"Komm, Süßer Tod, Komm Selge Ruh"

Prologue

November 21st, 1990.

Location: Парамушир - Paramushir, Kuril Islands - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

Officer Itsu Hattori - Member of "Zero" Company, Tokyo's 2nd Riot Police Unit

Role - Currently demolition specialist attached to the JGSDF's 1st Airborne Brigade

Operation North Star

The night was cold, even for the weather-beaten inhabitants of the Kuril Islands. Temperatures dipped into the negatives throughout the day, culminating in one of the chilliest nights in recent memory. The wind whipped throughout the island of Paramushir; most of the island's citizens were hunkered down and asleep. The few towns that dotted the island were dark, the only vehicles moving across the roads were buttoned-up Soviet military patrols and even those began to decrease in number as the bitter cold began to envelop the island like an invisible fog. To say that Paramushir was a desolate place would be a grave understatement. Ever since the tsunami that slammed into the island in 1952, the island had slowly bled off residents year after year; the island was in danger of becoming an inhospitable and abandoned wasteland. The major staple of the island, the fishing industry, had been all but wiped out during the tsunami and only a few fishermen had returned and rebuilt in a futile attempt to bring back their trade. The island had come under control of the USSR in 1945 following an amphibious invasion by the Red Army, a gesture that finally finished the undeclared conflict between the Soviets and the Japanese that had been brewing on the sidelines of WWII following the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939. The Soviets proceeded to throw out most of the island's Japanese residents, allowing some to remain but shipping in thousands of Soviet men and women of all ethnicities in a naive attempt to somehow make something out of the cold hellhole; it had failed miserably.

These facts were not lost on the man currently freezing his ass off on a hill on the island. The man was clad in cold weather gear specifically designed by American manufacturers for this kind of duty, and it was still doing a piss-poor job of keeping his core warm. Rubbing his thighs frequently in an attempt to stave off the cold, he lifted his hands up to his white camouflage helmet to flip down a peculiar device sitting atop it on a mount. The AN/PVS-7 night vision system was a nice piece of kit, a much better alternative to the Vietnam-Era AN/PVS-5s currently sitting in JGSDF warehouses all over Japan. The man had experienced the lack of overall vision associated with those, and he had heard the stories from tank crewmen and airmen about how bad the PVS-5s were in enclosed spaces; the depth perception left much to be desired. The man reached down to fiddle with the safety of his rifle, a suppressed Colt Model 723 with a 4x scope atop the carry handle. He was glad that he was able to take this into combat instead of his Howa Type 89. There was nothing particularly wrong with that rifle, but the modularity and adaptability of it to different roles left much to be desired, especially compared to his current kit. He was currently using his binoculars to observe an outbuilding on the interior of the island. He had hiked 15 miles into the island after landing at a particularly desolate beach 2 days ago, having come off of a US Navy submarine; a Sturgeon-Class modified to be able to land Special Forces troops anywhere in the world. Along with his uniform and his rifle, he had with him several pounds of Semtex and detonators as well as camping and medical equipment. His orders had been clear: do not engage with any Soviet soldiers, simply recon a specific area within the hills near a major roadway and use his explosives to successfully destroy a building marked on his map as "E-5 Observation Center, Soviet Rocket Forces". After setting his camp up and resting until the afternoon, the man set off from his camp to the makeshift blind he had set up on a hill overlooking his target. Putting some snow into his mouth to mask his breath, the man peered through his binoculars. The building did not appear to be heavily guarded at all, he could see what looked like two soldiers sitting next to an idling car and a small fire, no doubt trying to stop themselves from freezing up. There were no mounted weapons of any kind, not even barricades around the entrance to the site. They moved like conscripts, not with the edge and ingrained readiness associated with experienced troops. The man chuckled under his breath at this; he would try to simply slip past the men or create a distraction if that didn't work. They also had no visible night vision, another boon, Itsu thought. As the man sat and waited, he let his mind drift a bit as to how exactly he ended up freezing his ass off on this godforsaken island.

