Chapter LXVII: Unlimited Drill Works
0900hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.
"To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues." Thomas Hobbes, the Leviathan.
"I fucking hate walking," Raye complained after a couple of hours hiking uphill with all of their equipment through the tram tunnels. The walk/hike had been surprisingly uneventful, with no hidden ambushes or firefights. The SAILOR team chalked it up to the massive size of the facility, and to the fact that no one in their right mind would trek twenty kilometers, uphill, to assault a heavily fortified and defended base. But that's what made them special.
"Will you quit your bitching?" Lita said right back, just as tired and irritated as Raye was.
"We're almost at the main terminal guys," Amy whispered to them.
"Be quiet and listen up," Serena said Raye and Lita. They glared at each other, but took a knee.
"Alright, those guys are going to be waiting for us here," Amy pointed out on her tablet computer. She put it up on their HUDs for convenience sake. "There's the entrance up ahead, but that's going to be heavily guarded."
"Where do you suggest we attack from?"
"There are several maintenance entrances that we can gain access to," Amy said, highlighting them on everyone's HUDs. It was much better than looking at a map.
"It looks like they're right ahead of us," Serena said, before realizing that they had been basically travelling in a straight line for about four hours. She laughed a little bit, and that brought a smile to everyone's face, if not for a brief couple of seconds.
A massive rumble echoed throughout the tunnel, quickly putting an end to their laughter.
"What was that?" Raye asked.
"Probably the battle going on outside," Mina said. "Hope that everyone is okay." Obviously, they weren't.
Serena tapped her HUD to get into contact with Luna. "Luna, status on the fleet outside?"
"SAILOR Moon, they're taking a pounding. In addition to the anti-ship missiles, they're engaging UCAVs and UAVs out there. Uh, Unmanned Combat Vehicles and Unmanned…"
"We get it, thanks Luna."
"Please proceed with the upmost haste, SAILOR team," Luna continued. "Beryl will more than likely launch the nuclear missiles when the naval fleet has expended all its ordnance on anti-missile activities, over."
"Understood Luna. Out."
"So, the nuclear weapons…what could they do to the fleet out there?" Artemis asked Luna, gobbling up another bag of cheesy puffs. He had to shout a little bit to be heard over the engines of the Orion aircraft. "I mean, Hiroshima…Nagasaki…" he almost brought his voice down to a whisper, remembering the images seared into his mind by the textbooks in his Japanese History class. Clothing burned into flesh, people melted into nothingness, the vast amount of destruction…
"Only one of them would be sufficient to take out the fleet on each side. That would leave several more for targets in Yemen, Oman, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and a bunch of other countries," Luna stated, looking at the list of possible targets on her computer screen. "But after the destruction of the fleet, she won't need to use them. The world will know what kind of power she holds over them, and they won't make any more moves to destroy her and the Nakanishi Group."
"So that's why we have to take these guys down now?"
Luna nodded slowly. "Correct Artemis. That is correct."
They had been working nonstop. For ten days straight, the men and women of the Information Operations Section, had been toiling away at their computers, trying to get everything fixed, repaired, and even go on the offensive. Mountains of pizza from the local chain that only seemed to appear on the military bases (Anthony's), Burger King, gallons of coffee, Mountain Dew and Red Bull was the fuel that kept these nerds turned warriors running.
"Colonel." Major Sam Tyler knocked on his CO's door, only to find him with his head down, napping at his desk. "Colonel." It was early in the morning, and like everyone else there, the CO had stayed overnight working hard at trying to unfuck the US military from the Nakanishi software. It was in the very early morning hours, and despite the coffee, ten days of nonstop work was taking its toll on the rest of the wing.
"Mmmmm?" Colonel Paul Edwards raised his head and groggily saw his XO in the doorway. He coughed and raised himself off of his desk. "Yeah. Yeah, what is it Sam?"
"Sir, we found a weakness in the Nakanishi software."
"Huh?" It took him a second to recognize what the XO was saying. "What is it?"
"Sir, the backdoor program that was used in the cyberattack against our systems can be used to tap into the Nakanishi network on Socotra." Edwards blinked at the report, trying to take it all in.
"I thought that wasn't possible," he said, rubbing his eyes, then adjusting his loosened tie.
"No sir, it's not possible from outside the facility, yes. But from inside, we can access their databases and automated systems." Tyler shifted on the balls of his feet, trying to stay awake himself. Another cup of coffee sounded good at this point.
Edwards frowned at the XO's remark. "Wouldn't that be the case already if we had access inside anyway?"
Tyler shook his head. "It would take months, maybe years to break the encryption on the Nakanishi software. And since the two people that designed this stuff are dead…"
"Courtesy of the Brits," Edwards scoffed. For once, they were the ones who were a bit too trigger happy, rather than the Americans.
