Chosen
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Chapter 2: The River Battle
He veered again across the water, making a large loop where the channel widened. Skidding to a stop across the river surface, he waited for the round red button on his weapons system to light up, and it did so with a beep. "Here's one for you too, sweetheart," he said, depressing it without any remorse.
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Sector ran, flew, and floated his way through the forest, heading for the indicated location. It wasn't often that he got to use the power of his mask, but when the opportunity called for it, the ability was indispensable. And right now it made travel shockingly easy across the difficult, irregular terrain. Ditches, rivers, swamps, and marshes presented no obstacle. The land was sparsely inhabited here. Rhino would have been paralyzed by the lack of roads and dry ground, but a flying man could go anywhere.
Eventually he came to where Rax and Dagger were securing a large wood and plastic crate aboard the flat cargo boat. Mayhem's voice barked over the radio. "He gave us the slip, but I think he was the only one. We only saw one vehicle. But keep alert. I'm sure he's hiding around here somewhere, and more of them always seem to show up."
"Right you are," Sector mused. "There will be more of us on the way, and I'm already here." He floated through the undergrowth to where he could get a better look at the boat.
"I've spotted another parachute," came Warfield's voice. "It's also near a river so you'll be able to bring the boat almost right to it."
"Three out of four," said Dagger. "This is going well."
"Just one more crate to find, and then back to Belem," drawled Rax. "And the sooner the better. These insects are starting to bite! I'm going to get malaria or yellow fever or something."
"So hurry it up, or did you already forget that MASK is here!?" snarled Mayhem.
"We can take care of them, can't we?" asked Malloy optimistically over the com-link. Like Warfield he was out searching for the fallen crates.
"Of course we can! So far there are five of us and one of them, so you'd better hurry up and get to that next crate. The longer we take the more of them we're likely to encounter."
"All right, Mayhem. We're just about done here."
Alex picked up one of the large nutshells at his feet in the undergrowth. "Oh no you aren't..." he grinned.
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"Matt, come in. This is Alex."
"Well hello. I wasn't expecting to hear back from you so soon. "I only just landed in Belem."
"I wasn't expecting to be calling back so soon. My little spying trip was a visit to the Plot Convenience Playhouse."
Trakker chuckled at Sector's analogy. "So what did you learn?"
Sector repeated the details to Trakker, who listened intently, his mind already working on the next part of the plan. "Well try keep track of them if you can, and if and when they locate all four crates.
"Oh, that shouldn't be too difficult. That locator beacon you dropped seems to have found its way aboard their boat.
"No~! Seriously!?"
"I told you. It's Plot Convenience Playhouse out here."
"Alex, I could kiss you, but the others would get jealous so I won't."
"Speaking of the others, do you have an ETA on the transport? I'm presuming you've called in a team."
"Of course. Three more agents on the way. Dusty and Julio just took off from Boulder Hill and will be collecting Calhoun in Louisville. So they won't be in until tonight."
"The timing should be good then. That boat will take at least a day to get to Belem...maybe longer."
"Exactly. We'll just head them off at the pass tomorrow morning."
"My thoughts too."
"So is it safe for me to come back and pick you up?"
"No need to yet. I'd just let them take care of the recovery process unhindered—let them go retrieve the crates for us."
"You're a regular Tom Sawyer."
"I'll take that as a compliment. Besides, I've still got to catch you a lizard."
"Well good luck out there. Just don't get caught yourself. I'll come get you tonight after the team arrives."
"Thanks, old boy."
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The tranquil dawn was broken by a most unpleasant interruption as Mayhem threw a long stream of words at Rax that weren't fit to print. So much for the peaceful sunrise he had been enjoying. With all the expletives edited out, the exchange of dialogue came down to something like this:
"Idiot! How could you miss the turn off for Belem? You're almost all the way to Macapa!"
"Because it was dark out here and the riverbanks all look the same. Nothing's lit. And Malloy was supposed to be watching as well but he was sleeping."
"You were supposed to wake me up when we got close, Rax," Malloy defended himself.
"You didn't tell me to wake you up," Rax countered.
"Yes I did."
"Well maybe you did and I ignored it because most of what you say is a bunch of pointless yapping."
Mayhem shouted at them over the radio so loud it woke Dagger and nearly blew out the speaker.
"Relax, Mayhem. I'll find where we are on the map and turn around. There are a lot of channels in this area so getting back on course should be easy. We'll just be a few hours late getting into Belem."
