Uroboros: Resident Evil V
Chapter Thirty Nine: Storming the Ship
Thanks to the transponder signal that Jill had provided, the BSAA was able to track the cargo ship's location, allowing the operation to save Chris and stop Uroboros to begin just after sunset the following day. Flying as low as possible in order to stay underneath the ship's radar, three helicopters moved toward the vessel until they were just about right alongside, before quickly lifting up so that they were above the top deck and then launching their small missiles in unison.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Just because they couldn't sink the ship without potentially releasing Uroboros, that didn't mean that the stern couldn't be cleared out of hostiles, and since Jill knew that Uroboros was kept deep within the lower decks for containment purposes, there was no danger except for the infected. Some hits caused a dozen infected to go flying in different directions, while others struck the bottom of cargo container stacks, causing the whole thing to fall over onto even more infected, and good thing too, because there were certainly a lot of them.
An alarm began to sound throughout the ship once the attack began, and once the infected, who were all armed with rifles, got over the shock of what was happening, they returned fire. The helicopters had to move sideways a little bit now and then to avoid getting hit, but thankfully AK-47's weren't very accurate at long distances to begin with… but this was not the case with the gun turrets that were mounted on the side of the vehicles, as the infected quickly learned when they started getting cut down with large caliber bullets.
It was impossible for three helicopters by themselves to clear off the entire top deck of such a large ship, so once the stern had been secured as much as possible, the vehicles landed as close to the back as they could in order to insert the new team. Since it took a while to get into position, the infected from the bow of the ship were already moving into position to repel the invaders, so Sheva had to dive for cover as soon as she jumped down onto the metal surface. Sparks were kicked up as enemy fire bounced off the metal surfaces around her, and there was an outcry of pain when one of the last agents to jump down was struck several times as the helicopters were pulling back.
"Get to cover!" Josh yelled after moving behind one of the fallen metal containers. "Pick your targets carefully and conserve ammunition; do not let them overrun us!"
Since all of the infected only spoke Swahili, it had been decided that all communication within the new team was to be done in English in order to try and keep some kind of advantage, but as more and more of the armed men appeared running toward them from the bow of the ship, this would only buy them a little extra time at best. So everyone rushed to the best covered positions that they could find, and began firing single shots at a time with their own rifles, a lot of times aiming at the approaching infected's legs to halt their advance using as few bullets as possible.
This all-out attack wasn't the complete mission, though, in fact it was just a distraction in order to keep all of the heat on the new team, while Sheva stealthily made her way across the ship toward the bridge. Even if they were unable to defeat all the heavily armed infected or put an end to whatever Wesker's final plan was right there and now, if the young woman was able to reach the bridge and take out the few infected that were probably manning it, then she could at least sabotage the ship's controls in order to buy more time for the BSAA to send in some more reinforcements.
Radio silence on her part was required in case Wesker was somehow listening in, because it would be just about the worst thing possible for Sheva to get all the way over to the bridge only to find the blond man waiting for her, so she had to do this all on her own. Thanks to her small size, the young woman was able to hide behind smaller crates then her male comrades could have done, and she even had to crawl underneath a grated steel staircase to remain unseen just as more infected were coming down to join the battle.
In fact, she did a lot of crawling for the first couple hundred meters, but after that everything seemed to calm down, at least in the immediate area. The explosions and gunfire could still be heard behind her as she crawled out from under the next staircase, but no more of the cargo container stacks had been knocked over, allowing the young woman to get to her feet and move around more freely. Just like they had planned, the vast majority of the infected had gone to attack the new team, leaving no one to guard the front section… or almost no one.
Either the infected were getting smarter, or had received prior orders from someone carrying a control plaga, because Sheva nearly walked right into one of them as she came around the corner, and if he hadn't been facing the other way her whole stealth mission would have been ruined. Thankfully, the blaring alarms were drowning out the sound of her footsteps, so she was able to duck back around the corner before he turned around, but the infected man must have sensed something, because now he was slowly coming toward her.
