Thursday, July 20th, 2017
14:49 GMT-5 (19:49 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour + 2 hours 09 minutes
The Arctic
Hit Girl headed out of the kitchen and back into the mess hall with Fury and Rage trailing along behind.
They were joined by Kick-Ass and Stripe although there was no sign of Arbiter. Splinter and Resolute soon joined their friends as the air-conditioning chewed away at the decidedly smoky atmosphere allowing the true carnage to be seen. Thirty-six bodies had been identified with just nine wounded – eight Royal Marines and Stripe, who was moaning about his sore left thigh which had been grazed by a bullet during the fighting – none of whom were seriously injured and were all declared fit for further duty by the Royal Navy medical personnel. The accommodation block was virtually destroyed with each bed frame either used to form the barricade or wrecked during the Royal Marines' search.
Fury was trying to steal one of Splinter's biscuits when she saw movement across the destroyed accommodation block and a mercenary burst in on the resting troops but only for a second as a single gunshot rang out. The mercenary dropped with a hole in his head, then Arbiter appeared from the far passageway, her assault rifle smoking at the tip of the barrel.
"I found the bastard lurking," she commented. "I hate lurkers."
"A fair sentiment," Sergeant Martin responded. "Right! Let's not dawdle; the command centre is down that corridor about a dozen yards and on the right, then we have the server farm a ways beyond."
"Captain, message from Bravo Troop," a corporal called out. The man carried a radio-pack on his back and was busily making notes on a pad. "Bravo Troop have captured the outer accommodation blocks and have thirty scientists and civilians in their custody."
"Tell them, 'well done', and to hold their objectives until relieved," Captain McFadden responded.
"Ma'am!" the corporal responded as he noted down the message and then made his radio call.
"We move on the command centre," Hit Girl directed. "Tango Hotel Eight and Tango Hotel Six are closing in for when we have the command centre seized."
"Victor Two Two and Tango Two One are moving in to provide external covering fire in case the enemy choose to make their escape out the backway," Kick-Ass added.
"Let's move!" Captain McFadden announced and the tired fighters all clambered to their feet and re-checked their weapons prior to moving out.
The captain led the way, striding to where two of her marines were covering the exit corridor.
..._...
With a large part of their force dead, moral was very low amongst the defenders.
Indeed, a dozen did try to make their escape out onto the icepack, but their progress was inhibited by the armoured Vikings with their vicious heavy machine guns mounted in armoured turrets against which they had no defence but to lay down their weapons. That left just eighteen men in the command centre which included the eight men manning the consoles. The crash of flash-bang grenades echoed ominously closer as the Royal Marines advanced, cutting down anybody who stood in their way. Outside, the battle was still waging but the sounds of the advancing paratroopers was coming ever closer. Then, as the seemingly impregnable door of the command centre was blasted open, the eighteen men stared at death as a hoard swept into the command centre much like the Army of the Dead had swept through Minas Tirith.
Indeed, several fighters were seen to almost fly from desk to desk, cutting men down even as the Royal Marines dished out their own version of death. Blood flew but not a single computer system as put at risk. No firearms or explosives were used by the attacking forces, but they were not needed as Fusion were weapons in themselves, as were the marines. Hit Girl relished the killing as she stabbed and cut in a routine which involved somersaults and creative deaths from on high. Arbiter was her close support and shared in the vast majority of the killing along with Hit Girl. Then the targets began to diminish, and the two females found themselves back on their feet with blades dripping blood and nobody left to kill.
The action was swift and decisive leaving eighteen dead with zero injuries on the part of the Royal Marines and Fusion.
14:49 GMT-5 (19:49 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour + 2 hours 49 minutes
The Arctic
Battle Guy walked into the command centre and made a beeline for the master console.
Without hesitation, he shoved a dead body off the chair, and it fell with a thump to the metal plates which formed the floor.
"Okay," Battle Guy commented as he sat down and ran his eyes over the various screens and keyboards.
"This looks relatively simple," Q added as he settled down at a neighbouring console, ignoring another equally dead corpse.
Hit Girl peered down at Battle Guy. "Can you get all this crap running and find out what we are facing?"
"Working on it, my purple queen."
Captain McFadden chuckled as she and her sergeant began to permanently secure the facility with her men and those of Bravo Troop.
..._...
A short distance away, Termino and Ajax were entering Block Five via an exterior door.
