Out of the Cage
Part 1 of 2. Kenros, Hraggs, and LJ arrive at the compound and conspire to sabotage it while stealthily traversing through the place to find the crystal.
Who Let the Dogs Out? (Part 1)
So here we are, gazing at the Wildmutt's base out in the distance, the freezing rain pounding on our faces. It was nearly five in the morning already and no sign on sunlight was showing so we don't need to worry about getting spotted. The rain had washed away our scent so the Wildmutt's (if they somehow managed to get a whiff of us) would only detect rain water. All in all, this plan should work perfectly. Get the crystal, steal some weapons, sabotage the base and leave before anyone spots us. Hell, maybe we can even gather some Intel about the next crystals' whereabouts.
"Okay…how should we do this?" asked LJ.
"I thought mercenaries knew the tactics behind sabotage??" I asked.
"Yeah, when there aren't alien dogs that got a keen sense of smell."
"Alright…first, we need to collect as much C4 as possible and plant them around the weak points in the base. Y'know, gas tanks, control rooms, stuff like that."
Hraggs grunted at me questionably.
"I was getting to that. We find Acknit and kill him quietly, we get the crystal back, and then we walk away. It'd also be best that we find some info about the other crystal too."
"Cool. It's just like Medal of Honor!" said LJ.
I groaned and rolled my eyes.
"Let's just go before it stops raining."
Me, LJ, and Hraggs slid down the hill and ran behind a food locker, hiding from the various human mercenaries patrolling the place. I had to stop Hraggs from busting down the door and eating all the food for himself a couple of times, but so far, no one's seen us. Hraggs growled gutturally at me, nudging me to look left.
"What are those trucks for?" asked LJ.
Several trailer trucks with bright green containers on the back and blue cabins were backing up into the base's warehouse. Some of the mercenaries were "escorting" many Wildmutts into the back.
"Son of a bitch. They're using them as slave labor, smuggling them all around the world to the other bases." I concluded.
Hraggs grunted at me again.
"No, we're not gonna save them. Slave or not, these Wildmutts gotta go. They're the bad guys, remember? I'll go find some explosives and place them around this base. Hraggs, you go disarm their alarm systems in case we get spotted."
Hraggs growled.
"I'll go find Acknit and that crystal before he decided to get away again. Shouldn't be too hard to find a Stinkfly--"
I grunted, ready to correct LJ again and say Lepidopterran, but I held my mouth shut.
"I mean 'Lepidopterran' in this base."
"Okay, let's go."
The three of us split up, going in three separate directions.
Hraggs ran across the ground, snarling and grunting to himself as he hid behind the corner of a wall. Three guards were sitting and cracking wise jokes at a wooden shack with an alarm on it. One of the mercenaries simply needed to lift his arm and move it right and he'd press the alarm. Sure, the rain masked his scent, but Hraggs was pretty sure they'd see a giant orange dog in the rain, no matter how dark it was.
Hraggs made this hacking grunting sound like he was choking on something. He made sure it was loud enough for the mercenaries to hear clearly.
"Goddamnit, why can't these dogs chew their food?! You guys stay here while I go perform the Heimlich maneuver." said a mercenary.
As soon as the merc got close enough to Hraggs, he dragged him behind the corner of the wall and violently jerked his head sideways, snapping his neck.
"Hey, Gilroy! Where'd you go off to?" asked the other mercenary.
Now Hraggs was in a little trouble. Should either of the guards find him, they'd presumably fire off a shot and hit Hraggs in the chest. He wouldn't die right away, but many of the Wildmutts would wake up…and that was the last thing they needed. Sneaking up on the two wasn't a choice since they'd either hear him or see him before he attacked. Hraggs was gonna have to do this quickly.
He got a very fast head start and charged towards the guards when they turned around for one second, just to make sure no one was sneaking up on them. And then he leaped on them, roaring and showing his full set of teeth. Hraggs roared when thunder struck so no one even heard. One of the guards could only open his mouth as if he were about to scream, then he had a gigantic dog on top of him. Hraggs began to ravenously tear away at their faces and body until he was satisfied that they were dead. Hraggs jumped off the ravaged bodies and lashed his claws at the alarm system, rendering it useless.