"…this would help us tremendously in decrypting their files and such."
"This doesn't help in any way shape or form with the battle though, doesn't it," Edwards said. He got up from his chair and started for the door. He needed some more coffee, and well, he could ask his XO to get it for him, but he wasn't. His XO was there to help run the Wing, not to be a coffee boy; at least, that was Edward's view. He had done a stint up at the Pentagon, where full-bird Colonels served coffee to the top brass, and vowed never to do that to people under his command. Yeah, it was idealistic, but there were better things to do in life than serve coffee.
"I'm sorry sir, it doesn't."
"Well, at least we can have that looked after once they've mopped up on that infernal island. Glad I'm not there right now."
"Of course."
The tram station at the entrance to the main part of the fortress was humming with activity. Patrols were checking air vents and side passages for any intruders, setting up sensors, manning machine guns, building barricades. There were at least forty Quick Reaction Force members in there, all ready to kick some ass. 2 November 1 was in charge of the entire gagglefuck there, making sure that when the SAILOR team came up from the tunnel, they would be cut down to ribbons. A small, but extremely fit man, he heralded from the Turkish Army, fighting against the PKK in Iraq.
"What's the status on those unmanned combat vehicles?" he yelled out to one of his subordinates, 3 Whiskey 4.
"The youma, right?" 3 Whiskey 4 yelled back from across the room.
"Yes, the fucking youma, what else do we call those thing around here, hmm? Metal Gears?"
"Oh, you're so funny," 3 Whiskey 4 replied back sarcastically. "Burak, you crack me up." 3 Whiskey 4 was from France, just out of the French Foreign Legion. His English left something to be desired, but then again, when you put a bunch of people in the same room that can only speak English as a second language (and not very good in that regard), things might get dicey. Burak ignored 3 Whiskey 4 and shouted at him again.
"Just give me the fucking status report."
"They'll be ready in an hour."
"An hour?!" 2 November 1 was not happy about that. "Soshkin is going to have my ass for that if I don't have those youma up and running in fifteen minutes! What's the fucking holdup?!"
3 Whiskey 4 tried to deflect his wrath. "Burak, it takes time for them to get charged, to load all the ammo, and there's over a couple thousand of them scattered all over the island, so the time it takes to…"
"Just…get…them…up," 2 November 1 scowled. 3 Whiskey 4 scurried off, presumably to yell at his own subordinates, who would then yell at their subordinates, and so on and so forth until they reached the bottom of the command chain.
"Soshkin," he said over the radio the CIC. "The youma are going to take an hour to get powered up at this point,"
"Why is this taking so long, Major?" the PMC commander snapped. "That SAILOR team is going to be at the tram station way before that, and you are going to need all the goddamned help that you can get in fighting them."
"Sir, there's only five on them and forty of us. It shouldn't be…" Soshkin cut him off.
"Listen, those girls have already taken down a squad of the QRF and before that, wiped out our PMC units in Japan, India and the United States, not to mention the other places they've gone on missions. So your men aren't going to stand a fucking chance unless they get those youma up and running. Do I make myself absolutely clear?"
"Crystal."
"Good. Good luck, out." Soshkin cut off the radio, wondering if it would be the last time he would hear from 2 November 1 ever again. Jesus, this was looking bad.
2 November 1 felt exactly the same way, but there wasn't much he could do about it.
"Shit. Move your asses!" 2 November 1 screamed at the rest of the men in the tram station.
"Okay, we're about five hundred meters out from the tram station," Amy said, calculating the distance on her HUD.
"Take a knee," Serena ordered. "Mina, Lita, keep an eye out for baddies, okay?"
"On it," Mina said. She a Lita stood a little bit in front of them, their weapons at the ready.
"What's the plan?" Serena asked Amy.
"There's several ways we could do this," Amy said, tapping on her tablet computer. "We could straight up the middle…"
"And get completely shot up," Raye darkly added.
"Or we could go around the sides and try to flank them, through these maintenance tunnels on both sides of the tram station here…"
"That sounds like a better plan," Serena noted, taking a look on her HUD. "We could easily bypass whatever traps they've set up for us when we come barging in from the sides."
"However…"
"What is it, Amy?" Serena asked, suspiciously.
"They might be able to direct forces to the flank in order to defeat us in detail, or to try to push us back into the train tunnel."
"Okay, how about this," Raye interrupted. She wasn't going to have Amy or Serena coming up with all of the goddamned plans all of the time, and she was going to have some more input, like it or not.
"Uh…sure, go ahead Raye," Serena replied, somewhat surprised at her actions, but it was good that other members of the team were at least trying to have some input on the tactical aspect of things, rather than two people try to figure out everything.
