Chapter XXII: Remember, Remember…

0340hrs, 5 November 2013, Khabarovsk Krai, Russian Federation.

"Remember, remember/the fifth of November/the gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason /why the gunpowder treason/should ever be forgot."

Amy was feeling even more shitty than usual. She didn't know why, but it was someone had dropped a veil from over her eyes, and she could concentrate even less now. She didn't really care about contacting her mom anymore; she had given up a couple of weeks ago when internet access had been completely shut off for a couple of days and Kobayashi had come in and had a little talk with her. Now, she had more important things to do, whether she liked it or not.

"Where's the target Amy?" Serena asked over the radio. She, like everyone else on the SAILOR team, was feeling more of the same after their "rest" in Japan. Another month on the road had not helped them to recover as well; they were ready to take on whatever task was assigned to them physically, but mentally, there were many obstacles that could stand in their way of that. And it had been the same, more killings, more shootings, more stuff blowing up, and it was just starting to wear more and more on the SAILOR team.

No response.

"Dammit, where is the target Amy?" Serena hissed. Her temper was become more and more short.

"It's five kilometers from here," Amy replied. "They're still travelling down the Amur river by boat."

"How long do they have until they reach Khabarovsk?" she asked.

"Maybe two hours, at best."

The SAILOR team was waiting in an area by mouth of the Amur River, the tenth longest river in the world. They had been assigned to intercept some stolen military hardware from the Russian Military, and reportedly, it was on its way to Japan via ship to be distributed all over the world. Budget cuts in the Russian armed forces meant that selling weapons to whomever had the cash on hand was a practice not condoned by higher-ups. If they knew of the practice in the first place, that is.

"Alright, that gives us some time before they can get there. Luna, do you have the RFID signal?"

"Affirmative." Luna was still in that P3 Orion, flying over the sea. The aircraft did give off an IFF tone, identifying itself as a JASDF aircraft and for the most part, everyone who had an air force in the area (South Korea, North Korea, China and Russia) left it alone…for the most part. They had a couple of close calls with Chinese Shenyang J-11s had buzzed by, wondering what they were doing. The usual response was that they were on a training exercise and that there was nothing to worry about. They didn't buy it of course, but seeing no evidence of foul play, they had flown off to a safe distance and mirrored their movements for some time before RTBing.

"Did the Chinese give you guys a hard time again?" Lita asked. She was sitting on the shore, separate from the rest of the team and keeping an overwatch position with a Dragunov SVU, a bullpup version of the famous Dragunov marksman rifle.

"They buzzed by an hour ago," Luna replied. "And please everyone, use proper radio protocol like we talked about in the briefing, over."

"What was that?" Serena asked, distracted by what she thought were some people on the shore. It was just some ducks though.

"Never mind, over." It was a losing battle, trying to get them to use the correct protocol words on the radio net. At least the transmissions were encrypted.

"Right. ETA on the transports?" Serena was getting fidgety over this mission. They had been in this stupid fishing boat for hours now, and with nothing to do, she had started thinking about food…

"About twenty minutes."

"Standby," Lita said. She saw some lights in the distance, coming down from the north on a boat. "I have contact with possible target."

"This better be it," Raye said. She was on an unnamed island in the middle of the river.

"It is," Amy replied with trepidation. "At least, the RFID chips at least say it is."

"Everyone standby." Luna brought up the real-time satellite feed and tracked the ship as it approached the AO. "Artemis, did you get Mercury and Venus into position?"

She looked over at him. Artemis was casually swinging his chair from side to side, eating some cheese puffs and getting them all over his white uniform.

"Artemis!"

"What?" he moaned, dropping some of the cheese puffs on the floor. The pilot was not happy about that and had admonished him in the past for being so careless. Not that he cared.

"Did you send Mercury and Venus over to their positions?" Luna asked impatiently.

"Yeah, I sent them to an overwatch position on the other side of the river. They'll start over to the boat once it's been cleared out by SAILOR Moon and Mars."

"And Jupiter?"

"Uh…yeah. What was she doing again?"

Luna sighed and looked at the mission plan again. "She's supposed to be in the water right now."

"Alright, I'll send her in." He hit the push to talk button on his headset. "Hey, Jupiter."

"What is it?" she replied. She was still looking at the boat in the distance. It was more barge on the outside than actual boat, but no matter.

"You're supposed to be paddling toward that boat right now," Artemis said in a casual fashion.

"Oh you have to be shitting me." She remembered that part from the briefing now. "Alright, I'm moving."

"Roger."