Officer Itsu Hattori was something of an enigma, 21 years old, fit, already a veteran of Tokyo's police force. Itsu was by all accounts an impressive and decorated police officer, a highly efficient soldier, and a kind and generous man to those that knew him as a friend. Standing at 5 feet 8 inches tall, he appeared at first glance to be a typically sized Japanese male, albeit one considered handsome if one was to believe the gossip in the bars frequented by receptionists and the female officers of the Tokyo police. Underneath his uniform; his body told a story that was most certainly atypical; legs and arms meticulously molded and crafted via hours of hard work to be as taught and explosive as possible. He had the body and muscle of a fighter. The man's back and torso told a story of hard fought battles; an exit wound on his shoulder from where a robber had lost his self control and fired a revolver at Itsu following a nasty snatch-job gone wrong in a high end jewelry store. A long scar traced from his chest to his stomach, a gift from the shrapnel created by the splinters of a riot shield after a right-wing fanatic threw a bomb into him and his cohorts during one particularly spicy evening last year. His face might have been that of a young man, but his body told the story of a grizzled police officer; that of a man with experience in taking and saving lives. After joining the force at 19 following a two-year stint in the Ground Self-Defence Force, he had expressed to his fellow officers a profound dislike for standard police work, always finding the mundane nature of a beat cop mind-numbing and unfulfilling. Finding out about the 2nd Riot Police Unit had put an end to that dislike immediately. Itsu took to the Unit instantly, bonding with every member of the squad. Itsu found that he liked the camaraderie of the Unit more than anything else; young men with a desire to do more than pore over drunk driving citations and petty crime reports, they wanted to protect people. Here he had found himself highly motivated for both his brothers and his unit as well as the Tokyo police force. After a year of constant but fulfilling work in Tokyo, he had been approached by his former Army squad leader requesting his presence at a local base due to Itsu's mastery of explosives during his previous conscript service. Upon arrival, Itsu had been moved into an annex in the base and asked if he wanted to train with 5 other men for an unspecified "mission". Ever the patriot, Itsu trained for 2 grueling months, putting his body and mind to test. Upon the completion of this training, he found himself attached to a special unit being formed within his old squadron; the 1st Airborne Brigade. The special unit would be officially nameless and buried deep within the Airborne, it had been modeling itself off the Special Forces units of other nations, mainly the US Army Rangers and the British Special Boat Squadron and Special Air Service, SBS and SAS respectively. Itsu and his comrades and officers called this the "Special Reconnaissance" division. After this intense training period, he had become one of the most valued members of this special unit. He would be on-call in a similar vein to a detective; he would drill with the 2nd Riot Police Unit but if need be he would be called to participate in missions under the 1st Airborne Brigade and the SI unit. This would be his third mission in the Kurils, the previous 2 recon operations had gone off without a shot being fired. This operation would be to recon a suspected Soviet observation center on the island of Paramushir in the Kuril Islands. Photos taken by American spy satellites had got them all the info they needed on infill and exfil routes, and it was decided that Itsu would be the operative assigned to this mission as a result of his outstanding performance during training and his police experience while under fire.