"Why don't we split up and divide their forces?"
"Raye, they're already splitting up," Amy replied. She had done a scan with her HUD and while the effectiveness of it in here was limited, it still could locate targets. "They've got a couple of squads of troops fanning out in those tunnels. They'll be on the lookout for us."
"Well, why can't we do the same? Two of us will take each side, and someone can go up the middle to attack the forces there…"
"Wait, just sending one person up the middle?" Lita asked. "That sounds like a very bad idea. Let's send one person around the right. That way, two people can attack."
"Okay Lita, you're going on the right then?" Raye sarcastically said to her, but Lita nodded her agreement.
"Yeah, that sounds good. I've got the machine gun, so I'll provide good flanking fire."
"Good. Amy, Mina, take the maintenance tunnel on the left. Raye and I will go up the middle. We'll push their forces toward the terminal and eliminate them there."
"Sounds good."
"Check your weapons," Serena ordered.
"It is just me, or is it kind of hot down here?" Mina asked the entire group.
"Well, we just hiked twenty kilometers," Lita pointed out, checking her machine gun.
"And we are far enough underground so that a lot of heat does get trapped underneath here," Amy added. "It takes a lot of energy to run a place like this, and I guess the heat sinks aren't doing their job." Mina thought that she was just making shit up now, but there really wasn't a way to prove it unless she looked it up on the internet or something like that. Amy just shrugged and inspected her weapon one last time before the assault began.
"Ready?" Serena asked.
"Sir, the motion sensors are picking up movement," 3 Whiskey 4 said to 2 November 1.
That wasn't very good. 2 November 1 swore at the bad timing, but resolved to continue nonetheless. "Shit, they're here. Status on the youma?"
3 Whiskey 4 shook his head. "Still thirty minutes from being powered up and…"
2 November 1 just threw his hands up in frustration and walked away, knowing that their chance to probably get the incoming SAILOR team was already past. But his professionalism demanded that he still continue to fight, no matter what the consequences might be.
"Alright then, we've got incoming hostiles. 1st and 4th squads, hold down the fort here and get those .50cals manned and ready to go. 2nd and 3rd squads, get ready to do some hunting."
"Hey, what do you want me to do?" 3 Whiskey 4 asked him.
"3 Whiskey 4, you're with 2nd Squad there. Get ready for that Team. Out." 2 November 1 checked his M4A1 and made sure that it had a fresh magazine. 3 Whiskey 4 did the same with his own weapon.
"2nd squad, I want you to take the tunnel on the right side of station and make a sweep of the maintenance access there. Check, double check, and check again for these fuckers. Same with you, 3rd squad, only the access port on the left."
"Affirmative," the squad leaders for 2nd and 3rd squads replied. They were from Kazakhstan ("Who the hell is Borat?" he asked 2 November 1 after being called that multiple times) and the Ukraine respectively, and were fairly well trained in the soldiering craft, but they were not really on par with other nations' militaries like the UK or the United States; probably not even smaller nations like Turkey or Sweden. Most of these guys were from "internal security forces," which meant after a couple of years stomping on the local populace in the name of domestic security, they got out and realized that they couldn't really do much with their experience of oppressing the local population in the workforce. So, they signed up to stomp necks for a PMC. And here they were.
"I'm with you 2nd Squad," 3 Whiskey 4 yelled out, running toward their position. "Let's move on out!"
As the SAILOR team got into position, they sounded off.
Lita slowly made her way down the maintenance tunnel on the right side of the tracks. She could see the squad of PMC troopers coming in her direction. They were all bunched up together, and made for an easy target. The squad hadn't seen her yet, so she got down in the prone position and sighted her M249 down the narrow hallway. "This is SAILOR Jupiter," she whispered into her radio. "I'm coming up on the right maintenance tunnel, standby for contact."
On the left side of tracks, Amy and Mina were doing the same thing, except hiding in a couple of alcoves in the wall. "This is SAILOR Venus, coming up on the junction, standby for contact." Mina readied her shotgun on the pointman for the approaching squad. Amy aimed for the guy in the rear of the formation, prepared to mow them all down when the time came.
Finally, Serena and Raye were approaching the bright lights of the tram station; they could see about a dozen men running back and forth, trying to get everything secure.
"This is SAILOR Moon, approaching the entrance to the tram station, initiating contact in ten seconds."
Serena quickly ran forward toward the tram station and tossed a flashbang grenade in the general direction of one of the highlighted machine gun positions. As it was in flight, Raye behind her tossed a grenade, then quickly swung her grenade launcher at the other .50cal and depressed the trigger. The flashbang detonated, blinding practically everyone in the tram station, at a second later, the grenades detonated, killing the weapons operators and disabling their machine guns. There were three tracks leading out to different areas in the base, and Serena and Raye were attacking out of the central one. The tram station wasn't anything special like Grand Central Station or CST in India. A low ceiling, just enough for the tram cars to move in, adorned with white tiles, several stone benches and support columns, with the entrance to the main facility was in the center with stairs going up to it.
