2051: The Battle Over Nothing

(Earth, Arizona Desert – Augment Complex, Stasis Room B – 2051.09.07, 0936)

The heavy metal doors opened and Cheng's troops charged through. They were armed with assault rifles and riddled the room with bullets. But they didn't hit any of Crichton's group. The stasis chambers were arranged in towers of five units. While the maintenance area allowed for maintenance of the lower units, it was useless for the tops unit. So there were ladders that allowed access to the top ones. Crichton's group had climbed those ladders and lay flat on top of the towers.

While Cheng had preparing for her charge, Crichton had given her pistol to A-8. She knew that the robot and Zander were best shots her force had. The Augment forces had made the mistake of not wearing helmets, so the two of them aimed for the heads of the targets. By the time they ran out of ammunition, dozens of the enemy soldiers had been killed. It was at this point that Verity Cheng stepped into view. Cheng appeared to be in her thirties, with Asian features. Her black hair was in a pixie cut.

"Bravo, Colonel Crichton," Cheng said. "But I know you are out of ammunition. And I can flood this room with poison gas whenever I want to. So show yourself."

~The game is afoot.~ Zander watched as Crichton left the maintenance area. But he knew that Major Nez and Captain Williams were still down there. He looked at this watch. ~Ten, nine, eight…~ As Crichton and Cheng came face-to-face, a nasty-looking green gas began rising from the hatch to maintenance area. ~The coolant is leaking as planned.~ The gas used to cool the stasis chambers was heavier-then-air, so the gas essentially 'stuck' to the floor. Nez and Williams had punctured the lines as Crichton had ordered. Cheng, however, was a sharp cookie.

"Ah, the cooling gas. You know that it's toxic and whoever is down there will suffocate." She said.

"I know," Crichton began. "I also know it's very combustible. One spark and…boom !"

What Cheng didn't know was that Nez and Williams were fine. Benton and Williams had each had one emergency oxygen tank in their supplies. They only had enough air for twenty minutes, but it was enough. By the time they ran out of air, the fog on the ground would be so thick that not even Augments would be able to see them.

"So, what's your plan ? Stall for time and then light a match ?" Cheng smiled. "Even if you pull it off, you'll never take out all of my forces. You'll still be slaughtered."

"What do you want ?"

"You know what I want to know. You said it yourself." Cheng stepped closer to Crichton, putting her in hand-to-hand combat range. "Who do you report to ? Who knows you're here ? You can tell me now, or we will torture it out of you. And if you don't give us the answers we need, one of your troops will." Before Zander could even blink, Cheng grabbed Crichton in a chokehold. "Tell me what I want to know or I'll rip out your throat."

Before Crichton could say anything, something flew through the air and drove itself into the back of his neck. Zander realized that Benton had thrown a pair of taped together scalpels into Cheng's flesh. Cheng pulled the scalpels out, which gave Crichton her opening. First, she elbowed the Augment leader, then bit her in the hand. Cheng screamed, while trying to regain her hold on Crichton's neck. But then three loud booms echo through the room. Three red spots began to form on Cheng's clothes, before her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to the floor, dead as a doornail.

~What the…we were out of ammo.~ But then he remembered that A-8 had magnets in his hands. The assault rifles themselves were mostly plastic, but the ammo clips were old-fashioned metal. A-8 had dangled his arm over the tower and snatched up one of the rifles. There had only been three rounds left in the clip, but it had been enough to finish Cheng.

A second wave of Augment troops rushed into the room. But it was too late. Nez and Williams came from the maintenance area. Nez grabbed a grenade from one of the dead Augments. Nez, Williams and Crichton climbed just far enough to get out of the layer of gas. Then Nez threw the grenade. It exploded and the coolant ignited. The entire Augment group was incinerated in the blast.

"Yikes !" Shepard said.

"Arm up, people. Strip the corpses, this is far from over." Crichton said.

The group climbed down and they got to work. The Battle over Nothing was about to start in earnest.

(Earth, Arizona Desert – Augment Complex, Control Room – 2051.09.07, 0945)

Samuel Zhukov was forty-five years old, with black hair and green eyes. He had been Cheng's second-in-command, which meant that he was now running the complex. The basemodels, which was what he called normal humans, were fighting room-to-room. While his troops were keeping the enemy busy, the maintenance team was busy swapping out the gas tanks. When they were done, the Augments would retreat and they would flood the rooms with the basemodels with poison gas. And that would be then end of it.

