Cyber Wars 2.0 Chapter 2: One Eye Blind
 

Wraith took another swig of his coffee -- the last, in fact -- and was about to get up to leave when the reply came back. He skimmed it over quickly, then smirked to himself as he got approval.

One last time for the road...

He closed the email program and got up, leaving as he was originally going to.

Now under normal circumstances he'd be suiting up right afterward and getting back to work on the double.

However, it was nearly three in the morning and he, Devin, and Shahdee were a little banged up over the fight earlier.

So instead, he went straight back to his room and got ready for the bed. The mafia could wait until tomorrow.

Jason's PDAP beeped with an incoming message from Jade. "Since I'm not going to be joining you on this mission of yours, I've asked a friend to go with you to give you a hand. Also, she's been given the title of "Cyber Eden Liason" so that she can report to me once in a while. Good luck!"

An AI materialized onto Jason's PDAP. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt she could pass for Jade's identical twin if she weren't an AI. "Hi," said J2, "I hear we're going AI hunting."

Jason grinned a bit. Now we've got two very capable mastermind-hunting AIs.

"Yes we are," Jason said. "Though we don't have much to go on, I'm working on narrowing down a couple locations where our team can make the first strike. Sadly, it's mostly RW combat. Though I'll need your help and Beowulf's to shut down any security that may be there. I'll let you know when I have something more concrete."

Azrael was prone on the Westin hotel, overlooking parliament hill. Six-hundred meters, slight cross-wind. Hard shot regardless of anything else. That, and tactical belaclavas get hot, as do jumpsuits and bullet-proof armor.

But, he still laid still. His Sig-Sauer SSG 3000 was still in his hands. Normally, Azrael would've take one of his customized AR-15s or his G36 that he converted for sniper work. But both were owned by the UN, and technically were illegal for police work. Too big of a cartridge. Made quite the mess. Rarely a chance for interrogations afterwards.

So, Azrael waited. Patient, and deadly. Around the House of Commons, random ERT members were strewn about. He also knew that in the "random passerby" were no less than eight members from Joint Task Force-2, wearing their trade-mark low-slung holsters. These were hidden with raincoats, or with briefcases, or with whatever else they could use.

Azrael yawned. It was boring work. Solely so he knew he could, he exhaled, stopped his breathing, and swung the barrel lightly around to trace a random figure. It wouldn't be an easy shot, but he was relatively confident he could make it.

Wolf was scanning through the mass collected evidence to see if he could pinpoint any likely origins for the attacks. Eventually a lot of the signs began pointing to a possible identity for the ones who hit Seattle.

The Arsenal of Liberty was a militia situatied throughout the Nortwest United States. They had quickly been tricked into doing Mastermind's bidding during the war and had then been assimilated when some of them realized what was going on. They had almost been wiped out during the 5 years of fighting, but some of the senior members had survived and rebuilt the unit. Now it seemed that evidence was pointing to a Mastermind sleeper within the militia that had made the strike from his base in Montana.

It could be a shot in the dark, but it's what I have to go on and this will be a good mission to help get the team integrated.

He set a meeting time for 1000 the next day and decided to get some rest.

OOC: My next post will be of the mission breifing.

Lyon was sitting in his office trying to think of something he could do with his new found information, when he received an e-mail. When he finished he slowly got up, shut down his computer, and then with surprising speed, ran down the hall. One hour later he was on the airplane heading toward CF Headquarters.

Cyber Eden RW shell platform Alpha, 2300 hours

A small angular black boat sped through the water towards Cyber Eden's real world shell. Quietly mooring against the side, 2 dark clothed figures climbed up the side of the platform and went to work. Quickly placing their charges on the eerily silent structure, they leapt back in the boat and sped off.]

The charges detonated, causing very little RW damage, but chaotic CW damage. Half the cyber continent went dark, and afourth of the part that went dark became very glitchy, eventually needing to resort to a 2d mode in order to remain stable.

OOC: I lied, I needed to set that up for JAD. NEXT POST is of the briefing.

OOC: I hope Wolfie and BG don't mind this.

IC: Azrael exhaled then stood and stretched. Instinct screamed at him that he was exposing his position, but he let it slide. He was part of the RCMP now, which meant he wasn't always in hostile environnements. Beside him, Jax McLean rolled briefly from his prone position, and put his finger in his book.

"Wow, even you show some semblence of humanity. I'm...amazed."

Azrael smirked and got back down. His neck ached from pushing it up to the scope.

"Keep the human thing quiet, the others might hear."

"And they said being your back-up was a bad gig..."

Azrael placed his gun down gently, and rolled back over. He was tired, and sore. It was starting to get late, and he was 90% certain no one would openly attack the Prime Minister. Taking him out just had no strategic value.

Azrael glanced at Jax, then yawned. "I'm going to go grab a drink. And take a piss. You need anything?"

Jax but his bookmark into his book, then got up to his own sniper rifle. A Unique Alpine TPG-1. Azrael was tempted to debate rifles with him, but decided not to. Instead he went and used his brief break to do the afore-mentioned tasks.

He returned to the roof about ten or so minutes later, quite happily drinking cranberry juice. Jax glanced away from his scope, then rolled into a sitting position, returning to his book.

"You know, we should've brought matresses."

"That would've been the smart thing to do."

Azrael smirked and got back to his rifle. The House of Commons was emptying. MPs and members of Cabinet flowed out. There was one face that stood out though.

"Blue jacket, red tie. Who is it?"

