Love Hina;
A different Path Taken
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Chapter 12
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Kitsune, Keitaro thought, looked like hell. Which was not surprising, considering that she had spent almost the entire night with Naru as the latter balled her eyes out over the departure of Suu and the danger their dorm-mate was in rather than sleeping and recovering from her hangover.
"Morning." he greeted her.
"Hi." Kitsune returned his greeting, her voice rough.
"You get Naru calmed down?" he asked.
Kitsune nodded and squinted blearily at him. "You are disgustingly chipper, considering recent events."
"I slept in the love hotel." Keitaro explained, referring to the honeymoon cottage that he and Kitsune used for their hook ups. "And I'm chipper because I got some sleep last night."
"You're not worried about Suu at all?" Kitsune inquired.
Keitaro sighed and lit himself a cigarette. "Yeah, I am worried. But there's not a whole hell of a lot I could do to protect her. She's under the protection of the Molmol military and the security forces that protect their royal family, so that's the best chance she's got."
"You keep using that phrase. Why?"
Keitaro took a drag off his cigarette and exhaled a blue blast of smoke. "I suppose I should elaborate on that." he admitted. "Okay, first of all, what do you know about the Kingdom of Molmol?"
"All I know that it's an island in the Pacific." Kitsune answered.
"You're close. It's in the South Coral Sea, and it's a chain of islands." Keitaro corrected her. "They're a major economic power in the region. They're economy is primarily based on tech and shipping, with tourism being a distant third.
Militarily, their ground forces are fairly decent, small professional core with a large reservist force, built around defense of the islands."
He paused to take a drag on his cigarette. "Their navy, on the other hand, is rather unique. Not many big capital ships, I think the largest hulls they have are a couple of Aegis class frigates they bought from the US. What they do have in quantity, however, are destroyers and what they call "Rapid Response Vessels", which are fast container ships converted into either pocket helicarriers or troop carriers.
It's set up that way because it's primary mission is anti piracy. Which makes sense, considering that a big chunk of their shipping goes past the Horn of Africa and into the South China Sea."
"Okay..." Kitsune said, following along so far.
"That means that means that they get some fairly regular action. Usually boarding and securing ships, search and rescue, etc." Keitaro continued. "They also will do punitive raids on wherever the pirates are operating out of if they get the intel."
"What does that mean?" Kitsune asked.
"Punitive raids?" Keitaro asked, guessing that was what she was asking about.
"Yes."
"A punitive raid is where you attack someplace as retaliation for an action against you." Keitaro elaborated. "In this case, it means that if they know where the pirates are working out of, they come in, destroy everything they can, set fire to whatever will burn, and shoot anybody who tries to fight back, then bug out before the locals can get organized and mount a counterattack."
"Oh." was Kitsune's response.
"So, in other words, their SPECFOR community is pretty good. So they have a lot of experienced assets available to them. And that's in addition to the Molmol royal family's personal security, which is drawn from from the groups I listed above and is the best of the very best." Keitaro finished.
Kitsune took a moment to process what Keitaro had laid out. "So, you're saying that by going home, Suu's gonna be okay?" she hazarded.
"What I'm saying is that she has a much better chance of surviving than if she stayed here." Keitaro corrected her. "Even so, there is no guarantee that she's gonna make it. The odds are much better at home in Molmol than here, but it's not a certainty."
"What you described sounds like a hell of a lot for a couple of guys to overcome." Kitsune countered.
Keitaro nodded, acknowledging that she had a point. "That's true." he admitted. "But the two coming after her have an amazing ability to pull off the impossible, and very good at wrecking someone's carefully laid plans. Remember, these guys were able to pull off buying the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl and declare themselves their own country."
Kitsune opened her mouth to say something, then stopped as she thought about what Keitaro had said. "Oh, son of a bitch. You're right. With everything that's happened lately I had forgotten about that." she said, running a hand through her hair. "And now suddenly why you say that makes a terrifying amount of sense."
Keitaro nodded. "Hopefully, her people can keep her safe." he said. "Hopefully."
A worried look was working it's way into Kitsune's expression. "So what the hell are we supposed to do in the meantime?" she asked.
"Pray." was Keitaro's response. "That's the only thing we can do. Pray, and hope someone's listening."
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"I should have followed her."
That was the thought that was playing over and over again in the head of Suu's head bodyguard, Tannata Lau.
"I should have followed her when she ran off, I should have followed her and sat on her so she couldn't do something stupid."
Tannata took a deep breath and carefully let it out, reminding herself as she did that hindsight is 20/20. There was nothing she could do to go back in time and prevent what had happened, the only thing she could do is deal with the mess at hand.
