Then this is it… Rikko thought, turning around as he activated his shield But I’ll take as much of them as possible with me!
He grabbed his sidearm, planning to first empty that one. He fired his first 3 shots, but then already got an angry buzzer, telling him to reload or, in this case, start to shake. Bullets started to deflect off of his shield and whiz by his head, hitting the rock right behind him.
Rikko placed his sidearm carefully back to where it belonged and grabbed his particle gun. This seemed to make the mob slightly scared. The last three shots took three of them with them, but this would take a fair chunk out of them with the little room they had. But instead of running, they only increased the pressure they put on his shield. Rikko knew he only had two shots with his particle gun yet. This was getting desperate.
Rikko carefully aimed at the mob, targeting the one that seemed to hold the most damaging weapon. When he pulled the trigger, a small explosion took place. For a second, Rikko was puzzled. For as far as he knew, particle guns didn’t cause explosions.
More impacts, this time from lasers, coming from the sky. Rikko looked up to see a small person fly over in a jetpack. The person was too fast to be targeted properly and made strafing runs untill the mob decided it wasn’t worth it and broke off. Then Rikko’s savior landed next to him.
Rikko still remembered that one day he and Eva got free from their work. They went to Rikko’s house to surprise his parents, and took some friends with them. The whole day was spent in various rooms in the house, discussing things and playing games. It was like they were just the normal 17 year olds they would’ve been if they weren’t recruited.
When Rikko and Eva took their friends down to get them home, as it was getting late already, Rikko suddenly smelled something. He put his nose in the air and sniffed, to indicate he did. Eva stood by him and asked what he smelled, and he happily exclaimed ‘Alcohol!’.
Needless to say, he got a lot of comentary on that, as his parents were just drinking some wine, but it was a good finisher of the day.
Eva turned her visor back to it’s smaller mode, freeing her hair and showing her face.
“Just in time, eh?” She said, smiling at him.
“Nothing new…” Rikko answered, grinning “So… Twenty minutes?”
They started walking, the landing zone was still quite some distance away.
“I flew ahead,” Eva answered, pointing with her thumb to the Jetpack that was hanging on her back
“I owe you for that.”
Eva stopped
“Stand still,” She said, rummaging with a packet over her shoulder “you weren’t too hard to follow…”
She pointed to the ground, which had small blood splatters where Rikko had walked. Because of all the excitement, he had completely forgotten about his arm. It still had three small holes where the turret had perforated him.
Eva found what she was looking for, and pointed it at Rikko’s arm. Almost instantly, his wounds started to heal up, leaving only three ugly scars.
The Rev-Up was one of the best things Declipse had to offer. Generally, only few officers were issued one, because they were very hard to calibrate to a person. The machine is capable of restoring damaged tissue within seconds, as long as it happened within a three hour period from the moment the damage was inflicted. The only drawback of the machine was that it left very ugly scars, making it immediately recognisable where you were damaged.
The reason they are hard to calibrate is it’s secondary option. This option is often called ‘Sacrifical heal’ by the people operating them. To activate this, they need to type in a security code on a panel, hit the button that comes free when the code is correct and then type in another code. When this code is correct, four tubes will penetrate the wrist of the operator, sucking blood into the machine. The blood will then power the machine even further, allowing it to heal otherwise mortal wounds. When the machine is calibrated wrong, the tubes might miss the veins and are useless, or, even worse, penetrate the bone and start to suck away bone tissue.
Because the scars are so clearly visible, every two months commando’s had to perform a full body scan, mapping the scars. This allows the doctors to see, when comparing it with previous maps, where you were hit the worst and determine if you had suffered any permanent damage out of it. It also allowed you to set a holographic camouflager to camouflage your scars, so you would look better.
Exactly 19 hours and 54 minutes after Rikko started the car engine, the Gunship landed on the designated spot, allowing Rikko and Eva to get in. The ship quickly went airborne again, and they were off to the Mobile HQ.