But then his plan went off the rails as the Colonel and her people found the armory. This was where they had locked away, the basemodels' gear. One of them, the Captain called Zander, broke down the door. ~Blast !~ The armory was where they kept the supply of gas masks, which rendered his plan useless. This had just become an old-fashioned war of attrition.

(Earth, Arizona Desert – Augment Complex, Corridor – 2051.09.07, 0950)

Crichton gave Shepard and Rodriguez the hand signal to enter the next room. They had their gear back, including their gas masks with their build-in radios. But she didn't want the enemy to overhear her orders, so they went with the hand signals instead. So far, they had been clearing small rooms. This kept the enemy from crushing them with superior numbers. There simply wasn't enough space. But sooner-or-later, they would reach the large chamber where the embryos where kept. And that would be the deciding moment of the fight.

Shepard and Rodriguez charged into the room as ordered. It was the complex library. Fortunately, all they found inside were books. So they kept moving. Four rooms later, they reached another corridor. This one had a window that provided them with a grand view of the embryo room. ~Time to earn your paycheck.~ The window was near the top of the grand chamber. But the corridor did not connect to the doors where they had originally entered the large chamber. Instead, it connected to a separate flight of stairs. They had not seen this flight earlier because they had been gassed before getting that far into the room.

This time Crichton had no intention of letting go of the high ground. She signaled to Nez. The Arrows took out their climbing ropes and attached grappling hooks to them. Their assault rifles came with integrated launchers, so getting the hooks to where they needed was not a problem. In the meantime, Benton and Rodriguez studied the doors. There was a pair of hydraulics engines. This was how the Augments had slammed shut the doors the first time. They set to sabotaging the devices.

By time they were done, Nez and his team had secured their ropes. The other entrance-slash-catwalk was lower then the one they were on, so the team could easily sail over. While they kept that platform secure, half of the McKinley folks followed them. Besides the two entrances they had just secured, there was only one way in or out of the chamber. A set of wooden doors located halfway between the two entrances. This was the room's only lower entrance. Now the ball was in the Augments' court.

(Earth, Arizona Desert – Augment Complex, Corridor – 2051.09.07, 0955)

Zhukov had split his forces into three groups. One would enter through the lower entrance and the other two would attack the two basemodel positions directly. It would be a short, but very satisfying fight. He would lead the charge against Crichton's position himself. Reaching their starting point, he signaled his troops and they rushed towards Crichton's position.

The corridor lit up with weapons are both sides opened fired. They took down several of Crichton's people, but were hit by grenades in return. Zhukov watched as at least eight of his soldiers were blasted to pieces by the explosives. The basemodels were putting up a stiff fight, but it was only… That was as far he got before the corridor was rattled by a heavy explosion. What Crichton and Williams knew, but Zhukov didn't, was that McKinley's Abrams tank had been abandoned on the surface.

And that tank had been spotted by an army satellite. Combined with the damage it had done to the town, it had send up a red flag in the Pentagon. On top of that, Crichton's unit had not checked in since arriving in Nothing. And neither had the Arrows. But the straw that had broken the camel's back, was the explosion of the fallout shelter. So the Pentagon had called the Navajo Militia Command. The militia's supply of gear was a scraped together bunch old surplus equipment. But it was still capable of doing a ton of damage.

/\=What the hell !?/\= Crichton asked. /\=Why are parts of the ceiling coming down ?/\=

/\=Sounds like Crazy Hank./\= Nez answered.

/\=Who is Crazy Hank ?/\=

/\=Colonel Hendrick Chee is the Commander of our artillery unit. Very capable, very deadly and more then a little of his rocker./\=

Zhukov cursed. He was nowhere near Crichton and whoever she was talking to, but he had overheard the whole conversation. This meant that the location of his bunker was now out in the world. Even if they killed all the basemodel troops, their long-term plan was ruined. More chunks of ceiling came down. At the same time, the enemy was making a push. They backed it up with another wave of grenades. Zhukov was about to give another set of orders when a chunk of ceiling ended his command.

