Camp Rogain, Shanxi, July 21, 2192, 0500 Local Time.
"What's the word Thom?" Travis asked his gunner as he took a sip of his morning coffee.
Shanxi had a 29-hour cycle, 5 hours more compared to Earth, which meant that they all had to go around working longer times than they might be used to. Officers were generally forgiven for taking early nights at situations like these, though grunts don't get any slack on this.
"Something about a POW camp/fortress-thing off the coast on a cluster of islands somewhere." The gunner said, passing a data pad to the Lieutenant Colonel. "Satellite recon shows heavy AA emplacements in the islands. Mammoths are too slow, and Goliaths are too big of a target."
"So how in the hell are we supposed to get the ground pounders there then?" Travis asked as he flicked through the Sat-Con pictures. Thom wasn't kidding when he said the island looked like a fortress. Barely any of the original island was visible anymore, save for a few patches of land near water, and on the sheer cliffs of the islands.
"That's the kicker, some of the locals pitched in, grunts are gonna be using boats."
"A space-ship? I thought that stack of bricks was stuffed with more guns than your average Texan house?" Travis said, looking at Thom from the corner of his eye.
"Not space-boats, boss. Boat-boats. Like legit, on water boats. With a diesel motor and shit." Thom said as he swiped on the data-pad until it displayed a dozen or so boats, some of them armed with MGs, the others looked like it was used more often on seasonal fishing trips.
"You have got to be shitting me." Travis said in disbelief.
Half an hour later…
"…and as the data-pad that you've all been provided has suggested, you will be escorting real, surface-ships, towards the POW camp." The ACI officer said during the briefing. Travis was still in disbelief, and Thom was honestly having a hard time keeping his face straight.
"We're actually using older tech to fight the bastards?" Travis asked incredulously. "We might as well as go back to using gunpowder!"
"It's the only thing that four-eyes probably haven't thought of Colonel." The ACI officer said again. "Your Mi-144s are fast and agile enough to evade Triple-A fire. For SAMs you could either chaff it like usual, or you could try a new alternative."
"And what's that?" Thom asked.
"I was getting to that sergeant… We've gotten a new shipment from Mars. Next-gen MGs, built using the freak's own tech. Rate of fire is stupid fast, and accuracy is quite impressive, the targeting computer should be able to help you shoot down incoming missiles if need be."
The officer brought up a picture of the new gun to the projector.
"It draws a lot of power, so we're only mounting it on a few squadrons for now. You won't have to worry about running out of ammo soon, it runs on a lead-block feeding system, like the alien's guns."
The officer brought up another picture of the gun, this time with its front half on fire.
"It does overheat fast though, so go easy with the trigger."
-000-
Somewhere else in Shanxi, two weeks earlier…
Zaeed opened his eyes to find he was inside a barely empty room, which was barely furnished. He tried to recollect what had happened to him before he blacked out. He remembered trying to hold off the Batarians, his company commander being brutally killed, falling back to their 'Alamo' and being overrun…
He remembered everything now. Zaeed bolted up realizing that he had been captured. He looked around the room and recognized the makeshift toilet and a bowl filled with what he surmised to be someone's food. He looked around further and found another occupant in the room.
"You're finally awake, now how about that!" The other occupant said. He, for Zaeed recognized the voice to be a man's, was hiding behind a long shadow cast by the wall. "I was getting worried, though they might have gotten you."
"How long have I been out?" Zaeed said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"A couple days or so." The man said as he got up and revealed himself. He was dark skinned, though not an ebony dark. A Hispanic, Zaeed thought to himself. "When they threw you in here, you looked like shit, got a nasty scar on your face. Dragged you out during what little outdoors time we're given, got some friends to take care of your cuts and bruises. Discreetly of course."
Zaeed touched his face at the mention of the scar. Sure enough, he could feel rough patches of skin, and some very subtle lining on his face.
"I suppose I owe you for that then." The wounded soldier said.
"I suppose you do." The man stood up and walked over to where Zaeed was, and extended a hand forward. "The name's Victor Santonuevo."
The soldier took the man's hand and got a closer look at him.
He was an older person probably between his 40s to 70s, Zaeed couldn't exactly tell -modern medicine doing wonders to a Human's lifespan and all- how old Victor must really be. He had a few wrinkles here and there, and his hair hadn't seemed to begin graying.
"Well then Victor, where the hell are we?" Zaeed asked.