"No, don't turn around. Just go into Macapa. I'll have Vanessa bring the cargo plane there and we'll pick it up and fly it to Belem."
"Good," and then a mumbled "we should have done that in the first place."
"Any sign of MASK?"
"Not yet."
"All right. Just keep your eyes peeled. I figured they wouldn't attack at night, but now that it's daylight they could be upon us at any moment. They know we're here so I doubt they'll be sleeping in this morning.
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Mayhem had been correct in his guess—within the hour MASK was upon them.
As Raven and Gator came across the wide waterway they were met by laser fire. "Watch yourselves! There's a mounted cannon aboard that boat," reported Burns.
The alarm raised, Malloy quickly leapt onto Vampire and took the the air. The motorcycle hybrid needed very little of a runway if any. Immediately he began shooting at the two boats in the water. "Vampire's airborne," called Hayes, swinging between two islands.
"Julio! You're up to bat!"
"I'm on it, Chief!" responded the doctor and in moments, Firefly was clinging to Vampire's tail. Thunderhawk followed, heading straight for the boat.
"And there's Switchblade!" continued Burns. Knowing which agents Mayhem had brought along, they had a good idea as to what vehicles they would be seeing, and had come up with a counteractive battle plan. He drew Switchblade's attention with a few bursts of laserfire.
"Still no sign of Manta, but I know that won't last." Sector flew Thunderhawk in, Trakker bailing from the passenger seat this time. "Spectrum Hanglider, on! The energy field flared around his outstretched limbs and his descent slowed. Gracefully he glided down to the boat's deck. Dagger, the gunner working the cannon, had been so busy shooting at the two boats teasing him he had not noticed the addition of another passenger. He was completely caught off guard when Trakker came up behind him with his hands folded together and hit him in the side of the head, knocking him down. A good spinning kick and he was next sprawled out on the deck. As he staggered to his feet, Trakker simply shoved him overboard.
Rax came out of the pilot's cabin. "Stiletto! Fire!"
Trakker sprang back, the darts whizzing past the point he had stood a moment ago.
It was then that Manta made an entrance. "There's Vanessa," Sector announced. "Fashionably late to the party." Sector buzzed past the flying car, hoping to draw her attention and lure her away. While not much of a fighter pilot himself, all he had to do was to keep Warfield from jumping into one of the other dogfights.
Burns hit the accelerator and barreled for the open water of the river's main channel. Engage VENOM, commandeer the boat and cargo, defend the boat until they could turn it over to the right hands. Trakker tried to keep the objectives down to the necessities given the unpredictable nature of their enemy and the battles they fought with them.
A rapid succession of laserblasts struck the water in a curtain alongside Raven's course. Switchblade was gaining. Time to turn the tables.
Burns decelerated sharply and turned the wheel, Raven spinning twice atop the water. Coming to a stop, he swung the cannons around and the computer locked onto the jet as it passed overhead, and again he fired at Mayhem. None of the hits landed though and Mayhem swung about himself to fire at his opponent.
"Raven! Dive!" commanded Burns as he launched a few more counteractive shots, and the black Corvette dipped beneath the surface of the river, dropping by default to a cruising depth of fifteen feet, a depth just out of range of Switchblade's armaments.
When the targeting computer showed that the jet had passed on by, Burns hit the accelerator and surfaced. The targeting computer beeped again, indicating a shot was lined up and the weapons were ready to fire. "Try this, Mayhem!" Burns hit the round red firing button and from Raven's nose a circular blade with a saw's serrated edge shot into the air, spinning upwards and into Switchblade's body just as Mayhem was turning it around for another attack. Smoke began to billow from the blue jet, and the leader of VENOM made a hasty retreat.
"Switchblade down!" crowed Burns.
"Great! Now come deal with Vanessa. She's not playing nice," said Hayes. "She decided not to chase Alex and instead she wants me." He had planned to jump aboard the boat and assist Trakker in commandeering the craft, but Manta was hard on Gator, firing relentlessly.
"I can't help it if I'm not her type," bemoaned Sector.
"Head for the islands to the south, Dusty," Burns instructed. "I'll sneak up on her between them."
"You've got it!"