It appeared that Block Five – the server farm – was unoccupied as twelve men had been seen to escape out of the very door which they had just passed through. The pair listened intently as they moved forwards and then stopped at a heavy-looking door. Without hesitation, Termino affixed a small explosive charge to the coded locking mechanism and then stepped back with Ajax.
"Fire in the hole!" he said as he flicked up the safety lever on his remote control and then flipped a switch up.
The dull boom indicated that the locking mechanism had been destroyed and allowed the door to be pushed open.
"Hey, guys!" Hal announced as she appeared with her escort which consisted of a badly bruised Rampart and Pyrrha who was trying to get a moment with the older girl to treat the injury, but Rampart was having none of it as she was too mission focussed at that moment.
Nemesis followed along behind, her eyes ever watchful for trouble as she took a last peek behind her to where Tango Hotel Six sat, engine ticking over, under the gaze of Piranha who was standing behind Tango Hotel Eight which was parked a few yards distant.
Together, Termino and Ajax moved into the server farm which was massive – at least as far as Termino and Ajax were concerned but Hal appeared unimpressed. Nemesis was unhappy with the tactical situation and the hairs on the back of her neck indicated that something was not right. The server farm was difficult to cover as there were seven-foot server cabinets scattered all around preventing much line-of-sight security while the air conditioning along with the raging fans on the servers all meant that conversation was nigh impossible let alone listening for an enemy. It was just that kind of environment that made Nemesis nervous and she hated being nervous. Then she stopped dead as she passed alongside a row of four giant steel cabinets each loaded with patch panels, servers, network switches, and routers. It was a veritable geek's paradise, Nemesis considered as she tried to figure out what she had heard, if anything. Then came the unmistakeable twang of a bullet striking the frame of a cabinet to her left. Nemesis ducked down, her C8-CQB carbine raised to her right shoulder.
Ahead of her, about twenty yards distant, Nemesis saw a pair of legs which appeared to be unmoving.
..._...
The gunshots had come out of nowhere and Termino had taken a bullet to the head, dropping the boy to the anti-static rubber-matted flooring.
Hal had turned at the sight of the boy falling, and she had dived to the floor, firing off four rounds from her Glock 17 Gen4 pistol as she came up onto one knee. Somebody fell to the ground and did not move even as Hal felt pain like she had never felt before as something tore through her left side and she fell to the floor beside Termino. The soon-to-be seventeen-year-old saw a shadow move towards her and her eyes registered a pistol aiming at her head but then another shadow crossed her vision and the pistol vanished from her sight as she passed out.
Pyrrha was raging as she flew at the man who had shot two of her colleagues and as they both fell to the floor, the man's face came into view and Pyrrha went nuclear as she went to town on the man, ignoring the pistol which the man tried to bring to bear.
"You motherfucking bastard, Tanner!" she yelled as her left hand forced the pistol to one side while her right hand went for the man's throat.
Rodney Tanner saw little threat especially as he figured that he was being attacked by a young girl and he figured that her small hand would not be able to strangle him before his pistol lined up with the bitch's head. But then he began to choke as a surprisingly strong grip grasped his throat and his face showed great surprise as the sophisticated actuators on the artificial appendage closed their grip at the wearer's command and continued to close, crushing everything within their titanium grip. The man could not breathe as his neck and windpipe were crushed causing him to feel great pain before he felt nothing as his spinal cord was crushed and mangled.
Rampart could not believe what her eyes were seeing as she watched Pyrrha all but rip the head off the man. Then Pyrrha stopped as blood pooled on the floor and the head simply lolled on the dead shoulders of the corpse. Pyrrha got to her feet, and she turned away from the bloody mess wiping her hand off on her jacket.
"What the fuck was that about?" Rampart demanded.
"He worked for my father," came the simple response as Pyrrha then knelt down beside Hal, checking out the older girl's injuries even as Nemesis dropped down beside Termino having checked out the rest of the server farm and declared the facility clear.
That was also the moment that the entire facility fell into the hands of Fusion and the Royal Marines and all fighting inside the facility ceased.
..._...
The Axis facility had a good-sized medical facility which had not been damaged too much by the Royal Marines during their taking of the accommodation block.
