Chapter 26 – War Tails Part 2
"Our air-strike is coming in from 170 degrees. Time for you to prove you can back up your promises, Miss Briefs." General Gun stated, looming over the blue haired heiress.
"Already on it!" Bulma's hands flickered over the keyboard, typing commands on the console screen. "Oh dear, it looks like their search radar has suffered a case of partial blindness, covering 160 to 180 degrees. There's no patrol craft up covering that vector, so they shouldn't notice anything screwy."
She typed another command, and tapped the Execute key. "I've set up a more subtle malfunction in the Archer sites. We want them active until the last possible minute, because your fighters are almost certainly going to have radar-guided missiles."
General Gun frowned. "Doesn't that risk them actually launching?"
"Not if the detection threshold on the recognition system has been bumped up by a factor of a thousand... which it has. At that sensitivity, they might launch if someone holds a metal sheet a metre in front of the main antenna, maybe. But just to be sure, I'll cut the system completely before the planes reach the base. After all, just because the Red Ribbon radar watchers are getting an edited signal, it doesn't mean I am."
"... and that's why we ended up getting involved with these goons in the first place..."
The six martial artists were sat around having a picnic, courtesy of a Capsule hamper full of food provided by Tails. He had, amongst other things, introduced the group to chilli-dogs, and was just constructing a particularly fine specimen when his computer gave an urgent beep.
He pulled down his goggles over his eyes, and toggled through various screens in his Heads Up Display. They appeared in turn as an inset screen in one corner of his field of view, as if an invisible computer monitor was hanging a few feet in front of him. They were out of his direct line of sight, but big enough to display useful information. Such as the status and commands running through Bulma's terminal.
"It looks like it's starting... That's odd... oh, I see."
Kurillin swallowed the mouthful of chilli-dog he'd been masticating. "What's up?"
"Bulma's just started the hack on the Red Ribbon computers. Their radar system has a hole in it big enough to fly a Wing Fortress through. I'm betting it'll shortly be followed by knocking out their anti-air defences... There we go!"
"Is it time for us to go too?" Goku had somehow managed to stuff two chilli-dogs whole into his mouth a fraction of a second before, but that didn't stop him speaking clearly as he bounced up off the ground.
"To get into position, anyway." Tails replied. "I'm betting they're either starting with an air-strike, shooting the place up with aeroplanes, or landing people on parachutes. We can go in just after that."
He put the chilli-dog on the pile he'd manufactured, and packed up the hamper.
Yamcha chuckled, "I didn't expect this fight to be catered. Though I've got to admit, those chilli-dog things are great!"
Goku nodded furiously enough that his hair produced a significant breeze.
Tails closed the lid with a snap, and capsulised the hamper. "Since you guys are all here to help, the least I could do was feed you. Besides, Sonic always ends a raid with a chilli-dog, he says it tastes like victory. I figured we can use all the luck we can get."
Kurillin chuckled. "If nothing else, our breath will knock out those goobers!"
Tails grabbed the chilli-dog he'd made up, and offered the plate of done dogs around the others. Then they headed towards the edge of the forest, getting up into the trees just opposite the centre of one long wall. The main entrance was to the south, and on this eastern side, the hillside was close to the perimeter and the cleared area was narrower.
There were five witch hatted masonry towers along it, each mounting heavy machine guns, and backed up by dozens of pylon mounted automated guns that poked up from behind the curtain wall., a mix of anti-personnel and anti-air weapons. Considering the hillside made it near impossible to move heavy vehicles in close, the minefield in the cleared area and the turrets made it a killing ground for infantry... and about as useful against Tails' team as a pillow fort.
"After the air-force has it's turn, I'll disable the rest of the automatic weapons, then Goku and I will fly in on the nearest tower and knock out the crew served ones. Everyone else jumps across while we work our way around the curtain wall and wreck the guns."
"Yes, you said, the towers have the manned weapons, and you want to make sure the automatic ones are permanently out of action." Kurillin responded. "You explained it all."
