An Unwinnable War
Episode 6 - Night Raid
March 20, 1977
10 Minutes after Plan B was chosen
"Damn the White Fang, those holier-than-thou fuckers!"
- Beacon CIDG Paramilitaryman's helmet, 1977.
Foreword from (ex-)Lt. Miller;
"I'm terrible at recounting things, even with my grasp of the English language. Sorry if you're expecting something else. I'm just really bad at writing. Now, I was told to write this just to give a foreword if people were expecting a truly complex beginning. But, to summarize, our mission started off simple: Drive off the White Fang. Now, you know that simply giving leaflets advising them to turn in lest being annihilated utterly failed. So, instead, we turned towards the logical choice - that being to kill the White Fang slowly but painfully."
"I didn't actually participate in... well, the construction of punji traps to get those Whiskey Foxtrot patrols immobilized. I did see the results, though. Not pretty, but hey. I was just tasked with shooting anyone who came to rescue the guys trapped in a ditch. And leave them to bleed. Not helping them would be the fact that the Ohio guy dug the ditches deep. And loaded them with Punjis. Ow. And since they were effectively trapped there, they'd be continuously in despair, leaving them to spread negativity. It was cruel, but God it was funny. I'll say that."
"Though, we got Zener's 26th ID to jury-rig some speakers, fly 'em in to deliver to us, and let us play Ghost Tape No. 10 at their sorry asses. I think he was onboard the heli that flew in the speakers. Zener was talented at fixing and rigging microphones and audio devices together. Honestly, I'm just genuinely surprised that he chose to be a door gunner - or annoyed that he got voluntold to be a door gunner."
"But I think the worst or best part - depending on your view - was that this essentially gave our existence away to the WF's Vale Branch. Not to the public itself, but to the Vale Cell. They thought we were mercenaries. Mercs. For crying out loud! Hell, the only reason they knew about us was the aftermath of the operation. That Blake Girl who became one of the best recon spotters in all of MAC-NE? Yeah, she was with the White Fang at this time. And she had been sent to find the outpost after it suddenly died after reporting Grimm. Ha!"
"This whole operation started before she defected and went to school, so killing a future student might have annoyed the Lieutenant Colonel. The bloke with the hot coffee mug. I still can't believe that ex-terrorists go to school, though."
Scott Miller - Northwestern Valean Forests - March 20, 1977 (Earth Years) - 1:31 AM (Earth Time)
After I ran back to get the storage crate, I dragged it all the way to the campsite where the team was waiting. Hopea had informed the rest of the team that we had chosen Plan B since most of the leaflets did not work. With it, I unveiled a uniform that fit her. And I grabbed a C4 charge as we were planning to blow up the White Fang. I handed C4 charges to each and every member of the LRRP patrol. We all had the bombs set to a timer approximately set to three minutes at the very least. And we were all ready to use them.
After we prepared for Plan B, I decided to do the briefing. It went something along like the following; "Alright, first, we eliminate the outer White Fang patrols either by simply shooting them or by simply letting them fall into punjis," That was the basic constituent, the part one, if you may. "Then we enter from within and contact the 26th to get them to blast the Ghost Tape. Once that's completed, we plant the charges and watch the fireworks. And then, we leave them to the Grimm." And that was the second part. Psychological Warfare. Though we didn't have enough time to make it complicated.
We had flown in a jury-rigged speaker made to be as distorted and spooky as possible to play Ghost Tape 10. How the helicopter was silent enough to deliver that? I have no idea. But, as soon as we got the speakers set up and in a man-portable state too. We just had to set it to really loud, let it play the noises, and watch as they panic when we get to work smearing their shit in blood.
Now, it was here where Alexander brought up a question. "How do we know the Grimm are going to arrive here anyway?" He asked. I was pretty sure he was just as uncertain of the plan as everyone else. But, thankfully, Hopea had an answer to that. Rather conveniently, too.
"Grimm are attracted to Negativity. And this forest is often full of them. The only reason we didn't encounter them for the past two days is that they were attacking the mining camp we worked at." And there, Alexander nodded. "The same one we rescued y'all from, right?" He asked, with Hopea nodding in response.
"The Grimm usually attack often once a month, but that one was way too big. And it was all thanks to that new manager. Honestly? To see him getting snatched by a Nevermore was funny." She smirked, but her face straightened when they went back to discussing the plan. "The point is, the more negativity we can ramp up, the Grimm get attracted. And with their supplies detonated... Well, what's there left?" She smiled.
