Cyber Wars Ch. 14: "Situation: Critical"
 

OOC: Yep, new chapter

BIC: The grenades went off, killing a few of the Death Squad troopers and wounding others. The KPBs dealt out a metal storm of death to the still confused enemies, cutting down most of them while the rest went for their weapons.

Wolf fired his KI-42 into the mix, while next to him Kaitlin fired her twin TMP-75s on full auto. There were so many bullets flying, Wolf wasn't entirely sure how many he got...but he knew he cut down at least a few. As everyone's guns clicked empty, Wolf looked at the shot up corridor.

Only 5 of the soldiers were still standing, but some of the fallen were getting back up.

SHIT! Their drugs must have kicked in! Wolf thought as he drew his Katana and Omni-Falcon. "Take them down!"

Wolf leapt into the hallway, firing a shot that took down one of the rising armored soldiers. With a slash from the katana, he felled one of the standing troopers, whose stuttering AK-74 put bullet holes into the ceiling tile.

As the disoriented troopers began to start fighting back, all hell broke loose. Wolf saw his team beginning their assault, even as a FLAG trooper took two rounds to the chest and collapsed.

"Kill them all!" Wolf shouted manically as he shot a Death Squad soldier in the face, the .45 round punching through the helmet's faceplate.

Angel took Wolf's command of "kill them all" straight to heart. Normally he'd consider trying to do it nice and smoothly, making full sure that his target was dead. But this was time for lethal efficiency, if not primal attack styles.

Instead of being fancy, Angel tackled one of them, and shot him in the face. Another came behind him, so Angel kicked him with all the force he could, rose, and punched him in the throat with all the strength he could physically provide. The man vomitted blood out, splattering Angel.

As Angel dived as another, he used his wickedly curved combat knife to rip that man's throat clean open...getting even more blood on himself. The next he went to attack seemed to hesitate. A giant blood covered man charging at you can do that.

Angel jump kicked, and rode the soldier's face to the ground, ending with a disgusting squelch.

When this is over, I'm taking a very very long shower, going swimming, then maybe a massage.

"You know he's screwed." Coyote said watching the security monitors.

Wolf faced down a wounded and enraged trooper. The soldier raised his gun to shoot, but Wolf kicked it aside. The Death Squad trooper dodged Wolf's sword slash and kicked Wolf in the chest. As Wolf fell back and to the side, he heard a throwing knife whistle past his ear, and embed itself into his opponent's chest with a meaty <thwock!>. As the soldier looked at the knife in confusion, Wolf caught him in the side of the head with a roundhouse kick. He grabbed the stunned soldier, ripped the knife from his gut, and jammed it into the soldier's neck. The dying soldier clawed for the knife in his throat, but to no avail. Wolf dropped the corpse like a sack load of bricks, and then began firing at another soldier with his Omni-Falcon.

Nice throw, Kaitlin. he thought as he kept firing on the enemy. He heard two more knives whistle through the air, and another armored soldier fell, with a knife through his helmet and chest.

Hmm...Wraith's got one hell of a throw there... he thought as he mapped out the trajectory of the knives back to his XO.

As Wolf's target fell with 10 bullets in his chest, he noticed all the gunfire had stopped.

"Area's clear." Miller said. "It doesn't look like anybody's getting up."

Wolf looked over to Wraith for confirmation. Wratih simply nodded. (OOC: Zeph couldn't think of anything to do, so I wrote him in)

"Good," Wolf said as he began walking up to the bridge door. "Salvage what you can, and make sure they're all dead."

Angel grabbed an assault rifle with underslung launcher, with ammunition to match.

And, he also tore off a large piece of un-dirtied fabric from the shirt of one trooper and did his best to wipe himself off.

"We better be getting bonuses for this."

He made sure the chamber was loaded, checked the launcher, and walked up next to Wraith. "Five bucks says Kaitlin gets the first kill when we open this door."

"I can't even bet against you on that one," Wraith says while reloading.

Wolf knocked on the thick metal door leading to the bridge. "Hey Knight! You in there?!" he asked.

A video monitor next to the bridge sputtered to life, and the Image of Michael Knight appeared on the screen. "Yeah, I'm still alive...that you Wolf?"

"Yep. I'm here at the behest of Captain Miller."

"Good to see he found some help. Is the area safe for me to open the door?"

"Yes it is."

The door to the bridge slid open slowly, and Wolf looked in. The bridge hadn't seen any heavy fighting, if any at all. Everythign seemed to be still working, although a few secondary monitors were blown out, probably from the crash.

Everyone out in the hallway followed Wolf into the bridge. Wolf looked over at the 10 bridge crew members that had holed up with Knight, and he asked, "Is anyone here a medic? We've got wounded."

"Yeah," Knight said. "Hosky's a medic. He can take care of any wounded you have...although given what you were up against I'd say it's a good thing you've only got wounded."

"True," Wolf replied, "And...uh...skip giving Angel over there medical attention," he said pointing to Angel, "None of the blood on him is his own."

While Hosky went to check on the injured FLAG soldiers, Knight asked Wolf how the mission was progressing.

"Well, we've secured the armory, as you can see." Wolf answered holding out his KI-42. "And we came up here because we want to download the OTAV AI cores back into thier respective bodies. Beowulf and J2 have protection protocols that will prevent Mastermind from taking over the vehicles."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Knight asked.

