"Good idea Jax, you should definetely be able to thin their ranks before they even get their hands on the train. Azrael, as long as you don't blast any of the train's interior with your bomb arrows that should work fine."

All of a sudden the train screeched to a halt.

shit

"Everyone on guard. Beowulf, backtrace any signal that may have been used to stop the train. J2, take over piloting and circle around us, get ready to shoot at whatever comes for us."

Suddenly there was the faint noise of rocket launches from the distance. Kaitlin looked out one of the windows. "Two missiles incoming!"

"They're sidewinders locked onto the Phantom! I don't know how they knew I was here but I'm trying to evade!" J2 said.

***

Though the soldiers on the train couldn't see it, the cloaked jet maneuvered as best as possible to keep the missiles from following its heat signature. The first missile blew past harmlessly, but the second scored a glancing hit on the starboard side.

The Phantom's cloak generator began to malfunction as circuitry smoldered from the hit. The plane struggled for altitude

"I've taken damage to my right engines; I don't know if i can maintain guard position. I'll do what i can but right now i need to pull off until the cloak can be reactivated. I can see vehicles moving up on the train...looks like the same vehicle estimates that you listed in the briefing, Jason."

"Thanks, hope you can give us some cover eventually." Jason said. "All right, get moving people we've lost our air cover, possibly for good. We're going to be hit hard in a few seconds so let's get to it."

He readied his G36 and leveled it out one of the windows, ready to open fire as soon as the enemies were in range.

Jax, by contradiction, scrambled up a ladder onto the roof of the train. He hooked himself onto the ladder with his rappel cord in case the train started moving again, and then crawled while prone to a better vantage point. In a well rehearsed motion, his M4 was swapped for his SR (sniper rifle).

As the rifle came off his back, he moved his left hand forward in two quick motions while his right made one before resting on the grip. The result was that he popped the forward scope cover and opened the bipod, loaded the chamber, and set it up. Then the tip of his thumb punched the bottom of the back scope cover and flipped it open.

Ideally, he'd do this with a spotter, but unfortunately they didn't appear to have the time. So, he set the sights up over a truck driver, and threw his best guess as to the speed of the wind.

"Lead, I have a shot. Should I take it?"

***

Azrael tossed Betsy onto his back and then flicked open his bow. He grabbed a bomb arrow and put it into the bow before crouching, half covered, with the arrow pointing at the door.

"Sir, I've got this section covered."

OOC: Why must I find time to write things only when it’s too late?

Lyon looked up at Jason from his PDA; “Yes sir, I think so”, he said tapping his pen against the PDA’s screen. As he prepared to explain his plan, all hell broke loose. As Jason ran to the window, and everyone else prepared to get into position, he began to quickly yell the plan he had worked out. “Jason, Join Jax on the roof, your main target is to stop anybody from messing with the track; if they do anything to it were most likely dead. Everybody else: Aim at the windows, but make sure that anything coming from the outside can’t reach you. And if possible, keep an eye on the doors as well.” As he neared the end of his speech he grabbed his gun and went off to the side, aiming for the window.

Jason scrambled up the ladder as Jax's question came in "Yes, by all means take the shot."

coming out at the top of the train, Jason latched himself to the ladder with his own rappell cord and armed the G6. He wanted to fire as he brought himself in line with a different truck than the one Jax was aiming at, but he didn't fire.

They're too far away, it's just pointless at this point.

***

Kaitiln took aim with her M16 with M203 grenade launcher out at the oncoming vehicles to take aim.

Jax exhaled and his finger brushed the trigger. The truck driver's head snapped back, and the truck abruptly spun. Then it rolled over. The bottom was exposed, so Jax fired again just left of the gas tank. The sparks spread out, hit the gas, and caused a pretty explosion.

"Truck two..."

OOC: And the world goes boom

BIC: While some small hit and run tactics were put into play by the enemy, Jason had not banked on something, an attack from below. As the train sped along, two figures decloaked on the tracks. Lying strait down flat, they took out what looked like suction cups, electromagnetic suction cups. As the train sped over them, the suction cups activated and attached them to the bottom of the train. With Jason and the others distracted topside, they had no trouble placing a few charges of C4 on the underside of the train. Their mission completed, they let go of the suction cups and fell flat against the tracks with expert skill. As the train moved on without them, one of the figures pressed a detonator and the charges went off. They were not enough to blow up the train, but they were certainly enough to derail it. The train tipped on it's side and skidded off the tracks, starting some small fires around it. As the train lost speed, the full force of the attacking army converged on it's location, and the Cyber Force soldiers on the inside.

Jax was incredibly grateful he'd put that line on. The train flipped over, and violenty threw Jax off. Luckily though, the line went taut, folding Jax double before snapping him backwards. Roughly, he bounced off the train wall and just dangled there a bit. He'd lost his grip on his sniper rifle, throwing it a good distance away.