And what a mess it was. Shortly after the Princess had sent a message announcing that she was returning home and that there was a credible threat against her person, the Kingdom had gotten slammed with a combination worm/DDoS attack, which had, among other things, left their civilian air traffic control systems inoperable, internet access across the whole Kingdom down, and their phone networks scrambled, both cellular and landline.
Clearly, it was the work of the Guild, which meant that they knew that the Princess was home. And while their civilian emergency services were effectively snarled, their military communications were working just fine. So if they tried anything, the MDF would be ready and waiting for them-
Footsteps running in the hallway interrupted Tannata's musings as someone knocked frantically on her office door.
"Come in." she commanded.
The door opened and a somewhat harried looking MDF corporal came into her office and saluted.
"Captain Lau, you're needed in the CNC." he said as Tannata returned the salute.
"How come?" she asked, getting up and grabbing her "go" bag.
"I don't know, ma'am. I was just instructed to go and get you." the corporal answered.
Tannata mentally swore and headed out the door. "Let's go." she said over her shoulder as she headed out the door.
The corporal dutifully followed and walked with her, matching her near jog as she headed for the CNC – the nickname given to the Molmol Defense Forces Operations Center.
At the CNC she slapped her ID on the black glass reader, which scanned her ID and gave the okay to the guard standing behind eight inches of bulletproof glass, who buzzed her through the armored door which lead into the CNC.
When she stepped through the door, Tannata was surprised at how noisy it was – normally there was a quiet murmur from the staff mixed with the rumble of the AC and the quiet tapping of keyboards. A glance at the boards -giant projection screens showing a map of the Kingdom, it's islands, and the territorial waters surrounding it- showed that a typhoon was heading straight for Molmol itself.
"Well, that's new."Tannata thought as she noted that the listed predictions currently forecasted for the storm to start making landfall in just over six hours.
"You're wanted in the Command Center." the corporal who had fetched her said, tapping her on the should to get her attention.
"Thank you, Corporal." Tannata said, giving him a salute.
She made her way to the Command Center, which was a large, glassed in, platform overlooking the CNC where the Assistant Chiefs of Staff of the various branches of the Molmol military worked and managed the day to day operations. As she climbed the stairs Tannata's spine stiffened when she saw that Crown Prince Lamba Lu was in there.
"Okay. I've been summoned to the Command Center, where the Crown Prince is. He's almost certainly the one who summoned me. He sent someone to come and get me, rather than use the internal phone system and call me." she thought as she hurried the rest of the way up the stairs. "And apparently there is a typhoon that has appeared out of nowhere and is heading straight for us. Something tells me that the shit is about to hit the fan."
At the top of the stairs Tannata placed her ID on the reader, waited for the door to unlock, and stepped inside.
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Prince Lu turned when Tannata entered the Command Center.
"Ah, Captain Lau. Thank you for joining us." he greeted her.
Tannata gave a half bow in return. "I am always ready for when you need me, Sir." she responded.
"I would expect no less." Lu said. "But, I did not summon you here to exchange pleasantries, Captain. As you can probably guess by the attacks on our civilian infrastructure and the sudden appearance of a rapidly strengthening typhoon, the Guild has been making moves."
Tannata nodded in agreement. "That would be my assessment, Sir." she said. "Is that why you did not call me?"
"Yes." Lu told her. "The Guild has incredible technical proficiency, even if their actions can be quite erratic."
"That is an understatement, Sir." Tannata pointed out. "But there is usually a point to all of it, even it s not immediately obvious to anybody but the Guild."
"Indeed." Lu agreed. "And in this case, they have managed to neutralize our defenses without even firing a shot."
Tannata was confused for a moment before she got what Lu was getting at. With their civilian communications down, no internet access, and a typhoon bearing down on them, their military would have to drop what they were doing and start getting the populace alerted and prepared.
Which meant that the Kingdom was more or less undefended.
"Oh, hell." Tannata swore.
Lu nodded in agreement with her assessment of the situation. "And that's related to why I called you here, Captain." he continued.
"Sir?" Tannata asked, wondering what he had in mind.
"With the current situation the way it is, having my sister here is not a viable option." Lu explained.
"How so?" Tannata inquired. "This facility has some of the best security in the Kingdom, specifically set up to repel intruders."
"Yes, it is." Lu admitted. "However, this is also where we're coordinating the typhoon preparations. Think of what would happen, if in the middle of things, our ability to communicate and direct relief efforts were disrupted."
Tannata thought about what Lu had pointed out, and grimly nodded. "I understand, Sir." she said. "What are your orders?"
Lu clasped his hands behind his back and turned to look out over the Operations Center.
"You and your team are to accompany my sister to her personal accommodations in the Palace, where you are to wait out the storm and defend my sister from whatever threats present themselves. Assisting you will be the Palace Guard.