Itsu began to move steadily through the wind towards his target, rifle at the ready, his eyes scanning the road in front of him. After watching the guards for what seemed like an eternity, they had finally left and drove off towards the nearest town. Itsu ruefully hoped to himself that they would be partaking in the Russian national pastime of drinking until either their bodies or their livers failed. As Itsu moved closer, he noticed the lack of surveillance equipment on the building, as well as the lack of windows and lights. Coming upon the door, he checked the lock, finding it open before entering. The layout of the building was simple enough, a hallway leading to what looked like a guard room (thankfully empty), bunk room and kitchen, before reaching a set of stairs leading to a door at the bottom. Cautiously descending the stairs and opening the door, he came upon a single room filled with all manner of electronic equipment in front of him. The room itself was small in comparison to the size of the glorified Morton building above him; only about 20 feet squared. Looking over everything quickly, he found some papers laying on top of a computer near him. Quickly scanning over them, he discovered they were all in Russian and he quickly shoved them into a watertight container in his pack brought along for this specific reason. After looking through the room further, he grabbed a small floppy disk sitting on a desk at the front of the room, stuffing it into his jacket pocket. He began setting charges along the corners of the room before he heard a commotion coming from upstairs. Unsure of the location of the disturbance, Itsu quickly and expertly set the charges for a 10 minute delay before he steeled his nerves and began to ascend upstairs. Seeing no changes from before, he began to scan the three rooms. Going through the kitchen yielded nothing, as did the guard room. He began setting his final charge in the room when he suddenly heard a cup smash to the ground behind him in the bunk room. Time appeared to slow down indefinitely for Itsu; he brought his rifle to bear as he dove towards the ground, sliding his torso around to the door as quickly as possible. The rifle bucked in his hand; he instinctively fired a short burst from the Colt as he finally turned, but when he saw the object targeted by his fire fall to the ground he felt his blood run even colder than the freezing Kuril air.

It was a short, dark-haired Caucasian woman dressed in what appeared to be a lab coat, with three dark red splotches spreading over her front as she screamed and rolled on the ground like she was on fire. Itsu's mind went blank almost immediately and he found himself unable to move for what seemed an eternity; he had killed before, not a lot but enough to become acquainted with the feeling of taking a life. He had never killed a woman before, however, the thought had never even entered his mind that he would ever have to. Finally coming out of his stupor, he let his rifle fall to its slung position before rushing over to the woman flopping around like a fish in front of him. She was whimpering like an injured child and she was beginning to cry, her green eyes sheeted over with tears of pain. Itsu frantically began grabbing the first aid kit out of his backpack, reaching over to help the woman as his police training began to clash with his role as a soldier. Thoughts began to stir in his mind, he was supposed to protect people, to keep them safe from criminals, to help them from car accidents and burning buildings, and to stabilize them for when the trained medical professionals arrived, he was never supposed to kill people, at least never like this. Itsu managed to grab the clotting materials out his pack and he began to reach over to her torso when he saw her recoil in horror in front of him. She was staring at him like he was a monster, Itsu thought to himself, but wasn't he? He didn't check to verify if the person coming behind him was a soldier or a civilian, he didn't check to see if they were holding a weapon, he reacted like a soldier instead of as a police officer. Hell, he was a soldier, but then why the fuck was he agonzing over this, Itsu thought as his mind began to race like he never felt before. He reached over and began to slowly tear off her outer clothing to gain access to her torso to check the damage his rounds had done. She slowly began to grow accepting of Itsu's hands on her chest. He thanked whatever God existed for this turn of events before he caught her face and he realized why she was offering less resistance; her skin had begun to become deathly pale, eyes slowly blinking less and less and becoming heavily lidded. Itsu began to panic, desperately trying to stem the dark red blood flowing out of the last wound. Had he known what happened, he might not have tried so hard. Unbeknownst to Itsu, the first 5.56 round from the burst he fired had caught her near the lung, the bullet tumbling after shooting straight through her without hitting anything vital. The second one did the same, this time shooting through the very outside of her left side without doing anything other than superficial damage. The final 5.56 round is what killed her: the final round of his burst caught her almost dead in the underside of the left breast, the round slamming into a rib before fragmenting and sending shrapnel into her lungs, her stomach, and finally sending a fragment into a spot near her heart. Itsu began to watch on in horror as his efforts failed, her face becoming more and more pale as her movements eventually ceased entirely. He bent down near her face and began shaking her violently, finding no pulse he attempted CPR to no avail. With a bone chilling rattle emanating from her still open lips, she finally passed; small flecks of blood from her death rasp landed on Itsu's face mere inches away from her own. Itsu just stared at her for a solid minute, becoming more and more despondent and angry at himself as he looked at her death mask; a face frozen in agony and fear. He did it, Itsu thought to himself, he fucking killed her and he had no idea why. She hadn't done anything, he thought as he began to rage at himself, he just killed her because she had stumbled upon him. Suddenly remembering his mission and the bombs set to go off in minutes, he slowly gathered her body up in his arms before heading back outside. He carried her to the other side of the road before laying her body down in the snow. He sat there next to her for several minutes, paying no attention to his surroundings as thoughts began to enter his mind, Did she have children? Did she have a husband? Who was she, what was her name? What was she doing there, was she even a fucking soldier or was she just a civilian? As the realization of what he did slowly began to nestle itself within the deepest and darkest recesses of his mind, the Semtex he planted detonated, and with a muted flash and a bang the building collapsed in on itself, illuminating the perverse scene in an orange glow for several seconds. Looking at the face of the woman he killed one final time, he reached down and slowly closed her eyelids with his hands. Itsu finally began the long trek back to the designated pick-up spot. As he walked back through that frozen hell once more, he could only think of her as he began to sob softly, his tears falling from his face into the snow beneath him.