Lita got into the small, wooden fishing boat and started rowing toward the lights upstream. It would have been an impossible task for a normal person, but her prosthetics gave her just the right edge so she could basically swerve the boat into position when it passed by.

"Alright," Luna said. "SAILOR Moon, start your approach."
"Fine, I'm moving." Serena got out of the (larger) fishing boat, which was in the middle of the transportation lane that the boat/barge had to pass through. They would hit it, and in the confusion, SAILOR Moon, Mars and Jupiter would sneak on board and subdue the crew. Mercury and Venus would then come aboard to help find the stolen materiel.

"I hate this." Serena was in a wetsuit, but it still was going to be cold. She jumped into the freezing river, and slowly made her way toward the boat.

"Raye…you in the water?" she quietly said over the radio. The boat was very close now; she could see several crew members walking on the deck, talking or having a smoke.

"Yeah, I'm in. It's fucking cold right now."

"Tell me about it."

"Target is approaching," Amy said quietly.

"Thanks Captain Obvious," Raye said.

"All units, standby for execution," Luna interrupted. "Five…four…three…two…one…"

The crew members suddenly saw the boat coming out of the darkness, and they slowed down and moved to starboard to try and avoid it. But it was too late, and they crashed right into it, causing the boat to come to a halt. There was a lot of yelling and cursing in Russian, and some of the crew members were getting poles and crowbars to try to pry the ship out of the way.

"All SAILOR units, execute."

"Roger. I'm moving." Serena paddled her way silently toward the boat, aiming for a ladder on the side of it. Several crew members ran past her as she made her way toward the ladder, but they did not see her in the darkness.

She climbed up on the ladder and quickly boarded, swinging a silenced MP5SD3 to bear.

"I'm on board," she reported.

"Same. I'm on port," Raye said.

"I'm at the aft," Lita said. She had to go a little out of her way so that she would not be seen, but it wasn't too much of an inconvenience.

"Amy, where's the crew now?" Serena turned on her eyepiece HUD and looked around for any threats.

"Highlighting…" She did a scan and ten targets showed up at the fore of the boat. "They're busy up there." They were still trying to get the debris and the damaged boat out of the way.

"I see three more in the bridge," Mina said, looking through another Dragunov SVU . "Amy, did you get those?"

"Yeah, I'm sending them."

"I see them," Lita said. She was behind the bridge now, readying her MP5SD. The captain of the ship was yelling at the helmsman and navigator; the helmsman didn't look much older than herself.

"The captain is pissed," she said.

"I would be too if I were him," Mina replied. "Okay, let's take all of these guys out."

"Luna," Amy asked. "Any more activity on the river to the north or south of our position?"

"Negative," Luna replied. "You are a go for second phase of mission."

"Standing by," Serena whispered. She was kneeling near where she had climbed up on the ladder. There were several rows of metal container boxes on the ship, but the RFID transmitters would help in locating the cargo.

Suddenly, one of the crew members started walking from the fore of the ship and on the starboard side, right toward SAILOR Moon.

"Serena," Amy hissed. "Company."

"What..?" she replied, but it was too late. The crewman rounded one of the rows of containers and saw…

No one was there. He thought he saw something move in the shadows, but at the length they had been out here, everything moved in the shadows.

He walked past one…two…three rows of cargo before a rifle butt bashed in his face. SAILOR Moon dragged him into the shadows and snapped his neck.

"That was way close," she said into the radio. "Give me a little more warning next time, hmm?"

"Sorry," Amy replied.

"Standby again for execution of second phase," Luna said. "Artemis!"

"Yeah, what?" He was not paying attention at all.

"Stop eating those cheesy puff thingies and watch the screen!"

"Fine, fine." He sat up and looked blankly at the satellite feed.

"Okay, ready for execution."

Serena and Raye crept to the fore of the ship, and trained their weapons on the unsuspecting crew members.

Lita readied herself by the door, ready to take out everyone in the bridge.

"All units, go."

Serena and Raye flipped the select fire settings to "Auto" and depressed their triggers. The crewmembers were mowed down in a hail of 9mm bullets, never even having the chance to cry out.

SAILOR Jupiter swung from around the corner and quickly aimed five shots at the helmsman, the navigator and the captain.

The navigator and helmsman went down, their brains splattered all over the windows. But the captain got out of the way and ducked behind the steering wheel.

"Shit," Lita muttered. She fired a burst more, trying to get a ricochet onto the now hiding captain.

He popped up and fired a shot from a pistol he had in his pocket. Lita fired another burst center of mass and he went down, hard.

"What was that?" Mina asked. "I heard that from over here."

"The captain got a shot off at me," Lita reported. "He's down."

"Luna, did anyone hear that?" Amy asked.

