Starkiller reporting – mission failed. Chapter two – MIB.
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Chapter two ready. Hope you enjoyed the story so far.
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… Forest. A beautiful landscape, filled with various trees and various indigenous life forms, such as animals. It was warm, the sun smiled upon the forest below, and nothing seemed to break the tranquility of it. It was a place, where one could find peace, to escape from rushes of the big city for a while…
But then, something happened. Hundreds of birds lifted in the air from their nests and flew away in panic. Something seemed to scare them. Several moments after all the animals ran away back into their holes, searching for shelter. It was a sign, the animals knew that something was about to become wrong.
The next moment the air was pierced with a terrible shriek of a falling aircraft, and an unidentified object fell to the ground at great speed, easily smashing through trees and leaving a burned and broken tree-line behind.
Finally, the wild fall has come to an end. The ship that came from the sky looked badly damaged, but it could have been far worse. Any other ship would have been damaged beyond repair in such an uncontrollable fall, but "Rogue shadow" was made tougher than it looks. Plus, its master did his best to minimize the damage the ship received. After all, it was their only ticket out of here.
With a hiss, the emergency hatch opened, and two beings crawled out of there. They were very dizzy from the crash-landing they just had. And quite amazed they had survived.
"C'mon master, let me help you out of here… Easy now." PROXY was trying to help Starkiller get out of the hatch, he had trouble standing on his two feet, being shaken. His head was bleeding, he hit it when the impact with the ground came.
"Ouch my ached head… PROXY, where are we?" Starkiller asked while trying to stop the bleeding with a piece of cloth. He barely kept himself together, his Force powers were exhausted, when he saved the ship.
"I do not know, master. Wherever we are, this system is not in any imperial astronavigation charts. But it is inhabited, however. During our rather rapid descent I noticed some cities. Perhaps there we could find refuge…" the droid replied, and suddenly looked away in another direction.
"What is it, PROXY?" Starkiller asked with suspicion.
"My sensors indicate some unusual readings, master. Intercepting comm chat…" the droid replied, and with a buzz, his vocoder switched to replaying the recorded messages:
"… Chhhh… Troops, spread out … chhhh … surround the area … chhhh … do not let anything escape … chhhh … message ended. Looks like we're in trouble, master." The droid made a conclusion after repeating the message.
"Hold on, maybe they will help or something. We should wait." Starkiller replied. He knew that the percentage of probability that the troops are friendly is low, but he was too weak to attempt to run away on his own right now…
"As you wish, master… This is not going to end well…" the droid replied pessimistically, as they waited…
…In less than 10 minutes they heard some noises in the bushes. It made both Starkiller and PROXY stand up and make a few careful steps in the direction of the noise. Soon, out of the bush, three soldiers appeared. They were wearing camo-suits, Kevlar ballistic jackets and their faces were unseen, covered with some sort of complex targeting systems. Before anyone could have said a thing the leader of the group pointed at the newcomers and shouted:
"Blast them!"
Starkiller activated his lightsaber when he heard that, and the soldiers aimed and fired. Only reflex saved him this time, as he jumped and hid behind a stone, evading the bullets. The droid was not as quick, so he received a handful of hits. Most ricocheted, but several managed to penetrated the plating, doing some minor damage.
"Kinetic bullets! I can't believe anyone still uses that old junk!" he said and switched off his saber. It was useless against that type of ammo.
"Apparently, they still do, and … they are coming this way…" the droid replied.
"Suppressive fire! Don't let those damn aliens escape!" they heard the enemy commander shouting.
"We have to get out of here, now…" Starkiller replied, and fled from cover. The troops fired at him all at once, but stopped, when they saw that the bullets stopped in the air I front of their target.
"What in the name of … TAKE COVER!!!" the enemy commander screamed as he dodged the rain of bullets Starkiller launched back with the Force. The troops, however, managed to take cover, only few of them were hit, and, even so, protected by their ballistic jackets.
"Run for it, PROXY!!!" Starkiller screamed as he turned around, and ran into the woods, followed by his mechanical companion. The troops opened fire, but only managed to hit PROXY a few times before Starkiller raised a cloud of dust, sand and rubble to thwart their aim.