Therefore, Surgeon had got to work with Doctrina while Allegiant and Pyrrha assisted where necessary. In the operating theatre, a conscious but queasy Hal lay on her right side, stripped to the waist but for her sports bra while Surgeon worked under local anaesthetic to find the bullet which had dug deep into the flesh and caused a lot of bleeding. Doctrina had secured a drip of blood expander into the girl's left lower arm to replace lost blood. While Pyrrha assisted Surgeon, Doctrina was working on Termino with the assistance of Allegiant. The boy was still out cold, and he had a vicious gash to the right side of his head, almost to the bone but it was not life-threatening and would simply result in a very bad headache. However, some glue and a medical dressing ensured that the wound would not produce too bad a scar.
Rampart was suffering the indignities of a once-over by the same Royal Navy sub-lieutenant who had treated Psyche. The bruising on her torso was severe but apart from no small amount of pain it was not inhibiting the fighter from going about her business of killing the enemy. Lying on a bench off to one side, La Terreaur was recovering from the bang on her head caused by being thrown from the back of a moving vehicle. She scowled at everybody who looked in her direction preferring to be left alone.
The entire Axis facility stank of gunfire, explosives, blood, and the dead; although it felt quite homely to some but not to others who just wanted to leave and head somewhere far to the south where it would be so much warmer.
..._...
Rigour and Intrepid were patrolling inside Block Seven while Shadow stood just outside on the vehicle ramp enjoying the fresh air.
"You hear something?" Rigour asked.
"I do," Intrepid confirmed as she aimed her weapon at the opening which led towards Block Six.
Two shapes appeared, a man and a boy, both of whom looked around furtively hoping to avoid danger. Only, that was not possible as danger filled the facility and danger surrounded the facility. Indeed, Raymond Ransom and his son were about to find out just how much danger lay around them as they stepped foot into Block Seven which they had thought to be empty but instead they came face-to-face with two armed vigilantes. Ransom responded remarkably quickly as he turned to run, pulling his son, Todd, with him only to find his path blocked by two girls, one of whom he recognised.
"Going somewhere, sport?" Psyche asked pointedly.
Ransom looked at the Glock 17 Gen4 pistol held in Psyche's gloved hands as the girl stood in the classic Weaver stance. The man looked over at her colleague who held a C8-CQB carbine to her right shoulder.
"Look...," Ransom began as he turned back and walked towards where Intrepid and Rigour stood.
"Shut the fuck up, old man!" Psyche growled as she fired off a bullet into the man's left lower leg.
Ransom yelled out in agony as he dropped to the steel floor and grasped his leg from which blood flowed. Todd Ransom screamed as he watched his father fall to the ground. Up until that moment, most of the events which the boy had taken part in had been kind of fun, including hiding in the bowels of the facility to avoid capture. But the reality of life hit him like an eighteen-wheeler as he was grasped by the girl he had stripped and shoved towards the vehicle ramp which led down onto the icepack.
"I meant nothing by it...," the boy whimpered as he reached the top of the ramp.
"You fucking dropped me into the goddamn fucking Arctic fucking Ocean!" Stephanie roared. "I ought to rip your fucking dick off! Assuming I can find it – now fucking strip, you fucking wanker!"
The boy did not hesitate, and he pulled off his clothes in the middle of the freezing hanger, his whole body shivering as he stood completely naked in front of the smirking girls and his groaning father.
"I've seen bigger dicks on a fucking mouse," Stephanie growled.
"I'm . . . sor . . . sorry."
Stephanie holstered her pistol and she put her own face into the boy's for a full minute before she stepped back, pulled back her right arm and she brought it forward at speed, her fist connecting with the boy's face and taking him off his feet, his unconscious body rolling down the ramp into the snow at the base.
..._...
His forces were decimated.
He had a bullet in his left leg.
His life was forfeit, as it seemed was the life of his son.
"Get up!" the taller girl growled, and he forced himself onto his feet, his left foot gingerly remaining on toes only. "Move!"
Ransom hobbled past the parked vehicles including his Mitsubishi Shogun as he was pushed and prodded towards the vehicle ramp. He stopped dead when he saw his son lying naked at the base of the ramp, unmoving. He turned to face his captors, his face one of anger and disgust but also of sorrow. He hoped to see something in their faces, but he saw zero emotion. The expressions were as cold as, if not colder than, the icepack which surrounded his former facility.
"Move it, you worthless piece of shit!" Rigour growled as she shoved the man down the ramp.
Fury turned to face Psyche. "Can we trust you to be by yourself and stay out of trouble?"
Psyche grinned. "I'd like to say yes but that would just be so untrue."
"Don't worry," Intrepid said. "I'll shoot her if she steps out of line."
