Chapter LXVIII: Assault of the Senshi.

1020hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.

"Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie; Which, being advanc'd, declines, and then men die." Volumnia, The Tragedy of Coriolanus.

"May no one triumph over us! Come, let's go, get a move on! May those who oppose us be obliterated! Come on, let's go!" Chale Chalo, Lagaan.

"Nice."

Raye was looking over the remains of the two UGVs. They were in a million pieces, with CPUs, video cameras and weapons all shattered beyond repair.

"Does the Nakanishi Group have an official designation for these things?" Lita wondered, poking at a piece of destroyed plastic.

Amy looked it up on the newly accessible database.

"Yes, they're called 'youma,' apparently."

"Youma? Doesn't that mean monster?" Mina added. "Nice thing to name your own personal robot that does all the killing for you."

"Could have been worse," Raye said.

"In what way?" Mina asked. She didn't want to think what was "worse". Being blown up? That was bad. Being blown up, then turned into elite assassins for a mega corporation? That was worse.

"They could have named it the Terminator." Raye mimicked the movies. "Hasta la Vista."

Mina shrugged at the reference. "I think they might have gotten into copyright issues."

"I don't think this company has to worry about copyright, period."

"That's enough," Serena interrupted. "Amy, point us toward the hanger. Luna?"

"I'm here."

"Analyze the data from the firefight we just had and look for any way to effectively take down these…youma."

Luna typed away on her computer. "I'm on it. Do you need other assistance in getting to the hanger?"

"If you could point us in the right direction and see if there are enemy reinforcements," she said.

"Done."

Luna swiveled her chair around to face Artemis, who was digging into another bag of cheesy puffs.

"Artemis, I'm sending the combat footages and HUD scans from their gunfight with the UGVs. Take a look at them and see if they have any sort of weaknesses."

He put the bag down and got back to his computer. "Other than explosives?"

Luna nodded. "Yeah. Other than explosives. Okay? I've got to help the team get to that hanger."

"Gotcha. I'm on it."

"Amy?" Luna said over the radio. "Okay, you've got the directions on your HUD?"

"Yeah, we take a left out of here and follow the hallway for about 500 meters until we get to Hanger A1."

"Minor correction Mercury," Luna said. "It's straight for about three hundred and fifty meters then a left another 150."

"Thanks, anything else?" Amy asked her, a little irked that she had gotten the directions wrong, but then again, that's why they had two junior officers circling the battle in a P-3 Orion.

"I'll let you know of any approaching hostiles."

"Thanks Luna," Serena replied. "Let's move out."

Raye and Lita took point as usual…and immediately jumped back from the door.

"Serena, there's more of those things out there!" Raye hissed. She had just seen five or six youma on both sides of the door, waiting to ambush them as they came out.

"Where?!"

"On both sides of the door. We can't get through there without being shot up."

"Luna, find me another alternative route," Serena said over the radio.

"Got it." Luna looked at the blueprints at the train station, but didn't see anything that remotely resembled an emergency exit or a passageway out of that place. They were either being extremely careful or just plain stupid when they designed this place, Luna thought to herself. Beryl sure got her money's worth. Maybe that's why she had that CEO killed…

More searching came up empty. They were going to have to attack.

"That's a negative, you're going to have to go through that ambush, over."

"Why aren't you sending the youma in!" Beryl yelled at the technicians.

"There's too many of them jamming the hallways! We've got both security personnel and youma trying to converge on the area but they keep blocking the dammed hallways up!"

"That doesn't explain why you aren't sending those youma in outside of the train station!" she screeched.

"Beryl…"

She lost it. Beryl took out her pistol, a Beretta Bobcat and pointed at the technician. She fired a single shot into the poor man's forehead, blowing his brains out all over his workstation.

"Will somebody please clean this mess up and get this entire situation unfucked?! Do I make myself clear?!"