"Damn it, the aliens have escaped." The officer stated.
"Should we go after them, sir?" one of the troops asked.
"No, they're useless to us… But their ship is the real prize around here. Call for reinforcements and helicopters. I smell my big promotion." The officer replied, as one of his troops went manning the radio station to call for heavy transport helicopters and additional reinforcements to secure the area…
… Three days earlier... Tokyo. Shinjuku district. Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building …
Heavy steps were echoing in the computer room, where only tapping of the computer keys usually was breaking the silence. Executive officer Yamaki was slowly moving across the main computer room, observing his underlings' work and frequently giving commands.
Mitsuo Yamaki was the leader of a government covert organization known as Hypnos. It was his responsibility to monitor electronic communications of half the Earth for the Japanese government. Because of the legal issues of violating privacy, Hypnos was kept secret from the public. However, due to the appearance of sentient rogue computer programs in the real world, also known as Digimon to the public and as 'wild ones' to the operatives of Hypnos, its primary objective became the extermination of these … programs, the embodiments of chaos and disorder, a danger to humanity, and mere faulty programs.
Suddenly one of the technicians, who were operating the computers, asked:
"Sir, we have an incoming message of highest priority. Should I put it on?"
Yamaki sighed when he heard that. He was waiting this call for several days now, a call from the superiors on the progress with the current situation. And this wasn't going to be an easy talk.
"Yes, go on." He said wearily.
"Patching it through…" the technician replied as he pressed several more buttons, and a semi-holographic screen appeared in the center of the room. Soon an image appeared on the screen - it was his boss, an elderly man with a sharp and strict face, wearing glasses. His glare was piercing.
"Executive Yamaki, pleased to see you. I would like to heat report about the situation in the sector under your control." The chairman went directly to the point.
"The situation is stable, chairman. All digimon trying to appear in our world are being located and destroyed via special programs named Tracer and Yuggoth. Everything is under my personal control." Yamaki replied confidently.
"Yes, I expected as much. But I am more interested on your progress with the wild ones that managed to escape destruction… Were they … been dealt with?" the serious voice inquired. Yamaki swallowed, but answered, after small hesitation:
"We are working on that, sir. Their movements are closely monitored, and we have the situation under control." He said and swallowed again. His boss was clearly displeased.
"We have them monitored… everything is under control… For several months you've been telling me the same old story. To put it plainly, to me it looks like no progress has been made so far to exterminate this thread once and for all. As for your 'under control', what would you say about this?" the chairman inquired and the next moment a piece of an article from a local news paper appeared, with a photo of a red dinosaur-like digimon on its front page. Yamaki had nothing to say.
"Some control you show, executive Yamaki. If the press knows about it, that means everyone knows about it, or will soon enough. Do you know what panic it could create if this knowledge will be poured into public?" the chairman asked again. Yamaki started to flick open and close his Zippo lighter – he was becoming nervous.
"This newspaper has to be silenced…" he said angrily.
"Don't bother, it was already done for you, the paper never reached the printing press, and I am tired of doing YOUR job for you, but we both know that is not the real thread. The three wild ones that still roam out there are the problem. While they exist, such articles will keep appearing, and we can't keep it hidden for long." The chairman said wearily and whipped his forehead with a handkerchief.
"What do you expect me to do? Once they have materialized here there is little we can do, besides monitoring their progress, we do not have any programs capable of deleting them at this stage. And I can't send my own operatives to their death trying to fight them conventionally." Yamaki protested.
"Then invent a program that would be able to vanquish them! That's why you're the head of the computer research and security branch of our organization. However, I noticed a long time ago your lack of resolve to use force when needed. That's why I have made a decision to relieve you of the responsibility for the security of the Tokyo sector, so that you would be able to focus on your research." The chairman replied heavily.
"Who do you entrust with the responsibility then?" Yamaki inquired sourly.
"The responsibility would be given to our military branch known as the "Black watch" and its executive officer. Am I right, Mr. Smith?" the chairman asked and in a few seconds another screen appeared before Yamaki. Unlike the chairman, executive Smith had a habit of hiding his face in the shadows, with only his glasses gleaming in the light of a monitor.
