Cyprus Finch had not been sleeping when the alarm had been called in by Ramierez. He didn't tend to sleep much during the night and never more than four hours at a time under even the most relaxed of circumstances during the day. It wasn't that he suffered from insomnia or even paranoia, though he had to admit that he was a very cautious and suspicious person, it was just he always found that there were more important things for him to be doing than sleeping. It had been hard at first, adjusting his body to the rigors of near continuous activity, but after years of strict personal discipline and training he found that he didn't even find it odd anymore. He'd been sitting by the recliner/bed where his friend of longest standing, Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory, formerly of the Hellhounds of EFSOU, much like Cyprus himself, was ensconsed, stationed in front of a table practically overflowing with stacks of viewscreens and forests of connecting cabling. A massive white bandage covered Glory's bare torso from armpits to waist, with especially thick padding under his left arm and along his left side, where the terrible entry wound from the .50 caliber slug he'd been shot with was still slowly healing. Glory was still on light and very limited duty, but he'd defiantly refused to be consinged to total bed rest and Cyprus had eventually caved in and allowed his friend to stand stationary watches like the one he now had, at the new security command center they'd hastily constructed in one of the long disused studies inside the mansion.
"Sir, we have a problem..." Ramierez said over the radio amplifier fixed to one wall, the tone of his voice leaving no doubt as to the severity of the situation. Cyprus glanced at one of the four clocks spaced throughout the room. 2341 was the time... just a little before midnight. A slightly unorthodox time for a night strike... he personally would have waited until after midnight, probably around 0300 or 0400... times when watches would have already been relieved uneventfully and even the most disciplined of soldiers would be slightly relaxed by the calmness of the night. But he considered that the planners of the attack probably had not been given their druthers with Cervantes calling the shots. He shook his head slightly in sadness but a smile came to his face at the same time. If Cervantes wanted to rush to his own doom, well, all the better. Glory reached out and tapped a large blue button on his master keyboard, instantly transmitting an alert signal to all the HUD's of the on watch Hellhounds as well as triggering a series of silent alarms in the rest of the house that would rouse the off duty soldiers and the rest of the household.
"Report." Cyprus commanded, his voice utterly calm as he stood up and began gathering his equipment from the racks along the wall.
"Multiple inbound hostiles... several dozen in number. Ashino heard a jet fly by overhead and then spotted the parajumpers a short while afterwards. Hold on..." Ramierez cut off for several seconds. "He says that their trajectory will take them into the water just where it gets deep off the eastern shore."
"That can't be all of them." Glory muttered, his brows creased. "They'd want at least three to one, if not four or five to one odds to have any sort of chance of victory." Cyprus laid a hand on his friend's shoulder to quiet him and nodded agreement that Glory could not see, concentrating as he was on the myriad camera views that appeared on the viewscreens.
"Tell him to look around more. There must be more than one group." Cyprus ordered. While Ramierez and Ashino were carrying out this order, Cyprus looked to Glory. "They'll be coming from both beaches in a pincer movement, with a support team landing elsewhere. It's a fairly standard set of maneuvers, and one of Asmodeus's favorites."
"You think Asmodeus is here?" Glory asked.
"He's the only person Cervantes would trust to lead an assassination mission like this one." Cyprus replied evenly. "Start activating the new cameras and get the uplink going. I want to be live before they get to our perimeter. Feed me the reports from Ramierez and Ashino as they come in, I'm going to go brief the young master and make sure there aren't any last second changes to the plan."
"Boy, Cervantes really blundered this time, didn't he?" Glory commented, half to himself as Cyprus walked briskly from the room without a single backwards glance. "Did he really expect us to just sit here and wait for him to come after us without coming up with a counter plan?" Glory started tapping commands into the new set of cameras they'd jury rigged during the past week while they waited for Cervantes to make his move. Every member of the Hellhounds now had a camera on their chest and on their helmet, and dozens more were scattered around the grounds and interior of the house. All these new cameras did not feed into the security system, but rather directly downloaded their feeds to one of the house computers, which compiled it and sent it in burst data transfers via undersea dataline to the Big Island of Hawaii, where another computer in a rented apartment decompiled it and uploaded it to every major newstation on Earth. "You wanna brush us under the carpet and make your mess go away... well, it ain't gonna happen, you goddamn madman." Glory muttered. "Let's see how you like having your little assassination attempt broadcast worldwide."
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Sai had been sleeping the sleep of mental exhaustion when his alarm clock suddenly activated itself with a thrumming vibration and series of muted but directed blue and red lights that flashed directly into his bleary eyes. He could tell it was still very dark outside and slowly his tired mind put together the situation from the facts. His alarm was going off when it shouldn't... it was still dark... and the peculiar sequence of flashing lights... "Oh god damn it all!" he sat bolt upright in the bed, disturbing Vanai, who'd been sleeping with one hand draped over his chest. Her eyes cracked open and she frowned in displeasure when she saw that it was still the middle of the night. Vanai was not someone who liked having her beauty rest disturbed.
"Wha' is it?" she murmured, reaching up with one hand to drag him back down into the covers. "No impor'ant. Tiireed." her voice was still heavily slurred from being only partially awake. Sai was saved from having to explain the situation when the door to the master bedroom opened and Cyprus Finch stepped through, already fully dressed in his body armor and Hellhound pattern BDU's, his weapons slung on his back and waist. The only detail missing was his hound faced battle mask, which he carried in the crook of one arm. Light from the hallway spilled into the comforting cave like darkness of the bedroom like a fat laser beam that cut staright into Sai's weary eyes, forcing him to turn his head away and blink out the glowing purple and blue spots. He grunted a complaint and clapped one hand to his face to rub away the residual headache while the other grabbed selfconsciously at the bedcovers, dragging them up to more fully cover himself and Vanai... in the tropics and especially in his own house in the tropics, he usually slept in the nude and tonight had been no exception, even without the extracurricular activites he usually indulged in with Vanai, which were quite out of the question given her pregenacy now.
"Sorry to wake you, sir... ma'am... but we have something of a situation." Cyprus informed them in a clipped voice.
"Lemme guess... the board called back again and wants to rehash the new agenda protocols again? I swear, those people must be robots... how they can function at a time like this, after days of exhaustive meetings is quite beyond..." Sai grumped.
"Little worse than that, actually." Cyprus interrupted. "Ashino and Ramierez spotted parajumpers inbound to the near vicinity of the island. Heavily armed parajumpers, in large groups."
"My father?" Vanai asked, from where she lay, mostly hidden by Sai. Usually it took her most of an hour to fully wake up in the morning, but the tone of Cyprus's voice had done wonders in focusing her mind. "No, never mind. Who else would it be?"
"We need to move you two to a more secure location. My people are preparing the broadcast room as we speak. You should both get dressed." Cyprus advised. Sai nodded agreement and started to get out of bed. He stopped a second later, remembering that he was quite naked, as was Vanai.
"Uhm... I don't suppose I could ask you to turn around?" Sai asked Cyprus. The bodyguard gave him a level stare.
"Sir, ma'am, I'm your bodyguard. Emphasis on "Body" and "Guard". I can't do my job very well if I'm not watching you and the area around you for danger. I've seen women naked and men naked. More of either than both of you combined. Trust me, neither of you will shock me with nudity. And you needn't feel embarrassed... who am I going to tell?"
