Vladimir, Jackie, be advised. There's another player on the ground. Keep ears up. Not sure if friendly or not, but definitely hostile to insurgents. Both hostiles in front of target building are down. Will update on further developments." Ninja looked back through his scope, wondering who this phantom was that had just ghosted the two insurgents he was watching.

[Die Erworbenen Namen]

"Up ahead! Targets are being engaged by unknown third party!" Valentine was crouched up against a car in front of the task force, and had his LMG up. Through the scope, he could see the men at the hospital go down like flies. But the reason why hadn't been clear up until now.

"Roger! Assume target friendly! Do not engage unless engaged. Team, let's make a move!" Vladimir ordered, and stood up, running towards the next car in a sprint. When he got to the cover, he got to his knees, and held up his gun to scan for targets. One by one, the team did the same, until they were next to the hospital. Vladimir turned his head towards the place where Ed, Robin, and the Remnants were at, and nodded. They were in the clear. Slowly, they began to move towards the door, their guns up and searching.

[Congreveopia]

Leighton, Basement:

“No,I didn’t see your rifle.” said Leighton “John, is Sholokhov’s rifle up there?”

“Um, yeah.” said John “So, do you want me to run it down to you?”

“No, stay there and keep eyes on the situation.” said Leighton “Sholokhov, you’ll have to run back up and grab it yourself, I think. Might as well get started on that while I get Dragunova’s rescue sorted out with Arynka."

"Now, we can’t fight all the hostiles out there, unless there are a lot more of you STU hiding in that tunnel." said Leighton "So we need to grab her before they get her back. I say you and Abutovic do that: work your way through these buildings down the street to abreast of the car’s wreck as fast as you can and get Dragunova. I’ll take these two-" here, he gestured to Charles and Thomas "-and head the other way to provide a distraction when you’re ready to make your move, or when the hostiles get too near the Humvee, which will probably happen first. My marksman up top will cover us for all of that, then him and Sholokhov can retreat and rejoin either of us, and us three will try and lose the hostiles once Dragunova is safe. Hopefully the assault on the hospital is going to happen soon, and that’ll distract any reinforcements they’ve got. Failing that, you guys set an ambush somewhere and we draw them into it. Once we're all clear, we move to help with the hospital. Sound good?”

[The United Remnants of America]

Koopa's shoulder rounded the doorframe as he rifle lifted up into a high-ready position, his head turning down so his eye could glance through the weapon's sights. The barrel of his rifle glances right, then left, then straight ahead. "Clear..." Koopa stepped in and continued onward, his rifle still high as he walked through the room on the other side of the door they'd breached. It was a quick crossing to a second doorframe, which was open, with no door to it. Beyond the doorframe was a short, dark hall ending in a staircase. "Looks like we're goin' up, eh?" Koopa risked a glance back to see if he was being followed by his teammates before glancing back up at the staircase, which he crossed slowly, cautiously towards, his rifle rising to aim towards the top of the staircase as he reached the foot. "Going up."

Koopa side-stepped up the steps slowly, his rifle waggling in his hands as he climbed to the top of the steps, his boots clacking onto the upper level. He was faced with yet another dark hallway, which he immediately began to walk forward through. He was beginning to think this building was clear. He was almost happy that- A line of pressure pressed across Koopa's pant leg as he took a step and he heard a click as soon as the pressure disappeared. His blood ran cold and his mind began to race even as he pressed his rifle to his chest and yelled out, "Grenade! Take cover!" Koopa himself tried to twist and turn to run from what he knew was coming, hoping the others that had been following him could get out of harm's way before the inevitable happened....

---

Grenade! Take Cover! Oreo was in the bottom room, his sub-machine gun held low. Being near the back, with Voroshilov covering his back, left him in a slightly relaxed position. But as soon as he heard Koopa's shout, he reacted without thinking by turning around and leaping forward, towards Voroshilov, his weight knocking into her, pushing her towards the ground with himself on top of her, shielding her from any potential blast.

Even as soon as impacted with Voroshilov, he heard the muffled crump of what sounded like a small improvised explosive go off up the stairs, the entire ceiling above them shaking a little, dust filtering down as Oreo held himself down, not knowing the damage. As soon as the shock wore off, he refused to move, but yelled out, trying to out-yell his own thrumming ears, "Casualties?! Sound... Sound off!"

[Monfrox]

The garage door housed an ambulance, or it would've in the desired state that the building should've been in. Now, it was a place for the insurgents to get away from their commanders, take their time, drink a few beers, and shoot the shit. A table with playing cards scatted over it was proof enough that this wasn't a front for them, but a rear echelon unit. Still, the dead insurgent at the door thought that as much and paid the price. Further in, a woman standing at six feet, two inches, with long dark black hair that had a purple tinge to it with it being tied up out of the way, pale skin complexion, and shimmering red eyes, wearing a full black combat uniform, stood with a knife to the other insurgent's throat as his nose bled while she held one of his arms in a twist.

"Don't wiggle...it'll get you killed." She said coldly in a rater deep feminine voice. "What are you doing out here."

"Uhh...g-guarding the hospital against intruders....so...you..."

"What about your friends."

"S-smoking...and...drinking beer..."

"Don't be smart."

"Okay okay! They're running patrols around the floors to keep people from getting in!"

"So where's the General?"

"What are you talking about?"

"What did I say about being smart?"

"And what do you want to know for?"

"Word is you might know."

"Who told you that?"

"God."

"Well why don't you go ask God!"

She twisted his arm up.

"T-top floor! The colonel wanted to handle her interrogation personally."

"Anything else I should know?"

"Your rack is pressing into my back and it actuall-AGH!"

She twisted his arm up harder.

"Ow, God! Why do you keep doing that!?"

"Because I'm a sadist and I get pleasure out of hurting people like you."

Without waiting any longer, the girl moved her arm over the man's mouth and nose and choked him out for a second before kicking his knee out and throwing him onto the ground. He didn't move after that. She swore she heard more footsteps or something moving around outside the garage, and reached for her sidearm: A modernized M1911A1.

