Thursday, July 20th, 2017
11:57 GMT-5 (16:57 GMT July 20th)
The Arctic: 3 minutes to Zero Hour
Stephanie felt like her entire body was being stabbed by a thousand needles.
It took what seemed like an eternity for her body to register anything resembling cold or even that she was underwater. The drop had been totally unexpected as had been the initial plunge down an icy shaft not all that much wider than her own body. After about eight feet, her feet had first tasted the Arctic Ocean. Stephanie could not remember screaming but her mouth had been open as the rest of her body had plunged into the frigid water which was around zero degrees Celsius – ocean water freezes at -1.8°C due to the salt content or salinity. The salt water had enshrouded her body as she had plunged ever downwards towards the ocean bottom over a thousand metres below. Her eyes had initially registered shades of blue, darkening as she sank, but then she had snapped them closed as the freezing water had stunk her eyeballs.
She had tasted the salt water in her mouth for just an instant before her descent was jerked to a stop and the pain at her waist reminded her of the rope which her hands feverishly fought to find and then locked around.
11:59 GMT-5 (16:59 GMT July 20th)
Sixty seconds to Zero Hour
The boy reacted quickly, hauling Stephanie out of the hole in the ice and pulling the screaming, hyperventilating girl out of the freezing water.
Stephanie was shaking so violently that the boy struggled to get a hold of the naked girl and he had to grab hold of the leather belt to heave her out of the hole and onto the snow. Stephanie was rolled over and over in the snow; the snow drying her skin before she was wrapped in a thick blanket and Ransom lifted her up and took her over to the 4x4 and he laid her inside.
"Get back inside," the boy ordered Mindy.
Mindy did as she was told, and she cradled the violently shivering Stephanie against her, hugging her daughter as they both sobbed with the cold and the near-death experience.
"We shall wait a while, and then we shall repeat that little exercise," Ransom chuckled as he threw Mindy a towel which she used to dry Stephanie's hair and remove the last of the snow. "There are..."
However, before he could finish his statement, there came a loud crashing sound from a few hundred yards away and a tremor went through the ice, followed by a loud cracking sound, like something had struck the icepack.
12:00 GMT-5 (17:00 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour
Indeed, something had struck the icepack; something weighing in at some five-thousand-three-hundred tonnes submerged displacement.
Ransom was mesmerised as he watched several massive chunks of icepack each weighing many tons rear up and fall to one side as something very black poked through the cracked ice and thrust aside further huge sections of Arctic ice that had to weigh a dozen tons each. With a loud noise easily audible at their distance and a blast of spray reminiscent of a whale breathing, the black object heaved itself out of the Arctic Ocean. First it was the sleekly sloping steel bow with a partial view of the sonar chin which quickly vanished back under the water as the monster blew itself to full buoyancy, continuing to shed tons of snow and ice to either side as it did so, then it was the rest of the eighty-four metre underwater warship, her hull stretching back past the largest hull protrusion and very black against the white ice.
The Royal Navy nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine, HMS TORBAY, shuddered as she achieved full buoyancy and then shapes began to appear on her foredeck, afterdeck, and the bridge atop the tall sail or conning tower. Within a minute, machinegun fire begun to erupt from atop that sail where a giant White Ensign unfurled and flapped lazily in the breeze. The gunfire was directed at the Shogun 4x4 but not striking the vehicle. White shapes poured out of the fore and aft hatches.
Mindy and Stephanie had both been dragged out of their frozen stupor by the violent upheaval and the sudden offensive display of military hardware.
..._...
On the foredeck of the submarine, amidst the remnants of snow and ice, the forward hatch had clanged open against its catch and a sailor inserted a stainless steel vertical railing to assist those coming up behind him.