"Thanks Luna. We'll get back to you when we've taken care of this mess. Out." Serena thought through her tactical options; they could charge out there, but that would certainly end up in all of their deaths. More grenades it was. She had heard somebody say that anything could be solved with the application of explosives. Well, if anything in the last hour or so had proven, was that theory held up.

"Okay, let's toss some grenades in there and hope for the best." Serena pointed at Lita and Raye to get started.

Lita and Raye pulled on the pins for their grenades and tossed them immediately into the hallway. A burst of gunfire from the youma answered them as they tried to target the grenades. They were so close however that they ended up hitting each other; three youma were taken out without the SAILOR team doing anything other than tossing grenades into the hallway.

The resulting explosion shattered the remaining youma.

"They're all bunched up," Raye said, poking her head out of the doorway. The smoldering ruins of several UGVs littered the hallway with their metallic gore. "No wonder they got taken out so easily."

"Mina, you're on point with me. Raye, Lita, watch our six," Serena ordered. Mina and Lita swung out into the hallway to cover

"Hold up a second." Raye stopped Amy from going out the door. Here you go Amy, take the M16 here. Something better for you to go on." Raye unslung her M16A4 with Masterkey shotgun underneath the barrel, and handed it off to Amy.

"Sorry," she replied, sheepishly.

"Don't worry about it, I've got plenty of firepower here," she said, smiling back. "Lita, give me your shotgun."

"Heh, take it." It was turning into a real round robin with the weapons.

"Guys, will you please get your shit together!" Serena said, exasperated. "They're coming!"

"Fine, fine." Raye tossed Amy a couple of shotgun shells and cocked the Mossburg 500 from Lita. "Covering!" Lita and Raye yelled to the others.

"Move!" Serena ordered.

"Moving!"

The team ran down the long hall, weapons at the ready for inevitable contact from the QRF.

"Luna here," her voice chirped into their HUDs. "A fire team of QRF soldiers is approaching at the next junction, along with two youma units."

"Got it."

Mina saw the junction up ahead; a couple of signs on the wall allowed for easy orientation of rooms in the sprawling underground complex. From what she could see, there were hallways that went on for what seemed like forever, then abruptly ended with more hallways branching off. Their combat boots thudded against the concrete floor, illuminated by extremely harsh florescent lights.

It was vaguely reminiscent of their stay at the "top secret" Medical Facility in Miyagi Prefecture. How fitting, Mina thought to herself, they were owned by the same company, after all. Oh the irony.

She saw a man poke his head around the corner. It was far out enough for Mina to line up a shot and fire. The man disappeared for a second, then the rest of him slumped out from behind the corner.

"Contact rear!" Lita fired off a couple of bursts from her M249 at some approaching soldiers. They ducked back into the train station where the SAILOR team had just come out of.

"Keep 'em pinned!" Raye fired off a grenade at the entrance before switching over to her shotgun. She fired a couple of slug rounds, pumping the forehandle of the shotgun back and forth, the green shells flying out of the chamber with great force.

"Luna, I've got something on those youma units," Artemis interrupted. It didn't take very long for him to review the footage and come up with a solution.

"Let's hear it," she replied, keeping her eyes focused on her computer, but listening all the same.

"Obviously, explosives do the trick against the UGVs, but I looked at the one Lita and Serena were targeting, and there appears to be a weak spot on the sides of the vehicle. These things though, look pretty flimsy to begin with. I'm not quite sure if it's a design flaw but concentrated gunfire to any part of the vehicle will…"

"Yeah, got it," Luna said, waving Artemis off. "You got that, Serena?"

"Yep. Aim for the sides, but heavy gunfire will do them in." Serena squeezed off a couple of rounds at the remaining youma on the corner and watched it sputter helplessly to a halt as the bullets penetrated its weak sides.

"Or large caliber weapons," Luna added. "Perhaps."

"Yeah. Got it." Serena and Amy moved forward, while Mina took overwatch on the corner they had just killed the fire team and youma units. She squeezed off several rounds at another fire team and youma advancing down the hall. She got three youma and two of the QRF soldiers before they retreated down the hall.

