Chapter 148: Cracked Mirror.
As the Vertibird landed back at her home base Dark Angel dropped down from the troop bay and she was met on the landing pad by a security team and a couple of scientists who were obviously very eager to get their hands on what she had brought back with her.
"Excellent work Dark Angel as always, I knew we could count on you to get the job done," one of the scientists said, it was a man she knew as Dr Phillips.
He was a man in his late fifties with greying black hair and deep green eyes but also a very pale complexion from spending most of his life underground.
She held out the case to him and he took it from her eagerly, resisting the urge to open it there and then, instead after he took it he and the science team scurried away back to their labs with the case in hand to begin their analysis.
That's when one of the security team a man even in his power armour Angel recognised as Major Haden stepped up before her.
"Come along, I want to hear your report," he said gesturing for her to follow him and as he turned the other members of the security team closed in on all sides of her, it was obvious they still didn't fully trust her but given how different she was to any of them that was kinda understandable.
Major Haden led them through to a briefing room and he gestured for Angel to hook her suit into a machine at the front of the room that looked like a cross between a chair and a computer with all the wires and bits looping around it.
Angel moved over and sat in the chair, hooking up various probes and leads to the ports on her suits so that they could download the data and only moments after an image popped up on a large display screen to their left, it was a view of what she had seen while on the ground.
"Alright Angel, standard SOPs talk us through the engagement and what you noticed," the Major said while tapping away at a computer.
Angel talked them through what she had seen and heard at the facility, with the Major pausing the feed from time to time to ask more in-depth questions about what they were seeing or hearing from her suit's sensors and cameras, she did her best to explain them to them and he seemed satisfied by her answer.
"Well it definitely seems like the Brotherhood have ramped up their operations all over since they collaborated with the Free Peoples, the Avians and now the Minutemen, they are getting bolder and this here proves it, plus with the intel we are getting back from our spies within the organisation says they have all but locked down the region of Boston, if this spreads it could be catastrophic," he said.
Major Haden turned to look at Angel who was still sitting looking up at the feed from her suit showing her hard work, she felt rather proud of what she had accomplished down there and seeing it again only bolstered that sense of accomplishment.
"Alright Angel we have another mission for you, this one is kind of a fastball so we're gonna need to deploy you quickly, you are going to be in the field for several days so grab gear and ammo for a possible prolonged engagement," he Major Haden said.
"Whats the mission sir?" she asked and he nodded approvingly.
"Thats what I like about you Angel, always right to the point, no fuss no mess, I wish I had ten more just like you despite what the other commanders bitch and moan about, alright listen up, we're sending you into Boston, there are a number of important targets here but most of all there are a series of Minutemen commanders we want you to take out, now normally we'd send you right for their HQ and their General but the place is extremly well fortified and with all the Free Peoples running about down there even you might have a problem given how effective these guys are in combat, we can't afford to lose you out there, so we are gonna send you after some softer targets, now don't mistake that for easy, these guys are gonna be heavily guarded but if anyone can get to them it's you, I'm transfering a file to your suit's combat computer, it contains picutres of each of them along with their last known whereabouts, there are eight of them in total each of them is responisble for a region within the Boston arena, with them removed it will throw the Minutemen high command into disarray which will allow our guys more breathing room to get their own missions done in the area, it also might throw some spanners into the works with regards to this alliance they got going on down there, there are also a list of targets of opertunity as well, primarily Brotherhood commanders but they are secondary only," he said as his fingers tapped away at the keyboard.
"When do I deploy?" Angel asked and once again the Major nodded approvingly.
"Right away, so head down to stores grab the gear that's been prepped for you and meet us at the landing pad, dismissed," the Major said.
Angel got to her feet and saluted before heading out of the room with a bubble of invisible excitement growing in her stomach, she was finally being set into the field for real, no more minor hit-and-run or smash-and-grab ops, this was the big time, she was being upgraded to Assassin level.