Captain Sinead McFadden of 45 Commando, Royal Marines led her twenty-six-man Recce Troop out of the forward hatch, a winterised L119A2 CQB Carbine held across her chest. A sergeant was up next and he counted out the next twenty-four men who all followed their captain as she leapt ashore and took cover behind a large(-ish) hummock made up of snow and ice. It took just a few minutes for her entire troop to take up positions on the icepack and in their sections ready for action. All were highly-trained and experts when it came to operating in such frigid conditions.
Some sixty yards away, a second Recce Troop was assembling on the ice having left the submarine via the midships hatch on the afterdeck.
..._...
The gunfire aimed in his direction had suddenly galvanised the man into action and Ransom shoved the vehicle into gear and pressed his foot down on the accelerator, momentarily fish-tailing the vehicle in his haste to escape the enemy troops gathering just a few hundred yards distant.
The man had no illusions about who had just left the obviously British submarine - it could only be Royal Marine Commandoes.
"I . . . can tell you that the assault involves a British submarine – two actually," Mindy laughed, and she felt Stephanie giggle as the youngster huddled into Mindy.
"Fucking bitch!" Ransom breathed as he made for his facility.
His mind was just wondering what could only be about fifty or sixty men could do when his radio crackled to life.
"Aircraft inbound, at one thousand feet! Coming from the east!"
"Shoot them down!" Ransom ordered as he stopped the vehicle and looked to the east, but his head then snapped around to the north where his surface-to-air battery was (had been) hidden. "Motherfucker!"
"Problem, Ransom?" Mindy asked innocently as she watched the growing explosive cloud of orange fire which rose into the clear sky followed by black smoke.
Ransom did not trust himself to speak as he watched his primary air defences cook off. Then he groaned as he watched what had to be hundreds of paratroopers drop from a pair of Royal Air Force C-17A Globemaster III transport aircraft. Then he watched as a third C-17A dropped down even lower than the others and deposited several pallets of cargo onto the ice before curving up smartly and punching out dozens of dazzlingly-bright flares as it curved around to the east and raced away at what would have been tree-top height had the Arctic actually had any trees.
Mindy grinned fiendishly as Ransom started the vehicle moving again.
..._...
A little under a kilometre to the east of the Axis facility, under a cloudless blue sky, the first paratroopers touched down onto the icepack beneath a carpet of white parachute canopies.
They were primarily men of 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment - 1 PARA - which was operating as part of the Special Forces Support Group and made up of A Company and B Company. Of the four platoons in each company, one was made up of Royal Marines while B company also hosted a platoon of the RAF Regiment. The men quickly split up into their platoons and began to march on the objective via the cache of airdropped supplies.
Just minutes behind the rapidly departing C-17A transports but coming from the west, a contrasting pair of Royal Air Force A400M Atlas 1 transport aircraft came in low at exactly one thousand feet and the men of C Company and Y Company of 1 PARA jumped to join their comrades on the ice. Again, as with A Company and B Company, C Company also consisted of a single Royal Marines platoon and 3 Parachute Regiment platoons. As before, the men quickly sorted themselves out and they moved off after the other two companies, laying claim to whatever remained from the cache of airdropped supplies.
All told, the airdrop had added some four hundred and thirty professional soldiers into the Arctic assault bringing the numbers of assault troops currently on the ice and available to face the Axis of Evil to over five hundred.
12:12 GMT-5 (17:12 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour + 12 minutes
Mindy was shivering, despite the Shogun's heater operating at full blast as that bastard had deigned not to offer up her jacket.
Her dignity was protected by the towel-clad Stephanie who was whimpering as she huddled into Mindy for what meagre warmth remained. Despite their problems, Mindy was pleased to see that the boy was crapping himself as he looked out the windows at the parachute assault underway much too close for comfort. Part of her was desperate to get into action, and if she had to fight stark bollock naked, then she damn well would! But the other part of her mind told her that she would die of hyperthermia long before she died at the end of an Axis weapon. Mindy kept her eyes and ears open, observing everything and missing practically nothing. Everything she saw or heard was filed away in her brain as intelligence all of which could then be drawn upon to ensure that her reign of death in the Arctic continued.
