A/N- The second of the diversions is here. The next diversion chapter should be ready soon-ish.

Chapter 9c- Patrol Base Diversion

Natalia had a somewhat different plan to tackle her objectives from Ivan. She had assembled a group of soldiers and divided them into teams of between four and six and made sure that they were well equipped with tranquilizer guns and ammo and sleeping gas grenades and they had a large number of wormhole extraction devices on hand as well. In addition, they had managed to retrieve a number of bazookas to tackle enemy armoured vehicles.

She was aware that there were a number of objectives. Firstly, Natalia wanted to take on the guards at the patrol base, eliminating a potential thorn to the second objective of destroying the supply depot. Afterwards, she planned to send out a distress call which would draw in the nearby armoured column. When that was dealt with, Natalia wanted to call the enemy headquarters to get the enemy reinforcements from the bridge. It was a plan full of details and deceptive elements.

When the time came to carrying out the plan, things began to go wrong.

Natalia and her soldiers infiltrated the patrol base, communicating with each other using only hand signals. Approaching from multiple directions, they steadily cleared the area of guards, extracting them back to base. Soon, the entire base was under their control and Natalia signalled for the next part of the plan to begin.

Natalia found the radio in the patrol base and discovered that it was already set to call the enemy headquarters. Using the convenient circumstances to her advantage, Natalia called the enemy headquarters and asked them to send reinforcements, claiming that they were under heavy attack. The headquarters promptly dispatched reinforcements to the patrol base including an armoured column and a few companies of soldiers who were hastily made to get in a number of trucks. Several minutes later, the headquarters then decided to send additional forces by diverting soldiers from the bridge.

Natalia readied her soldiers and calmed them as the armoured column arrived. They waited until the enemy were within a few dozen metres of them before opening fire. The fury of the fire by Natalia and her soldiers forced the armoured column into making several mistakes. Bazooka fire made the crews of the armoured vehicles abandon most of their vehicles despite the damage being repairable and small arms fire wounded or killed about half of the accompanying enemy soldiers before they could get to some cover. Natalia's group appeared to be on the verge of an easy victory.

Yet the fate of the battle was not yet decided. At that moment, more enemy soldiers arrived from behind Natalia's group of soldiers and began to pin them down. Natalia knew that the diversion was now working too well and realised that the enemy headquarters had dispatched additional reinforcements in addition to the armoured column and the yet to arrive troops from the bridge.

A radio call from Roy came through, just as Natalia was sending some of her soldiers around the new reinforcements. "Natalia, I know that you'll probably have already realised this but the enemy have sent stronger than anticipated reinforcements to your location and the bridge reinforcements are not far away."

"Real helpful Roy, real helpful." Natalia muttered sarcastically to herself as she slammed through a warehouse door. She then ran through the building and opened another door on the other side of the warehouse. She stepped out a few metres away from the door and opened fire on the enemy soldiers, who had already been outflanked by her soldiers. Having been outflanked and outfought, the enemy reinforcements lost all semblance of organisation and will to fight. With some of the enemy dead and the rest knocked out, retreating or surrendering, Natalia ordered her soldiers to capture everything of value that could be moved and either extract them back to base or they would truck it back.

Substantial amounts of equipment and supplies were packed up and extracted or placed onto trucks including the one that they arrived in.

As Natalia and her group of soldiers began to depart, making their way to their mini fleet of stolen trucks, mortar shells momentarily peppered the area. The short bombardment killed one of Natalia's group but miraculously caused no other deaths. Many were injured though, with Natalia herself recieving a lacerated shoulder and abdomen thanks to some shrapnel striking her.

"Ow! This is hell!" Natalia growled in pain. She then barked orders to her group of soldiers, "Get us the hell out of here! We've done what we've come here to do."

Getting into the back of the trucks, Natalia and her group left the patrol base just as the reinforcements from the bridge began another mortar bombardment. They knew that when they returned to their base, the first destination for many of them would be the harbour hospital which had been set up when they first established the base. It was also where Harry was after he passed out from what appeared to be magical exhaustion.

Natalia and her group returned to the base and gingerly got out of the trucks. The majority of them, including Natalia went to the hospital to get treated for their injuries with some of the more seriously injured soldiers being carried by those who were not as seriously wounded. The few uninjured soldiers went to tell Roy and Kurt where Natalia and the rest of the soldiers were.

Natalia entered the hospital and saw John who rushed over to her as soon as he saw her. "Come on, let's get you onto a bed and treat these injuries." John said authoritatively as he guided her to a bed. He then became slightly apologetic, "I'm sorry. We're still settling up the surgery room so we're going to have to do surgeries in this not quite as sterile environment for the time being."

As Natalia got into the bed, she realised that the bed she was getting into was the same one that Harry had been in. She began to look around in alarm as there was no indication of where Harry was.

With her alarm increasing, Natalia asked John, "John, where's Harry?"

A/N- I couldn't resist having a cliffhanger. Harry will be in action again soon.

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed reading this chapter and please review.