DISCLAIMER: All characters and concepts from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy; all characters, creatures, locations and concepts from 'Jagged Alliance 2' belong to Strategy First and/or TalonSoft and/or SirTech; I'm just borrowing their toys for a while, with no intent to profit from that use.
However, all original characters, creatures, and situations are entirely mine and may not be used without permission or acknowledgement. All canon-fanatics should be aware that I have done a great deal of 'fleshing out' with regards to the JA2 story and characters, including giving Arulco a context (both in terms of geopolitics and my own take on the Buffyverse) instead of leaving it in its original little vacuum. :-P
WARNING: Rated R (as a minimum) - contains wartime violence, coarse language, and possibly sexual situations, depending on whether I actually write the details of that side of things and find the nerve to post the result, or simply hint at things and leave the rest to your no-doubt fertile imaginations. :-P
(In deference to the mores and Mods of , while there may be some strong innuendo (waves to Fox!), any material that approaches actual intimate activity will be included only in the version posted at the XanderZone. :-P)
DISTRIBUTION: XanderZone, , BearPit Forums - others only by request.
SYMBOLOGY KEY: ((radio traffic)), ::translated::
DUST OF THE ARENA - Prelude
17:23, FRIDAY FEBRUARY 5, 1999, LIMA (00:23/06-02-99 ZULU)
ELEVEN KILOMETRES SOUTH-SOUTH-EAST OF REBEL-HELD DRASSEN
KINGDOM OF ARULCO
Earth fountained skywards in an ear-shattering blast.
Lieutenant Ernesto Calderon cringed as dirt and stones and leaf-litter rained down on him and his radioman, sparing the barest hint of a thought to be thankful that they'd found even so meagre a piece of cover as this shallow hollow they were now sprawled in; his only machine-gun team had been less fortunate, taking the full force of that rocket from less than a metre away, and what was left of them wasn't recognisably human. Every iota of his conscious mind and attention, though, was bent on the radio he was currently shouting into – and the fellow on the other end of the radio link. "::Bravo Five, I say again, I am taking heavy fire, estimate platoon-strength with heavy weapons. These spooks are fucking close, sir! Request immediate gunship support two kilometres north-east of Waypoint SINGER, over!::"
(("::Bravo One-Five, copy your request – wait one, over.::"))
Calderon blinked at the handset for a moment, then shot his radioman a bewildered look. "::Jesus, Julio, d'you believe this shit? The fucker put me on hold!::"
"::Just as long as he's not playing 'Singing in the Rain' over the net,::" the corporal quipped shakily, firing a couple of bursts towards the nearest rebel muzzle-flash. He snarled a curse and cringed deeper into the hollow as streams of red tracer came back towards him, ripping past overhead with a godawful cra-cra-crackle. "::I thought the spooks weren't supposed to have heavy weapons, sir? I already count two MGs – not mention that fucking rocket-launcher!::"
"::What, you expect Intelligence to actually know its ass from a hole in the ground? How long have you been in the army, anyway?::"
Julio Moncada glanced at his commander to offer a sarcastic rejoinder... and a bullet tore off the top half of his face. Gore and other materials splashed everywhere, including in Calderon's face.
Recoiling from the wreckage that had been an almost-friend half a second before, Calderon hastily wiped the man's blood and brains out of his eyes and mouth and raised his head a fraction to see where the hell that had come from. Shit! "::Bravo Five, Bravo Five, they're in our flank, repeat they've got us flanked, where the fuck are those gunships?::"
(("::Bravo One-Five, gunship flight, callsign Tiger Zero-Three, ETA your position now seven minutes -"::))
"::We don't have seven minutes!::" Calderon screamed into the handset. Motion in the trees to his platoon's right caught his eye, and for the first time he saw the rebels who had flanked his platoon: only four or five of them, clad in camouflage uniforms of an unfamiliar (and thus foreign) pattern, but they were moving with professional speed and precision, their shooting steady and aimed. "::Oh, fuck this!::" he snarled, tossing away the mike; shouldering his HK33 for the first time in the engagement, he fired three quick rounds towards the nearest of the rebel troopers. The man jerked and dropped from sight, his shrieks of pain making it clear that at least one of the lieutenant's shots had found its place.
Don't like it when it's not all going your way, do you, you spook bastards? the lieutenant thought savagely, turning his sights on the next man.
Only it wasn't a man.
For a moment that seemed to last an eternity, Calderon's eyes locked with the oncoming rebel trooper's. They were blue eyes, eyes that belonged to no native Arulcan – especially not when framed by tanned Caucasian skin and wisps of long blonde hair that had escaped from beneath a US-pattern Kevlar helmet.
A woman? Calderon gaped.
The moment ended. The 'rebel' dropped behind a fold in the terrain.
What the hell? How the hell did a gringo woman end up fighting for the Cordonas? Calderon wondered wildly.
