Chapter LXV: King's Gambit Accepted.
0430hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.
"But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration." John Stuart Mill
"1 Foxtrot 1, come in, over," Ahmed in the CIC was having no luck communicating with the QRF squad that had gone down to the submersible pen, and now he feared the worst. He dialed another number, this time, it was the PMC commander, Pyotr Soshkin.
He was still in bed, trying to get some shuteye after spending the last couple of weeks dealing with the fallout of attacking JTF 151 and 152, plus the massive fleet outside baying for their blood. The PMC only had 2000 effective people, and that was going be a challenge against all those ships out there.
The phone rang next to his bed, a Spartan twin mattress with completely white sheets; his room was more the same, with little to no personal effects. He didn't need any. The family that he once knew had been killed by the Chechens by a series of bombings in 1999 on apartment buildings. Since then, he had been working with various PMCs before being hired by the Nakanishi Group.
"Yeah. What is it?"
"Sir, this is Ahmed from the CIC, we have developing situation."
"What is it?" he asked groggily. This better be good.
"An alarm was tripped in the submersible pen."
You woke me for this? The PMC commander thought irritatingly. What the fuck do we pay these people for?
"What about it? There's nothing down there but broken tubs. Did you send the security team stationed there to…"
"Yes sir, and they didn't respond, so I released a squad from the QRF to go down there, and they haven't checked in on the phone network either."
Soshkin sighed and turned on the light switch next to his bed. For added irritation, the light was a fluorescent, which immediately lit up the entire room in a harsh white light. At least it got him up.
"Shut down the tram system to that area immediately," he ordered. "That'll buy us some time to see what's going on in that sector. Scramble the rest of the QRF and have a platoon secure the tram station in the main concourse in addition to the security detail there. I want the guard doubled on the WMDs in the hanger and start handing out weapons to the civvies here. It looks like the invasion is starting."
"Roger that." Ahmed issued some commands to the tram service program, and stopped the tram from going any further.
When the train stopped, all of the SAILOR team was thrown to the ground by the sudden stop. The emergency lights popped on, bathing them in a weird red glow.
"Goddammit, I knew something like this was going to happen," Amy said, tapping furiously at her tablet computer and her laptop. They were now stopped in the middle of the train tracks, with no power or any illumination of that sort. The tunnel itself was about ten meters high and ten across, and in comparison to other places with rapid transport, was not very big.
"How close are we to the station?" Serena asked her.
"Let me check…about twenty kilometers."
"That's a lot of distance to cover," Lita said, her face furrowing as she thought about the amount of walking they were going to have to do.
"Let me get in contact with Luna, if we can," Serena told the rest of the group. "Amy, try to find some other way of getting up to that fortress." She got on the horn in order to contact Luna.
"Luna, come in, over."
On the Orion, Luna was going over some of the data that Amy had sent her about the Socotra fortress, but there really wasn't much to go over.
"I hear you SAILOR Moon. Signal is weak, but I can still hear you, over."
"Okay, they shut down our tram going to the stations, uh…please advise, over."
"Standby," Luna said to Serena. She looked up the blueprints from before, along with the new data that had been sent from Amy. Luna couldn't come up with any definite solutions at the moment, save for one.
"The only solution I can think of is to leg it up to the tram station. That will take about four hours or so," she said. "Maybe less if you run."
"Fuck," Serena hissed.
"Didn't catch that," Luna replied.
"Nevermind."
"That didn't sound good," Lita whispered to Raye, who wasn't happy at the prospect of climbing all that distance to their target. And when they got there, it would more than likely mean that the enemy would have gotten their position and shoot them on sight, if they didn't come up with some plan first.
"I can try to restart the tram, but even that might be a long shot," Amy said to Serena, after several attempts to access the Nakanishi network.
The technician, Sorenson, who had been tracking the previous group of soldiers down the in the submersible pen, had been assigned to watch over the stopped tram on the tracks, and noticed that there was a lot of radio activity coming in and out of that area.