Burns watched his map monitor closely, all of their vehicles displayed on it, as well as anything anyone's targeting computer happened to be locked onto. There was Hayes headed into the islands, pushing Gator to the limit, presumably with Manta in the air behind him. While Gator had maneuverability, Raven had speed, and soon he met the two, coming up behind them. "Keep her steady for me a moment, Dusty. I just need a moment to target her." The weapons computer soon had a lock and the twin swivel guns fired, hitting Manta but not hitting anything critical as he had with Switchblade.
But the attack did not go unnoticed. Manta peeled off of the pursuit of Gator, pulled upwards and over in a grand 360 degree loop, and ended up behind both of the MASK boats. Burns remembered Ace's words to him. "I've seen her fly, and she puts all of us to shame." Immediately he began to waver in his course to avoid the laser blasts.
"Cal, the channel splits ahead. I'll go left. You go right," called Hayes.
"No problem. Right fork for me." Burns looked down briefly at his monitor and saw the oncoming division, and when the channel split he veered sharply to the right, as did Warfield.
"She seems to like you better," said Hayes, "so I'm going to head back and help out Matt now."
"Right on. I'll slice Manta up like I did Switchblade." He veered again across the water, making a large loop where the channel widened. Skidding to a stop across the river surface, he waited for the round red button on his weapons system to light up, and it did so with a beep. "Here's one for you too, sweetheart," he said, depressing it without any remorse.
Burns watched as the blade sailed out of Raven's nose, and continued watching as the oncoming Manta executed a perfect corkscrew roll, dancing an aerial ballet around the oncoming disk. His mouth fell open. Ace was right. She did put all of them to shame, on both sides. He hit the accelerator and began to move again.
As she passed on over, her cannons fired at him striking the water and missing Raven by inches.
"Close...but not quite. Now let's see what else I can find for you, Vanessa."
Meanwhile on the boat, Rax still had Trakker pinned down behind the four cargo crates with Stiletto. "Spectrum laser..." He quickly popped up his head to take a shot at Rax. "Fire!"
Rax ducked and the beam missed, hitting the ship's cabin, and Rax answered with a scattering of darts.
"After this, I start carrying a pistol. This is just much too awkward," Trakker told himself.
"Hey, help me get on the boat again!" Dagger called, having caught up to it after Rax had shut off the engine.
Trakker winced. "Dusty, I'm going to be in a heap of trouble soon. Are you anywhere close?"
"I just handed off Manta to Calhoun, but I'm about four miles away."
Trakker made a quick calculation of Gator's top speed in boat mode and estimated how soon he would be there. It wasn't encouraging.
"I can lay down a little cover fire," said Lopez.
"What happened to Malloy."
"Vampire went into boat mode."
"Vampire doesn't have a boat mode," Alex corrected him.
"It does now," the doctor chuckled.
"Heh. Nice," complimented Trakker. "Well I could use something to distract the guys here. Just be careful not to hit the cargo."
Firefly suddenly streaked out of nowhere, a line of laserblasts crossing the water but cutting out just before hitting the boat. It was enough to scare Rax, who ducked back into the cabin, and to make Dagger, half into the boat, jump back into the river.
Trakker breathed a sigh of relief. "That worked, Julio. Can you give me another pass like that? It should buy me enough time for Dusty to get here."
"Sure thing, Chief,"
Burns swung Raven though the channel, hoping that Warfield had not gone off in pursuit of one of the other vehicles. To his relief he spotted her coming back around for another attack, this time from behind. She swung low and cruised overhead, firing from a low elevation.
Again he dodged, and as she passed by he took up the role of the pursuer, chasing her at close to top speed through the river channels between the islands. And it seemed to him that she delighted in leading him down winding difficult passages. "Is she testing me? Or just toying with me?" Burns wondered. Her flight pattern could suggest either.
And suddenly the channel ended, blocked off from the main river by two enormous fallen trees.
"Raven! Dive!" Burns called, hitting the water-brakes at the same time. Hopefully he could slow enough to avoid the branches, or better yet go underneath them, if they didn't reach the bottom of the channel.
But the crowns of the felled trees were wider than the water was deep, their spreading branches resting on the bottom of the channel. He crashed into them but managed to avoid the largest ones. "Damn!" he spat angrily. "Little minx led me right into a trap."
He began to maneuver out, wriggling Raven in reverse and trying to back out of the tangle. Going in had certainly been much easier. And then came a strange sound through the water as more branches came crashing down right on top of him. And then another tree came down right behind him. The branches grabbed Raven and pushed it downwards. "And she closes the trap," he cursed.