He never heard the rocket that killed him.
- - - - - - - -
Charlene Higgens, callsign 'Raven', kept the officer's body in her sights as she approached, but it was mere reflex professionalism. Her ambush team's only Carl Gustav team had been set up on the long-arm of the L, the one which had fired first, and Steve Bornell had obviously decided that the radio-aerial made a good target-reference point for his third round. The radioman's body had taken most of the blast and been blown to scattered, gory pieces; tossed into the air like a Cabbage Patch Doll by the explosion, the FRA lieutenant had landed on his back some five metres behind the impact point, and the front of his head and torso were gone, as if smashed in by God's own fist. Wincing at the mess – even after her six years in LAPD SWAT's élite D Platoon, that was a sight to turn the stomach – she lowered her carbine and raised a thumb to her back-up man. "Clear!"
"That's all of 'em," 'Wolf' Sanderson agreed from a few metres behind her. "Nothin' left but funerals here."
Raven sagged on her haunches and let out a long breath. Wolf's gallows comment was an exaggeration – a pair of stunned-looking FRA grunts were stumbling into the jungle with their hands interlocked behind their heads while Blood and Dmitri held their rifles on them, and Fox was working fast to patch up a man who'd taken two rounds in the guts – but it was close enough. Her scratch ambush party, barely fifteen strong, had all but annihilated an entire FRA platoon. "How's Malice?"
"Yelping like a kicked dog," the chunky mechanic snorted. "Took one in the arm - didn't hit bone, Fox says he'll be okay."
The blonde woman nodded absently and lifted one hand to her radio headset. "Ice, anybody hurt on your end?"
(("We're all cool, dude.")) Ice Williams was, as always, so laidback that he was almost unconscious - perhaps it was a product of his growing up in Malibu. (("Looks like the Canuck's little booboo's the only ding anybody got."))
"GUNSHIPS!" screamed another trooper.
"Shit!" Raven hissed, snatching up her carbine again. "EVERYBODY UNDER COVER, NOW!"
- - - - - - - -
A mile and a half to the south and a thousand feet above the jungle canopy, a pair of Mi-35M Hind gunships in FARA livery came to a hover, sweeping the ambush-site with their electro-optical sights to sort out what was going on. Refitted by the French some three years before, these gunships had far better avionics and sensors than many of their Eastern Bloc cousins, and they carried modern Western anti-tank missiles to boot, but in a situation like this, their old-style rocket pods and YakB 12.7mm gatling guns would be more than ample.
Unfortunately, they couldn't see a damned thing. The rebels had melted back into the jungle as soon as they heard the rotors; even the most modern camera can't see through trees, and in the middle of a February afternoon in a country less than five degrees below the equator, thermal-imaging was out of the question.
- - - - - - - -
Raven clung to the bottom of her spider-hole, watching the government choppers over the sights of her carbine. She'd done some reading up before she came to Arulco, and she was quite happy to steer clear of those things. The Afghan mudjehadeen had dubbed them "the Devil's Chariot", and it was apt: they carried enough firepower to flatten a city block and were all but invulnerable to any weapon her people were carrying. "Stay cool, everybody," she breathed over the radio, trying to ignore the way her heart was hammering in her throat. "Wait for 'em to get bored."
The Hinds just hung there in the air, little more than olive-drab blobs at this distance, their noses waggling back and forth a little as their crews apparently tried to assess the situation on the ground.
C'mon, c'mon, give up! The guys you came to help are all dead already and you can't see any bad guys – go HOME, goddammit! Raven thought at them, as loudly as she dared.
The choppers seemed to waver in the air for a moment, and her heart almost stopped for a moment as she thought they might be about to fire... then she saw their noses swing around to the south-west and drop as they left at high speed. Letting out the breath she'd been holding, she let her head sag forward to rest against her weapon while she savoured the relief. After a few moments, she shook it off and rose to her feet. "Okay, people, saddle up! Fox, can we move that casualty?"
The brunette she'd addressed looked up from the wounded FRA conscript she'd once again knelt down beside. "We'll need a stretcher!" she called back. "I'm gonna give him some morphine and start an IV, but we need to get him back to the field-hospital stat or he's not gonna make it!"
"Right!" Raven nodded. "Dmitri, give those prisoners the folding stretcher, they can carry their buddy. Wolf, Stephen, Nails, police up all the hardware and ammo you can carry, the militia needs modern weapons. I want to be back in Drassen before dark, people, so move!"