I have also ordered the air defense units we had stationed around the Palace to remain in place. How effective they're going to be in a typhoon is anyone's guess, but it's better than nothing. Do you have any questions, Captain?"
Tannata nodded once. "I have one, sir. What about the elder Princess? Is she going to be at the Palace?"
Lu shook his head in the negative. "No. She has been relocated to Naval Air Station No 3 to help with the storm." he explained.
"I understand. Is there anything else I should know, Sir?" asked Tannata.
"No, that is it." Lu told her. "You're dismissed."
"Sir." Tannata said, snapping off a crisp salute.
Lu returned her salute and went back to watching the boards as Tannata left to go take her charge to the Palace.
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By the time that Tannata had rejoined her team and gotten them and the Princess loaded into their uparmored Land Rovers, the sky had become overcast, the wind had picked up, and rain was beginning to splatter against the windows.
Suu craned her head to get a glance up at the sky. "Wow, that is a pretty impressive storm." she commented, then her face lit up with a toothy grin. "This is gonna be fun!"
"No, it's not. There's a good chance that people are going to die." Tannata thought sourly, keeping her expression neutral as she fought the urge to slap the girl upside the head.
"Why do you say that, Princess?" she asked Suu instead. "Considering the danger, I think a more cautious outlook would be more appropriate."
"Because I'm gonna be fighting a mad scientist, that's why! I beat him, that proves I'm smarter, and then the stuffy old Guild will have to leave me alone!" Suu explained.
"Except the Guild is sending a heavily armed and very capable psychopath after you, not one of their loony-tunes lab rats." Tannata thought, her mind going back to the briefing she and her team had been given.
"Hopefully, that won't be the case." she said instead, again resisting the urge to beat some sense into the girl.
"Pfft! You sound like Keitaro back in Tokyo." Suu said dismissively.
"Princess, my team and I are the ones directly responsible for your safety." Tannata explained, deciding to use words rather than thumping her up side the head. "As such, we know exactly just what kind of threats are out there. I imagine Mr Urashima, as a professional soldier, is similarly aware. This is not going to be one of the fun little adventures that you are used to going.
There is a man coming here to kill you. We-" Tannata pointed to herself and her second in command "- are the ones who have to stop him. People are going to get hurt, possibly killed. And thanks to this storm coming in, the chances of that happening has gone up dramatically. Please consider this before you say something."
Suu sat there, her mouth open like she was about to say something, then deflated and slouched into her seat.
"Okay." she said sullenly.
Tannata looked at her for a moment, then shifted her gaze to the window and the building storm outside. She knew from previous experience what Suu's reaction to the few times that the girl had been reprimanded had been: Go sulk in her room/workshop.
Which in this situation was actually a good thing, as her room was fairly well secured and the team knew all the ways in and out of it. Plus, with the Princess sulking in there, it meant that she wouldn't be doing what she normally would be doing, bouncing around all over the place and being a nightmare to run security on.
"Looks like things just got a little bit easier for us." Tannata thought. "Wish I hadn't had to that, but it needed to be done. I might get some blowback from it, but I'll worry about that when we don't have the Guild breathing down our necks."
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The wind moaning off the eaves combined with the rain drumming against the walls and roof to make an unearthly soundtrack that matched perfectly with the tension that Tannata felt. An hour after they had arrived at the Palace, the storm had started to come ashore on the northwestern edge of the island and then had almost stalled. Which meant that the man the Guild had sent was coming.
As it was, the Princess was safely ensconced in her quarters with Tannata's team in position around it, and the Palace Guard was running patrols all throughout the residence. She had clear lines of communications with the Guard, her team, and the AA units stationed around the Palace.
"There's damn little those AA units are going to be able to do, unless he flies right over them." Tannata thought as she looked out at the darkening outside and the rain coming down in sheets. "This weather is the sort of thing that they were not designed to work in. But, this is better than nothing."
She sighed, rubbed her eyes, and turned away from the window. "Only thing we can do now is stay alert, and wait. And hope that we're better than he is." she thought.
Reflexively, she checked her gear, then decided to make a quick round of the perimeter. Just to be sure.
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"I don't know which one of us is crazier – you, for wanting to fly into hostile airspace in an unarmed JetRanger using a hurricane as cover so you can snatch a would be mad scientist, or me for agreeing to help you." Andrew grumbled as he fought the cyclic on their helo.
Sitting next to him in the co-pilot's seat, Chris puffed on his cigar and flicked the ash into a cupholder ashtray before responding. "First of all, this is a typhoon, not a hurricane. Second of all, you're my partner and there's no way in hell you'd let me do this alone. Third, the Guild is paying you five million in gold bars for this, and, as a ranking member in the International Association of Undead Monsters, we'll be owing you guys a favor."
"You're gorramed right you'll owe us a favor. Flying a helo twenty feet off the deck in a hurri-I'm sorry, typhoon- is fucking insane, even by your standards." Andrew countered.