2nd squad was moving down the hallway toward the entrance on the other side of the tracks when Lita opened up with her machine gun. The first fire team went down hard, never having the chance to raise their weapons up.
"Goddamn!" 3 Whiskey 4 screamed into his radio. "Return fire!" The remaining squad members opened up with their P90s, trying to suppress Lita and her machine gun. She fired off another burst and hit another soldier.
"Fall back!" 3 Whiskey 4 backpedaled, reloading his M4A1.
The first soldier in front peeled back, with the second and third members firing their own weapons to cover him. The theory (and practice) of the maneuver was to keep a rolling wall of fire on the target so that they would be unable to pursue or engage them as they retreated.
It was a well-executed maneuver to get out of an ambush setting. Unfortunately, it was also the one that the SAILOR team wanted the squads to do.
Mina hit the pointman of the squad with a well-placed bullet in the center of his face, dropping him to the ground. Amy opened up with her MP5-PDW and sprayed the rest of the squad with 9mm bullets. Their vests protected them though, and while some were injured, most of them were able to get back up and to start firing.
"Dammit!" Mina exclaimed, wondering why Amy had ever picked out such a low powered weapon for this sort of mission. She fired her HK417 again, hitting another member of the squad.
"Fall back to the station!" the team leader for the squad yelled out. Again, like before, a couple of members of the squad fired their weapons as the rest retreated, and they leapfrogged back to the tram station.
"This is 3 Whiskey 4, we're falling back!"
"Fuck!" 2 November 1 swore over the radio. He saw both 2nd and 3rd squads come tumbling back from the maintenance tunnels. He himself was still seeing stars from the flashbangs Serena had thrown, and the explosions from Raye's grenades had suppressed any attempt from the remaining squads to man the heavy machine guns. A couple of light machine gunners from 1st and 4th squads opened up, trying to hit the two girls who were now climbing up from the tracks.
"I've got four light machine gunners!" Raye shouted over the din. Serena and Raye hefted themselves up from the tracks and took cover behind a support column. From what they could see, the retreating squads had taken up cover behind anything they could find; sandbag emplacements, benches, support columns like their own…Raye swore she could have seen someone take cover behind a trash can, but he moved out of the way after realizing his poor choice in cover. Not that it helped him very much when a suppressed burst of machine gun fire from Lita took him down.
"Nice job Lita!" Serena called out. In her peripheral vision, she saw Amy and Mina emerge from the other tunnel and start firing at their assigned targets. Amy did a quick scan of the terminal, which revealed twenty-four targets in the area.
"You guys getting this?" Amy shouted over the din of the gunfire. Mina took cover behind a bench and squeezed off a couple more rounds, hitting one of the machine gunners. He went down, hard.
"They've got us completely outgunned!" 3 Whiskey 4 screamed over his radio.
"There's only five of them!" 2 November 1 yelled back. He popped out from the sandbag emplacement he was hiding behind and fired off a couple of shots. "I need 1st squad to push against that machine gunner on the left and try to force them into the center of the train station!"
Lita's was breathing in and out quite heavily; the adrenaline rush of battle and the excitement of being shot at…wait, more like the sheer terror of being shot at, yeah that was better. She still couldn't believe that she was having this dammed conversation with herself when a couple of bullets snapped by, announcing 1st squad's counterattack on her position.
"This is SAILOR Jupiter!" she said over the radio. "Enemy counterattack!" The black clad troopers moved up the train station, leapfrogging forward now instead of retreating this time.
"Venus, Mercury, attack the squad in front of your position," Serena ordered. She could see that the soldiers in front of her were wavering in their confidence.
"Okay, Mina, give me covering fire," Amy said.
"On it!"
Venus popped out from behind cover and started firing off indiscriminately with her battle rifle, trying to keep the rest of the enemy soldiers from firing at her one true love. Amy, trying not to think about that aspect of their relationship too much, dashed from behind the bench and slid behind another support column.
"Grenade, out!" Amy tossed a frag grenade at two troopers about ten meters away, opening up with their P90s. The grenade bounced off of the bench and detonated in the air, killing both of them and sending deadly fragments all over the place.
The situation was now becoming very fluid, as with all battles like this. Lita was holding out against the onslaught of PMC troopers assaulting her position, but without support, she would be overrun. Likewise, the aggressive attack by Mina and Amy was pushing 3rd and 4th squads back.