As the Major had said her gear was waiting for her at the stores, more magazines for her sniper rifle and for her battle rifle as well as a pack containing food and camping equipment for a prolonged time in the field, Angel signed for it all and swiftly geared up, she knew her first task on the ground would be to plan out her route and this meant setting up a camp at a central point as she really didn't want to be lugging all of this gear with her when she headed to the combat sites.
As she headed up to the landing pad there was the Major and he had one of the Signals team with him, who as she approached got a piece of equipment ready to inject new encryption codes into her comms system, with that done Angel boarded the waiting Vertibird and braced herself for the long flight to Boston.
As the pilot gave the one-minute warning Angel checked her gear over, everything was packed and ready to go, so as they neared the ground Angel kicked the drop rope out over the side, this would be a fast rope drop rather than a landing, this entire region was hostile territory and she couldn't afford to have the Vertibird hanging about and potentially drawing attention to her.
So once in position, Angel grabbed the rope and launched herself into the air feeling it sliding through her hands and legs as she slid towards the ground being buffeted by the downwash of the two powerful motors keeping the bird in the air.
As she hit the ground Angel brought her weapon up into the aim and looked around, the ground was clear around her and it was once again night as the flight had taken all day to complete which had thankfully given her the time to sleep en route.
The Vertibird pulled the fast rope back in and with a quick tilt of its engines, it turned and headed for home.
"Dark Angel to Dark Sky actual comms check over," Angel said into her comms.
"This is Dark Sky actual, reading you loud and clear Dark Angel, status over?" the comms operator replied and this time it was a different person from before.
"On the ground and preparing to move out to set up base camp over," Angel said.
"Roger that Dark Angel keep us in the loop and good luck out there Dark Sky over and out," the comms officer said and with that, the connection closed leaving Angel alone with her thoughts.
Angel called up her map of the region, the place was huge and there was a lot of ground to cover between targets, she figured was going to need two camps, one for a master base where she could store the majority of her gear in and would serve as a fall back location, then she could use her camping gear to establish a temporary FOB closer to her chosen target's location.
For the master base, she was going to need a place she could easily secure to make it raid-proof so no one could steal her shit.
Looking carefully over the map she found what she thought would be a perfect spot, it was in the downtown region of the city where there were a ton of skyscrapers, these high rises would give her a bird's eye view of the surrounding area while at the same time making it incredibly dangerous and tricky for anyone to reach her, plus the Ghoul and supermutant infested streets would help.
So getting her bearings Angel set off in the direction of the city of Boston, she knew she was going to have to be real careful herself in there as there were some rather big independent human settlements not to mention with this alliance going on there was a good chance there would be soldiers moving about near them.
Which as it happened was exactly what she saw as she came close to the place the locals called Diamond City.
There seemed to be Brotherhood soldiers trading with the locals and she could see their obvious power armoured soldiers guarding a landed Vertibird as squires moved boxes to and from the city.
Angel was tempted to see if she could get close enough to plant a bomb on the bird so that they'd take it back to their base where she would detonate it above them to send a clear message, but the more that she thought about it the more she felt it would be better to remain in the shadows as she didn't want them hunting for her too early on.
So Angel silently slipped passed them and moved on to the tower she had picked out, now it did seem that the tower did have somewhat of a Supermutant infestation but that was pretty par the course for the buildings around here, so she was going to have to do some house cleaning.
"Where the fuck is it!? Me no see fucking thing!" one of the super mutants yelled to its companions as they ran from room to room desperately searching for the figure that had just sent a whole group of them sailing head first out of a hundred-story window into the pavement far below.
Angel stood with her back to a wall letting her cloaking tech do its job, she stood with a pair of suppressed pistols in her hands, they had been in her loadout for this job so command had obviously figured that she would be doing a lot of close quarters fighting and as per usual they had been right.
As two of the large mutants charged past her Angel stepped forward away from the wall and lowered her pistols to fire them into the backs of the closest mutant's knees sending it sprawling forward with a scream as dark green blood spurted out from the wounds.
Before its companion could move Angel was already in the air diving forwards so that her pistols were near point blank when she fired into both of its eye sockets at the same time taking the entire back of its head off before rolling out of the dive and firing a single round into the side of the screaming mutant's head silencing it.