"Sorry, I guess I'm just a little nervous." Tails suddenly looked his age. "I want this to go right!"
Goku polished off his last chilli-dog. "It will. You've always figured this stuff right before."
"I still think we should be the ones to take the turrets." Tien said. "We can fly across too."
"Goku and I are faster in the air, and more manoeuvrable." Tails responded. "And we've run down guns before."
"And it's nothing to do with the fact that you don't want to feel like you're hiding behind others." Kurillin snorted.
"Okay, that too, but my original reason makes..." The young fox's sensitive ears picked up a distant sound. "Sounds like the good guys are coming."
Striker Leader, Wing Commander Akane 'Crimson' Daimyo, checked her echelons and the bombers following them with a glance. She wasn't happy about the mission strategy, but she'd been over-ruled. You could tell the planner was a ground pounder. Bringing in the entire force as a single mass 'to avoid defeat in detail' sounded good, but wasn't the best use of aerial forces in this terrain and situation.
If she'd had her druthers, she'd have split her force into individual squadrons, covering a separate section of the heavies. They'd have come from three different directions, and converged on the target. The smaller groups would have been able to fly closer to the ground and evade radar detection for longer. Also, when the opposing force did spot them, they'd either have to split their defences three ways, giving her forces a better chance to evade and spoof with countermeasures, or concentrate and have two untouched forces hammer them to pieces.
The last update, just before they took off, had given some far better targeting data and the claim that the enemy defences would be out of action. It was the only way this force deployment made any sense, but she still felt like an awfully big target. Still, she had tactical control, and if they they were locked on by the enemy, she'd call a defence plan that would split her bombers, and as soon as they detected the incoming Archers going over to terminal guidance, the fighters would throw out counter-measures and peel off by squadron to join up. Then they'd follow a plan much closer to hers.
Of course, the squadron on the original heading (hers) would get the worse of it, but they'd have the cover of three squadrons worth of countermeasures. It wasn't much, but it was the best she could do, and the fighters would certainly get off their own radar-guided missiles before the Archers reached them. She switched her radio to the command circuit, checking every pilot would be almost impossible in a formation this big. "Striker Lead to all squadron leads, report readiness."
"Striker Two, Lead, we're all good." Her wing, Flight Lieutenant Aoi 'Viridian' Yamane was managing the squadron while Akane handled the full formation.
"Firebat Lead, Striker Lead, on the triggers." Squadron Leader 'Stripes' Murray was a tiger, both literally and in a fur-ball, and commanded the second squadron of fighters.
"Storm Knight Lead, Striker Lead. Ready to shred some Red Ribbon rears." Squadron Leader Dim Sun 'Dumpling' Chow was anything but dim, and the couple of extra pounds the panda carried, the origin of his call-sign, did nothing to slow his reflexes in a cockpit.
"Rhino Lead, Striker Lead, got their special delivery all wrapped up." Wing Commander Hai Tatsu was the senior bomber pilot and effectively her second in command for the formation. While he had some years on her, both in age and in the service, he didn't seem to have a problem with her being picked to run the show.
"Albatross Lead, Striker Lead. Ready to light them up on your command!" Squadron Leader Yu Bin sounded awfully young, especially next to the other bomber lead, but her record, and rank showed she had the skills.
Akane flipped back a clear cover and flipped a toggle. "Okay, weapons free, people. You know the ops plan, so wait for my calls and let's do this by the numbers. Good luck and good hunting."
There was a chorus of affirmatives on the command channel and then quiet. Akane went to watching her radar detection warning system, as well as her course. While it would pick up the regular radar, it would detect the signal of a tracking radar attempting to lock on to her jet.
They got closer and closer, and the tension got higher and higher. While she was just as happy not to be detected yet, she couldn't understand why, unless that last minute notice about them having some way into the Red Ribbon's system was accurate. Finally, it started to ping with the sound of a radar beam trying to lock on.