After bouncing around for a few minutes, Mindy was getting very annoyed and her wrists were fighting against the plastic flexicuffs on her wrists, but she paused in her struggling as they approached a glazed dome which towered over them for a moment before they plunged down a ramp into a tunnel which opened into the dome after just fifty metres.
The Mitsubishi Shogun 4x4 skidded to a halt in a large hanger-like domed structure with several prefabricated buildings arranged to the left and right in parallel lines. Raymond and his son jumped out. Mindy remained in the back of the vehicle, unsure what to do, not to mention that she was all but naked. Raymond yelled at two armed guards.
"Take these two to an office and secure them – we are under attack!"
Ransom vanished and Mindy found herself hauled from the back of the vehicle where one of the guards was at least good enough to hang her jacket over her bare shoulders. Even so, she could feel the cold from the outside on her bare legs, bare ass, and bare other places. She had to help Stephanie to walk as the girl was still too shocked by her near-death plunge into the Arctic Ocean to be able to properly comprehend her surroundings and what was expected of her. In the end the other security guard had picked the towel-clad Stephanie up and sped up the imprisonment. Stephanie had been laid on a couch in an office and once Mindy was inside, the door had been closed and locked.
Mindy had looked around but was unable to see any way out of the office as the windows were not large and the door was decidedly solid. Instead, Mindy found a gas fire which she turned on full before lying down beside Stephanie and listening to the sounds of battle outside as the office warmed up considerably. While her body was resting and recuperating, her mind was working at full speed, thinking about the plan and what was happening beyond the walls of the office even as she and Stephanie laid there.
Hell had arrived in the Arctic.
..._...
Mindy could not have fully known that Dave and the rest of the team were desperate to find her and Stephanie.
The young man had been beside himself with concern when they had lost contact with Mindy after the vehicle had rolled. Then he had watched as a Mitsubishi Shogun had appeared and he had fumed knowing that it was the enemy. Not being able to do anything had been the worst; they had no idea who else was out there and it was too early to strike and potentially blow the entire operation before it had even begun. Then he had been relieved to see Mindy reappear – at least she was alive although there had been no sign of Stephanie. Then as he had watched Mindy through his binoculars, she had begun a striptease on the ice which had been surprisingly erotic from his viewpoint despite his knowing that Mindy could easily die from exposure at any moment. Others had witnessed Mindy's plight but nobody had said a word and nobody had even made a joke; instead, everyone had simply seethed at their boss being put through such an ordeal.
Then they had watched as Mindy had been pushed into the Shogun which had driven off before vanishing behind a large hummock of ice and had been lost to sight.
..._...
Unfortunately for Dave and the rest of the combined strike force, Mindy's situation had to be filed away for later.
To minimize the chances of a blue-on-blue strike, the attacking forces had been allocated a strike zone. Therefore, the four hundred plus men who made up 1 PARA were charged with moving in from the south and east to seize the airstrip which consisted of a single runway (or 'skiway' as it was known in the Arctic) and the fuel depot. It was imperative that nobody be allowed to escape from the facility and the facility did operate a pair of helicopters and a small fixed-wing aircraft. The battalion had separated into individual companies for the initial move into the objective before splitting down further into sixteen twenty-six man platoons. The white-clad troops moved in slowly but stealthily knowing that they could come under attack by the defending forces at any moment.
Not surprisingly, they were not made to wait too long as heavy machinegun fire came in at them from what had to be machinegun pits located between the skiway and the main facility. Every man went down into a prone position behind anything which provided even the most basic of cover. All except two sections of men who swiftly set up the tripod for their star weapon, the L1A1 12.7mm heavy machine gun (.50-cal for the Yanks). Spaced eighty metres apart, the weapons soon let rip with tins of one hundred round belted cartridges stacked ready for use.