"This is 3rd squad!" the team leader reported over his radio, panic welling up in his voice. "We've got two hostiles advancing on our position and we can't stop them!"
"For fuck's sake, you outnumber them!" 2 November 1 yelled back. What the hell had gotten into everyone! This should have been over the minute they had initiated contact with their squads, but now this was become a full-fledged gunfight.
"Their fire is too accurate! Every time one of my guys pops his head out, they get shot!"
"Pin them down and move forward!"
Do I have to do all the fucking thinking here?! 2 November 1 thought to himself. He peered around his sandbag emplacement to see 3rd and 4th squads start to advance, with several of the troopers lay down a blistering cover fire from their P90s. Firing at over 900 rounds a minute, it was ample enough firepower to stop even platoon sized formations, if the operators knew what they were doing.
"Mina, I could use some help here!" Amy said, firing a burst from her MP5-PDW at an approaching PMC soldier's legs. She saw one of the bullets snap through the bone and send the man tumbling, screaming in pain for a medic.
"They've got me pinned here!" Lita yelled. She was in the prone position, but there were so many bullets snapping around her position that she was unable to return fire.
"Raye, advance forward and try to take some of the pressure off of Lita. I'll take care of the guys on the left by Mina and Amy. Ready to go?"
Raye finished dropping 40mm grenades into her launcher. "Ready!"
"Go!" Raye and Serena swung out from behind their support column and began their attack.
Raye fired a grenade off at a couple of soldiers taking cover behind a stone bench. The grenade detonated, but the soldiers continued to fire at Lita. Snarling angrily, in quick succession fired off two more grenades, both of them detonating slightly behind and to the left of the covered targets. The resulting explosions took off a couple of limbs and send equipment and body parts flying everywhere.
"Shit!" 3 Whiskey 4 heard over his radio. "They just took out half of my fire team!"
"1st squad, fall back, fall back!" 3 Whiskey 4 ordered over his radio.
"Negative, lieutenant!" 2 November 1 counter ordered. "Stand your ground!"
"They're flanking our guys!"
While the two PMC leaders were having an argument, Raye and Serena quickly made their way up the center platform and took cover behind yet another support column. Out of the corner of her eye, Serena could see Lita moving up with her machine gun, and Amy and Mina pushing the PMC soldiers back on her left. The plan was working perfectly.
"This is 3 Whiskey 4, we're falling back!"
"No!"
Lita saw the remnants of 1st and 2nd squads break from cover and try to make a run for the central area of the tram station, where 2 November 1 was camping out. There were some soldiers there hiding behind the sandbag structure they had built, firing out at seemingly random intervals.
"This is SAILOR Jupiter, there's a large force of troops making a run for that area over there!"
"Raye!"
"On it!" She finished reloading her MGL and snapped the chamber back into place.
"Go!"
Lita opened up with her machine gun, with brass and disintegrating links flying everywhere. Time itself seemed to slow down as she continued to fire.
In three seconds, Raye had all of her grenades in the air, which detonated around the fleeing soldiers.
"This is 3 Whiskey 4, I'm hit!" was the last transmission that 2 November 1heard. He peeked around the corner again and saw the dead bodies of what had been 1st and 2nd squads. 2 November 1 cursed the very day he had signed up for this stupid job. Join the PMC, they said, it'll be fun, they said. A cushy life, three square meals a day, all the high tech weaponry you could possibly want…yeah, nice one.
"What should we do sir?!" the squad leader of 3rd squad asked him. He was the only one left out of his own squad, and there were only ten soldiers left out of a force of forty.
"Get on out of here. Lockdown the entrance to the rest of the facility and make sure to tell Soshkin that it was my order." What little it will do them, 2 November 1 thought to himself.
"Alright. Everyone, on me." The ten soldiers ran up the stairs to the entrance.
"They're getting away!" Amy pointed to the soldiers running up the stairs. She tried to engage the fleeing soldiers but was interrupted by a long stream of fire coming from sandbag area.
"Come and get me!" 2 November 1 shouted at the SAILOR team. He rose up from the sandbags and fired his M4A1 on full auto, spraying the station.
Serena double tapped him, sending him falling backward, dead.
"Good shooting there," Raye commented.
"Yeah. Thanks." Serena slowly approached the sandbag bunker and inspecting the dead guy.
"There should be a security station up these stairs right before the entrance," Amy pointed out.
"Okay, we'll go in, make sure everything is clear…" Serena said before being interrupted by Amy.
"Come on, Serena. I'm not a child. Just because I do all the high-tech stuff doesn't mean I'm helpless, okay?" Images of America and India flashed through Amy's mind, taking her back to the chilly air of the assault on the meat processing plant or the sticky, hot climate of Bangalore when she and those 108th soldiers attacked the Nakanishi HQ. It wasn't really Serena's fault after all though, thinking that she was more vulnerable; after all, they had been separated for the vast majority of missions since November.