"Makes sense." Sai allowed. "Doesn't make it easy though." He slipped off the covers and stood up, then moved over to one of several dressers around the room. He tried to be nonchalant, but found himself unable to look back at Cyprus to see the expression on his friend's face. And he dressed very, very quickly.
"If it'll make you feel any better, once we have some time, you can ask Thomas to relate to you the story of the mission where he and I had to infiltrate a rival political group that only held its meetings at nudist beaches. Then you'll realize that you have absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about." Cyprus told them, his voice inflection completely unchanged. Within three minutes Sai and Vanai had managed to get dressed, though Vanai still felt she looked like a mess, as she did not have time to do her hair or apply makeup or any other the other myriad tasks that allowed women to be ready to face the public world, but with Cyprus there practically pushing them along she wasn't exactly spoiled for choice. The interior hallways of the mansion, the ones that did not have any windows to the outside world, were brightly lit and busy, with various members of the household live in staff and ex-Hellhounds moving around in urgent but directed chaos. Sai knew without seeing that any hallways or rooms with exterior windows would still be dark and silent, to give the incoming enemy the impression that they were still quite undetected.
They passed the study where Cyprus had had his soldiers set up a new security command center for the household and its grounds to replace the old one in the bunker outside the house, the location of which was sure to be well known to any enemy forces. Sai shook his head... it was still hard for him to consider the fact that other members of Blue Cosmos were now the enemy and would be trying their best to kill him and his friends. He tightened his resolve and found his teeth gritting in a harsh frown. He hadn't started this fight, but by all that was holy, he'd sure as hell finish it. If his father in law thought he was just going to roll over and let the assassins kill him, he had a nasty surprise coming. Finally, they reached their destination, in the second basement level of the mansion. Before they'd come back from Panama it had been a secondary storage room, unopened and unused for years, filled with old construction materials leftover from the last time the live in staff had had to make some emergency repairs to the house.
The Hellhounds under Cyprus hadn't had long, only a little more than a week, but they had done what they could to transform the room from a disused storeroom to a secure bunker. The single door had been replaced with a much more durable model with several locks and other securing mechanisms. The walls had been shored up and the ceiling braced in case heavy weapons were brought to bear on the mansion above. It was nowhere near as secure as some household bunkers, like several the Attha family owned in Orb, or even the original security bunker that Cervantes had put in, but it was the best they could get. The old bunker's access codes had to be considered compromised and so it was unusable. The bare concrete walls and floors of the storeroom-bunker had been hastily covered in carpet and thin wooden paneling to facilitate the secondary usage of the room. At the far end of the room from the door a speakers podium had been set up, with an enormous banner depicting the symbol of the Isolationists... a grey battlemented wall with a Blue Earth rampart... hanging behind it. Dozens of cameras, recording systems and broadcasting systems were crammed in along the walls of the room with their fields of view overlapping in such a manner that the entirety of the room was covered. Sai and Vanai wasted no time in moving over to the podium and taking up their positions behind it.
Cyprus crossed to one of the banks of computers arrayed along the walls and punched in several commands, bringing the wide screens of several closed circuit TV's flickering to life. The images broadcast to those TV's came from the external security system, plus the security system of the mansion above. What Sai and Vanai saw there was enough to draw a gasp of shock from Vanai and a further tightening of the lips and clenched fists from Sai.
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Ashino and Ramierez stayed out on the upper level balcony for as long as they could, while Ashino searched out the extent of the descending enemy forces to the best of his ability and Ramierez acted as his link to the rest of the security forces. Besides the initial group that he'd spotten inbound to the eastern shore, Ashino also located a similar group dropping to the west of the mansion's shoreline and a possible third group that might have landed somewhere to the north of the mansion, in amongst the thick jungles along the higher elevations of the small island. After nearly a minute with no more sightings of the enemy, they were ordered by Cyprus to get to their preassigned defensive positions and prepare for emminent enemy contact. Ashino didn't precisely have a preassigned position, being outside the command structure of the ex-Hellhounds, so he just stuck by Ramierez, whose position was outside in the inland facing gardens. The pre-prepared position was basically just a hole in the ground with a cleverly disguised trapdoor covered in sod to make it blend with the rest of the garden lawn.
Inside the hole-position was a pair of automatic rifles with several boxes of magazines, along with twice as many handguns, also with ammunition. A dug out shelf in one side of the hole, which covered a medium sized man like Ramierez to just below his shoulders when he stood upright at the bottom, held a rack of two dozen grenades of various types, ranging from the standard high explosive or fragmentary to smoke and flash bangs. The hole also contained a portable medkit and a landline phone that connected to the radios the security team carried, allowing secure, unjammable comunications to the rest of the mansion and its outlying defenses. Ashino, being shorter than Ramierez by several inches, was forced to claw out several footholds in one of the clay-dirt walls of the hole so that he could see out. He kept watch while Ramierez struggled into his body armor and weapons, keeping a constant stream of muttered oaths going as he fumbled in the darkness of the cloudy night. At last the Hellhound settled the last of his gear into place and dropped his battle mask over his face and head and then it was Ashino's turn to get ready while Ramierez kept watch.
There was no body armor for Ashino, due to his odd size... most soldiers were not a tad bit under five feet tall, with massively muscled limbs and torsos. There was some armor from one of the smaller females that almost fit him, but it was so incredibly tight across his arms and chest he always felt like he was stuffed in a rubber sack when he was wearing it, so he generally didn't wear it. By no means did he consider himself above the need to worry about bullets or shrapnel... his skin was tough, but it was still just skin... but neither did he enjoy the loss of freedom of movement he suffered while in the armor. His rifle and pistol were back in his room in the mansion, there'd been no time to retrieve them on the way out, so instead he'd grabbed up two of the pistols and plenty of replacement magazines. His knife was sheathed at his back, like it was every waking moment. His final accoutrement was a speaker headset that patched into the comm net of the security team.
"This is Ramierez, I'm in position. Situation is green. I have Ashino with me." Ramierez reported as Ashino stepped into his footholds and peered out past the ex-Hellhound's shoulder.
"Roger that, Corporal, situation green, Ashino with you." the bass voice of Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory crackled over the commnet. "Lt, sir, all forces are in position. No enemy contact."
"Stand by. ETA of OppFor is one point three minutes." Lieutenant Cyprus Finch replied tersely. "Ashino, can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Asmodeus is likely to be leading the enemy." Cyprus pointed out.
"You needn't worry, Lieutenant, I was never loyal to that man. I respected him at times, but never more than that." Ashino replied.
"That's not quite what I meant. If I know Asmodeus, he won't be relying on just numerical superiority to win this battle. Not when he has other resources at his command." Cyprus said. Ashino swallowed hard.
"Ah, yes. Naturally, he would bring Frost along on an important mission like this. The soldiers are just to keep us busy. I'll do what I can, but please remember, Frost is considerably more powerful than I am and my ability to stand against him will be very limited." Ashino informed them.