She instantly heard the thunderous footfalls of the mutants remaining companions converging on her so she quickly pressed herself into a gap between two bookcases and stood perfectly still.
The group of about six mutants burst into the room and instantly saw their two companions dead in the middle of the floor, "Where is it!! Where it hide!?" one of the mutants yelled and by the size of it the thing was the one in charge.
Angel stepped out into the middle of the group letting her cloak do its work, "Right fucking here," she said before unleashing the psychokinetic energy that she had been building up since the fight started in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree blast wave that sent the entire group flying off their feet and into the walls.
Even before their bodies had finished falling to the ground Angel was moving, twisting her body through a very practised series of movements that allowed her to both acquire targets with both pistols and fire at them accurately which was not easy to do holding two guns as it wasn't like it was in the holovids, it not only took focus but incredible accuracy, also being able to bend the bullets using a hit of psychokinisis didn't hurt either.
Not a single one of the mutants managed to even raise themselves into a sitting position before one of Angel's bullets found its mark in their skulls, as the final one hit the ground dead she simply swapped out the magazines and headed for the door leaving the bodies where they lay, they would serve as a warning to any stupid enough to climb this building.
As she finally reached the penthouse suite of the building she was surprised to find that it was mostly intact which was a rarity considering most of the other floors had been pretty heavily damaged, but this place still even had some of its original bulletproof windows.
There was a safe room in the large penthouse and it had armoured doors that could only be locked and unlocked from the inside or with a very special key which she found a copy of lying on one of the desks inside the large room, so this was going to be her command centre from now on.
Once she'd unpacked her gear Angel ran through her checklist making sure her much smaller travel bag would be packed for the first mission, her first target was a Minutemen commander by the name of Emmet Granger.
As she looked over the document relating to him complete with pictures she couldn't help but think of the chaos this was going to sow in their ranks, honestly she did feel a little sorry for them and kinda bad about it.
After all these guys weren't some all-conquering army hell-bent on sweeping across the wastes, they were just a bunch of farmers who wanted to protect their homes from raiders and mutants while living peacefully, wasn't that what everyone wanted?
Well, whatever the reason they had obviously chosen the wrong side in this fight and now it was her job to teach them the errors of their ways and she was going to carry out her duties to the letter.
So once she was packed up and ready to go she took one last look over the documents, according to the brief on this guy he was the commander of a group to the North that protected the farms in the area, their base of operations to rapidly respond to any of the nearby settlements call for aid was an old abandoned factory, thankfully there was a picture and by the looks of it, there were some rather nice large windows should make sniping rather easy.
So with that she was off, it was a cool five kilometres to the target zone so she decided to do it at a jog, deactivating her cloak to ensure that it would have plenty of power should she really need it.
Once she reached the area where the factory was located she looked around for a suitable spot to set up, it didn't take her long to find one in the form of an old radio mast set up.
At the very top of the mast was a maintenance platform where an engineer could easily access the small dishes, so with her rifle on her back she climbed up the massive ladder right to the very top feeling the tower swaying gently in the winds as they blew over the grounds far below her.
Angel took her .50 rifle from her shoulder and set it up on its bipod, she checked that the magazine was secure and that there was now a round in the chamber before she laid down behind it and activated her cloaking systems, laid still like this they would barely use any power as the suit was essentially in lurk mode which meant that she could lay here for days without it using near one per cent of the total capacity.
Once she was set up Angel dialled in the scope for the range using the laser range finder to give her an accurate distance, she also used another tool to measure the wind speed so that she could adjust for the flight time and curve of the bullet, the target was nearly a thousand meters away and there was a lot that could happen in that distance.
Angel watched through her scope allowing the world around her to fade away until it became nothing more than the reticle before her eye, the sounds, sensations, feelings everything simply faded away to nothing more than a low background noise, the loudest sounds now for her was the sounds of her beating heart and her breathing both of which needed to be controlled perfectly in order for her to make a shot like this.
That's when she saw him.
