April 5, 2021, over Russky Island, Russian Federation

"Don't give me that crap, Misuro!" Pvt. Ling shouted to be heard over the noise of the aircraft's engines. "You know what I'm talking about!"

Cpl. Misuro, sitting directly across from Ling, stared back at him impassively. He might as well have been a statue.

"How would he know anything about the intel?" Pvt. Kawashima asked Sgt. Sato.

Kawashima was relatively new to the squad. He had seen action with the unit in the push past the Yalu not long ago, so he had graduated past 'replacement/ FNG', but he was still learning, and he didn't know some of the older guys like Sato did. He had done all right in his first fight though, surviving and even helping out a few times. Three out of five didn't make the cut - two of those were dead now. Their names and faces were starting to fade out of Sato's mind, just like the old squad before the war, only they were fading faster. He just never really knew them like he did the old gang.

There weren't any more replacements in the squad yet, which suited Sato fine. If any mission required the finesse of a veteran, it was this one. A new recruit would just get in the way.

The aircraft heaved as the pilot dropped it to the deck, following the terrain unnaturally close. If he so much as sneezed… The tilt-rotor aircraft banked left and Sato found himself looking up into the night sky. Stars winked in and out as other dark shapes cut through the sky. Somewhere up there, between Sato and those stars, a different attack was playing out; satellites were moving into position over Vladivostok and its defense grid, and with any luck, they were wreaking havoc, shutting down the network and carving out the digital heart of the defenses. It was a standard maneuver these days, but that just meant it was inevitable that someone would figure out a way to stop them. He hoped tonight wasn't the night someone did, or he was as good as dead.

"Five minutes out." Captain Zhou radioed. In a heartbeat, everyone was holding up five fingers, passing the message on in case anyone missed it.

"****, Misuro. We might get shot out of the sky in the next five minutes! Just tell me what you know!" Ling shouted.

Kawashima looked at Sato plaintively. Sgt. Sato rolled his eyes behind his visor and leaned forward.

"You know the Lt. in S-2?"

Kawashima nodded. Sato nodded at him conspiratorially, and after a moment, Kawashima let out an 'ahhh' of understanding.

"Ling thinks she told him if the intel was strong or not."

"Oh," Kawashima said dumbly. How he'd missed that piece of battalion gossip Sato would never know.

"The truth is it doesn't matter; we're about to find out if the intel was worth the paper it was printed on in about three minutes." Sato said, clapping Kawahima on an armor-clad shoulder. The kid looked nervous, but that was natural. As long as he didn't freeze up, with a little luck he'd be fine.

The dim lighting in the cabin abruptly changed to amber. Everyone checked and double-checked gear in-between gut wrenching maneuvers as the transport made its final approach. Sato's HUD winked into active mode at the tap of his finger, and he switched on his night vision. The cabin lit up in his visor, now a bright, sharp world. Sato checked the infrared laser on his rifle, tapping it on, and switching the glowing beam off. Satisfied, he took one more look around the cabin and closed his eyes for the final descent.

The KT-14's engines roared and changed their pitch as the rotors flipped into the vertical position, and the pilot pitched the nose up. The transport hurtled towards the ground, decelerating wildly and crushing the men against their seats with the G's. Sato heard the distinctive pinging sounds of small arms fire hitting the hull. The armor would keep most of it out, but if they managed to put a missile on the transport, their chances of survival were slim as hell. Sato tried to keep that thought out of his head.

The G's relented and the engines relaxed. Sato opened his eyes to see the amber light blinking, and he tensed up. The aircraft leveled out, and the doors slid open. The crew blazed away into the night with their miniguns, hosing down anything that moved with a stream of hot lead. Sato was on his feet already, moving to one his door patiently as the men ahead of him took the rope, then it was his turn, and he was sliding down, holding on for dear life through thick leather gloves. He hit the ground and took off for the nearest bit of cover; a concrete barrier. Shell casings from the minigun rained down nearby, spilling across the ground. As his squad formed up around him, Sato scanned for targets. The pilots had put them down in the right spot, about fifty meters from the uplink control center. Surrounding it was a high concrete wall lined with razor wire and reinforced towers, all of which were being suppressed enthusiastically by the door gunners on each tilt-rotor. The barracks building was about one-hundred meters from Sato; a few guards had made it out before the building was raked back and forth with miniguns, only to be dropped by Sato's comrades on the ground. There were a few other buildings inside the concrete perimeter, mostly administrative and minimally staffed.

"Squad's ready." Misuro slapped him on the shoulder.

"Stack on the uplink utility door, move!" Sato heaved himself over the concrete barrier and sprinted for the uplink. His heart pounded as he skidded into place next to the door. His headset chattered with radio traffic as teams began assaulting their targets.

