KALM
1.
A thunderous explosion shook the still air of the afternoon.
It was a quiet day in the town of Kalm, a charming and picturesque town which stood right outside the Midgar Wasteland. Inside the walled downtown, which separated the historical city centre from the newly-built sprawling suburbs, people were crowding the streets to take part in the weekly street market. The occurrence was so dear to the inhabitants of the town that most of them simply did not care about the unusual higher number of WRO soldiers who patrolled the streets with their rifles in their arms. It was a different sight, to which the townspeople of Kalm were not acquainted with but most of them had welcomed their presence and got along fairly well with them as reports of the turmoil in Edge got them quite worried about the state of peace and order in their urban reality.
Everyone was busy dealing with their own issues, as the sun in the sky had inaugurated another day like any other, with the much appreciated disappearance of the Mako streaks in the sky. A phenomenon to which most of the people was still oblivious to.
But when the blast went off everyone on their spot froze, and then turned towards the point were an orange globe was rising in the sky, immediately followed by a plum of thick, black smoke. Somebody had recognized the part of town affected by the deflagration
"It's the WRO garrison" a frightened man pointed out, as soldiers around him instructed the populace to stay calm and remain on their spot
"So, that's why they had deployed so many soldiers here…" a woman realized, as she crouched to shelter her child from an invisible menace
"Those terrorist have decided to strike here too!" a frightened man shouted
"Don't bullshit me!" a man bitterly replied, still minding after his merchandise on the stall "Maybe some rookie has dropped a batch of explosive…"
"Stand away from the road people!" a sergeant shouted as he waived to an oncoming fire appliance, leading a convoy of fire-fighting vehicles towards the site of the explosion. The bright red vehicles passed at high speed, with their sirens howling towards the blue afternoon sky. On the radio a plethora of voices were surmounting one another
"…can you confirm the number of code-red wounded? Over…"
"…and the fuel dump as well. We need urgent assistance from the fire brigades…"
"…the back-ups should be here anytime soon. We have already a company coming though from the broadcasting centre…"
Even more explosion could now be heard in the distance, always coming from the WRO garrison. This time they were less powerful, sounding like small cracks in the distance rather than loud bangs just like the first one.
The bustling streets of Kalm were now almost empty as people took refuge in the closest building they could reach. The latest developments and the news that had circulated, after the General Staff had announced the attempted coup, had made the people quite prone to panic but generally the populace, under the careful guidance of the WRO staff, behaved compositely.
"Thank the Maker that place stands alone in the midst of Vogel Park" a peasant commented "Such a blast could have shattered all the windows of Kalm if it was just a couple of inches nearer!"
Just seconds from the first explosion, the idle atmosphere of the town had been turned inside out by the waves of WRO troops cordoning off the most sensitive areas and junctions of the city, in order to facilitate the afflux of emergency and security personnel to the scene. The roar of an helicopter filled the air over Kalm as a WRO chopper circled around the column of smoke.
As everyone, citizens and soldiers, had shifted their attention to the damaged building and its surroundings, nobody paid attention to three young men running like hell through the alleyways towards the part of town opposite the explosion.
"It looks way too simple too me, Ryan" one of the running man commented, heavily panting. Apparently his daily gym attendance had not prepared him well for the run he and his comrades was doing
"Don't worry" the leader of the group of those three off-duty WRO soldiers, by the name of Ryan, reassured him "If I've made my calculations right, most of the sentries at the broadcasting facility have been sent to guard the road running along the southern wall"
"What if they are on full alert, instead?" the third man enquired "What if reinforcements have arrived and the security has not moved an inch from there?"
"What if… what if…" the leader teased him, his feet not losing a beat "Run, instead of talking, Shane! We're almost there!"