"My life sucks!" Psyche growled. "Thanks, guys."
That was the very last Psyche saw of the man who had tortured the pair of them on the icepack – or so she thought.
15:50 GMT-5 (20:50 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour + 3 hours 50 minutes
It was a scenario which had been allowed for in the extensive planning for the mission, but it was a scenario which everyone had hoped would not actually come to pass.
The air-search radar atop an extended stainless-steel mast which rose high above the conning tower of HMS TORBAY had detected the inbound targets some twenty minutes earlier as the aircraft had come over the visible horizon. The aircraft were large and headed in towards the Axis of Evil facility in straight parallel lines at a little over two-thousand feet.
The Ilyushin IL-76MD-90A stretched a little under fifty-one metres from wingtip to wingtip and almost twenty-five metres in length. The glazed chin of the aircraft made it uniquely identifiable and had been retained even for these, the very latest iterations of the venerable military transport which dated back to the 1960s. Each of the five giant aircraft were a light grey overall with the national flag of the air force painted on either side of the towering tail. In this case, the white, blue, and red horizontal tricolour of the Russian Federation. Aboard each quadruple-jet-powered aircraft, in the capacious cargo cabin, one-hundred and twenty-six Russian paratroopers were standing to hook-up their static lines ready for the jump.
Then, without warning, the blue sky to the southeast of the facility suddenly began to fill with blossoming white canopies as the men jumped from the forward door of the transport aircraft. It seemed like the constant stream of paratroopers would never end as more and more jumped, their static lines triggering their parachutes the moment they had left the perceived safety of the aircraft. Ten, twenty, thirty, sixty, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred – more and more headed downwards.
As the fifth aircraft turned away to the east, six-hundred and thirty men dangled beneath their canopies, descending towards the icepack below.
..._...
It was down to 1 PARA to face the Russians as they were landing in their area of control.
Military intelligence (yes, that classic oxymoron) had managed to correctly identify the paratroopers descending towards them. They were men of the 217th Guards Airborne Regiment which in turn was part of the 98th Guards Airborne Division based in Ivanovo, a city some 254-kilometres northeast of Moscow. The men were mostly seasoned veterans, a number of whom had fought in the Second Chechen War, and as such they would be no push over for the men of 1 PARA.
Many of the men had looked up at the sky as the giant aircraft had thundered overhead and for most, it was the first time they had seen such an amazing sight which had mirrored their own landing some hours previously. While most of the descending canopies were white, there were a significant number of red canopies which signified that supply containers hung beneath those canopies and the red would allow for easy location upon the white landscape. The Russians landed smartly and then they moved off in their sections to collect their equipment which took them about twenty minutes before the force of six-hundred and thirty men moved off and headed towards the four-hundred and twenty-seven paratroopers in their fortified positions most of which required a rapid one-eighty-degree alteration in axis to face the new threat.
Naturally, the order had gone out to ensure that nobody fired upon the Russians and started a shooting war which was most undesirable. As a bonus, the fighting with the Axis forces outside in the snow and ice had, more or less, drawn to a close so turning their backs on the Axis facility to face the Russians was not as bad as it initially sounded.
The Russians had been very unhappy to find such a large military presence in what they deemed to be their 'backyard' not to mention a facility which threatened to change the way of life for every single man, woman, and child on the planet. They wanted a piece of the action, or at least a piece of the spoils. The facility, if they could take it, would give them a semi-permanent base on the Icepack and nobody would be able to do anything about it without risking World War III kicking off. But the Russians were under no illusion that they were fighting amateurs.
They knew the approximate make up of the forces arrayed around the Arctic facility and they knew that an open fight would not benefit anyone.
Somewhere, in the North Atlantic Ocean...
21:00 GMT+0 (21:00 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour + 4 hours
Deep beneath the North Atlantic Ocean, and many hundreds of miles to the south, HMS VENGEANCE moved at four knots in a thirty nautical mile circle.
The sixteen-thousand-tonne submarine was one-hundred and fifty metres in length and almost thirteen metres in breadth. The giant submarine was fitted with sixteen missile tubes dedicated to its primary weapon system, the Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile. At that moment, eight missiles were currently loaded, each of which was fitted with five thermonuclear Holbrook warheads, each of which could provide an explosive force equalling some one-hundred kilotons of TNT, although settings as low as ten kilotons, five kilotons, or three-hundred tons of TNT were available. The submarine's current mission was as a unit of the United Kingdom's Continuous At Sea Deterrent (CASD) and she was designed to remain undetected as she cruised beneath the waters of the world's oceans waiting for the order to release unimaginable horror upon an enemy.
