Chapter 10
Astrid leaped up from the chair which she was reading one of Hiccup's reports that she found in one of the drawers when the raging sound of gun fires reached her ears. She was way too familiar with the unique voice when a bullet leaves the gun barrel.
"Tango, Charlie, move to south corridor! Move to South corridor!" the computer-generated voice yelled through the speaker system.
Astrid paced to the window of Hiccup's lab. From there, she could see the gray paved Road that extended deep into the forest. The thick, dense trees that could block the sunlight provided a natural secluded space for the engineers to work, but also gave invaders a perfect camouflage and protection.
Three bullets that shot out of nowhere stroke the window in front of Astrid. The bullets didn't pierce into her head because the window absorbed the bullets' energy. Cracks spread across the glass like spiderwebs.
The windows of Asgard were made of triple-layered, bulletproof glass, more than 10 cm thick. A normal rifle wouldn't break the glass with a mag in close distance. Even though Astrid didn't know what "Code Tundra" meant, according to the training she received in DPA, she could sense that some sort of danger had already surrounded Asgard.
If three bullets stopped in front of her a few years ago, when she had just joined DPA, she would probably scream the hell out of her and find a closet or someplace and hide until the next day. But right now she had been through too many gunfights and cheated too many deaths that she felt numb in front of those lethal steel products.
Most of the fire came from the forest concentrated at the front door of Asgard. Muzzle flashes from behind the tree trunks looked like giant serpents flicking their tongues. Officers wearing their black uniform with the four white letters "SWAT" printed on the back of their uniforms used the tree trunks that could fit three Astrids in them as shields while pouring bullets at the guards who were positioned outside the building. Powerful steel rain covered the parking lot and everything in front of the door. Cars in the parking lot quickly turned into piles of trash under the terrifying firing. More than two guards fall with bullet holes in their heads or chests before they could raise their weapons to defend. They laid in the parking lot or front of the door, blood rushed out from their body and quickly dyed their uniforms red.
Guards who survived the first round of attack picked up their P90s and SRM 1216 shotguns and returned fire. All the practices for countering a ground attack didn't work in a circumstance when almost every inch of the ground was filled with flying bullets. The SWAT officers didn't want any captives, and if they had grenade launchers or missiles, they would probably blow Asgard into ashes already.
Brandt got pinned down behind a square, concrete post board a few yards away from the glass door of Asgard. Even though the post board was meant for engineers or guards to post hard copied announcements, but Helga ordered to add extra thick and hardened steel to make the board bulletproof, so it could provide some protection to the guards.
The ground-shaking firing already tore the announcement posters into splinters. More than two M4s pointed at the board. The concrete slowly turned into sand and rocks, only left with a 15 cm thick hardened steel between Brandt and death.
Right after he and Alex rotated to stand guard at the entrance, rifles started rattling behind the trees. Alex didn't even have the time to react before a bullet punched its way through his neck, the great impact of power almost removed his head from his body.
Bandt got lucky and had one more second than his friend to duck behind the post board, but he could do nothing but watch other guards falling around him. If he dared to reach out from the board, he would be torn into pieces just like those posters.
Astrid shot out of Hiccup's lab and ran down to the lobby of Asgard empty-handed. She tried to find her MP7s from beneath her trench coat, but then she quickly remembered that she left them in Hiccup's car. Around her, engineers threw their products and files into special storage rooms that could withstand ten tons of TNT explodes right next to it. Guards pulled out heavy weapons and transported them to the roof. Those 12.7 mm machine guns were great tools for countering infantries in large numbers. Their bullets were nothing like M4's tiny 5.56 mm bullets. Muspelheim's redesigned machine guns could cut tree trunks into half and turn human bodies into pieces.
"Where is Hiccup?" Astrid screamed at an engineer who ran down the corridor.
"I don't know. I haven't seen him since he came," the engineer's voice shuddered as he ran past Astrid and disappeared into his lab.
The entrance of Asgard was made of two giant glass door. The extra big design was meant for transporting large research apparatuses and materials, but also provided a perfect target for the invaders. The glass doors were bulletproof as well, but were only single-layered glass without extra reinforces. SWAT couldn't get through the doors at first, only filled the glass surface with cracks, but an officer threw a grenade across the parking lot like a catapult launching boulders.
