Life On Helghan.
I know it's been a long time coming but here's chapter 20, sorry for the looooong wait but I've had stuff on, I'm sure you're as antsy as me to start so...
Chapter 20.
I woke up and noticed the men were all asleep, I looked up and all I could see was white blowing across the top of the crevice, it was another blizzard, 'perfect' I thought, we'd have heavy cover to enter the base and their patrols would be at the minimum, I decided to go check in with the bloke on watch duty before waking the rest up so I grabbed a pair of ice picks off one of their belts and climbed the wall.
It wasn't a problem getting to the ice face in the wind, but the climb was difficult, I eventually made it up to the ledge and he gave me a hand up, I asked him for a report.
"Well sir, I've noticed their patrols have been reduced since this blizzard started up and judging by the masks I've seen them wearing their vision is highly reduced, getting inside without being seen shouldn't be a problem but unfortunately I can't tell you anything about the interior."
"It'll have to do, come on."
We climbed back down and got back to the crevice, I set about waking the men up and everyone shared what they'd learned about the patrols, judging from the reports it would be impossible to avoid them in fair weather so I realized this was our only chance to get in during this blizzard so I came up with an attack plan, we'd get inside and hit the ammo dumps and food storage with remote explosives that night, this blizzard was guaranteed to last all day and night out here and our nightvision combined with knowledge of night patrols gave us a large advantage, plus the patrols inside would be at their lowest during the night, so I allocated demolition duty to two teams of three, we'd go inside, set the bombs, then meet up and search the base for the captain, if all went to hell we'd detonate them, or if it went well we'd detonate them anyway after getting clear of the base, I told them I'd handle the ammo dumps with two others and the other three would take the kitchen.
With duties assigned we all waited for the cover of night while playing, you guessed it, poker. Eventually it was finally dark enough for us to move on the base, we activated our night vision and climbed out of the crevice again and advanced on the base, the patrols weren't a problem and we eventually arrived at the front entrance, there were two guards there, I told my team to use knives only for silent kills, we snuck in without them seeing us and grabbed them both from behind and slit their throats, we found signs fixed to the walls with directions written on them, one pointed right saying 'armoury' the other pointed left saying 'mess facilities' I couldn't believe how simple that was, so we split up and headed to our targets, the three of us kept moving through the rocky hallways running into a few guards here and there but always only one or two, eventually we arrived at the armoury and looked inside, there were three guards inside, we entered and hid behind a large weapon locker waiting for one to pass close, on of the men grabbed and took him down, after that I told the other to take the one on the right while I got the one on the left, I leapt up onto the weapon locker and jumped across the room to end up behind the guard just as my comrade was grabbing the other one, I jammed my blade into his spine and twisted, he fell to the ground, we started looking around for the ammo room and found it, no guards inside which was odd.
We entered the room and began setting bombs in and around the ammo boxes, enough to blow out the rock walls of the room and, if we were lucky, collapse part of the armoury with seismic vibrations, the bombs were set I called the other team to see if they'd done their part yet.
End of chapter 20.
Short I know but I don't wanna get ahead of myself since I haven't written anything in ages, anyway hope you enjoyed it and hopefully chapter 21 sometime this week.