"Just try your best." Sai's voice cut into the conversation. "I cannot ask or expect you to do any more than that, Ashino my friend. Just remember though... our goal is not to kill them all... when this battle is won, it will not be because the enemy is dead."
"Sai..." Ashino shook his head. "I still feel that this entire plan is somewhat..."
"Flimsy?" Sai supplied. "Fanciful?"
"Reckless." Ashino answered. "Asmodeus and especially Frost will not hesitate to kill you, on public TV or not. You cannot even be sure Cervantes will care... the man did not hesitate to kill tens of thousands in Orb in order to try and kill his enemies there. I just cannot imagine a little more bad publicity would matter to him."
"It's not the amount of publicity that matters... it is who sees it that is important. Even in Orb, that tragedy of tragedies, Cervantes could claim that the Merciless acted on its own initiative. That was a far more public event than this and yet he still remained in power because he had deniability. He was able to deflect much of the blame to the Earth Alliance Military. Even now, he seeks to fade into the background, to allow public sentiment to be aimed at the Alliance as a whole, rather than just him individually. The one thing he cannot withstand right now is to be in the public eye unfavorably. His friends and supporters in the high echelons of power are itching to betray him... but they cannot hang him out to dry just yet, as the public still, by and large, likes him. Until he loses the protection of public favor, we cannot hurt him." Sai explained. "And sending his personal assistant to assassinate me is not something hes going to be able to deny, especially when Asmodeus is recognized on public TV."
"Still, Sai... it's going to be very hard to capitalize on Cervantes's disgrace if your head has been ripped from your body by Frost." Ashino countered. Sai chuckled briefly and Ashino could almost see the slight shrug of his friend's shoulders.
"I won't deny theres quite a bit of risk to my plan... but I have faith in your ability to protect me and Vanai. I have faith in all of you, my friends." Sai said quietly and then signed off the channel. A few seconds of shared companionable silence ensued.
"This is PFC Gomer, on the east side. Enemy contact! Enemy cont..." the blurt of noise cut out in a explosion of static, followed almost instantly by a plume of smoke and fire from the east side of the mansion. "Goddamn grenade launchers!" Gomer spat over the line a moment later. "Sir, I have multiple inbound hostiles, more than a dozen in number. They came up from the beach and are advancing towards me in good order."
"This is PFC Khan, balcony three. I see the force assaulting Gomer. Headcount is fifteen plus, armed with automatic rifles and at least two grenade launchers. Engaging to support."
"Corporal Bass, west side blind. I have a second force inbound. They've passed through the minefield without casualties and are approx. one fifty meters from my position and closing at stalking speed. I saw one grenade launcher and what looked like a medium SAW (squad assault weapon), plus standard small arms. I also got a visual on enemy insignia. Sir, OppFor is MAGOS. Repeat, OppFor is MAGOS."
"Fucking Marines?" Glory snorted. "They called in the goddamn cowboys this time."
Ashino's sensitive ears picked up a muted "whoosh" sound, accompanied by a rapidly growing whine. His eyes widened in instant recognition and he wasted no time on words, instead grabbing Ramierez by the shoulder and pulling him down to cover in the hole. Bare seconds later a surface to surface missile of the kind that was fired by a team carried multiple missile launcher streaked by about ten feet overheard before impacting on the front doors of the house, blasting the finely carved doors into kindling and collapsing the columns that flanked the entranceway with a roar of cracking stone.
"Evidence of enemy heavy weapon support." Ramierez reported once he'd recovered from the shock of being bodily manhandled like a baby by a man several inches shorter than him. "They've got a Hydra launcher set up on the elevation somewhere. Be prepared for multiple inbound missiles."
"Ramierez!" Cyprus snapped, clearing the line of the other communications for a moment. "Did you see where the missile came from? We need to neutralize that heavy support ASAP!"
"Sorry sir, I didn't see the origin point. Ashino detected it before I did." Ramierez answered.
"I do not know the exact spot, but I could get close." Ashino added instantly. Before the conversation could progress any further, evidence of more heavy weapon support became evident. A laser-like beam of bright red tracer fire seared by the hole, hundreds of hyper-velocity bullets chewing a path of destruction through the garden like a buzzsaw running along the ground before the enemy gunner walked the fire into the house, blasting out windows in showers of glass splinters and shredding every exterior room on the first floor of the north side of the house. "That's a gatling weapon of some kind." Ashino commented, stating the obvious, ducking back down before the machine gunner could notice the head poking out of the hole in the garden lawn.
"Ashino... Ramierez... I need you to take out those heavy weapons! If we don't neutralize those, our defenses will be destroyed in less than an hour. I'll be out in a minute or two to replace you. Cyprus out."
"So wait... he wants the two of us to assault an entire enemy emplacement?" Ashino asked, his eyes wide.
"I'm not particularly happy about it either. But when the Lt asks me to do something for him, I'm gonna damn well give it my best shot." Ramierez replied. "He's right anyway... if we don't get rid of those weapons up there, defending the house will be pointless. This hole won't do a damn thing to protect us from a missile launcher and we'll never be able to mount any sort of effective counter assault with a gatling weapon like that covering the open ground."
Ashino found himself smirking suddenly. He'd been shocked at the difficulty of the mission, but then he recalled that was he not the person who'd been flung from a destroyed mobile suit, floated across most of half an ocean and then fought and killed a Coordinator spy? What was a simple assault mission compared to that ordeal? "I guess that leaves only one question. Do you want the frags or the HE grenades?"
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Asmodeus stood with Captain Kiffon and watched the missile team blow the front doors off the house while the gatling gunner annihilated any possible defenders taking cover in the exterior rooms on the whole north side of the mansion's first floor. Two other heavy weapon specialists, armed with modified .50 caliber sniper rifles, hunted for targets of opportunity on the grounds or in the yet untouched second and third floor exterior facing rooms. Meanwhile, the command squad spread out in defensive positions, digging shallow trenches to lie in or building mounds of dirt to shelter behind, with a deeper hole being dug for a sort of command center, where the comm man was already setting up his tactical communications network. With a few more key taps, the comm man extended an antennae from the top of his comm set. "Sir, jamming is commencing." He reported. Moments later a green icon blinked into existence on his computer screen. "Jamming is in effect, sir. One hundred percent of all outbound comms are blocked and ninety four percent of all inbounds blocked as well."
"Work on those inbounds, sergeant." Captain Kiffon ordered firmly. "This is a black op and I demand a total comm blackout."
"Aye, sir." the man replied. "Sir, news from Broadsword and Trident teams. They have engaged the enemy. Broadsword team encountered a mine field, but passed through without incident. Enemy resistance is heavy, but concentrated. As expected, there are only a few positions firing upon us. No casualties yet."
"It's time to finish this." Asmodeus whispered. He turned to where Frost was standing, staring up at the sky, apparently completely unconcerned with the mission. Without approaching too closely, he unstrapped the batteries from around his waist and tossed them to the BCPU, who let them land in the dirt by his feet. "Frost. Frost!" Asmodeus snapped. Damned monster can choose the worst times to zone out.