"Quite correct. I assure you that we will succeed where executive Yamaki, unfortunately, failed so miserably." This was a stab towards Yamaki. They were not on good terms with each other.
"Yes, I am pleased to see you too, executive Smith. Though, chairman, I must ask, why have you entrusted them for the task of keeping everything under control? You might as well roll the tanks onto the streets.
"That is unlikely. While any movements of the armed forces are monitored by our worthless press, none of them even knows of the existence of the "Black watch". And few who tried to discover the truth died of natural causes. We operate much more subtly." Smith replied with a sly intonation. Yamaki shivered a bit. The "Black watch" was famous for getting rid of any witnesses of their activities.
"Yes. You see, executive Yamaki, that is why I tasked them. They know how to get results, a trait that, I hope, you will also gain in the future. I give you one month to come up with a program capable of deleting ANY bio-emerged wild ones, and in large scales too. When the D-project will be complete, I believe there would be quite a few of them trying to break in here. You are to provide executive Smith with all the data you have on the current targets. Signing off…" the chairman said and his screen turned off.
"Send all available data through a secured link…" Yamaki ordered and in a few seconds executive Smith was already looking through it.
"Hmm, three digimon … accompanied by three children… Interesting. Battle parameters and recordings… Hmm… This might be a problem…" he nodded while looking through the data.
"What are you planning to do?" Yamaki asked with a bit of irony.
"I would require some time to devise a strategy. Eventually, I will succeed. They will be eliminated." Smith replied confidently.
"And what about the children?" Yamaki suddenly asked.
"What about them?" Smith inquired with a bit of amazement.
"What are you going to do with them?" Yamaki insisted. A pause was held for several seconds.
"They are to be captured, if at all possible. I'd rather think about that after I find a solution to our run-away program vermin." The answer came and the next second the second screen was shut down. Yamaki closed his lighter and almost squished it in his hand. He was angry, angry and embarrassed. He was made looking ineffective and incompetent before his subordinates.
"Mr. Yamaki, sir, are you alright?" Reika Ootori, his trusted chief system operator, asked with a concerned voice.
"Keep working, Mrs. Ootori. I have some urgent matters to attend to…" Yamaki grumped, and left the room.
"Wow, our chief was just demoted, can you believe that?"
"Hardly, I wonder how anyone could expect us to be pushing harder than he does…"
"Stop this chatter. What we heard was said not only to the chief, but to all of us. We are not working hard enough, and this was the failure not of one man, but of all of us. Keep working!" Reika's strict voice made everyone shut up and get back to work…
…After managing to escape pursuit, Starkiller and PROXY decided to go back to their ship, to see what was going on over there. It was to their amazement that the place was already secured by a couple of hundred of troops. They all wore camouflage and bore strange badges. White eye on the black background – Starkiller immediately made a conclusion that these were no rank and file troops, neither were those who tried to kill him earlier.
"Master, we cannot fight all of them at once, there are too many, and you're still too weak from the crash." The droid said with worry.
"I know, let's see what they are doing…" Starkiller replied as they started to watch from a hidden spot.
The ship appeared to be covered by a large camo-net. The troops were preparing some sort of magnetic grapplers, it took them about an hour to prepare all of them. Then, with a recognizable sound, around 8 helicopters appeared from the sky. They were no ordinary helicopters, but those designed to lift very heavy objects. In less than ten minutes the soldiers below attached the grapplers to the metallic cables hanging from the helicopters.
"There's no way such primitive aircraft could lift my ship off the ground…" Starkiller thought confidently. It was to his amazement when his ship started to levitate from the air. A few moments later the ship was taken away, and the troops were getting back into their vehicles – the black vans, to return to base.
"PROXY, can you place a tracking beacon on one of the trucks?" Starkiller asked.
"One moment…" the droid replied and aimed at one of the trucks with his forearm. It shot a small bug-like beacon, which crawled and hid itself inside…
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Another chapter done. The next one will be ready soon.