Two hundred yards behind the machineguns, a mortar platoon was setting up six L16 81-millimetre mortars upon what they hoped was solid ice. Very swiftly, an army corporal had zeroed in on the positions of the enemy machinegun pits with binoculars and with a smart order from the sergeant in charge of the platoon, six L41A4 high-explosive mortar bombs were released into the smooth-bore mortars and the crews turned their faces away from the devices which bucked as each mortar bomb was fired into the air with a crack.
The corporal watched for the fall of shot and called out corrections as required although the first two rounds from each mortar served to bed in the baseplate prior to more accurate fire being possible.
..._...
The mortars came as a shock to the defenders as the initial rounds plummeted down and landed just a few yards distant and detonated.
Hot metal scythed out in every direction, cutting down one man who had been a little too inquisitive. His blood, plainly visible on the ice, was a reminder that a battle was underway using modern weaponry. However, the men and women who made up the defenders were disciplined and they knew the stakes and what would happen to them should they fail to defend the facility.
It was not a battle which they intended to lose but they knew the odds were building against them.
..._...
Coming in from the west and partially covered by the 7.62-millimetre machineguns mounted upon the sail of HMS TORBAY, Alpha and Bravo Recce Troops of 42 Commando made directly for the personnel structures.
Captain Sinead McFadden was in her element as she led Alpha Troop towards the facility. She loved the snow and like her male colleagues, they felt at home in such an inhospitable environment where the Royal Marines were arguably world leaders. All communications were with hand signals as twenty-four of the twenty-five men under her command spread out into their four-man teams leaving her with Sergeant Billy Martin. The sergeant was a veteran of Operation Counterstrike of the previous year when they had taken down the forces of one Sebastian Radford. Many of the marines out on the ice had also fought in the very same battle. The captain had the respect of her men, not just because of her rank, but also because she had fought in battle and been injured while leading her men from the front.
The captain was also pleased to be fighting alongside her friends, including her adoptive daughter, Dakota.
..._...
The northerly route was reserved for Brigade Patrol Troop, the sixteen men who had already caused destruction by planting explosives upon the expensive Russian-sourced surface-to-air missile system which was now nothing more than charred scrap along with the air-search radar which controlled said system.
They had a relatively easy approach via the storage berms before they would approach the personnel buildings. The troop commander hoped to capture any enemy fighters attempting to escape the battle by making for the vehicles stored at the north end of the facility, however, what vehicles could not be sabotaged were boobytrapped.
Finally, the troop would be the spearhead for the force following in their wake.
..._...
That force was the thirty-five members of Fusion/Vengeance/Honneur who would make directly for where they believed the command centre to be located in buildings to the east of the main personnel buildings.
Kick-Ass was on point along with Arbiter and Stripe who were eight yards to his left and right. All wore white and all were armed with automatic weapons – mainly the C8 CQB carbines. They approached on foot with Rage, Fury, Resolute, and Splinter in the next line, some twenty yards back, each with an eight-yard spacing. The third line, again some twenty yards back, consisted of Ajax, Termino, Nox , Obsidian, and Rampart. Behind them were Trojan and Wildcat with Foxtail as tail-end Charlie.
Behind the personnel, were the two armoured Vikings with their heavy machine guns which could fire over the heads of those ahead of them. Victor Two Two under the command of Surgeon out on the right flank would also be the primary medical unit with Allegiant and Pyrrha aboard. The same applied to Victor Two One out on the left flank under the command of Astute with Thunderstorm and Doctrina aboard. Three Toyota Hilux completed the force. Tango Hotel One and Tango Hotel Two were each fitted with twin Maximi machineguns in their load beds and were there, primarily, to look after Tango Hotel Eight behind them.