"Kawashima, breaching charge." Kawashima hustled to the door and stuck the small plastic explosive near the door handle, and moved back to the rear of his stack. No slip-ups; Kawashima was doing fine so far.

"Three, two, one, hit it!" Sato didn't hear the second half of 'hit it', as Kawashima detonated the charge, blowing the door off its hinges. Sato's fire team surged through the door, rifles and SMGs up. The room was lit by a few fluorescent bulbs, so Sato's visor automatically compensated and switched off night vision. There were a few empty desks and filing cabinets in the room, but no targets. Looseleaf paper floated down in the smoke, thrown up by the explosion.

"Clear!"

Sato's team moved up to the next door as the second team filed into the room. Sato checked the knob; unlocked, threw the door open and charged through, into a stairwell. So far, the schematics had been right. Moving methodically down the stairs, he kept his rifle trained downwards as he moved. Two flights of stairs, and they had reached the bottom, and a pretty solid door with warnings written in Cyrillic lettering all over it. According to the schematics they'd had, it would open into the control room; an emergency exit. The profusion of warnings on the door made Sato optimistic. He keyed his mic as his men took up positions at the door and started fitting it with explosives.

"Two, Red31 is set on the control room emergency exit."

It took a moment before Plt. Sgt Katsuo replied, "Copy that, 31. Standby."

The wait stretched on for an eternity, as Sato's squad waited for the other control room teams to get set. They had drawn a relatively easy approach; an unused emergency escape access door. The other teams were working their way through the main and secondary entrance, where there would be some personnel to work through. Sato doubted they would offer much resistance, but it would still slow those teams down. He listened intently to his radio, idly tracking the battle as he could while listening for the other teams. The perimeter was almost entirely secure; there were just a few holdouts in some of the towers to clean out. The buildings inside the compound were cleared, and the battalion was already moving into the second phase of the operation: bracing for counter-attack.

The other control-room teams checked in, and Sato's squad tensed up again. The control room had two levels to it, and a wide floor plan. At this point it would be the most heavily guarded room in the complex, so the attack plan called for three squads to take it down.

"Control room teams, execute on three, one, two, three!" Kawashima blew the door inwards in a flash of fire and smoke.

Misuro's fire team charged in first, followed closely by Sato and his own team. Sato and his team hugged the right-hand wall and scrambled up a flight of stairs as gunfire erupted across the room. Matusi was on point up the stairs, blasting a guard at the top with a three-round burst that ripped right through the man's vest and toppled him over.

Sato was in the number two spot, so when Matsui reached the top of the stairs and turned right along the catwalk, he swung left and scanned for targets. Computer consoles were spread around the upper level, mostly unmanned. A few technicians hid behind their consoles, weapons all but forgotten. At the far end though, a guard leaned around one console, Kalashnikov up. Sato slowed his step for a heartbeat as he double-tapped his trigger and sent two rounds ripping into the man's shoulder and his neck, sending up a spray of blood as the man went down, firing wildly as he fell.

The technicians practically fell over themselves surrendering. By the time Sato was halfway to the corner he was headed to, the firing had already petered out. The uplink security force hadn't been anywhere near ready for the attack. The attack had been a classic uplink-grab with a new twist, something to do with an EMP and stealth air attack, executed moments before the air transports entered detection range. The details weren't important, but they had been lucky. Even the most optimistic estimates hadn't put the chances of the air transports making it through Vladivostok's defense grid above twenty percent. But they had, with no snags that Sato knew of. So far the mission was going shockingly well. The control room was filled with Tiger Brigade soldiers, dead guards, and prisoners.

Sato had the technicians pile their sidearms and escorted them downstairs. They didn't need the technicians, but so far Russia had played nice with them, so Sato and his colleagues kept them alive. Special teams were already setting up shop, taking over the vital functions of the uplink center and turning them against the Russians. It was standard procedure for a good reason; high above them satellites were making their move, capitalizing on the Russian system's disruption. Allied satellites would be cleaning up in no time, controlled by stations in this uplink and the others like it. Enemy communications would be limited to landlines before long, and the defense grid would fall apart like a house of cards. As long as the uplinks stayed in friendly hands that is.

Sgt. Katsuo grabbed Sato as he turned over his prisoners.

"Sato, get your men moving. We've got sector 4, pull up some good real estate and get comfy, we're not done yet."

Sato and his squad moved quickly back up the stairs and out the door, and into a radically different scene than what they had left not five minutes earlier. The compound was swarming with crews preparing defenses. Only a few meters away, a soldier in a heavy-weapons exo-skeleton was toiling away with an oversized shovel, using his augmented strength to dig fighting positions in a fraction of the time a normal man could. His support team was close by, weapons also laid aside for the moment as they dug for all they were worth as well. Combat engineers planted mines and staked out sectors of fire for their heavy weapons. Keeping them and their weapons working meant keeping the compound in friendly hands. Even now, a Russian counter-attack had to be brewing, and they would spearhead it with an armored column. That meant T-90s at best, T-100s at worst.

