Whoever still reading this, did you guys see the trailer for the new Overwatch? Holy crap, was it awesome. I'm mostly excited about them expanding the story elements in the OW universe, which I thought was lacking in the first game. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Also, said trailer also kinda gave me the push to write this story again, after what seems like a long-ass time. I'm still slowly starting to get around to this, and I still need someone to help me write this thing, since I'm not much of a writer, and I do want to improve. Anyways, here's the end to the intro arc. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. If you guys have something you wanna say, just leave a review or something.
"How many did we lose?" Lieutenant General Gregory Haslam, overall commander for USAF Seventh Air Force based out of Korea, asked with a voice laced with a just hint of apprehension.
"We still don't know specifics yet, sir," the man next to him, a light colonel serving as his adjutant, replied, "with the AWACS gone, we don't really have the overall picture yet and—"
"How many?" The general asked again, this time apprehension replaced with barely restrained anger.
The lieutenant colonel just stared for the briefest of moments at the three-star general facing him, before slowly letting out a huge sigh he didn't know he was holding. Usually the man that was his immediate superior was calm and collected. But after this whole debacle with the gearheads earlier (and the colossal one-sided ass kicking that ensued) it probably made everyone who lived through the horrors of the original Omnic Crisis re-experience some …unpleasant memories, to say the least.
The colonel felt rather lucky that he didn't get to live through that hell first-hand. Bracing himself internally, he proceeded to respond.
"Best guesstimates from the ops-personnel say that both the Fifty-First Wing's fighter squadrons are almost a complete loss. They're only able to account a fraction of the pilots who went out to intercept, most are still unaccounted for, and CSAR has only managed to retrieve three pilots out in the field so far with various degrees of injuries. And it's already been a couple of hours, so…"
"Dear God," General Haslam breathed out, still trying to process the information.
"The Eighth out of Kunsan also took a serious mauling, but not as severe, based on what their CO is relaying to us. Looks like the gearheads' main effort was centered around where the Fifty-First was operating, so their casualties aren't as bad. Doesn't make it any less significant, I know, but it is what it is."
The 51st Fighter Wing was based off Osan Air Force Base, the general remembered. It had two operational fighter squadrons attached, the 25th and the 36th Tactical, which is about fifty frontline fighters and their pilots assigned to them. All that treasure and blood, lost in an instant…
Losses haven't been this severe in a really, really long time. After the Crisis was concluded, the rogue omnics usually kept to themselves, and the odd skirmish happened every now and again, but certainly not to this scale. To think that they thought the omnics were already defeated. It just proves to show that even after all these years, they all still didn't know jack.
He looked away from his adjutant and took a quick view of his nearby surroundings. The ops-center both officers were in on was abuzz with frenetic activity. With major combat operations now over, the next priority was accountability of all surviving personnel out in the field, and even that was proving to be a difficult challenge.
In cases like these, the pilots who were forced to bail from their aircraft—or other ops-personnel in distress on the field—usually activated their distress beacons, in which automated transponders would immediately give rescue personnel or quick-reaction forces their exact location and status, either via GPS or Galileo, so that they could mount a recovery sortie. To their immense (though not exactly unexpected) surprise, all the transponders and associated comms attached to it were stealthily hacked and rendered inoperable by the gearheads some time during the battle, right under their damn noses. So, they had to improvise.
Their primary command nodes in the field, several E-12 Watchman AWACS birds that usually kept tabs on everything from command and control, battle management, and airborne warning and surveillance, were all shot down in the span of an hour of their engagement; leaving the higher-ups in headquarters and the people in the field blind as bats, and pretty much left all the forward units to fend for themselves against the onslaught.
When the AWACS picket was gone, they sent in human-controlled UAV drones with limited capability to try and recreate the overall strategic picture, and to hopefully reassume command of all the disparage units if possible. But they didn't even last as much as the previous radar picket. In fact, they fared worse. They survived for the better part of ten minutes before they were all hunted down by ruthlessly efficient machines.
So that left them with the radio and data uplinks the pilots were using to communicate with each other. In a perfect environment, these were supposed to be just as good as the dedicated command and control assets in assessing the overall tactical environment and providing real-time information. The only problem with that was the omnics were putting out such serious jamming on both ends of the EM spectrum during the engagement, that all they had manage to collect were incomplete snippets instead of streams of unadulterated data.
And those were next to useless. All they could get out of it were partial voice conversations of pilots frantically fighting for their lives, and the data they were putting out was already outdated because of the rapidly shifting dynamic of the battlefield.
In the purest sense of the word, it was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
It's not as if they had literally nothing, though. They had backups of the real-time data stream the AWACS picket was sending out before they were all shot down, but the only problem with it was that the data was already hours old, which is considered several lifetimes when it comes to fast-paced combat. Their only hope now was to extrapolate as much of it as they can and hope for the best.
