Chapter 30
Operation Nexus Leviathan was on its way and almost all agencies had their attention on it. All watched at the ridiculous displays of power on both sides and cheered at the roars of pain Bixi gave when the attack reached its full power.
And while all this happened, a small group of Harten Flight Units made its way towards a 'secure' facility owned by the US intelligence services. Thanks to the database ripped by the cores a few days prior, Steel Locust had concluded that the place was the most suitable place where either the Core of Logic or Kristoff Matthews were stored. 1S, Soreo, was leading the group of Assault and Infiltrator units flying there.
"Operator 12O to 1S, ETA to objective, 160 seconds, engage active stealth mode at once."
"Roger that. All units, engage active stealth." The Harten had both passive and active stealth capabilities. The passive were the common ones found in human aircraft, the alloy used, the paint, the low profile (while in flight mode), etc. For active measure, the units had been outfitted with an active light refraction/projection unit. In other words, it could turn invisible. In addition to that, the engines could be muffled to 30% of their usual noise levels, so the Harten flight units were some of the best insertion units in existence now.
"Operator 12O to 1S. Find Objectives 1 & 2 or report their absence. Team two is on standby for next location." The stakes were high, Nexus Leviathan was as much a distraction as a tactical strike. Everyone was paying attention to the flashy stuff. But Steel Locust needed the small, overlooked parts that the US services had been dragging their feet with.
Team two has flight units fitted with heavy sensors, specially calibrated for the spectrum the Honkai created when interacting with common materials. And now they were using them to detect the facility where the two objectives were supposedly held. The results they sent to command weren't good. "Operator 12o to 1S. Objective is hot, repeat, objective is hot. Prepare for combat landing."
As soon as he finished that transmission a horde of black and red Archangels showed up in their visuals. "1S to all units. Upcoming hostiles, weapons hot. Prioritize arrival to the facility. Termination of hostiles is tertiary objective."
"Understood sir!" the chorus of android voices reassured 1S, who peeked at 1A's own Flight Unit. it had begun firing on the Honkai rushing towards them. 1S opened joined the cacophony of energy bullets, their mission couldn't fail.
Father was counting on them.
"1S to Operator 12O, facility in visual range, requesting scan for life forms. Bandits in the AO." 1S grunted as his Flight unit kept firing. What began as simple insertion soon became an unavoidable dogfight. His team had now lost over 4 minutes trying to create a hole in the flying swarm blocking their way.
"Operator 12O to 1S, Lifeform scan complete. Faint human bio signs detected. Concentration suggests barricaded survivors. Exfiltration of survivors is a quaternary objective. Primary and secondary remain unchanged."
"1S to Operator 12O. Swarm shows no signs of reduction of numbers, requesting reinforcements."
"Operator 12O to 1S. Request granted. TSF forces authorized. ETA 10 Minutes."
"1S to Operator 12O. Understood! 1S to all units, concentrate fire and make a hole! Team 2! Engage the swarm! Full armaments authorized!"
"Team 2 to 1S, Copy that. Proceeding to engage."
Team 2's 12 flight units came down and began their own dogfight. The swarm reacted and began focusing on them. Which 1S' team 1 exploited. The flight units soon all fire their heavy energy beams, which punched the needed hole through the enemy's numbers. Soon Team one engaged tier afterburners and raced towards the closing gap. They made it just as it closed. "1S to Team 2, we're through! Hang in there, reinforcements 8 minutes away!"
"Team 2 to 1S, just complete the mission. We'll hold the line. 6A out."
Team 1 landed on the destroyed field near a hut in the middle of nowhere. The forest was dense, and the shadows cast by the swarm flying overhead didn't help on how ominous it looked. 1S took out his MP Shotriser. They'd gotten priority on equipment for all this. So Team one had Shotrisers, Shotguns and Caliburs unlike the other units currently fighting alongside Father. And they would use them well.
The hut was nothing remarkable, but the area below it had traces of Honkai radiation, so they knew there was something of interest down there. and they were right. Below the house, a passage entrance covered by wood and a metal door was found. The 1S looked for any electronic locks they could exploit, but nothing came back. Primitive was it was.
"SHOTGUNRISE!"
"KABAN SHOT!"
He and his team began destroying the area where the door met with the surrounding concrete. While a common force would find this futile, the weaponry of the YoRHa forces soon overcame the reinforced construction. The door was pulled and with a heavy thud it fell. It exposed a concrete corridor heading somewhere deep into the earth. "1S to Operator 12O, bunker entrance located, proceeding to enter. Possible communications interruption."
"Operator 12O to 1S, understood. TSF reinforcements are 4 minutes away. Team 2 reports massive enemy forces."
"1S to Operator 12O, copy. Proceeding to infiltration. Team 1 going dark."