Okay, I got the bombs. Now I just need to put them in the right places before the sun starts to come up. I walked into a room full of a bunch of sleeping Vulpimancers, quietly tip-toeing in between the crowd. A couple of human mercenaries wearing standard blue camouflage uniforms and black boots were also sleeping, not watching guard. Lucky me, I can go through here with no problem. The boiler room is just across the hallway right through the door. At the last second however, one of the mercs sneezed and woke himself up. I rapidly jumped into a locker when he shined his flashlight across the room, making sure all the Vulpimancers were still sleeping. Then I waited until he stood in one spot, crept up behind him and stabbed him in the back of the neck. I quickly hid his body in the same locker before blood hit the floor.
Now that the coast is clear, I can place the bomb. I climbed up a ladder and started moved along a steam pipe quickly, before my hands suffered 3rd degree burns. Then I jumped down in front of the boiler and put my knife in my mouth to muffle the scream. …Damnit, there's a door that leads to this section of the room. Why the hell did I just hang by the steaming pipes and burn my hands?! God, LJ's right: I am getting old and slow.
LJ was in the west wing of the base, patrolling the area for Intel and Acknit. Unfortunately, he was having no success.
"Seriously, is it this hard to find a stinky insect inside this base?" LJ said.
He sighed and hid under a table when two mercenaries walked into the room, grabbing more ammo from a weapons crate.
"Hey, when's that guy Acknit gonna get here?" asked one of them.
"Couple hours from now. I hear he's the director for some big time assault vehicle that could wipe out a small city. Calls it the G.A.T.O."
"What the hell does G.A.T.O. stand for?" asked the other one.
"I don't know ask Acknit when he gets here."
LJ riskingly shot both mercs in the chest and killed them, despite the fact his M9 pistol was silenced. LJ scurried the bodies into one of the cupboards and locked, sealing away the bodies before a Wildmutt got a whiff of the blood.
"Okay, got the Intel. Now all I gotta do is find that crystal before Acknit gets here and everything should be all right." said LJ to himself.
LJ walked into the next room, filled to the brim with snoring Wildmutts ready to be shipped out in the morning. He gulped hard and began to tread through the crowd without making physical contact with any of them. At one point, LJ almost screamed when the heel of his boot made contact with one of the Wildmutt's claws, but the Wildmutt simply growled softly and turned over onto his stomach, lying face down. After LJ searched every inch of the room, he almost began to lose hope…up until he saw a red twinkle in his eye. The crystal was in his sights. All he had to do was just walk up to it and take it. The only problem is that the crystal was lying on top of the biggest and ugliest Wildmutt in the room. It was this spiky, yellow, grotesque looking animal resting on his back, slobber falling all over his mouth and face. He looked like a baby...a disgusting spiky dog-like baby with smelly breath, but nevertheless, a baby.
"Always gotta be right on top of the bad guy…" moaned LJ.
He sighed and cracked his neck, crawling up to the spiky Wildmutt. LJ quickly swiped the crystal, but he dropped it immediately when the Wildmutt rolled over onto his stomach. LJ swore under his breath and began to ponder about his next move. He was gonna have to stealthily take the crystal right from the Wildmutt's claws. LJ moved his hand over the crystal and touched it, retracting his hand when the Wildmutt twitched and growled. He waited a while before he slowly slipped the crystal from the Wildmutt's grip, replacing it with some plastic cup he found on the floor. LJ mouthed the word "YEAH!" and did the cabbage patch and some other stupid dance moves before yelping when he tripped over a dark red Wildmutt. LJ quickly ran out the door and locked it.