For a moment he was seized by the horrible thought that he would be pushed below Raven's operational level. Bruce and Buddie had both warned him that the glass and seals on Raven's chassis were only good to forty feet in depth.
But he reassured himself that this channel was nowhere close to that deep. In fact when Raven came to rest on the silty bottom the depth gauge read twenty-three feet. He tried again to free Raven by rocking it back and forth, but it would not budge more than a few inches in either direction. The trees held him down like two many-fingered hands.
"Guys, Vanessa got me. I'm down and out for this battle."
"All right," said Trakker. "Just sit tight. We're kinda tied up here"
Tied up was right. Trakker was now battling Rax hand-to-hand aboard the boat, the two men throwing punches at each other. Dagger had climbed aboard again and was heading for the cannon. He fired twice at the oncoming orange blur of Firefly, causing the doctor to veer off. And then he swung the cannon around to aim it at Trakker. "I'll blast him, Rax. Just get him off of you."
"Don't, you idiot. You'll hit me or the cargo!" Rax shouted.
"I see the boat now," called Hayes. "Hold onto your tailfeathers, Matt. I'm almost there!"
"Watch out. Dagger's on that cannon again!" And sure enough as Hayes swung past the VENOM boat Dagger aimed at him.
Hayes bent low to the steering wheel and circled the boat, cannon-fire following him.
Suddenly Trakker broke away from Rax and tumbled across the deck. Like a pouncing cat focused only on the target, Dagger whirled around and fired at Trakker, missing the MASK leader but hitting the deck.
At once a single burst of water shot up from the holes in the deck, and at once all four agents realized that the hull had been well breached, and that soon this boat would be headed to the bottom.
"Matt! Get on!" shouted Hayes, maneuvering to the side of the now-sinking ship. Trakker ran across the deck and leapt into Gator. Hayes took off, leaving the two VENOM agents aboard to find their own escape route.
Manta flew overhead—Vanessa coming in to appraise the situation or possibly to chase Firefly. But she took off, leaving the two hapless agents to fend for themselves.
Rax scrambled for Pirahna, parked under a tarp on the deck of the boat, and jumped into the sidecar. He launched it into the water and came back for Dagger, who wrapped his arms around the top of the mini-sub.
The boat gurgled and glubbed and soon disappeared into the Amazon, taking the coveted cargo with it.
"Alex! The boat just sank. Can you call up that homing beacon?"
"I'm on it," he reported. He had landed Thunderhawk in a pasture beside the river and was now working his way through the computer menus to get to the one he needed. "There it is...and...gone..."
"Gone?"
"The beacons are water-resistant, but not waterproof. The water pressure will easily debilitate them."
Trakker's head slumped forward. "Damn." He pulled off his mask and surveyed the area, trying to get an idea in his head of where the boat had cone down at. "All right men. Let's get back to land and take care of any damage."
"I'm going to need a rescue," announced Burns. "I'm sitting on the bottom of the river here held under by several trees."
"How deep? Are you taking on water?"
"I'm only down twenty-three feet according to the depth gauge, and so far I'm not leaking."
"Okay, hang tight. You've got oxygen for two hours and we'll have you freed before then."
"No worries. I'll just read a book or something...work on my tan," he laughed.
"Julio, you good?"
"I just landed next to Alex. We're both fine."
"All right. We're in a lot better shape than VENOM is. They lost Switchblade, Vampire, and half of Piranha."
"And their boat and the cargo," added Hayes.
"Yeah, but we lost it too."
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A flash of movement in his peripheral vision caused Burns to look up from his computer screen. There, at the end of Raven's nose, was a diver. The others had gotten down here unexpectedly quickly. It had only been about half an hour since the end of the battle.
And then he realized it wasn't a diver coming through the branches. This was no man...it was only man-shaped.
No, he decided...it was woman-shaped. The visitor appeared female.
She came closer, peering in at him through the glass of Raven's windshield, her golden eyes wide with curiosity.
Burns could only sit and stare, petrified by what was staring back at him.
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Chosen continues in Chapter 3: Denial
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M.A.S.K. and all related concepts, characters, worlds, and events are property of DIC Enterprises, Inc and Kenner Toys. Original characters and story elements are property of E. Potter, writing under the pen name of Miratete.
This fic is dedicated to Ben Chapman (1925-2008), Ricou Browning, and Tom Hennesey (1923-2011)
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