A/N: At this time, I'm switching the Helmaji language from the actual sounds that we hear to translation. Readers will see anything spoken inanother languagedemarcated by # signs. doesn't allow non-language characters like brackets or carets, which I think is disadvantageous in this situation. My beta team has commented that this is not a good idea having characters like that mark off foreign languages. I contend that it's better to see those characters than "'Blah blah blah,' so-and-so said in Helmaj." The nature of this fic has multiple languages in it, and this just serves to denote when someone's in another language. I understand that this might break up the story, but has tied my hands. Please direct all complaints about this to them.
In the beginning, I intended to create the Helmaji language from the ground up and let the reader notice the commonalities and stuff, but it came to the point that I don't think people are reading this to learn a language. ;-)
For reference, the words in brackets are exactly what those who know the language hear, mispronunciations, missed words, and all. If you don't know a language like a native, of course you're going to have problems understanding it. Just a bit for authenticity.
On with the show!
14: The Perpetual Star
The Helmaj base
3:05 PM
"#Clear the flats!#" the bullhorn called out. "#The new weapons cache has arrived!#"
"Sounds like something is up," Sergeant Kadashivili remarked to his officer. "It's quite a bustle out there."
"From what we've been told by both our superiors and this Majid person, I doubt the Helmaj are content to be left alone," Kalinin said as he rubbed his goateed chin in thought. "They're worse than the mudje simply on battle tactics alone, but the fact that they push outwards is what really concerns me."
"#I see the aircraft! It's an Antonov! Helmajin Helmaj's personal Antonov is coming in!#"
The soldiers' ears perked up. "They just said something about an Antonov..." Kuyvishev mused. "Maybe it's from the 103rd Guards Airborne, finally come to blast their way in and rescue us?"
"Only thing the 103rd will blast through is a crate of vodka. Probably someone's old Cub ferrying cargo around. Maybe they've got someone who can handle those beasts?" Kadashvili tried to heft himself back to his feet, despite his injury.
"Stay down, comrade sergeant. I'll go take a look." Kalinin held up a hand as he stood up and made his way to the far end of the tent, around the remnants of their lunch from earlier. "You know what to do if I don't make it back."
"Comrade lieutenant, we aren't going anywhere," Private Danilenko protested. "If it's an attack, they'll probably think we're the enemy and blow us to pieces."
"Comrade private, I'm sure that none of us thought we'd end up as Helmaj captives when we were on our way back to Konduz, no?" Kalinin quizzed. "The Soviet Army doesn't deal in certainties, and we're still Soviet soldiers until the day we die or are told otherwise."
Danilenko couldn't help but agree.
"#Set up the beacons! Khalil, pop a smoke flare at the southern edge of the flats! Get over with Popov and stay on guard! The rest of you standing over there, get the mules and trailers ready to haul cargo! Move!#" Majid was barking out orders alternating between a bullhorn and a radio microphone; a ragged Helmaj soldier bore the heavy field radio pack a step behind the Helmaj commander.
"We are receiving Helmajin Helmaji's cargo," Majid said without acknowledging Kalinin. "He has promised us the final weapons we will need to crush your invading army."
"Final weapons?" Kalinin could hear the droning of turboprop engines. "Sounds like a cargo plane... but we don't have any aircraft in-theater capable of handling helicopters..."
"That is because these are not helicopters. Nor are they tanks. I am not surprised you don't know what I am referring to."
If it's not a tank or a Hind... they probably have all the munitions they need, so unless they're getting some sort of armored vehicle, I have no clue what else the Helmaj could employ to keep pushing against us and the mudjehedeen.
"#Aircraft spotted! Confirmed as an Antonov-8!#"
Kalinin's eyebrow rose at the familiar name. "Antonov? You have a Soviet transport aircraft?"
Majid didn't answer; the man had already started trotting off towards an open part of the valley. In the distance, Kalinin could see a dark speck in the bright afternoon sky, flying parallel to the Helmaj valley headquarters.
"Comrades, we may have a ticket out of here," Kalinin mumbled in intentionally garbled-sounding Russian as he got back into the tent. "There is an Antonov-8 inbound, and unless they've specifically stripped them, there are bound to be radios in there. Soviet radios. Soviet radios with Soviet encryption chips in them..."