Chris looked up from the nautical chart to arch an eyebrow at his partner. "Would you rather we be on their radar?" he asked. "Their civilian systems might be down, but their military stuff is still functioning, and I'd rather not find out how their SAM's work in this kind of weather."
"Good point." Andrew admitted. "How long 'till we're feet dry?"
Chris glanced at the compass and then the chronometer. "About ten minutes, if we keep this course and speed." was his answer.
Andrew nodded and glanced down at his instruments. "Wish we could use GPS on this." he groused, tapping the darkened display.
"Me too." Chris said as he rechecked their position. "Unfortunately, we gotta be radio silent on this op. Such is the way we earn our pay."
"Yeah."
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Tannata looked out the window into the rapidly darkening gloom and sighed. The storm was stalled, with most of it offshore, and enough of it onshore to make a mess of everything. Among the long, long, list of things rendered completely useless by the storm were most of the Palace grounds security systems- camera, motion trackers, geophones. Which meant that instead of having a nice large perimeter with it's approaches closely monitored, the perimeter was the Palace itself, along with whatever they could watch from the windows, which wasn't much with the rain and wind.
The floodlights they had running were only marginally effective thanks to the weather with about ten meters clear around the Palace. And there were gaps in the coverage, too. The wind had knocked some of them out, leaving areas in blackness. Tannata had doubled up the patrols in those areas and left lookouts covering the illuminated areas, which was the best she could do given the situation.
"I hope this is enough." she thought, listening to the radio and sending a silent prayer to her gods "And I hope this storm passes soon. We're good, but this is going to wear us out eventually."
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Cresting over a ridge, Andrew nosed the helicopter down and followed the slope of the backside of the ridge. Ahead of them, dimly visible through the rain, were the lights of Molmol's capital.
"Okay, this is good enough." Chris said, checking the map.
Andrew looked down through the canopy at a black gap in the trees that ran in a straight line towards the city and frowned.
"Chris, that doesn't look like a road." he said as he brought the helicopter into a hover.
"It's not." Chris answered as he stubbed out his cigar. "It's a drainage canal. They use it for flood control."
"You realize that it's gonna be a raging torrent in this storm, right?" Andrew asked.
Chris nodded as he undid his seatbelts. "I am aware of that." he said. "However, there is an access road next to it that runs to within a hundred yards of the Palace grounds."
"Good. I hate to think that you'd be insane enough to try and wade your way in." Andrew said as Chris donned his helmet and buckled the chin strap.
"Hey, we're the Guild of Mad Scientists. You want stupidity of that level, you go talk to the Brotherhood of Super Scientists or the Guild of Heroes." Chris pointed out with a maniac grin. "And speaking of doing something bloody stupid, this is where I get off."
With that, Chris opened the side door to the helicopter, eased himself out onto the skid and over enough to be able to close the door after him, and then casually stepped off the skid and dropped into the jungle below, the nanotechnolgy that was enhancing his body enabling him to do something that would otherwise be suicidal.
Andrew watched him go, then reached over and clicked a switch on the radio, patching his personal radio into the helicopter's internal communications.
"Radio check." he said into the mike. ""You still alive?"
"Yeah." his partner grunted. "I almost botched the landing, but I'm good."
"What happened?" Andrew asked.
"Landed on a monkey."
Andrew grimaced, imagining what his partner landing boots-first on top of a simian would look like. "Ewww."
"Yeah. Pretty much." Chris said, confirming what his partner was thinking of. "Anyways, I'm heading in. I'm gonna stay radio silent until I get the target. Give me seventy minutes, and I'll meet you at the LZ."
"Copy that."
Andrew eased the helicopter around and gained altitude as his partner headed into the jungle.
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It was now pitch black outside, and the rain was coming down in sheets driven by the wind. If she squinted, Tannata could maybe make out the wall that ringed the Palace grounds.
"Can't see a gorramed thing outside..." she muttered to herself.
"Ma'am?" her second in command asked.
"I was saying that you can't see a damn thing outside with this rain." she clarified.
"It's not much better with NVG's." her second advised.
Tannata nodded her agreement with her second's assessment of the situation. "Remind me the next time we see the Minister of the Public Purse to tell him to take his nixing the budget for procurement of FLIR scopes for our sniper teams and shove it up his ass." she said.
Her second nodded. "Yes, Ma'am." she said.
Tannata sighed and rapped on the window with her knuckle. "There could be an entire armored division out there surrounding us and we wouldn't know it with this storm." she complained, then turned to face her second. "So, how's the Princess doing?"
Her second clasped her hands behind her back and shifted into parade rest before making her report. "She's still sulking, Ma'am. She did not take you reprimanding her well, and having us sit on her so she doesn't go and do something... unwise isn't helping her mood."