Emmet was dressed in the standard fatigue uniform of the Minutemen, the only thing that really gave him away from the others was the fact that he tended to wear a red beret like most of the Minutemen commanders while all the other rank-and-file soldiers either wore duster coat and cowboy hat combos or fatigues and black berets.
As she watched him Emmet was walking around with his soldiers, it seemed that he was a man who was not above getting stuck into a menial job himself as she watched him he carried ammo crates, moved wounded men to the hospital even helped clean up blood in the surgery.
He was as much a leader as these men could ever hope to have really, it was going to be a pity to take him away from them, Angel squeezed the trigger.
The rifle gave a deep growl that was muffled by the massive suppressor on the tip of the barrel, the round flew clear with a belch of smoke and began its flight towards the unsuspecting man in her scope reticle which after only a few beats of her heart had passed dropped to the floor minus his head.
As she watched Emmet's beret spinning through the air Angel let out the breath she'd been holding before pressing her comms pressel, "Dark Angel to Dark Sky actual come in over," she said softly.
There was a brief pause before the operator came on.
"Go ahead Dark Angel," they said.
"Cosair is down, I repeat Cosair is down, over," she said.
"Roger that Dark Angel confirming Cosair is down, good work, keep us apprised of your progress, Dark Sky actual over and out," the operator said.
Even as the Minutemen soldiers began to scramble to figure out what in the name of flying fuck had just happened to their commander Angel was already at the bottom of the tower having taken the quick way down thanks to her collapsable grappling hook and runner line combo allowing her to fast rope down before she simply pressed a button and collapsed the hook so she could retrieve it.
Before they had even worked out what the hell had happened Angel was already halfway back to her home base, that was one down and seven left to go, she couldn't rush this job it was going to be a slow process and she knew that, so she had to minimise the risks to herself or to being discovered now it was about to become a waiting game.
As she reached home base Angel couldn't help but think about the ramifications of what she had just done, she imagined the Minutemen troops running around in a frenzy trying to locate an assassin who was no longer present and trying to figure out what to do without a commander.
She knew that they had a chain of command that would eventually pick up the slack but that would take a bit of time.
As she dropped her gear in her safe room she sat down on her bedroll and opened up some of her rations while she began to scroll through the remainder of the documents on the other targets.
As she ate she looked primarily at the locations of the list of commanders, she didn't want the Minutemen to be able to figure out where the attacks were being launched from as she knew that despite being a malita they were far from stupid people.
It took a lot of determination and skill to not only organise but effectively run a well-organised militia but during these times when resources were scarce it took even more skill to pull off and she had to respect them for that.
As much as the rank-and-file soldiers of the Enclave were taught to despise their enemies as traitors of the USA and enemies of freedom, Angel did not hate the Minutemen, they were simply farmers and simple people who had banded together to protect themselves, they were not some conquering army hell-bent on domination, they simply wanted to live in peace and to drive the raiders out of their lands so that they would be safe.
This in her opinion was an admirable goal really, after all wasn't the Enclave's goal to make the country safe again so that democracy and freedom could once again return to it under their rule?
Or that's what she had been taught since she'd joined the program.
Now the Brotherhood and the Free Peoples were a totally different matter in her mind.
The Brotherhood as far as she was concerned were terrorists, hoarding technology they deemed to be valuable or dangerous while making themselves more powerful by using it, they were as far as she was concerned the enemies of democracy and of freedom.
As the tale went they had once been the US military or the remnants of it that survived the great war, where they should have joined the Enclave and fought side by side to rebuild the great nation they instead rebelled against their leaders and split off to follow their own path, they were traitors plain and simple.
Now the real oddballs in this whole equation were the Free Peoples, they were a real wild card as far as Angel was concerned.
They seemed to be made up of many different people and species and from what she had learned they were led by a pair of traitors to the Enclave though she really didn't know all that much about them only that they were really dangerous.
She knew that they had been responsible for many attacks on Enclave facilities and on Enclave-controlled towns.
The fact that they were not only so efficient at what they did but that they had somehow managed to broker a peace treaty between all the major powers in the area was nothing short of miraculous.