"...So if we can sneak over there, we'll have these ragheaded terrorists by the balls!" Kadashvili slapped down on his knee triumphantly. "Damn this sprain. Send me out, comrade lieutenant!"
"Your leg is broken, comrade sergeant, and it'll shatter under the weight of your ever-inflating ego," Kalinin flatly replied, with the hints of a rare smile on his face. "We're in hostile territory, so I'll ask you privates if you'd like to volunteer."
Kuyvishev and Danilenko looked at each other for barely a moment before coming to their feet. "We're with you, comrade lieutenant," Danilenko said. The Kazakh private drew himself to attention and saluted proudly. Kuyvishev did the same, barely concealing the wince from his sprained wrist that hadn't fully de-swelled.
"Good. Let's go reconnoiter the scene and see what's going on."
The Antonov's wheels touched the dusty alkali flats and bounced once on ground effect. The pilot swiftly compensated, bringing the nose down, and all three landing gears' shock absorbers started working overtime. The bumps and vibrations rattled the aircraft and its cargo, both known and unknown.
"I feel like I could be writin' a song just now," Mark quipped over the propellors' reverse pitch. "'You don't really love me, you just keep me hangin' on.'"
"Funny." Kenji tightened his grasp on the ceiling load struts, his strong, stocky muscles working overtime. The two agents had managed to clamber up into the ceiling bays of the Antonov-8, normally reserved for extra cargo netting, and were blending in with the un-lit shadows of the aircraft. Aside from Mark almost getting jarred loose during the landing, they had somehow managed to remain concealed from the unconscious soldiers, neither of whom were happy about being chained together.
"Where the hell could they hide?" one of them was yelling as the aircraft slowed down; they had already clambered out of their chains.
"Just secure some weapons when we land. If they've got our AKs, it doesn't make sense for us to take them unarmed. We're already on the ground, so –"
The rear cargo door motored down with a roar of heavy hydraulics, and as the propellers powered down, a great cloud of dust was kicked into the cargo hold. A group of ten Helmaj soldiers waited with ropes and chains attached to four stolen Soviet UAZ trucks.
"#Get this thing out of here and send for an armed platoon!#" one of the soldiers in the plane called out as he rushed down the ramp. "#There are at least two armed soldiers inside the plane!#"
The ten – now twelve – men hitched the chains up and started physically heaving the multi-ton cargo container off of the Antonov, backed up by the UAZs. The pilot and copilot tromped down as well, but bypassed the heavy lifting team.
"#Did you secure the cockpit on the way out?#" the pilot asked as he pulled off his flight helmet, tossing his stringy dark hair about and shaking away the sweat.
"#It should be secure,#" his copilot replied in a feminine, strangely-accented voice. She had come onto the Antonov from the Hip that had ferried her wearing the helmet, not revealing a name or anything else to identify her. "#Those two are of no significance. Neither of them knows how to fly a cargo plane, nor can they read Russian all too well.#"
"#It still bothers me that we let them on, and –#"
"#This came from Helmajin Helmaj himself,#" the copilot snapped, turning to face the taller man. She balled her fists in anger, and he didn't have to guess at the fire that burned in her eyes behind the smoked-plastic visor. "#If you want to question his orders, why not face him and try to take his title like all the others?#"
"#Easy, easy,#" the pilot supplicated. "#We'll leave them alone, just as he ordered.#"
The dust cloud still hung in the un-ventilated air of the Antonov's cargo hold. The haulers had since physically pulled the cargo container out of the aircraft, but the search party still had to work their way through.
"#I'm going to get my hands on Mikhail Kalashnikov himself and find out why the hell he didn't design a light mount for the AK-47,#" one soldier mumbled as he awkwardly held a flashlight and a pistol, taking cautious steps forward. "#Shahid, take up the rear.#"
The reflections of the flashlights blinked under the closed cockpit door, and it didn't take much for the shouting voices to echo throughout the Antonov. Mark silently worked on the radio, rewiring an already-exposed instrument panel. With a nod, he gave a thumbs-up to his partner. All that Kenji saw was a morass of wiring, but apparently he had done something to the aircraft's radio system.