"Sir, we're getting reports of radio traffic emanating from the stopped tram," he said to the PMC commander.
"Where is the tram stopped?" he asked.
Sorenson checked the map on his computer screen. "About halfway up the tunnel, twenty or so kilometers from our base."
"Jesus," the PMC commander swore. "I'm not going to have the QRF trek down that tunnel. They'll just be picked off." Having a close in gunfight within the confines of a subway tunnel was not something the QRF wanted to get into. The PMC commander ran the scenario through his mind on how it would go down. The QRF forces would get there after taking another tram or walking down there; either way, they would be tired and jumpy from the weeks long siege. In combat, one has to get to the scene with quickly, with the most amount of troops and equipment in order to overwhelm the other side. But this was different; both sides were operating with an incredibly limited amount of manpower. The PMC could get there fast enough, but it was better for them to choose their own battleground and let the SAILOR team impale themselves on their defenses after trekking all that way from submersible pen. Fatigued, tired, unfamiliar with the environment, outgunned, outmanned, the PMC would have the advantage in the train station. At least, that's how it played out in the PMC commander's mind.
"Where do you think they're headed?" Ahmed asked, from behind his desk, interrupting his thoughts.
"Here, dumbass," Soshkin spat, before calming back down. "They're coming here to kill all of us, and to secure the nuclear weapons."
Ahmed sighed and continued on. "What do you want us to do now?"
"What I ordered you to do earlier," he said, his calm regained. "We need to get ready for these guys."
He groaned before deciding to tell Beryl the very bad news. She was going to be extremely pissed off, and would more than likely take it out on him. Soshkin figured he might as well tell her in person. If she was going to take it out on him, might as well man up and face the consequences. He left the CIC and walked toward Beryl's room.
Beryl lived just down the hall toward the very rear of the underground facility, but there were over five different security posts (in addition to several others that had to be passed in order to get to the CIC), that guarded her own quarters. Kunzite was down there, and Zoicite would have been there as well if he hadn't gotten himself killed in Italy. Soshkin, being the PMC Commander, was not exempt from the stringent security standards, but at least they were abbreviated for him somewhat. After much ID card swiping, retinal scanning, and fingerprint analyzing, he arrived in front of Beryl's room. He simply walked in the front door after talking with her personal assistant; if you got this far, then another lock or fingerprint scanner wasn't going to stop you at this point. There was a foyer for guests and entertainment, with a couple of tables and chairs for dinner or casual drinking. He knocked on the door to her room.
"Come in," was the muffled response. Soshkin opened the door. Inside, the opulent office greeted his entrance. It wasn't a big office, but it was very well furnished. He was in the middle of the room, with a walk in closet to the right, and a little bit beyond that was her bedroom and bathroom. He had never been inside there, but he heard that an extremely comfortable bed resided in there, along with gold plated sinks and shower. He silently reminded himself that it was fortunate that they had the proper facilities to purify water, grow food, recycle the air, and in general live a comfortable (but Spartan) lifestyle. It was better than what some of the people back home had anyway. Soshkin hear the running of water in her bathroom, walked over, and knocked on the door.
"Yes, what is it?" she asked.
"Beryl, we're getting reports that the fleet outside is beginning preparations to attack the island."
Beryl, who was brushing her teeth in her bathroom, sighed and put her toothbrush down on the marble counter.
"Alright then. I'll be in the CIC in five minutes." Irritated at the interruption, she finished washing up and went to put on a pinstripe suit, specially customized for her figure at Harrods' in London.
"What do we know about the fleet out there?" she continued to say to the PMC Commander from inside her walk-in closet.
"It's significantly larger than the counter-piracy one that was stationed there before," Soshkin stated obviously.
Beryl had to stifle a groan at her PMC Commander. "I know that, give me something specific."
Soshkin looked down at the tablet computer he was carrying for specifics. "Three carrier groups from the US Navy, with over 200 airplanes at their disposal, with their escorts. Thirty ships just from the United States, and another thirty from allied nations."