The grenade did explode, the power way larger than M4 bullets shattered the glass doors with a loud "BANG." The debris of glass fanned out in a speed not slower than race cars. Sharp edges cut through Brandt's exposed skin and uniform.
He raised from behind the post board with his P90. Through the optical scope, he could see the SWAT officer tried to hide behind his tree trunk for defense. Brandt pulled the trigger of his P90, and the gun barrel launched the 5.7 mm bullets from its mag with a rate of fire of 900 rounds per minute. The officer's Kevlar didn't stop the bullets: three of them pierced through the Kevlar fiber and drilled into his heart and came out from his back.
The parking lot had turned into a kill zone, not the guards nor the SWAT officers dare to leave their protection. Asgard's parking lot was just fifty yards wide, but the crazy amount of firing brought back the feeling of trench warfare during WWI. The parking lot had been turned into a kill zone.
When Astrid reached the lobby, the floor was covered by small pieces of sharp, broken glasses and two guards' bodies with multiple bullet holes with them. Without the protection from the two glass doors, SWAT could fire directly into the building. Lights went out, tables and chairs turned into pieces, the decorations on the wall turned from drawings and pictures of famous engineers into bullet holes. Three guards returned fire from behind walls, but their accuracy became a problem due to the distance between the lobby and the trees.
"Get in here!" Astrid yelled at the guards outside. "We are outnumbered!"
Before the attack, six guards with P90s and SRM 1216 shotguns watched the parking lot, but only two survived the first few minutes of gunfighting chaos.
Brandt carefully raised his P90 and emptied the rest of his mag towards the trees, but a bullet struck his hand before he could withdraw his hand. The bullet created a giant hole in his palm, blood spurted out from his wound. Surrounding tissues were burned and turned slightly dark, and a few disconnected bones pointed outward like the spikes on hedgehogs. Brandt felt nothing at first, but then he believed that someone poked him in the hand with a baseball bat sized needle. He dropped his P90 on the ground and screamed at the top of his voice as if shouting could relieve some pain.
"Breach! Breach!" the leading officer of the SWAT team yelled after seeing Brandt being injured. He threw another grenade at the door, and the explosion ended Brandt's suffering.
SWAT officers reappeared from behind the trees and charged toward the entrance. M4s roared in their hands, bullet shells were thrown into the sky like thousands of popcorn. Astrid ducked behind a wall and covered her head by her hands. Concrete walls turned into small dust as bullets struck them, the debris of concrete covered the floor. Astrid quickly picked up an SRM 1216 from beside a body of a guard with some bullet holes in him. When the boot of the leading officer touched the floor of Asgard, Astrid tilted her body out from behind the wall just enough to allow her to take a clean shot. In a place like the lobby of Asgard, a shotgun can release its full power. The specially designed quad-tube mag of SRM 1216 can load up to 16 rounds of 12 gauge. When all 16 rounds were shot out, they will create a real "rain of death" made by hundreds of steel beads traveling at a subsonic speed. Each time when the shotgun in Astrid's hand roared, a SWAT officer would be pushed back by the great force from the shrapnel with a giant hole that could fit in two fists on his body.
"They are not good enough," David hidden under an electronic camouflage with an HK 416 in hand commented.
"Erik surely can hire some gangsters who are willing to give their lives," Nina used a telescopic sight on her rifle and watched the gunfight a few hundred yards beneath her.
The four members of Heimdall used trees and electronic camouflage and perfectly hid them among the dense trees on the mountainside above Asgard like four green ghosts. If a professional military sniper wouldn't be able to figure out their camouflage, because not everyone could get an electronic camouflage.
"When do we engage?" Nina asked as she brushed her hair away from her face.
"When those people are done with their job or after they are all dead," Axl replied.
"They can't finish the job that we assigned them," Evan said. "Muspelheim can take them out."
"What do you know? You are just a field engineer!" David joked.
"Evan is right. Eric's men are fighting for money, but they are also afraid of some overpowered enemy. But Muspelheim's guards are a bunch of die-hard followers of their company. The safety of Muspelheim is the only thing they care about," Axl took out his radio from his pocket. "Call in the second team, breach from the east side and take out Sam's office."
"They are in the building," a technician reported as the screen on his computer showed dozens of officers wearing black SWAT uniforms rushing into the building like a wave of black water.