...
...
The group of androids had run through the seemingly endless passageway. It soon connected an enormous tunnel. An underground highway, from the looks of it. Following along they soon found traces of barricades, machine gun nests and a few armored vehicles. Then their former occupants.
Some were crushed, a few had bites taken out from all over their bodies and a few looked as if they had been fed through a blender. The blood looked a few hours old so they knew whatever the Honkai was looking for might still be around.
A place looked promising, as there were some beats wandering around along some undead. The Shotrisers made short work of them. The undead were analyzed, a few were made purely from Honkai energy but some still had some human bits remaining in their bodies. Soon they found a pair that wore civilian clothing along with pistol holsters. Keycards were acquired from them, along with their hands and a couple of eyes.
They reached the door that held the most promise. Around it another barricade and a few destroyed machine guns were scattered. It was caked with blood and flesh and the door looked like a Chariot had pounded it for a while before wandering off.
The severed eyes and hands were used for a biometric lock. The door failed to open all the way from how bent it was from the repeated hits from the Chariots. Team 1 pried it open all the way.
The interior looked bad. Bullet holes made by something from inside littered the walls. The few corpses adorning the hallway looked to be the reason of the former.
The facility was spacious, against that media would tell you about secret bases. The illumination wasn't working properly from all the bullet holes that filled the corridor. Walking over the corpses of a few armed personnel, the group collected a few more keycards and 'biometric passes.' They found more doors that their recent acquisitions opened, usually to the sight of a random undead or the odd corpse with a bullet to its head and their sidearms still on their hands.
They finally reached the place their scans had pointed as the source of the bio-signs. The door looked like it had been clawed at for a long while. There were some corpses filled with holes around it, and a man half-eaten right in front of it. The bloodstained footprints indicated that the undead responsible had wandered off to somewhere else.
The door accepted the 'pass kit' the YoRHa units had appropriated. And from inside the room, a few exclamations of surprise were heard. "Oh, thank god! The rescue team! I thought the broadcast room had been overrun but seems like they managed to set the emergency beacon!" the man wearing nurse scrubs loudly exclaimed. Besides him, another male and three females were crouching below a barricade made of overturned desks and a few office furniture. One of the females had a hand towards the loud man.
"Hopkins! God dammit! At least check for their passwords! Oh shit!" She yelped along with her companions and the loud man, as the Shotrisers and Attache Shotguns were pointed her way.
1S spoke neutrally. "We're here for prisoner KM6246. Your extraction team will arrive later."
The loud man didn't seem to have a mouth filter. "The spook? What's so important to get him the Private Ryan treatment?"
"Above my paygrade, Director Mason's orders." The lie was easy to make but soon they engaged the full-spectrum scans and located another bio-sign a bit further from the room they currently were in. "Is the prisoner secured?"
"Yeah, his extraction was scheduled for later… why?"
"I'm sorry. Orders were leave no witnesses."
"Wait! No! NO!"
The loud bangs silenced the organics inside the room. Soon a few more corpses joined the rest filling the base.
The agent was tied to a metal table, spy thriller style. Near the head were a few cloths and buckets, some of the still filled with water. It looked like the last thing before the outbreak was the enhanced interrogation of the prisoner. He was still covered with a black hood.
The android group surrounded the table and took off the hood. The beaten face of a man greeted them with swollen eyes. "Ready for round sixteen dear?"
"You Kristoff Matthews?" 1A asked the bound man, facial recognition software running through the deformations to verify with previous photographs.
"Question is, who are you cuties?" The man grinned revealing a bloodied smile. No honor among thieves, or in this case, among intelligence operatives, it seemed.
"Identity confirmed. You're coming with us." 1S simply put the hood back on the prisoner. An android holding each limb, they cut Matthews out of his bounds and put custom android-grade restraints. He struggled a bit before finding he wouldn't be getting out of them easily. Then one of the assault models took him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
"Hey! Watch it! You're gonna break something!" The sarcasm was heavy with this guy.
1S didn't care. "We only need you to talk, the rest of you is expendable. Let's get out here."
The trek back to the surface was shorter, and the sight that greeted them would have given a human pause. Enormous gunmetal grey machines with green highlights stood close to Team 1 and 2's flight units. Around them, twenty thousand dissolving Honkai beast corpses lay in mountains as proof of the battle that had transpired there.
In another world, these marvelous machines would have never seen mass production or deployment. Here, the satellites had queued their construction just before commencing Operation: Nexus Leviathan. Here, just above the Berkuts created first, they were the single most powerful single-manned war machine on the planet.
In another world, the YF-23, in this world, the Black Widows, crafted alongside their pilots for the sole destruction of the Honkai.
Their name? The Grey Ghosts.