The alleyway opened up into a courtyard which was being used as a temporary scrap-yard. Along one of the sides, a metallic net ran along. They reached for it and the leader of the group probed it looking for a weak spot he had previously discovered and arranged
"There it is!" he exulted, as a portion of the net detached from the rest, revealing a short and narrow passage. They ducked and went through it. They temporarily froze as a helicopter made a low passage over the area, without noticing them, though,
They all crawled thorough the hole in the net. Shane momentarily swore as one of the eyelet of his trousers got tangled up in a stub, tearing it. Soon they found themselves running down a drainage canal, on a series of v-shaped concrete slabs laid one next to the other. The bottom was slightly slippery as a small river of brown, muddy water ran right in the middle of it
"Stay out of the water" Shane warned, hearing the clapping sounds of steps into the puddles "You're going to make them hear us!"
"Whops, got that" the third man, a young guy named Char, said as he hopped to the side of the ditch were his rubber soil treaded nothing but dry concrete.
They finally reached a point were the canal dived under a road inside a piping. On the road over them, a WRO soldier stood on guard, as a small convoy of trucks drove past him
"I told you" Ryan exclaimed triumphantly as he stood with his back against the shoulder of the bridge "They are moving them, as we expected. And judging by the number of the vehicles they should be pretty much all of them"
"Don't be so happy too soon" Char pointed out "There are at least twenty other guards in there. And all armed!"
"Like I did not know that" Ryan puffed "Have you brought them with you?" he asked the other one
"Of course" Shane opened the bag he had brought with him and pulled three WRO uniforms out from it. The batch of vests had been acquired by subtle means as WRO personnel was generally not authorized to wear uniforms outside the working hours
"Did nobody notice anything?"
"I don't think so" the man shook his head "I stole while they were on their way to the laundry!"
"I just hope they don't smell fishy, then!" Ryan commented, as he briefly sniffed the one he picked up. They quickly wore them over their everyday clothing.
Ryan climbed a small, rusty staircase next to the pipe entrance and he carefully peeked over the railing of the bridge. The soldier was now standing on the middle of the road, watching away from where Ryan was standing. The young man leapt over the balcony and rushed towards the guard.
With a swift movement he swung his arm around the neck of the WRO soldier dragging him away from the street, before the grey-clad man could even realize someone was charging at him. His shriek of surprise died in his throat. The man dressed as a WRO soldier, instead, fastened his hold until the guard slowly slipped on the ground unconscious
"Did you just killed him?" Shane, who had finally climbed onto the bridge as well, exclaimed
"Don't worry" Ryan assured him "He's just passed away. We are bound not to kill anyone, aren't we?"
"Only if not strictly necessary" Char sternly reminded him
The observation reminded Ryan of the only inconvenience of his hastily conceived plan. The chance of having to shoot at their own colleagues may arose anytime as nobody was aware of their intentions. Ryan, a soldier in the local WRO garrison of Kalm was already hoping that the diversion bomb planted at the main barracks had not caused any serious injury or any victim at all, although he perfectly knew it was wishful thinking.
Char and Shane were his comrades, two other soldiers of the local division who had been crazy enough (or maybe friends enough) to accept his invitation to what it appeared to be a suicide mission. Besides, Char's expertise in IT systems was vital for the execution of the plan.
As his two companions dumped the body of the soldier in the canal, Ryan waived at them "Come on" he urged them "The broadcasting station is just ahead!"
"The security shack is empty" Shane observed "Good for us!"
"Maybe Ryan is right" Char thought out loud "if we keep cool we may even live enough to exit that building simply by walking away"
Ryan gulped. He hoped his mate was right as the mission before himself appeared further from reach as the seconds flew by. He briefly thought upon the choice he had made just a year ago. He would not have joined the WRO if he had not felt compelled to walk in his older sister's footsteps. Being a soldier was not really something that ran into his blood.
The broadcasting station finally appeared. It was a concrete building which stood in an opening over a raised block surrounded by ditches and pipes and bundle of wires as thick as an arm. The main building looked like a shoebox with a protruding antenna raising up in the sky, with satellite dishes growing out form its main rod. All they had to do was to reach the broadcasting control room inside it and relay the message stored inside a hard drive kept inside Ryan's dangling pouch. The easy part was that the premises were scarcely patrolled. It was in fact an auxiliary station which served as a secondary relay radio bridge. Nevertheless the one who had entrusted him with delivering the content of the disk had assured him that, secondary or not, that antenna would have served the purpose pretty well, without the risk for the message to be identified and intercepted too soon.