An airman from seemingly out of nowhere appeared right next to the colonel, where they were talking in hushed whispers for a bit before the lower ranking serviceman left as quick as he had arrived.
"General."
"What is it?" Haslam tersely replied.
"The Overwatch strike team," the colonel said matter-of-factly, "they're hailing us on comms."
"Huh," the three-star general muttered with a slack jaw.
The rational part of his mind thought that they really should be thankful for these guys for putting a kibosh on this quagmire, where he and the men and women under his command obviously couldn't. Nevertheless, the other part of him was telling the rational part to shove it and fuck off. He didn't have time to deal with all this.
But, out of courtesy for what they did in resolving this mess, he decided against putting them off.
"Put 'em through."
In the main holographic monitor in front of all of them, the display changed. From the tactical layout, map overlay and other relevant information beforehand to the face of a grizzled man, sporting long gray hair swept back behind his head, complete facial hair to match the mop on top, and both clearly out of regs. But that wasn't the most distinctive feature. A wide scar ran vertically on his left eyebrow and the eye underneath, but instead of seeing a regular eye, all the lieutenant general saw was a milky orb in place of it.
He allowed himself a small humorless smirk.
"Major Reinhardt Wilhelm."
The man himself snapped a quick smart salute, which the general halfheartedly returned in kind.
"Your reputation precedes you, Major."
"As do yours, Generalleutnant Haslam." the major began, dropping his salute.
"After today, it's probably not going to be a good one." Haslam muttered grimly before turning his attention to one of the legendary heroes the world has ever seen. Supposedly. "What can I do for you, Major? Not that I don't appreciate the call, but our hands are kinda full here."
"Understood, Generalleutnant, I wish I were calling under better circumstances," the larger-than-life figure with a noticeable accent replied, with a surprising amount of grace and compassion that the general was not expecting.
The flashy publicity vids featuring the German giant certainly failed to capture more of that.
"The purpose of this transmission is to send a situation report on our end," the Overwatch agent continued on to business, "we have disabled and destroyed the command and control protocol directing the rogue omnics in this sector."
"I can tell." The lieutenant general wryly responded. The moment that C2 site was destroyed, all semblance of organization overseeing the hostile omnics ceased in an instant. At least that's what the people in the field reported. What was left of them, anyway.
"We also wish to ascertain the situation on your end, Generalleutnant."
"I'm pretty sure you people already tapped into our comms and our data-links." Haslam said straightforwardly, knowing full well what their capabilities were.
The major unexpectedly let out a booming laugh.
"We do, actually. But we wish to confirm."
The three-star general just heaved a helpless breath. At least they were polite about their unauthorized intrusion into restricted military communications and systems.
"Fair enough." The three-star general motioned for the colonel to give him a datapad, which he did immediately. Better to get this over with quick. "As you already know, all offensive omnic ops have all but stopped as of sixteen-fifty-one local time. Their processing power took a major nosedive when you guys fragged that See-Two site, so good job on that."
The major silently nodded in response, listening intently to every word.
"We just have pockets of resistance left, and the Koreans are mopping them up piece-by-piece with their fancy new MEKA drones, so it shouldn't be long before this is all dealt with. The Army's also sending in their own ground-pounders to help with the mop up, so there is that."
"Are you still experiencing any widespread jamming?"
"Not anymore, both sides of the spectrum are mostly clear as day. We still got some small-scale jammers, but we usually burn though them really quick. We just don't have any recon and surveillance assets left to survey the area and give us a clearer picture. The spy-sats' window is already gone, so we're just sending ground teams to see what else is out there. The Koreans had their own reconnaissance capabilities, but I'm told the omnics messed them up quite a bit before they had a chance to use them."
"Most unfortunate, Generalleutnant."
"You're not wrong there, bud." Haslam agreed.
"Are you being sent reinforcements and support?"
"Already passed it up the chain, so yeah, we are. ETA's probably gonna be a couple of hours, at most."
"That is good to hear, Generalleutnant!" The Overwatch legend boomed a bit too loudly.
"Yep. But until then," The three-star quickly tossed the datapad back to a mildly surprised adjutant, "I've got a shit-ton of pilots missing and presumed dead, I've got entire units wiped, and I don't have much in the way of expediting the solutions for either. So, if you'll please excuse me…"
"One more thing, Generalleutnant…" Major Wilhelm added just as he was about to turn and walk away.
"What?" He snapped, a little bit too harshly.
"I may have the solution to one of your problems."
"Get on it with it."
"We are sending you a data packet, Generalleutnant. Please stand-by…"
"Sir," one of the enlisted techs in the ops-room said out loud, the console in front of him alight with action, "there's a request from an unidentified source to send da—"
"Just do it, son."
"Roger," the tech responded as his fingers began to do its work. "should I display it on the main-holo, sir?"
