Prologue: Project ORION (Vietnam – 1969)
Fourteen years.
Any diplomat or political savvy could put that estimate on the duration of the bloody conflict.
It was nearly as old as Ciciley Livingston, an 18-year-old draftee and one of the few females to serve in field combat. In less than a year, she climbed up to the rank of lieutenant, much courtesy due to her credentials with S.H.I.E.L.D. and a personal recommendation by Peggy Carter.
Carter, as the few close to Ciciley knew, was once an associate and close friend of Ciciley's mother, Chrissy Livingston, who had been classified as "M.I.A." for as long as her daughter's been alive.
Agent Carter saw much of herself in the young lieutenant.
Her fierce determination, focus on duty, and courage convinced her that she was fit to be enlisted for a special squadron of agents stationed in Cambodia under the project codename "Orion."
The resources of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the government led both to believe a Soviet-Hydra faction – that managed to escape under the radar – had been conducting experimental research, replacing the Tesseract-powered weaponry from World War II that would in turn supply artilleries to the Vietcong. "A terrifying breakthrough that could turn the tide of the war" was how President Lyndon B. Johnson described the scenario.
As commanding officer of her squadron, Ciciley received her intel on the location of the Hydra base that pinpointed it on the border of Cambodia and North Vietnam.
She led a proud squadron consisted predominantly of Howling Commando veterans like Isadore "Izzy" Cohen, Dino Manelli, and Robert "Rebel" Ralston. The only new recruits to the squad were Elijah "Eli" Simms, a young African American man just a year older than Ciciley and yet to see combat, and Martin "Marty" Brooks, a cocky, male- chauvinistic Italian American in his mid-twenties who Ciciley trusted as far as she could throw him.
The unit arrived to the location at nightfall, keeping themselves hidden behind a ridge some distance from the base heavily guarded by Vietnamese soldiers. They speculated how to infiltrate the base without being seen – everyone except for Brooks.
"Hey, fellas, I was thinkin' about our squad name," he said in his thick New York accent. "Since 'Howlin' Commandoes' has gotten too old and tired, I thought maybe—"
"Get your head outta yer butt and back in the game, Brooks!" Ciciley sneered.
"Hey, Livingston, ya may be squad leader but ya ain't boss of me!" Brooks argued. "I say we just go in, guns blazin', and wipe these rice-pickers off the face of the earth!"
"Are you insane, mate?!" The Aussie Izzy darted his steely blue eyes in Brooks' general direction. "Have you forgotten there's a Hydra terrorist in there?! One slip and we could send the entire Vietcong on our tails in a heartbeat!"
Brooks puffed out his chest. "Ain't no Vietcong that scares me."
"Hey, boss," Ciciley heard the southern Ralston addressing her. "The kid's a bit shaky." He gestured to Simms, whose breathing became unsteadily, clutching his rifle gun with his head hung low.
Detecting this, Ciciley calmly instructed the young cadet, "Easy, Simms. Breathe. Take it slow."
Heeding her advice, he found himself turning a bit more collected.
"You got someone waiting for you back home, kid?" She smiled from calling him that, regardless of him being older than she was. A part of her liked him for being so innocent in all this war while also pitying him; he had only been deployed for a month and hardly got his hands bloodied.
"My fiancée," Simms confirmed. "I proposed before the day I shipped out."
Brooks condescendingly snorted. "Dumb move, kid. Left your girl at home worried sick about your sorry butt every day, wonderin' if ya ever come back."
"Takes a guy courage to step up like that, Brooks," Manelli boldly confronted his fellow New Yorker. "Most guys chicken out 'cause they think the way you do."
Ciciley stifled a snicker that didn't go unnoticed by Brooks.
"A man who proposes before being shipped out is a man with good faith," Izzy praised to one "Amen" supplied by Ciciley.
"You goons say whatever ya want," Brooks grumbled. "That broad of his is doomed into an early heart attack. That is, if he doesn't die first…on the battlefield."
"Hey, I'm not gonna take that from you, Brooks!" Simms roared.
"Say that again!"
The two infuriated men rose up, charging at each other.
Had it not been for the interference of Ralston and Manelli, holding them back, the words would have turned to blows.
"Cut it out! I've got a plan." Ciciley alerted, returning focus to the base. "We take out the outer defenses through stealth, that way we can catch the inner defenses off guard once we bust in. If they don't know what's happening outside, we have a better shot at catching them with their pants down inside."
Simms and the veteran Howlers verbally concurred with the genius plan.
Brooks remained mute (not that his opinion mattered to Ciciley).