- - - - - - - -
22:23, FEBRUARY 5, 1999, LIMA (05:23/06-02-99, ZULU)
SUB-LEVEL J, MORRIS MINERALS SILVER MINE
DRASSEN, FREE ARULCO
"::- so I say, 'Actually, I kiss your mother with this mouth!'::"
Several of the speaker's companions exchanged old-fashioned looks at hearing that punch-line, but didn't look away from the chunks of ore they were breaking up for easier loading into the skips that would take it to the surface for processing. The foreman wasn't so shy. "::Y'know, Esteban, that joke was funny the first time, and it was okay the second, but after fifteen tellings it's kind'a lost its spark.::"
"::That's just 'cause you've got no sense of humour, Vargas,::" the erstwhile comedian returned sourly. The sparse, bare light-bulbs strung overhead were enough to work by, but they were still fairly weak, and Esteban cast a large, inky shadow on the wall behind him as he turned to face the foreman. "::Y'know, you really ought to -::"
SHHHRRRRAAAA-OOOOOOOO!!
"::What the fuck?::" Esteban yelped, turning to look towards that unholy screech. It had come from down the end of the tunnel they were currently working, and it had not come from a man or any machine he could think of; it certainly did not belong in a mine. The screams of fear and horror that came after it, however, were all too human.
As unnerved as any of his men, Vargas took his radio from his belt and keyed it. "::Barres, this is Vargas, what's going on down there?::"
There was no reply over the radio, but a moment after the first sound, the men of Barres' work party came stampeding out of the tunnel-mouth, clawing and tripping over each other in their desperation to flee whatever was behind them. Barres himself was near the front of the mob, and he was utterly panicked. "::Start the elevator - we have to get out of here!::"
"::Barres, what the fuck is happening down there?::" Vargas demanded, his own alarm making the question an accusation.
"::Creatures - monsters!::" the other man babbled, the words stumbling over themselves as his men had done. "::They're coming out of the walls!::"
"::'Monsters'?::" Vargas blinked. "::Are you out of your -::"
Then the first of the creatures came out of the tunnel, and Vargas' incredulity died.
Soon after that, so did Vargas and his men.
- - - - - - - -
Almost an hour later, Corporal Len Anderson, US Army Special Forces (ret.), flipped up his night-vision goggles, shifted his M-4 carbine on its sling and knelt down to examine the mess while Stephen Rothman and Igor Dolvich covered the roughly circular nine-foot hole in the tunnel wall a few metres away. Though the chemical break-light he'd tossed to the very edge of that hole rendered everything in shades of fluorescent blue, he could easily distinguish the blood-stains on the rocky floor, which trailed all the way from where the mining crew had obviously been killed, then dragged into this side-tunnel. To be devoured at leisure, if they're right about this not being anything human. Over to one side lay an entire human arm, apparently torn off whole; the exposed bone of the ball-joint gleamed in the chem-light's muted glare. Len reached down and plucked up something else, a human skull stripped of all other flesh and tissue as if by caustic chemicals; the entire front-right third of it was gone, the bone sheared by what could only be needle-sharp teeth backed by staggeringly powerful jaws. In almost thirty years of combat experience, he'd seen every gruesome fashion of violent death and maiming imaginable - and a few he'd never have come up with on his own and would rather not have been introduced to - but even by those standards, what he was seeing now was... ghastly. Turning his head a little, he spoke to the guide in Spanish; he'd learned the language from chicano friends in his native Texas, whose dialect was far removed from the Arulcan idiom, but it was far better than appearing condescending by addressing the natives in English might have been. "::Mateo, you say Vargas radioed that he was being attacked by 'monsters'?::"
"::That's all he had time to say,::" the foreman nodded. "::After that, it was all screaming.::"
Len nodded his agreement with that smart move, swearing bitterly to himself. GodDAMN it, we don't need this right now! "::Sub-levels H and below are off-limits until further notice. Any work-parties that do come into the mine are to be escorted by armed militia at all times, and nobody moves in groups of less than five or goes into areas that aren't covered by the flood-lights.::" Standing up, he cricked his neck and added, "::Now let's get topside, pronto. I need to make a 'phone call.::"
'Cause when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro... and we need to talk to the pros in this kind'a stuff.
- - - - - - - -
08:27, SUNDAY FEBRUARY 7, 1999, LIMA (20:27/06-02-99 ZULU)
'THE PENTAGON' (NZSAS/NZPDS HEADQUARTERS)
HOBSONVILLE, NEW ZEALAND
(("shhhwoooing! Message for you, sir!"))
Even the Monty Python-ism on his e-mail warning didn't do much to amuse Lieutenant-Colonel James 'Zorro' Torrance. He'd already been here for better than two hours, and the stack of paper on his desk was just as deep as ever. Well, at least it's something to get me away from these bloody ridiculous bureaucratic hoops they keep expecting me to jump through, he noted sardonically, turning to the computer to open the new message.
His eyes widened a little when he saw who it had come from, and the contents didn't do much to assuage that amazement. When he finished reading and digested the implications, the first summary thought to mind was a simple Bloody hell!
Zorro took half a moment to consider his choices... then smiled thinly as he picked up the phone. Just as well I have specialists. "Switchboard? Put me through to Golf Troop, please."