With the sound of dual rotors of their helicopter making deafening beats overhead, Ash slipped on a pair of ear protectors as he walked towards the back of the cabin.
"Check all of your gear," He informed everyone curtly, "Once we're deployed, there's no going back."
He stopped in front of Zack, who had popped open the weapons lockers and beginning to outfit everyone's of choice. "Where's your handgun?" The noise was so dominant that he had to yell over it.
In response, he lifted up his uniform to reveal the holster. The P226 Navy was colored tan and brown with a special desert camouflage applied to it. Similarly, it was also going to be on all of their weapons.
Across the troop bay sat Jewell, who laid her sniper rifle out on the bench and deep in concentration as she was tailoring the settings and instruments on her prized weapon using a fine set of screwdrivers.
Ash laid a hand on her shoulder, "When we're approaching the target building, you and Damien are setting up on the ridgeline to provide sniper support. We'll be flushing them out from the other end, so they'll be headed your guys' way."
"That means you'll have to take the long way around,"
"Leave that part to me." He said, heading to the front, "Listen up everyone!" At that, all other four JETS turned to him.
"You all know the drill and what I and the top brass expect of you. Our intelligence sources have picked up our target building as the Syndicate's main base of operations and there's rumors that Harley himself is there to conduct a deal going down that could get them financial security for years. It's also our chance to show the rest of Hoenn who's really protecting Petalburg and our capabilities! Now it's not going to be easy. The people of Fallarbor Town may hate the Syndicate, but they sure as hell have people working for them as couriers and informants. Even our very sighting could tip them off to our approach and compromise what has been in planning for weeks. Needless to say, there's just about zero room for error." He halted to see if everyone was listening.
"Who's got my back?!"
"I GOT YOUR BACK!" They shouted in unison.
"Who's got my back?!" Ash repeated.
"I GOT YOUR BACK!"
"That's what I want to hear!"
"Ash, you buying the first cold ones when we're done?" Zack propped.
"You ask Zack and you buy," This got a chuckle from the rest of the team. Ash then left the main cabin to speak to their pilot.
"Ash is really pushing hard," Arron said, "Is he okay?"
On the other side, Decker had just fitted a magazine into his rifle and he stopped, inhaling sharply. Out of everyone, he was the only one to know what happened between him and May. Damien and Jewell glanced at one another and shrugged.
"He's fine," Brendan said, "Whatever is gnawing at his mind, he's going to put it aside. We all have a job to do."
"Still," Damien piped up, "There's just something that's off. He sounds like he's beating himself up."
"I agree," Jewell added, "Brendan is he okay?"
Decker looked back and saw that Ash was still in the cockpit. He looked back and tapped the side of his face; he was going to open a private chat.
When the other three had connected, Brendan felt a pang of regret with what he was going to do. This may hurt his trust, but if it helped in the long run, it could just get things off his chest and over with already.
"You all remember that girl May. The one Ash saved onboard the Sea Mauville?"
"Yes,"
"Well things have been a little tense with them and she eventually decided to marry Drew Hayden, whom she was seeing before she met Ash."
"What?" Jewell gasped, "Why? They were so good together!"
"I don't know." Brendan said, "But we can't let that decision nag at our minds. Like I said, we have a job to do."
"We have to do something though, May didn't seem like she really wanted to be with Drew."
"I don't think she had much of a say."
Brendan was about to jump in when Ash suddenly opened the door and headed back into the main cabin.
"Guys, we're sixty from the drop. Get the Zangoose ready."
Working together, he, Decker and Damien quickly undid the straps holding the five desert painted ATVs in the center bay. Weapons were passed around, magazines placed in their harnesses and the engines ignited.
"Make sure you got water," Ash reminded everyone, "We're in the middle of the desert here."
"Copy that," As the team began final preparations at the thirty second mark, Brendan approached Ash.
"You good?"
All he got was a nod. That was all that he needed.
"Five! Four! Three! Two One! It's go time. Call when you need the ride back."
The bay door hissed open and for a second, blinding light streamed through the side, but much of it was quickly gone as their facemasks adjusted to counteract.