"You've got a point there," Alexander added. "Alright. I'm in. Let's do this."
And it was there where the team split up. "Okay, here's how we do this. We split up into two man teams, and we each take out the patrols. Then, once we're done, two of the teams can sneak in and kill those inside the compound. Make sure to splatter everything with blood too. And draw some ominous messages." My plan was pretty simple. And the last part was more just me trying to take advantage of the local wildlife.
"Eddie, you're with me." I got Eddie and placed him into my team, while I looked at Hopea and Alexander. "Hopea. Alexander. You guys stay together." I looked towards Spencer and Daniel. "Daniel. Spencer. Both of you lads stay with each other. Oh, and by the way, leave the grenade launcher and machine gun. You have HDMs for a reason." I stressed the last part. The pistols issued to our team had integral suppressors. To demonstrate that to the team, I grabbed an HDM and loaded it.
"Use these. They'll dampen the noise so that we can do our job easier." I noted. While we would normally have other US-issue pistols, the fact that logistics HAD to give us HDMs showed that we were basically out of luck. To think that our pistols would only be .22 LR.
"Do we really have to use .22?" Eddie complained, taking his HDM out of the holster and inspecting the magazine. I couldn't blame him. We really were just out of luck.
"Yes, Ed." I sighed. I couldn't bring myself to yell at him, so I just calmly told him 'yep' and left it at that. "But at the very least we have suppressed weapons." I conceded. Ed reluctantly nodded. With that, the rest of the team had agreed on it. Even if some grumbled about the .22 LR pistols. Though, Hopea looked the most skeptical. And at the time, she had a valid argument.
"Why are we using .22 LR against them? They surely have Aura. Yes, we'll be taking them by surprise, but still, how will this penetrate aura?" At the time, I didn't know the effect that native American ammunition had on Remnant Aura, which effectively meant that I was very cautious about alerting them at the time. Though I knew that Aura was turned off most of the time, I wasn't aware of how our bullets effectively ignored them.
My response to Hopea's Question?
"We'll have to take them down when their Aura is out," I pulled back the slide on the HDM.
After that, the team actually began to split up. Eddie followed close behind me as I tried my best to sneak through the woods with a silenced pistol and a rifle that was unsilenced. Eddie, meanwhile, was trying his best to not end up shooting me in the back of the head with the HDM. I stopped for a moment and turned towards Eddie.
The reason why? I had just spotted two of the White Fang fuckers, one of whom was nearing a punji hole.
"Don't." I motioned for him to stop.
He nodded and instead took out his AKR to observe carefully, with me watching from the sidelines as the poor, daft, and idiotic fucker walked into the oldest trick in Vietnam.
"Wait for it... Wait for it..." I mumbled. The guy was foolish enough to let his guard down as Eddie lined up for a shot on his partner in case he fell. And to be fair so did I. Just with a suppressed pistol-
One of the men fell into a punji hole, and on reflex, I fired the HDM at the other person's head, instantly killing him with a quick headshot. And after that? Well, I rushed towards the punji hole to see who was in it. Eddie didn't get a chance to fire, so he was a little irked. But nonetheless, we were still going to check on the hole.
And what do you know? One White Fang bastard stuck in a punji trap, with all of his arms and legs skewered by at least one spike. I can't go into details as I'd rather not remember, but, as far as I can tell, he could NOT walk at all.
Perfectly fine to leave him there then. At least, not without depriving him of something to fight with. With a swoop, I ducked down and grabbed his AKR. And, well, thanks to being immobilized in the punji hole, he practically had no way of resisting. The look in his eyes of sheer terror as he realized what was happening made me shiver.
Sure, I could make a case of how I was doing my job and how they were irredeemable supremacists, but still. There was a reason I resorted to simple "plant-explosives-and-run" plans after this operation. Just so I didn't have to see shit like this again.
I grabbed the magazine of the AKR and tossed it to Eddie, then pulling the charging handle and getting the unspent cartridge out. At the time, I wanted to examine the bullet later to see if it actually was like an L1A1 and Eddie wasn't lying. Though, when I did get to testing it, the following happened; When fired out of an L1A1 - of Earth - the weapon fired smoothly. So, that proved that it was like an L1A1.
"Leave him." I told Eddie. "Let's just go."