"That is easy, we're in a prison camp/fortress built in the Jian Liu islands, in the Guanxi strait." Victor said, motioning for Zaeed to take a peek out the window "The place doubles as both an internment camp, and a staging ground for the Batarian military."
Through the small, barred hole that served as the cell's 'window,' Zaeed saw gunships and transports flying around, transporting troops and equipment between the continents.
"Well, that means the Alliance will be hitting this place soon. We need to coordinate the folks here, help the Alliance troops take this place over." Zaeed said, still surveying the fortified islands.
There were several sentry towers overlooking the inside of the prison complex. No doubt to keep them inside. A SAM launcher was barely noticeable in between the concrete structures, and it was heavily fortified too. A squad, maybe two were guarding it. He couldn't tell, the Batarian silhouettes blended in with each other.
"Figured that you'll say that. Resistance in this prison is heavily disorganized, it's gonna be hell trying to find out who's doing what here. We're gonna need to do some sleuthing to get this place in tip-top shape if we want a chance at even getting out." Victor replied coolly. "I've got a few leads, but I've heard of some kind of gang calling themselves 'Yellowcoats'. Not sure who the hell they are, but word around is they're planning something big. If we can get them and some of the other gangs to work together, we'll stand a lot bigger chance in beating four eyes."
Zaeed considered this. It wasn't unusual for prisoners to group up into gangs and form up rivalries. He should know, most of the soldiers he led was a part of his gang back when he was in prison. It was pure chance that the Alliance had decided to start conscripting prisoners into the armed forces.
"Any idea where they're based?" Zaeed asked, turning away from the window and looking at Victor once more.
"Can't say for certain. The aliens shuffle the cells every few days. They think it stops us from ganging up, though that obviously didn't work." Victor chuckled as he said. "We get limited outside time, we better use it properly."
A few days later…
"Vic, I think I found one of them." Zaeed whispered to his now former cellmate. They were being herded out to the courtyard for their daily 'out time'. "One of the boys out there recognize me from my juvie days, said he'll set me up with a guy later."
"That's great." He said in return. "This is the first lead I have in months. When do we meet him?" Victor asked after that.
"Not we Vic, just me. These guys are paranoid as hell. They've only agreed to see me." Zaeed told him in return. Victor looked disappointed in this, it wasn't surprising with all things considered. He's been looking for the Yellowcoats for months without end. To have some fresh-blooded youngster steal his glory from him was almost insulting.
"Just you? You sure you can trust these guys?" Victor turned to the younger man as they finally entered the courtyard.
"Of course, I bloody can! What kind of question is that? These are my friends, of course I can trust them." Zaeed all but shouted. The thought that his friends would turn against him was completely preposterous to him.
Victor looked torn. He wanted to join Zaeed in his meeting, but it was obvious that he couldn't. All he could do was keep watch on his 'friend' from afar.
Zaeed went to find his contact. The note he was given told him that he was to meet one of these illusive Yellowcoats. He approached the entrance to an unused laundry room. Apparently one of the washing machines had exploded. Most electronics there were fried and destroyed, leaving the room useless. The Batarians didn't want to waste the effort to fix the laundry room, and instead moved the load to another laundry room, or had an external facility do it for them.
He looked around to make sure nobody was watching him, then slowly pried open the steel doors. He slipped through the crack and closed it behind him.
Zaeed was early to the meeting. He had a good amount of time to stake out the place, plan an escape route if necessary, or an ambush if push comes to shove. He just needed to inspect all the rooms and…
'Shit!'
Zaeed peeked at a corner and spotted a dozen Batarians, armed and armored as all Batarians in the complex are. The meeting was definitely compromised. He slowly took a step back, and tip-toed back to the door. He'll have to tell Victor that the meeting was now a dead end. As he reached the door, Zaeed once again tried to pry the door open, but as he slowly pulled the door, he was surprised to find it all but fly open. Zaeed stumbled and landed on his back, and when he got his bearings back, he realized that there was now a pair of Batarians looming over him. The pair of aliens grabbed him by the soldiers and lifted him up. A third one entered through the door and shut it behind him. The four-eyed alien sneered and punched Zaeed in the gut a few times before having him dragged into the room where Zaeed had first seen the aliens grouped up. They dropped him on the ground and one of them stepped on his back, keeping him from getting back up.
"We found this one snooping around, what do we do with him?" the Batarian that had kicked the imprisoned soldier asked.
"He might be one of Zahn's boys. We can't let him learn what we're up to, get rid of him." The leading Batarian said.
The Batarians dragged Zaeed further into the room and pinned him into the wall.
