A/N: Russian characters in this chapter speak, er, Russian unless otherwise noted. This chapter has been rewritten from its original version to make improvements, i.e. relocating the mission objective and, more importantly, adding lots of explosive barrels.
Rain in the Night
Spontaneous pro-government demonstrations arose yesterday across the World Socialist Alliance, as surging crowds of patriotic comrades flooded the streets with red banners to proactively show their support for visionary policies that have lifted millions out of poverty and exploitation. From Mexico to Iraq, the world witnessed an unprecedented display of worker solidarity. The demonstrations were clearly in response to false statements by the capitalist Allied Forces claiming that socialism somehow lacks the support of the people.
This aggressive Allied rhetoric comes at a time when experts say that global war is more likely than at any moment since the sacking of Moscow, as terrorist outrages by reactionary bandits and hostile arms buildups by imperialist powers menace peace-loving peoples across the globe. Allied provocations make it clear that fearful capitalists are still obsessively fixated on revenge for missteps ordered by Stalin over fifty years ago.
Today, an inspiring statement by the WSA Supreme Joint Secretariat called on the UN to protect world peace from insatiable warmongers seeking to divide the people. The UN recently proclaimed a new 'Global Defense Act' on October 12th, claiming to overhaul peacekeeping missions, but has yet to match actions to its words.
In the absence of global leadership, the WSA warns the imperialist side against any move to escalate tensions, including the development of dangerous superweapons such as the Chronosphere. But as yesterday's demonstrations made clear, if war does come, a united people formed from all the workers of the world is ready to meet any challenge.
-TASS News report, October 20th, 1995
October 20th, 1995 - [LOCATION CLASSIFIED], United States of America - 0600 hours
"Where do we start, sir?" Lieutenant Toyama asked, as she settled into her seat on the plane.
Since Captain Solomon's meeting with General Sheppard, it had taken weeks to actually get their hands on the UN transport plane which would be Echo Nine's unofficial headquarters for the time being. The UN's bureaucracy moved at its own agonizing pace, especially when the money involved was being kept carefully secret.
Currently, the elite team consisted of the two of them. Presumably at some point they would also get a pilot to actually fly the plane.
"First we figure out who on this list we want on board." Solomon, sitting next to her, tapped the black folder on his lap. "Then we just need to contact people whose every move is a state secret, and convince them to volunteer for a team that doesn't officially exist. Pretty simple, really."
"Hmm. Then maybe we should begin with Boris," said Toyama, opening her own copy of the folder. "According to his profile, he isn't very subtle."
October 20th, 1995 - The Tiber River, outside of Perugia, Italy - 0300 hours
Rain sheeted down onto the waters of the Tiber River, dribbling into his clothes despite the dark poncho he was wearing. Boris Volkov paid it no mind. After growing up in the heaving wreck of postwar Siberia, where heat was a luxury and dryness a blessing, a little rain in Italy was nothing to the commando.
The construction site ahead of him was alive with activity, even in the dead of night and the pouring rain. Which was among the reasons the Kremlin wanted it infiltrated. Tall concrete walls encircled the property, concealing whatever was transpiring inside. Heavy machinery rumbled within, sounding like the growl of some beast in its lair, warning any intruder. Beams of searchlights swept the perimeter, lighting the FutureTech facility up like a beacon, announcing the location was watched and guarded.
None of it intimidated him. He was Boris, top agent of the WSA. There was nothing he could not do.
His sallow, hunched companion was not as confident. Boris knew him only as 'Grigori', which could have been an alias considering the intense secrecy surrounding the Special Projects 'Psi-Corps' program. Grigori hadn't once lowered the heavy purplish hood concealing his head since Boris had met him. He was fidgeting his dark-gloved hands as he crouched with Boris behind a pine tree, shaking out his fingers like a pianist warming up.
"You will distract the guards as we practiced, yes Comrade?" Boris said, keeping his booming voice to merely a low growl for the sake of stealth. "Just like at the border. 'You don't need to see our identification,' haha!"
He mimicked the hypnotic hand wave and unsettlingly compelling tone that had dulled the eyes of the Italian border guards when they entered this forsaken capitalist pit of a country. Boris did not fully understand what the Psi-Corps did or how they did it, and a good Russian soldier knew better than to ask questions about State secrets. But he had witnessed Grigori's power firsthand on the covert voyage into Allied territory.