(Earth, Arizona Desert – Augment Complex, Embryo Chamber – 2051.09.07, 1007)

The fight was not going well. Her people were giving as good as they got. ~Making every shot count.~ But even with Crazy Hank's help, the numbers were not on their side. Benton and Williams were doing their best to threat the wounded, but they could only do so much. They needed to make a move and make it fast. And then she spotted something on the floor. She untied one of the ropes that Nez and the others had used to cross.

"Cover me !" Crichton said.

"Be careful, Indy," Zander said with a grin.

She jumped off the catwalk and swung to the floor, landing and rolling. She had ended up next to the pallets with supplies. They had found fridges amongst the supplies. And in order to stay under the radar, the Augments had scraped together old models. Models that ran on some pretty nasty chemicals. Because they were in storage, the chemicals were not in the fridges. Instead, they were loaded in special tanks loaded on another pallet. Crichton send one of the tanks rolling towards the Augment forces, while puncturing it with weapons fire. The chemicals did exactly what she hoped they would. Some of them began choking, while others rushed to put on their gas masks. But the chaos gave Nez and the Arrows the edge they needed.

By the third tank, however, the plan had stopped working. So Shepard threw a grenade into the chemical covered mess. Like before, there was a fireball that took out several Augment troops. At the same time, Nez charged down the stairs and provided cover fire. Between him and Crichton, eight more enemy soldiers went down. As Nez joined Crichton, the biggest impact so far hit.

/\=Oh, no, he didn't !?/\= Crichton gave Nez a surprised look. /\=The military museum had this really big, really old, really nasty German naval gun./\= Nez shot another Augment soldier. /\=The projectiles are heavier then you and me together./\=

Two more artillery shots followed. Then somebody shouted an order to retreat. The Augment forces didn't waste any time bugging out. Somebody tried to activate the gas protocol. But the sabotage had done it's work and the doors didn't close. Crichton and Nez made their way up the nearest flight of stairs. Crichton cursed. The Arrows had made it, but only a handful of McKinley's people had survived.

/\=Zander, regroup at my position./\= Crichton said.

/\=Yes, Colonel./\=

Zander's group made their way to her location. She didn't like this situation one bit. The Augments should have realized that the gas protocols didn't work and attacked again. ~So where are they ?~ Zander's group began climbing the stairs to her position. But there was still no sign of the enemy. And then she realized something.

/\=Oh, crap./\=

/\=What ?/\= Shepard asked.

/\=We broke the coolant system. We presumed it only cooled the Stasis Chambers, but what if it also cooled key components of the power station keeping this whole thing ticking over ?/\= And Crazy Hank blasting holes into the place probably wasn't helping either.

/\=It's a hydroelectric plant./\= Rodriguez asked. /\=How would that even work ?/\=

/\=Who cares ?/\= Crichton asked. /\=If we're still in here when this place blows, we're toast. We need to move, now !/\=

The survivors headed down the corridor that Crichton and company had originally used to enter the complex. They reached the stairs back to the top of the dam as the first explosion rang through the complex. Going down the river was suicide. Once the dam broke, the water would rush down the passage and drown anybody inside. The hatch was located in the middle of the dam, so they had never gotten to the far end of it. Now Crichton spotted that there was a flight of stairs that they had not noticed before.

"That way !"

Making their way down the stairs, they found a dock with a barge tied to it. This was how the Augments had gotten all the mining equipment to the quarry. Fortunately, the barge was fitted with three outboard engines. The group boarded the barged and Zander started the engines. Soon, the barge was making their way across the reservoir. On the other side of the reservoir, the river narrowed to a passage again. They were entering it when the dam broke. The water levels began to drop, but they were far enough away to keep going.

A couple minutes later, the passage widened. There was another dock, next to flight of stairs up to a hatch. Zander brought the barge up to the dock and Crichton secured it. The group disembarked and began climbing the stairs.

(Earth, Arizona – Desert outside of Nothing - 2051.09.07, 1020)

Crichton had split her forces into three groups. Her own force was group one, the Arrows and half of McKinley's troops were group two and the rest of McKinley's people – led by Williams – were group three. Crichton unit were headed for their helicopter, Olivia. So far, they hadn't run into any Augments forces. They reached Olivia. Two dead Augments lay next to the helicopter.