"I know." Frost replied lazily. He continued to stare up at the sky. "I'm soaking in the moment. Can't you just feel destiny charging the air around you, Asmodeus? Something very important is going to happen tonight. Something which will have consequences you cannot even imagine." He tilted his head down so his gaze met that of Asmodeus's helmet and grinned wolfishly. "Poor Asmodeus... so in the dark... so lost... so confused. You're just a pawn, caught up in the games of people of far greater consequence than you."
Asmodeus raised his rifle and sighted in on Frost's head. "I didn't ask for a meglomaniacal rant, Frost. Now hop to it, or all the people will be dead before you get down there."
Frost shrugged and picked up the batteries, slamming the heavy cylinders home into the grips of his chain-machetes. "Oh, Asmodeus... if only you could understand... we're not so unalike, you and I. But I can see for myself and you are just content to be blindly led." He shrugged again, and settled his grip on his weapons, which thrummed to life, the pressure sensitive triggers reacting to his grip.
"Movement!" one of the snipers suddenly called, his weapon firing with a loud "crack-slam" as the massive shell case flipped out of the discharge port along the side, sending the bullet flying at whatever its target was at more than one and a half times the speed of sound. The sniper snarled a muttered expletive and fired twice more. "Fucker moved fast!" the sniper complained. "I think I may have winged him with that last shot, but I can't be sure."
"Three shots, three misses? You need some more time on the range, Lance Corporal." Captain Kiffon commented with a frown, displeased at a bad showing in front of Captain Asmodeus Sark, arguably the most famous and respected Special Forces commander in all the Earth Alliance.
"That was no Natural, sir." The sniper replied. "He was out of his position and into the cover of the trees in less than a second and a half, and its a good twenty meter run across broken ground. No man moves that fast... though I've seen Coordinators do it."
"The brief didn't mention Coordinator involvement..." Kiffon said leadingly, looking over his shoulder at Asmodeus. Asmodeus returned the glare levelly.
"Even if Sai has fallen far enough as to be working with the Coordinators, it doesn't change anything. We have with us a most perfect anti-coordinator weapon. Frost... it would be a nice bonus if you could bring us the head of the Coordinator, along with Sai's."
"No sooner said than done, Asmodeus." Frost replied with a mocking half bow, before taking off into the jungle at a sprint, moving so fast that most of the MAGOS soldiers saw only a confusing blur of movement.
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Watching the battle outside on the TV's was one of the most surreal things Sai had ever experienced. It was like watching an action movie, but he knew a lot of the people involved and he knew that everything was actually happening... but for all that, it still seemed like it was happening somewhere else, someplace far removed from him. As far beneath the mansion as the soundproofed room was, they hadn't even heard the explosion of the missile taking out the front doors, though they'd been able to watch it on Ramierez's cameras. In some ways it reminded him of his time aboard the Archangel, where he had been in charge of sensors and electronic warfare. During all the battles he'd been focused on his screens, even though the battle was happening right around him, shaking him and blinding him with explosive flashes of light... he still hadn't really been part of the battle. He'd never pulled a trigger or fired a weapon... just pointed them out so others could do so. Just like now... he wasn't the one fighting... he was just pointing out the enemy so the fighters could do their job. Sai gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, fighting with the insane urge to go out and do what he could to help the beleaguered soldiers above.
"No casualties yet. We have the advantage of pre-built fortifications and knowledge of the terrain." Cyprus noted calmly. "They have numbers and unless Ramierez and Ashino do something about it, heavy weapons that will be able to nullify our advantages in a reasonably short time." He paused a moment, watching the view from Ramierez's camera judder and shake as he hauled ass towards the treeline after breaking out from his hole-position by using a flash bang grenade to temporarily blind the snipers who were undoubtedly using night vision scopes on their rifles. The snipers had nearly gotten Ashino and Ramierez was clearly less sanguine about his ability to evade enemy fire simply by relying on his reflexes.
"Sir, our outside comms are being jammed. No outbound or inbound transmissions will be able to make it through until someone does something about whatever jamming device they're using." a harsh burst of static underlined every word Glory spoke on the house intercomm.
"It's being taken care of, Sergeant-Major." Cyprus replied, unruffled. He stared at an unblinking green light on one of the computer screens arrayed against the wall. He smiled ever so slightly. "Aerial jamming is all very well and good, but its very damned hard to jam a landline without physically severing it... and if they were going to break the line they would have already done it."
Sai was just starting to feel reassured when three of the smaller screens that filled boxes on a larger display screen suddenly turned black. His stomach churned... he knew what that meant. Three soldiers... men and women who believed in him and his cause... had just perished for their beliefs. "Goddamn it!" Glory swore. "Fuckers dropped a missile right onto Balcony East... they never knew what hit them. Sir, we gotta get the fucking heavy support down NOW!"
"It's being taken care of, Sergeant-Major." Cyprus repeated, his voice completely unchanged. He snapped his mask down over his face. "Master Sai, please, stay in this room and do not open the door for anyone but me or Thomas. I'm going to lock it after I leave. There's a pair of pistols on the top shelf of the podium. I pray to god you'll never need to use them, but it never hurts to be cautious."
"Be careful Cyprus." Sai admonished, not even trying to dissuade his friend from going. For one, it would be pointless and maybe even counterporductive... for another, how could Sai order someone to stay when he himself so dearly wanted to go, even though he knew he'd only be a liability. "Don't do anything crazy. I'm going to need a bodyguard for a long time." Man, that sounds so cold...
Cyprus may have smiled... it was impossible to tell through his mask of course. Still, to Sai he sounded faintly amused. "Just who do you think you're talking to, sir? I've no intention of dying... I've a lot staked on the new world of peace you're going to bring about... I'm going to be around to see it, you can count on that." With those words he swung his rifle around to a tactical carry position and stepped confidently out the door, shutting it behind him with a firm click followed by the sound of a key faintly turning in a lock.
"What did I ever do to deserve all this?" Sai whispered, staring unseeing at the wall. A small flicker of color on one screen drew his attention... another square had turned dark. Sai's blood suddenly ran a few degrees cooler... from the ID tag on the corner of the box he figured the location of where the soldier was stationed... and that soldier, the one who'd just been killed... was one of the soldiers stationed inside the mansion. The enemy were already inside the house.
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MAGOS team 5 had infiltrated the building while the other teams kept the defenders pinned down, diving straight for the enemy heart like a dagger plunging through flesh, a surgical attack designed to end the fight quickly by ripping the support guts out of the entire enemy defense. The seven members of the team padded quickly through the surprisingly empty mansion, shooting out every camera they came across in an effort to compromise any still operating security system that the jamming hadn't rendered useless. MAGOS soldiers spent endless hours practicing urban combat, including building to building and even room to room scenarios, and so the soldiers had their strategy down pat. Upon coming to a doorway, shut or open, the point man would stop just short, while two other teammates would line up just behind him. Two more soldiers would take out grenades, one flash bang and one frag grenade, which were bounced into the room at an angle with practised flicks of their hands. After the twin blasts, the three just outside the door would sprint in, covering left, right and center, laser sighted rifles probing in precise sweeps for any movement. There were no warnings and no mercy granted. Unarmed household staff cowering in corners were gunned down or blasted to shreds with the same prejudice as the soldiers displayed for two wounded but ambulatory Hellhounds guarding an interior storeroom containing medical supplies.