Eddie could only nod as he walked into the White Fang base with me. I gave the hole where the man impaled himself one more look before I turned my head around and continued my straightforward path towards the White Fang camp's insides. I wondered why we dropped the leaflets during night time, looking back at it. When I did ask about it, most people shrugged and said that it was the first option that wasn't launching an assault which could have gone bad.
After all, just ask the United States Army for the Battle of Ia Drang, really.
"Bloody ignorant fucks..." Were all I mumbled to myself before I continued on my way to the base. What else was I supposed to say? That they were competent? Give me a fucking break here.
Still, undeterred, and with no way of stopping when it was getting started - okay that sounded weird in hindsight - I just kept my pathways unchanged. And with Eddie behind me, we had approached a door where the White Fang kept their officers. At the time, I didn't know that, but hey, I was just really lucky.
Backing up to the walls near the doorway, I held my HDM up with one hand while moving the other to the doorknob.
I gently open the door.
Greeting me was a White Fang officer looking over some documents with three other buddies. This felt more like one of those stealth games you'd play on your scroll rather than an actual stealth operation. And I say this in hindsight.
And as that door finally opened and the bastards bothered to turn their heads to the sound of them getting in, two shots - suppressed, mind you - rang out and the officer and one of his bodyguards went down with a single shot. There were the two remaining in the room, and I didn't have time to actually align my aim to their head unlike with the first two so...
A gunshot to the stomach had got one of the guys, with him slumping to the floor. As for the other guys, I expended all of my shots at him. The previous guy had a single gunshot wound to the stomach. The one I expended all of my last ones on? Chest area. I'm no autopsy guy, but I'm fairly certain that a collapsed lung and a shot to the heart is enough to get 'em.
While I was reloading my gun, Eddie followed from the door, AKR trained. He aimed at the guy with at least a single bullet in his stomach. He was still breathing, and that was a problem for Eddie.
Eddie raised his AKR to fire, but I had to lower the barrel myself by pushing it down. Turning to him, I shook my head, and then turned back to the crippled man.
I shot him square in the chest, and put in another bullet for good measure.
And he stopped breathing.
"I'd have let you kill 'em, Ed. But, suppressed weapons are needed..." I lamented, with Eddie looking solemn and biting his lip, but agreeing. "Alright, but let me get a kill." He said, putting his rifle on his shoulder and taking out the HDM pistol.
"When I joined LRRP, I didn't expect to fight animal terrorists..." Eddie groaned, pulling the slide on his pistol. "But, hey, anything goes." He conceded.
I went over to the papers he and his buddies were looking at before I shot them dead.
I didn't have time to review the papers, so I just grabbed them and stuffed them into my LCE after I rolled them onto a round roll, almost akin to a burrito.
"Found some papers. Might be important." I noted, before I finished cleaning up the table and everything in the office. "Find anything, Ed?" I asked, turning my head behind. Eddie was busy scouring through papers as well.
"Looked through some of the papers left 'ere." Eddie turned around, holding a pair of important-looking documents and a map. "These detail troop movements, probably outdated, and current safehouses in use by the White Fang." He walked over to my table and set them down, then began pointing at the parts of the documents.
"There's a White Fang base here," he pointed north to a circle with an X crossed over it, "A supply base over here," pointing south, he circled a location with the words "Arms Depot" on it. "And there's a vehicle outpost located... right here." He moved his pointing finger to a marked X over down southwest. He then rolled up the map and looked at me.
"Get this back to Command?"
"Get this back to Command." I nodded.
Eddie stuffed the maps inside his LCE and we set on getting to their supplies. That is, if we found them, of course. The map we found only detailed the other outposts, not exactly the rest of the base itself. That matter was something else entirely apparently, as some of these dickwads didn't have map on their bodies.
At least, that was what I thought back then, because it turns out the bastards did have a map. But at the time, I was hurrying up to do a boom-boom.
After we got out of the office, we tried our best not to get spotted. Because as it turns out, these bastards still have night vision. I don't approve of animal jokes, but really? Did they have to send the Dog faunus out to patrol the areas?
We tried our best to avoid having to kill him. Unfortunately, he had gotten far too close to actually finding us. So, my defense?
Eddie put a bullet in his brain. And since there was barely anyone patrolling the insides of the base - poor idiots - Eddie had just effectively screwed over the entire security apparatus of the inside of the base.
I only knew this in hindsight though, because I made a big deal to him about hiding the bodies.
"Ed! Hide the fucking body!" I yelled, dragging the body off.