Tactically, Tango Hotel Eight was critical to the operation as it carried Q and Battle Guy who would be required to hack into the command centre to obtain the deactivation codes. Piranha had the job of driving Tango Hotel Eight and keeping the uber geeks safe. La Coccinelle and Shadow drove Tango Hotel Two and Tango Hotel One respectively with La Terreaur manning the gun in the load bed for La Coccinelle and Rigour doing the same for Shadow who also had Intrepid along for the ride.
That left two vehicles operating independently with their crews. Hal would remain with the command & control Toyota, Tango Hotel Six with Nemesis to protect her and they would remain a kilometre to the northwest of the objective.
Naturally, that just left the sniper team of Leon and Songbird who were currently laid up in a hide, a kilometre to the northeast from where they had an amazing view of the entire base.
..._...
However, facing those combined forces were almost eight-hundred men and woman, two hundred of whom were scientists and civilian staff.
Just one month or so earlier, there had only been around eighty personnel present at the facility but that number had skyrocketed once Operation Capital was due to commence. Every fighter employed by the Axis was a skilled mercenary, almost all with prior military service from a dozen different countries around the world. Indeed, that meant that the defenders knew much about the tactics which would probably be employed against them.
They were top-notch but then so were those with whom they were facing.
12:12 GMT-5 (17:12 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour + 5 minutes
The first forces to make contact was Alpha Troop of 42 Commando who came under heavy fire a good thirty minutes before 1 PARA as they had approached the personnel structures.
Bullets struck the snow all around them as the troop dropped to the snow and ice, taking cover as best they could. Fire was returned as soon as targets were identified and Captain McFadden began to coordinate a flanking counterattack. An expert on military manoeuvres, the young captain had trained her troop in exactly what they should do in just such a event. A few hand signals and shouted commands and the twenty-four men separated into three eight-man sections. One Section threw several smoke grenades out onto the icepack before they moved off to the left, their movements covered by the dense white smoke. Three Section, over to the right did the very same as they moved in from the right. More smoke grenades were thrown by Two Section in the centre who then advanced forwards, their weapons chattering away as a distraction from what was happening to their left and right. The captain and the sergeant leapt up from their position on the snow and they followed Two Section through the smoke.
The muzzle flashes of the enemy weapons were visible through the smoke and bullets whizzed past the heads of the Royal Marines as they moved forwards, two at a time, darting in different directions to confuse the enemy before coming back down onto the icepack as the next pair ran past them. It took the enemy several minutes to realise that they were being outflanked but not before lethal hails of bullets began to strike the snow and ice around their re-prepared positions, coming out of the smoke from unexpected directions.
Both the sergeant and the captain were quick to notice that the foxholes in use were well-sited and provided very good cover for their occupants as well as well-planned overlapping arcs of fire. But it was a threat for which the Royal Marines Commandoes trained on a regular basis and as they advanced from each flank, high-explosive grenades were thrown ahead of them from out of the swirling smoke.
Just as the bullets which had rushed out of the smoke from their left and right flanks, causing several injuries – some fatal, had been unwelcome, the inbound hand grenades were deemed to be just as unwelcome and rather disruptive.
..._...
Captain McFadden grinned as she saw the flashes of the grenades and heard the screams of the wounded above the resounding crashes as they detonated.
It was difficult to see what damage the attack had inflicted on the enemy, but the level of gunfire had definitely reduced which meant some of the enemy had died and therefore made her task all the easier. As she ran forwards to join her men, she saw movement to her right and a man in a uniform which was not one of her own – the man died with a three-round burst into his chest without hesitation on the captain's part as she ran past with her sergeant close behind.
The sergeant had a lot of respect for his commanding officer as she was very capable and never allowed herself to be overshadowed by the men she commanded. With his experience and time in service which was almost three times that of the young female officer, he was certain that she was going somewhere within the Royal Marines and may even become a general officer one day. He also knew that his officer was more capable than some male officers under which he had served.
"Move it, sergeant!" the captain roared over her shoulder. "No time for dilly-dallying!"
The sergeant chuckled as he ran after his officer.
..._...