The wrenching open of the cockpit windscreen made the agents jump. Outside, they could see a uniform-clad arm loosening one of the bolts that held down the thick safety glass.
They traded desperate looks as the arm loosened the bolts quickly, all the while with the slow approach of combat boots and shouting voices in a strange language encroached them, every step a kettledrum strike, every raspy shout a tolling bell.
Just then, the windscreen was pulled easily away and tossed down to the ground, and the infiltrator leapt in from the roof of the aircraft...
The SinaiThat same time
"Fehu Six, this is Fehu Two. You're lagging behind, advance to the edge of the Israeli advance and head them off!"
"Six, this is two. I've got four Merkavas that are trying to flank me. Be about sixty seconds."
"Make it thirty. Blow them away if you have to!"
"Roger!"
It was all McAllen could do to shake the sweat away from his face. The angular, ablative-armored torso section of the M-5 Patton Arm Slave wasn't designed for cooling, save for the minimum required antifreeze and coolant for the heavy Allison turbocharged gas turbine engine. Its ever-present roaring whine, indicating smooth run-up to 33,000 RPM, had long since been blocked out by his sound-canceling headphones, and the heat running off the engine had only made the desert exterior worse.
The Patton had already taken four hits from Israeli HEAT rounds, and the armor had certainly done its job. The torso was scorched from the impacts' explosive force, but aside from a secondary hydraulic fluctuation on the right arm, the Patton still fought like it was brand-new.
"Dammit!" McAllen forced the Patton into a hard dodge, kicking the left foot-pedal control to the side and yanking hard left on his twin control sticks. The gigantic, split-toed legs immediately forced the unit to the side, engine roaring as it strained to maintain power to the high-speed hydraulic pumps. Not a moment too soon, the Patton had dodged the rushing approach of an American-made TOW antitank missile.
"Don't shoot at me, I'm trying to help!" McAllen yelled to nobody in particular, pulling his right control trigger. Still locked on to the M113 APC he had been targeting earlier, the Patton's right arm extended its gigantic Boxer cannon, kicking out a rapid burst of three 105mm recoilless rounds. They traced three huge holes into the thin armor of the APC, visible only for a moment as the vehicle exploded in a blossom of flame.
"Fehu Two, this is Fehu Three. Do you require support?"
"Affirmative!" McAllen rotated his control sticks and foot pedals to bring the unit back to its feet, springing up with a leap. He fought the sudden vertical sensation's g-force just as he triggered a leap on the pedals. "I can't move up the phase line until I can break through this tank platoon!"
"Understood. Fehu Three is en route to support Fehu Two."
The hawk-like head of the Patton tracked in on the column of tanks he had been attacking, four Israeli Merkavas in a line-abreast formation, eacha hundred yards apart. The sudden burst in altitude registered on the bright green lettering of McAllen's heads-up display, broadcasting a live image from its external sensors. He made it up to eighty feet, the apex of his leap, before flicking a fire control switch on his right trigger. This time, individual Boxer shots blasted one Merkava through the engine compartment, disabling the vehicle; another Boxer round blasted clean through the turret armor of another. The crew of the first tank threw themselves to the ground as they bailed out of their vehicle, trying to evade the fragments from the latter.
"What in the name of God are those things?" the tank commander asked his driver, helping the injured young man to his feet as they limped away from their burning vehicle.
"I wish I knew, Lieutenant," the driver replied, wincing from the pain of his cracked ribs; the earth nearby had shaken as the Patton had landed hard on its feet and started running to the northwest. "They came out of nowhere and started shooting at us and the Egyptians."
"At least those Arab bastards are getting it hard, too," the lieutenant angrily growled as he glared at the departing, scorched rear of the Patton. He didn't see the other one, armed with a 30mm Gatling gun, taken straight from an A-10 Warthog jet, dash up to the side of their attacker. It swept the ranks of the Israeli armored division like a harvester with a scythe, holding back the advance of the IDF troops. They couldn't see the same beating being taken by the Egyptian brigades on the far side of the line, the Egyptian artillery advantage long since negated by Israeli air strikes.
"Fehu Four to all. I've stopped the southern flank and pushed them back two hundred yards. Fehu One is leading the advance up towards Fehu Six's position. Moderate damage on our team. Bofors rounds have been exhausted, operating on internal weapons only."