---

Sholokhov made a slight grumble before trudging off to go get her rifle. Sergeant Arynka put her hands on her hips and let her rifle hang down.

"Well...I guess that's an idea. Far as we know, though. They don't know we're here. You guys may kick a hornets nest, but if that's your plan, that's your plan. We'll head over to the crash and get the Lieutenant then. Just watch yourselves out there. These guys ain't pushovers."

Meanwhile, the Humvee's driver door lurched open. The late driver slid out off the seat, followed by Dragunova.

"My head's fuckin' killin' me..."

She stood up and looked around. Well, no way she was going outside with all those guys standing around wanting to see just what the hell had happened. She checked the magazine in the Grach pistol. Half-empty. Who in their right mind walks around with a half-empty magazine in their pistol all the time? She cursed that idiot she snatched it from before walking further into the facility. Hallways were a stark white, and almost looked futuristic. Even offices and cubicles looked more high-end than the usual kind you'd normally see.

The sound of something falling over drew her attention. She swiftly aimed the pistol towards the direction the sound came from. A younger looking man in a lab coat raised his hands in the air.

"D-Don't shoot! Please!"

Dragunova's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?" She demanded.

"You don't seem to be with them...are you a rescue team?"

"Rescue team?"

"Yeah! The soldiers came in here looking for supplies. Most everyone who wasn't necessary left, but when they rolled in with tanks and troops, the Army couldn't stop them. Everyone who wasn't killed in the fighting was being forcefully experimented on..."

"Experimented?"

"You have to stop them! They don't know what they're dealing with! Here, I'll open the door for you. It's retinal scan, so only personnel like me can do it."

Dragunova followed the man over to a large metal door as he put his head onto the scanner. A second or two later and the door opened.

"Do whatever it takes. We can't let them get an edge in this war."

"Yeah, I know. Keep safe."

The Lieutenant wasted no further time and started down the long hallway ahead of her.

---

Voroshilov had been following Oreo along his way when Koopa's shouting from upstairs got his attention. She didn't entirely process the info until her pointman threw himself onto her. She knew that the insurgents would be out to look for whatever just tripped their trap. Still, the PFC wasn't exactly pleased with lying on her back with a load of equipment on top of her. She gave the man a very deadpan stare.

"If this were any other situation, I'd probably've bit you by now. Please move."

First Kayora grabs the tip of her tail, now this. She hoped that this wasn't just a prelude to a lot of gunfire and hard fighting. She hoped to get in and out before the assholes knew what hit them. So much for that, then.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Kayora had shaken her head at the offer of Koopa's 'ladies first' attitude, and instead covered him from behind; thankful that his forces issued more... discrete hand-grenades.

The entryway and stairs cleared, she again covered his quick breeze-through of the upper-story when the man in front of her warned of a grenade, the specialist did not have time to see or confirm what it was before it exploded, and training had thankfully taught her not to second-guess such a cry, as she'd hugged the steps so hard that she fell back a few feet, causing bits of shrapnel and debris to ricochet off the floor and fly mostly-harmlessly over her head or get lodged in the floorboards.

Down below, Ralph watched something of a slapstick comedy-routine unfold as Voroshilov was near-accidentally sexually-assaulted. With a great big sigh, he lifted Oreo off of the lamia by handle on his plate-carrier and gave a quick glance at the two.

"... You're both fine." He murmured as from higher-up, there was only silence.

[Congreveopia]

Leighton, Basement:

“Well, if you can get her out without drawing attention, be my guest.” said Leighton “Signal us or my marksman if you need the distraction, though. Nexus, am I forgetting anything?”

“Your radios should be compatible with ours.” said the mini-quadcopter as Charles reattached it to his backpack “I’ve got your standard frequencies. I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t be able to call us if you need to, other than the whole ‘radio silence’ thing.”

“Right.” said Leighton “We should get moving.”

John, Room Overlooking Jamming Site:

“Surviving occupant is the shooter.” reported John as he watched the scene as best he could standing a couple paces back from the window in a shadow “She is getting out of the vehicle.”

“Her name is apparently Dragunova.” said Nexus.

“Dragunova has left the vehicle and entered the nearby building.” said John “I’ve lost visual. Shifting location to set up for distraction.”

The room was pretty good for providing cover from, although John was skeptical about whether the front wall would stop a bullet if it needed to. He shifted over to aiming out another window to give himself a better view of the bulk of the hostiles.

“What now?” he said.

“That’s the STU’s decision.” replied Leighton “Just be ready.”

Leighton, shortly thereafter:

Thomas gripped the door handle, waited a second, then shoved it open, moving out into the next room with his rifle raised as he did so. Leighton slipped through after him, and found the “room” to be an empty alleyway between this building and the next, perpendicular to the street that the hostile base was on.

“This’ll do for an escape route.” said Leighton “Charles, front window. Me and Leighton have the alley.”

Charles moved off to fire from the front of the building at the hostiles as Leighton and Thomas cautiously advanced down the alley. They were a bit past the far side of the enemy base from the car wreck, and couldn’t see any hostiles, but that didn’t mean they exactly felt safe.

“You want the dumpster?” asked Thomas under his breath, gesturing towards a metal dumpster that was probably the best cover in the alley.

“Take it.” said Leighton “Just get ready to cover me when I fall back.”

Thomas crouched down behind the dumpster and checked his rifle. Leighton grabbed a camera ball and set it on top of the dumpster against the wall.

“Thanks.” said Nexus “This is a pretty good view.”

Leighton snuck the rest of the way down the alley, pressed against the wall to keep himself out of sight of the hostiles. He reached the corner, checked his rifle instinctively, and then waited to see if the STU would signal them.

[The United Remnants of America]

Oreo felt the tug on his back as he was pulled to his feet, his SMG hanging from its sling around his shoulder and neck. The Sentinel nodded and a faint blush showed on his dark complexion as he looked back at Ralph, "Thanks, man. Kayora and Koopa good...?"