That was enough to give Beryl some pause to think. It was certainly worse than she expected, but then again, nothing had really gone to plan after she had the Japanese PM develop the SAILOR team. Still, she tried to be at least a little optimistic. "Well, it looks like we've got quite a fight on our hands now, don't we?"
"They're going to be cautious after the last engagement," Soshkin continued. "I don't think we can rely on the element of surprise for this one."
"Then we're just going to have to draw them in. Simple." She looked at her suit in the mirror, admiring it in all of its glory.
There was a long pause before the PMC commander got on to the main point.
"There's another thing Beryl," he finally said. "It's the SAILOR team."
Beryl stopped buttoning up her suit. "What about them?"
"They're here. In the tunnels. We've got them stuck in a tram car about halfway up the tunnel to here, and they'll probably start walking their way up here."
Beryl breathed in deeply, trying not to get pissed off. She knew that they were coming for her, and that there was almost nothing they could do to stop them. The best they could hope for was to at least slow them down for a little bit, then maybe get them in a situation where they could be destroyed in detail.
"What preparations have you made?"
"We're getting the QRF set up in the tram station, along with activating the youma units."
"Those experimental things?"
"They're not experimental when you build five thousand of them," the PMC commander pointed out.
"Thank you, Soshkin."
She walked across the hall to the Kunzite's room, which was just as opulent, if not even more so. It was slightly bigger, but that was because it was for two people instead of just one. Like hers', it was not keypad locked, just a small lock on the door that she had the key for. She unlocked it and walked in. There was the front room, which was to be used for entertainment and reception, with several couches, a TV, a desk for the personal assistant (who never showed up), and a minibar. Going to another door beyond that, she unlocked it and let herself into his room. All the lights were off, hiding the beautiful furniture and decorations that adorned the room.
"Kunzite, stop your moping and get your ass up!" she shouted into the room.
"Go away," he grumpily responded.
"Kunzite, I get it. Zoicite is dead. There is nothing that you can do about that." Her voice echoed throughout the room, thundering about the walls and surrounding Kunzite with the words that he did not want to hear.
"You certainly showed them at the battle last week, so why not do it again this time?"
There was still no movement.
Beryl hit the light switch on the wall, which instantly brightened the entire room. His bed was a complete mess, with the sheets and pillows everywhere. Kunzite stirred, but ignored the looming presence in his room.
"Come on, Kunzite, time for battle," Beryl cajoled, trying a different persuasion tactic.
"Why should I?" Kunzite said back.
"Maybe because they'll kill us once they get in here."
"Who?"
"The SAILOR team."
"They're here?" Kunzite slowly sat up.
"Yes, they're here, but it'll take them some time in order to reach us. In the meantime, it's up to us to stop the fleet outside from interfering with our operations inside here."
That seemed to get him up and moving. The desire to have some sort of revenge on the SAILOR team motivated him to serve Beryl for one last fight, one last stand against the forces arrayed against them. They were beyond good or evil at this point; it was just all power politics at this point, with one force acting against another one.
"I'm getting up." Kunzite got up from his bed and grabbed a white shirt hanging from a chair near his bed.
"Good boy," Beryl muttered under her breath. "Join me in the CIC once you've cleaned yourself up here. And get a new shirt from the closet."
Kunzite looked at the shirt that he was holding in his hands, sighed, and dropped it back on the chair. He walked toward the closet, giving Beryl a dirty look, but complied nonetheless.
"I'll see you then."
The PMC commander had made his way from the exclusive living quarters to one of the armories, where there was much activity going on.
"Come on, come on! Get those missiles loaded onto the launchers and prep the magazines!" A couple of civilian employees ran about, loading gingerly Exocet missiles onto anti-ship launchers, while others loaded Crotale anti-aircraft missiles another other launchers.
"What is the status on those naval guns?" Soshkin asked one of the technicians, walking around the place and inspecting the work of the crew.
"Sir, the 57 mike mikes are all ready to go, and the 100 mike mikes will be online within the hour."