"Don't just stand there, guys. Grab a shovel." Sato said, plucking one out of a supply crate nearby.

Two hours later, he couldn't remember what had happened to the shovel, but if he could have found it he would probably have married it. The Russians had been pounding them for the last twenty minutes with Artillery and mortars. If the exterior of the uplink center hadn't been reinforced concrete several feet thick, the whole building would have been leveled outright. As it was it looked like the surface of the moon, and the Russians hadn't even made their push yet. Sato huddled down in his foxhole, keeping an eye out with his snake cam while the bombardment lasted. There was no sign of the Russians yet, but they were coming, sure as sunrise.

In the lulls between volleys, he could hear the roar of jets overhead. Friendly planes would be making a play for the skies above Vladivostok, and if they took control his personal chances of survival spiked in the right direction. As of now, they seemed pretty slim. From what he could see with his snake cam, the concrete wall was more all but completely shattered now. The buildings were flattened, except for the uplink itself. Sato could taste blood in his mouth, a souvenir from a near hit from a shell.

Then the bombardment lifted, and he knew they were coming. He heard them before he saw them; the rumble of Russian armor shook the ground and he could feel it in his bones. Then he saw them; T-100s, which as bad as it was by itself, also meant Spetznaz. Well, intel had to be wrong about something; apparently they were wrong when they reported that all the Russian special forces were at the front lines.

"Sit tight, Bravo company. Rifles, keep an eye out for infantry but until then stay buttoned up. Heavy weapons teams, wait till you've got a clear shot." Captain Zhou had made it through the bombardment in one piece, it seemed.

He saw the flash of the tank's guns first, then the scream of the shells; after that, everything was drowned out in explosions again; the dull roar of the guns firing, and the sharp clap of the shells exploding on the concrete and on the ground. Rockets lanced out from foxholes and slammed into the tanks, but only stopped a few of the beasts - not what Sato was hoping for. Cockroach IFVs weren't far behind the tanks, and Sato was sure the infantry was right behind them. The tanks pressed on through the continuing hail of rockets, breaking into the perimeter into Bravo company's sector and wreaking havoc. Teeming with weapons, they let loose with a hail of bullets and streams of fire on the fighting positions. Where they hit, men died.

But the tanks were hurting, too. The withering rocket fire and the surviving mines were taking a heavy toll on the T-100s. One of them turned Sato's way, only to hit a mine on the right tread, which didn't kill the tank, but it did stop it. The crew fought on, but dead in the water, the tank was a perfect target, and three rockets slammed into it in a matter of seconds. The third one did the trick, penetrating the armor and touching off the ammunition, blowing the turret into the air.

For a second, Sato thought the attack was stalled, but then the real attack began in earnest. Soldiers in green camouflage advanced with more tanks and IFVs, firing as they came. Accurate infantry fire would kill or pin down anyone trying to fire rockets - it was time for Sato to earn his pay.

"Enemy infantry! Take 'em down!"

Sato was up already, sighting in on the Russians through the smoke and dust and opened fire. The Russians didn't give him an easy target, using the vehicles for mobile cover when they could. Coaxial guns and the auto cannons on the IFVs laid down a hail of lead, forcing Sato down before a spray of dirt and bullets more than once. But Sato wasn't the only one shooting back. Only a few meters away, an exoskeleton trooper stood up and delivered with a minigun, tearing the Spetznaz apart, literally. An IFV answered with it's dual cannon, catching the trooper in the shoulder plate on his way down. Sato thought he'd be down for the count, but the trooper was back on his feet blazing away after just a few seconds.

But all their fire couldn't keep the Russians out. They were at the wall before he knew it, and after that, they were inside the compound. Sato was closer to the uplink than the wall, but he could see Spetznaz jump into the foxholes of his comrades, and the fighting there was brutal hand-to-hand. Rifles were clubs, knives flashed, and there was blood everywhere. Sato helped as he could, picking off Russians as they dashed up, but there seemed to be no end to them. Still more Tanks and Transports were approaching, with another wave of infantry. Sato eyed his dwindling supply of ammo nervously. He had only a few more minutes left in this kind of fight.

As he reloaded, a familiar sound entered his ears: transport choppers - relief was here, and not a moment too soon. He scanned the southern sky, saw nothing, and turned North. They were coming from the wrong direction… And then he realized they weren't friendly. Flying in an arrowhead formation, at least twenty transports with gunship escorts were headed straight for them. The ground attack was a diversion, or maybe the air assault was - it didn't matter, because there was no way they could resist both attacks at the same time. Sato did what the only thing he could; he kept firing.