Oreo glanced around and up at the staircase. He saw the shape of Kayora in the dust in the area. He could tell it was her because of her size and her hair. She was on the ground, and slowly moving. The medic rushed over to her and knelt, giving her a quick once over, his recent embarassment gone, replaced by a calm and cold expression of a battlefield medical specialist. His gloved hands ran quickly and smoothly over Kayora's body: Her limbs, her back and her ribs, as well as her head. He was looking for major lacerations, or breaks in bones, momentarily forgetting that Kayora wasn't entirely a person. He checked off the triage in his head and filed her as good to go, and with a pat on her back he looked up the staircase.

"... Koopa...?"

---

Koopa didn't feel pain. He felt numb, and he could barely hear, but he knew that was because of the explosion. The Remnant tried to stand, but found his limbs were too numb to move. He tried to lift his head to look, but warm liquid ran over his face and into his eyes. Koopa's head was too cloudy, he didn't know it was blood. He didn't know he'd taken shrapnel to his cheeks and forehead that had him bleeding.

But what Koopa couldn't figure out right now was why he couldn't stand. And that was the real problem. If he could see, he'd see that his right leg was gone, bloody and shredded to pieces below the knee. Everything below that joint was a mess of blood, sinew, and bone, and the puddle of blood was growing bigger. His right arm was also gone from halfway through the forearm down, and his right side was burnt, torn, and shredded, in some parts, his body armor had been shredded, and his ribs were visible from the shredded tissue. He didn't know it, but he was lucky to be alive. Several pieces of shrapnel had pierced his body, but miraculously, they missed his major organs, with the only major internal injury being a trio of broken ribs on his right side and a fractured rib on his left side. His eardrums had been broken, and he had received a major concussion.

But from Lieutenant Nikolai Kovanich's perspective, he was just numb, and just heavy, and just... So... Tired... Koopa's head hit the floor at the top step and he gave out a low moan.

---

The moan was all Oreo needed. He was taking the steps three at a time and nearly stepped on Koopa before stopping and realizing that his blood was already dripping down the steps.

"O-oh... God..."

Oreo gingerly stepped over Koopa, sloughing off his medical kit to sit beside him. He didn't take his eyes off his friend as he unzipped the bag, the emotion of the scene slowly overwhelming him. His friend, his teammate, was lying in front of him... He pushed the back open and yelled as as a single tear of stress and emotion welled up in his eye, his first words choking as he inhaled, not from emotion, but because the smell had caught him. The smell of burned human flesh and hair. Oreo saw it then, there were spots on Koopa's pants and shirt that were still smoldering.

"One down! One down!"

[Die Erworbenen Namen]

Vladimir and his team moved around the entrance with a smooth, quick step, and came to rest just inches from the actual door. Valentine, standing behind Sarge as he held up a short combat shotgun, his own SMG slung behind his back, saw his hand raise and stopped, dropping to one knee. The soldiers all piled up behind him, and Vladimir moved quickly to the other side of the door, holding up his own hand. Everyone knew what they meant. Someone, somewhere behind that door, was talking.

With the group standing ready, Shinji inhaled, stood up, and picked the lock open, then slicked back as Sarge pushed the door open, and the whole group ran in, their guns up high. "Goddamn... Fucking place almost looks deserted."

"Yeah, Sarge, I get that. Shut up and search for a fucking stair. And someone bloody find that person..." Vladimir whispered, and began to slowly walk forward.

[Monfrox]

Voroshilov looked over at Ralph.

"We're not going to be fine for long. No doubt they heard that and will be investigating soon. Your call, guys. We can hope to either hold them off or we can take our chances at the rally point. Personally, I'm not too crazy about the idea of getting trapped in a building with any number of those bastards trying to kill us."

It was a tight spot, even without Koopa's casualty. They had no intel on numbers, but then again that was like playing Russian roulette. There could only be a few with moderate equipment, or they could be going up against a battalion-strength force. There was the sounds of shouting outside. Hell was coming to visit sooner rather than later.

---

Coast looked pretty clear. Sholokhov stayed with Charles to give him an extra gun and an extra pair of eyes now that she had her G3 again. The insurgents were rallying around the crash, looking it over but not sure how exactly to proceed. There was the talk between them and a command unit and the order was given to standby until further developments occurred. With that, the usual patrols were carried out but more cautiously now. It was the most exciting thing to happen that day, so it was on the lips of everyone who was there. What happened? How did it? And would it happen again soon?

Sergeant Arynka and Corporal Abutovic had made it to the end of the tunnel when the Corporal put her hand to the floor and froze.

"Wait..." She said. A few minutes passed. "Okay, go."

Arynka slowly stepped out into the alleyway alongside the building and kept to cover.

"Going across open ground is a no-go. We should be able to get around to the building but we'll have to cross the street eventually. Let's go."

The pair bounded down the alley and began to make their way through the buildings to stay out of immediate sight.

Inside the facility, Dragunova was walking through when she saw a room with a big glass window that looked stained in some kind of red powder. She walked over to it, a bit baffled. A figure slammed up against the window, screams muffled by the seal of the room as blood too now stained the glass. The shadow of the figure slumped over after a few seconds. The Lieutenant grabbed her mouth in horror to keep her from screaming before moving on down the hallway at a faster pace. What the hell were they doing in here?! Was this an old government facility? She needed to find out. She moved into another room that had it's door automatically open. It was sort of an observation room. Down below there was a larger room full of more well-armored insurgents.

These guys were wearing camo uniforms and had vests and helmets on. Definitely a step up to the usual grunts she had seen earlier. They were messing with a ton of crates and other things. She leaned over to get a better view. Drum barrels were being looked over that were being slowly filled with canisters that had a biohazard symbol on the side. Crates of gas masks and filters were being split among them. Were they planning a chemical attack? Before she could think anymore, the door behind her sealed shut. Dargunova whipped around as soon as gas started to fill the room. She ran over and tried to find anything to help her get out. Anything at all, but it was useless. She started feeling woozy, her head was hurting and the room was spinning. Eventually she lost consciousness and fell onto floor.