The Mobile HQ was the flagship of the assault force that was currently waiting just out of radar range of the terrorist base. When nearing the force, the sky was already filled with small fighter planes performing recon operations, with the giant, lumbering battleships hanging on their place in the air.
“This is Gunship G57B, requesting permission to enter the flagship…”
“Understood, Gunship G57B, permission granted, docking bay 12 is free to use.”
A large hatch at the underside of the flagship opened up, allowing the Gunship to enter it. At this moments, Rikko was happy. You never entered a battleship as a commando, except after a mission. This ment he had completed the mission.
“Lady, gentlemen, glad you could come…”
After about 10 hours of natural sleep, Rikko had recovered completely from his pills. This meant he was going to finish the job. He was currently in the flagship’s briefing room, drinking a cup of coffee while being educated with diagrams and maps.
“After G-Lead finished his mission, the terrorists were well aware of a certain degree of Declipse activity in the region.”
The person who was briefing them was not the usual commander. This one was wearing a neat suit and spoke with a monotonous voice. His scalp looked like it had been combed for hours to get it in the right, political correct way.
“Because of this, hostile patrols in the area have increased, increasing our risk of detection every three minutes by…”
He frowned for a second as he looked at a note
“Zero point zero three one five percent...”
Rikko didn’t take the trouble to hide his moan. As a captain, he could take some risks with his superiors.
“So that makes zero point six three percent an hour,” he finished the commander’s sentence “If our detection risk started out at twenty-two point three nine one percent, that means we are currently at twenty-eight point six nine one percent. The risk required for mission abortion is fifty-three point nine percent.”
The commander looked irritated at Rikko. Rikko grinned, he enjoyed annoying this type of people.
“That means we have another fourty hours to take action before the mission will be aborted. When official offensive action is taken, it requires the death of two commando’s to abort the mission. In other words, between now and roughly thirty hours, Eva and I will be sent out to disable the base main defences and open up the door for the offensive that is being prepared here. Or we both die and clear the way for a full retreat. Am I right?”
The room had become silent. It was an effect that Rikko had on people when he started to think about the mission. Of course he didn’t do all the calculations out of his head, he had a calculator right in front of him, on which the devastating numbers were clearly visible.
“Of course,” Eva jumped in “we will most probably be sent out as fast as possible. Keeping an expensive assault force out in the open with an increasing risk percentage is not very well for the promotion status of the commander. The faster we finish, wether it be by death or success, the faster the assault force can be pulled back. Am I right?”
You had to feel sorry for the poor commander. You just had to. Before him there were two commando’s punching away at his complete plan of promotion. Not only did they do it in front of the camera’s which would be reviewed by his superiors, they also did it grinning like innocent - or is the correct term ignorant - children. Especially the ‘Am I right’ was devastating.
And then he did the worst he could do. He started to stutter.
“No, h-how could y-you come up with that s-s-stupid i-idea?”
“Experience, sir. But I am happy to know we are wrong.” Rikko answered. Eva leaned against his shoulder. For as far as he knew, Eva had slept more then he did, so Rikko put his arm on her shoulder.
A different person took over for the commander, for the briefing had become hard to understand with all the stuttering that was now involved. This one was grinning slightly, but his eyes were sharp. He was a slightly damaged person, with a couple of scars on his face and hands. He had a much more animated voice, too, and his hair was hanging in wild rags across his head. You could say he was the previous person’s evil twin brother. Except for the evil, twin and brother part.
“After this quick deduction, we might want to continue the briefing,” he said, throwing a look at Rikko and Eva. Eva sat up right again and Rikko honestly looked like he was paying attention. The grins were gone like by magic.
“Thank you. Anyhow, with the increasing detection risk, we will have to accellerate our course of action. The original plan was to let you two perform the opening in fourty-eight hours, but that has become unaffordable now. This means that you two will be sent out in two hours after the end of the briefing.”