"Copy that. Six and Three are in position Charlie at phase line Alpha. We've pushed back the Israeli advance as well and have established a perimeter at Charlie."
"All, One here. Check in at point Charlie and move out on your patrols. Shift to defensive rules of engagement only. Fire only if fired upon."
A metallic thunk sounded as Fehu Three, setting aside its rapid-fire Bofors cannon, delivered a comradely steely pat on the back to his squadmate. The stocky Arm Slaves turned to face each other for a second, the metal-framed heads 'looking' at each other, as if exchanging a signal visible only to the mecha. They headed north in a slow jog, eventually settling behind a sand berm a kilometer away from position Charlie.
Slowly, the Arm Slaves deployed in a scattered line, barely bothering to camouflage themselves, parked square in the middle of no-mans-land between the Egyptian and Israeli armies.
"Morgoth, this is Fehu One," the Arm Slaves' secure radios crackled. "We are at the bridge. Repeat, we are at the Bridge."
"Copy, Fehu One," Sachar radioed back, making note of the date and time on a transmission logbook. "Hold your position. CHISEL POINT moves into phase two at this time."
"Fehu One, holding the Bridge in defensive ROE, copy all, out." The radio went silent.
Sachar dialed in to a telephonic radio frequency, basically a hijacked cell phone signal, before making another transmission.
Israeli Defense Force HeadquartersThe jangling of the brick-like portable phone made everyone in the conference room jump, including its operator. The young MITHRIL staff sergeant picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, then nodded.
"It's for you, General Shabra," the sergeant whispered, interrupting a drag on a cigar. "General Sachar, above the SIGNET CARVER operating area."
"Good. Thank you." Major-General Hebron Shabra, commander of Operations for MITHCENT, tapped the ashes of his Monte Cristo into the ashtray across from the scowling commander of the Israeli Defense Force.
"Andy, this is Hebron here. What's the status?"
"Fehu has interspersed themselves square in the middle of the battle line about twenty miles down from the coast," a scratchy, noisy response came crackling over the earpiece. "We've effectively stopped the advance of both sides. Until the Egyptians bring more artillery to the rear area or the Israelis start staging more air strikes, we're dug in and nobody is fighting anyone at the moment."
"Excellent. I take it the Commander wasn't happy about deploying the Arm Slaves?"
The other line only echoed with the hissing roar of jet engines in the background and a sigh. "Nobody is, Hebron," Sachar replied. "Nobody is happy about it."
Shabra nodded soberly. "Good. Keep me posted. Raikov is in Cairo right now presenting the situation to President Sadat, and I can't imagine he's happy about it either."
"Will do." With that, Sachar disconnected, and Shabra handed the receiver back to his radioman.
"So, in other words, General Abarov," Shabra began as he leaned forward over the oak conference table, "you will pull your forces back to their original locations as of August 15th and accede to existing treaty regulations. You will leave the wreckage removal to us. Your soldiers died in training accidents. Furthermore, I-"
"Furthermore, you and your mercenaries are a bunch of pests that I would love to crush right here and now!" The Israeli general pounded the table and got to his feet, looming over the MITHRIL officer. "These Arabs surround us on all sides, waiting for every single opportunity to push us into the sea that they can take, and only now do your tin men come to fight them off! What's worse, you're killing my men in the process!" He lowered himself to look Shabra right in his dark-ringed eyes. "Where the fuck were you in 1948? 1956? Huh? What about pushing the Heights in '67, holding the Suez defenses in '76?"
Shabra didn't respond, merely taking a drag on his cigar. Exhaling the smoke softly, away from the face of the Israeli, he stared right back at his counterpart. "Who's to say we weren't there?" Shabra responded cryptically. "Who's to say we didn't have our own Merkavas, painted with Stars of David, moving through the Gidi Pass? Were you at the Bar-Lev line to account for each and every one of your soldiers... every single one?"
The Israeli held his ground as Shabra crushed out his cigar. "General, MITHRIL is not an adjunct of the Israeli Defense Force. We are not a division of the Egyptian Army. Nor are we under the command or influence of NATO, the Warsaw Pact; neither American nor Soviet bloc. My job is to make your job, my job, the job of every warrior obsolete. If by doing so, we must unveil the technology that you have only heard rumors and whispers about, so be it. If we must kill Israelis to do so, so be it. We are dedicated to stopping conflicts across the globe, General, not just in the Arab-Israeli conflict."