"Got us a few knick-knacks to make sure this goes off without a hitch," Izzy said, turning to a gadget-filled duffel bag. "Taser arrows and a bow to fire 'em; a cough box – my own invention to simulate coughing that'll lure in the target and explode into a smoke bomb; and an EMP switch that's sure to black out those two towers by the gate."
Ciciley was like a kid at a toy store, ogling over Izzy's gadgets.
Gathering them with her Bowie knife, she tied her long raven hair into a ponytail and used a crimson handkerchief as a headband.
"There's one tiny detail I forgot to mention in this plan," she told her men. "I'm going in alone." She was already over the ridge, heading into action, before Simms, Brooks, or the Howlers could have said a word.
Brooks shook his head, clicking his tongue. "Dumb broad just signed her death certificate."
He soon ended up eating those criticizing words as he, alongside Simms and the Howlers, watched the teenaged soldier go to work.
She first used the EMP switch to take out the spotlights and then fired the taser arrows with pinpoint accuracy at the soldiers in the towers, striking them in the chest and sending them into a deadly seizure. With the area darkened, the other Vietcong soldiers were left baffled and blinded, only a few wielding flashlights to see.
Ciciley proceeded to use the cough box to lure the majority of ground soldiers toward the side of the complex. Once the box unleashed the smoke, clouding their vision and making them cough, she sliced each of their throats, executing them instantly.
The last two remaining guards, positioned at the base door, heard the commotion.
One went around the corner to check it out; however, the other soon witnessed his body collapse from the corner with a taser arrow to his chest. His watch dropped in investigating the body, failing to spot Ciciley sneaking up from behind and burying her Bowie knife deep within his back, its tip protruding from his front.
"Whoa!" An astonished Simms exclaimed over the young woman's prowess.
"I see now why Carter enlisted this one," Ralston said. "One tough lil' minx!"
From the distant ridge, he detected Ciciley making an unknown gesture; only through his binoculars did he realize she had signaled for her comrades to advance.
They regrouped near the base door and stormed in, gunning down the resistance that waited. The forces within the upper level, housing office space and winding corridors, was surprisingly minimal. Short work was made by the squadron in mere minutes of infiltration.
"That was way too easy," Manelli stated for the record.
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, old man," Brooks refuted.
"And don't call me 'old man,' you horse's…!"
"Alright, alright," Ciciley caught their attention. "You Howlers keep an eye on the entrance. Brooks and Simms, you're with me. We're gonna do reconnaissance downstairs. If we're actually walking into a trap, I wanna make sure I got backup just in case."
On this command, the squadron split into their groups.
Ciciley, Brooks, and Simms headed down to the lower level, discovering a bigger portion of the base resembling more of a warehouse, complete with a giant Hydra insignia engraved on the far wall.
White-walled labs were situated at adjacent sides with open ceilings to expose the different experimentations that took place. Rows of operating tables were between them, occupied by decayed human bodies. No personnel was currently present; only their unfinished and abandoned work remained.
Simms vomited when sighting one human test subject with its chest cavity exposed. Neither Ciciley nor even Brooks judged his gut reaction, being just as revolted from the disturbing display.
"What kind of sick freak show did these Nazis cook up in here," Brooks wondered aloud.
Ciciley wandered into one of the laboratories. Inside, she spotted a Vita-Ray Chamber – the same mechanism that transformed Steve Rogers into Captain America in the 1940s – and a desk littered with photographs of a test subject deformed by whatever experiment he was involved with.
"Hey, Lieutenant! You better check this out!"
She was called out of the lab by Brooks when he and Simms happened upon one body on an operating table that was large, muscular, and blue-skinned.
"They must've kept this one in cold storage too long," Brooks presumed.
"Could be alien," Simms said.
Brooks scoffed. "Last I checked, men from space ain't big and blue, genius."
"Let's just forget about him and start setting up the C4 charges," Ciciley ordered. "Let's blow this odditorium back to Hell where it came from."
Simms and Brooks carried out her command.
She was on the verge on assisting them before her attention was drawn to yet another laboratory. This one contained a six-foot steel cryogenic chamber and another desk littered with photographs of a redheaded woman out of the 1940s. But it was the chamber that caught Ciciley's eye first and foremost, luring her hypnotically towards it.
Unfortunately, due to her short stature, she couldn't look through the viewport to see whatever/whoever was inside.
She turned to find something sturdy to stand on.
Her cold blue eyes met with the barrel of a handgun.
Its owner was a tall bald man with a dark goatee, adorned in a beige Soviet Union uniform pinned with several medals and Hydra pins.
Viktor Uvarov.
The very Russian Hydra agent they were sent after.
Outside the laboratory, Brooks and Simms had been detained, also held at gunpoint by Vietnamese soldiers.
"Добро пожаловать в ад, женщина," Viktor hissed in his Russian tongue.