"Fine." Ed grumbled, before he grabbed the other arm of the guy.
We placed the body next to some bushes, hoping that nobody would find the guy.
I mean, yes, nobody did. But I didn't think about that, so I was just internally fearing for my life and I was just afraid that, well, this operation would be fucked.
Look, I have confidence issues, okay?
I just had fears that this mission was going to end in a total clusterfuck. I heard stories of MAC-V SOG operations going wrong because Charlie spotted them and destroyed their helicopter upon landing.
I was not going to have that.
But regardless, other than that the walk through the base - without a map, mind you - was mostly quiet after that. I can't exactly remember most of the details off the top of my head, so I'll skip straight to the point.
We finally arrived at the armory where the guns were all stored at. Getting in there? Painfully easy, as it turns out. White Fang members and trying to secure their supplies is an incompatible mix. As demonstrated by further operations by MAC-NE after this. Though, I'm pretty sure that just the Vale Branch were the ones who were actually incompetent.
Regardless, when we arrived there, I opened the door and walked slowly with my pistol in hand. And when I had opened the door there was nobdy in there. Not even some guard who tried to prevent people from taking the guns and leaving.
Then, when we opened up the crates, I honestly found myself surprised at what we found. At the time, I didn't know this, but most of the weapons here were of Remnant, which meant they behaved differently compared to your normal 5.56 rifle.
The first crate I opened contained MC8s. Machine Carbine, Model 8. Atlesian Police standard-issue. It had a magazine integrated into its grip. Most of the MC8s I saw there had 20-round magazines, but there were 40-round models.
I had taken one and inspected it.
"Check this out, Ed." I spoke, holding one up to him. "Think they're better than the M10s?" I spoke out. Ed had taken one of the MC8s and was already inspecting it. He decided to keep it alongside the HDM. I did, too.
"I'm keepin' it. It looks like a valuable gun." Ed said, and I agreed. The rest of the weapons, though? Well... Again, at the time, I didn't know what these were. I'm just listing these off from what I remember.
The second and third crates we had opened had AKR rifles. Ed would have gotten magazines from them, but that would've been too time consuming, so we just let them be.
The fourth crates opened contained AP-1s. Atlesian Pistol, Model 1. They looked like an M1911, but far weirder. Of course, seeing as I could carry an HDM and an M16 around, I grabbed an AP-1 as well.
The following was what I once told myself: "These are some weird 1911s." when I stuffed two on my uniform through my pockets. They barely fit, of course, but they still held on.
The fifth crate held some AA-12 shotguns. At the time, I didn't have an interest in the shotguns. But when we got AA-12s in other operations? The LRRP really liked them. At least, the other LRRP teams. I was just too ignorant at the time.
I proceeded to put an explosive charge on the crates. I already got an MC8 and two AP-1s, but I didn't have the space for any other guns, and thus I decided to do my job and put explosives there. I stashed it in the AKR crate, and I prepared the C4. I had put it on a five-minute timer. It was a rather crude one, that just had a detonator rigged to a timer that automatically pressed the detonator after a timer.
Fun fact; Ed had the same improv'd timer on the C4 he was using. And he placed it on the AA-12 crate, and set the timer to five minutes. Just like my C4.
"Charges planted." I spoke, and Eddie's response was a resounding "Affirmative." and that was it, we had finally planted our C4 charges onto the crates.
"Right, now that we're done with that, let's get to the RV."
"Alright then, just be sure not to fight the White Fang on the way." Eddie responded, grabbing his AKR.
"Oi. Don't jinx us, we're going to die if you compromise us like that."
"Right, right. Sorry about that." He shrugged, with my eyes squinting as I looked at him with the expression comparable to the words 'Don't fuck this up'.
"Let's go, then, Ed." I finished.
Eddie nodded. "Got it."
The RV was our original encampment, only with us done with our objective, we had the time to double time it through our original way, trying to avoid the White Fang while we were going back to the RV.
Now, at the time I had double-timed it because I feared that there were more White Fang in the base. But as I said quite earlier, the White Fang's internal base security was terrible, with most of their patrols focused on the outside perimeter of the base.
And on the note of the outer perimeter, when I had double-timed it back, I stopped to check on the guy who had been left inside the punji pit, still bleeding out and just barely clinging onto his life. I assume that he had spent all his aura trying to keep himself alive, regardless of if he actually had aura or not.
Regardless, I just went on with my day after that.