For her commanding officer, Commander Damien Burbidge, the evening was not going well, and his evening meal had been rudely interrupted by the receipt of an urgent message from Northwood Headquarters. The signal had originated from the desk of COMOPS (Office of Commander Operations) or more precisely Commander Task Force 345. It was the one signal which he had never wanted to be the recipient of, but it was his duty. Therefore, with a heavy heart, the man stood up from the small desk in his cramped cabin and he pulled open the door before he turned right into the control room where he could see his officers awaiting his arrival – they knew a top-secret eyes-only signal had been received. The man stepped over to the command console and he reached up for a handset from the overhead and he flicked a switch then took a deep breath before he issued an order, the first of many which would culminate in a final order which had not been followed through in over seventy years.
"Set condition 1SQ for strategic missile launch. Spin up missiles four and seven for guidance package upload."
The crew moved smartly to their positions aboard, their minds full of concern for what their preparations would ultimately result in accomplishing.
..._...
As the giant submarine spiralled up from the depths, the preparations for nuclear launch were almost complete.
In the missile control centre, located a short distance aft of the control room, the submarine's executive officer and the weapons engineering officer had opened the two safes (one inside the other) allowing the weapons engineering officer (WEO) to withdraw the tactical trigger, keeping his index finger outside the white-painted trigger guard. The tactical trigger was in the form of a grip and trigger assembly taken from a Colt .45-calibre pistol. The grip was black while the trigger was painted red. It would take another forty minutes for the missiles to be uploaded with the data required to take the weapons to their target. The orders, originating with the Prime Minister ordered the submarine to prepare two missiles for launch should the Russians advance on the Axis facility. Once launched they would be unstoppable.
With the missiles ready for launch, there was nothing more to be done but await the next signal from Northwood.
17:00 GMT-5 (22:00 GMT July 20th)
Zero Hour + 5 hours 24 minutes
In the command centre Q and Battle Guy were pounding away at their keyboards.
They had been at it for near on three hours and the Royal Marines guarding the command centre were not overly happy with the situation. The Russians were gathering just one kilometre away and there were still a couple of dozen Axis mercenaries running about the facility causing general mayhem in and around the facility. Despite the facility being in the hands of Fusion and the Royal Marines, it was not a safe place to be by any stretch of the imagination.
"Are we getting anywhere?" Captain McFadden asked for the umpteenth time.
"Pull up a pew, captain!" Arbiter called out from across the command centre. "Take the weight off for a few minutes."
The captain glared over at her adopted daughter who sat reclined on another computer desk, her booted feet resting nonchalantly on the torso of a corpse and eating a Mars Bar. The fifteen-year-old was not alone. Seated beside her, guarding a large box of Mars Bars was Intrepid who sat with her legs swinging in mid-air from the edge of the desk. A gloved hand reached past her to grab a Mars Bar but was intercepted by Intrepid's Glock 17.
"Do you like using that hand for wanking? If you do, I'd stay clear of my stash, understand?"
The Royal Marine attached to the gloved hand laughed as he withdrew said gloved hand from danger. The captain was not amused. The Predators behaviour was expected but some of her men were enjoying fighting alongside the murderous youngsters and that had involved a race for the storerooms where the Predators had stolen the last two remaining boxes of Mars Bars which had infuriated the Royal Marines who were part of an organisation where a mere box of Mars Bars held a value way above that of even Gold or Platinum. However, the captain knew that her men respected the wayward children; respect which was rarely given out.
"We're getting there," Q said to the Royal Marines officer. "There's a crap-load of data to go through here."
"Sorry; I just want to get out of here before the Russians decide to come in."
On a screen above the two uber-geeks, their younger compatriot was also pounding her own keyboard a few kilometres away in Tango Hotel Six – despite doctor's orders to rest.
..._...
The young Royal Marines captain turned away and she walked out of the command centre, checking in with her men...
"We're in!" Battle Guy called out loudly enough to be heard a dozen yards down the corridor.
"Oh, crap!" Hal muttered as she began to assemble the crucial data.
"Captain!" Q called out as the officer reappeared. "Hal's putting together a map of device locations."