"That's not surprising." Tannata commented. "I love her dearly, and we've guarded her since she was a toddler, but she's spoiled."
"I would agree, Ma'am. We share do some responsibility for that." said her second.
"Indeed, we do." Tannata agreed. "Now we just gotta keep it from blowing up in our faces."
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"Okay." Chris thought as he scanned the Palace grounds with his mask's thermal imaging. "No exterior patrols visible, security cameras that have probable gaps in their coverage due to the storm, floodlights covering large parts of the grounds.
I'm not seeing anyone in the windows, and the towers on the corners of the buildings are empty, probably because the visibility is shit because of previously mentioned storm. The floodlights are covering all of the ways into the building."
He huffed and shifted his gaze to the squat, cinderblock, building that had been added on almost as an afterthought. Tweaking some controls on the bracer that he had on his left arm, the display in his mask fuzzed out for a second and then refocused.
It was mainly cooler blues and purples, with a large orange splotch on the back wall, and two roof vents glowed orange as well, hot air billowing out of them in swirling vortexes of red and orange before rapidly swirling away in the wind.
"And judging by the heat signatures and thermal plumes coming out of it, that is their generator room. Which means that they've switched to internal power." he mused. "And if I am remembering the briefing materials correctly, that's also where they have the place's mains. Okay, I can work with this..."
He zoomed in on the generator building and noted that there was no easy way into it.
"Oh well. They don't pay me for the easy jobs." he thought, calling up a map of the Palace on his head's up display. "There should be a way in from the inside- there we are."
Dismissing the map, Chris got up from his hiding place in the bushes next to the fence and headed for the fence.
"The hard part is gonna be getting to there without getting spotted. Which means I'm gonna have to take the long way around. Joy." he thought as he scaled the fence.
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Tannata frowned as she listened to the chatter over the radio from the teams of the Guard as they did their patrols of the Palace. There was something off...
Pulling a small notepad from a pocket on her vest, she flipped through it to where she had a list off all the patrols of the Palace Guard written down.
"All teams, report in." she said, keying her radio to the Palace frequency.
She listened as each patrol checked in over the radio, mentally tallying them off of the list in her hand. When they were finished, she realized that one patrol hadn't checked in: Eight, assigned to the South section of the Palace, by the reflecting pond.
"Team Eight, what's your status?" she said. After not getting a response, she keyed her radio again. "Team Five, you're closest. Go check on them. Everyone else, stay alert."
Right as Tannata clicked off the channel the phone on her desk rang. With a sigh she picked up.
"Yes?" she asked into the line.
"Lau? It's Nan." answered Koonta Nan the Palace's groundskeeper. "We have a bit of an issue."
"What kind of issue?" Tannata asked.
"There were a couple of windows unsecured on the second floor and we've gotten quite a bit of water in." Nan told her. "Nothing major, but it's something I figured you'd want to be appraised of."
Tannata nodded, even though the man wasn't actually there in front of her. "I understand. Thank you."
"You're welcome." Nan said before he hung up.
Tannata frowned as she put the phone back on the receiver. Two of the Palace Guards not reporting in and windows out- she hoped the two things were unconnected, but she wasn't going to take that chance. Keying her radio, she switched over to the dedicated frequency used by her and her team.
"Dao, this is Lau." she said.
"Yes Captain?" came the immediate reply.
"Get the Princess to the safe room immediately." ordered Tannata.
"On it." Dao said.
Tannata listened as Dao relayed her orders to the rest of the team, then she got back on the radio. "Is there something going on?" she asked.
Tannata sighed. "Possibly. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I'd rather be safe than sorry." she explained.
"I understand, Captain. Is there anything else?" Dao asked.
"No." answered Tannata. "Radio me when the Princess is on the move."
"Understood, Captain." Dao said.
"Good. Lau, out." Tannata said before she clicked off the channel.
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Chris clicked the last lead into place and smiled behind his face mask. That Lau woman he'd heard on the radio was right to be paranoid- the open windows and unresponsive guards were connected. The windows were from when he had made entry into the Palace- he would have normally closed them, but with the storm he had left them open because puddles of water in front of a closed window would have raised alarms, but the other way turned it into a case of someone forgetting to secure a window.
The guards, on the other hand, had just been a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Chris had crossed paths with them on his way to the generator room and had popped them both with the suppressed .45 he was carrying in lieu of his usual revolver.
After hiding the bodies in a handy closet, he had ghosted his way down to the generator room. The three people tending the generators had been dealt with by a knife thrust and four rounds of .45 subsonic, respectively.
Then Chris had rigged the first half of the distraction for when he made his move on the Princess, which in this case meant charges to sever the fuel lines on the generators with time delayed thermite charges to ignite the diesel.