Despite the temperature being thirty below, the icepack was warming up somewhat.
That did not help the fifteen members of Fusion, Vengeance, and Honneur who were trudging through sixteen inches of soft snow in teams of two or three, running (wading) forwards before crouching down in the snow and checking ahead and to the side for movement as their position dictated. So far, they had not come under fire, despite hearing the chatter of automatic weapons only a few hundred yards distant. Fury and Rage had just completed their eighteenth run (wade) forwards and their weapons scanned out to the left. Ahead of them, Arbiter could be seen running forward with Ajax off to their left and behind. Fury was angry because her friend was missing, as was the person whom she referred to as 'her second mother'. That simply made her angry and that anger piqued her senses as she gazed through her tinted goggles at the seemingly endless whiteness, her eyes moving, watching...
"Contact! Contact! Contact!" Fury radioed as she put a trio of bullets into a head which had popped up some sixty or so yards ahead of her.
Some more heads appeared and rapidly vanished from sight again as Rage, Arbiter, and Ajax gave them several reasons to do so. Everybody else who was not already crouching down in the snow dropped immediately and aimed their weapons. Kick-Ass raised his weapon, an L119A2 C8 carbine fitted with an L17A1 underslung forty-millimetre grenade launcher, and he fired off an M713 smoke grenade which flew straight (actually a parabolic arc) and true, landing within a foot of the enemy forces where it began to emit copious amounts of thick red smoke, marking the position.
Forty yards back, in the turret of Victor Two One, Thunderstorm squeezed her triggers and the L111A1 turret-mounted heavy-machinegun shook as it spat death upon the Axis forces. The heavier weapon had been fitted in place of the Maximi machineguns purely for the hard-hitting bullets and the damage which they could inflict on the enemy. Indeed, the bullets stretched out and carved into the snow and ice within inches of the red smoke. Then a dozen bullets struck something else and something else red exploded out across the snow as one of the defenders quote literally lost his head.
Obsidian and Rampart moved over to the right, dodging bullets as they moved into a position from where they could close and counterattack. Ahead of them, Splinter and Resolute were lying in the snow, shooting at the enemy to allow the two girls to move. Kick-Ass knelt in the snow between Stripe and Arbiter as he aimed his grenade launcher and fired off several high-explosive rounds at the red smoke. As the devices landed, they exploded, devastating anything close by. The distraction allowed Trojan and Wildcat to race forwards with Foxtail close behind.
The enemy were becoming disorganised as the two Vikings moved in a coordinated fashion so as to ensure that there was never a single static target to attract a missile. The concentrated .50-calibre gunfire from their turrets was devastating as the hot bullets cut through the ice like . . . well, like hot bullets through ice. That crucial advantage enabled the vigilantes to close on the Axis defenders and the trench network from which they were fighting. Kick-Ass was not overly pleased by the trench network as it would take time to clear and time was not something they had a lot of, not to mention that he needed to find his wife and daughter, before...
The advance continued until a few minutes later, Kick-Ass stood at the side of the closest trench and seeing that the defenders had apparently retreated, he waved Arbiter onward.
..._...
Arbiter leapt down into the trench and she swapped her C8 CQB for a different weapon which she deemed more suitable for the close confines of the trench.
The ice sides were five feet in height and the base of the trench was fitted with wooden duckboards for the defenders to stand on. Arbiter stepped over three corpses as she moved along the duckboards. Then she heard boots on the duckboards ahead of her and she cocked the weapon she held in her hands with her left hand and she slowed her steps waiting for the enemy to come into sight – and come they did. As three men rounded a small bend in the trench, they skidded to a halt on the damp wooden duck boards and the first fired off a round from his SIG Sauer MPX carbine. The round missed its intended target and that intended target squeezed her own trigger, once, twice, thrice, and the M4 Super 90 combat shotgun spat once, twice, thrice. Each blast emitted nine steel 8.1-millimetre pellets from the 12-gauge double-o buckshot cartridge. The steel pellets spread out as they left the barrel at over one-thousand feet per second. Indeed, with twenty-seven pellets in play, the three men at a murderous range of just thirty feet stood no chance as their heads and torsos were shredded and at least one man never even knew what had caused his death having been dazzled by the triple muzzle flash.