Team 5 cleared twelve rooms in a little under eight minutes with these tactics, until they finally reached a long interior hallway that ran down the middle of the house like a spine. There was a room just ahead on the right, from which came the glow of many computer screens and the low hum of electronics. The team 5 leader smiled grimly... plainly this was a room of some importance, maybe even a command center. Maybe even THE command center, the one that would contain the target. With a quick series of hand signals, his team lined up in standard order once more, in almost total silence. Just instants before they commenced their routine though, cruel reality burst in and ruined everything. Thomas Glory was quite well versed in the hostile room entry scenarios practiced by EA soldiers... he'd after all practiced in most of them for long, long hours as well. And while the MAGOS soldiers were quiet... they weren't silent... and in Glory's experience, the distinction made all the difference in the world. Soon as he heard the first back bump gently up against the wall outside the door to the study, he twisted his recliner chair around and snagged a heavy automatic shotgun from where it was leaning against a nearby table. Wounded as he was, his body wasn't strong enough to handle the recoil of a grenade launcher or minigun or heavy machine gun... but a little shotgun was nothing to a man as big as Glory, especially well braced in a sitting position.
Glory didn't wait for the enemy to make the first move or even come into view. He closed his eyes briefly and pictured how the soldiers would be lined up and aimed accordingly. The shotgun was loaded with heavy caliber deer slugs, not buckshot, and the heavy slugs penetrated the unarmored wall like it was made of straw. The body armor the MAGOS soldiers wore didn't do much to slow them down either... or the bodies of the MAGOS soldiers for that matter. The shotgun roared and bucked in Glory's hands like a living thing as he hosed it back and forth, not bothering to conserve the twenty four round magazine, there being plenty more stacked underneath his chair. By the time team leader 5 figured out what was going on, three of his teammates were dead, their chests blasted apart and their corpses thrown across the hall in explosions of blood and viscera. A fourth was badly wounded, his leg blown off at mid thigh by an errant slug, areterial gore pumping out in a bright fountain as he lay screaming on the ground. Gritting his teeth, the team leader swung around the doorway, his weapon at tactical present, the butt snuggled up against his shoulder and his head pressed down close so that wherever he looked, so did the weapon. He just had enough time to comprehend the mountainous man reclining in a big chair in the middle of the room holding a smoking shotgun in his hands when his own head exploded, courtesy of a three shot burst fired from down the hall.
Cyprus Finch didn't bother to wait for the headless body to fall, he shot through the spurts of blood that jetted from the ravaged neck of the MAGOS soldier, another three shot burst that struck another surpised MAGOS soldier just above the collar of his armor but below the chin of his own combat mask, blowing his throat out in a messy slurry of pulped flesh and shattered bone. In a fluid movement Cyprus dropped to one knee and rolled sideways, clearing his line of fire once more, his next shots blew up through the groin of the man with the severed leg, the hollow point bullets exploding inside his lower abdomen with predictable results. By now the last remaining member of team 5 was shooting back, but he was extremely disoriented by the sudden and savage loss of the entire rest of his team, and his shots streaked high and wide, blowing a line of splintered craters along the wall where Cyprus had stood when he came out of the basement stairway at the end of the hall. Cyprus took his time and aimed a single shot that went through the eyepiece of the soldier and turned the upper half of his head to mush. As he rose, Cyprus reloaded and swept the hallway with his eyes... no more hostiles were in sight.
"I guess they forgot we do STS's (Standard Training Scenario's) too." Glory commented quietly, when Cyprus looked in through the doorway. He rapidly reloaded the shotgun and then turned back to his computer screens. "We've lost six, sir. Khan and Gomer among them. Damn missile launcher is hell on static defenses. We're starting to get pushed back... East side entrance reports at least twenty hostiles mustering for a big push about thirty meters outside their position. We've only got three guys there, sir, one of them walking wounded."
"Tell them I'm on my way. And tell everyone else on East side to muster on the East stairs, second level. That includes the three at East Entrance." Cyprus ordered.
"Ah, you're going to booby trap the door... damned clever sir, but won't they be expecting..." Glory started to say.
"Tell them to leave the doorway and their position clean. And I want them seen retreating." Cyprus cut him off.
"I don't understand... you're just going to give them the position and a way inside?" Glory was almost visibly scratching his head in puzzlement.
"Hopefully they won't understand either. Send the order." Cyprus commanded. Glory shrugged and whispered into his throat mic, utterly trusting his friend. Not that he really had much of a choice... if the three guys at East Entrance didn't pull back they were just going to get overwhelmed and slaughtered anyway. "Listen up East side... the LT's got some sort of plan..."
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Ashino grabbed Ramierez and dragged him fully into the cover of the trees as sniper fire gouged miniature craters in the soft sod of the garden lawn just a few feet behind the prone scout, who had slipped just short of full cover. The flash bang had done its job in blinding the snipers for a few seconds, but it still almost hadn't been enough to cover the ground. Ramierez was panting heavily and just lay there for a moment. "Twenty meters... open ground... I should be dead..." Ashino shrugged, recalling the bullet that had almost creased his sleeve just as he'd dived into the welcome cover of the thick jungle trees. It had been closer than he would have liked too, but he didn't have time to dwell on it now, as another missile streaked by overhead, plowing into the third story balcony on the east side of the mansion and blowing it to flaming splinters, sending at least one body cartwheeling through the air in smouldering pieces. "FUCK!" Ramierez swore as he clawed his way to his feet. "We gotta..." He never got to finish the sentence.
With a whine like a buzzsaw wielded by god himself, a solid laser-like beam of reddish-orange tracers cut through the forest canopy a few meters ahead of them and chewed through several slim trees in explosions of seared sap and scorched wood chips. The gatling gunner knew her business... while the tree cover hid the enemy from the view and thus the wrath of the snipers... she could just saturate the area with bullets and eventually she'd hit something. She swerved her fire back in forth in short arcs, probing it through the treeline where the enemy soldiers had disappeared from view like a woman with a garden hose might while watering hard to reach plants in an overgrown garden. She fired in bursts of a thousand rounds or so to avoid overheating her barrels and to give time for the enemy to think the barrage was over and leave cover, if they were stupid.
Neither Ramierez nor Ashino were stupid... but nor were they spoiled for much choice either. They had to disrupt the enemy heavy weapons, or the defenders at the mansion would be picked apart like fine meat at a delicatessen. Ashino thrashed through the undergrowth on his hands and knees, slithering along uphill faster than a man could jog, always staying low to avoid the intermittent bursts of gunfire, which were mostly aimed at waist height or a little lower. The highest point on the isle was only at about twenty meters of elevation, but that twenty meters stretched out over at least a mile from the beach and house. It was a long and frustrating crawl, with long puases forced every half minute or so while hyper-velocity bullets whipcracked through the air inches above his head and back or else smashed out small smoking craters in the dirt or foliage around and in front of him. Several times he was nicked or grazed by rounds that just wouldn't let him get low enough to avoid, but they were a minor pain and even less of a distraction. During one such forward crawl, Ashino clearly heard the sound of chainsaws resounding from somewhere nearby, but before he could pinpoint the location or the source of the noise, he was forced to stop and duck again by another burst of bullets. This time though, he was close enough to see the gun itself as it spun, illuminated by two foot long muzzle flashes.