"Yes, of course." Grigori gave his head a shake, as though to clear it. "They are coming. You will have your opportunity."
"Good, good! This will be easy. Then back home to Mother Russia for us!"
Boris grinned behind his thick dark beard, and gave Grigori what was supposed to be an encouraging pat on the back. Grigori stumbled from the impact. Boris was six and a half feet tall and weighed over one hundred and fifteen kilos of Spetsnaz-forged muscle. Grigori, on the other hand, was built like a short, nervous scarecrow, and seemed to be swallowed up by the dark purple slicker that shielded him from the rain.
Grigori righted himself, took a deep breath, and then placed his hands on his temples, closing his eyes.
"There is no resistance…" he murmured.
Two humanoid silhouettes could be faintly glimpsed through the rain up ahead. The hired guns of FutureTech, guarding the blood-soaked profits of their arms-dealing employer. At some unseen signal from Grigori, one of them halted, stiffened, and suddenly ran off into the night, away from the Russians. After a confused moment, his compatriot followed after him, shouting.
"Very good, my friend!" Boris restrained himself from thumping Grigori on the back again, then readied his tools. "Now it is my turn! Wait here for me - this won't take long."
Boris heard Grigori murmuring 'good luck' behind him as he took off for the gap in the perimeter left by the distracted sentries. For such a big man, Boris could move like a panther. He was a silent shadow in the rain as he sprinted toward the wall, not breaking stride as he hurled the grappling hook in his hand.
The hook flew upwards, trailing its black rope, and caught the top of the wall. Boris tugged to ensure it was secure, then braced his legs and climbed, hauling himself upwards smoothly and quickly. He wasn't even breathing hard when he slipped over the top of the wall without a sound, pulling the rope and hook after him to avoid discovery.
Boris was the first comrade of the WSA to see just what FutureTech was building on the banks of the Tiber River. Analysts had first realised the Allied dogs were up to something when part of Italy simply vanished from the view of reconnaissance satellites passing overhead: a sure sign of the damnable Gap Generators the Allies had used to bedevil Moscow since the last war. Further investigation had revealed that the Allies' most powerful weapons corporation had suddenly bought a swathe of land next to the Tiber River, and started building something in total secrecy, and at a furious pace. Something big.
Factor in a meteorite impact a month ago that had barely registered any comment in the corporate-controlled 'free' media, and there were more red flags than May Day in Moscow. That kind of activity could not be ignored by the Kremlin, not after losing the last war to surprise superweapons like the Chronosphere. They had sent Boris, and Boris did not fail.
Boris crouched in the shadows next to the wall and unslung his rifle, a heavily customized AK-74 with a big drum magazine filled with armour-piercing rounds. The WSA's tactical doctrine favoured maximum firepower in all things, even covert ops. Boris was just here for reconnaissance, but if he had to defend himself, he could do so with gusto.
The rifle's modifications included a video camera integrated into its scope, complete with night vision, the better to record evidence of the Allies' plot against the workers. Boris knelt, wiped rainwater off the scope, and raised it to his eye. He saw the world through shades of black and green speckled with flares of white light, as he swept the camera over the compound and began recording.
The FutureTech compound was frantic with movement. Boris saw supply trucks, construction dozers, and engineering crews hustling from site to site, working in the pouring rain under blazing electric lamps. They were all well-guarded.
Boris took careful note of the enemy mercenaries, counting at least ten in view just in his first sweep, all moving in pairs. He saw blue-grey urban camouflage uniforms peeking from beneath dark rain slickers, gloved hands carrying Cobretti AR-70 'Raptor' assault rifles with trained confidence. The faces under the black berets looked alert and active even under these conditions. The guards were accompanied by combat vehicles, lightweight all-terrain Buggies roving the compound with machine guns mounted in turrets, bright headlights scouring the darkness.
He felt his neck prickle. These were not the pudgy low-rent thugs corporations usually used to frighten trespassers or bully activists.
The Construction Yard was the centre of the work, its big crane arm whirring as it lifted heavy pallets of materials. Surrounding it was a steel forest of gantries, frames and scaffolding, sprouting buildings in progress, tarps fluttering in the wind like big waxy leaves. Boris saw the flat asphalt of an airfield and multiple helipads already operating on the right of the Yard, and a blocky residential structure on the left next to a garage. Steam drifted from the stacks of a Power Plant set up in the rear, one of the new Cold Fusion designs the Americans had produced to rival Russia's Tesla Reactors. Next to the Power Plant was an even larger project that Boris couldn't identify, involving a smokestack and bulbous storage silos, perhaps some kind of refinery.