Two days later, he made his way to the sail of the submarine jutting out of the freezing water. The US Navy submariner who helped him inside said nothing, the crew didn't have the clearance to know anything other than the pickup spot, but he couldn't help but notice the look on the young Japanese man's face. Face red and raw from the cold and wind, the American paused as he made eye contact with Itsu, his brown eyes bored a hole right through the submariner, dead, empty, listless, with a vast sadness reaching the corners of his eye sockets. Itsu settled into his bunk in the submarine after his first warm meal in a week, his mind never resting as sleep began to take him. As he slowly drifted off into the depths of his subconscious, those teary green eyes followed him down, and the nightmare that followed shook him to his very foundations as he began to relive the night. Lashing out and groaning in his sleep, Itsu realized that these dreams would never leave him, not as long as he lived. With a shudder, he finally fell into a deep sleep, his soul and mind marked and forever changed; damaged, broken, and in constant torment.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months after the incident. Itsu had been commended by his superiors, he had even been given a glowing recommendation of his service by his commander, Officer Itawa. Itsu thought about asking them about the girl, but they wouldn't know and he doubted they would tell him even if they did. Those close to him noticed Itsu's demeanor changed completely almost overnight. No lively smile broke on his lips, and his eyes never regained that certain shimmering quality that women found so attractive. He began to move through his training and his life without a true care or purpose. 4 months after the incident, Itsu resigned from the unit, citing his desire to head back to police work full time. 2 months after that, he resigned from the Tokyo police as well, much to the overwhelming shock of everyone close to him. Days before he had run into a fire in a high rise, bringing two children out with him, his lower arms sustaining some burns. This wasn't what garnered attention from the EMTs on scene, however. As Itsu sat in the back of the ambulance being treated, the technician currently wrapping up Itsu's burned arms noticed the ever-present odor of alcohol emanating from the injured officer in front of him whenever he spoke. Making a quick mental note, the man sent Itsu on his way before placing a call to his dispatch operator and asking for a Tokyo police representative. As Itsu drove back to the station, he knew he had been found out. He wasn't stupid; he knew the ramifications of being drunk on the job, but it was the only way to stop the internal monologue running in his head 24/7 like a bad soap opera. Returning to the station, his analytical mind ran through every possible excuse and way to stave off the inevitable barrage of questions from his superiors. Hours later, before opening the door to his apartment, Itsu realized what he needed to do. The day after he tendered his immediate resignation.