"And the ECM system?"
The technician poked at some of the icons on his tablet computer. "Powered and ready to go once they start engaging the main island."
The PMC Commander took stock of the situation; hundreds of missiles were being shipped around the island to their respective launchers, shells loaded for the different guns, fuel being prepped for…well, that would come later in the battle. He had never seen this amount of materiel when he was in the Russian Military. He had not known the old Soviet one, only the rusting weapons and tanks that they trained (and sometimes fought) with. "Goddamn, this is a lot of firepower."
The technician had an answer for that. "I don't know how much good it will do against all of those ships out there if they don't come within range." The fleet had been staying well outside the engagement range of the Exocet and Harpoon missiles, and it would be probably late in the upcoming battle when they moved to within engagement range of their missiles.
Soshkin shrugged at that. There wasn't much they could do about the movements of the fleet, being a stationary island and all. He switched topics.
"What's the update on the power plants?"
More poking at the tablet computer. "The nuclear generators are operating at sixty percent capacity, and we expect to increase that to ninety percent with all the gunnery systems online and the CIC operating at full capacity."
"Very good. I've got to get back to the CIC and with Beryl, but you keep me updated on everything. And I mean everything. Understood."
"Understood."
Soshkin turned to leave, before turning back to the technician one last time.
"One more thing, we've got possible intruders in the base, so make sure that you're on your toes."
That took the technician by surprise. "Who are they?"
"Don't matter, we have the situation under control, but if they get here…well, let's say it won't be good. Stay frosty, okay?"
The technician nodded. "Got it."
"Any century now, Amy," Raye bitched at the blue-haired girl.
"I'm doing my best," she stoically said back.
She tapped out more commands on her tablet computer, but Amy just couldn't break through the encryption on the Nakanishi computers. It was just too dammed difficult, especially when the first thing that was required to access the system was a one-hundred thousand character password, and brute forcing that one was not going to fly with the rest of the team.
"How are you going to find one-hundred thousand characters to put into that little password box thingie?" Mina asked Amy, who was trying to concentrate.
"Mina, I don't know, I'm trying to find a way to bypass the security, but it's not working out right now." She furiously typed away, but there was just too much encryption. It didn't help that the other members of the team were on her case about getting the tram started again. "I think the best option for us right now is to just start walking."
"Agreed," Serena said. "As much as I hate to admit it, we need to get a move on if we're to reach the main facility up…there." She didn't really have much of an idea what that part of the fortress looked like, let alone where it really was in conjunction with the island's geography. All that she knew concretely was that the main part of the fortress was down this tunnel, and they were going to get there one way of the other.
"Come on you guys. Hold your position." Serena looked around for anything that might provide a likely ambush point. The tunnel itself wasn't anything special, but there didn't seem to be any maintenance tunnels on the sides, like there usually were in the Tokyo subway system.
"Lita, Raye, on point. Make sure that there's no surprises up ahead," she ordered.
"Oh yes, we get to be the first ones shot at. Lucky me," Raye groaned.
"Well, at least you've got the firepower to handle yourself," Lita said. "Plus, I thought that you liked getting shot at anyway."
"Ha, ha, very funny Lita," Raye shot back.
"Guys, focus up there," Serena said, bringing them back onto topic. Raye and Lita rolled their eyes, but complied with the order.
"Any more progress…" Serena started to ask.
"I'm doing the best I can," was the repeated response from Amy. It was getting more and more aggravating, trying to break the encryption. "Doesn't matter how many times you ask me, it's only going to get on my nerves more," she muttered. After five more minutes, she was no closer to restarting the tram or getting power to their part of the woods.
"Serena, I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do from here," Amy sheepishly reported to her. She cracked her knuckles; all that typing made her hands hurt.
Serena nodded her acknowledgement. "Alright everyone, get moving."
Reluctantly, the SAILOR team started to trudge along the tracks up toward the main part of the fortress, leaving the tram car behind. What lay in front of them, they did not know. They would soon find out.