Serena groaned, but Amy was right. She could look after herself as well as any of the other soldiers in the group by now. "Fine, we all go in. Happy?"
"Yeah."
The SAILOR team charged up the stairs, with Lita and Raye in the front, Serena in the center and Mina and Amy bringing up the rear. Just as they reached the top of the stairs, the remaining soldiers slammed the steel doors leading to the facility shut. There was some clanging and shuffling of feet, and then silence.
"Lita, check that door."
"On it." Lita tried to open up the door by grabbing on one of the handles, but it was stuck shut. She tried again, using more force. Nothing.
"Why won't this door open up?!" she grunted in frustration, pulling again and again at the door. Lita finally resorted to kicking it.
"Ow!" She bounced back from the door, holding her left foot in pain.
"I don't think that's going to work," Raye snickered.
"Let me see you try it!" Lita shot back.
"Guys, that's not going to work in any case." Lita and Raye turned to see Amy looking at the door with her HUD.
"What is it, Amy?" Raye asked.
"The door appears to be sealed with an electromagnetic lock," Amy stated after scanning it with HUD.
"Oh, great. We just need to cut off the power to this door then," Lita said.
"Not that simple. I still can't access their systems from here."
"Check out the security station," Serena ordered. "Maybe you'll find something there."
The security station was like the one at the submersible pen, except a bit larger. There was even a break room for officers rotating through their shifts. Several desks lined the wall with computers, and there were scattered coffee cups and sandwiches, reminders that actual people with real lives and histories used to work here. That tugged at Mina's heart for a second. That was interrupted by several loud explosions.
Bang! Bang! Amy looked up to see Raye firing at the door with her grenade launcher. No such luck.
"Shit. Fucking thing won't fucking penetrate the fucking door."
"You done yet?" Lita sarcastically commented.
"No. I'm going to try to find a way through this door. If SOMEBODY would have let me take the anti-tank launchers…" Raye shot a look at Serena in the security station. She ignored her and focused on Amy's work.
"Can I at least use the C4 on this?!" Raye yelled at Serena. Lita shot a look at Raye, since she had become her goddamned pack mule carrying the explosives.
"No, wait until I come over there," was the distracted response from Serena.
"Arggg…" Raye glared at the door, angered at its refusal to open up.
Major Tyler got off of the phone with a General, who was insistent that they send the email right away, despite him pointing out that it would be of no use outside of the facility. He figured that they must have someone on the inside already. "Colonel, they want us to send the information on the vulnerability immediately to USAFCOM."
Colonel Edwards gave him a strange look. "On who's orders?"
"It's from the Joint Chiefs. Well, they recommended it to SecDef, who ordered it to..."
Edwards sighed and waved him off. "Ah hell. Better send it." It was never a good sign when the Joint Chiefs of Staff started to micromanaging your work. Not that they were supposed to, since they lacked operational control of things, but times were different now.
"Right away."
An email detailing the specifics was sent from the offices of the Information Operations Section, bounced around a couple of servers, layered with encryption and protected behind firewalls, secure packets, and other measures that would ensure security (especially from the Nakanishi Group).
Amy was looking at some more of the data that she had gotten off of the security station computer. Again, it wasn't classified information, just whatever had been on the computer once the user logged off of it. Several of the computers on the desks were turned on, and she had her Toughbook and tablet computer hooked up to them.
"There's at least several hangers in the main section of the fortress here," she stated to the rest of the team. "Looks like they hold the UAVs and UCAVs."
"So we can get those nuclear weapons then?" Serena asked her, nervously. "Can you get a fix on their location."
"I don't know," was the unhappy response from Amy. "I can't get any of that information unless I'm in their secure servers."
"Are you getting this Luna?" Serena said over the radio.
"I'm getting some of it, but there's a lot of interference. I can barely make it out. Standby while I try to boost the signal."
A couple of seconds passed as Luna diverted some of the power from the engines of the plane to the radio antennas.
"Can you even do that?!" Artemis asked her.
"Yeah, I'm not quite sure how that works, but oh well," Luna shrugged. "SAILOR Moon, can you hear me?"
"That's much better," Serena replied. "We can hear you more clearly. Go ahead with your message."
Luna looked over some of the blueprints that Amy had sent over from the security station computers. "It appears you're closer to the surface than when you were in the submersible pen. What do you need, over?"
"You're getting the information that we're sending you, over?"
Luna checked the incoming data feed from Amy's HUD and tablet computer.
"Affirmative, it looks like there's more blueprints, a patrol schedule, and other miscellaneous things. Nothing about nuclear weapons though, over."