Jax grabbed his binoculars and sighted. "I think that's the new NATO leader."

Azrael briefly panned his rifle over to the crowd, and some of the protestors. He seemed to be in the clear...wait. One guy broke off, and was bee-lining straight towards the NATO head. Azrael sighted on him.

The gait that the guy used when he walked...it was...odd. Somehow familiar. Azrael kept his rifle sighted on him, and lined up a kill shot.

Then he saw the handgun being drawn. Daewoo DP-51. Azrael's finger twitched, and the man's head exploded, spraying brains all over some of the MPs. But that wasn't right. Azrael's bullets were metal jacketed, they should've left the head intact.

"Jax, on your scope."

Jax was already looking at Azrael like he was insane.

"On it! Now!"

Jax complied. Azrael's looked back in his scope, still perplexed about the damage his bullet had done. It wasn't right. Then those thoughts stopped. The headless body was standing up again. Azrael heard a bang from beside him, and a hole appeared the in headless body, as it was trying to brandish it's handgun. It started standing back up. Azrael fired again, taking a leg clean off. It toppled over, and vainly tried to raised the gun arm again. Jax's second round demolished the shoulder, and took the arm off at the collarbone.

"Cover me!"

Azrael jumped up, and sprinted towards the doors. He hopped railings on the way down. He sprinted out of the lobby, and then clearned the street in record time. He could run flat out for 50 minutes. This wasn't very hard.

He heard another bang from the Westin behind him. Then a second. Then he heard a gunshot from up ahead.

"Oh no."

Azrael sprinted harder, rushing by pedestrians that were trying to get away. What he saw was three men spraying gunfire from Daewoo K2 assault rifles. These rounds pinned down all of his ERT team, and he saw two were down. Two gunmen were down.

"JTF-2! Gretzky! Gretzky!"

The eight JTF-2 members came out of cover, handguns drawn. Azrael's own hand snapped out his Browning Hi-Power, and took the safety off with a satisfying snap. Gretzky was the command for a rush. The idea was to rush and put as many bullets as possible into the target, in homage to Gretzky's ability to make as many goals as possible in a really short amount of time.

And that they did. Azrael was slightly deafened by the massive amount of gunfire he heard, but all three attackers went down, bodies being shredded by the bullets they unloaded. Except the bodies shredded from the gunfire. That wasn't right.

Azrael dropped his clip, and slapped a new one in, pumping the action as he did so. The target that he'd put 14 rounds into the chest looked at him and said, "You killed father." The voice sounded strained and choked. Azrael put eight rounds into the would-be-assasin's face.

"If anyone smokes, now's the time to use that match!"

Azrael pulled out his own handy zippo, lit it, then tossed it onto the disfigured body. It ignited instantly. Like something very un-human. Like Shift.

Shit, there's more.

Around him, various members of his teams pulled out various combustion sources and started lighting the bodies of the attackers. A few shrieked and tried to fufill whatever their mission was. Those ones were shot again.

Azrael safetied his gun, and holstered it. The NATO leader looked shaken, but okay. Jax had gotten the first (last?) assasin in the other shoulder, and had taken off the other leg. There was just a torso lying there. A torso that wasn't bleeding.

Azrael opened his cell-phone.

"Get me the Secretary General. I have big news."

OOC: Cue up the Yggdrasil Theme.

1000 hours. Fort Dalek

Although the situation usually demanded it, Jason was never one for wearing full military uniform during a breifing of his troops. As such he had only pinned his rank insignia to his shirt, but aside from that he looked like the most casually dressed Major General in military history.

That aside, he still launched into his briefing with almost natural enthusiasm, while still remaining very serious.

"All right, let's get down to business. I am Major General Jason MacKenzie. The powers that be have seen it fit to pull me back in to Cyber Force so that they can deal with this supposed 'Revived Mastermind' threat. I'm not bitter about that though, since they've allowed me to form an elite team dedicated to this role. That's where you come in. This team represents those in the Cyber Force who I believe have the best potential and combination of skills to eliminate this threat. Also, this isn't the whole team, a few, including my XO Wraith, are currently chasing down a lead in Russia. They'll soon be linking up with us though."

He activated the holoprojector "For now though, we have our own lead to chase."

The holoprojection was that of a small nondescript enclave of houses in the middle of just about nowhere.

"This enclave out in Montana is the main base of a seditionist group known as 'The Arsenal of Liberty'. Evidence points to them as the origin point of the cyber attack on Seattle. Also, the Arsenal was linked to Mastermind activity during the war, so there is a good chance someone in their ranks is a sleeper agent for Mastermind. Also, they've been linked to the pilfering of numerous Soldier AI codecs from military bases across the country. If someone wanted to recreate the Death Guard on a massive scale, they'd need those codecs."

He switched to an overhead view. "The operation is simple. We'll split into two teams and hit the area from two sides after our AIs, Beowulf and J2, take down the security systems. Take prisoners only if possible, otherwise we wipe them out and go over the data later."

He shut down the projector "We should only be facing light resistance. The Arsenal does not believe government troops can touch them. We're going to show them differently. Are there any questions?"

Ryan thought for a second. There wasn't much that he didn't know from the pictures and info they had, but there were maybe one or two questions that he did have. His bionic eye looked at another moniter to get a grasp of some more information so he could think of something that would be important.

"Sir, do you know what they're armed with? Heavy weapons, explosives... Anything so we can get a general idea of what to bring along. I don't want us to run into armor with just rifles and a few grenades."