"No… no, go away." She silently hissed before moving farther back. "Go look at something else, you ushoga."
But he didn't go away, and thanks to the bright lights that dotted the whole upper deck of the ship, there was no way for her to use the shadows like she had done back at the stern where most of the lights had been destroyed. So she had to keep moving back, at least until there was nowhere to go after rounding another corner; finding herself boxed in between three cargo containers stacked four high that formed a dead end. The shadow of the infected man was seen getting closer, and Sheva couldn't risk giving her position away by shooting him, so she did the only other thing available.
When the infected man reached the dead end, he snarled while looking around but didn't find anything until he looked up just in time to receive the surprise of his life. With no other options, the young woman ran up to the nearest container, and used its door handles like stepping stones in order to climb up to the third level, before jumping off just as her stalker was looking up. Thud! Landing right on top of him with her full body weight, which granted wasn't very much, it was enough to make him drop his rifle as they both fell to the deck, and those same alarms were enough to cover the noise while she bashed his skull in with her pistol.
It was certainly a lot easier taking these things on one at a time instead of getting ambushed by an entire city district, the young woman thought as she took the man's grenades, but now she was going to have to be extra careful because the alarms and distant explosions were making the sound of their movements just as much as hers. But from where she was the intact container stacks were creating a maze, where there could have been a hostile hiding around any corner. She couldn't see the bridge from where she was, either, so what Sheva needed was a way to see the whole deck's layout without getting spotted.
The only way she could think of to manage this was to do what she had just done to get rid of her infected stalker, but instead of jumping down she would have to climb up to the top of the stacks. Getting up there was easy enough, but in order to make sure she didn't draw any attention to herself, the young woman stayed flat on her stomach as she crawled along the tops of the containers. As much as they formed a maze down below, up there it was more like a shortcut, especially since she was above most of the ship's light fixtures.
From up there, not only was Sheva able to see the positions of every infected that she came across, but the bridge tower wasn't very far now, and it looked like this wall of cargo containers went almost all the way up to it. Plus, the battle must have been going better than expected for Josh and the new team, because every so often another of the infected guards would suddenly go running off toward the stern as if they had received some kind of a signal requesting reinforcements.
This was fine with her, since every armed man that ran off to join the battle left the bridge that much easier to get to, so that by the time the young woman reached the end of the container wall, there were no infected around to get in her way as she climbed back down to the deck. She almost lost her footing for a second, not realizing that the next container down had a broken door handle, and thereby almost causing her to fall, but she managed to swing over to the other handle, while deciding to simply leave that part out of her mission report.
Once all the way down, Sheva crouched down and made a run for the back door of the bridge tower, since it was possible that the people at the controls would see her if she went around to the front, and it came as a partial relief that the door was unlocked. Partial because now the success of the mission depended solely on her shoulders as she slowly pulled the door open and started up the metal staircase that was immediately inside. Although the young woman had a rifle, her pistol was better for operations like this involving tight quarters, so the larger weapon remained slung over her back as she moved up the stairs one step at a time toward the nerve center of the ship.
Alarms lights were flashing at the top of the stairs, although there was no sound along with them, not that anyone on the bridge was paying attention to the attack in the first place. When Sheva reached the top of the stairs, she found that the place was being manned by four infected men who would grunt or snarl as they went along with their tasks of piloting and navigating the ship… no guards though… probably had all been sent to the stern of the ship to help repel the attack.
To her it was still crazy that these people whose minds were overtaken by parasites could still perform such operations as steering a ship, since the one at the navigation board announced that their course needed to be adjusted by four degrees north, and then the helmsman repeated the course change, before turning the wheel to make it happen. The young woman wondered if given enough time and experience, could these things become just as intelligent and free thinking as humans? Hopefully, the plagas in general wouldn't be around long enough for anyone to find out… especially these ones as Sheva readied her pistol and came out of hiding.