"Striker Lead, all fighters, pop up and loose your birds!" she called out. While it would expose the fighters to an easy lock, the Archer launchers were currently big bright targets for their radar guided missiles. Once again she didn't expect verbal acknowledgements from a formation this size, but their action spoke loudly enough.
Akane herself angled upwards and then down, triggering the two air-to ground missiles on her outer pylons as soon as they showed on her HUD that they had the signal. They weren't the only ones, a massed salvo of missiles shot forth with them. Even if the intel was right, and there were over twenty launchers, seventy two missiles should be enough to cover them all. There was no way to co-ordinate targets, so but the chances of any launcher getting nothing were infinitesimal.
Of course, that wouldn't stop them getting at least one salvo of their own off, before they were destroyed. "Striker Lead. All planes be ready for evasion pattern on my mark..."
She waited for the hunting bleeps top become a solid tone, and waited, and waited. What was wrong with the idiots? Her formation was almost in visual range and the radars still hadn't locked on! If they didn't launch in the next few seconds... The bleeps vanished as she saw the base ahead, and a flare of explosions as the missiles her command had loosed plunked straight into every missile site.
Akane's estimate of General Gun went up a considerable amount. So that sneaky son of a... so and so _knew_ his techie types would be able to take down the launchers. That was why he ordered a massed formation. She didn't let her delighted surprise stop her. "Striker Lead, Strikers, Firebats, Storm Knights! Go to cover positions. Rhinos, Albatrosses, give them a second helping!"
A quick visual check confirmed that despite it not being the order they expected, all her fighters had moved into the correct formation. The bombers were now clear for their own runs. Akane could picture what was happening now,even though she was keeping a careful watch for any Red Ribbon aircraft that might contest their passage.
Bombadiers in the chin turrets were lining up laser painters on their primary targets, guided by the plans and schematics HQ had passed on. Seconds later, a second wave of projectiles launched, this time from from the bellies of the bombers, but rather than shooting forward on a pillar of flame, the laser guided bombs just swooped down steeply on stubby wings that scissored out from their sides, tail fins twitching as they homed in on a particular point of light.
There was a second wave of explosions as the formation broke off left and right over the base, and Akane heaved a sigh of relief. There were no enemy aircraft up, and as the hangars had been primary targets, there were unlikely to be any chasing them. It looked like she wouldn't be writing any letters to pilots' families this evening...
What happened next shouldn't have. The lack of radar contacts meant the strike had come as a complete surprise, and almost all of the Red Ribbon soldiers outdoors at the time either dived frantically for cover as the first wave of explosions hit, or didn't need to ever again.
The chances that one of the few who didn't do either had been out in the open, with a bazooka were ridiculous, and the chance that he'd had a round in it for testing took that to ludicrous. Still, the universe is an unlikely place to start with, so the fact that he not only aimed and fired it at one of the overflying jets and actually hit it in the wing was one of those things that had to happen somewhere, some time.
Akane's world went into a spin as her cockpit instruments flashed and flared around her. A quick glance to the side confirmed that most of her right wing had been blown off, and as a result, her hundred million zeni jet fighter was now a pretty good paper-weight. Without the control surfaces or lift from her right wing, she had zero chance of stopping the roll.
"Mayday, Mayday, Striker Lead is hit, going down! All planes keep going!"
Fortunately the roll was slow enough that she could get some idea of what was going on. Her own trajectory had veered over the left side of the base, and the spin was carrying her back towards it as far as she could tell. That meant she'd make a crater somewhere near the far end of the runways.
Akane didn't intend to be in the plane when that happened, so she judged her time and pulled the ejection lever just as the roll brought her right way up. Everything worked, the canopy blew off and back, and a powerful compressed air ram launched her seat away from the fuselage.
Her parachute popped at the apex of her flight, and she started floating down. She saw her jet auger in between the runways, and breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, it didn't last long as she recalled that she was about to land in the middle of a hostile base, which she'd just helped attack. This was not a good situation.