---

There was a small directory map near a door into the hospital proper. It was rather small, perhaps serving as a first-come, first-serve basis for local residents if they didn't want to make a trip elsewhere. There were three levels: The first floor had the reception desk and the check-up rooms. The second floor was for patient housing and surgery. And the third floor held a cafeteria. There was almost no trace of the body that the voice of the woman belonged to that had just been there. A small vent had been opened, but only someone of a thin stature could've squeezed into it. The lack of any and all vent covering in the near vicinity may have suggested that it had been removed a lot earlier than today as well.

[The United Remnants of America]

Ninja heard the muffled groans of Royce behind him, but the sounds were distant, on the edge of his senses. One of his eyes was closed, the other pressed against the scope of his sniper rifle as he scanned the front of the hospital across the street from his window perch. He'd had no time to set up a proper nest, so the muzzle of his rifle sat just past the window frame as he moved it slowly from left to right, up and down, watching for anyone else. Ninja's mouth moved slightly, his voice barely above a whisper as he spoke into his throat microphone, detailing a message to Jackie and Tarzan, who were in his sights currently with the other Namenians, "No targets on the street currently. Will provide overwatch."

---

"Thanks, Ninja. Moving in with Vlad." Jackie's back was against the outside wall of the hospital as she looked to her right. Vladimir's troops breached the hospital's door and the Namenians moved in. Jackie glanced to her left and nodded at Tarzan, who nodded silently in return, his big, bearded face stone cold where a smile could usually be found. That was his mission face. The large Remnant peeled off the wall, passing Jackie and going into the building following on the heels of the Namenians. As soon as Tarzan's ass passed the door's threshold, Jackie was pulling off the wall and turning the corner into the building, the darkness of which raised the hairs on her back as he eyes fought to adjust to the change in light level. "We're in, no contact yet."

---

"Copy, Sentinel 1-1, confirming losing visual with team. I will continue overwatch from perch. Will notify upon any changes." And with that, Ninja stopped talking, with no intention to have to talk. He began to once again slowly observe the street, looking for movement to identify. If it was hostile, he'd wait for the perfect moment to send a .300 WinMag round into the center of mass of said target, and in his mind he prepared for the recoil of his rifle against his shoulder and the sharp crack of the bullet as it left the barrel and compensator of his weapon. Ninja held his jaw open, breathing through both his lips and nose slowly, careful not to upset the scope with his breathing. He kept his mouth like this, because if he fired a round with a closed mouth, he could impact his teeth, loosen them, or even pop an eardrum from the pressure. He'd rather not have to deal with any medical emergency today.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Kayora's ears rang as she was shuddered out of her stupor long enough for her to look up and face the ugly mess of what was left of Koopa being treated by Oreo to the best of his abilities. Her hearing slowly returning just enough for her to realize a short but heated discussion downstairs.

"... getting trapped in a building with any number of those bastards trying to kill us."

It was Voroshilov, and Ralph's silence meant he was in the dark as to what they could possibly do with 40% of their combat-effectiveness wasted. She soon realized something the others had not as she closed her eyes in frustration, the radios were static-free.

"We need to get to the roof. If they know we're here then there's no point for us to maintain radio-silence. We won't be able to hold any dialogue since the others are still in-hiding, but there are orbital assets available to give intel if we can just get to the roof." She explained, before flashing a glance at Voroshilov, trying to size-up her abilities as she repeated her need to get to the roof; having only worked with her for a few minutes, she had to use what the squad learned from the Scythtail-sisters to fill in the blanks... She wasn't hissing, so she wasn't panicking, yet. Good.

"Ralph, you set-up a perimeter of traps on the first floor, keep them from getting upstairs to the wounded. Voroshilov, you're with me to the roof. I'm assuming you can climb the hole in the ceiling left by the blast." She began belting-out orders, although outranked by Ralph, Kayora was still part of the section's junior command-staff with more than sufficient qualifications to order him around in an emergency, she then flashed a smile to Voroshilov as she closed her eyes, trying to find an uplink with Nexus, "We've still got a Shilka to kill."

Meanwhile:
Kayora's avatar popped into that wonderful welcome-mat Nexus created in a pocket of his operating-system for visitors, it was sort of a blank grassland-landscape he kept refering to as "vintage windows default", although assured there was supposed to be a soft breeze, she couldn't feel it.

"Nexus, we've got a problem. Koopa is down. Our mission is compromised, position in jeapordy of becoming known. Requesting any and all available satellite-info so we can clear a path for evac. Estimated time of being overrun is five minutes, do you concur with this conclusion?" She spoke clearly and calmly and without any sign of being rushed so Nexus could understand her even if there was any jammers lingering as she brought-up empty windows for displaying incoming data, tables of ballistics for the team's weapons, and a rough diagram of known enemy and friendly positions so far.

"Oh, and please notify the other teams of our situation, so they can react accordingly to the modified timetable." She added as she wated for Nexus to respon, with a tinge of cheeriness, as though asking for a tiny favor for her on the way off to school.

[Congreveopia]

Leighton, alley:

“Status?” asked Leighton as he shifted the weight of his pack against the wall behind him.

“Hostiles in the street seem to have simmered down,” reported John. “Were gathered around crash. Now dispersing.”

“Let me know if any of them look like they’re heading to us,” said Leighton. “How about the STU?”

“No sign that they’ve alerted the hostiles yet.” said Nexus “No status reports from them yet, but they’ve probably followed Dragunova into the far building.”

“We’ll continue to hold here, then,” said Leighton. “Draft a status report to the Major and readback to me before sending.”

Nexus, virtual greeting environment "vintage windows default":

Nexus walked over the top of a small rise near Kayora, represented by a low-poly model of his diplomatic avatar. He had two drones worth of spare bandwidth to talk to Kayora on, but two drones wasn’t very much when the drones were man-portable and trying to talk to a satellite.