The air hung heavy with the acridly sweet scent of Cuban tobacco smoke and silence. The Israeli returned to his seat, glaring over the table at the MITHRIL general, not even acknowledging the aide that accompanied him with his portable phone.
A knock on the heavy oaken door interrupted the mutual game of stare-down chicken. "Go away!" the heavyset Israeli roared, just as the door burst open.
"Sir!" the frantic colonel rushing into the room yelled out. "There are more of them, attacking the new ones!"
The Helmaj baseMark immediately slid between the intruder and the copilot's seat, grabbing the sandy-haired man in a quick headlock. Almost instantly, the man in Soviet pattern camouflage drove his elbow into Mark's stomach, weakening the tall black man's grasp long enough to slip out and throw him to the ground in a hip-toss.
Kenji was quick to back up his partner, thrusting a sharp open palm strike square at the man's temple, but the intruder parried his sharp right fist, almost anticipating Kenji's follow-up middle punch from the left. As they locked into a mutual parry, the man thrust his knee upwards towards Kenji's stomach. The MITHRIL agent quickly spun right, pulling the soldier's parry downward and away, forcing him down to the ground. Desperately, Kenji dropped down to press his knee into the soldier's neck. Not a moment too soon, the soldier rolled away and back to his feet, holding a fighting stance.
"#I'm not a Helmaj, and you don't seem like one either,#" the man said in Russian, right hand leading in a textbook CQC stance. "#I don't know if you understand me, but we can get out of here alive and well if we play our cards right.#"
"#Shit,#" Mark responded in very broken Russian, shuffling back to his feet and rubbing a sharp gash on his elbow. "#You had to saying hello like that?#"
"#Your pronunciation and grammar are terrible.#" Kalinin extended a hand to Mark, helping him back to his feet. "#Still, you're the first black man I've ever heard speaking Russian, let alone the first I've ever seen.#"
"#Hey, mister, slow down, I not great in Russian.#"
"Mark?" Kenji asked, an edge in his voice indicating that he had yet to trust the Russian.
Kalinin turned to the stocky Japanese MITHRIL agent. "Sorry my English so bad," he said, his voice brogued in a very heavy Russian accent. "They teach some at university. I am not Helmaj."
"So you're a Soviet soldier, then? Aren't you a bit far from Kabul?"
"I not Kabul, I 104th Spetsnaz. Konduz."
"Spetsnaz? Shit!" Mark hopped up onto the copilot's seat. "#Come on, let's getting out here! Soldiers coming into cargo area!#"
"Da. Quickly, Mr. Japanese, I follow your friend. We escape through way I come in and get off plane."
Kenji eyed the man. "Who's to say you won't throw us off the wing headfirst?"
"I have no means to gain trust, Mr. Japanese, but we go now and worry about that later, please. Now." Kalinin tore the unit patch off of his left sleeve without gusto, handing it over to Kenji. "Soviet citizen not know about existence of Spetsnaz. I abandon you, you survive, you go public and make big splash to superiors. Hurry!"
Mark had already clambered out and hissed at Kenji, low enough not to be heard by the soldiers: "Come on, man! We gotta get out of here! That radio's been wired to broadcast a distress signal! MITHRIL'll be here in eighteen hours!"
Kenji swore under his breath in Japanese . Saying no more, he waited for the Soviet to clamber out of the cockpit and followed him up. They closed the windscreen just as the cockpit door opened inwards.
The Sinai"Fehu Three, move to the north and cover Six's retreat! Four, Five, cover our flanks! Move it, dammit, these things are fast!"
The rapid thakathakathaka of the Arm Slaves' Boxer cannons, combined with the yellow flashes of phosphorous-based shell propellant, rocked the desert with a shadowing, unearthly thunderstorm in the pre-dawn darkness. McAllen desperately pulled himself out of the cockpit of his Patton, reaching for the emergency gear kit, and threw himself to the loose sand of the desert under the smoking hulk of his machine.