Arbiter didn't give the dead men a second look as she continued along the trench, her shotgun raised ahead of her. She could hear scuffling and other sounds somewhere up ahead. The icy trench focussed sound and she could hear long before she could see. She heard feet behind her, and she turned momentarily to find Stripe moving towards her. She nodded to show she had seen him and she then continued her slow progress along the trench, her eyes and ears straining to catch the sight or sound of an enemy at close quarters. That did not take long as she sensed rather than heard the attacker. She could sense somebody close by but she could not see them. She could hear sound but it was coming from the ice to her...
A form burst out of the ice just inches from Arbiter's left. She was unable to bring the shotgun to bear, so she dropped the weapon and she dropped to the wooden duckboards, her right hand reaching for an alternative weapon. The form turned out to be a woman who was apparently annoyed that her ambush had not gone as well as she had hoped. Indeed, the evil-looking blade which had missed Arbiter's right shoulder by just a few inches was brought down and Arbiter raised her left arm to block the thrust giving her time to unsheathe her own blade. Her brain told of another ruckus close by and it appeared that Stripe was also in a fight for his very life. That was not good news but they were trained to fight and fight hard; ultimately, their training taught them to fight to the death.
Fighting in an ice trench was not as easy as it seemed as there was not enough room to easily distance yourself from your opponent so that you could properly gauge and strike. There was barely room to execute a proper strike, but Arbiter adjusted her fighting style accordingly. The knives moved fast but both fighters were experts and despite the woman's benefit of height, the fighting level was fairly equal. Arbiter was one of the stronger girls and she put that upper body strength to good use as she struck with her eight-inch fighting blade. The cumbersome clothing did not help as a slash did no damage to the person beneath the multiple layers of fabric, much of which was stab-proof. That simply meant that the blade would have to be embedded somewhere else other than the torso. Arbiter used her shorter stature and her youth to outmanoeuvre her opponent, ensuring that the inbound blade missed and she patiently awaited the opening which she craved.
That did not take long and very soon the woman made a strike against a feint of Arbiter's and her upper body came across Arbiter who did not hesitate as she drove her blade upwards and the blade slipped nicely into the woman's right eye cavity. She screamed, but only for half a second before the body went limp and dropped to the duckboards. Arbiter instantly turned to check on Stripe but she found the boy finishing up his own fight with a horizontal thrust into his male opponent's neck. Stripe looked up as his nearly-dead opponent sank to the duckboards clutching at the mortal injury in his neck. Stripe did not retrieve the blade; it was not his, but had belonged to the attacker. Neither said a word as they picked up their dropped weapons and...
"You two finished playing?"
"Yes, Kick-Ass!" Arbiter responded.
"Glad to hear it," Kick-Ass said as he waved the youngsters forward and he took up position behind as tail-end Charlie.
..._...
Not too far away, Rampart led a squad along another part of the trench network.
Nox and Obsidian were in their element as they moved swiftly but silently, their weapons raised and pointed everywhere their eyes were looking. A man appeared – he fell to Rampart's weapon; a single shot. Then they found themselves at the end of the trench network at the base of a giant geodesic domed structure. The dome's structure was steel with triangular double-glazed glass panels filling in the gaps to produce a weather-tight structure within which a small amount of heat could gather, thus making the interior slightly more accommodating to humans than the barren icepack outside.