Itsu sat in a chair in his apartment, alone. Someone looking upon the scene from above would notice the emptiness and lifelessness oozing from the apartment. No pictures dotted the walls, no artwork or photographs of loved ones sat in frames anywhere. A bed sat in the corner, a night table next to it. The kitchen was sparse and bare. The living area had a couch, a chair, and a tv stand. Holes dotted the 4 walls of the apartment, almost all the way through to the apartment next to him. Itsu was seated in front of his television, a late night game show illuminating his face in a dull rainbow of colors. His eyes stared into the monotony of high pitched voices and garish purples, yellows, red and blues. His breaths even and measured, he looked down onto the table. Empty and half empty bottles of every hard alcohol he could get ahold of littered the floor near his feet and the table in front of him. His eyes slowly peeled away from the TV and moved to the two objects sitting in front of him.

A small envelope sat next to a handgun in the space cleared in front of him. He just stared and stared at the two objects in front of him. It had been like this for last night and all of today, he thought. Itsu stared at the handgun, an American M-9, the standard pistol of the US Armed Forces based off of the Italian Beretta 92. He had a contact pilfer it from a military base months ago; the serial numbers on the frame had been acid washed and grinded down, the rest of the gun's parts replaced with unserialized ones. He reached down and grabbed the gun in his right hand, before silently and steadily bringing it up to his temple, round chambered. Do it, just do it you fucking coward, he raged inside, fucking END IT ALREADY. He couldn't, he never could. Whether it was his perverted sense of needing constant punishment for his mistake or his cowardice, self-pity and loathing, Itsu could never tell. Every fucking night his body betrayed his mind and refused to pull the damn trigger. Resigned to his fate, Itsu dropped the gun to the table again. Every night for months, he had played this game, hoping that he would finally have enough liquid courage in him one night to cut through that 4 pounds of pressure needed to put an end to the torment plaguing his mind day after day. The games continued, as did his drinking, neither managing to stop those teary green eyes from staring at him before dragging him down kicking and screaming into the nightmare of his own psyche. Tonight was different though. His eyes drifted to the envelope in front of him, his hands moving of their own accord, tearing it open and staring at the letterhead. His father, enraged at his perceived failure at the Tokyo police force and what effects this would have on his family's social status, had gotten him a job interview through his contacts within the Japanese industrial circles. Itsu's eyes stared at the lettering atop the paper as the smoke from his cigarette clouded the room, casting everything in a noir-like haze. The lettering seemingly burned through the smoke, etching the words on the paper into Itsu's eyes like a neon sign:

Asahi Heavy Industrial Corporation.

Welcome to my first attempt at fan-fiction.

Get ready for Tom Clancy-style action and espionage, high stakes gambles of life and limb, a dark backstory to Rock that no one knows about, political intrigue and gang warfare, a struggle between the major world powers hidden underneath Roanapur, a brewing secret three-way conflict between the CIA, SVR, and the MSS, and a Cold War era secret that if revealed would threaten the entire global balance of power between the United States, NATO, The People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation.

Why does Rock seem so reserved and detached around Hotel Moscow, especially around Boris, and why does he despise Chang and the Triads so much? What does the footlocker hidden under the floorboards beneath Rock's bed contain and why is he so desperate to keep Dutch and Revy from knowing about it?

Just what the hell does a sunken Liberty Ship frozen in ice within the Bering Sea have to do with any of this?

What secrets are contained in the floppy disk Rock has hidden for years now, and how does it relate to the classified wreckage of a submarine hidden beneath the blackness of the Pacific Ocean since 1968, intentionally abandoned by both the US and the Soviets?

Strap in to those jump seats, check those mags, rack those charging handles and put your sunglasses on Jason Hudson style; it's time for some blood, sweat and murder on the high seas and the crew of the Black Lagoon have no clue about the storm that's approaching both them and Roanapur. That is, all except for the most recent addition to the crew of pirates; the former Tokyo police officer, Special Reconnaissance operative, the jaded and battered man once known as Itsu Hattori—now known to Roanapur and its inhabitants as Rokuro Okajima.

Bust open the Bacardi and cigarettes, it's gonna be a wild fucking ride.