The time was finally here. Gabriel, McCree, Genji and Chris were making their way to the shuttle on the landing pad for probably the most ambitious mission any of them had taken. Lena of course was trailing behind Chris to see him off. Morrison and captain Amari were on the landing pad to give the strike team a final good luck as well. As Amari and Morrison were talking to the other 3, Lena was saying her goodbye to Chris.
"Just promise to be careful ok? I still need my wing man." She says holding his hands before pulling him in for a tight hug.
"I'll will." Chris pulled Lena in for a final kiss goodbye before he felt Lena place something in his hands. It was a Royal Air Force badge that was given to Lena when she first enlisted.
"I always kept it for good luck whenever I faced a big test or something, I thought it would keep you..grounded, so to speak, if you start to get nervous." Chris examined it and appreciating it before he pinned it to the inside of his cloths.
"I love it. I promise I'll contact you as soon as I can." They shared one last kiss before a holler came from the shuttle.
"Come on Romeo we don't have all day." McCree still teasing him over his relationship. Chris boarded the shuttle giving a wave to Lena seeing her disappear in the distance as the shuttle flew farther and higher away.
The shuttle was on autopilot before the four were all sitting in the cockpit planning their course of action for when they arrive.
"We don't exactly know what we are up against here so when we first land we'll split in two duos to scout out the surrounding area. We'll need to keep a very low profile, so only under extreme circumstances are you to engage any hostiles." Reyes laid out some blueprints of the facility based on the pictures that were provided. "The north side of the facility seems to be the most fortified, likely where most of the most secure data is kept."
"What exactly is it we are looking for?" Chris asked. A reasonable question seeing as they seemed to be running at a hidden Talon base they really knew nothing about.
"Anything. Anything that will give us an edge in the short term or long term. This facility is in no records of Talon what so ever, meaning it must be where all their confidential projects are kept. Projects only high ranking officers will know about. Which also means Talon's best will be stationed here." Reyes said looking up at his team. All three nodded.
"The west side might give us the easiest access with least amount of resistance. See here and here." Chris pointed at what looked like access points through pipes that dumped into the body of water next it. "If we can manage to access their controls and halt their drainage, we could easily slip through their outer defenses and be in before any of them knows whats going on."
"The problem with that is this is in Alaska. Water will likely be lethal if we are in it for too long." McCree pointed out. An oversight Chris seemed to miss that was so simple.
"The south western point of the facility looks like it will have a blind spot from the watch towers if we approach it the right way, but we won't know for sure until we see the facility first hand." Reyes pointed out. Everyone agreed with the plan of attack before going their seperate ways for the time being. Chris was looking out the window looking at the night sky.
"You good?" Chris turned to see McCree standing next to him.
"Sometimes I wonder if I'm in over my head, like I'm not really fitting in my niche, you know?" Chris said as he turned back to the night sky.?
"Are you kidding kid? You got a cyber ninja, an ex gang member, and a special ops personnel. You're probably the most normal out of all of us. And as far as filling your niche, you wouldn't be here if we thought you would hold us back. But I'm sure I'm not the first one to tell you that." McCree caught glimpse of the R.A.F. badge on his shirt.
Chris unpinned it and looked at it long and hard. "You two seemed to really be quite the couple. It's good to see you finally doing something other than being stuck up in your room or the gym." Chris just smiled looking at the badge thinking of what kind of smart ass remark Lena would make in this situation.
"Yea your right." but deep down he was always going to have a shadow of doubt follow him around.
Hours later the shuttle dropped them off at their safe house that was in a small town nearby where the facility was reported to be. The shuttle having a cloaking device made it easy to slip past any Talon detection. As soon as they were unpacked, they geared up and made their way towards the base to scout their best approach to infiltrate.
Being in the snow, everyone was fitted into white camouflage armor that would be near impossible to spot in the snow. They split up into two teams. Genji and Chris were scouting the southwest side where they expected the least amount of resistance, while McCree and Reyes were looking to see what kind of defenses were in place from afar. All of them were linked up on a private comm channel to report any immediate findings.
"Looks like they have 6 watch towers equipped with anti air guns. The east side appears to have a few gaps in their scouts based on their patrol routes and timing." Reyes said looking into the scope studying the guards patterns. "Anything on your end?"