Rikko and Eva nodded. Their visors were lying before them, on the table. They were wirelessly connected with the keyboards integrated in the table and the small screen in front of them. This way they were able to insert personal notes into the visor. Sometimes information relayed from HQ just didn’t do it.
“Your deduction about your mission was right, though.”
Rikko grinned again
“The main objective will be to spike as much base defences with explosives as possible. You will enter the area through long range cannon shells.”
Rikko moaned. He hated that. The basic idea of this kind of transport was that they were loaded in shells which were then loaded into the flagship’s main cannons. The story between there and the landing can probably be guessed. The shells were made of titanium, and they crumbled apart on landing, theoretically keeping the rider alive. Theoretically.
“Don’t worry, we have already calculated the arc trajectory, so you will land in the middle of the base.”
This meant they would go through the roof.
“Using Rikko’s knowledge of the base, you should be able to position yourself and navigate to each of your targets. Top priority is the radar. When that is spiked, the way is clear for the rest of the force to advance.”
“That is, assuming we don’t land on top of the radar…” Rikko typed down, hastily taking the notes.
“Next priority is the ground to air armament. Once the radar is down, we don’t expect it to be able to fire guided anymore, but try to spike their main computer to put it down.”
“Assuming there is a main computer…” was typed.
“Finally, when the troops get in, they will most likely be slaughtered by the ground to ground defenses. I believe I speak in their name when I say they would highly appreciate it if those were at least partially disabled.”
Rikko finished his typing after a second.
“Question.” He said, raising his hand “If we are going to disable everything now, why did I risk my life half a day ago?”
“You won’t be sliced up after landing now.”
“Ah, good one.”
“Question.” Eva said, also raising her hand “How much time do we have between our dispatchment and the arrival of the assault force?”
“The jammer is located in the radar. Once we regain communication, the assault force will start to move towards the base. Count on 8 minutes between the radar spike and our arrival.”
More typing
“Give us five more minutes after the spike…” Rikko said “During that time we can decide if the ground to air armament has a central computer or individual units…”
“Understood. No more questions?”
Rikko looked at Eva, who shook her head.
“Nothing from our side, sir.”
As they left the briefing room, both Eva and Rikko were silent. They usually were when the briefing had ended, for they now had to prepare for the mission. Sure, they could goof off during the briefing, but they took their preparations very serious.
Rikko started off with a short shower and a fresh set of clothes. He always did before the mission. That way, if something went wrong, he would die as clean as possible. After that he went to the armory where he would replace his ammunition. Even the clips he hadn’t used were traded in for fresh ones. Once in the field, the clips were subject to the weather and thus became less and less relyable over time. He topped everything off with recalibrating his weapons on the shooting range, making sure they were still alligned well. Of course he ended with placing everything on it’s place. This meant he had two guns, one on each hip. One dagger right in front of the gun on the right side and his double sword in front of the gun on the left side. His rifle was placed over his back.
Eva had studied Rikko’s face before they entered their shells. He was looking very serious, with only the slightest hint of a grin, somewhere in his eyes. That was not very good, concerning he had told Eva not to worry when he was loaded on the Gunship bringing him to his previous mission’s location.
The shells were… Relatively comfortable on the inside. There was a small chair crammed inside with safety belts. These belts would automatically open on landing, so they could immediately exit the remains of their transport. The whole inside was padded with soft material, a thing that really was done just in case, as failing safety belts usually meant death upon landing. But it was a nice touch.
“Ok, Team Gamma, are you ready?”
“Ready as one can be, assuming we’re going to survive the landing…” Rikko answered.
“Don’t be such a pessimist, we’re going to load you now…”
The loading mechanism was quite fast, basically allowing you to fire a shell every three seconds. The main turret housed three barrels. This meant the first shot would be a smoke shell, covering their entrance and breaking the roof first. Rikko would be fired immediately after that and Eva would come last.