He silently nodded his assent.
For a second time the main display in the ops-room changed again, with the Overwatch operative's live vid-feed minimized and relegated to the lower right corner of the display and substituted with the previous tactical layout and map overlay they were using earlier.
But only this time, instead of sparse information and a wide gap in their battlespace coverage, it was the exact opposite.
It was quickly filling up with complete data and information, taken from who knows how many and what kind of assets these guys possessed, and unceremoniously enlarging what little situation awareness they had regarding this AO. And it wasn't just their picture of the battlefield that was being sent. Communications that were inoperable before and during the battle unexpectedly became online, bombarding them with comms from personnel thought lost, and the data-links from the US military's own assets in the region were also sending them telemetry unabated again, further widening their ever-increasing knowledge of the battlespace.
And more importantly the transponders from the downed pilots, the ones those incessant gearheads had hacked, were gradually transmitting the ops-center with their data and the beleaguered aviators' exact location.
Whatever ailments the omnics had instilled upon them before had swiftly disappeared.
Like a single switch was just flipped and everything suddenly went back to normal. It was unreal. It was like watching a blank canvas, being magically painted with a masterpiece by an invisible hand from God himself.
Except for the blaring comms, the entire room suddenly got eerily quiet, as they just look in awe at what was unfolding before them.
It took a while before Haslam even found his voice back.
"How…?" He managed to breath out.
"Well," the German giant said, with just the barest whiff of delight in his voice, "we do have our ways. Would this suffice in aiding your efforts, Generalleutnant?"
"Hell yes," the general said all too quickly without missing a beat, before realizing his mistake. He made a show of clearing his throat as he looked at the staff in the ops-center, clear purpose etched on his face. "Don't just fucking gawk there, get to work! All of you! Let's bring all of our people home!"
"Yes, sir!" Everyone in the room yelled out, as they returned to their respective posts in an instant.
With what was pretty much an oasis worth of intelligence miraculously dumped on their laps, the personnel inside the room didn't waste any time and went straight to work. Accountability of everyone was quickly established, as the distress beacons not only gave them their approximate location but also how they were doing physiologically, as vital signs from the people on the field were sent back via embedded sensors on their person. It was a double-edged sword, however. In addition to finding the exact positions and vitals of still living personnel, it also showed those of the deceased, and majority of the readings being sent back had a lot of flat-lines and almost no discernible movement at all.
A lot of people in the ops-center noticed that uncomfortable tidbit, and just decided to attribute the readings to faulty systems due to extensive combat, instead of recognizing it for what it really was, which was a one-sided slaughter.
Haslam really couldn't blame them for trying to keep hope alive, seeing as morale was already low enough as it is, but if it kept order and professionalism throughout the ranks in the meantime he really didn't mind. Lord knows he was the one who most desperately wanted to believe that his pilots were still alive and weren't all dead.
With their locations narrowed down the next step had been to inform the few responsive and able airmen in the field, telling them to walk to suitable LZs nearby if they can and just sit tight, where combat search and rescue assets (already airborne and rerouted, since they were vectored to the probable crash sites beforehand and well before Overwatch's timely assistance) would pick them up and return them to base; but not before priority extraction had been given to those unresponsive and in severe condition. The surviving pilots with less than serious injuries more than understood the situation, and unanimously agreed and supported that decision.
The CO in charge of the PJs and the rescue effort, another colonel by the name of Evans, told him that operations would conclude in another hour, maybe two depending on the situation.
It was only a matter of time then, before everything was going to get wrapped up.
And they had Overwatch to thank for. Again.
The general's own reservations about them aside, they really did good work. They put a stop to this omnic incursion with minimal effort and undid whatever it was those damn gearheads did to their C4ISR systems. They could've just left after trashing the omnics, and he wouldn't even bat an eyelash about it (hell, he knows he would've done the same) but they decided to help them out again anyways.
Maybe those cheesy commercials about them were right. They really were the good guys.
He smiled inwardly. There was only one thing left to do. He motioned for the tech to enlarge the German's vid-feed once more.
"Thank you, Major." Haslam said as sincerely as he could, his features slowly softening. "You have no idea how much you helped us out."
"Sorge dich nicht, Generalleutnant," the major had replied warmly, in what Haslam could only assume was the German saying, 'you're welcome,' "in times of distress, it is only natural for us to help one another, is it not?"
"I guess so." He replied, still coming to terms with the Overwatch agent's magnanimity. This was definitely a first. "I'd ask if there's anything I could help with you people, but I suppose that would be irrelevant."
"Actually, Generalleutnant," Reinhardt added, somewhat surprising him, "there is something you can help us with."
The general slowly raised a questioning eyebrow but said nothing. The major took it as a cue to continue.
"You see, we rescued one of your pilots during the latest skirmish, and we were wondering if…"