Why do mercenaries like this guy always go to the bathroom alone? As soon as he comes out, I'm simply gonna bash him in the head and interrogate him for everything he knows. God, these humans are so stupid! I heard a toilet flush and a faucet turn on, indicating the mercenary was done urinating and currently washing his hands. I opened the door and banged the mercenary's head on the faucet, knocking out a tooth and busting his lip.
"What the hell?!"
"Shut up right now." I growled.
"You yell like that again, I'll drown you in the goddamn septic tank, understand?"
The mercenary shook his head.
"There are five vital weak points in this base that I need to sabotage in the next two hours. I need you to tell me where they are."
I slowly began to cut into the mercenary's throat with my knife, causing him to bleed severely.
"Stop--Stop it! We got a boiler room--"
"I sabotaged it already."
"The machinery bunker--"
"I got that too."
"A prototype missile launching system located in the basement."
"…Not familiar with that one. How long till the prototype is launched?"
"In a half hour. You'd better get down there before it's too late. I hear they're trying to launch it at Rio de Janiero, and it's capable of destroying half the city."
"Thanks."
I knocked the guard out when I hit him in the head with the butt if my gun, hiding his body in one of the stalls, stealing his radio in case LJ decides to contact me. Now…I gotta get to that missile launcher.
LJ walked into a room that lead to one of the main control rooms. The central core was this giant CPU with four terminals that could shut down the whole base or launch all the weapons that were stationed inside it. LJ knew he had to destroy the CPU somehow, since they were on a mission of sabotage. The only problem was that the door behind him locked automatically, and there was a guard that blocked the ramp leading to the terminal. If that wasn't enough, two more guards and a technician were upstairs near the CPU. He had to do this fast or else the alarm would be activated.
LJ couldn't kill anyone else without risking a Wildmutt sniffing the blood, so he would have to knock them all out. LJ ran quickly and jumped on top of the guard, knocking away his rifle and wrestling with him. The mercenary couldn't scream because LJ cupped his mouth, but he did manage to grab his Beretta 8000 from his pocket and wave it in the air. Still on the mercenary's back, he grabbed his gun and tried to bash it out of his hand. Both of them were angrily grunting and trying to punch each other. LJ was the unlucky one though, because the mercenary inadvertently fired his gun on the platform. It wasn't silenced and the ricochet noise was so loud that several of the Wildmutts growled ferociously and woke up.
"DAMNIT!!" yelled LJ.
The other mercenaries heard the shot and rushed down the ramp, only to get shot twice by the other mercenary's Beretta. LJ took out his knife and stabbed the mercenary he was on in his back, swearing at himself for how stupid he just acted. LJ pointed his gun at the technician. He needed to deactivate the alarms permanently from the main CPU core.
"Enter the deactivation codes for the alarms!" he demanded.
"What? Why?!"
"Cause you want to live! Now enter the goddamn codes before I shove this gun up your ass!!"
"Okay, okay. Just don't hurt me."
The technician turned around and started running his hands all over the keyboard, inputting a multi-coded password.
"There. The alarm's off."
The technician lied; the alarms started blaring all over the base and red and yellow lights were flashing everywhere. LJ was so upset that he shot the technician in the chest twice. He never really felt good about killing civilians, but after he did, he would just write it off as collateral damage. He was a mercenary after all.
With no other option, LJ rushed to the terminal and entered a lockdown code, cutting off any of the base's imports and exports. Even if Kenros failed to blow up the base, it'd still take a massive amount of time before they'd find the password algorithm that would get the base up and running again. LJ got the dead mercenary's radio and called Kenros.
"Kenros."
"LJ, what the hell's going on?! All the alarms just went off!"
"They set off the alarms on CPU core terminals. Even if Hraggs shut it down it still went go off."
"You got the crystal?"
"Yeah."
"Then get out now! We'll regroup a couple miles from here."
"I can't. I gave the base an all out lockdown. Nothing comes in or goes out. …You go on ahead."
"LJ, I'm coming to get you. I'll get Hraggs and we'll find our way to the core terminals. Just hold them off as long as you can!"
To be continued…