His ear protectors barely kept out the hammering explosions of shell impacts and Boxer fire. Still tapped into the MITHRIL frequency, he heard Fehu One frantically trying to coordinate a perimeter around the MITHRIL lines.
A crashing explosion threw up a pillar of sand yards from McAllen, lancing the thick, two-fingered arm off of his wrecked AS. The explosion was followed by a grinding chatter, the rapid firing of a 23mm cannon. "Six is out and pinned!" McAllen called out over the headset of his radio. "One of those things is through the perimeter!"
The cannon fire stopped as a rapid, mechanical pounding thkwiss-thkwiss noise dashed past McAllen. McAllen swore at the thing under his breath as he slung a LAWS rocket launcher over his shoulder from the emergency kit.
The shadow that raced past him was squat-looking for a forty-foot mecha. Its legs were even more awkwardly placed, bent backwards at the joint like a bird's, and it had three large, reptilian-looking feet for stability. Its torso was egg-shaped, not angular like the Patton, and its head was barrel-shaped with two bright, sharp blue-colored 'eyes.'
No doubts about whose that is, McAllen thought to himself, lining up the sights of his LAW on the advancing enemy Arm Slave's right side, centering on the red, white, and black bars of an Egyptian flag, hastily painted over what appeared to be a Soviet red star. They didn't tell us we'd be seeing anything like our Pattons so soon.
"Two, watch your left flank!" McAllen barked into the radio. "One of the enemy machines has broken through to my eleven-o'clock!"
"Copy, Six. Stay where you are and hold tight. We're doing all we can for an egress."
"Egress, my ass!" McAllen yelled. "There's at least seven of those damn things running around! We have to punch through and get out of here!"
Another crashing thkwiss threw up a cloud of sand a few feet away. McAllen turned, drawing his LAWS to bear before even thinking about it, depressing the wedge-shaped trigger on the topside of the weapon. The small rocket kicked out with an explosion of neutral gases as the main motor kicked on. Its warhead had barely armed before the LAWS lanced into the arm of the Egyptian AS, blowing a gaping hole in a shoulder joint. The arm of the mecha seized up, dropping its heavy cannon as the three thick fingers on the end of the arm flexed in and out, almost as if by reflex. A burst of Boxer fire brought the machine down, sparks emitting from the thick, rotund neck.
"Got one!" a voice crackled. "Fehu Three has the kill!"
"Confirmed!" another voice yelled over the radio. "One confirms! Now pull back! Regroup and form a perimeter around Si-"
McAllen tossed aside the spent LAWS and pulled out his last rocket, keeping it ready at his chest as he saw the rest of Fehu team's Pattons circle around him. All the while, they slowly walked backwards, dodging, dashing to the side, moving just like giants. The MITHRIL soldiers didn't even bother to wonder about what the Israeli and Egyptian armies were seeing.
A series of spang noises echoed off the remains of McAllen's AS, and a burst of light over his shoulder caught his eye. He turned just in time to see a Patton explode, its torso welling out and bursting apart with the impact of an unseen assailaint.
"One is down!" someone exclaimed. "Fehu One is down! Negative on the pilot!"
"Calm down! Continue to regroup!"
"Regroup, my ass! We're gonna die out here! Those goddamn Soviet fakers are gonna round us up and kill us all!"
"Steiner! Get a hold of yourself! We've got a man on foot out there!"
"I don't care! We're gonna die!"
Just then, a hail of tracer rounds lanced across the sky, followed a few seconds later by the echoes of tank cannons firing.
"What the hell?" the radio crackled. Another explosion marked the fall of an Egyptian AS. "Who fired? Who was that!"
McAllen ventured a quick climb up his AS' shell to explore. There were four of the bulky Egyptian AS remaining, stunned by the attack from an unanticipated direction. Having swept in from the sea to the north, they had only anticipated the MITHRIL resistance from their occupied area. But not from a troop of Israeli tanks that had lagged behind as a rear-guard.
"Those Magachs and Merkavas are attacking the Egyptians!" Fehu Two called out, his voice steely, even with the surprise.
There were only eight tanks, a small platoon, but they were moving westward, not a few kilometers away, firing as fast as they could draw a bead on the Egyptian mecha. Seeing the flag was all it took for the IDF tanks to charge off, and as the Egyptian Arm Slaves redeployed in a wider line to meet them, they were pinned between advancing Israelis and defiladed MITHRIL AS units. It was only a matter of seconds before they were cut down.