"Oh fuck."

***

Azrael was flipped over, slamming roughly into the train. A rather large heavy looking box fell towards him, but Azrael managed to roll out of the way. Unfortunately, he also lost his grip on his compound bow, which was crushed by the box.

"Oh fuck."

Jason was thrown against the top of the train as it flipped over, the rappell line straining against the force of holding Jason up, and against the force of the train suddenly being deviated from its normal path.

As the train ground to a halt the line snapped, dropping Jason down about 5 feet. He tried to be ready for it but he landed awkwardly and felt something in his right leg crack. He fell to his knees and found himself having trouble getting back up.

"oh, fuck," he said through clenched teeth.


Ignoring that dull pain, he brought up his G36 and started firing at the oncoming troops. A jeep slewed and flipped over as Jason put 10 rounds into the driver's chest.

"SITREP!" Jason shouted on the comm channel.

***

Kaitlin had been thrown head-on into the engineer consoles in the back of the engine when the train flipped. Her head hurt like hell, and she was bleeding from a gash in her forehead and a small cut on her cheek.

Wiping the blood away from and out of her eyes, she stumbled in the tipped car, retrieving her M16 and making her way too the front of the engine. Through the shattered windows, she could see enemies approaching.

"oh, fuck,"

she brought up the gun and loosed a grenade, dicing a squad of enemy soldiers.

"Kaitiln here," she said in reply to Jason's order. "I'm in the engine, injured but still active, I'm not sure about everyone else."

Azrael flipped on his X-Ray vision, and saw the incoming trucks. Then he pulled out Betsy. Making sure they couldn't see him moving, he found his way to a viable gun point, aimed at the truck's engine, and opened fire.

The nifty thing about .50 caliber rounds was that it can sheer clean through an engine block. A 2$ bullet could take out a 40 000 000$ airplane. It was a nice sense of empowerment. The truck that took these rounds didn't last long.

The bullets absolutely demolished the engine and kept going, instead turning the occupants into an equivalent of Swiss cheese. For reasons such as this, the Geneva convention outlawed using .50 caliber ammo on humans, but Azrael doubted the Swiss would come after him.

One thing was disturbingly clear though. He couldn't kill them all before they got to the train. They were like locusts. So, he would have to head into the train and deal with them face to face. He slipped into the shadows of the train, and took one last shot. Then there was an incredibly loud clanging heard behind him. He spun, Betsy levelled, and saw Jax.

Jax took the M4 off of his back and took off the safety. "You clear that way, and meet up with whoever and I'll clear this way and meet up with whoever?"

"Deal."

Beowulf wished he had his robot body with him, so he could at least help Jason and the others, but he knew that it was more important that he find where these signals were coming from.

He emerged in a well defended installation in the Cyber World, surrounded by 10 very angry looking soldier AIs.

"Okay boyos, let's dance." he said.

Guns slid into his hands from the sleeves of his military jacket: two Desert Eagles. He leapt into the air as bullets struck the spot on the floor he was standing on. In midair he twisted and fired, taking down 4 soldiers with headshots.

Landing next to another soldier, Beowulf used him as a human sheild, and took down 2 more soldiers while his unwilling shield absorbed 15 bullets for him.

The last three troopers tried to close in on Beowulf and take him down in very close quarters, but Beowulf was ready for them.

3 inch claws sprang from Beowulf's fingertips, and he set upon his prey. His dead and useless shield was flung forward, knocking down a charging soldier. Beowulf slid to the left and back, dodging the butt of an AK-74 assault rifle. He sank his claws into the side of the soldier that had swung at him, electing a gurgled cry of pain. Beowulf punched the soldier in the throat and let him drop, before spinning around and slashing the throat of the third soldier.

The first soldier struggled to get up but he was pinned under the corpse of his ally, and, just a few seconds later, Beowulf's enhanced grip.

"You're going to save me some time and tell me how to access the main terminal" Beowulf snarled as he ran a claw down the soldier's cheek, creating a small furrow of blood.

"The...the code is 'revalation' and that will get you into all of the files." the AI trooper said frightendly.

"Thank you." Bewoulf said, then he picked up one of his Desert Eagles and shot the soldier in the face.

Walking over to the main terminal, Beowulf entered the code and the walls were replaced by scrolling text and data. Beowulf drew it all into his internal memory banks and opened up a comm channel.

"Jason, I have the location, it's a Mobile Command Vehicle located 4 miles from the train tracks. I'm leaving a trace program so it can be tracked down if it moves later."

***

Jason drove his wazakashi into the gut of an enemy soldier while firing his G36 into a line of 5 more, dropping all of them.

"That's good, Beowulf, now get back here, I need you to either release or wipe all the programming data on the environmental nanites; things are getting really bad here."

***

Meanwhile, J2 got the half crippled Phantom turned around and limping back towards the train wreck, determined to help the rest of the team.