Fox climbed off the jetbike and pulled the binoculars out of the side compartment. As it turned out Colonel Towns hadn't wanted to cancel the mission, not that he blamed him, by all means it was too important to be cancelled because of a simple sneak attack. Krystal joined him at the edge of the underbrush near the crest of the small hill they were on, below in the small valley was a sprawling Brotherhood base.
"Well we found it, so much for the easy part." Fox said as he scanned the complex with his binoculars.
There was a thick concrete wall surrounding the base, topped with razor wire and with guard towers clustered along the perimeter much like its Cornerian counterpart but on a larger scale. Unlike the Cornerian base however this one had wicked looking missile turrets mounted on concrete pedestals behind the walls. Inside the perimeter there were buildings of all shapes and sizes as well as a small communications tower and a large hanger. Fox scanned the skies around the base and found them thick with more of those fighters and gunships he'd seen in battle, as well as scout drones keeping a lookout for enemy forces. But the most interesting part of the base was a somewhat small squat building surrounded with plenty of razor wire, obviously some sort of detention area and maybe worth investigating later.
"Alright, ready Krystal?"
The red furred vixen beside him turned to face him. The red dye that he'd helped her hastily apply to her entire body before they left had mostly dried. He smiled at the memory of that particular stimulating experience, a brief moment of pleasure in this war zone.
"Yeah, it looks like one of the main entrances is pretty close." She replied.
"Ok just remember, your private Christina Anders and I'm private John Stevens."
"Gotch ya."
Together the vulpine pair moved back to their "commandeered Cornerian hardware" and raced to the road leading to the entrance. Fox spun his bike around toward the base and gunned it, Krystal right behind him. As they rounded a corner Fox nearly collided with a lumbering APC headed in the same direction. A hatch popped open on the top and a soldier stuck his head out.
"Watch it you dumbass!"
Fox did the most soldierly thing he could think of and flicked the guy off. The soldier paused for a second then laughed and ducked back inside.
"Well that went well." Krystal said as she pulled beside Fox as they slowed down to match speeds with the APC.
Fox didn't dare say anything like it this close to the enemy but this was an incredible stroke of luck, they would appear less suspicious if they reached the base with other stragglers from the attack force last night. He leaned back slightly and enjoyed the tickling feeling of the wind ruffling his short face fur.
****
General Osborn was not a happy man and he didn't really care if the military aid in the room knew it. The chameleon general's skin had taken on a red tinge as he read the report again. The casualty reports were high as was to be expected of a high-risk operation gone sour, but that wasn't what bothered him, it wasn't even the fact that the Grand Chancellor would have his head on a platter if he knew. Seventeen of those casualties had been inflicted to some of his best commandos by two individuals, that was unacceptable! He flipped the page, they were vulpine, one male one female, the male was a typical red fox while the female was of an unknown subspecies. Reports from survivor's stated that both used typical ballistic or energy based weapons and didn't appear to wear any special armor or combat suits. The male also wielded an advanced type of energy sword, while the female used a staff weapon. He flipped to the page that showed detailed photos of both of them and their weapons. His breath left his throat. The male appeared to be slightly more powerfully built than the average red fox, not much but just enough so that it was vaguely noticeable. The same with the female, and while she did not appear to have as much physical strength as the male her muscle mass was definitely more than a typical vixen in proportion to her body mass. But it was not any of these details that had gotten his attention, not even the females perfect body and impressive figure. It was that looking at a picture of her she looked almost exactly like someone else he knew, true there were some differences but that was to be expected, he would have to report this immediately. Osborn set the report aside and picked up another set of documents, these ones describing the status of the entire ground operation on the planet. The local resistance had been crushed within an eighty-nine percent guarantee. The construction of several more bases were underway, as well as prison camps, and recon teams had already found the "sites of scientific significance." Osborn snorted; the scientists were placing an awful lot of emphasis on building a base over one of these sites, definitely a lot going on behind the scenes on that one. Also it appeared that the hostile military force that had landed on the planet was becoming quite a nuisance and would need to be dealt with sometime soon. The general sighed and picked up the cup of coffee sitting at the corner of his desk. He poured down the cups contents before hauling himself to his feet, no matter what he did the Grand Chancellor wasn't going to like this, but that was okay, Osborn didn't like him either.
Hydraulics whirred as the heavy metal gate slid into the ground and one of the soldiers in a guard tower waved them forward. Fox edged his jetbike forward as the APC rumbled through the gate. The group followed a pair of soldiers past all manner of buildings, hoards of troops and personnel walking through the streets, and past all manner of parked vehicles to a medium sized building situated next to a row of barracks building. The large door rolled up and the group moved inside while the door rolled shut behind them. The lights in the warehouse came on as a squad of tired and dirty soldiers filed out of the APC. A door at the end of the large room opened and a squad of soldiers trained weapons on them while an officer entered. The troops lined up and stood at attention, Fox and Krystal followed suit as the officer walked down the row.
"Present your dog tags!"
The soldiers pulled out their dog tags containing their names, ranks, unit numbers, and service numbers. The officer examined each, paused for a moment in front of Krystal and continued on.
"Welcome back ladies, you're very late. You know the drill; you have thirty
minutes to get yourselves squared away before reporting to your squad's
assigned debriefing room. Get your sorry asses moving, double time!"
The group of soldiers scattered as the troops jogged toward a smaller door. Fox and Krystal followed the group of soldiers out the back door as a group of engineers entered to check the vehicles for bugs and to examine the two Cornerian jetbikes. As they stepped back into the sunlight the group of soldiers broke up, heading to their assigned barracks. The vulpine pair walked down the row of barracks buildings until they came to one that's number matched the squad number they'd had to memorize on the way here. Fox entered first with Krystal behind him, fortunately the hallway was empty at the moment, even better the special forces barracks had small but private two person quarters rather than simple rows of bunks, which would come in handy when it came time to start moving about and start gathering data. As they entered the room that bore their names Fox walked over to the bed that bore his fake name and wedged the small packet of espionage equipment up among the support beams that held the bunk up while Krystal pawed through the duffel bag of the bunks previous owner, but obviously didn't find anything useful. Fox removed a small device from the espionage packet and moved it around the room, sweeping for bugs, he didn't find any.
"Well we should be able to talk freely in here if we sweep it daily and talk in whispers."
Krystal thought it over. Aside from the carefully chosen equipment they'd had on them when they arrived the only other resources they had at their disposal were anything useful in the duffel bags of the room's former occupants or whatever else they could find. She produced the "field wrench" from here pocket, it was slender and had some strangely shaped edges but on closer inspection those edges were to sharp to be the ends of a wrench, her staff incognito. Fox also had an oddly shaped "field wrench", the disguised hilt of his energy sword with the wrench like ends designed to be quickly detached if need be. These and the standard issue Brotherhood weapons they'd been given were their only weapons. She wasn't sure where the armory was, but if they got into a situation where they needed that much firepower than their mission would already be over.
Krystal picked up the datapad lying on the table and brought up a map of most of the base. She memorized part of it, than slid the datapad into one of her uniforms pockets. She sat down in the chair and leaned back against the wall. Well they'd gotten this far, now for the hard part.