The bad part was that the unexpected was behind every corner.
A soldier with the ranks of a sergeant spotted them as they walked the stairs to the main entrance
"Gentlemen" the sergeant greeted them "May I help you?"
The trio saluted as Ryan approached the sergeant "Sir, no sir. We've been left here by the detachment that has relieved the reinforcements for the situation in town"
"I see" the sergeant nodded, his hand reaching for the handle of the main door of the building as he reached the top of the stairs altogether with Ryan and his posse "May I see your authorizations?"
"Authorizations?" Ryan fumbled "Oh… yes Sir. Just let us in, and we will show you them"
The sergeant shrugged. He opened the door and passed the threshold holding it open to let Ryan and his associates inside.
Ryan quickly looked around. As he was sure that no cameras had a view over the place he and the sergeant occupied, he took his pistol by the muzzle and with a firm swing dealt a blow on the sergeant's head
"What the…?" the sergeant managed to shout, before the stock of the handgun impacted on his scalp with a crack. Ryan quickly dealt another blow as the body fell on the ground
"Hold it, for heaven's sake!" Shane rushed to cage his arm
"Jeez Ryan. Another blow and you kill him!"
"I know!" Ryan replied, heavily breathing
"Come on!" he said, regaining his composure "Help me move him where…"
"Are you alright, Ryan?" Shane enquired
"I'm fine!" Ryan cut him off "Just help me move him out of…"
He could not speak further on as he noticed, with the tail of his eye, a figure standing on the stairs leading to the first floor, witnessing the entire scene from the landing. They all turned, dropping the unconscious body of the sergeant on the floor.
The WRO soldier stood on the landing paralyzed, unable to pick his next move. Char acted faster and produced his pistol, firing half of his clip at him. The soldier crawled away, after being hit by a couple of bullets
"Fuck!" Ryan shouted, alarmed by the unexpected reaction of his comrade. And by the fact that he could distinctly see the bullets hitting the guard on the torso
"Here our cover gets blown away" Shane remarked
Char stood there still, his arm extended towards where the WRO soldier once stood "I'm… sorry…." He uttered
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Shane swore "What do we do now, Ryan?"
Ryan could not think of anything. They had been discovered sooner than expected. Char's impromptu reaction had only made things worse
"They are going to wait for us with their rifles cocked now!" Shane complained "And it's all thanks to you!" he scolded his comrade
"I've already told you I'm sorry, for fuck's sake!" Char replied, as the trio dragged themselves up
"Let's just burst in and hope that they duck under their desk" Ryan finally said
Shane looked at him in disbelief "What? Is that your plan?" he asked
"Tell me when you come up with something on your own, would you?"
"I did not kill him… Right?" Char nervously asked, almost begging
"Who cares?" Shane shook him "Better him than us. Right Ryan?"
Ryan did not reply. Getting out of that place alive was now something not to take for granted
'I hope you are right, sis' he thought addressing to the girl who had begged for him to pull this string 'Otherwise the only thing I will accomplish from this stunt will be me joining with you in the Lifestream sooner than expected!'
Once upstairs, they stumbled on the body of the soldier who had exposed them. Thankfully, he had collapsed in a pool of blood in the corridor, without managing to warn anyone. Unluckily, he might have been dead by now.
Ryan threw him a pitiful look as they past by, slowly starting to repent of his decision to start all this. But almost immediately, he was reminded on behalf of whom was he carrying out that mission and finally found the strength to carry on.
A door appeared in front of them. It was made of sand-papered glass and it occupied the entire height and width of the corridor, concealing their arrival to whomever might have stood on the other side
"No time for niceties" Ryan exclaimed as he drew his pistol "At three…" he instructed, as his comrades followed his moves pointing the handguns in front of them
"One… two… three!" as Ryan reached the bottom of the countdown, their guns erupted altogether, shuttering the glass in thousands of pieces
"No bulletproof glass" Shane commented, chuckling "Security is a no issue in this place"
"Don't be too cocky!" Ryan scolded him
At the end of the corridor stood a reception desk. Two men stood there, startled and quite terrified by the sudden appearance of the armed men and by the explosion of the dividing door
"Don't move a muscle!" Ryan shouted
"You'd better don't!" Char remarked
"Char!" Shane pointed out "Don't play 'High Noon' again, all right?"