The trip through the loading mechanism was thus quite short. Rikko felt a thud when his shell was loaded onto the conveyor belt leading to the barrels and he turned around his axis for 90 degrees as he was loaded into the barrel.
“You are loaded now, we’re going to fire the first shell in 3… 2… 1…”
Rikko didn’t even hear the zero, because the immense sound of the launching shell deafened him for a second. Immediately after he recovered from this, he was launched, feeling a large pull and an even larger explosion behind him. As he traveled through the barrel, he gasped for air for a second. This was something he just couldn’t get used to. He figured no-one would.
Rikko barely safed himself from the embarrasment of wetting himself. Barely. There was no time to check for any damage, however. The barrels were positioned in such a way that, unless one of the shells hit a disturbance en route, they would land on top of eachother. Instead of checking for any leaking liquids, Rikko had to jump away, taking full use of the two second head-start he had gotten to Eva. The smoke was perfectly covering them from nothing, for the hallway they were standing in was empty.
“Are you ok?” Rikko asked Eva, activating the smokevision on his visor. Eva looked to be ok, already standing up and scanning the hallway.
“Yes, where are we?”
“I recognise this area. This is three halls before the EMP wore off too early.”
Rikko looked around.
“And it is hard to drop us on a worse position. We will need to cross five halls before we reach the radar entrance…”
He pointed at a door.
“And we will need to go through that door… Move!”
The door was quick to fall. They didn’t need to be carefull, with about the whole building knowing of their arrival. It didn’t take long for Eva to suddenly pull Rikko into another doorway, pulling him away from a rain of bullets.
“One would say… We weren’t welcome…” Eva commented, throwing a grenade around the corner of the door. They had to be fast, for the longer they were standing still, the faster they would be surrounded.
After the resulting explosion, they would both storm through the hallway, emptying their clips on the hallway. When they had reloaded, the smoke finally started to clear, leaving only dead bodies.
The following hallways were actually more of the same, with the main perk being the sudden grenade that was being lobbed towards them. From that point on they used their shields to keep away the bullets and make even faster work of their opponents.
But finally they reached the door. It was kicked open, with Eva rolling in to scan the area. Eva was a natural choice for this, being such a small target. Of course Rikko quickly followed, but Eva still went first. Surprisingly, the radar controll room was… Empty.
“That makes everything so much easier…” Rikko muttered as he tossed Eva an explosive. He placed his explosive on the key component that was being indicated on his visor. It always took longer then was comfortable to set an explosive. This ones took nearly 10 seconds of full concentration to set, but they made it without interference. This time Rikko went out first to check the area. When he was sure it was clear, he detonated the explosives.
The resulting explosion was kept in the room by the walls. As predicted, communications came back online.
“Well done, Team Gamma! We’re moving our assault force in 5 minutes!”
“Understood. Moving on to the main controll room! Erm… This way!”
The main controll room was only one hall further. One hall full of hostiles, which had taken the time to forify themselves in the hallway, which explained the low activity. Small sandbag walls, a single fullautomatic weapon emplacement and a lot of small arms suddenly were all aimed at the duo standing in the doorway. They once again took cover in a doorway, being safe from the fire for a second.
“What is your shield status?” Rikko asked
“48 percent damage. You?”
“35 percent. Listen up, I’ll go out first, taking most fire. I will try to take out a couple of the smaller ones. You need to take out the one operating the machinegun.”
“Understood.”
“Ok, ready? Now!”
Rikko jumped out of the relative safety, with the machinegun immediately opening fire on him. His shield was able to block out the bullets, but it wouldn’t last long. He opened fire as he steered clear from Eva’s field of fire, who took carefull aim to down the machinegunner. Once the man was dead, the fire decreased dramatically. As Eva jumped out of cover, the chaos became complete, and most of the hostiles ended up dead, with the rest trying to run.