Herkman watched the camera screens. He frowned anxiously. Even though he knew that those invaders were not real SWAT team, maybe a group of mercenaries wearing SWAT's clothes. But they were well trained, Herkman could see it. Their combat position could defend attacks from 360 degrees.
"Where is Helga? We need someone to lead the defense," Herkman asked.
"Not sure, we don't have an eye on her right now."
"Sir, Asheville PD is coming in!" another technician shouted.
On his screen, Two police cars with their sirens turned on stormed down the Road until when the SWAT trucks blocked the Road. Before the police could step out of their cars, and argue with some officers standing next to the trucks, the side doors of the trucks slammed open, machine guns pointed out from the steel doors, releasing thousands of bullets at the two poor police cars like a net made of sharp blades. Tires exploded, sirens were muted, bullet holes covered the doors and car bonnets, windshields shattered, and the cops sitting in the cars were dismembered by the 12.7 mm machine gun bullets, fresh blood flew out of the windowless doors.
"And they are gone," the technician added.
"Now we confirmed that they are not real cops," Herkman put his hands on his hip. "How many guards do we have left?"
"Around three dozens."
"Then tell them to get into the fight! Right now we only have a few guards and our guest resisting," Herkman yelled. "What the hell were they doing for the past few minutes? The gunshots didn't wake them up?"
"Yes, sir, I believe so," a technician answered. Then he moved his microphone near his mouth. "Bravo 1, Bravo 2, and Delta number 1 engage immediately. I repeat: Bravo 1, Bravo 2, and Delta number 1 engage."
"What do you mean engage? We are already engaging!" Helga's furious voice came from the radio with the sound of glass shattering and bullets punching the concrete walls in the background.
"Where are you?" Herkman snatched the radio from the technician's hand.
"East wing, where Sam's office is located!" Helga bellowed to talk over the gunshots. "They came out of nowhere."
"It's so quiet down here," Hiccup stood before a shelf and flipped through the files. "Are you sure something is off?"
"We are 250 meters below the surface. Of course we can't hear shit," Gobber leaned on a wall with the M4 within reach.
On the surface, gunshots could be heard more than five miles away, like thunderbolts striking the earth, but in Niflheim, Hiccup could only hear the breath of Gobber, Emma, and himself.
"You said this place is air-conditioned, but I feel like we are in a giant underground oven," Emma complained. Her sweat adhered her long hair to her face. She took off her lab coat, only wearing her white t-shirt decorated by all sorts of chemical formulas. And after a few minutes, she decided to throw off the t-shirt as well. "You guys don't mind, right? This place is warm like hell," Emma looked at Hiccup and Gobber with her hands on the hem of her t-shirt, ready to toss it off. The front and back of her t-shirt was already drenched by her sweat and turned the fiber dark gray.
"Only if you are wearing something else beneath that t-shirt," Gobber warned. "This place is also under surveillance, so I don't want to see a nude woman wandering around in the most classified place of Muspelheim."
"Of course," Emma murmured as she lifted her t-shirt and threw it aside.
"Wow, you really put some effort into it," Hiccup stared at Emma.
Beneath her shirt, she wore a black "laboratory" bra which all female engineers in Muspelheim loved to wear. This specially designed underwear can provide another layer of protection to the skin from corrosive and other dangerous chemicals that were used frequently during experiments. But Hiccup wasn't looking at her chest, he looked at her midriff which was covered by six squares of muscles. "This?" Emma ran her fingers through her hair and tied them into a ponytail behind her head so that they wouldn't stick to her face by her sweat. "I work out as well. Two hours a day. Six-pack doesn't come out of nowhere."
"Gobber do we have a lot of this kind of engineers around here?" Hiccup asked Gobber.
"How am I supposed to know," Gobber cried. "I can't just go up to an engineer and lift his or her shirt and check whether they have a six-pack or not."
"Hey Hiccup, you don't feel warm?" Emma asked after realizing that she stripped her upper body except for her bra, but Hiccup was still wearing his lab coat over a long-sleeved shirt.
"If you stop being so active and energetic and try to calm down," Hiccup turned back to the files in front of him. "You might not feel that warm."
Since Gobber locked down Niflheim, Emma tried to run to the end of the shelves and come back and romped around among the shelves like a little girl, just trying to enjoy some free time that Muspelheim engineers rarely had. On the other hand, Hiccup had been reading those files and Gobber was leaning against the wall to take a nap.