Char puffed in contempt as he kept the two men under his sight
"Did someone of you had the bad idea of warning someone, or maybe activating the alarm?" Ryan growled at the two men, trying to look menacing and intimidating. He was feeling tense and scared as hell instead. He could feel the weight of his pistol augmenting as he wished his clip was actually empty, so as not to hurt anyone
"If we didn't, someone else is going to do that" the man behind the desk replied, as Shane reached for him, tying his hands together with some cable ties
"Seriously!" the man who had been forced to sit on the ground against the desk said "What are you going to pull off here, guys? Are you part of the coup as well? Did you plant the bomb at the garrison across town?"
"Shut up!" Ryan viciously ordered him, noticing that the two men appeared curious rather than frightened "Pull them up!" he ordered his companions
"What now, uh?" a man asked
"How many of you are still there?" Ryan asked as Char and Shane held the two WRO soldiers with their pistols thrust against their backs
"Us, two guards down there and the staff managing the antenna" he replied "If I were you, I would quit it right now. The rest of the security detachment will be here back soon if we fail to report"
Ryan decided it would have been the best to mark very clearly who was in charge in that situation. He lifted his arm and opened a wound on the WRO soldier's forehead
"We are going to the end with what we are about to do!" he warned him, as Shane held the man on his feet as he bent forward, moaning after receiving the blow "And you better go along with us if you wanna tell this story to your friends at the next round of beer at the bar in town!"
The group remained silent until they reached a two winged door. A small plaque told them that behind that door stood the communication centre
"Where are the handles?" Char asked
"It's locked" one of the two hostages explained "There is a code we have to enter!" he said, pointing at a small keypad next to the door
"Would you?" Shane, politely under the circumstances, asked
The man Shane was holding hostage was translated in front of the keypad. He dialled a four-digit sequence, sideways and with great discomfort as his hands were still tied on his back.
The wings slid open.
As he set foot inside the dark room, illuminated by faint neon lights and the light of the screen of the computers in front of which operators where monitoring the status of the equipment, Ryan shoot a volley on the ceiling.
The bullet ricocheted against the beams as a collective howl erupted from the desks
"Everybody against the wall over there!" Ryan ordered, waving his pistol "You two, with the rest of them!" he told the two hostages
"Shane!" he continued "Take care of security. Char, come on. Let's rely the message!"
As Shane lined all the staff against the wall and made them crouch, Ryan and Char took seats in front of a computer
"Give that to me!" Char told Ryan, as the latter pulled out an object from his bag. It was a small rectangular block, into which Char plugged a cable connecting it to the CPU
"Ok, he recognized the hard disk" Char explained his mate "Let's wait for the download"
"How long will it take?" Ryan nervously asked
"A couple of minutes…" Char answered
A couple of minutes. Ryan wondered if they could afford to wait two whole minutes
"Here it is" Char triumphantly exclaimed, as a chime came from the computer "Download completed!"
"Good! Now broadcast it!" Ryan pressed him
"Do you have the NP address?"
"There you go" Ryan tapped on the hard disk case, where a string of numbers had been written in white
"I said nobody move!" Shane shouted in the background, startling Char and Ryan as well
"All right back there?" Ryan turned to him
"Don't worry about me" Shane nervously replied "I'm fine"
"Good!" Ryan switched back to the screen of the computer, where a progression bar was slowly advancing towards the completion of the broadcasting "How about here?" he asked
"We've broadcasted just half of it…"
"How can we be sure it has been successfully delivered?"
"We can't!" Char replied "Sending a feed through a network port is nowhere like sending an e-mail!"
Ryan began sweating. There was the faintest chance that all their efforts might have turned out futile. Again, as he always did, he shook that feeling away from his head. They were so close it would have been nonsensical to have second thoughts right now
"And…" Char announced "…here it goes! Broadcasting complete!"