The second part, which he had just finished rigging, was a series of charges on the power mains that distributed power to the whole Palace along with the phone and data mains as well. Their security and fire alarms ran through separate junctions in a different part of the building, but with the power and phones out their ability to communicate would be hampered.
The wide spectrum jammer he had set up elsewhere would provide further disruption.
"And now, to get into position..." thought Chris as he armed the detonator.
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Tannata restlessly drummed her fingers against her thigh as she waited for her team to report that the Princess was on the move, or that those two guards had been found, or something-
"Captain, it's Dao. We're on the move."
Tannata sighed with relief and clicked her mike. "Understood. Lau out." she replied.
Clicking her mike off, she stretched. She was just about to switch channels to the House Guard when there was a muffled "boom" right before the lights went out and an ear piercing squeal erupted out of her earpiece and into her eardrum.
"GAAAAH!" she yelped, yanking out her earpiece and clasping a hand over her left ear. "What the fuck just happened?"
"The power went out!" a voice answered in the darkness.
"I noticed!" Tannata snapped back, pulling a flashlight from her vest and clicking it on.
"Why the hell haven't the generators kicked on?" the voice asked.
Sweeping the flashlight's beam in the direction of the voice, it illuminated a member of the Palace staff, one of the groundskeeping crew by the khaki work uniform he was dressed in.
"We were on the generators." Tannata corrected him. "We switched over from grid power as soon as the storm made landfall."
The groundskeeper opened his mouth to say something right as the fire alarm went off.
"SHIT!" Tannata swore. Pulling a chemlight from her vest, she snapped it and shook it. "Here." she said, tossing the stick to him "Take that, get down to Security and tell them that we have a Code Black and I am rejoining my team. If you see any Guard tell them that too."
"B-but the fire alarm-" the groundskeeper stammered.
"Is a diversion! GET MOVING!" Tannata snapped.
The groundskeeper fumbled with the chemstick as Tannata grabbed her carbine on her way out the door, leaving him standing in the dark, with his eyes slowly adjusting to the chemlight's glow.
"Fuuuuuuck." was all he could say.
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Elsewhere, a few moments before...
Chris peeked out of the office he had ducked into when he had heard the sound of several pairs of booted feet on the polished stone floors of the Palace. Looking left, he saw his target along with her security detail. Taking a moment, he counted ten people, his target with nine guards.
One was next to Suu, two in the front, two in the rear, and the remaining four flanking Suu and what was probably the person in charge of her security detail. Satisfied that he knew how many people and where they were, Chris pulled his "clacker" - the trigger for the detonators- and pushed the button.
He felt rather than heard the explosion of the charges going off, a rumble in the floor coming up through his boots. Half a heart beat after that, he saw every member of Suu's detail cringe as the jammer kicked in and whited out their radio channels with noise. At the same time, Chris was already moving, using the few crucial seconds of the security detail's distraction from their radio communications being jammed to step out from the room he was hiding in and bring his rifle up in one smooth motion.
Combat has several truisms that have been discovered over the decades. Three of them are as follows: Professionals are predictable, the world is full of amateurs, and no plan survives first contact intact.
As soon as Chris stepped out of the doorway, all three rules kicked in at once. Suu saw him and jammed her hand into a small duffel she had slung over her shoulder and started to pull something out of it as he shot her head guard twice in the head.
The two rear guards had registered the threat and were turning to face it as Chris saw Suu pulling something and shifted his aim, firing the cut down Mossberg non-lethal shotgun he had clipped to his AR-10's Picatinny rail, sending a taser round into her abdomen.
The taser round went off on impact, causing Suu to convulse and fire the glue projector she had built, pasting the two guards on her left flank to the wall and covering them with an incredibly strong adhesive. Suu continued to fire the projector as she fell, catching one of her guards on the right flank in the face with it as Chris shot the two rearmost guards,
The other guard on the right flank saw her comrade get hit and was moving to grab her when Chris put four rounds into her center mass, the 7.62x51 armor piercing rounds out of a full length AR-10 barrel defeating the level III-A armor and trauma plate she was wearing.
The front guards by this point had swung around and were bringing their HK 416's into position when Chris engaged them. All three of them fired at the same time, the guards fire being dead on, the only thing saving Chris being the AT field generator he had as part of his equipment.
This disrupted his shooting, causing him to juke his aim lower and put three of the rounds into the guard on the left's gut and the fourth round missing her entirely. The next four, however, he was able to put on target, in this case being the last guard.
Chris then shifted his aim back to the guard he had gut shot, double tapping her in the head before she could shift her attention from the immense pain in her guts to the threat to her primary. He then shot the guards who had gotten tagged with the glue projector.
It took eleven point fifty three seconds from start to finish.