Tails and the others watched the first wave of explosions when the missiles hit, and the second where the bombs followed. The planes were flying up the valley towards the main gate, and they mainly hit in and around the base, and took out the towers and gate at the main entrance.
The tower directly next to them was untouched, and so were most of the ones around the runway area. One hangar had collapsed in completely, but the second had just suffered a blown off roof, and the third was untouched. Tails was checking his computer even as the aircraft raced overhead.
"Whoa! They got all the anti-air systems, and a lot of the other turrets down... Yes! Tower 12 is down, and I'm getting a dragon-ball signal! The shielded box must have been in there, and the collapse busted it open!"
"Hey look!" Kurillin pointed, but they didn't really need the heads up. They saw the lone rocket shoot up and blast the wing off the plane, and saw the pilot punch out, their parachute opening high above the base. Tails glanced along the line of the wall, and went, "Uh oh!"
He started frantically punching out options on his computer, as he spoke. "I'm shutting down all those auto-turrets in line of site of the runway area. Goku, you lead in on the nearest tower, and get everyone across when you've taken out the guards. As soon as Goku and I have dealt with the manned turrets, go after the remaining hangars just like we planned."
He pointed up at the descending parachute. "If that guy lands in the middle of the runway with the manned turrets still active, it'll be as a colander. I've got to get him out of the sky fast, and while Goku's faster on Kinto-un, I'm more manoeuvrable."
He immediately twisted his tails up and blasted off into the air. He zoomed over the curtain wall, and shot towards the pilot like a missile. Akane had an impression of an orange blur off to one side, then the clasp of her five point harness crunched as someone reached around and broke it.
Before she could protest, or for that matter react, she was hauled out of the ejector chair and pulled towards the ground at terrifying speed by something, a pair of arms wrapped around her body. However, she was stopped short of street pizza-hood by those same arms, and let down gently in the shadow of a cargo plane that for some reason was out in the middle of the runways.
She heard the chatter of machine guns in the background, but nothing came near her, and her first reaction was to turn and find out what had grabbed her. A two tailed fox in a well worn Capsule Corps jumpsuit with a pair of goggles was not what she'd expected, though she hadn't known what she _had_ expected.
"What the... why did you do that!" She exclaimed.
The ejector chair crashed to the runway a few hundred metres away, riddled with bullet holes and surrounded by shreds of parachute canopy.
"That's why." replied the fox, gesturing with one white gloved hand.
"Okay, good answer... Hey, you're that fox that was on the news!"
"I guess I am..." Tails had seen some of the news footage about his and Goku's past adventures, mostly Jingle Village and the Tenka'ichi Budo'kai. Some of the things they were saying about him made him horribly embarrassed. "You make it sound like it's just me. Gosh, Goku does all the heavy lifting, I mostly just figure stuff out and help."
He wasn't idle while he spoke. He was checking views from surviving security cameras around the runway area, as well as using his own mark one eyeballs. There were seven manned stone towers built into the wall at this end of the base, two at the midpoint of the long walls, two three quarters of the way along, and three at the far end, on the ends and in the middle of the northern short wall.
The three at the far end were out of range of the hangars, for any accuracy at least, but the other four could cover the area in front of the hangars, not to mention the cargo plane they were hiding behind. Short spiteful bursts of fire splattered around the edges of their cover, but he'd landed where the fuselage and wing blocked the western mid-point tower and the two further along.
The eastern mid-point tower had a clear view of them, but it wasn't going to be a problem. Goku and the gang had clearly already taken it, that was clear from the lack of fire and the fact that it had a distinctly crumpled look. The wall of the circular watch-room at the top had partially collapsed in on itself, and the witch-hat roof tilted at and angle somewhere between rakish and falling off completely.