"When can we go up?" Emma asked with great impatience.
"Until they tell us through the speaker," Gobber replied with his eyes closed.
"And how long is that going to take?"
"Until they finished dealing with their business. I don't know the exact time because I don't know what's going on up there, and our job right now is to make sure that no files or apparatuses go out of this place, no matter the cost."
"And what's wrong with the ac?"
"Maybe they cut off the power line, or it got damaged," Gobber checked a thermometer on the wall. "It's just 95 degrees."
"What do you mean by 'just 95 degrees'?" Emma yelled.
"This place is closer to the core than the surface, and that means we will be receiving more heat," Gobber placed his right palm on the wall. "Mmmm, kind of warm without the ac. Might cause some program failure for some equipment in those rooms."
"Do you know that this file talks about Alan Turing and says that he might be the first person to invent the computer, not those people in Pennsylvania," Hiccup said. "I knew it! I knew Alan Turing is the creator of computer."
"Cut it off, Hiccup," Emma grabbed the t-shirt that she dropped on the ground and threw it toward Hiccup. "Why don't you use the time to work on Project Bifrost and figure out how on earth are we going to release enough energy."
"Wow," Hiccup turned his head at the sweaty t-shirt that landed on his shoulder. "You are the second girl who throws her clothes at me."
"Who is the first one?" Emma asked. Then she paused. "Never mind. We all know."
Astrid threw away the emptied P90 mag and found a new one from a pocket on a guard's body and ran down a corridor, bullets followed her on the ground. After holding the lobby on her own for five minutes, the SWAT officers forced her to retreat to the corridors. She didn't know why Muspelheim hadn't sent out more reinforcements even though the gunfight had started for more than ten minutes. Astrid stopped when she reached the stairway, walked a few stairs up and rested herself on the wall. She breathed heavily, trying to grasp more air to refill her lungs, her chest rose and fell. She cursed the officers as she slid the new mag into the P90.
"Over there!" an officer yelled as the wall started shattering under heavy firing.
This wall wasn't reinforced, that means the concrete would be in pieces in a matter of minutes, and Astrid's body would be filled by bullets.
The lights in the corridors went black as bullet waves struck them, wires and circuits zapped and sparked. The muzzle flashes from the M4 rifles lightened the dark corridors as well as the emotionless faces of the officers when they put a bullet into the injured guards lying on the floor.
A woman wearing yellow desert camouflage uniform jumped down from the stairway from the second floor, holding an M249 in her hand. The machine gun roared as soon as she landed on the messy floor covered by shattered concrete, glass pieces, and gores from the dead bodies. The corridor was a great place for the machine gun to slaughter lives since the compact space made it impossible to miss the black uniforms.
The noise from the M249 almost broke Astrid's eardrum as if someone ignited a firework right beside her. The small compact space even further magnified the noise. She turned away from the gun and covered her ears to decrease the noise. Her face distorted from the pain that her ears were receiving. When the gun stopped pouring out bullets, Astrid turned deaf at first and the only thing she could hear was a loud buzzing sound like after a bomb exploded next to her.
As Astrid slowly regained her hearing, the corridor turned dead quiet, except for the electric sparks from circuits. No more officers shouting and no more gun firing. The officers' bodies were torn apart by the machine gun bullets, dismembered arms and legs laid in the corners, and the walls turned scarlet as if someone painted the walls carelessly with red paint.
"I read your file," Helga said as she dropped the M249 which the gun barrel turned slightly red from constantly shooting on the ground and took out two Beretta 92Fs from her holster on her right thigh. She walked through the bodies, firing at the officers who magically survived with one or two bullets in their bodies. "You are not that bad. You can take them out no problem. They are not real SWAT."
"Everything is under my control," Astrid replied harshly at the woman who pointed at her with a gun when Astrid first visited Asgard.
"Yeah, seems like it," Helga snorted as she put a bullet through the surviving officers' heads, just like what they did to the guards a few seconds earlier. She then dashed up the stairs and disappeared at the direction where more gunshots came from.
To be continued
This chapter is basically actions, and I'll return to the main storyline of the story in next chapter.
Thank you all for the support
Please point out my mistakes in the story and share how you think about the story down below.
(I heard news that dreamworks is going to release a new dragon short film, is that true?)