My mission there was over, with me just scurrying like a rat back to the RV.
When we went back there, we just had one objective.
Wait for the rest.
Hopefully, they'd be done and dusted with their job by then.
Again, hopefully. Otherwise, I was fucked five ways to Sunday.
Grayson Wells - Northwestern Valean Forests - April 21, 877 AGW (Remnant Years) - 2:55 AM (Remnant Time)
Grayson was hurt.
That was an understatement.
Seeing as he had several spikes immobilize him by impaling him through his arm, legs, and feet? Yeah, it was an understatement. He looked one more time around him. Turning his head upwards to see if the Human who put him in this position was still there.
Grayson heard the footsteps and stopped, using all of his strength left in him to look at the bastard who put him here.
The green uniform did nothing to stop the night vision in his eyes - nor the hate he had for that ratfucker. The look in his eyes as he inspected Grayson writhing in pain was that of morbid interest. And that only furthered Grayson's hate even more. He wanted to get up, he wanted to scream, he wanted to shout at the man looking at his pain.
His efforts only seemed to be in vain, though. As he only gave out a whimper that had a vaguely angry tone in it.
"F-f-fucking- mother-fuc-"
Grayson's words died in his mouth as he found himself unable to speak at all.
The human, bold as ever, dropped to his level to look at him and only then was Grayson able to take a good look at him.
The words 'U.S. Army' greeted him, and his shock only increased.
A-Army? What the fuck? Was this an Atlesian operation?
The questions were left unanswered as the human got up to leave, and dashed away. Leaving Grayson all alone, and without any support. He was still impaled, and alas, he could not break free as he would only cut himself and bleed while doing so. And defeated, Grayson could only watch and vainly try to pull his hand free.
"Maybe..." He said to himself, before trying to lift his arm out of the spike pit. At first, he didn't feel anything even with his Aura protecting him. However, as he lifted it up more and more, the pain started to sting him.
He screamed as his right arm started to bleed yet again, only this time with Aura vainly trying to stop the pain within it. He was only halfway through but he bled like a champagne room, with red spewing everywhere even as he tried to press on and lift his arm off the spikes.
When he finally did lift it up, he repeated the same thing with his other arm, only using his other arm instead. He did it faster, but the holes in his arms still bled.
He had no way of fixing that, unfortunately. His Aura was just on its last legs and he was trying to get out of the spike pit. He used both of his arms to lift his left leg out of the spike pit.
He succeeded. and finally got it out, even as it bled.
He tried it on the other leg.
However, as he did so, the Spike refused to give up, and he leaned his leg a little too backward.
As he kept trying to lift it, it leaned backward, backward, and backward...
And then it widened the hole in his leg by tearing through it.
He screamed, and let go of his leg as pain stabbed through him.
And unfortunately, his screams timed with an event too unfortunate for anyone's sake.
An explosion rang through the base as he let go of his leg, with the orange glow illuminating his situation as he turned his head to face the flames.
His eyes widened in terror as he realized what was happening, even as the orange glow permeated through the base.
"HEY! OVER HERE!" Grayson tried to shout, as he heard the sounds of other White Fang members getting up and ready.
But his efforts were for naught, as he heard a growl and a snarl from his spike pit. And only turning his head sideways did he realize he was facing a leaping Beowolf attracted to his screams of agony.
Alas, he never felt the claws, as blood loss got to him combined with shock, as a Beowolf face to face leapt onto his pit.
The rest of his buddies, however, were not so fortunate.
And Lady Liberty smiled as her children's machinations wrought havoc on the White Fang.
Sic semper tyrannis.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Holy shit! I wasn't able to get this out sooner than I wanted. And thus, I had to cut out content that I wanted to write about, all thanks to my poor PC, my school, and god throwing everything at me. Taking Journalism was more of a hassle than expected. Coeur wasn't lying when he said that journalism was going to be an abssolute pain in my ass. I won't be able to make more promises from here on, but just know that I'm now free to work on my other projects for a bit without worrying. I'm still going to work on this, but less. I have other works too.
Well, as always, you can find me on my discord under #0462 or the server code under 4m8QfQUE4n. Make sure to forward all your suggestions there. Be warned though, as I plan to have the server expand to encompass my other projects as I'm going to turn it into a lore dump for my other projects. Stay tuned, and wish me luck, because School is still beating my ass into a pulp.
See you next chapter.
Discord server invite: 4m8QfQUE4n