Ryan sighed in relief. They had finally done what they could. Now it was left to chance and they could only hope that the message actually reached its destination
"We're clear guys!" Ryan triumphantly exclaimed "Let's get out of here"
His satisfaction was short lived thought. A giant quake shook the building, from the basement to the upper floor. Debris and smoke started pouring from the ceiling as the lights flickered. Everyone was thrown on the ground as furniture and hardware fell from the desk, sprawling on the cold floor. The computer screen went momentarily black, before reappearing with several warning windows popped up
"Jeez! What happened?" Char asked
Ryan looked around him. He rushed outside to see if he could sneak a peek from the windows but, apparently, whoever caused that commotion was to be found on the front of the building. The windows of the corridor were place towards the side of the building facing directly towards the city wall
"Char!" he shouted as he ran back in the broadcasting room "See if you can find a security feed!"
"What about them?" Shane asked, pointing at the hostages
"Let them go"
"Are you sure?"
"Positively"
"Have you heard him?" Shane aggressively shouted "Get up and run outside, if you are fond of your lives!" he added, as he let a couple of shots in the air as to press the staff to abandon the premises
"Are there any weapon around we can use?" Ryan asked
"Do you plan to make a last stand?" Shane replied, visibly alarmed
"Of course not" he replied "But I could use something more effective than a pistol!"
"I'll go see what I can find!" Shane offered himself, as he walked away
"Bad news…" Char shook his head
"Can you be more specific?" Ryan enquired, as he looked at the screen in front of him
"They are going to surround the building!" Char commented, as the security feed revealed a motorcade of trucks bursting through the entrance of the opening where the building stood. Among them, and armoured combat vehicle was adjusting the elevation of its turret
"My God! Are they going to level the building?" Char asked, awed by the sight
"Probably they had just torn down the antenna with that thing!" Ryan commented, upon seeing a trail of smoke coming from the cannon of the armoured vehicle.
Another scene unveiled in front of them: the stream of former occupants of the building was running towards the WRO forces about to lay siege to the building. Surprisingly, the soldiers proceeded to apprehend the fleeing staff and put them on the ground, even resorting to violent manners. It looked like they were arresting a mob of urchins rather than providing rescue to their own colleagues
"They probably think we had an inside man and they want to leave nothing to chance" Char suggested
Ryan shook his head in amazement "I'm flattened but we aren't that cunning"
Steps echoed in the room as Shane had returned, holding three assault rifles in his arms "I found a nice stash of weapon in a room". He unveiled a set of grenades "Got a hold on a couple of these, too!" he added, hurling one of them at Ryan
"Might surely come in handy" Ryan pondered as he examined the high-yield explosive device in his hand. His musings where interrupted as another tremor ran through the basement of the building, and up through the main axis of the antenna. Thick black smoke began seeping from the shaft next to the room
"Damn it! They must have hit the fuel tanks!" Ryan grunted
"Fuel tanks? This is no power station!" Shane shook his head "Where the hell they keep those tanks?"
"Ever heard about backup generators?" Char poked fun at him
"Whatever" Shane shrugged "Please, Ryan. Don't tell me we planned to climb down the shaft to get out of here?" he asked then, pointing at the smoke-belching vent
"Of course" Ryan nodded, before walking to a red closet hung on the wall. The closet door opened after he dealt it a powerful fist with his bare hand. As the lid swung, a set of breathers appeared "But I think we should wear these first" he said, as he gave the devices away.
Another explosion could be heard, this time closer. The building and the walls were shaken one more time
"Damn it" Shane swore "This was inside!"
The WRO forces had probably entered the building
"Why did they have to let a bomb off? Haven't they seen that the door was open?" Char questioned
"Who knows?" Ryan asked, as he removed the vent, speaking through the breather "Maybe they want to scare us…"
Ryan then climbed through the hole in the wall were smoke was heavily pouring out, immediately followed by the other two.
The only other thing that accompanied them was the urge to know whether the message had reached its destination.