It was a feat that impressed Angel no end because by rights all of these groups should hate each other's guts, but somehow the Free Peoples had swept in and united them together under their banner.
She couldn't help but wonder how they had achieved such a thing, what had they offered in exchange for their co-operation?
But whatever it was it must have been very enticing because they now had all of the major players in the area working together and that got Angel thinking.
How easy would it be to break this union apart?
She knew that was the end goal of the Enclave here was to break up this little alliance and have the major players go back to fighting one another but surely it would be a better option if they simply took control of it instead?
Surely it would be in the Enclave's best interest to simply assume control of the alliance because with them stabilising the region it would make it far easier to reinstate democracy, they could then hold it up as an example to the other regions of what they could have if only they let the Enclave govern them.
Angel sighed heavily, she didn't understand the command's reasoning but then it wasn't her job to understand, it was her job to carry out orders and make people disappear.
Once again turning back to her list as she took another bite of her rations she selected two targets from it.
She knew that she couldn't take her sweet time and simply bump off one every day or so because the Minutemen would rapidly get wise to what was going on, they would rapidly figure out that someone was targeting their field commanders and would either increase their security or worse recall them to their HQ where getting to them would be an absolute nightmare, as that place was apparently not just crawling with Minutemen but Free Peoples and Brotherhood as well.
Angel didn't think picking a fight with the Free Peoples was a wise decision right now, she did not know enough about their tactical strengths or weaknesses to be able to formulate a plan of attack, she knew that they had a wide array of skill sets available to them from stealth, to demolition, to espionage and then they had all of those loyal Deathclaws to boot.
She still wondered how the hell they had managed to tame those creatures without the aid of control devices.
She'd heard of Enclave experiments that tried to achieve the same thing and those had mixed results at best, but somehow the Free Peoples had managed to pull it off without any kind of constraints.
Then there were all the other abominations they had in their ranks, species that had no business in civilized human society but somehow worked alongside these people as if it was the most natural thing in the world to them.
Angel shakes it off and focuses on the task in hand, two targets stand out as perfect for tomorrow's hits, one codenamed Rook and the other Leviathan.
Rook is a middle-aged white-skinned woman, she has the look of a grizzled veteran with a look of fierce determination in her dark eyes, and a thick ponytail of dark curly black hair cascading down her shoulders from under her beret in the picture.
She is in charge of the minutemen's Logistical procurement team, which is a fancy name for scavengers in Angel's approximation.
According to the intel as part of the alliance they have going on with the Avians and Brotherhood they have been allowed to send out a joint team made up of both to look for something at an underground site approximately 12k from her current location.
Though intel on what they might be looking for is sketchy what they do know is that they seem to have found it because Rook's team has been dispatched to set up a transport and retrieval operation on the surface nearby.
Rook's real name is Ellen Williams.
Then there is Leviathan.
He is a black man in his mid-forties, he is in charge of the Minutemen's artillery network which seems to be in the middle of expanding throughout the region.
According to the intelligence reports their goal is to create an artillery network that can hit anywhere in the entire region of Boston at a moment's notice, the point is so that troops in the field can simply call in a strike to drive out an entrenched raider position or for a settlement under attack to call in a strike to thin out their attackers before the main bulk of the Minutemen troops arrive.
It's a pretty sound plan in Angel's approximation and it would be an incredible tactical asset to be in possession of.
She figures that while on this job she may just look into how much coverage this artillery network has and what kind of accuracy it can produce, as well as how they call the strikes in as there may be a way for her to hijack it and trick the bombardiers running it into shelling their own guys or any other target that she could designate.
This could have a potential twofold effect, it could cripple the trust the Minutemen have in the reliability of the system but also potentially take out a target for her allowing her a free kill that the Minutemen would chalk up to an accident rather than assign to some mysterious assassin targeting their command structure, it would certainly buy her some more time before they start hunting her full on.
With a plan forming in her mind's eye Angel decides to get some sleep, it's going to be a busy day tomorrow and she has a lot of ground to cover so she was going to need to be up bright and early to start moving, so she digs down into her bed roll and with a few last thoughts of her mission she lets sleep claim her.