Wolf pointed out the cockpit of the Skybase. "It's going to be daylight soon, and we'll need a distraction in order to escape. The OTAVs have enough firepower and speed to be that distraction. Besides which, it'll keep them out of Mastermind's hands."

Knight thought for a moment. "Well, that seems like a good idea, but what do we do with the Skybase?"

"I don't think a prolonged conflict at this crash site is going to produce any winners. I say we just blow up the Skybase in order to keep Mastermind from getting any technology from it."

"Are you sure there isn't any other way?"

"Well, we don't have the hardware to take down a full battallion of tanks...and it doesn't look like you do either. I agree that, we need to blow this thing up." Kaitlin said.

Miller simply nodded his agreement when Knight looked in his direction.

Knight sighed, "I guess you're right. Okay, we can activate self-destruct from here."

"Not yet," Wolf said. "I want to release the OTAVs first."

"Okay..." Knight said as he hit a few keys on the keyboard next to a black box server. "I'm starting the download now, have your AIs attach the security protocols to their main shell programs."

"Got it." Wolf said. as he activated his PDAP. "You know what to do, Beowulf."

"That I do. Commencing download"

At his own behest, Angel took up a position to cover the door against any attackers. And looked at the medic, "This whole blood thing was completely unintentional. Do any of you have a spare shirt, or a towel?"

He shivered slightly, and turned his attention back to the door.

He shivered as he watched the sun set on him and the snow. A fierce storm was blowing in, pushing snow from the air and the ground into his face and bare hands. His feet were planted in the snow, so like boots, they were keeping them warm. It wasn't the brightest idea to come out with any bare skin showing, probably why he was given funny looks without boots, gloves, or any type of mask. He had just set up camp, if stopping can be considered setting up, and put his hands in his sleeves, sitting down in the snow and meditating, finishing the transition to the weather.

It would soon be cold and dark... and Monk would be reunited with his teo best friends.

OOC: I'm running out of filler talk, so I'll just wait until we put "PLAN B!" into action.

...

B... B... B...

Knight removed his jacket and tossed it to Angel. "This should suffice for now."

***

Inside the internal network of the Skybase, Beowulf was busy trying to detail escape plans to the 12 OTAV AIs, all of whom were represented by oscillating lights of varying colors.

"All right, I hope you all have this figured out."

"I'd say that we do," Replied AKIMBO, one of the AIs. "We get rid of our guards, blast through the hangar, and escape into the night sky."

"While causing as much damage to the surrounding Mastermind forces as possible in one pass" added ASCKI (OOC: pronounced the same as ASCII), a stealth OTAV AI.

"Excellent" Beowulf flashed a grin. "Here are the security protocols, get to it."

***

"Download's complete" Wolf said, "Now let's just see what happens."

***

Within the hangar of Skybase 2, the twelve silent OTAVs suddenly flared to life, much to the surprise of the Mastermind troopers standing guard.

"So you think we cracked the codes?" one soldier asked.

The nearest OTAV lit him up with twin pulse lasers.

A second soldier looked over at the corpse and shouted, "If you're still alive...then no!" Then the remaining enemy soldiers started firing on the OTAVs, but their small-arms fire and even their stinger missiles couldn't pierce the armored shells of the attack vehicles. After disposing of the Mastermind troopers, the OTAVs turned their attention to the jammed hangar bay doors. A salvo of LRM fire tore apart the doors, and the 12 mechs transformed into fighter jets and rocketed off into the sky, firing on the line of tanks and troopers surrounding the crash site before breaking off on numerous vectors into the night.

***

Back on the bridge, a communication was recieved by the lead AI of the OTAV squadron.

"This is KAOSCOM reporting in, Michael. We have achieved all objectives with no casualties and we are now heading to base Ithaca and base Chicago, as per force separation protocol."

"Excellent work," Knight replied. "We should be joining some of you in Chicago soon. Knight out."

The communications closed down, and Knight turned back to Wolf. "All right. Now I'm going to bring KIP back online so that he can orchestrate the self-destruct. I'm setting it to 10 minutes on default, but KIP can trigger the destruct manually if we get out before then."

A secondary monitor lit up showing the countdown timer. It started ticking down from 10 minutes.

"That should give us enough time to escape to the flight deck, get into choppers, and get out of here."

Suddenly a synthetic voice echoed through the bridge.
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

"Oh, shit!" Wolf said. "It's Mastermind!"

"But...how?" Miller asked.

"Simple, you foolish humans. I took over KIP just before you managed to put his core consciousness into the Lance. While I was unable to control anything else...I think a Skybase AI will do just fine. Unfortunately I have big plans for this wreck...and I cannot allow you to destroy it."

The timer froze at 9 minutes, 10 seconds.

"He's frozen the countdown, somebody shut KIP down!" Knight shouted.

Mastermind's laughing was suddenly cut off. Beowulf appeared superimposed over the timer. "I managed to lock out his access of the comm channels and all security measures. But he's got a firm grip on the self-destruct measures. Even if we could restart the countdown, there's no guarentee the ship would still blow. he reported.

"Well then," Wolf said. "We'll have to destroy the reactor manually. Is that possible, Knight?"

Knight thought for a second. "A sufficent amount of C4 should be able to break the reactor's sheilding and cause a meltdown. So yes...it is possible."

"Good," Wolf said. "Now all we need is to decide who goes."