Oo000ooo000oO
For a moment, Tannata's mind would not accept what she saw in front of her. That her team was dead, and her charge was gone.
"Everything was under control just a couple of minutes ago." she thought.
Closing her eyes, Tannata forced back the maelstrom of emotions that tore at her and made her want to scream and rage like a madwoman and rip the man who had did this apart with her bare hands. She forced them back and focused.
She still had a job to do, and she had to keep her shit together.
"Inhale." Tannata took a long, deep, breath.
"Hold it." she counted to four.
"Release." she exhaled slowly.
The first thing she knew she needed to do, Tannata knew, was get back to the Security Office and get a response organized. They needed to get in contact with the outside world and get the word spread.
Turning on her heel, she sprinted back the way she came.
Oo000ooo000oO
For Chris, the exfil out of the Palace had been considerably more difficult than infil due to the fact that he had the drugged, unconscious, and heavily restrained Koalla Suu slung over his shoulders. Even so, having had to duck various patrols and staff running around collecting every fire extinguisher they could- burning diesel can be quite challenging to put out if you don't have the right equipment- he still found himself running a little ahead of schedule, which was a good sign.
Once he was off the grounds Chris had looked back and whistled in surprise at seeing generator building and a surprisingly large section of the Palace itself merrily ablaze and spreading.
"Gotta love old buildings." he commented to himself. "They're nice to look at, but oh man are they flammable."
He had then shifted Suu on his shoulder, turned, and headed off into the jungle, heading for the LZ.
Oo000ooo000oO
"Andrew, come in. This is Chris. Come in Andrew."
Andrew perked up when he heard his partner's voice come over the radio. He was about ready to die from boredom, staring at the rain splattering itself against the helicopter's windscreen.
"I'm here." he said into his mike. "You got her?"
"Yeah. I'm heading for the primary LZ right now. I should be there in the next ten to fifteen minutes." Chris answered.
"Copy that." Andrew replied as he nudged the cyclic and began to shift the helicopter's course around. "I should be there in ten."
"Copy that. Out."
Oo000ooo000oO
Tannata found the ranking officer of the Palace Guards in a conference room rather than the security office, desperatly trying to get the situation under control.
"Captain Taal!" Tannata called out to get the man's attention.
Captain Taal turned from where he had been addressing a subordinate towards her, a surprised look on his face.
"Captain Lau!" he said. "I thought you going to rejoin your team-"
"They're dead. The Princess is missing." Tannata informed him, her voice a monotone.
It took Taal a moment to process what Tannata had said, but when it registered his reaction was immediate and true to his origins in the Molmol Naval Infantry.
"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" he bellowed at the tops of his lungs before spinning around to his subordinate. "Forget everything I just said! Go down to the motor pool, get a vehicle, get out of range of the jamming, get in contact with GHQ and tell them that we have an Alpha Black situation here!"
His subordinate nodded and sprinted out of the room. Taal didn't even wait for them to get out of the room before turning his attention back to Tannata.
"Do you have any idea on what happened?" he snapped at her.
Tannata shook her head. "I have no idea." she said. "I think they were hit from behind. It must've been right when the jamming kicked in."
Taal grimaced. "That makes the most sense. Was there any indication on which way she was taken?"
Again, Tannata shook her head. "None whatsoever. There were no footprints that I could see, and they were hit in the Grand Hallway, right where the residential quarters border the actual Palace proper."
Taal sighed and nodded. "Alright. That means that she could be anywhere by now." he said, then took a moment to collect his thoughts. "Okay. The fire is now no longer a priority. The Palace can be replaced. The Princess cannot."
Taal motioned for Tannata to follow him and walked out of the room. Wordlessly, she followed him.
"Are you functional?" Taal asked her as they walked.
Tannata nodded. "Yes." she answered. "I'll go to pieces on my own time."
Taal gave an affirmative grunt and they kept walking.
Oo000ooo000oO
The aforementioned Code Alpha Black that Captain Taal ordered his subordinate to transmit had a very specific meaning to the Molmol military: Code Alpha Black meant that a member of the Royal Family was in mortal danger, and that the whole island was to be put in lockdown. The only vehicles allowed on the road were ones belonging to the Molmol military, and any aircraft or boat not flying the Molmol insignia would be fired upon.
The code went out as Andrew was about a kilometer and a half from the LZ, and was picked up by a reserve unit in a 70's vintage Flakpanzer Gepard SPAAG (Self Propelled Anti Aircraft Gun). The weather made visual sighting impossible, but he was close enough for their radar systems were working perfectly.
Their systems locked on and they fired, Andrew unaware that he was under threat until 20mm ripped through the back of the JetRanger's fuselage. In short order, the avionics and hydraulics were shredded and the helo autorotated into a small lake.