But all of that was a sideshow to the real focus of FutureTech's work.
A massive structure rose behind the Construction Yard, dwarfing every other building in the facility. Trucks and dozers and technicians bustled around it, and two towering cranes flanked it like sentinels. The building's grand scale, high arches, and sharp points reminded Boris of a temple - specifically the old Orthodox cathedral he had seen burning as a boy, after a Partisan action in Irkutsk. The U-shaped rotating dish on the intact part of the roof marked the Gap Generator that Boris had to bring down.
The looming edifice was being built, according to Boris' briefing and the GRU's best analysts, on the precise spot where the meteorite had struck earlier in the year.
Boris would find out why. But he first had to disable the Gap Generator so that reconnaissance satellites could properly scan this place. Boris felt his pulse quicken and senses sharpen as he moved forward, low and silent in the darkness and the rain, cutting through a narrow gap in the enemy patrols.
"Stay alert. Something odd just happened with Claw Squad. We're doing another sweep to…"
The rest of the words were swallowed by the rain as Boris slipped behind the patrol, but he noted that the enemy mercenaries had spoken American English. A multinational private army, then.
His lip curled behind his beard as he crossed the ground between him and his objective, ducking behind a parked truck for added concealment. This was the precious 'freedom' for which the Allies had broken and humiliated Mother Russia: vast fortunes spent on foreign mercenaries and secret weapons, all while the working people struggled for dignity across Europe. Boris and millions of others had grown up under occupation so that wealthy capitalists could keep exploiting their fellows.
The late Premier Romanov, whose memory lived in eternal glory for Boris, had returned Russia to strength and pride by founding the WSA alongside his Chinese counterparts. In doing so, he had also granted the chance for vengeance. The war hadn't begun yet, but everyone knew it was coming.
A buzzing engine and glowing headlights warned Boris of a Buggy approaching behind him. He sprinted the last few metres out of the open, and ducked behind a tarped pallet of pipes moments before the headlights flashed over where he had been. The headlights illuminated new details for him, particularly the clusters of red fuel barrels with bright yellow warning labels, stashed around the construction site. This was good news. Boris often found fuel barrels very useful in his work.
Beyond his hiding place, dripping and yawning like the mouth of a great drooling creature, was the entrance to the massive structure at the centre of the Allies' latest scheme.
Boris checked his watch, squinting through the green eye of his scope to see the time. Ten minutes before the next satellite pass: more than enough time to quiet the Gap Generator. He would rather have called down a flight of MiGs to bomb the entire site off the Earth, but orders were orders. Reconnaissance and sabotage today. Destruction, maybe next time.
He raised his rifle, checked the scope to ensure it was recording everything, and moved in.
Boris' feet left the muddy ground of the construction site, and he was careful to stay silent as his thick boots hit concrete. The skeleton of the frame enveloped him, steel beams and columns and girders all around him like he was in the rib cage of a metal monster, cables and pipes coiling everywhere like veins and nerves. He pushed towards its heart, seeking a way to reach the roof, and the Gap Generator.
Further in, the skeleton gained flesh on its bones, walls and doorways forming the beginnings of rooms. Insulation bulged between slats, thick and puffy. Boris ducked under a set of water pipes and crouched outside the largest and most important-looking doorway, listening for movement in the core of the structure. Then he swung inside with his rifle raised, and stopped, tilting his head.
The room opened up into a vaulting, cavernous space, again like a cathedral, with a central aisle flanked by black stone pillars. The aisle led to some kind of shrine set up at the head of the room. The space was crowded with scaffolding and pallets, still under construction, but the path to the shrine had been left reverently clean.
A pillar of light from a blazing ceiling lamp fell upon the centre of the scene as though from on high. The floor shifted from grey concrete to smooth, polished black stone. The stone rose up into a small pyramid of steps, its summit crowned by a sculpture dominating a flat platform. A slab of the black stone had been carved into a squared-off triangle, a six-foot emblem looming over Boris. The emblem had been engraved with a bright, crimson red image of a scorpion's tail, arching to strike. Beneath it was an inscription on a golden plaque, English words inscribed in a flowing script. Bewildered, Boris lowered his rifle and leaned in to read:
"And the Prophet went forth from his genesis, to gather the faithful in the Land of NOD."