Chris and Genji were scaling a cliff that seemed to be right in the blind spot that Reyes had pointed out on the ship. "This way looks to be a no go. The watch towers can't see us in this position but we have no access point to enter through without needing demolition." Chris pointed out looking around to see if he could spot any other flaws in the buildings design. "I don't see any entry way over this way."
"Perhaps we should see if there are any ways from above." Genji stated. Before Chris could even react Genji started scaling the wall coming to the roof of the building, peering over the roof to make sure he was clear. He swiftly flipped over the ledge gingerly landing on his feet without making a sound. He made his way over to what seemed like a large panel. Genji examined it noticing there was away from hidden from most of the watch towers. It still was in sight of two, but it was a way in.
"I think we have our opening." Genji said. "There appears to be a panel on the roof we can access the building from." Genji looked to see that two towers were in plain sight of the panel. "The towers to the northwest and southwest appear to be the only ones that can see this point, they will need to be dealt with if we this is going to be our route."
"Affirmative." Reyes responded lowering his scope. "Meet back at the safe house. We can plan our attack and strike tonight."
Back at the watchpoint, Winston was hard at work fixing the slipstream still trying to figure out what happened during the last test run. Torbjorn was also aiding him in hoping to find something mechanically wrong that would explain the delayed return.
"There's nothing wrong here, the ship is running as it should be." Torb said as he hopped off his stool looking at the exhaust ports of the ship. Jack had ordered Winston to keep what happened during the last test flight to himself, saying there was no need to cause a panic when there wasn't a problem. But Winston knew deep down in his gut that something had gone wrong. Something was wrong.
"I guess the circuits must have been overloaded and caused a longer jump than anticipated." Winston said starting to dismiss the curiosity arising from the little mechanic. Winston was hesitant on sending the slipstream on another flight until he was sure he found the issue wrong. "Thanks for your help Torbjorn."
Torbjorn just muttered something to himself almost annoyed while he made his way back to his armory to clean the weapons and work on improvements to models.
"Hey big guy." Lena made her way in as Torb left the hangar. "Why was he here? Everything ok?"
"Oh yes everything is fine, he was just keeping up with the jets maintenance." Winston said so nonchalantly. He had implemented a meter measuring the electrical currents circulating inside the accelerator in hopes of seeing where the energy readings spiked to get a better handle on the situation at hand.
"I've actually been itching to fly for a little while. It's been a couple of days I'm getting antsy." Lena said hopping around.
"Well then I guess it's a good thing you are here." The two turned to see Morrison entering the hangar. "I've noticed there hasn't been much progress made in the last couple of days. Why?" Morrison was visibly annoyed at Winston.
"There were a few minor tweaks I needed to make before we resumed testing. And the jet required some standard maintenance. We should be up and running today." Winston's brow furrowed at the tone Jack had with him.
"If you don't mind I'd like to observe your flying Oxton." Jack said to Lena but never broke eye contact with Winston.
"Oh of course, I always liked to show off for an audience." Lena was completely clueless to the tension between Jack and Winston. She hopped in the cockpit of the jet giving a thumbs up. "Ready when you are big guy!" Winston heard her excitement over the comms.
"Ok Lena take her through her course and take it easy."
Lena took off, both Jack and Winston observing the readings n the jet as Lena approached the jumping point. "On my mark Lena." Winston was hesitant. Before Winston could say anything, Jack cut in "Now!" The ship flawlessly made it's blink from point to point with exact precision. Not off by a single mark. Winston almost sighed in relief. The jet flew back around before landing with Lena hopping out of the cockpit.
"Excellent work Oxton. Though the jump seems to be a bit..small for the jet being tested for so long. Why don't we try a larger distance." Jack looked at Winston becoming unsteady.
"We need to take it small steps at a time Jack." Winston responded.
"Awe nonsense I can handle it." Lena said already climbing back into the jet.
Winston sighed and knew he couldn't win. "Alright Lena set course for the jumping point but increase power to mark 4." They were constantly operating on mark 1 which was only "blinking" the jet by about 1000 meters which in terms of flying a jet wasn't that far. Lena was in flight before she set the power to mark 4, she was approaching the jump point. Just as she was about to jump there was a warning message popping up on Winston's monitor. But again before Winston could say anything, Jack cut in "Now Oxton!" There was the sound of a sonic boom in the air and a bright flash of light where Lena's jet was. Then there was nothing. All the monitors and comms all said the single most worrying thing to Winston.
"No signal found."