Of course, there was also the problem of the Red Ribbon goons emerging from the two hangars that hadn't been completely wrecked by the bombardment. Some of them had spotted the pair by the cargo aircraft, and were already bringing up their guns. Tails reached up and pulled open a rear door.
"Get in! They don't seem to want us enough to shoot their own plane, and maybe you can find a radio to call your friends!" He pocketed his computer and tapped the side of his goggles. "Guys, I don't like how heavy those machine guns are. Wait one and Goku and I will remove them before you hit the hangars."
Akane stopped half-way into the plane. "What are you going to do?"
"Help out, like I said." Tails gave her a grin then jumped straight up, ascending like a rocket before any of the guns could track him. She looked up just in time to see him reach the apex of his flight, spinning his tails to keep flying up above the angle the guns could track him, and then arc down on a weaving, spiralling path towards the eastern mid-point tower.
Fortunately there was a matching door with a porthole window in the far side of the plane fuselage, so she could move across and see what happened. While he was back in the field of fire of at least one of the guns, his evasive manoeuvres were making a hash of the enemy's attempt to target him. At the last second, his flight straightened out, and he plunged straight down towards the roof of the tower. At the last second he seemed to transform into a glowing orange disk, as she'd seen from that martial arts tournament, and blasted straight through the pointed roof as if it was balsa-wood.
The gun covering the inside of the base fell out of it's window seconds later, the barrel useful only as a demonstrator for a pretzel maker. However, the fox was pinned down as far as she could see. The next gun along on the west side couldn't bear, but the one from across the east side could, and it was splattering the watch-room with fire.
Akane decided to call for help. She dashed up to the cockpit, and found radio-gear. Fortunately it was a military band radio, and fairly simple to adjust to the frequency her squadron was on.
"Striker Lead, any aircraft! I'm down inside the enemy base, but safe and under cover. Report!"
After a few seconds, Aoi replied. "Crimson? Is that really you? We thought..."
She trailed off and Akane didn't waste time. "Patch me through to Rhino Lead. Are you in range for another pass?"
They should be, she thought, the plan was for the bombers to support the paratroopers with fire-support.
"Okay... Done!" Aoi's voice came over the radio, joined by Squadron Leader Tatsu's. "You have something for us, Striker Lead?"
"Yes, bring a flight around the west side, as far out as you can while still getting a solid lock." She though back to the plans she'd studied so intensively. "We missed Hangar 3 completely, and 2 was only damaged. And keep it on target, there are friendlies down here."
"But the paratroopers aren't supposed to be there yet!"
"Uh huh, call them special forces... Whoa!"
From the cockpit she had an excellent view of the entire north end of the base, and she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. Tails was flying up the west side of the walls, weaving and dodging around the unmanned pylon turrets even as he buzz-sawed through them, sending them crashing to the ground. A constant stream of tracer fire from the manned tower up ahead hunted him, but it couldn't intercept him.
Along the eastern wall someone else was flying towards a manned tower. This was a kid who appeared to be flying on a cloud, and... spinning something in front of him that seemed to deflect the stream of bullets aimed at him. She guessed this was the Goku kid who'd been in the news with him. He was simply smashing the towers with whatever that was he was waving as he went.
She considered calling in an air-strike on the three towers at the far end, but at the rate those two were going, by the time the bombs arrived they'd already be there. Tails was almost at the tower when he seemed to dive out of the sky, and she thought he'd been hit. He plunged out of sight in the base of a pylon, and the machine gun followed, but it was right underneath and the gunner clearly had trouble depressing it that far. The fact that he was still walking bursts of fire around it was actually comforting, he'd hardly be going after a target he'd hit.
A few seconds later Tails emerged into view, flying up over the outside of the wall and plunging into the undefended outer embrasure. The firing stopped, and the soldiers burst out of the door at the base a few seconds later, clearly panicking. It's brother on the east wall fared no better, Goku just ploughed straight in.