Like a good comrade, Boris did not believe in corrupt churches or outdated superstitions. But it sounded like scripture, like the slogans the old priest in Irkutsk had yelled in front of his burning cathedral before the Partisans shot him. The old man had died without fear, strong in his faith.
What did an arms company want with religion?
The clack of an assault rifle's safety behind him rendered the question moot.
"Freeze! Put down the rifle and raise your hands!"
Boris winced. He had let the silly sculpture distract him. Just for a moment, but long enough for guards to catch him - two of them, one yelling orders at him while the other called for backup on the radio.
"I said drop your weapon! Getta l'arma! We will shoot you!"
Despite his embarrassment, despite the rifles pointing at him, Boris smiled slightly. His orders were clear in this situation. Capture was unacceptable, and failure was not an option. Even on a covert mission, Boris was fully authorised to defend himself. And in honesty, he had hoped for an excuse.
He dove towards the shrine, gambling. He landed on the stairs in a twisting combat roll and came up kneeling with his back to the graven image, bringing his rifle to bear. He only needed a split-second's pause, and he got it. The mercenaries - cultists, really - hesitated to fire upon the sacred stone.
Boris shot them instead. His rifle's thunder echoed off the walls, cutting down the two guards. One guard wildly fired his weapon as he spun to the floor, spraying bullet holes across the face of his precious shrine.
Boris brushed chips of stone and spent casings off himself as he got back to his feet. Alarms began to howl throughout the base, backed by pulsing red lights, and he grinned behind his beard. He could hear boots running and voices shouting, many of them. This was no longer a stealth mission. Which meant that Boris could have a little fun.
Grigori, he thought. If you truly can read men's minds, you should get out of here. Things just got interesting!
He needed to reach the roof. Moving beneath the nearest array of scaffolding, Boris slung his rifle. Then he bent his knees and jumped upward, catching the steel struts, which squealed under his weight. He did an effortless chin-up, and climbed up into the still-emerging frame of the building, clambering through girders and trusses like he was still a boy playing among the rusting tank scrap around his home in Siberia.
Levering himself up onto the next surface, Boris reached a maintenance catwalk running over the cathedral space. He saw bundles of circuitry and knots of wires snaking through the ceiling above him - and a ladder, leading further upwards to the roof.
The catwalk clanged as a goggled man in blue overalls dropped down from the ladder and charged Boris, screaming and waving a wrench. Boris shot him. The worker fell facedown at the Russian's feet, wrench clattering next to him.
Boris shook his head. Who were these people? Capitalists killed for profit, but they were less eager to die for it.
Gunfire cut off further questions. The space below filled with scurrying mercenaries, two then four then eight of them running to take cover behind crates and pallets, rifles chattering as their bullets converged on Boris overhead. Boris roared a challenge as he returned fire from atop the catwalk, sweeping his rifle over the room, spraying bullets from the hip.
"Fools! You can't touch me!"
Muzzle flashes and tracer rounds lit up the temple. Two guards fell, clutching their wounds. The others ducked down as Boris' fusillade pummelled their positions. Boris seized the chance to relocate, sprinting to the end of the catwalk, where the ladder offered escape to the roof. A pain in his ribs, behind the thick body armour under his coat, told him he'd taken at least one bullet.
No matter. Boris did not fail. He was almost to the Gap Generator. He fired one more burst, killing another man, then hauled himself up the ladder.
Rain soaked his face as he flung open the hatch at the top of the ladder. The storm was getting worse. Good - it would make his getaway easier. He slammed the hatch behind him, and hammered its latch with the butt of its rifle to jam the mechanism. With Boris' muscle, a few hard blows bent the metal enough to ensure that no FutureTech mercenaries would be following the way he came.
For a moment, wind was a greater hazard than the enemy. The bare steel of the roof's beams and trusses was slick, crowded with obstacles like bundles of rebar and stacks of acetylene cylinders. Boris reloaded his weapon as he crept carefully, climbing to the peak of the roof. From here, he could see the whole base spread below him: the ideal firing position, with a clear view of the structures, enemies, and fuel barrels. Behind him, the great metal 'U' of the Gap Generator pulsed a bass hum as it rotated.