"How much further to the hanger?" Serena asked Amy.

"One hundred meters straight, then another fifty to the left."

"Alright."

Luna intercepted more radio traffic and cross referenced it with the blueprints. "SAILOR Moon, more contacts at the T-junction up ahead. Approaching squad of QRF troops and ten youma."

"How far out are they?" Serena dropped the magazine out of her rifle and rammed another one in.

"Fifty meters from the intersection. Standby…there's another fire team and two youma approaching on the left side from the hanger side."

Serena had to make a quick tactical decision; she could let the attacking team bunch up at the intersection, but that would mean that their firepower would be concentrated against them. The other option was to engage both of the approaching forces separately as they barreled down toward them, but that would leave the shooters engaging them open to the other enemy forces approaching in the other direction.

There really wasn't much of choice though; they had to engage them separately or the combined firepower of twelve soldiers and seven youma would be too much.

"Raye, Lita, break contact and engage forces on both sides of the T-junction, Mina, Amy, cover the rear."

"On it!" The two teams simply switched positions, with Mina and Amy flopping down on the ground into the prone position to engage any threats from their rear, and Lita and Raye taking up their familiar role as pointman.

Mina continued to lay down accurate fire from her HK417, sniping youma and soldier alike. It still didn't make it better that they were machines, she thought. All this materiel going to waste…those robots could have been used to clear minefields or to rescue trapped miners. Instead, they were attacking five out-of-their-mind women on a suicide mission to redeem themselves from an evil corporation. This was completely fucked up. She depressed the trigger a couple more times, headshotting a soldier and in quick succession, another youma.

Raye and Lita shot past Serena and immediately took up positions on the corners of the T junction, Lita on the right, Raye on the left.

"On three," Raye said. "One. Two. Three!"

The two of them swung around the corners and immediately opened fire. Lita sprayed the advancing squad with machine gun fire before taking off a grenade on her tactical vest and tossing it at some youma. Another fire team was wiped out, along with several more youma.

Lita depressed the trigger again, but this time the machine gun jammed. She looked down, noticing that a shell was stuck in the ejection port. A simple extraction method was required to defeat the jam, by sliding the hand forward and knocking the shell out of the port so the next round would feed into the chamber. In combat however, even the most simple of techniques becomes extremely hard to perform, and when Lita looked up from her jammed weapon, the soldiers were only fifteen meters away and closing.

"Shit." Lita dropped the machine gun and quickly grabbed her sidearm, firing off three shots at the closest advancing soldier. He dropped to the ground, dead. That bought her enough time to unsling her shotgun and start firing it at the remaining squad. They fell back and allowed the remaining youma to approach, the machine guns on their sides blazing away.

Raye was having an easier time. After snapping off three grenades from her launcher that destroyed the youma and two soldiers, she also got out her shotgun, blasting away at the two more soldiers who had taken cover behind the destroyed youma. Raye pulled the trigger after firing a couple more shots and realized that the shotgun was empty; time to go to the sidearm. She unholstered her Glock 18 and switched it to full-auto. Instead of firing it though, on actual automatic fire, which would serve no purpose other than to empty the magazine, she snapped off quick bursts. The two surviving soldiers quickly succumbed to the bursts snapping through their exposed faces and extremities. They went down, hard. Raye ejected the 33 round magazine and shoved in a new one.

Goddamn, nice shooting out there, she thought to herself. Really showed them who's boss now. The sound of gunfire behind her caused Raye to turn about, facing Lita. She could see that Lita was in trouble, with advancing youma and the remaining fire team putting down an increasingly heavy amount of gunfire on Lita's position.

When in doubt, attack, a vague maxim crossed Raye's mind. Sure, why not.