Rampart stopped at a pair of large double doors which were both closed, shutting off access to the fifty-metre diameter dome which towered above them. Nox moved to a small electronic access control box mounted on the steel bulkhead to the left of the double doors where she swiftly went to work while her colleagues provided cover. After forcing off the cover of the box with a large screwdriver, Nox examined the insides for a moment before she went to work with the same screwdriver on an internal steel box which soon succumbed and the steel lid flew off and dropped silently onto the snow beneath the girl's boots. An array of wires and integrated circuits were exposed to the electronics expert.
"Get a fucking move on!" Rampart growled. "It's fucking freezing!"
"I'm working as fast as I can!" Nox growled back as she poked at the electronic circuits with an electronic probe. "This is very delicate wo..."
A brace of bullets pinged off the nearest section of steel dome and Nox ducked before turning on Obsidian. "I'm trying to work here!"
"So are we!" Obsidian grinned as she returned fire in the direction of the trench as Rampart dropped to one knee and fired off a burst towards the same trench, the ejected shell casings from both weapons spraying across Nox.
"For fuck's sake, Rampart!"
Rampart ignored her colleague as she coldly gunned down two men advancing on them. Two more men appeared, stepping over their former colleagues and keeping low to the ice, their fingers squeezing the triggers of their assault rifles. Three bullets struck Rampart in the chest, almost flipping the sixteen-year-old girl over as she fell to the wooden duckboards at her feet.
"Yes!" Nox yelled out as the door locks released. "We're open, let's move!"
Obsidian provided covering fire as she pulled open one of the double doors and then grabbed the back of Rampart's webbing and body armour, pulling the older girl backwards through the doorway.
"Fuck me, Rampart: you need to keep off the damn doughnuts!" Obsidian commented as she heaved and heaved until the wounded unconscious girl was through the doors and Nox had yanked them closed.
Obsidian dropped Rampart and helped Nox to reengage the locking mechanism before they destroyed the controls for said mechanism thus sealing the doors with the enemy beyond.
12:12 GMT-5 (17:12 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour + 35 minutes
The Arctic
It was a battle like nothing they had ever fought before.
Bullets of every calibre raced across the icepack, striking snow, ice, flesh, steel; the bullets did not care about what they struck. The normally peaceful Arctic was a raging battlefield with the constant chatter of automatic gunfire interspersed with the thump of mortar fire. The deeper roar of the heavy machine guns punctuated the unrelenting din which included the thunder of raging diesel engines as various types of vehicle criss-crossed the battle zone. Neither side were making all that much headway. The defenders had some simple defence in depth which hindered the assault of the Paras while the attackers (especially the younger ones) found the going through the fresh snow, difficult at best.
In the command centre, deep within the central personnel structure, Raymond Ransom was not happy as several men and women stood around the sides of a very large horizontal flat screen. The screen depicted the area around his facility and the dispositions of his own fighters and also those of the attackers. His mind was reeling at what was arrayed all around his facility. Nobody, least of all him, had every contemplated such a formidable assault on their main base of operations. The Arctic facility was supposed to have been undetectable and nobody was supposed to even know of its existence until well after the planned devastation. Detection, had been expected, but any response they knew would take time and coordination, but this – where had they all come from? The United Kingdom, obviously, considering the transport aircraft had been Royal Air Force and the troops had to be of the Parachute Regiment. As for the submarine; only Royal Marines Commandoes travelled to battle in that manner. That concerned him immensely; where were the Americans?
Well, that woman he had incarcerated in an office was an American. He was certain that the woman was a part of Fusion, but he had no idea whom she was without her mask, let alone whom she was when wearing her mask. Whatever or whomsoever she was, she was dangerous; she had to be: hence the striptease, not to mention using the daughter as a bargaining chip. Maybe he could use them again, to pause the assault on his facility. Men and women were dying but so far, his defences were holding. However, were there reinforcements on the way, or was every piece on the board before him? If so, he could wear down the enemy and make them give up. Actually, with professional troops, that was decidedly unlikely.
Ransom paced around the command centre, running scenarios through his mind as he tried to block the sounds of battle.