Life On Helghan.
Chapter 19 then, not long to go now, oh AND I've got a few ideas for a crossover story so keep watching me after this is over, right then time to begin.
But I decided to stop the men to talk to them.
"Right boys, we've lost a lot of men during this mission and frankly I'm tired, but we still have to try for the captain's sake, he'd do the same for every one of us, I know how low our morale is after the shit we've been through, we never should've gome through those fucking cursed caves because they killed our unit but what's done is done, due to our limited manpower the originally planned frontal assault is out of the question so we'll need to gather as much data as we can on their base and then plan sneak attacks, so I want everyone to go up to that ridgline there and get your eyeballs in your binoculars for ANY signs of a base, once we find it's location we can begin discreetly gathering intel to allow us to plan our attack, so everyone move."
We went up to the ridge and I took my binoculars out along with the men and peered through them, we used the comm operator's info to see if we could spot any cave or tunnel entrances in the large cliff face two miles ahead of us, eventually one of the men called me over.
"Sir look, "
I couldn't believe it, high up on the rock face I could see what looked roughly like a machine gun nest, my suspicions were confirmed when I saw a humanoid sit behind what looked like the gun, that was it, we'd finally found the base, but we couldn't see any sort of entrances on this side, it was a large chunk of rock coming out the front of a much bigger cliff face, we were on a ridgeline of that very same cliff, so I decided to move around the base to try to spot an entrance, I told the men to stay where they were and await my return, if we all started moving together we'd surely be spotted by the sentries.
I left them and descended back down the ridge, I jumped off near the bottom and hit the ground running as fast as I could, my white armour was already decent camouflage against the snow so I wasn't too worried about them spotting me, I headed toward a ledge on the other side of the snowy valley I'd crossed, it was fairly high up and I'd have to use my arm blade as an ice pick to climb it, if anything this was when I was most likely to be spotted: moving slowly against the blue-white ice face. I hadn't been though and managed to climb up to the ledge, I pulled myself up and didn't even need my binoculars to spot the large opening in the cliff, but I used them anyway, I was lucky the weather was fairly calm otherwise I wouldn't have spotted the obvious footprints in the snow leading to and from the entrance, I'd found it. Now I had to climb back down the ice face to get back to my men.
It was tricky but I made it, then I began running back to the ridge they were all waiting on, I leapt up and met up with them, I explained where the entrance was and how well-guarded it was, we'd have to spend a night observing their patrols to figure out the best time to attack, I told the men we'd have to go back down into the crevice and use it as overnight shelter from the elements, they all had ice picks so climbing the wall wouldn't be a problem for them but we hadn't allocated watch duty, one of the men suggested we draw straws for first watch, seemed the fairest way to decide after what we'd been through, I ended up being the one on first watch, not that I minded since they all deserved a rest anyway, we were all pretty hungry so I left them to open their rations while I got ready to climb the rock face again, I'd borrowed a couple of ice picks from one of them so it was a lot easier this time. I climbed to the top and settled down for three-hour watch duty.
After my time was up I went back to them and reported what I'd found out, they drew straws again obviously excluding me this time, I wasn't paying attention to who got picked, I was more concerned about eating my own ration, he came over and asked for his ice picks back and climbed out of the crevice, it was getting late so we all tried to get comfortable on the flat, ice floor to get some sleep, I eventually managed to drop off.
End of chapter 19.
Another stage setter which is why it's so long, chapter 20 will be here soon and hopefully you're enjoying this, anyway as always please review, my last few chapters have been met with silence, anyone there? Let me know people are still reading this please.