Kick-Ass and Hit Girl appeared seconds later with several others and stood next to Captain McFadden as a world map appeared on a large monitor. Then came mini nuclear mushroom clouds. The first was on the American east coast roughly where Washington D.C. would be, and the mushroom cloud icon was joined by four more. The icons continued appearing simultaneously to a list of cities and numbers appearing down the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Washington D.C. (5 devices)
London (5 devices)
Paris (2 devices)
Berlin (2 devices)
Canberra (2 devices)
Vienna (1 device)
Chicago (2 devices)
Los Angeles (4 devices)
San Diego (2 devices)
Ottawa (2 devices)
Toronto (2 devices)
Moscow (3 devices)
St Petersburg (2 devices)
Tehran (2 devices)
Tokyo (2 devices)
Mexico City (1 device)
Rome (2 devices)
Beijing (4 devices)
Madrid (2 devices)
Abu Dhabi (1 device)
Riyadh (2 devices)
Gotham (1 device)
It was not so much the number of devices – they had known for a while how many devices were out there – but to see the names of the cities which the Axis of Evil planned to wipe from the map was simply mind-numbing. While Hit Girl was not all that bothered about Gotham – to a point – the other cities were filled with, in some cases, millions of people – innocent people, mostly. The list also featured their very own home city: Chicago.
As each symbol appeared on the map, another screen detailed the latitude and longitude which designated the exact location of each device. Those details were noted along with the exact specifications of each device. Each device was already live, according to the computer system and each device was fitted with an embedded anti-tamper device as well as a manual trigger. Also detailed were the forces deployed to guard each device. As more and more information was displayed, everyone ion the room became all the more demoralised.
"Ah, crap!" Q announced. "We have a backup timer for each device which is set to trigger a fifteen-minute countdown to nuclear detonation. Only a correctly entered code will deactivate the device, either entered locally or transmitted over the encrypted wavelength."
"Can we transmit the deactivation codes with our own transmitters?" Hit Girl asked. "You know: get the hell outta here?"
"No," Battle Guy responded bleakly. "We don't have the cyphers. We will need to use the transmitter we have here which Ransom has conveniently repaired to transmit the deactivation codes as we retrieve them."
Hit Girl was getting tetchy with the lack of progress, so she stormed out of the command centre, and she paced around the facility hoping to find somebody who needed to die.
..._...
In the next hour, the situation both improved and deteriorated at the same time – a feat only possible due to the unpredictable nature of a standoff.
Hit Girl stepped into the command centre, her body language indicating that she was almost behind reason. She glared at everyone daring anyone to give her some bad news.
"We have the deactivation codes!" Battle Guy advised happily.
"Brilliant!" Kick-Ass replied.
"Only, they're encrypted."
"Oh," Kick-Ass responded somewhat despondently.
"Figures!" Hit Girl growled as she kicked a corpse hard enough to break a bone which snapped audibly.
"We can decrypt them, but it will take time."
"How long," Hit Girl asked.
"Probably twenty minutes per code batch – maybe six hours tops," Battle Guy suggested.
"Make it seven or eight," Q countered.
"Yeah – seven or eight," Battle Guy agreed.
"Full of joy, you two," Hit Girl groaned. "The Russians are closing in – we can give you maybe five hours max before we have to blow this joint."
"Crap!" Battle Guy and Q commented.
"Take it offline?" Hal suggested from the screen.
"We got the capacity?" Battle Guy asked.
"I have eighteen terabytes," Q replied.
"That could work," Battle Guy commented. "We can decrypt the final codes on the way out the door. Hit Girl . . . keep them at bay for five hours and we'll be ready."
"Thanks, Battle Guy."
Finally, Hit Girl felt a little hope but then her head snapped around as there came the thud of explosions to the southeast – the Russians!
..._...
It seemed that Hit Girl was not the only one unhappy with simply waiting things out.
The Russians had been on the ice pack for over an hour and a half, and they were not wanting to sit still for a moment longer. Indeed, a coordinated firing of a dozen 2B14 Podnos eighty-two-millimetre mortars had resulted in a quite deadly firepower demonstration for the Paras who began to drop their own mortar rounds onto the 'no man's land' which existed between the opposing forces as the Russians advanced through the smoke generated by the Russian mortar rounds which had also landed in no man's land. The icepack shook with the explosions and the Paras began to open fire with their rifles as the Russians came into range, running in sections over the icepack and spread out over a four hundred metre front. Two Russian paratroopers went down and then a missile blazed across the five-hundred metre separation between the two forces and struck the base of an ice ridge where two Parachute Regiment soldiers had been manning a Minimi light machine gun.