First things first. He hustled to the Gap Generator, knelt at its base, and planted a bundle of explosives with a short timer. In ninety seconds, the Gap Generator would suffer a catastrophic failure. The comrades behind the satellites would finally get their precious pictures, while Boris made his escape in the confusion of the explosion.
Boris just needed to distract the pigs until then. He excelled at that. He moved to the front of the roof.
Through his night-vision scope, he could see dozens of enemy mercenaries and vehicles swarming below him, surrounding the building. Two were ascending in the elevator of the great crane nearby, heading to an overwatch position with sniper rifles at the ready.
The snipers were the greatest threat, so Boris killed them first. He raked the crane elevator with a long burst of automatic fire, tracer rounds flickering out from his position, stabbing through metal and windows and people. The elevator's motor exploded in a shower of sparks.
The enemy returned fire, the ground below alive with muzzle flashes flaring through the darkness. Boris heard the bullets passing over his head, felt one of them pluck at his sleeve, and dropped prone for added protection as he turned his sights on the second crane on the opposite side of the building. Sure enough, two more snipers were taking up shooting positions on its long, reaching arm. He shot them, and their screams rose above the wind as they plummeted downwards.
Sparks flew from machine gun rounds ricocheting off the metal he was lying on. Boris didn't flinch as he aimed at one of the firing Buggies, who'd identified themselves as the next greatest threat. He hammered the vehicle with sustained fire, armour-piercing tracer rounds slamming through its thin armour and breaching the fuel tank. The fireball lit up the night, the sound of the explosion momentarily drowning out the howling alarms and Boris' booming, triumphant laugh.
"Who is next?" He called out, daring the entire base to take him on.
He was outnumbered, but the environment itself could be his ally. As the enemy raked his position with cover fire, Boris saw squads of guards running toward the building from multiple angles, admiring their neat, drilled formation through his scope. He couldn't shoot them all before they flanked him.
But he could shoot the fuel barrels they were running past. And there were so many of them.
Each barrel he shot exploded spectacularly in bright yellow balls of fire, touching off a chain reaction with its neighbouring barrels. The blasts doused the enemy with liquid flame and set several of the unfinished buildings alight. A flaming Buggy drove wild, running over two of its comrades, and then exploded. Mercenaries dropped dead from the blast, or rolled around burning on the wet ground, or ran screaming through the rain like living matchsticks until they were extinguished.
Boris roared with laughter. The remaining enemies fell back.
Boris had never regretted killing, not since gutting that first drunken German soldier as a boy. It was a joy to fight for Mother Russia, for the people, for a Socialist future, and joy surged in him now as he relished the last few seconds of combat before his explosives marked this mission accomplished.
Suddenly, the enemy gunfire died down. Perhaps the pigs had finally realised they couldn't stop Boris.
Something clanked down behind him. Boris turned and had a moment to see the green, glowing grenade between his feet before it burst into a cloud of sparkling green dust, covering him.
Boris roared in pain and wiped at his eyes. It felt like sand was behind his eyelids. When he opened them, the world was tinged with green, more vivid and sickly than his night-vision scope. His face burned as though splashed with hot water. He was no longer having fun.
No sign of the gas grenade's origin. The rooftop was silent and empty, except for the pattering of rain, Boris' hurting gasps, and the deep bass hum of the Gap Generator spinning. He raised his rifle, squinting, then tilted his head.
The Gap Generator was still spinning. His explosives should have silenced it by now.
Boris coughed, feeling a sharp stabbing inside his chest, like there was glass in his lungs. But- there! Outlined by the rain about fifty feet away, a vaguely man-shaped silhouette, large and shadowy, impossible to make out even through night vision, somehow camouflaged despite standing in the open. Screaming, Boris opened fire.
Sparks flew from the figure, like his bullets were bouncing off the thick armour of a tank. A buzzing red light flared, and hot pain flashed through Boris' right arm. Something thumped down in front of him as the sizzle of cooked meat filled his nose. He looked down, coughing again.
A hand lay on the ground, still holding the trigger of a ruined rifle, molten metal glowing and hissing in the rain. Boris stared at it a moment, then lifted the smoking, bleeding stump of his right wrist in front of his face. His rifle and his arm had been sliced in two.