"Gotta make this look like a gang kill, can't let the others know it was us." One of them said.
The Batarian that seemed to be in charge pulled out a knife from his belt and brought it up to stab Zaeed. At that moment, when the attacking Batarian was most vulnerable, Zaeed struck back. He kicked back against the wall, which forced him and the Batarians that were holding him back.
The paratrooper twisted around and struck the Batarian who held the knife, forcing the alien to drop it. The two then scrambled to seize the knife. Zaeed grabbed the knife from the ground and whirled around to attack the Batarian who he had wrestled with, but then had the wind knocked out of his lungs as a Batarian tackled him. He realized that one of the Batarians who had pinned him earlier struck from behind him.
Zaeed and the alien wrestled on the ground and struggled for the upper hand. The Batarian elbowed the Human in the face and began choking him while he was stunned. Now losing the battle, Zaeed began to panic ever so slightly. Zaeed began hitting the alien at his sides, to no avail. He increased the frequency and intensity of his attacks until he felt his hands brush on a metallic object in the alien's hip. Realizing that it was the Batarian's sidearm, he began trying to yank the gun out of the magnetic holster. Fortunately for Zaeed, the alien was preoccupied in trying to suffocate his opponent and was not paying attention to what the man was doing.
Zaeed managed to slip the pistol out and shoved it onto the Batarian's face. However, just as he was about to pull the trigger, a third party intervened in the brawl.
"What the hell is going on here?" Zaeed heard and recognized the voice.
The Batarian choking him was shoved away by the intervening man, and a pair of hands picked up Zaeed.
Zaeed shook himself off the man who picked him up and recognized him as his earlier contact.
"Wilson, what the hell? You're in on it with them!" Zaeed said as he drew the pistol on his old friend.
"Yes I am Zaeed, but not like that…" The older man said. "It's a matter of mutual benefit."
"Mutual benefits? What mutual fucking benefits! These Four-eyed freaks are the enemy!" the soldier shouted back at his friend.
"No we aren't." One of the Batarians then said, walking in between Zaeed's gun and Wilson.
"Really now? If you're not our fucking enemies, then why the fuck are you even on this planet, huh?" Zaeed said shoving the gun into the Batarian's face.
The Batarian clenched his fists and looked as if he was about to punch Zaeed, but then he took a deep breath and spoke.
"Your enemy is the Batarian Hegemony: The rulers of our homeworld, and over 94 percent of the Batarian population."
"What about the rest of the 6?" Zaeed asked, tightening the grip on the pistol.
"Lucky enough to be free." The Batarian answered. "That is what I, we, are fighting for: to be free."
"You'll have to forgive me for thinking that's a whole load of bullshit."
"You'll also have to forgive me for thinking that you smell like a pile of varren-shit, but our opinions don't factor in on this; the fact remains is that we have a mutual enemy."
A few tense seconds passed by in what felt like an eternity. After some heavy contemplation, Zaeed finally lowered his pistol, though he did not take his finger off the trigger.
"All right barf-face, I'll bite."
-000-
Apologies for not updating in the past 2 months, I had a mega-chapter (around 20k words) in the works to try and wrap a lot of things up before Christmas, but my computer decided that that wasn't cool and decided to crash the hard disk on me. Long story short I lost a month's worth of progress and after that, I was just way too bummed to deal with it until now.
I still want to clear up Shanxi before Christmas day, but I guess we'll have to see how fast I can churn out chapters in the next few days.
For those who are interested, Watch_Dogs, Assassins Creed IV, and World in Conflict is free on Ubisoft's uPlay until Dec 23 and Steam sale should start within a day or two. Personally, I'd recommend Day of Infamy for World War 2 buffs. The game's real authentic, and there're free updates for it every few months.
Speaking of World War 2, there's this ongoing alt-history comic book series called Uber. Very graphic, but also very interesting (IMO). It's interesting in that while it does go the usual way of 'Nazis make magical superweapon and turn the war' kind of thing, it doesn't go overboard with it ala Wolfenstein. The writers keep the new tech balanced and accessible by both sides of the war. really good read, if you're into that kind of stuff, I would definitely recommend.
Like it? Hate it? Don't feel either way? Write it down in a review or PM them to me! All (constructive) feedback is good feedback to me.
Anyways thanks for reading, and once again I do feel terribly sorry for not updating in so long. As always, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and hopefully, I will update soon.
*EDIT* Didn't notice the continuity error between the prison rebel's name, should be fixed now