Her attention was distracted by a thudding on the fuselage of the aircraft. Part of the seat buckle was a shiny flat surface, so she held it up against the side window, angled to look back along the side of the plane. She could just see a group of Red Ribbon soldiers battering at the hatch she'd locked from the inside before coming up to the cockpit.
There were a dozen of them, with automatic rifles, and she had only her side-arm and two clips of ammo. Enough bullets for everyone if they'd stand there and let themselves be shot, but that wasn't going to happen. This was a cargo plane, without any armour, and they could just shoot through the fuselage...
Four other figures appeared from the base of the central eastern tower, these dressed in various styles of martial arts clothing, and three of them went after the Red Ribbon goons who were trying to dolly out and prep a dozen jet patrollers. The other one peeled off and headed for her cargo plane, or rather the thugs attacking it, reaching them just as one of them shot out the door locked.
The little guy, bald with a pattern of six dots on his forehead and wearing a set of goggles like Tails', bounded into the middle of the group and started handing out beat downs on a first come, first served basis. It should have been a massacre, one unarmed man against twelve with rifles, and it was, but not the way she'd expected. He seemed to blur, vanish and reappear, and wherever he did, another Red Ribbon goon went down like a sack of spuds.
She decided to help, but by the time she'd smashed out the side window with the butt of her pistol and cleared away the glass, it was all over. He trotted over and looked up, eyes widening at her as she leaned out, still holding her side-arm.
"No need to wave that thing about, we're on the same side... sort of. Sorry, the name's Kurillin. It figures, Tails got to rescue a cute girl and he's the one too young to appreciate it. "
His grin took any malice out of the comment, and Akane found herself warming to the guy. The fact that he'd almost certainly saved her life didn't hurt either. "Akane, Wing Commander Akane Daimyo."
She couldn't help but look beyond him to the scene of carnage in front of the hangars. His three friends were at least as badly outnumbered as he'd been, but it made no difference. They danced around the Red Ribbon goons, dismantling them with ease. Not all of the soldiers had guns, some were mechanics with tools and wrenches, but even if they were armed, they were more likely to hit each other than the martial artists winnowing through them.
The biggest, another bald guy had a ripped gi that showed his chest, and she saw him take a burst of rifle fire on his bare skin as he dead-lifted over a ton of jet patroller over his head. It didn't seem to bother him, and he flung the air-craft at a group of three others, smashing them and rupturing fuel tanks which made them go up in a single massive explosion.
"Rhino Lead, Striker lead. Six parcels are inbound!" The radio chattered.
Akane remembered what Tails had done. "I suggest you get your friends away from the hangars. My guys are about to blow them!"
As Kurillin relayed the instructions, she glanced back to the north to see where the other two were. The corner towers hadn't put up any more effective resistance than the others, and both were looking wrecked. The one in the centre of the north wall was worse off, someone had ripped the roof from the western corner tower right off and flung it like a giant shuttle cock.
It had landed right on the centre tower, and while it had disintegrated in the process, it hadn't left much of the tower it had hit. The three guards staggering out of the door at the base showed they'd had the good sense to evacuate. But there was no sign of Goku or Tails.
Explosions made her turn and lean outside the window to see the remaining hangars go up. However, the fighters outside seemed clear of the blast. Just as they fell in on themselves, a group of vehicles, three jet patrollers and a combat air-car flew out and up into the sky. The combat air-car had twin 30 mm cannon where it's headlights should have been.
She snatched up the microphone. "Striker Lead, all. Four bandits up! Striker, Firebat, come in and clear them out!"
However, even as she spoke, two other flyers zoomed overhead towards them. Tails, boosting along in pusher propeller mode, and Goku on his cloud. They couldn't possibly be thinking...
The vehicles opened up and multiple streams of shells and bullets criss-crossed the sky in front of them. However, the two kids were dodging everything that was thrown at them. Goku held out the thing he'd been using earlier, a staff, and it extended out to a ridiculous length, smashing the wind-shield of the nearest patroller, and levering the pilot out still attached to his seat. The tip of the extended staff dropped down, dumping the seated pilot on the ground rather roughly.