"Coming up at your six!" she yelled to Lita, who had switched back to her sidearm, firing rapidly at one of the youma. She got a lucky shot off when one of the rounds hit the optical control systems, rendering it blind and unable for it to move. It stopped traffic behind it, which made it very easy for Raye to fire off the grenades in her launcher at the gaggle in the hallway. The resulting explosion sent bits and pieces of youma everywhere, along with whoever had been unlucky enough to have been standing nearby the explosion.

"Clear!" Lita yelled out to Serena and the rest of the team. She picked up her machine gun and cleared the jam, sending the spent brass cartridge flying into the air, clanging off of a wall then onto the floor.

"Mina, Amy! We're moving out!" Serena ordered. She covered the two of them as they picked themselves off of the floor and disengaged from the sporadic enemies that were following them, at a distance. Mina had destroyed most of the youma that the PMC had sent out in an effort to save on their manpower. This made most of the soldiers hesitant to move out into the open hallway to engage the SAILOR team; anyone who stuck their head out there was subject to quick and accurate fire from Mina.

"Moving!" Amy yelled, running past Serena. "To the left, go!"

Mina and Amy charged down the hall and sprinted to the Hanger door, with Lita, Raye and Serena close behind, keeping a lookout for more enemies. There didn't seem to be any after the thrashing the SAILOR team had given them in the last ten minutes though.

"Luna, are there any more hostiles in the area?" Serena asked.

"Not for two hundred meters besides the hanger area," Luna replied. "They're trying to get regrouped after you blitzed through them, over."

"Well, glad to see someone appreciates our work," Serena said. She sensed that Luna was impressed with their almost impossible progress on this very difficult mission.

"Not a problem," was the reply from Luna.

"Beryl, that team is tearing our security forces apart!" Sorenson, the technician from before, was terrified of being shot after seeing one of his coworkers get gunned down by Beryl. He really didn't want to suffer that fate. This really wasn't what I signed up for, he frantically thought to himself.

Beryl had no intention of shooting any more of her own employees; she had shot one personally before the siege had begun and now this poor chap.

When this was all over, she reminded herself to send reparations to the surviving family members. It was the least she could do, she thought to herself darkly.

"Where are they headed?" she asked, complete cool this time around. The pistol was already back in her pocket, but it might as well have been pointed at Sorenson's head.

Sorenson gulped and turned to one of the monitors that had a security camera feed up. "It looks like they're headed toward Hanger A1."

"Good." Going for the nuclear weapons, hmm? Well, you might be able to plow through my security forces, but have fun busting your way through five centimeter reinforced steel blast doors.

"Ahmed," Beryl said to the man behind her. Ahmed had been quite busy trying to reorganize all of the scatter QRF units after their solid beating by the SAILOR team.

"Yes?"

"We're going to start the emergency lockdown procedure in the A1 Hanger area."

"Ma'am, that'll put a lot of strain on the reactors," he protested, taking a look at the display that showed the status of the power reserves. "We're running at ninety percent capacity, and to engage those protocols will take more energy than we already have."

"Reroute additional power from nonessential services. Greenhouses, mess halls, living areas, all of it. I need that emergency procedure in place to stop these bastards once and for all."

"Beryl," the PMC commander interrupted. "Beryl, the marines are digging in and are awaiting further reinforcements," Soshkin told her. He had been out taking a quick smoking break before coming back to the action. The gunfire resounding in the halls also reminded him that he probably shouldn't do that again.

She nodded at his report. "Well, let's not keep them waiting. What's the status on the nuclear weapons?"

The PMC commander looked at his tablet computer that he carried at his side at all times. "They're being loaded onto the Tomahawks and being fuelled. They'll be ready within an hour."

"With most of the anti-missile ordnance out of the way, they won't stand a chance." She turned back to the monitors. "Launch the second wave of UCAVs, and start up the guns again." There was a brief pause as Beryl finished up the orders on the outside situation and turned her attention back to the SAILOR team.