Ramierez hadn't made nearly as much forward progress, as he'd been forced to move in short dashes, unable to crawl fast enough or low enough to maintain Ashino's near continuous forward motion. He too heard the chainsaws, but had even less of an idea where they might have been coming from, given how the jungle at night tended to distort sounds, even without all the distractions of the gunfire and whatnot. Still, he was close enough to make out the enemy position as well, using the scope on his rifle. They were well dug in, utilizing good cover. There were at least fifteen of them up there, including the two snipers, the gatling gunner and the missile crew, who were even now prepping to fire another wire guided missile at some defensive position down at the house. Ramierez scowled... he couldn't get much closer undetected, and if he was spotted he was going to be pinned down at best, if not immediately shot full of holes. "How the fuck...?" He muttered to himself angrily. His unspoken question was answered for him moments later. Ashino had taken the HE grenades and he popped up like a jack in the box on x16 fast forward, just as the gatling gunner was letting off from a barrage, his fingers in the process of relaxing from the triggers. In even the smallest motions, inertia makes a difference, and it took the soldier a fractional second longer to halt the offward motion of his fingers and press the triggers again than it would to just have triggered them from rest.
In that time, Ashino flipped the grenade forward like a pitcher throwing a fastball, a hard, straight line drive of a throw that cleanly intersected the fire line of the gatling gun. Bullets from the spinning machine gun struck the grenade just inches from the muzzles and the metallic sphere exploded, triggered by the hard and sharp impacts. The explosion peeled the gatling gun barrels back like copper straws and the concussive force of impact was enough to toss the gunner over backwards even from her kneeling position, while the flash of light and boom of noise was enough to distract almost everyone else in the enemy position. In the second or so it took for the MAGOS soldiers and Ramierez to clear their eyes and ears, two people had already reacted to the explosion. One of them was Ashino, who charged forward, pistol in either hand barking out steady streams of shots that dropped two of the dug in command squad as they stood there blinking in their hides. By the time the enemy realized what was happing, he was among them. The other person who was not slowed in the slightest by the grenade was, perhaps predictably, Asmodeus. As soon as he saw the grenade, even though he didn't see who threw it, he had dropped and rolled, shielding his eyes and ears from the explosion and by the time he actually felt the explosion he was already aiming his rifle at the figure darting into the middle of his command post.
Ramierez was a career soldier, in one of the most elite fighting units ever to exist. Among those men and women, he was a scout, used to the up close and personal brawls of infiltration combat. The number of people Richard Ramierez couldn't take on in hand to hand or close range combat could be numbered on two hands without using up all the fingers. Even so, he would never just jump into the middle of an enemy command post with guns smoking, like Ashino had just done. Its was plain fucking suicide... even in action movies, people got fucked up doing shit like that. But then again, he'd never watched a BCPU fight before. He found himself just staring at what was happening on top of the hill, though he did have the sense to stare through his scope, so that when an opportunity presented itself, he was already in position to take advantage of it.
Ashino felt the combat stimulants and synethized adrenaline pumping through his blood in full flow. The world itself seemed to be made from poured crystal and everything was so slow and sharply defined. Each spent shell casing ejected from his pistols traced its own spiralling line of smoke and fumes through the night air. He saw the MAGOS soldiers all around him beginning to react to his presence, but they were too slow by almost half a second. Two he dropped even as he entered the camp, single tap, right between the eyes. He bounced into a front flip and put three rounds into the chest and gut of the gatling gunner, who was just clawing her way to her knees again. The close range pistol fire shredded the light armor vest the woman wore and her chest underneath as well, though not badly enough to kill her right off. Landing from the flip, which left him with his back to the wrecked gatling gun, Ashino collapsed to his knees and dived right, putting another three rounds into the knees of one of the men huddled by the missile launcher, dumping the man to the ground, screaming horribly. Two low caliber but high speed bullets grazed Ashino's own chest in mid dive, the bullets did not penetrate but the impacts would likely have cracked the ribs of a human. Ashino just grunted and ignored the bruises, which would fade within hours.
"Damn Coordinator monster scumbag!" Captain Kiffon screamed, snatching at the rifle on his back, trying to drag it around into a combat position. He stepped forward even as he finally got the weapon into his grip, aiming down at where Ashino was even then rolling up from his dive. "I'll teach you to..." his sentence was cut off when a precision double tap from Ramierez hit him on the nape of the neck and severed his spine along with most of his neck. The Captain had stepped out of cover in his haste to make a shot... never a good switch off, in Ramierez's position. Not a mistake the man would be making again. Of course now the enemy knew there were multiple attackers, and fire started spraying his way as well, forcing him to duck down as divots suddenly appeared in the trunks all around him and spent rounds rustled through the undergrowth on downhill slides.
Ashino took advantage of the split attentions of the soldiers to kill three more with his remaining pistol rounds. Tossing the empty weapons aside, Ashino darted forward, towards one of the snipers, who was even then swinging his bulky weapon around in a vain attempt to defend himself. Ashino ducked in close, blocking the barrel of the sniper rifle wide with one arm while his other hand, fingers bent into claws, ripped the throat of the man out. Without waiting for the man to choke to death, Ashino kneed him hard in the groin and tore the .50 caliber rifle out of his slack hands, letting the spasming body pitch backwards and spinning the massive weapon around to point at the other sniper, still lying on the ground, trusting to his comrades to protect him while he did his duty. Misplaced trust, in this case. At such close range, the mammoth .50 caliber sniper bullet didn't so much as kill the prone sniper as blow him to shreds... everything upwards of the hips was just plain gone. Two more bullets struck Ashino, one more glancing across his back and one that actually struck home in the flesh on his arm, drawing a hiss of pain and a languid spurt of rapidly clotting blood. He spun around and swung the .50 cal rifle like a club, directly into the skull of yet another soldier who'd been coming at him with a knife. There was a moist crunch and the man dropped, the gun barrel warped and embedded halfway through his brainpan.
By this point in time, Asmodeus had recognized the dervish wreaking havoc in his command post, and to say the least, he was not pleased with the surprise of finding Ashino not only alive and well, but now working at cross purposes with Asmodeus and the true members of Blue Cosmos. He never would have thought such a thoroughly indoctrinated member of Blue Cosmos would turn against the organization, against everything they had been created for, but the evidence was impossible to dismiss. As the kill count mounted, despite his own attempts to stop the BCPU, Asmodeus started to slip away, but not before he carefully threw a camouflage netting over the comm jammer, which had been knocked over early in the fight but was still operating. With any luck, it would go unnoticed in the confusion. Already more than three quarters of the command and heavy weapons teams were dead or disabled, with only the missile team still frantically trying to fire their squad carried weapon even as Ashino closed in on them, bared knife in hand. One of those men suddenly twitched and fell away, his head mostly blown away by whomever was supporting Ashino from out in the woods, and Asmodeus reminded himself to stay down and low on his way to the mansion... no sense in ending a life like his with his brains around his ankles. He turned at the treeline and flicked his weapon to full auto, spraying fire out into the forest from where the support fire was coming from before fading away into the forest, mind boiling over with thoughts.