Tapping their throttles, they eased out and made the ten foot drop onto the sand. They flexed their bodies to take the shock of the impact and as soon as Jewell had cleared the bay, the pilot quickly rose up and began to fly south back to the air force base in Mauville.
Ash brought up a map on his HUD and plotted a course, "We're set. All we need to do is cross this desert around the base of Mount Chimney. Since the target building is at the southeast side, we'll stash the Zangoose bikes in the ash fields and then hoof it to our setup point."
"Sounds like a plan."
"Good. We're Oscar Mike."
Revving the engine, Ash took point and the rest followed in a straight line. The fat tires kicked up puffs of sand and the rolling hills were no match to wearing out the bike's flexible frames. The temperature was just shy of a hundred degrees with sweat beginning to bead on their bodies. Ash reached down at his hip and took a swig of water. He had two bottles and if the entire team were stranded, they each had enough hydration to last them for twelve hours. Fortunately, they weren't going to be in the desert for long.
A sandstorm was blowing to their south and headed away from them as it took the better part of an hour before they finally began to see vegetation. Another twenty minutes, the terrain began to even out as the air suddenly was beginning to thin out and ash from the dominant volcano began to appear on the ground. Uniquely, it could also be used to make glass products, an industry Fallarbor had several companies for.
The town had an estimated population of a thousand people and its location made it rather isolated from the rest of Hoenn. No highways were constructed, although talks of one heading towards Rustboro City were rumored to go around Meteor falls and through a tunnel further north. Thus people here had little contact with the rest of the country and it was only accessible through backroads.
Nevertheless, the town had its own airstrip to the west although during the high volcanic activity periods, it had to be closed down due to the ash potentially clogging aircraft engines.
It wasn't long before they spotted the buildings and veered off the main roads to park their vehicles in a thicket. They shut off the engines and Ash rolled out a large gray tarp to cover them. For fifteen minutes, they erased their tracks that came off the road and concealed the vehicles next to a few bushes that closely resembled them all underneath. Some more of the volcanic ash was spread over the tarp to make the ruse even more deceiving. Decker had arranged a pile of rocks beside the stash and besides that, none of them could see the bikes from twenty feet out.
"Everyone good?" Ash asked.
"Affirmative,"
"Let's move," As a group, the team clustered in a two/three formation through the trees. They had to move carefully as a slight jarring of a tree could cause the ash hanging on its branches to fall down and it was both easily seen and heard.
On point, Ash scanned the outskirts as dusk began to fall. Lights were being snapped on as the owners of the small businesses at the downtown area closed for the day. He noticed that there wasn't even a hospital, just a small practitioner office. It was fairly amazing if that was the best healthcare option to the residents. With the dismal atmosphere, the presence of an armed gang and the gray everywhere that seemed to never fail in depressing, he was tempted to call this place "Hoenn's Pallet"
Not if he could help it. Maybe he could turn this place around to somewhere people would want to live. Of course that meant eradicating the Syndicate's foothold here.
He motioned Jewell and Damien to take a sniper overwatch on a hill just behind the last row of buildings. From there, she was able to take out any hostiles fleeing from the back of the house.
The target building was a standard two story house that actually seemed to be in rather good shape as with the rest of the neighboring residences. Maybe people did live a better life here than he expected.
"Thermal scan complete." Jewell reported in his headset, "Multiple heat signatures in the basement and four on the main level."
"We'll be cutting the power," Ash replied, "Stand by to engage."
"Standing by."
Nearby the power box had several metal cables extending to various parts of the house. Zack had knelt down and got to work. The master of explosives, he was taking apart the components of a blast charge to tune it down for permanently disabling while being shaped to cause no additional damage.
As he was placing the explosive onto the box, a rapid rattle of gunshots suddenly came from inside the house. The entire JETS team froze.
"What the hell?" Damien echoed over the comms.
"Move!" Ash signaled Zack, who triggered the charge. The power box and its circuits exploded with a flash and a popping sound before the lights inside snapped off, plunging it and its inhabitants into darkness.
"Go!" Ash reared back his foot and kicked in the door. Their visors provided instant night vision and they spread out with their weapons trained in front.
"Upstairs,"
"Ash, the men inside have fired on one another, they're in the basement."