Nexus was looking at a holographic model of the area around the destroyed jammer, which floated above his right hand. He was slowly swiping his left hand back and forth, scrolling through time backwards and forwards to replay the explosion and the collapse of the radar tower. At the same time, he was rotating the model with his right hand, looking around the scene.

This wasn’t really for Nexus’s benefit. He’d already studied the scene extensively of course, and rendering a virtual model of a virtual model of him looking at a hologram of the scene had to be one of the least efficient ways to study it computation-wise, but it would give Kayora some insight into what had been going on with the Congreveopians in the meantime without Nexus needing to say it, and Nexus wanted to look busy.

“You’ve got better intel on your situation than I do,” replied Nexus. “Five minutes seems reasonable, though. I’ll alert the others.”

Nexus clenched his right hand into a fist and the hologram crumpled down into it. He opened his hand to reveal a simple thumbdrive inside, which he tossed at Kayora. The thumbdrive glowed, stretched, and expanded into a download bar, which looked like it would take about 3 seconds to download in real-time. In the simulation, of course, the bar appeared almost stationary.

“That’s the info on what Leighton’s team’s been up to, if you’re curious.” said Nexus. He snapped his fingers (a gesture that the real robotic diplomatic avatars were totally incapable of), and an SD card appeared in his left hand which he also tossed to Kayora. It too expanded into a loading bar, stacked below the first one. This one looked like it would take more like 20 seconds.

“That’s the Sentinel Constellation data from three days ago,” said Nexus. “One meter accuracy.” Nexus flicked his wrist, as if doing a magic trick, and a small hard drive appeared in his right hand. He threw that to Kayora as well, and the loading bar it turned into looked like it would take more like seven minutes.

“That is the Spyglass Constellation data,” said Nexus “It ranges from three to nine months old, but has ten centimeter resolution, and is a 3D model rather than stitched 2D images.”

A holographic globe appeared above Nexus’s left hand with hundreds of tiny dots orbiting it. Nexus grabbed one and pulled it slightly off course, dragging it over a blinking red target on the globe.

“I’m moving a Spyglass,” said Nexus “It’ll begin getting live data in twelve minutes, and I’ll pass it along to you when it does.”

Nexus took the globe and tossed it away over his shoulder. It bounced over a hill and out of sight. He then did the card-flip magic trick again, but with his left hand, and created a smartphone this time. It was showing a video from the camera on a drone on a catapult, Buzzer Two, where the teams had first landed.

“I’m taking the airplane drone for a recon run around the area, starting with your general area,” said Nexus, handing the smartphone to Kayora “Don’t worry, I won’t compromise your position. Hopefully we’ll get the location, size, and alerted-ness of any nearby hostile groups. At the very least, I’ll learn where the AA guns are when the shoot down Buzzer Two. How does all of that sound?”

Leighton, alley:

“Status report reads: deviated from primary mission to investigate and eliminate nearby hostile radio jammer,” said Nexus. “Shortly after locating jammer, jammer destroyed by STU operatives Arynka and Abutovic. Rendezvoused with them, and exchanged intel. First Lieutenant Dragunova then arrived near jammer as hostile prisoner. Dragunova escaped hostile custody. Arynka and Abutovic pursued Dragunova, who is unaware of our presence. We are on standby nearby to distract a large group of hostiles near former jammer location to help Arynka, Abutovic, and Dragunova if necessary. Additionally, we are passing along the information that Kayora’s squad is immobilized due to wounded, and they may have their location compromised. I’m sending Buzzer Two to get them some recon.”

“When was I going to learn about the Kayora squad thing?” asked Leighton.

“I only got word as I was reciting the report to you.” said Nexus “That part’s being passed along to all teams, by the way.”

“Append to the report that my squad is prepared to move to assist the Hurti and Remnant team if the Major thinks that is advisable, and send it,” said Leighton.

“Sent,” said Nexus. “Will inform you if I receive new orders.”

[The United Remnants of America]

Oreo took a shallow, shaky breath. "You can do this, Zach, you can do this." He pulled this fingers off his combat gloves, pulling them back on their hinges so his fingertips could be more agile and sensitive to what he was about to do. It was advised the battlefield medics not do this, but Oreo liked to feel what he was doing directly. "He's not Koopa, he's not Koopa, he's just a medevac, so random medevac..." Oreo blinked his eyes and tried not to look at Koopa's face. It would be easier if he wasn't one of Oreo's best friends.

His hands trembled slightly as he pulled his med pack open and dug through the contents. He found the proper tool: A trauma foam injector which spit out an expanding foam that could be used to fill bullet holes. The foam also exited at a hot enough temperature to sear wounds closed as it expanded and cooled, making it a perfect battlefield medical tool. Oreo brought the tool to Koopa's right knee and depressed the injector's trigger as a blue-white gel substance squeezed out of the injector's tip. Wisps of smoke came from Koopa's wound as the skin was burnt and the blood burned as the wound was sealed slowly, staunching the blood flow for now. The foam wasn't made to stop a dismemberment, and the foam wouldn't hold for ever, but it'd slow the blood flow for now. When he was finished, Oreo then took the injector to Koopa's right arm and did the same. Oreo suppressed a gag. The smell of burning human flesh wasn't something you got used to, and the stench clung to Koopa and his immediate area like death.

Oreo sat the injector down and worked to slowly pull at and lift Koopa's body armor, which was intact, full of holes, and ripped up. Lifting it up, he unclipped the front from the back and tossed it away. Oreo pulled out a handful of trauma gauze and bandages from his med pack and pressed the gauze to the open wounds along Koopa's side and chest before wrapping them in self-adhesive bandages. He used the same bandages on Koopa's arm and leg, wrapping them tightly before he gingerly lifted Koopa's head and wrapped it almost completely, giving an open patch in the bandages for his mouth, nose, and one of his eyes. The other was was full of blood, so Oreo deemed it safe to close it from the outside with bandages for now.