"Alright, thanks for that. Is there anything else?"
"I don't know, I…" Luna was interrupted by a beeping sound. She looked at her instrument panel discovered that she had an incoming call. It appeared to be from POTUS.
And why hasn't the Japanese PM called us? Luna thought as she connected the call. That coward is just hiding in the shadows, trying to wait this thing out. Well, we'll show him.
"Hold on, I'm getting a transmission from the President," Luna said to Serena. She turned her attention to the President on the other line.
"Madame President, what can I do for you?" she asked her.
"Luna, I've got some good news for you," POTUS said to her. "We're recently received some information about a weakness in the Nakanishi software from some of our cyberwarfare experts. Please send this information to your team in the field."
"Will do. Thanks, out." Luna disconnected the call. Seconds later, she received an email from the Joint Chiefs, decrypted it, read it, then recrypted it and sent it on to the SAILOR team in the field.
"Serena, heads up," Luna said. "I've just received some more information that might be helpful in breaking some of the Nakanishi encryption. Standby."
Luna sent the email to Serena, who then passed it on to Amy. She started reading it immediately.
"Okay…uh-huh…uh-huh…that makes sense."
"What? What is it?" The email was a bunch of babbling that Serena didn't understand; sure, she could memorize the thing in ten seconds, but actually understanding it was a completely different matter. One she felt more comfortable with Amy handling.
"The Nakanishi Group used a backdoor program to disable the majority of the US Military's DOD networks, along with many other organizations," Amy explained. "However, it would appear that we can use this backdoor to access the data that they have here in the fortress."
"Can you do it from here?" Serena asked hopefully.
"Let me try."
Amy followed the information that the email contained, using both the laptop and the tablet computer to find the vulnerability in the Nakanishi encryption software.
She found it. Buried underneath all that encryption was the backdoor program. Whoever designed it didn't realize that it could also be used to access their own systems, since it was meant for Nakanishi software.
"Gotcha," she muttered.
"Did it work?" Luna asked.
"Yes. I'm into their secure databases now."
Amy was now in their secure database, but there was so much information that it would take hours to find what she was looking for. She didn't know where to start.
"Did you find the nuclear weapons?" Serena asked impatiently. She glanced over at Raye and Lita, still prodding at the door to get it open.
"I don't know," Amy said. "There's a lot of data here."
"Amy…"
"Just give me a second, Serena, I'm trying!" she shot back.
That took Serena aback for a second, but recovered. "Sorry. Get it done, that's all."
Amy narrowed down her search by looking into emails, scanned memos, recorded phone conversations, pictures, cargo invoices…cargo invoices?
"Huh." Amy started to look at the cargo invoices for all incoming material coming into and out of the Socotra fortress. She found what she was looking for in an innocuous shipment of beef. The container had been shipped directly from mainland Yemen, after two different shipments from the United States had arrived there after a number of different stops.
"Five containers of beef, measuring 80 centimeters in length and 35 centimeters in diameter."
"What's that, Amy?" Mina asked, hearing Amy think out loud to herself. Serena walked over to Amy and looked over her shoulder at her computer, completely forgetting that it was also up on her HUD.
"Amy, this doesn't mean anything," Serena said to her after Amy showed it to her.
"Serena, beef shipments don't come in containers this small." She pulled up specifications on her tablet computer and set it to Serena's HUD.
"Look, this is the nuclear weapon we recovered from the meat processing plant in the United States." Serena looked over the pictures; it said "W80 warhead."
"This is what its dimensions were," Amy continued. "31 inches in length and maybe 12 inches in diameter. These containers, converted from imperial measurement, match up with the containers in the cargo invoice."
That was a long shot. It might be that it was a complete coincidence and that Amy was just seeing things.
"Where was the delivery point for this shipment in the base?" Serena asked, trying to entertain Amy with her theory.
"In Hanger A1, which is to the left of this train station, about five hundred meters down some corridors. I can send the information to Luna and she can get us there."
That fact removed all doubt from Serena's mind. Beef went into the freezer in the mess hall, not to a hanger.
"Nice, you've done good Amy." Serena clapped her on the back. "Now, get these doors opened up."
"I'm on it." Mina gave her a big hug as Serena walked away to inspect Raye and Lita's progress on the door.
"Okay, those youma are all fired up and ready to go!" a technician reported to Beryl in the CIC.
"About time," she grunted. "Send a couple of them in to access the reaction of the SAILOR team."
The doors to the entrance suddenly opened up.
"What the…" Amy was still working on the subroutine to get the doors open when Mina pulled her down.
"Get to cover!" she hissed. Lita, Raye and Serena, who had stepped away from the door for a second to reassess the situation, dove behind some benches and a support column just in time.