“Shield down to 12 percent!” Rikko said “But we made it. Force entry!”
Eva placed explosives on the door and blew it open. They didn’t even check if it was locked, they just needed this surprise.
Rikko jumped in and emptied his last shots on a couple of engineers standing inside, trying to repair the damage suffered to the internal systems.
As Rikko tried to reload, he cursed.
“Out of charged clips…” He said “At least five minutes untill I have a fresh clip again. Switching over to sword.”
“Understood, Lead.” Eva confirmed “3 charged clips left here…”
Rikko wasn’t done cursing, though.
“G-Lead to base, there is only a central ground to ground system. I suspect the ground to air systems all have their own systems.”
“Understood, G-Lead. Advise?”
“Stall the advance another 5 minutes, that will allow us to spike the frontal air defence systems. You will have to take care of the rear systems, though.”
“Understood, preparing.”
Rikko grabbed a single explosive and placed it on the ground defence system. Once they were outside, the explosion took out the computer.
“Almost done… Time?”
“6 minutes and counting!”
“So another 4 untill the advance starts… We need to get outside for those systems, though… This way!”
Rikko knew the closest exit was the wrong one. They would have to improvise a little. He leaded Eva through a hallway that ended in a dead end. The blind wall would lead them directly to the air defence systems.
“Be so kind to create a door…” Rikko ordered. Eva nodded and placed the small explosive. Taking about 10 yards distance, the explosion didn’t even get close to them, though a nicely sized hole was created.
The area was, once again, pretty empty. Rikko had to jump around a little to take out a couple of hidden soldiers and Eva had to show some marksmanship with a couple of guard towers, but nothing too complicated.
“You take those three, I’ll take this three!” Eva said, neatly dividing the defence systems between the two of them. The explosions were only small, but enough to completely disable the spiked systems.
“14 minutes and counting!” Eva said “Another 4 minutes untill the assault force arives!”
“Ok, let’s get out!”
On the way out, Rikko saw with his own eyes where all those missing opponents were. They were all just converging on their location. When Eva deployed a smoke grenade, Rikko used the cover provided by it to advance on a large collumn of opponents and rip through them. Then Eva would follow, taking out anything that was left standing. This highly effective strategy would probably cost them their stripes. There were less dangerous tactics.
“2 minutes!”
Rikko looked around, leading Eva through a new hallway. This one was empty, allowing them to pull a sprint untill Rikko pulled open a new door, leading into the final hallway to the outside. Unfortunately for them, at the same moment another door was kicked open. The hallway they left was filling up with opponents, which quickly persued the fleeing team.
“20 seconds!”
Rikko kicked open the door, leading outside and to their safety.
“Assault force to Team Gamma, we are starting the offensive!”
Rikko looked towards the sea side of the base. Over the sea was a small fleet, sending out amphibious tranports. In the air was an even larger force, this one containing heavy battleships, opening fire on the base with their massive cannons. All in all, quite an impressive sight.
A shell impacted right next to Rikko, throwing up a lot of dust and debries, but nothing harmfull.
“G-Lead to assault force, clean up your act! We were almost hit!”
“Understood, G-Lead, re-targeting cannons.”
And finally, to make things even worse, their persuing company was finally out of the building, too. Rikko noticed this because there were suddenly bullets whizzing around his ear.
“This is Gunship G81K. I have orders to pick you up on the rendez-vous!”
“Be advised, G81K, the rear ground to air systems are not spiked. It is unknown how they will operate without radar!”
“Understood, plotting a new route.”
A Gunship flew over a couple of seconds later and hovered about a feet above the ground, 100 yards from their location. Rikko turned around.
“Keep running, Eva!” he ordered “I’m right behind you!”
He activated his shield and grabbed his sidearm. Assisted by the Gunship turrets, he would be able to take out his persuers. When he took aim, though, he got a warning on his visor. Red and blinking. Something explosive was closing in on his location!