It came at him, huge and silent, air shimmering as it revealed itself. A seven-foot hulk of a man in sleek, gleaming black armour with sharp red trim, shiny and segmented like a scorpion's carapace. The armour was unmarked by Boris' armour-piercing rounds, and his safely disarmed explosives hung from its waist.
An iron hand closed around Boris' throat and lifted him up into the air, wheezing, feet dangling below him. The other hand was not a hand, a multi-barrelled cluster of weapons sprouting from the armoured wrist, glowing with crimson energy.
Through blurred eyes, Boris got a glimpse of a grim face with severe Slavic features and buzz-cut blond hair, criss-crossed with fresh surgical scars. His left eye was icy blue, but his right was covered by a glowing green electronic lens attached to some kind of headset that encroached onto the man's flesh, puckered scar tissue marking the line between man and machine.
Boris, growling like an enraged bear, hit him with his remaining hand. Once, twice, three times, throwing all his strength into it, blows that could and had killed strong men. His hand throbbed with red pain as it struck a jaw that felt like solid steel. The enemy commando didn't flinch.
A memory flashed in Boris' mind: the failed experiments with cybernetic soldiers from Stalin's time.
"What… are you?" He gasped.
The cyborg surprised him by answering in Russian, his voice tinged with a synthetic buzz.
"The future."
With that, the cyborg commando turned and hurled Boris straight into the Gap Generator. The massive whirling metal 'U' swatted him like a fly, shattering his ribs and knocking him off the roof. Boris saw the facility spinning below him as he plummeted down. He hit the ground on his back, and the world went black.
Agonised, throbbing consciousness returned, seconds or minutes later, he did not know. Boris lay coughing on the ground in front of the enemy structure. The upper half of his body felt like it was on fire, especially his back. The lower half felt nothing at all. He lifted his remaining hand, and saw that his watch had shattered in the fall, and his sleeve had been torn open by a bullet. The skin beneath was speckled with jagged shards of something shiny, hard, and green, like his flesh was turning to stone. Or crystal.
Grigori, he thought, trying to focus his thoughts even as blackness ate away at his vision. If you are still out there. Warn Moscow. Warn our comrades. Something horrible is happening here.
The enemy surrounded him, looking down. Guards, engineers, scientists in white coats, and business types in expensive black suits, seemingly from around the world. The fires Boris had started were already dying down. The cyborg loomed over of the scene, atop the peak of the building that was so much like a temple, the Gap Generator still turning behind him. Boris saw his rifle's scope, and all its recorded information, glint in the light as the cyborg pocketed it.
"Observe, brothers and sisters. One of the deadliest soldiers in the world, Boris Volkov, sent here to sabotage our dream. But behold! How easily our enemies fall before the Technology of Peace!"
They all parted like a sea, bowing their heads as someone stepped into their midst. The speaker was a bald, pale man with a goatee and piercing dark eyes. He radiated authority with his presence, hardly raising his voice as he addressed his followers. The long, dark coat he wore was completely dry.
The pouring rain had stopped the instant he had appeared, as though commanded by a miracle.
"You should be honoured, my Russian friend." The man leaned over Boris and spoke intimately to him, as though to a confidant. "Your body's changes are but the first draft of a great evolution. A divine process. You are among the first of billions to bear witness. This place is the beginning of a glorious future for all humanity. Brotherhood. Unity. Peace."
In unison, the cultists circling around him snapped to attention and pumped their fists in the air, a punching straight-arm salute as they chanted.
In his last, nightmarish moments, as his flesh rippled with gelatinous change and his mind sank into a final green agony, Boris was reminded of a dark image from history: the Fascist movements that had briefly arisen in Europe between the wars, black-shirted thugs chanting and shouting in rapture to their leader's vision of transformation.
"ONE VISION! ONE PURPOSE!
THE TECHNOLOGY OF PEACE!
PEACE THROUGH POWER!
PEACE THROUGH POWER!
PEACE THROUGH POWER!"
They were the last words Boris Volkov heard as a human being.
A/N: Looks like Boris won't be recruited to Echo Nine after all. The lesson of this chapter: even the world's deadliest commandos can be outmatched by Kane and his followers. Maybe the characters appearing in the next chapters will have better luck?
FutureTech is based on an Allied corporation that's up to no good in Red Alert 3. In this continuity, they're a front for the Brotherhood of Nod. The 'Raptor' assault rifle used here is from Renegade.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter, and thank you for reading!