Finally, Oreo pulled an object that looked like a pair of pipes with a cushion on one end. The pipes were connected in the middle with a third pipe, which was extendable, and Oreo pulled it apart and locked it in place. The object now resembled a letter "I" with a cushion on one end. It was a break-down backboard used for emergency situations when an actual backboard wasn't available. It was very minimalist, but it would work. Oreo sat the backboard down beside Koopa before lifting his torso up gingerly and laid it across the backboard, his head laying on the cushion. Oreo then lifted his hips and put them on the board, laying his remaining ankle on the footrest pipe. Oreo glanced down the steps after he was sure Koopa was secured, "I need someone to help me carry him! We're not leaving him here and the bandages won't hold forever!" Oreo took another breath, the usually cool and sarcastic athiest medic was shaken, and as his lips moved silently in waiting for a reply, he'd later realize what he was doing: Praying for his friend.

[Die Erworbenen Namen]

Vlad's team

"This was incredibly fucking anticlimactic. Seriously. It's like they didn't even try." Sarge murmured, almost letting his guard down a little bit as he walked in the now (mostly) empty garage. He looked around the place, before settling on actually going into the building with the rest of the team. "Alright. There's an entrance. Let's get in, find an elevator, and fucking make it up top."

"I actually agree with you. But for now, shut up." Vladimir said, and slowly walked up to the door. He carefully, slowly opened the door, and peered inside. Luckily, not a single person was there inside. He raised his hand and motioned for them to move with them, including the remnants, and began to walk down the hallway to what looked like a large door. Each footstep carefully planned and nearly silent. They finally made their way to the door, and Vlad stopped them, holding out a hand. He pointed to Shinji, and then to the door window.

Shinji understood perfectly; walking up to the door, and slowly peering through the window. Not a single man beyond the doors. Well, these doors at least. He gave the OK, and Vlad carefully pushed the door open, bringing them into what seemed to be the patient rooms. This was generally okay for them, and they could already see a sign for the elevators.

"Alright. Here's the plan. My team will go up the elevator, and get the general. Remnants will guard the elevator opening. Clear?" Vlad asked, looking at the remnants behind him.

[Monfrox]

Voroshilov looked the least bit contempt with the plan before sighing and nodding. It wasn't her place to judge, but she really wasn't crazy about ending up in a situation that left their options of escape limited.

"Alright, bosslady." She told Kayora before slithering along up the stairs to get a quick check.

She stopped when she saw Oreo working on Koopa. Good God, no matter how many times she'd been out on a mission (which wasn't a lot still) she'd never really been up close to a wounded man before. She was a sniper, first and foremost. Her targets were well out of range to even yell at with harsh language so she never seen someone she had actually shot before. She briefly considered trying to help him before realizing that the situation was too dire for her to be of any help with it, and so she made her way back around to the hole.

"Okay, you can do this. Just like in cobra training...just like a cobra..."

She coiled her tail and threw her rifle onto her back. With it secured, she held her hands up as she continued to form herself up like a spring. She took a deep breath, hunching low into the rest of her body. She saw the hole, her target, just above her. A few more seconds ticked by until she threw her weight and lunged forward. Her arms extended to their reach and allowed her to grab the ledge, to which she swiftly pulled her upper half clean through. She clawed her way down the hall, being careful not to hit any other tripwires if they were there, as she pulled her long tail through the opening until she was entirely up.

"Phew...still got it..."

---

Sgt. Arynka and her partner were slowly moving into the building past the empty reception desk when they heard talking. The Sergeant motioned to take cover as she stepped ahead. The same guys Dragunova saw were walking around the offices. Helmets, vests, kitted out with assault carbines and shotguns.

"This is gonna get tough."

She gave hand signals to Abutovic, indicating the number of visible hostiles and the course of action: seven here, we'll assault. The Corporal threw her face shield down and took her MG up to a ready position.

"This is Arynka. We're moving into the building, expecting heavy resistance. These guys are definitely kitted out better than the others outside. We're gonna try to assault and get through to find the LT." She radioed to Leighton's team.

At that point, both the STU operatives stepped out and opened fire. The heavy thumps of their suppressed weapons punctuated by the clattering of weapons as they fell from dead hands was soon overruled by the staccato of enemy rifles as they brought them to bear against the two. Abutovic didn't feel an express need to get behind cover, as she was cover. Coupled with the exoskeleton of her lower half, the ceramic armored plating absorbed much of the damage of which she was taking very little while she opened fire with her Ultimax 100. She was a tank on legs, as the insurgents were finding out the hard way.

---

Safeguard Air Base

Major Rosenthal was settling in after the evacuation of the command post finished up. There was the disheartening report earlier about Royce's battle condition essentially dropping to zero due to deafness. She made a mental note to send that report up the chain with her attached recommendation of fixing that shit pronto. She stood now in a command tent on the other side of the airstrip with a few other high-ranking officers, Colonel Toss among them.

"So our unit strength in the area leaves us essentially down to one GMV with a few Special Operations soldiers in it, one Leopard 2 from the 222nd Battalion, and a sniper-recon team giving us frequent reports. It's not a lot, no doubt, but as the one put in charge of this operation, I need reinforcements for that extraction."

A small three-star stood at the end of the table.

"I've been busy trying to hold the front against this offensive. We've stood them enough for here, but this front is spread all along the countryside. One of the armored companies just completed a refitting and is on it's way here, but they said they're still at least a few hours out. Til then, we've got that anti-armor task force with SAT teams and the M1128's to old off any armored threats. I can spare a few trucks, maybe an escort Humvee with a TOW launcher, but we're in a shit situation."

"I realize that General, but our mission is critical and may decide the outcome of the entire war."

"I'm aware of that, Major. Please be aware that I don't have much to work with. We're still waiting on that infantry division. Til then, we've been trying to bomb the hell out of them but the only thing really making any sort of headway without losses are the B-52 strikes. We can't send in the fast-movers so long as that gun position is there."

"What about SEAD aircraft?"