Her dreams are unusual though, they feel just like when she touched that odd crystal, like she is riding along inside the head of another, seeing through their eyes, only this time it is not the person who seems to talk to Deathclaws, but another person altogether but oddly they seem to be in the same place as him as she recognises the scenery.
There are happy people everywhere the person looks and not just humans either but big Aligator-like creatures wandering around talking to humans.
She wonders if this is one of the bases of the Free Peoples.
But if so where is it and how is it that she can see into it like this?
Those questions go unanswered as the dream fades and leaves her with more questions than answers as she awakens to the alarm she'd set to wake her just before dawn.
Angel stretched her muscles and got herself dressed before picking up a day's worth of rations and checking her gear over though as she did her mind kept wandering back to her odd dreams, she couldn't help but wonder if they were more than that.
Once again shaking off those odd lingering doubts Angel locked up her safehouse and once again she set off into the wastes heading for the location of her first target of the day, the Rook.
The terrain was pretty easy going thanks to most of it being urban sprawl, she walked through Ghoul-infested streets with all the presence of a shadow in the midday sun.
She walked right past them as if she were nothing more than a whisper in the wind, they were never aware of her presence and never even batted a rotted eyelid at her movements among them.
Soon enough she came on what appeared to be evidence of either the Minutemen or the alliance's presence.
There were bodies littering the streets, piles of them.
it seemed that the alliance troops had chewed through an army of Ghouls like they were little more than toy soldiers in a child's game.
Angel followed the trail of dead Ghous and very soon it led her to a valley that contained exactly what she was seeking, the Minutemen's camp.
The Minutemen seemed to have set up their camp near the entrance to an underground Railway network, they also seemed to be using some kind of refurbished towing train to bring large crates up out of the tunnels though given that they were sealed up Angel couldn't see what was inside of them.
As she watched a Vertibird clattered overhead and hovered above the camp where it lowered a large cargo net to the ground.
The troops rapidly began to move the crates into the net securing them with straps and lines until it was full and allowing the Vertibird to airlift whatever was inside back to its base which she guessed was the HQ they referred to as the Fort.
Angel counted the troops on the ground and realised there was rather a sizable contingent here but then moving all those crates probably took quite a lot of manpower so that made sense.
Looking around herself she found the ideal spot to set up and observe them from the rooftop of a nearby garage, it gave a good view and a quick escape line back into the town as she knew she was going to have to bug out rather quickly after she fired this shot.
Angel climbed up to the roof using a broken ladder and her grappling gear to hoist her up, once up there she positioned herself right between a pair of broken-down old air conditioners that gave her a view right down into the valley about five hundred meters away from her.
It was a pretty steep shot to make but the distance helped to negate most of the issue, though the angle was gonna be kinda tricky.
Angel set her large rifle down on its bipod and then angled it downwards so she could look through the scope down into the camp.
The place was a hive of activity with troops in fatigues running around all over the place loading and unloading the crates that were being brought up from underground.
Right at the centre of the camp was a series of large tents, that was going to be where her target was located now all she had to do was identify them.
Switching the scope over to thermal imaging she was able to see right through the thick canvas and count how many people were inside of each one, though straight away she got the feeling she'd found her woman as among the large shapes was a singular small one in the centre tent, if she were a betting woman Angel would put caps on that being the Rook.
Angel begins to run through her breathing exercises as she keeps her scope planted on the small shape in the centre tent, she keeps her eye glued on the flap of the tent in the hope that someone will open it and give her a glimpse inside to confirm her suspicion of the small thermal shape being her target.
Eventually after what felt like hours but was more likely mere minutes a soldier comes out of the tent carrying a clipboard and in that brief moment that the tent flap is lifted for him to leave Angel's suspicions are confirmed.
Taking deep slow breaths Angel lines up her crosshair on the centre of the thermal mass, this time given that she cannot see the definition of her target she knows she has to play it safe and go for a centre mass shot, no head shots this time but given the size of the round it shouldn't be a problem, so with one last deep breath, Angel squeezes the trigger and the suppressed rifle coughs.