The 4.6-kilogramme HEAT warhead of the Russian 9M133F Kornet anti-tank missile, known to NATO as the AT-14 Spriggan, detonated and the two men were badly injured by the blast but neither died thanks to the immediate availability of copious amounts of a sub-zero substance with which to cool their burns. In response, hell rained down upon the Russian paratroopers who rapidly retreated back to their own lines – almost. A second missile was launched but it went wild as the man controlling the weapon was shot dead by a Para. With building dread, hundreds of eyes, on both sides, watched as the Russian Kornet missile unerringly flew towards Block Five and the crucial server farm. With a bright flash and a loud explosion, the missile struck the southern end of Block Five and detonated. Inside the server farm, the red-hot shards of warhead bored through four server racks causing a fire to engulf six racks which soon blazed furiously.
The automated firefighting equipment failed as the mainline for the crucial fire-snuffing gas had been cut and six racks of very expensive computer equipment were soon nothing more than molten slag even as that molten slag began to eat through the steel supports holding Block Five above the icepack. Within minutes, the remaining weapons fire died down and silence descended on the icepack as many eyes watched the Russian own goal blazing furiously.
It was an uneasy, undeclared ceasefire, in what was very much a cold war but also one which was warming up a bit too quickly.
..._...
Alarms blared in the command centre for a number of reasons, all bad.
The first was fire which was never good but the second indicated that power had been cut to Block Five. Battle Guy was furiously typing away as he endeavoured to download every last deactivation code before it was too late. He had felt the entire facility shake violently as the errant missile had struck. Thankfully, the destroyed equipment bore no importance to his task, but the resulting fire was spreading fast and the loss of power to the block simply made things more desperate.
"I'm getting overheating alarms from the primary and secondary storage arrays," Q advised. "Oh, crap! We've lost the secondary storage array – the temperature went into triple digits too fucking quickly! I'm transferring data to the backup storage array – goddamn it! Temperature in the primary storage array is rising fast... Crap!"
Another alarm sounded in the command centre indicating that backup power in Block Five was failing. An explosion rocked the command centre as something in Block Five exploded not too far away. Smoke was spreading in the corridor outside the command centre but the raging fire itself was prevented from jumping to Block One, the command centre by Nemesis and La Coccinelle who planted two groups of explosives in the smoke-filled raised corridor before they detonated each group, causing the raised corridor to fail and collapse to the icepack six feet below and thus creating an eight-foot fire gap.
"We're not going to make it!" Q called out as his fingers hammered the keyboard.
"Have faith," Battle Guy offered coolly as he watched the data move across his screen.
"I've lost connection to the data arrays – all of them," Q announced as a gut-wrenching screech was emitted by Block Five which then collapsed in on itself before it then rolled over onto the ice below, the final servers dying in the inferno which lasted another ten minutes before it was snuffed out by the melting ice and snow.
"Did you get it all?" Hit Girl asked as she saw Battle Guy slump in his chair.
"One moment."
"Well?" Hit Girl demanded impatiently.
"Hold on."
"Tell her before she does something she'll regret," Kick-Ass chuckled, knowing that his friend was stalling.
"We got them all," Battle Guy admitted. "We managed to copy all the data onto a server in this room to give us more time to offload the data. Copying and decrypting is not a good combination, and both are going to take time.
Hit Girl said nothing as she scowled down at the two men.
..._...
The decryption of the deactivation codes was taking time, just as Battle Guy had advised.
The codes had been encrypted using state of the art military-level encryption methods which were nigh-impossible to crack on a good day, let alone under battle conditions in a frozen wilderness. However, it was not the first time Battle Guy had been in such a position and he had an amazing amount of computer processing power available to him. Samples of the encryption had been uploaded to Synthesis back in Chicago who were working every hour available to them in an attempt to crack the encryption. They were close, very close, but each individual device required dedicated decryption, so the process was slower than anything which Hit Girl could withstand without wanting to kill someone or destroy something.
Indeed, it was only Kick-Ass who was able to ensure that Hit Girl did nothing which might compromise the mission in her need for an outlet for her growing temper.
"Is she always like this?" Captain McFadden asked.
"Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday," Kick-Ass replied. "Although, I'd throw in Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday as well if I was being brutally honest."
The captain laughed as did Arbiter and Stripe – Hit Girl simply scowled, her temper worsening by the second.