Tails flew straight up between the twin streams of bullets spat at him by the air-car's twin guns, weaving above and below to evade the cross-streams of bullets from the other two jet patrollers. When he reached the bonnet of the air-car he simply did that buzz-saw trick and sawed the entire air-car in two down the centre line. The pieces crashed out of the sky and exploded on the runway. The pilot wasn't in it, having been pulled out of his car, and flung off by Tails to Goku for similar unceremonious dumping on the ground.
The two remaining hover vehicles had veered off when Tails had dived into the air-car, not wanting to shoot into their own side, and it cost them. As he finished cutting it in two, he came out of his spin and landed on one half of the falling vehicle, kicking off in a burst of speed that had him beside one of the patrollers before the pilot could even begin to turn.
He grabbed the fuselage, and punched a hole in the engine compartment, pulling out a fistful of wires. Removing wires from almost any aircraft more complex than a paper aeroplane generally had a negative effect on it's flying ability, and this one was no exception. The whine of it's under-jet turned into a stutter, and it sank out of the sky.
The charitable would have called it's impact with the ground a landing, but even though the pilot was able to walk, or rather stagger away, it was quite clear from the mangled undercarriage and engine bell that the vehicle wouldn't leave the ground again without some heavy lifting gear.
Goku had been a lot less subtle, zooming in on Kinto'un and smashing the remaining aircraft in two just aft of the cockpit with Nyoi-bo. He then just caught the cockpit as it fell, and dropped it on a pile of boxes outside the wrecked hangars. The engine compartment fell right onto a fuelling cart and exploded enthusiastically.
Akane had watched this open mouthed, but she could hear her fighters in the distance. "Striker Lead, All Fighters! Scratch that, the sky's clear. Break and circle."
"Striker two, Striker Lead. I can still see two on my radar!"
"Those friendlies again! Overfly but do not engage! They took out the hostiles."
Goku and Tails were flying down to meet their friends, and Kurillin looked over towards them. "Gotta go! Sorry I couldn't talk some more but my friends need me!"
He dashed off just as her fighters swept overhead. They'd come in low to avoid any remaining anti-air craft fire, and seen the flying fox, and the kid on a cloud.
"Striker Lead, did I just see what I thought I saw?" Aoi's voice was so full of disbelief that Akane had to grin.
"Join the club. I was here for the whole show and I still don't believe it!"
Several other people couldn't believe it either. Bulma had gotten multiple security camera views of the runway area, even after most of them had been wrecked, and General Gun was fulminating.
"What do they think they're doing!"
Major Motoki replied. "Saving the life of one of our pilots and securing the runway area. Our paratroopers should be able to land unopposed."
"You knew about this?" the general turned on the colonel furiously. "You mean you actually gave civilians access to our battle plans?"
The colonel didn't flinch"I knew they were going to make their own attack to support ours, but I didn't provide any information beyond the publicly available, those press releases given out to show we were acting decisively, and spread disaffection among the enemy."
He didn't mention that the idea had been General Gun's, and to be honest, he hadn't protested, as he was fairly certain the Red Ribbon still had assets in the regular army command structure and probably knew the basic plan of attack, never mind the day, which had been specified in the releases.
The reminder stopped General Gun but he quickly found another avenue of attack. "Which doesn't explain how they got there, or knew to strike before we did! This interference has got to stop!"
"Son Goku and Miles Prower were the ones that developed the basic intelligence that lead us to the main base in the first place, not to mention a lot of the reconnaissance take, and they've certainly had enough experience sneaking around Red Ribbon patrols. As for attacking, bombarding the place was probably a pretty good sign our attack was warming up."
Bulma chipped in. "What do you think this doohickey was for in the first place? Tails intended to go after this main base long before he knew about your army attack. And when he found out what you were doing, he worked with the Colonel here to make sure the regular army got the same information he did. You should be thanking the Colonel, not threatening him!"