Amy peeked around the corner to see what was coming in the station.
Through the doors, two boxy…things rolled in. They looked like robots, but they had none of the personifying traits that humans liked to give inanimate objects. It was about one meter long, one and a half meters high, and had a machine gun strapped to its left side. It was on treads, which enabled it to roll around on any terrain. From what Amy could see, there was some optics mounted internally in the machine.
She scanned it with her HUD.
"Millimetric radar device detected," the machine said in a robotic voice. "Beginning search pattern now."
"Shit," Amy hissed to herself. "Shouldn't have done that."
"Why is it announcing its actions out loud?" Mina whispered to Amy.
"I don't know."
"Identify yourself!" the machine called out.
That made Amy cringe. "Wait, is it talking to us?"
"Two female human subjects, behind the desks, identify yourselves!" the machine called out again.
"That's us," Mina said, dejectedly. "What are we going to do?"
Amy thought for a second, then came to a decision. "I'm going to distract it. Those machines seem focused on us and not the other three. If we can keep them off guard, then they can take out the machines. Alright?"
"Wait, what are you going to…"
"What are those machines doing?" Beryl yelled at the technician controlling the youma. "That girl should be hamburger right now!" The camera on the youma was looking directly at Amy, but it was going through a series of challenges so that the target would surrender.
"Beryl, the program is on law enforcement mode right now, not the military subroutine that we programmed in."
She was surprised by that statement. There was a dammed war going on outside and these idiots were dicking around with ways to not shoot people?!
"Why the hell aren't they in military mode right now?!"
"Because we were arming and refueling them!" the technician protested. "We didn't have time to…"
"Get those FUCKING drones firing NOW!" Beryl bellowed at the technician. "Or else I put a FUCKING bullet in your FUCKING brain! DO I MAKE MYSELF ABSOLUTELY CLEAR!" Beryl was quickly losing her cool. This should have been over by now, but the SAILOR team was just messing up everything. She looked on impatiently as the technicians worked furiously to get the military subroutine working.
"This is your last chance, two female human subjects. Identify yourselves or you will be fired upon."
Amy stood up with her hands above her head. Mina kept crouched down, even though the machine still could see her.
"Human subject, identify yourself," the youma said.
Amy couldn't really think of anything to say. Mina was the guile one, not herself. Maybe I should have let Mina do this type of thing, she thought to herself.
"Um…uh…no. No, you identify yourself."
The machine stopped for a second, then repeated itself.
"Negative, identify yourself."
"No, why don't you identify yourself!" Amy shot back.
Again, another pause, before the machine repeated itself a second time.
"Negative, comply with previous instructions to identify your own person," it droned on.
"Why don't you go first and identify your own being!" Amy shouted back.
Mina put her hand on her forehead in disbelief. It was completely moronic, but it was working. The youma was going round and round in circles with Amy leading it on. It should have opened fire at this point, but the law enforcement subroutines prevented it from opening fire and killing her.
Meanwhile, with the two machines or unmanned ground vehicles as Amy's scan had revealed, Serena, Lita and Raye took aim with their weapons, ready to obliterate them when the time came.
"How many grenades do you have left?" Serena whispered to Raye.
"Twelve, with six more in the chamber here," she said back.
"Good. On my count, we're going to take down those…things."
"I dunno, it looks like Amy's got the entire situation under control," Lita joked.
"If you do not comply, hostile action will be taken in ten seconds."
"Uh…" Now Amy was out of things to say. The UGV didn't take it very kindly.
"The subject has failed to comply. Termination in five seconds."
"Okay, time to end this," Serena said. "Take 'em out!"
Lita, Serena, and Raye popped out from cover and engaged the two UGVs. The first one closest to the door was riddled with machine gun and rifle fire from Lita and Serena, smashing optics and treads, puncturing the steel plating on the outside of the UGV.
The second one, that had been interrogating Amy all the while, was exploded by a volley of 40mm grenades from Raye.
Over the gunfire, Amy swore she could hear the UGVs screaming "Exterminate! Exterminate!" but she really wasn't quite sure. Their robotic voices were quickly quieted by Raye's grenade launcher.
"We got the military subroutine online!" the technician yelled out, somewhat happily.
"You fools," Beryl hissed. "They've already destroyed those two youma down at the tram station." The video uplink was all static now, showing the SAILOR team's handiwork.
"Oh…" that killed the technician's mood right away.
"I need all remaining elements not occupied with holding off the fleet outside to mobilize and engage the SAILOR team," Beryl said, sitting down in a chair and holding her forehead. An explosion rattled overhead, causing the lights to blink on and off for a second. This was getting worse and worse by the minute. She needed some heavy painkillers for this migraine, that was for sure.