"I'm not seeing anything light up on their communications network…" Luna said, scanning military and police frequencies. "Wait…wait…somebody just put in a call to the 112 network. They're reporting that there's a suspicious group on the Amur River, just near Vinogradovka. The police are responding and they put the local MVD unit on standby."

"How far away are they?" Serena asked. She was tracking the RFID finder and had found the containers that had military hardware in them. "I've located the boxes and are preparing to open the containers."

"I don't know," Luna said. "Artemis, what's the nearest unit closest to the SAILOR team?"

"Uh…uh…" He checked the satellite feed, looking for police units and the MVD teams. "They're several kilometers away, so maybe ten, fifteen minutes at the most."

"Alright, see what they were carrying in there and destroy the boat," Luna said, relaying orders that had just come in from Col. Iwasaki.

"Gotcha," Serena said. "Mina, Amy, stay on land, we'll send you the video feed while we open these containers."

"I hear you," Amy said. "But we can still make it over if you want…"

"That'll take too much time," Serena replied. "Watch for any sign of police or the MVD."

"Copy."

There was a padlock on the container, but it was no match for Lita's left arm, who proceeded to pull it off.

"That was too easy," she said, opening the metal door.

Raye turned on her flashlight and looked inside.

"Uh…there's nothing here." She pointed the flashlight around the container.

"Next box over," Serena said. "Sometimes the RFID finders aren't accurate. Or sometimes the crew moves them around and such."

Lita snapped the locks on the surrounding boxes, just to be sure. While Raye and Serena were checking the other containers, she stepped into one that didn't have an RFID receiver, just to make sure that they were checking everything out right.

"Guys…guys, take a look at this," she said. Raye and Serena walked over to her. There were three of the boxes on the floor, marked with Cyrillic writing. They didn't look like they carried small arms, but something much larger.

"What are those?" Raye asked.

Amy was watching from her HUD and did a quick scan of the objects.

"Oh shit," she said.

"What? What is it?" Serena looked at the boxes more carefully, and saw the standard nuclear logo on there, the black trefoil on a yellow background.

"Those are nuclear artillery shells for the Msta self-propelled gun," Amy reported. "I'm checking the radiation levels coming from those boxes."

Another scan. "There doesn't appear to be any radiation leaking out. It should be safe to open the boxes."

"Lita," Serena ordered, but she was ahead of her. Lita opened one of the containers.

"It's in here," she said. Everyone breathed out. If the nuclear weapons weren't there, that would be a bad thing. They checked the other two boxes. Same story.

"Alright, all the nuclear weapons are accounted for," Serena said. "Luna, what do you want us to do with them?"

"Same as before, scuttle the ship," she replied. "The police will recover them. Hopefully."

"Got it, set the explosives." Serena and company went to place the explosives around the ship (and hopefully, only sink it without setting off the nuclear cargo), and jumped off.

"It's cold!" Lita said. "I thought we were supposed to take the boat I rowed here off."

"No time," Serena said.

The ship suddenly exploded behind them, and started to take on water.

"Nice timing guys," Artemis said. "Police are still five minutes away. Plenty of time to get out of there and to the Consulate in Khabarovsk."

"How are those cheese puffs treating you?" Mina asked him jokingly.

"Ah…um…they're…"

"Stay on the mission please," Luna interrupted.

Serena, Lita and Raye finally managed to swim to the shoreline where Mina and Amy were positioned.

"Good job guys," Amy said, giving them some blankets to dry off.

"I didn't expect to find that on there," Serena said. "We'd better move before the police show up." They could see blue and red lights off in the distance, approaching quickly.

"Okay, in the jeeps we go," Mina said. She, Amy and Serena piled into one and Lita and Raye into another, and drove away with headlights switched off just as the police pulled up and started investigating the scene.

"How the hell did the Russians manage to lose nuclear weapons like that?" Mina asked. They were in a room in the Japanese consulate in Khabarovsk, awaiting for their transport to be refueled and looked at for bugs or transmitters.

"Mina, they're still recovering from the dissolution of the USSR," Amy said. "They're not the most safety conscious nation in the world. And when you have poorly trained and paid conscripts looking after weapons that are extremely valuable on the market, it's hard not to see how weapons get sold."

"I'm just glad that they found them," Lita said, twirling her hair. "No telling what could have happened if they found their way out of the country and into a major population center."

"But I thought they said they destroyed all their nuclear shells and rockets," Mina said, playing with her tablet computer that was on loan from Amy.

"Oh come on," Raye chortled. "Don't believe a word that they say."