Rachael O'Shea closed in for the kill, hoping she could get direct footage from Bulma. General Gun, in what way have those six brave individuals harmed your operation?"
General Gun couldn't really answer, as so far, they hadn't, other than stealing his thunder by doing the job he'd expected to do. "They haven't, not yet, but they could cause problems further down the line. Plus they could get hurt. This is a job for the army!"
"It's part of their creed as martial artists to fight evil and protect people, the Turtle school's anyway, and my boyfriend Yamcha chose that too." Bulma pointed out the wolf-fist school martial artist on the screen with pride in her voice. "They chose to put themselves at risk, just as every soldier in your army did. They have no intention of getting in your way, and every intention of helping."
General Gun was pinned down on all sides, unable to protest any further without looking like he was ungrateful, and simply mad over them showing him up. Which had a lot of truth. He turned to one of his aides. "Tell the paratrooper divisions to expedite! Since they've given us an opening ahead of schedule, we must make the most of it."
He just hoped that by the time they got there, there was still something for them to do.
He wasn't the only commanding officer who was practically frothing at the mouth. Commander Red was stomping around the underground bunker at the heart of the Red Ribbon base like a very short, red bearded elephant with irritable bowel syndrome.
"Arrggh! Imbeciles! Cowards! How could they let themselves be defeated by a bunch of civilians!"
The techies frantically trying to restore some sort of control to their control panels kept their heads down and carried on. When the radar had failed to spot the incoming aircraft, and their air defences had failed to engage, the commander had started to order them taken out and shot en-masse.
It was only the fact that the door had been sealed, and Adjutant Black's diffident reminder that these techies were the only ones they had available, that had saved their lives, for now. Not that they were having any luck, the test responses to all the command programs were coming back okay, but when they tried to actually do anything, the commands were just ignored.
Commander Red glowered at the wall screen displaying the dragon-ball radar display, and the bright marks on top of the location of their base. He turned to Adjutant Black. "I need someone to guard the area where the dragon-balls are until we can retrieve them."
Without apparently consulting anything, Adjutant Black came back with, "Sergeant Indigo's squad is in the area. They'd just retrieved an AFV from the motor pool before it locked itself down."
Commander Red stomped over to the PA microphone and picked it up.
"Sergeant Indigo! Get your squad to courtyard 3 and secure it! All other units! Get to the hangar complex and destroy those invaders! Especially that blasted fox! I want his skin for a rug!"
While the damage around the hangar complex made the words relayed over the PA less than clear, Tails was already listening in via Bulma's tap on the comm system, and relaying them to everyone's goggles' comm system.
He made a face and looked around at the others, grouped in front of the hangar complex, and asked. "Why do they always want 'my skin as a rug'? I shampoo and take care of it, but still... think of the mess!"
"I think it's just an suitably evil sort of thing to say." Kurillin suggested. "Killing someone is one thing, mutilating them afterwards is taking it up a notch."
He carefully didn't look at Tien.
"Well, he's doing what I hoped." Tails shrugged. "Except for the guard over the dragon-balls, I need to got get them. Otherwise we can go ahead as planned."
He held up a gloved hand when Goku started to speak up. "Sorry, but they'll be buried under tons of rubble, and only my Prower Drill Driver can dig through it fast enough. If you can sweep down the west side and make sure all the guns covering the main entrance are out of action and the gate is destroyed, that will be more help."
"While the rest of us fight everything they can throw at us here." Tien said sternly.
Tails' namesakes drooped. "I'm sorry to ask you to do it..."
Amazingly, Tien grinned without his face cracking under the unaccustomed expression. "Don't be, maybe if they do they'll give us a decent workout!"
Oddly enough, that weak bit of humour made Tails feel more comfortable around the three eyed martial artist than he'd been since he'd first met him. He grinned back, then turned and sped off.