"Understood Jewell." Ash looked over to Brendan and made a chopping motion with his left hand. Having understood the order, the two of them quickly located the basement entrance just beside the kitchen. Down there, a rattling of gunshots could be heard and based on the sound and pace of the weapons, there had to be at least a half dozen.
"Jewell, any alternate way in the basement?"
"There's a door that faces outside and I have visual on two of the guys."
"Affirmative, don't fire unless they flee out the back."
Slowly proceeding downstairs, Ash took a peek around the corner.
The basement was filled with thick smoke and the muzzle flashes temporarily seemed to blind his vision.
On the side closer to him were five men, all with submachine guns, keeping the other side pinned down. He was unable to see how many there were, but it was likely they were taken by surprise.
The party closer to them seemed to want to escape out the stairs and had turned around to see the two of them.
Ash and Brendan aimed, opening fire. The first two caught the hailstorm of bullets straight in their chest, dropping to the ground and causing the rest of their friends to look over. Their presence made then back off slightly, returning fire.
It was only a matter of time before either side ran out of bullets, but the party on the other side quickly took advantage of the situation by firing a stream of bullets from multiple guns across the basement. They buried themselves into the wall, making hideous sounds and splintering bits of wood and stone everywhere.
"Keep the guys closer pinned!" Ash yelled out, "I'm moving!"
At his word, he broke cover and Brendan sprayed a volley of rounds over their heads. Ash fired straight back just as one of them rose up…taking a bullet in the shoulder. He turned tail and opened the back screen door.
A quiet ping through the second one caused his body to jerk before collapsing.
Jewell had been rock solid.
Ash found his rifle running out of ammo and he quickly slung it onto his back, whipping out his sidearm and already double tapping the guy without even bothering to precisely aim.
The third guy was still hiding behind a table when Ash vaulted over it with one hand, his legs struck his body and caused him to stumble back.
For a moment the two men stared at one another, but the other man seemed hostile to the masked one in front and reached for his weapon.
Just as another one of Jewell's well place sniper shots went straight through the back of his head. The round missed Ash's own body by six inches.
"Duck," She instructed.
Ash dropped to the floor as another round sailed right into the body of another bad guy.
"We clear?"
From the back of the room there was a burst of gunfire, "We're clear." Decker confirmed.
"Upstairs is clear," Zack echoed, "Are you guys done shooting yet?"
"Yeah," Ketchum sighed, "Let's drop the beacon for the other boys and get on out of here. I feel like a I need a shower."
"I feel like we need a barbeque," Decker agreed, "Anyone up for a get together tomorrow night?"
Everyone agreed and they began to file out.
As Ash walked among the bodies and taking pictures of the scene with his armor, he didn't find Harley amongst the group, but something odd and when he scanned a couple more of the corpses, the oddity suddenly became alarming.
"Oh no," He said under his breath.
"What?"
"Don't worry about it Zack," Ash said, "Beacon's dropped?"
"Affirmative, Hoenn army's coming back to Fallarbor in ten mikes."
"No other sign of hostile forces. Then let's get out of here."
It was a much more relaxed trek back to their bikes, which thankfully had been undiscovered. The tarp was peeled away and the team mounted up before heading back the same way they came.
Overall their mission had taken a total of forty three minutes from drop to their departure from the target zone. It was an overwhelming success and now Harley no longer had Fallarbor under his shadowy influence. He was running out of places to hide and when the time was right, Ash and the rest of the JETS would nail him and bring his empire down for good.
Much of the chatter from his team was about how they were going to celebrate today's victory, but Ash…Ash's mind was only on one thing.
He had to get this back to Surge. Those fatigues on the bodies…he had seen them before and they usually spelt trouble wherever they went. If they were on Hoenn, then bad things were headed to the island nation's direction.
Reviewing the images once again, there was no mistake of the green and black colored battle uniforms or the dark set of double silver bars with a single star in the middle.
That was the insignia of a Captain in the Imperial armed forces.
It's true in whatever fashion, there is nothing good when an aggressive Empire shows up on your doorstep! Still, what are Imperial forces doing meeting up with Harley's Syndicate? Could this be something to do with Ash?
Thanks for reading and reviewing, you give my writing purpose.