"You okay, McAllen?" The pilot of Fehu Two, Sergeant Major Thabu Tkomo, a tall, thin Kenyan agent, leapt out of his AS as the others moved to cover them.
"Just scrapes and bruises, maybe a few burns." McAllen pulled off his leather gloves and checked his face. "I'll probably have to even my mustache out when we get back," he joked as their radios crackled.
"Fehu team, this is Morgoth. Give me a status update," Sachar's concerned voice ordered.
"Fehu Two here. One is down. I have assumed command. We have Fehu Six's Patton down and non-op. We are preparing to destroy the unit. We encountered resistance from seven Arm Slaves with Egyptian flags. We managed to take down two before an Israeli armored platoon started shooting at them. Following that, we wiped out the Egyptian ASes."
The line was silent for a moment. "Fehu Two, confirm that an Israeli platoon was on the scene of the battle?"
"That's correct, sir. Eight Israeli tanks. They'll be at our position in a minute or two."
"Fehu Two, you are ordered to immediately destroy the Israeli tanks and egress to the south for pickup at point Zulu."
"What!"
"Confirm the order, Sergeant Major," Sachar repeated, devoid of any emotion.
Tkomo grit his teeth for a moment. "McAllen, get in my machine. It's too dangerous to carry you."
"Sarge, those guys saved our asses."
"They saved nobody's asses, McAllen. Nobody was here to save. Some Egyptian units that went too far east attacked those Israelis. Everyone else on the scene was eradicated and should have had orders to pull back when we got here. You get me?"
"Dammit, Sergeant, we're here to stop wars, not kill people!"
"We did one to get to the other, McAllen! We have our orders! We blew the shit out of both sides not too long ago, so don't try to play moral high ground with me! This is MITHRIL! You're damn right we're here to stop wars! We just stopped one, and now we're getting out of Dodge!"
McAllen clenched his hands into fists, then turned and pounded his balled-up right hand onto Tkomo's AS.
"Fehu Two, wilco. Proceeding on orders. Three, Four, wait for McAllen and I to arm up before we move out."
"Three, roger."
"Four, copy."
"We owe them, Sarge."
"I know, McAllen. I know."
John McAllen, a few months shy of twenty-three, made his way up the kneeling Patton and thought about the recruiter that had contacted him shortly after coming out of Officer Candidate School.
"See the world, make lots of money," McAllen mused to himself, rubbing a scrape on his arm, probably from a shell fragment. "Maybe I'm the lucky one here to come out alive, but no peace is worth killing those who'd help us."
"We're here for all forms of peace, McAllen," Tkomo said as he climbed into the cockpit and adjusted into his seat. The gas turbine engine came back to life, quickly kicking power into the AS' systems. The Patton's canopy covers locked into place, covering the chest area where the pilot sat, as its arms brought the heavy Boxer cannon to bear.
"MITHRIL is the interceptor of international conflict," Tkomo growled, gritting his teeth as he worked the right and left control sticks to bring the weapon to bear. It quickly drew a bead on the lead Merkava tank, centering on the chest of the Israeli officer who had stepped partially out of the turret. The confused man saw the weapon pointed at him and looked nervous, almost comical, in the middle of waving to the MITHRIL agents. "If it stops all-out war, if it'll save enough lives, we go in to make whatever sacrifices are necessary. Save the innocents. End the need for soldiers. Even if it means blowing away some fools who couldn't run when they got the orders to do so."
To be continued...
Afterword/Glossary:
CQC: Close-Quarters Combat. Adopted from Metal Gear Solid 3, this fighting style is a combination of judo, aikido, and karate that is focused on rapidly ending a fight after disarming one's opponent. The basic stance is the stronger leg pointing forward (whichever leg the CQC user is more comfortable with) and the weaker leg pointed at a 90-degree angle, facing the front side of the torso, much like a basic fencing or karate stance. The strong hand faces forward and is held at a 45-degree angle facing the front of the body, and the weaker hand usually follows up the movements of the strong hand. CQC is a little hard to describe in text, but it's basically aikido with more of a combat purpose.