"Lockdown the doors to the hanger, and start sealing off the hallways. We'll corner the SAILOR team there and then take them out that way." Why didn't I think of that before? Beryl grumpily thought. Oh, that's right, I'm the only one with a fully functioning brain around here it seems. Why the fuck didn't the PMC commander, Soshkin, engage that team in the tunnel? I thought he had it under control, and now it isn't. This is what I get for having a shitty designer team and stationing the more inexperienced PMC unit here. Nice.

"Beryl." Kunzite's voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

"Yes, Kunzite?"

"Beryl, we need to take down that SAILOR team right away," he said to her.

"I know, what do you think I'm doing…?" she replied impatiently, but Kunzite kept going.

"No…I was thinking that I could go out there…"

Yeah, I think I know where this is going, Beryl thought. "Go on."

"And I could draw them out into the open, then you could have the QRF and the youma ambush them." Beryl thought that fact over, but she already knew that was going to be a suicide mission.

"I appreciate the thought, but I can't risk losing all of my company officers in a span of two weeks."

Kunzite blinked, remembering his dead lover. The one he was supposed to be avenging.

"Beryl…"

"That is my final order." She turned her attention back to the CIC.

"Sounds like a lot of naval gunfire," Amy noted, standing outside the door to the hanger. The entire facility shook with the sounds of the heavy caliber weapons opened up at the fleet outside. "We really need to get this over with."

"Tell me about it," Lita said, scanning the hallway for hostiles. She reloaded her shotgun, first by putting in a shell directly into the chamber, then loading the tube magazine with additional shells.

"Any luck on the door?" Serena asked.

"I'm almost in," Amy replied, before being interrupted.

"Emergency Lockdown initiated," a voice over an unseen loudspeaker boomed. Doors suddenly started to close and shut off the hallways toward the SAILOR team. They moved slowly, but in both directions the heavy steel doors barricaded them outside of the hanger area.

"Amy, stop those doors NOW!" Serena yelled, watching heavy steel doors slide into place in the hallways.

"I'm trying!" Everyone is so fucking dependent on me, Amy thought to herself. Great. I only had thirty minutes to look the information over. The tablet computer she was holding could only go through so many quires for information and there was no time to get out the laptop. She needed some help from someone else.

"Luna, Luna," Amy said on her radio. "Isolate the subroutine that connects the emergency lockdown procedure."

"I'm on it." With better resources and processing power on the P3 Orion, Luna was quickly able to track down and isolate the subroutine that Amy was looking for.

"I'm sending you the data now."

Amy received the information that she needed and accessed the emergency shutdown procedure.

"I'm shutting it down, standby."

Thank God for Linux. The command line bar was flashing in front of her. Sudo top, enter command "kill"…what was the process id? Yeah, 12012. Done. Better make sure that everything is wiped out as well. Amy proceeded to delete everything concerning that program.

"Beryl, the emergency shutdown was stopped."

"By whom?"
"I don't know ma'am," Sorenson replied, looking at the computer display. Something was off, but he couldn't pin it down. Not only was the shutdown procedure stopped, it just didn't seem to exist. Oh well, they had a backup of the program and…where was it?

"Get back to me on that," Beryl said, trying to keep her head above the deluge of information that was coming into the CIC.

"Soshkin, what is the status of your QRF units?"

"They're moving in on the Hanger.

Sorenson interrupted Beryl again. "Uh…we have a major problem." He just couldn't find any evidence of the shutdown procedure existing in the first place.

Beryl sighed. Another explosion from outside the fortress interrupted that train of thought. There were more important things to be done.

"It can wait. What's the status on the UAVs out there?"

"They're making headway against the fleet. Almost all of their anti-air ordnance is expended against our missile and drone attacks, and we should be ready to launch the nuclear missiles against the fleet."

"Good. Abbreviate the launching sequence and prepare for launch in five minutes. We're going to end this now."

"You will hold the line," Soshkin said to 5 Golf 5. "This comes from Beryl herself. Extra money will be rewarded for every one of them that you bring down. The missiles will be launched in five minutes, that's all you have to hold out for."