Quickly glancing up, he was able to notice the devastating shell, nearing quickly.
As Eva entered the Gunship, she looked around to see where Rikko was. He seemed to look up to somewhere above him. He tried to turn and then ended up in a big explosion.
“No!” she screamed, wanting to jump out again. She was stopped by the soldier inside.
“You can’t, ma’am!” he exclaimed “Your death will cause the abortion of the operation! We have to get you out of here!”
Eva nodded. She tried to look tough, but tears were still welling up. She put herself down and concentrated on the wall next to her. He was right. She could not risk the operation.
“Bodies, arms, legs… We could make a puzzle out of this!”
We are now a day after the attack that was already famous under the soldiers as ‘The Final Assault’. Declipse searcher teams were busy with finding and identifying Declipse soldiers who died during the offensive. There weren’t much.
“Yeah…” his budy snickered, picking up an eye that was thrown out of it’s socket “We could even create our own faces…”
Suddenly, the radio the search leader was carrying started to create noise. Three short stops.
“Three calls… They found a survivor! Quick!”
The survivor wasn’t hard to locate. The team who found him or her had already lighted a signal flare, calling in a Gunship to transport the unlucky person to the medical ship. He was still quite young. Upon closer inspection, he wasn’t wearing an official uniform, but his dogtags told he was Declipse definitely. The Gunship didn’t even land, instead the medics jumped out, placed the survivor on a brancard and then carefully re-entered.
Rikko woke up two days later in a bed he was sure he hadn’t entered the day before. He slowly opened his eyes, trying to determine his situation. He wasn’t bound to the bed. He wasn’t in his uniform. His weapons weren’t were they were supposed to be… His left arm seemed to fail to react… He decided to take the risk and sat up. He almost immediately fell down, seeing his left arm failed to support him because it wasn’t there.
“Woah, dizzy!” He exclaimed as he sat up again, this time using his right arm for support. Almost immediately, he was thrown down again. This time because Eva’s petite body flew against him, hugging him intensely.
Epilogue: “Come on, Rikko!”
Rikko smiled as he followed a tanned girl in a blue swimsuit. Her dark hair was waving untill about her shoulders and her thin arms were pulling at Rikko’s. It had been almost a month now since he had lost his arm.
“To the diving board!”
Rikko had taken up his penpal contacts again after he was allowed to use a computer again. He was happy to see that this girl, originating from Italy, still wanted to keep contact and even meet him in personal. Using some connections, the transport was relatively quick and free.
He looked how she graciously took her dive, and wanted to get ready to jump. Even now, he was still armed, with a knife stuck in his swimming trunks’ pocket. Then a loud disturbance happened. A figure crashed through the glass roof, shattering it. Luckily it was safety glass, so the glass pieces would be harmless.
“I want Rikko Gratein here, now!”
Rikko rolled with his eyes as he grabbed the knife with his hand. As he jumped, he pulled back his arm. The figure was hanging in mid-air using a Declipse Jetpack. He was an easy target. When he got close enough, the knife entered the figure’s head. Before he fell down, Rikko pulled out his knife and at the same time kicked the manual controll to ‘full speed’. The clown instantly went up again.
When he came above the water surface again, the swimming pool was silent. Everyone was looking at him, including a short girl in a green bikini.
“What are you doing here?” Rikko asked Eva.
“I was chasing that guy, but I saw you was able to handle him, so I took a dive.” Eva smiled “Besides, command wants to speak with you.”
“Not here…” Rikko said, looking over his shoulder. He saw his penpal standing right next to the diving board, looking rather shocked “To the dressing rooms…”
Eva helped Rikko out of the water and Rikko lead the way to the dressing rooms, where they broke all rules by taking a single one together. Eva helped Rikko with putting on a combat visor.
“I’m glad to see you are still the G-Lead we know, Rikko!”
Rikko smiled.
“Same here, sir, same here.”