"All being used in other areas at this time. We have one, and with the amount of defense they have, it'll be a suicide mission. Until then, we'll hold here and-"

A lieutenant burst into the command tent.

"GENERAL! We've got a problem!" She said, throwing out a piece of paper onto the map in front of her.

The General picked it up and stared at it intently. "So...they're renewing the armored offensive..."

"What?" Major Rosenthal was now incredibly worried, as she should be.

"Recon team reported an armored column with a mix of T-55s, T-64s, and T-72s headed this way. Some even have ERA. They intend to punch through and overrun our defenses...Major, take those trucks and get going. I want those Catholic Girl units activated now and I want this mission of your's over. Our time just got cut short."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Captain, go hand down the orders to the 5th company. Tell them to station their guns and dig in with their infantry. They are our only defense against those tanks, understand?"

"Yes ma'am!"

With that, the meeting closed and the General was left looking at the map to ponder other strategies to work with, as well as contingencies.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

"Nice one!" Kayora squealed as she witnessed Voroshilov manage to make the leap in a sing gargantuan bound. In the back of her head she noted that Leighton was preparing to move and assist with their evacuation. She was about ready to protest at the apparent vote of zero confidence in her abilities when they received word of an armored-push heading through the city. Instead of demanding they not save her, she asked for a quick run-down on anti-armor assets in their team's disposal. Personally, she had a few grenades that would do more than enough to trigger ERA plates off of older tanks, rendering them vulnerable to even the most mediocre of light anti-armor weapons, dropping a smoke/paint marker-rounds would be able to soft-kill their ability to engage targets while buttoned-up. If they came within view, should could pop their plates with rifle-fire, but also revealing her own position to direct retaliation; she'd need to be sure a follow-up anti-armor shot was on the way before taking such a risk.

"Voro, keep your eyes peeled. I'm getting reports of enemy tanks in the area. We've got the assets to deal with them... just not in this squad. So locating and tracking only." She warned, looking longingly at the young commando before confiding one last thing, "You have the word of International Liason Officer Kayora Nasta that things are going to be fine." (she made sure to block that underlined part from Nexus with a video she memorized)

Below them, Ralph shook his head; "Take him where, upstairs? Then we'd have to carry him back downstairs when we evacuate. Downstairs? That place is rigged to blow, we don't want anyone down there." He paused, and cast a cold, steely glare upon Oreo, "Besides, we're not leaving this place. Not until we finish the mission." He stated with emphasis, before seemingly returning back to the demeanor of a normal human being as he offered the following advice, "Just keep him stable as best you can. We'll take it from here." He then returned to watching the only remaining way up to their floor, just a few yards away from them, displaying an outward appearance of calm patience. Inside, he was trying his best not to breath the stench of Koopa's burnt-flesh, trying his best not to make a noise that would reveal their position, trying not to blink before his enemy made a mistake.

[Congreveopia]

Buzzer Two, LZ:

A packet of data landed in the drone’s satellite communications radio. It was decrypted, authenticated, and read. It was the starting series of characters for an instruction sequence. Three more packets. The second group of characters, the fourth, and the final. The drone replied with confirmation of the four packets of data, and a handful of milliseconds later, five copies of the missing packet arrived.

The drone parsed the complete instruction sequence. It was a request to execute a preprogrammed action: launching from the catapult it was on.

Nexus watched as the electromagnet in the drone released the pin that had been holding it in place on the catapult. The drone was small, but very sophisticated, as was its software.

The drone made the most of its limited bandwidth. Simple telemetry, like the flex sensors in the wings, the avionics suite, the RPM of the drone’s propellor, voltages all across an array of tiny motors and circuits, and more was constantly being passed to Nexus as it changed. On top of that, large amounts of raw data from the drone’s UV missile warning sensors, EW package, and other “big” sensors was compressed by the CPU and uploaded “live” when there weren’t more pressing items in the queue. Finally, the bulk of the uplink bandwidth was taken by the stream of video from the drone’s ball camera, compressed on the fly, where necessary, to fit in the uplink bandwidth, by a very clever algorithm that was one of the prides of data command, and was still forbidden to export, five years after its initial release.

The end result of this was that, as the drone shot off the launcher, it sent back very little actual video: a few high-resolution frames, and and two orders of magnitude more low-resolution ones, but Nexus could backconstruct most of the missing video from them.

Nexus couldn’t do this often, of course. If he spent the kind of exorbitant processing power needed to convert the video into a 3D model of the environment and dynamically fill in the details with a million other records, satellite photos, building codes, and web images on every drone, he would need a lot more servers than he currently had. He could spare a little special treatment for Alpha Force, though. He’d be asking them to turn on their comrades and risk their lives to betray their friends in a month or two, and there was nothing he could to to repay that, but he could at least make a start.

The drone pulled up and right, making a climbing turn over the buildings on the right side of the street and flying roughly away from the enemy positions while Nexus gained a bit of airspeed. Rather than controlling the drone directly, which would be tricky given the signal delay, and impossible given the potentially faulty connection, Nexus was passing a stream of waypoints to the drone, which it was trying to fly as well as it could. The drone could also problem-solve on a higher level to fly congested routes automatically or patrol areas, even execute some evasive maneuvers, but not as well as Nexus could, so Nexus just fed it a route and let the drone focus on maintaining on path.

After about a half-minute of turns and climbing, Nexus decided that the drone was high enough and fast enough, and sent it off towards the enemy positions, watching as the ball camera spun back and forth, sending back full-resolution images to him every second or so, which he wove into a much more detailed model of the combat environment, and passed on to Kayora, and the TFA analysts at Fort Bragg.

About a minute later, the drone had completed a wide survey turn around Kayora’s position, and checked a lot of Nexus’s current plan for Leighton’s team’s exfil route in the process, but hadn’t yet found where the enemy was hiding their Tunguska. Some of the narrower streets with higher buildings had been occluded from the drone’s view as it passed, but that played both ways: if the enemy hid their AA guns somewhere where it couldn’t be seen from the sky, it’d have a hard time shooting at the sky too. Nexus was just fiddling with the question of whether he should sent the drone towards the hospital and risk suggesting their primary objective to the enemy when he got a ping from one of the missile warning sensors.