Ramierez threw himself down as a splurt of automatic fire sprayed through the forest around him, one bullet, unaimed but lucky, catching him high on one shoulder with the force of a hammerblow. He'd be feeling that one in the morning. Thank god for body armor... He crawled forward a few feet, but when the fire died off he got up again and continued hustling forward... he'd lost sight of Ashino and any remaining enemies and he couldn't just let the little guy go it alone, no matter how frighteningly capable he seemed. Besides, he had to ensure that the heavy weapons were inoperable. He reached the position just as the fight reached its climax. Cornered and outmatched, the final member of the missile crew had turned from his own defense to defiantly slam a palm down on the trigger of the Hyrda multiple missile launcher, firing the missile at its last programmed target... the East side doorway position, currently manned by three Hellhounds. The man died even as he activated the missile, Ashino's knife bured in his heart, but the missile leapt from its tube on a tail of flame, reeling out a thin monofilament cable for in flight guidance behind it. In a move so fast and just insane that Ramierez could barely believe he saw it, even after the fight, Ashino snatched a gun from the ground and jerked forward, sweeping it in a short loop... actually twisting the loose slack of the monofilament wire around the stock of the gun. With a superhuman grunt of effort, Ashino jerked the gun to the side even as the line went taut. Before the wire sheered through the resistance of the gun, Ashino's beyond human pull managed to make the missile veer slightly... enough so that it missed short by nearly thirty meters, gouging out an impressive crater but nothing else.
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The First Sergeant who'd confronted Asmodeus aboard the plane gently craned his head around the corner of one of the outbuildings of the mansion... one of several outdoor equipment stoarge sheds that contained gardening tools and the like. He was just in time to frown in anger when the expected missile landed short and ineffective. He muttered a curse on all inept heavy weapon soldiers under his breath... could never rely on the bastards to hit the broad side of a FUCKING barn with a guided FUCKING missile! However, he was also in time to see the enemy soldiers turn tail and rabbit back inside the mansion, completely abandoning their positions. He tried to lean out and snap off a few shots, but his fire only managed to blow a few more divots in the already ripped up doors. "Top?" one of the other team leaders asked from behind him, where teams 2, 4 and 6 were crouched, readying themselves for the assault charge on the enemy position.
"They're getting tricksy, the bastards." the First Sergeant replied, sweeping his gaze around what he could see of the enemy position. It was a trap. It had to be a trap. The enemy had hung on like bastards till just now... a sudden retreat made no sense at all. He keyed his mic. "Sir, this is the Top. The enemy have abandoned their position... by the way, you and I need to talk about that missile crew... and apparently retreated. It must be... sir? Sir... are you there? Sir? SIR!?" He heard only static. "Goddamn piece of shit junk." The possibility that the command and support teams might have been wiped out never occured to the First Sergeant, referred to as "Top" by his men. "We're on our own now, boys and girls." he said wickedly. "Time to go a'scalping! Team 2, you're with me. We're goin a'thattaway!" he jerked his head straight at the empty position. "Teams 4 and 6 will provide cover. Come on, ye bastards, it's time to work a little bit of our magic."
Team 2's assault was not contested, the soldiers reached the abandoned position without taking a single shot of enemy fire, or encountering any mines or other nasty surprises. The abandoned position was clean too, which only served to raise the First Sergeant's suspicions, while also lending a lot of weight to the argument that maybe the enemy was on the ropes and was pulling back, consolidating. He grinned a shark's grin... they were getting their asses handed to them by MAGOS and they were running for cover. Fucking pansies. Still, there was no sense in rushing ahead blindly. "All right, boys and girls, we're gonna do this right." he waved teams 4 and 6 forward and waited until all twenty plus soldiers were mustered, hidden in cover, right in front of the doors to the enemy fortress. That it was an opulent mansion didn't matter to the Top... it was a building that held the enemy, thus a fortress. "This is how we're gonna..." he started to say.
"Top!" A man hissed, pointing out into the night. The First Sergeant broke off with a grunt and looked where the man was pointing. His eyes widened considerably behind his mask and NVG's. Running, no, sprinting directly at them, without regard for cover or sense, was the little psycho man who'd killed Simmons on the plane. The little fucker was FLYING across the ground... really FUCKING MOVING, so fast that his feet barely seemed to touch the ground. The Top had seen some men move in his time... hell, he'd once been in an ammo store when a grenade got accidentally armed... THAT had been some serious fucking movement right there... but the little psycho was putting that easily to shame, covering at least one hundred meters in about five and a half seconds. Enemy fire lanced out from upper story windows of other parts of the fortress, but it went sadly long and wide, impacting more than ten meters behind the little guy, who was moving so quick the enemy couldn't track down fast enough to shoot at him. "Fuck..." the Top finally noticed that the little killer was holding what looked like a machete in either hand, but the unmistakable shriek of chainsaws seemed to resonate closer and closer as the little guy raced towards them. "Chainsaws? WTF!? This a war or a fiction novel?" the Top complained. Barely had the words left his mouth when Frost came charging by, skidding to a halt directly in front of the doors.
"What in all the names of fu..." the Top started to say, but the guy... what was his name again? Frost? Yeah, Frost... just stepped up to the door and snap kicked one of the solid oak panels right off its hinges, against the swing of the door.
"Holy shi..." several soldiers gasped. Frost didn't wait for the soldiers... he had a job to do that he might actually enjoy. He didn't even wait to put his kicking foot down on the ground, he pushed off with his standing foot and leaped into the house head first, chain-machetes carving twin scars through the expensive wood paneling of the walls. Outside, the MAGOS soldiers eyed each other and the remnants of the door Frost had just cleared, in the most complete sense any of them had ever seen. The Top gritted his teeth and stepped forward. Ain't no way he was going to let some super secret, super soldier man killer get the better of him. So what if he'd just kicked a door down that would have withstood a motorcycle crashing into it... so what if he had two chainsaws in his hands and could sprint like nobodies business... the Top wasn't going to be intimidated. Right now anyway. "Right then, we're going in, boys and girls. We'll let that gung ho freak trip the bombs and we'll clean up the mess. Follow me." he commanded, and stepped forward at tactical present, his soldiers filling the hallway and doorways behind him as they flooded forward in a precision display of mobile cover and advance.
Frost let no barrier impede his progress as he tore through the house like a whirlwind. Every doorway he passed was either sliced open or kicked off its hinges as he spun past, eyes darting this way and that as he scanned the rooms for any sign of his targets or any victim of opportunity. He was barely slowed at all by this process and proceeded through the house at a fast jog, trusting to his instincts to keep him heading in the right direction. He indulged himself in some whimsical personal revenge, his chainblades hacking through precious works of art, paintings, sculptures, pictures and more mounted along the walls or on pedastals in the hallways. See how much Cervantes liked his pretty beach house after this! Frost was dimly aware of the MAGOS soldiers following behind him at a far more cautious pace, but he paid them little heed. They were ancillary soldiers, afterthoughts at best. They had their uses... bullet soaking, mostly and he was content for the moment to let them live to fufill that purpose. They might even be helpful, if the enemy decided to stay at range and blast away at him with their rifles, rather than just bowing to the inevitable and accepting their executions... if there was one battleground he wasn't fully comfortable with it was the coldness of a ranged assault. He saw another set of heavy double doors ahead of him and he smiled... according to the layout of the house Asmodeus had provided him to memorize, this next room would contain a stairway leading up to the second level. It was a natural place for a defenisve position. Revving his blades, he barreled directly at the doors, heedless of any danger.