Andrew, thanks to his enhancements, survived the crash just fine, and thanks to the very unique nature of them, was unaffected when the helicopter sank into the lack. He cut himself free of his seatbelts, grabbed his bag, then punched his way out of the canopy before swimming to shore.
He pitched up on the lake shore, muddy, clothes torn, and covered in water weeds, but otherwise okay. Putting his helmet on, he flipped the mask down and keyed his radio.
"Chris, come in, we got a problem." he said. "The helo's fucked."
"What happened?" his partner asked.
"Ran into a fucking antiaircraft gun." Andrew informed him. "It fragged the hydraulics and I autorotated into a gorramed lake."
"Fuck!" Chris swore. "Where you at?"
"Hold on." Andrew said as he checked his map. "I'm on the southwest side of that lake that's north of the Palace."
"Okay." Chris said. "Fuck, there goes me getting the Princess delivered to Guild."
"You're not gonna let her go, not after all the work we put into this?" Andrew asked.
"Nope." Chris grunted. "The Guild told me capture if possible, neutralize if not. Since we're gonna have to go find us some transport-" he paused and Andrew heard two gunshots over the radio "-and that's not something I can do while lugging around an unconscious captive."
"I see." Andrew said. "Now what?"
"Well, I know that the Palace has a helo on station in a hanger at all times." Chris began. "It's in that sub-complex on the northwest edge of the grounds. Meet me there and we can go from there."
"Got it. See ya there."
"See ya."
Oo000ooo000oO
Realizing that there was nothing that she could do at the Palace, Captain Taal had told Tannata to head to MDFHQ and brief them there about the situation. Dispatching one of his men to go with her as a driver, they had piled into a Land Rover and headed out.
The drive had been arduously slow due to the storm, the drive that should have taken them fifteen minutes taking almost an hour and a half instead. Having radioed ahead, when they got to HQ, she was met in the garage by a pair of troopers who were there to escort her to the CNC.
The troopers bustled her into the CNC and up to the Command Center, where she saw the Crown Prince along with a sizable contingent of the General Staff. Lu looked up when the door opened and Tannata came in along with her escort.
"Captain Lau is here, your Highness." one of the troopers announced unnecessarily.
"I see that, Private." the Prince told him. "Thank you. You two are dismissed."
Both troopers snapped Lu a salute, then turned on their heels and walked out. He then turned to face Tannata.
Standing there at attention in the Command Center, with the Prince and the Command staff, she felt as if the whole world was pressing down on her shoulders. Lu looked at her for a few moments, then took a breath and addressed her.
"Report, Captain."
Tannta waited for a heartbeat, then began. "The Princess is missing, my team is dead. The Palace is on fire and local radio communications there are being jammed. I have no idea on where the location of the Princess or the man who abducted her."
For an instant Tannata saw grief and guilt in the Prince's eyes, and she braced herself for the explosion as she continued.
"I'm sorry I failed, sir. I wasn't with my team and I should have been. I'll take full responsibility-"
"There's no time for that." Lu said, his face now a mask of stone. "One of our air defense crews north of the Palace reported shooting down a civilian helicopter. Get back to the Palace and grab everyone you can and get up there. If my sister is anywhere, she'll be there. Go!"
"Sir!" Tannata said, snapping off a parade ground salute before hurrying out of the room.
Oo000ooo000oO
Thanks to the hanger having it's own backup generator, the lights were on inside. This made sneaking in considerably more difficult than usual for Andrew and Chris, but, fortunately for them the hanger was almost completely deserted, with only the flight crew, a couple of mechanics, and two members of the Palace Guard there.
The Guards were in the hanger itself, guarding the Molmol Royal Family helicopter, which in this case was a brand-new Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma. This made Chris's day, as now they could hand it off to the guy they rented the JetRanger from and wouldn't be on the hook for replacing it.
Everyone else was in the hanger's office, so Chris signaled that he would take care of the Guards while Andrew cleared the office.
The Guards died first, shot with the silenced .45 Chris was carrying. After they were dead, Andrew made entry into the office and proceeded to take out everyone in there.
Chris rejoined his partner in the office. Andrew stood in the middle of the ready room, swapping a fresh magazine into his M4 while his partner looked over the bodies.
"Well done." he commented on his friend's marksmanship.
"Thanks." Andrew replied as he let his M4 dangle on it's sling. "Now let's get the hell outta here. We've been here long enough."
"Agreed."
Oo000ooo000oO
End.
Author's note: This was a hard one to write. This chapter is gonna rustle some jimmies, to be sure. However, do keep in mind this: Suu was given plenty of chances, and was told very specifically what the consequences of her actions would be.
It's one thing for when bad things happen to good people. This was not one of them. Suu, as an individual, is very reckless, impulsive, and immature. She got that way because no one held her accountable, and paid the price for it.