"Five minutes!" 5 Golf 5 yelled out into the hanger. His understrength platoon of eighteen soldiers, or about two squads, had been digging in, metaphorically speaking. All of the UAVs and UCAVs had either been launched from the hanger or transferred to the other ones in the base, so there was a clear line of sight toward the single entrance to the hallway. 5 Golf 5 was from Italy, and unlike the other troops in the train station, most of these guys were not from villager stomping "internal security forces" but from proper military units like the Italian Carabinieri, the French Foreign Legion, Polish Land Forces, and even a couple of ex-Luxembourg Army (yes, there is such a thing) soldiers who had joined up after budget cuts ended most of its military.

"Roger that," he replied to Soshkin. "We've got the youma here all fired up and ready to go." While his platoon might have been understrength, he had another twenty UGVs in the room with him, freeing up his troops to erect barricades and fortifications in the hanger.

"Good. Keep me updated. Out."

"Sir." 5 Golf 5's XO, 1 Bravo 4, a lieutenant from the Corps Des Sapeurs-Pompiers from Monaco, ran over to him with a FAMAS in hand.

"What's the status of the fueling of the missiles?"

"The technicians over there are almost done. They had to skip a couple non-essential protocols for the Tomahawks, but they should be ready in a few minutes." 1 Bravo 4 gestured over to the five Tomahawks sitting on launch platforms near the front of the hanger launch doors. Several ground crew and technicians were running about, trying to get the nuclear armed missiles fuelled.

"Good. We need to protect them, but it doesn't seem like the intruders are doing at the moment."

"Perhaps they got hung up on all of the security doors?" 1 Bravo 4 suggested.

"Yeah…perhaps."

Luna was going over some more data when she noticed a massive drop in fuel reserves from Hanger A1 in the previous hour. She could have chalked it up to the UAVs being fuelled, but the reserves continued to drop after all of the flights had been launched, which meant one thing; they were getting ready to deploy the missiles. She didn't know when the nuclear weapons were going to be launched, but they were going to be soon if the data wasn't lying.

"SAILOR team, Flash message," Luna said, keeping her cool. "Nuclear missiles are probable launch in the next couple of minutes. Advise that you immediately get in there and take out the nuclear threat, over."

"I've disabled the lock to the door over there," Amy pointed over to the entrance to the hanger.

"Did you do a scan of the Hanger?" Serena asked Amy.

"Not yet, let me see."

Amy tried to scan with her HUD using the infrared and millimetric settings, but got nothing. "Serena, the place is too hot for an infrared, I can't see anything. There's too much interference getting in the way of the other scans too."

Serena nodded at Amy's report. They were just going to have to wing it, like usual. At least they knew the nuclear weapons were in there. "Lita, open the door up. Raye, Amy, go in first."

"Why with Amy…?" Raye started to ask, before realizing that Amy was holding her weapon. "Oh."

"Oh, and try not to hit the nuclear weapon with gunfire," Serena reminded them, checking the magazine in her M4 CQB-R.

"I think we have some experience in that," Mina replied, winking at Amy. She just shrugged and readied the M16A4 for action.

"Status on the missiles," 5 Golf 5 asked one of the technicians.

"They're fuelled. All we need is to put the coordinates that the CIC sent us, arm the missiles, and we'll be ready to go."

"Which ones have nuclear warheads?" 5 Golf 5 asked. The technician only pointed to three of the missiles.

"Only three of them?" he wondered.
"Yeah, we're going to have a couple in reserve. Make sure that they know we mean business."

Meanwhile, a couple of soldiers were watching one of the youma in a patrol pattern.

"Who made these things?" one of them said, squinting at the writing on the side of it.

"Huh, it says on the side here."

"It's in Korean or Japanese…I can't read it." If the soldier could have read it, the Hangol on the side of the UGV patrolling the entrance to the hanger would have said "Hyeonjun Heavy Industries."

Suddenly, the entrance to the hanger was wrenched open, the metal screeching loudly as it was forced aside.