Asteroid Blues

Infinity

Task Force Storm Wind, part 7

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PanOceania
Storm Wind
VS NA-2
Vertimore

Lieutenant Max Delgado was back. A lot had changed after the disastrous defence of the Liberty Compound that had cost him his life - luckily for him the PMC had judged his intel critical enough to warrant a swift Ressurrection for debriefing, but it wasn't all good. For starters, the same didn't apply to all the good men and women that he'd gotten killed, although the reports said all of their Cubes had been recovered and are waiting for Ressurrection according to their normal schedule. Which was sometime in the next 100 years - Max knew the costs involved, the PMC had been kind enough to put the bill on his tap and take it from his salary. But he had learned a lesson there somewhere - this time around, as he was returning to the Task Force that was currently formed from VIRD members, he knew not to go into a fight without a plan.

The acting commander of the Task Force, Lt. Sofia Werner, had stepped down gladly and let Max have his old position back. The two went way back, they'd become friends on Paradiso during the Second Offensive, and had been writing to each other sporadically since. Sofia had briefed him about what had happened in his absence, and focussed on their recent capture of the Ariadnan officer. The interview had been terse, but the man had told that they had been keeping an eye on the Ikari Company. The Company had set up a command post down in the Gallery Maze, where they were doing some illegal weapons testing. The Hexahedron had put two and two together, and since the Combined Army's hideout was suspected to be somewhere in the Maze area the Task Force was sent to capture the Ikari's base and see what they have been up to. The Company could harly complain - if the facility was illegal, they'd have to admit it existed in the first place if they wanted international support against the Panoceanian raid...

Lt. Delgado had ordered a cautious approach on the site. The Maze was quite cramped in those parts, and they were walking to unknown opposition. Intel had sent remotes to map the area, but most of those were destroyed and they hadn't got a clear view of the numbers and troops against them. Sofia Werner had volunteered to scout ahead in her Squalo, and Max had agreed since it was the most heavily-armed thing in the Task Force and even if she walked into an ambush she herself was in no physical risk. "Here they are!" Sofia's constantly cheerful voice informed the rest of the team. She reported little under a dozen targets, and with Max's permission pinned them down with heavy fire. A couple went down, and she reduced a Heavy to spare parts with a focussed fusillade. "Looking good so far, LT!" she reported. "No prob!"

As Max was acknowledging her report he almost missed an alarm by one of the Kamaus, probably Cathy York the sniper. "Please repeat?" he asked. "A Ninja, headed your way," she said again, and punctuated it with a few pot shots. "Damned slippery thing, I can see it but can't nail it down. Oh, heads up, he's coming just 'round the corner on your posit!" "Copy, we're ready here!" Max answered. "Sir!" Patsy chimed up behind him. "Permission for the old Bullet Wall to welcome our sneaky friend?" Max shrugged, "Alright, all yours!" York had tracked the target right under a balcony where the squad was taking cover, and on Patsy's count of three the whole squad leaned over the rail and let loose full-auto. Camouflage or no, the sheer volume of bullets guaranteened at least one hit, and true enough, as Patsy leaped down to follow-up, the Ninja's camo suite flickered off and revealed a bleeding body in black body-suit. "That's the Varunan Welcome, tool!" she taunted, and gave the body a gratuitious headshot in parting.

"Another incoming!" the lookout York shouted just seconds after the squad had regrouped around the Ninja's body. They turned to face the signal, and a roaring shape of flesh and powered armour was on top of Patsy, knocking her down. She managed to fire a burst of her SMG while going down and the assailant dropped on top of her, now silent. "Wow," she breathed while standing up, "I didn't know I was that good!" She caught a wave from atop a nearby balcony. "No, you're not!" Corporal York shot back cheerfully. "That was me and Tommy - your burst killed a lot of stone from that wall, though!" Max looked over her in the dim light. "You okay? I think you're bleeding somewhere." Patsy took a quick look at her suit's diagnostics. "Yeah, puncture in the thigh. Not my first, and not my last. Let's keep moving."

Meanwhile, Sofia had her hands full with the mercenaries' main group. She had parked her TAG by a small bank, taking cover while firing the shoulder-mounted machine gun in controlled bursts. At first the enemy had scattered in surprise at the appearance of a heavy war machine, but now they seemed to find their confidence again. The TAG started taking heavy hits here and there, and she had to give ground a little to take stock of the damage. "LT!" she commed. "They're getting my number here! Chipping paint so far, but they're bringing heavier stuff... Oh shit!" she finished her sentence in hurry, as the opponents suddenly charged en masse, guns blazing. She felled one thanks to her superior position, but one solid round went inside her chest armour in a shower of sparks, and then one enemy was close enough to duck her long gun and blast the TAG in the face point-blank with a shotgun. The link went dark, and she cried in frustration in her pod, somewhere in the confines of Liberty Base. "LT," she said finally into the team's comms. "I'm out. Consider the enemy properly distracted."

"Alright, Sofia, you did your best!" Max consoled her. He looked up his tactical display, and saw that Sofia's stand and retreat had drawn a good number of the enemy out of position and that their comms relay was exposed. There was just a couple of soldiers in rear guard. "Sir?" one of the Fusiliers in the squad asked suddenly, Private Will Gordon read the man's AR tag. "Permission to lead the final assault? Can't have you ORC:s have all the glory, can we?" The squad chuckled at this, and Max gave him a thumbs-up with his free hand. "Careful, though," he warned. "You're no Patsy."

Will Gordon took the lead position, and count down with his fingers the seconds to coordinate the thrust. As he rounded the corner with his rifle level, the two sentries were looking the wrong way for a second. His first burst went wild, but he kept on running and firing. "Varuna Fusiliers!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, as the first enemy went down and the second readied his weapon. He shouldered a rocket launcher, which was practically suicidal at that short range, and managed to pull the trigger just as Will's last burst hit him in the stomach. The missile disappeared somewhere down the corridor, luckily missing the rest of the squad behind him before a cloud of dust erupted from its impact. The squad secured the area behind Will, and Max slapped him in the shoulder. "Damn, kid! You keep that up and you'll put the rest of us to shame!" It was too dark for normal eyes, but Max's armour's light enhancers revealed Will's ear-to-ear grin.

"Patsy, do the honours!" Max gestured at the merc's comms console. She moved up, took one of the demolition charges from her pack, and fastened it to the console. "Heads down!" she shouted as she stepped back, and there was a snap of the explosives and a cloud of dust. Once it settled, there was some superficial damage but the device seemed essentially functional still. "Hell," she sighed. "I'm no combat engineer, it seems." "No matter," Max said from behind her, his eye on the tactical screen. "Seems like they're retreating, so we'll have the whole day to dismantle that thing."

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