"Looks like the anti-theft system did its job." Shepard said.

"Start her up," Zander said.

Shepard nodded and unlocked the helicopter, while rest of the unit covered him. Two minutes later, Olivia was up in the air. Shepard flew the helicopter around Nothing, because the artillery fire was still ongoing. Crichton took a pair of binoculars out of the helicopter's supply locker and began looking for the enemy. She didn't find them, but she did spot Group Two. They had found McKinley's Abrams tank and were using it. The tank had room for four people, so the rest of the group had to follow behind on foot. She also spotted Group Three, who were moving parallel to Group Two.

"Come on, where are you ?" She said.

"Colonel," Benton said. "At two clock."

Crichton turned and spotted what Benton had seen. In the middle of the desert was a hatch surrounded by several corpses. Zanders brought the other two groups up to speed, who made the hatch their new destination. At same time, Shepard turned Olivia to put her on course for the hatch as well. That was when Crichton spotted the Augment forces. They were in a convoy that was a mix of Humvees and motorbikes. She turned to Shepard.

"Missiles."

Shepard nodded. Olivia was armed with two pods of four missiles and three machineguns. The first two were doors guns and the last was mounted under the nose. Shepard fired two of the missiles, destroying the convoy's lead vehicles. This caused the convoy to break and scatter. In the chaos, Shepard picked a target and made a strafing run. At the same time, Zander and Rodriguez opened fire with door guns. The result was devastating. The targeted Humvee exploded, while at least a dozen enemy soldiers were shot as Olivia passed.

Shepard turned the helicopter for another pass, allowing Crichton to see the Abrams coming into view. Nez had left the walking troops behind and pushed the tanks to it maximum speed. While it was technically off-road, the desert here was flat enough for it to make fifty kilometers an hour. And with the air attack, that was enough for the tank to catch up. Nez and his Arrows didn't waste any time putting the main gun to work.

But Crichton didn't get to see how much targets they hit, because one of the Augments fired a rocket-propelled grenade at them. Shepard dodged the grenade, then took out the Augment with the launcher with the nose-gun. ~He's not getting up.~ The helicopter swung around again. Below them, the Augment forces were in complete disarray. Then more Humvees came into view. ~Augments reinforcements ?~

Then she realized something. The Augments had probably stashed away enough Humvees for all of their people. But because some of their people had been killed in fighting in the complex, they had been forced to leave some of them behind. In the rush to get out, they had forgotten to sabotage them. Which had allowed the rest of Group Two and Group Three to get themselves some wheels. Her theory was confirmed when the Humvees parked behind the Abrams and Williams and his people jumped out. They opened fire on the Augment forces…

Later

(Earth, Arizona – Ruins of the Augment Complex – 2104.05.01)

The Battle over Nothing had been over five minutes after Williams and his troops had arrived. Two minutes after that, the bulk of the Augment complex had either collapsed or exploded. The only part of the base to survive was the embryo chamber. For the past fifty-three years, the US Army had guarded the embryos, while politicians bickered about what to do with them. But the one thing they did agree on, what that they should be locked away some place more secure. And now that was a practical option.

Major General Alexander Zander had been picked to oversee the operation. One of the perks being an Augment was a long lifespan. So he still felt young and fit, despite now being decades older. Around him, soldiers were carefully removing the stasis bubbles. They would be taken up to a pair of J-Class freighters belonging to the freshly formed Earth Cargo Authority.

The two freighters would be guarded by thirty-six soldiers each. They would take the embryos to another solar system, where a new space station called Cold Station 12 would become their home. Of course, the people at Cold Station 12 would not be told where they came from. Officially, these embryos had been gathered from all over Earth. The authorities didn't want Nothing, Arizona to become some kind of Augment shrine. That was also why they had rewritten the official history. As far as the world would know, the Battle over Nothing had been more then a minor skirmish over a insignificant dot on the map.

~Over 1,800 embryos, this is SO going to come back to bite them.~ But time would tell if he was right about it. For now, he had a job to do. So he got to work.

Next…2185: Roses and Ashes