"Anyway," Serena butted in. She hit the transmit button on her HUD eyepiece. "Are we headed to any more missions or do we get our break yet?" she asked Luna.

"That's affirmative," Luna replied. "You, Mars and Jupiter are going across the border to China. I'm sending the details over to you guys right now."

It looked like from the briefing, Serena, Raye and Lita were going to an industrial park in the north of China; it was actually driving distance from their current location.

"So, what's happening to Mina and I?" asked Amy.

"We've got a mission for you in India."

"India?" Mina scrunched her nose at that. "I saw Slumdog Millionaire and that was enough experience for me."

"You're going anyway," Luna reiterated. "Don't make me put Col. Iwasaki back on."

"Fine." Mina rolled her eyes at the thought of Iwasaki giving her more orders. He usually never came on the radio, but when he did…

"SAILOR Team."

"Shit." Mina heard Iwasaki's voice on the radio.

"Sorry about that guys," Luna said before she was switched off.

"Hello everyone," Iwasaki said.

"Sir," Serena replied dryly. "What do you want." The sentence was phrased more as a statement, rather than a question in defiance of superiors.

"Don't get snippy with me, SAILOR Moon," he said. "I just wanted to congratulate you on your successful mission."

"Why, thank you sir," Amy replied, in equally bored tone as SAILOR Moon. "Your wisdom fills our minds and souls with perpetual gratitude."

"For fuck's sake, what's gotten into you're team?" Iwasaki snarled at SAILOR Moon. "You're supposed to be the leader of this team, and you're letting morale slide and behavior like this tolerated?"

"We just killed thirteen men this morning," Jupiter said. "Most of them probably were just trying to make a living, sir." The mood was extremely icy now.

"If you were in the military proper, I would have had you courts-martialed for disrespect of a superior officer!"

No one was paying attention to Iwasaki now, but they couldn't turn off his transmissions (a feature put in by Iwasaki, as a matter of fact), and so the SAILOR team had to listen to another five minutes of him ranting on.

"…and if I wasn't here, stuck at this military base, I would be out there, beating you with a whip to install some discipline with you all!"

"Did you need something, sir?" Serena asked sarcastically after he had finished his tirade. "Or did you just need someone to talk to so you could get rid of those childhood demons?"

"When you get back here after your tour is over," Iwasaki said with rage in his voice, "We are going to have a nice long chat. With. Each. And. Every. One. Of. You."

"Looking forward to it, okay, thanks, bye."

Amy cut his transmission off, after spending the last five minutes trying to turn off the damn transmitter. "Put Luna on."

"Luna here."

"What's up with Col. Iwasaki?"

"SAILOR Moon, I don't ask such questions, and neither should you," was the reply.

"Why is everyone in such a bad mood all of a sudden?" Mina wondered.

"Well gee, I don't know," Raye snapped at Mina. "Maybe it's because we're getting treated like shit out here. Maybe it's because we didn't get the medical treatment that we needed. I wanted because I can't fucking sleep but no, Dr. Kobayashi refused to give me meds. But Lita get pills for her blood pressure."

"Oh come on, that's different," Lita replied.

"Yeah, sure it is."

"Hey, knock it off you guys," Serena interjected. "Transports are here. Thanks Luna for the information."

Two jeeps pulled up outside the consulate.

"Great. More fun it is," Raye muttered. She picked up her duffle bag filled with clothes, guns, and ammo and hefted it over to a Jeep.

"Uh, I was told to leave the vehicles here," the driver said. He was an employee of the consulate, and had no idea what these women were here for. He just did what they told him to do.

"Yeah, that's fine," Raye replied, shooing him away. The other driver left with him.

"Okay, this car is going to the airport," Serena declared to the other SAILOR members who walked out to the vehicles. She pointed at the jeep behind her. "And the other one is going to China."

"Yay, just love riding in these things for hours on end," Lita bitched. She tossed her stuff with Raye's.

"Have fun you two," Serena said to Amy and Mina as they climbed in their vehicle.

"Sure will," Amy replied. She found two envelopes on her seat; one with a couple thousand rupees in it and the other with plane tickets all the way to Bangalore International Airport.

"That's a lot of money," Mina said, looking at the stack of bank notes.

"Not really. It's only worth maybe about 4000 yen, total." The exchange rate was 1.6 rupee to one yen.

"Oh." Mina gave a frown.

"This is just in case of emergencies. We use the credit cards, remember?"

"Right, I forgot about that. To our Swiss bank account?" That was quickly becoming a meme in the group.

"No, there another account in the Caymans."

"The joys of modern banking," Mina griped. "See you guys later! Good luck!" She waved to the others as she and Amy drove off toward the local airport.