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"What the hell is that noise?" one of the Hellhounds, a female sergeant not from Alpha team, muttured as she crouched behind a makeshift barricade on the landing between the first and second floors of the mansion's East wing staircase. Behind the barricade with her were two other Hellhounds from her old team, who'd previously been assigned along with her to hold the eastern exterior doorway before they'd recieved the orders to withdraw to this position. She personally didn't know what value this new place had over her old position, besides that it was slightly more protected from missile attack, but she wasn't going to argue with a direct order from a superior officer, especially one from the Lieutenant, of all people. Maybe he wasn't her Lt... but he was THE Lieutenant. It wasn't a distinction many outside the Hellhounds or the other elite arms of EFSOU understood well... but to those in the know, it made a massive difference. The Lieutenant was positioned behind her, on the second floor landing with four more Hellhounds who'd been assigned to other portions of the eastern wing but had likewise been pulled to here by his orders. With eight Hellhounds in one place, a significant portion of their defense was gathered.
The Lieutenant heard her over the tactical comm net and held up his hand in sudden warning, causing the four troopers with him to halt in their task, which was using spades and sledgehammers to break holes in the second story landing floor, which was the ceiling for the first floor room below. Directly below the holes was the doorway that led into the room from the hallway outside. Stacked beside the improvised murder holes and firing slits were boxes of grenades and several satchel charges, already primed and ready. The Lieutenant's strategy was surprisingly simple. To procede further into the house along this path, the enemy had to move through this choke point, which would also allow them access to the upper levels of the house, where they knew several defenders were. After battering or blowing through the locked doors downstairs, the enemy would be immediately engaged by the Hellhounds on the stairs, who were well dug in and protected by several tipped over tables, cabinets and armoires with a few sandbags stuffed into corners to make things fit together. Maybe not grenade proof, but it would be a difficult throw to get a grenade up the stairs in such a way as to deal significant damage to the fortification, especially with grenades and gunfire coming down through the murder holes above in steady streams. Cyprus didn't expect to stop the enemy here. But he knew that the foes would pay dearly to take this room. He listened and heard the noise too... a thrumming, almost a vibration in the air.
"Sounds like a chainsaw or a hedge trimmer." one of the Hellhounds next to him, PFC Wayard of Alpha Team, commented. "Handy for getting through these locked wooden doors I guess, but I think some MAGOS soldier is getting a little too macho for his boots if hes honestly expecting to use that as a viable tool in here." he chuckled, as did several other Hellhounds. Man with chainsaw vs men with guns... men with guns win every time.
"No." Cyprus said, bringing everyone's humor up short. Wayard frowned inside his mask.
"Sir... I know that sound... that's definitely a chainsaw... sounds like one of the portable lumber saws I used to work with in the Northwest Atlantic Federation during my youth..." Wayard protested. He voice died off when Cypurs glanced over his shoulder at him.
"It is a chainsaw." The Lieutenant said. "But MAGOS isn't using it."
"What do you mean, sir..." the female sergeant started to ask, but by then the sound of the chainsaw... chainsaws actually, there were two distinct rumbles now, was very close, just outside in the hall. And then it was there, in the room with them as howling metal teeth chewed through the thick wooden double doors, shortly before an object struck them both like a cannonball and flattened them inwards with a huge SLAP. An indistinct shape, kind of like a human rolled into a ball, ricocheted into the room and rolled to a halt a few feet in. "What the fu..." several Hellhounds said at once.
"Frost!" Cyprus shouted, his rifle already aiming down through the loopholes they'd punched in the floor. "Fire at will! Kill him quickly!" He put action to words, firing in short, precise bursts of three rounds each, aiming for the head, throat and upper chest area, a place on the human body rich with blood vessels, where a hollow point bullet could lead to a rapid kill due to blood loss at almost any location. The Hellhounds responded with instinct and reflex, opening fire themselves, while Wayard snatched up a pair of fragmentary grenades and tossed them through the murder holes directly at where Frost lay. Sadly, for all their training, skill and experience, the Hellhounds, even Cyprus, were still just Naturals... just human. By the time Cyprus had started his second order, Frost was already up and moving, flipping and rolling around on the ground like a fish in a frying pan. It might have looked ludicrous from a detached observers standpoint, until one took into account the entirely deadly nature of the scene. By the time the rest of the Hellhounds started to fire and well before the grenades had left Wayard's hands, Frost had regained his feet and dashed back the way he came, into the eastside hallway and well out of the line of fire.
"Cease!" Cyprus commanded, less than two seconds after he gave the command to fire. He cursed vilely to himself... his surprise had been prematurely sprung... the enemy could not fail to know there was a reinforced position waiting for them now. Worse, they were now dealing with a foe who was reinforced themselves, with a wild card whos abilities were not fully known to Cyprus, besides the fact that they were great indeed. It made it hard to plan accurately... and without a plan they were in dire straits indeed. Cyprus tongued his helmet mic again, changing channels. "Thomas, the situation has changed. Frost has entered the combat zone. Where is Ashino?"
"He's outside still, he took care of the enemy command and control squad as well as the heavy weapon guys, with Ramierez's help." Glory replied.
"Recall them both immediately. Tell them to head to the safe room. Then you head there as well. Hopefully I'll join you in ten to fifteen. We're falling back to tertiary positions." Cyprus ordered firmly, closing his eyes and starting to take deep, calming breaths.
"But... sir... we still have a good three or four strong primary positions left, not even touching the secondary ones. Why back to last ditch already?" Glory asked. He was packing up and beginning to move out as he did, but he still wanted to know the reason behind the seeming overreaction.
"We have an abhuman killer leading a group of at least twenty trained soldiers through the east wing, Thomas. The soldiers we can deal with, but the BCPU won't be stopped by conventional means. The best we can do is slow him down until we can get Ashino back here, and even then all of us combined might be enough to make the battle even." Cyprus replied, his breathing slow and even as he slipped into a near meditative state, a trick he used under only the rarest of circumstances... because only the most rare of situations was challenging enough to merit his all out, life or death effort, which commonly left him exhausted and near useless afterwards for some time. Cyprus was well aware of the sound of the chainblades below spooling back up to full speed as Frost recovered from his evasive maneuvers, no doubt preparing to charge back into the room at any moment. The MAGOS soldiers Cyprus had been expecting initially were due to arrive any second as well. A slight frown crossed his features, completely invisible to anyone else and barely even noticed by himself. He was a man who enjoyed order and discipline, and despite how he employed his training, this manifestation of the soldiery arts always felt... chaotic... for lack of a better term, to him. This slight concern, like all others, was almost instantly forgotten as, unseen by any eye but the imaginary one in his mind, a grey seed dropped through a featureless void before finally hitting an invisible ground and exploding with all the light and power of a universe being born.