The drone automatically sent him the full raw data from the missile warning system. Instantly, it was evident that it was MANPADS. That meant only a couple seconds to impact. Not that time particularly mattered to Nexus. There was always a tradeoff between time and processing power. Here, he was about to spend processing power to make time.

The flickering UV emissions of a rocket engine, captured the second it ignited by the small camera embedded in the hull of the drone danced in Nexus’s vision. The nearest server, four nations away, which he was using to run the drone flight, didn’t have the specs for MANPADS rockets on it. He set about evading the missile while he fetched them from a server in Congreveopia.

He ordered the UAV down into a turning dive and put it between the sun and the missile, then rolled out, upside down, flying directly at the missile. The results came back. Probably something Russian. From the turn it did to follow the drone, he knew it was modern too. It was aiming at where the drone was going to be, not where it was right now. Nexus killed the engine and shoved the drone back down towards the ground, this time pulling “up” to do that from its inverted flight position. Now he was tracking the missile with the ball camera, looking upwards at it as it raced towards the drone —an eternity as Nexus carefully checked the luminosity and the position of the missile against the speed of the drone, the angle of the drone, and the angle of the ball camera, and Nexus metaphorically breathed a sigh of relief; the missile was heading towards the sun. He had lost it.

The relief was short-lived, as two new rockets cropped up almost as soon as Nexus had leveled out the drone. Still no sign of the Tunguska. He’d spent about half his altitude and most of his excess airspeed evading the first missile, and these were coming from opposite directions. He couldn’t lose both of them in the sun. He killed the engine and dove for the ground. He’d be risking hitting a power line or signpost or something to try running through the city streets with a weak connection to the drone, but it wouldn’t be any more hazardous than getting hit by two Iglas. The missiles continued to follow the drone. Nexus wasn’t diving fast enough. He wouldn’t hit the buildings before the missiles hit the drone. He pulled up and glided for the nearer missile, timing his bleed-off of airspeed from the dive. Half a second away, he hit optimal maneuvering speed and dived again. The missile followed. Nexus caught half a frame of explosion from the camera, then lost most of the signal as the battery voltage plunged to a tenth of its original level. The CPU rerouted power —it helped that the engine was off— and Nexus picked up the telemetry again. The ball camera wouldn’t swivel, the drone was in a downwards spin, which was not helped by the loss of control to the left aileron and the fact that the rudder was locked in the full right position. Also, most of the internal electronics were damaged or destroyed, and the information he was getting back from them was useless. Idly, Nexus reverse-engineered the paths of the six pieces of shrapnel from the missile’s fragmentation warhead that had taken out most of the drone’s capabilities. Then Nexus got an alert ping from a warning sensor whose video he could no longer view as it re-acquired the third missile and estimated it to be a mere twenty meters away. Then the signal from the drone vanished entirely.

“Hope you got the intel you need,” said Nexus as he passed the last of the recon data to Kayora. “Because I don’t think we’re going to be using that drone again.”

[Hurtful Thoughts]

When Nexus started streaming good data from buzzer-two, Kayora prioritized bandwidth to pick up and store anything that could remotely be relevant. She was constantly cross-referencing it against the sentinel-constellation data to narrow their respective locations down to several points, then establishing probabilities, and forming her own independent map in her head using her own dead-reckoning of their trip in the sewers to mark where they saw the truck parked over the manhole. It was indeed in an alley, a good blindspot to hide something important in need of re-arming, and the Tunguska ha just engaged several aircraft... other anti-air assets had just spent resources trying to put-down a drone, and would seen be looking for a way to replenish and reconsolidate those assets.

<Nexus, we're going to move soon. Wish us luck finding those guns before they find us, yeah?>

Looking through her sights, she was quickly estimating sizes and distances to various landmarks, this combined with rough bearings down to tens of milliradians gave her a pretty good idea of where every known asset was, the ones seen each only from singular independent sources. Her rapid ability to compile all this data without any outside intervention or aid was likely a marvelous fluke of genetics and constant conditioning. Right now she was hoping it'd be enough to save Koopa, and the general. "Ralph, get your rifle up here and take Koopa's. Soon as I'm nearly done with this intel we're moving. Got an idea where to find those Ackies." she grunted sternly as she keyed her throat-mic.

Ralph hopped over Koopa's body, trying not to disturb Oreo's hard lifesaving-work as he gingerly took the Lietenant's rifle and hefted the tonfa-esque Hurti monstrosity of a firearm through the hole up to Kayora before action-checking the remnant R21... it's been six months since he's had to use one of these to save his own ass, and this was six months too soon to be doing it again.

"Looks like you'll be getting your wish after all, Oreo. The lady says it's time we move our butts and lay some hurt on these rebs." He chided, then nodded, indicating Koopa's condition, "Is he fit to move?"

Topside, Kayora was giving Ralph's LAR a dry function-test with bayonets affixed before loading a fresh mag and chambering one round hot. One gun in each hand, she nodded with a smile at the lamia-sniper. "Ladies first."

[Hurtful Thoughts]

[posting on behalf of DeN]

Even as the Namiens boarded the elevator, Vlad was quietly cussing to himself as the Platinum-troopers relayed that exfiltration was likely to be more lengthy and complicated than originally planned. Shinji was still on-point as he lifted the elevator maintenance-hatch and crawled-up, scoped-out things topside while the rest of the team piled-up on the top of the 'vater. Vlad went through all the buttons, drew a red smiley-face on the opposing wall, and left a present for anyone walking-in to stop their 'distraction' from making noise by going floor by floor. He then took Falcon's hand and was pulled up to where his squad-mates were hiding.

The present, of course, was a c-rat can hung by its lid on one of the hand-rails with a few pistol-rounds in it. Pure souvenir-bait.

The best defense to walking knowingly into a trap? Set your own, and do it one better.