| From: | ANGLISS BRIAN EDWARD <angliss@****.Colorado.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | HALO drop, Maxim raid part 1 |
| Date: | Sun, 10 Mar 1996 16:33:56 -0700 (MST) |
got it handed to me from a decker chum of mine who found it, for some reason,
in a relatively easy to break section of a local megacorp who will remain
anonymous for everyone's safety. It's a section of simsense data from a raid
somewhere in the jungle recently. Bits and pieces have been obviously edited
to protect the rest of the people involved, but my systems have been unable
to return them to normal and so you're getting the drek as I got it. Enjoy.
+++++ Engage Simsense Download +++++
Static screams in your head for a millisecond, just long enough to know that
a second or two of the static would likely drive you insane or kill you
outright as you can suddenly smell, taste, even feel the static that your
normal senses can only see and hear.
As quickly as it started, it ends and more normal sensations replace the
maniacal static. It takes you a second or two to gain your bearings as the
simsense artificially replaces your natural sensations and you settle into
the life you're about to relive. The first things you notice are that your
are inside a plane, that it is lit only by a single night red bulb, that an
exit door is open, and that it is night outside. Additional sensations kick
in, like the muted roar of air passing through the cabin and the along the
skin of the small aircraft you are in, followed by the realization that you
are at a very high altitude. The air is thin, and it is difficult to breath.
The person in front of you is wearing an altimeter deployed parachute with
manual backup parasail. Nothing else distinguishes the person in front of
you, and with all the gear he is wearing you can barely distinguish that it
actually is male. But he is, and this is when you realize that you are not.
Behind you are four others that your internal cybernetic locator systems
identify as members of a team of 5, with two additional green signals as
well. Your helmet appears to have in integral communication system that is
also encrypted, but through it you hear "Go!" After one others and some
shuffling, you have moved to the front of the line, and you hear a "Go!" and
leap out of the door, tumbling for an instant before your well trained and
experienced muscles and enhanced reactions right yourself in a headlong dive
through the atmosphere. Below you is the target area, a small but growing
rough rectangle of light. With your enhanced sight, it not only glows
brightly in the visible, but also in the ultraviolet and the infrared, with
some areas obviously still cooling down from the heating of the sun that
your internal chronometer indicates set nearly 4 hours ago.
16 or so kilometers to the west you see what appear to be explosions and
very bright thermographic flares from what is likely thermite or white
phosphorous explosions, or perhaps scattered submunition effects. You
remember that Maxim not only has access to weapons of this destructive
power, but manufactures and employs them in high security facilities
worldwide. To the southwest, some 7 km away, your eyes see tremendous
glare, through all wavelengths, from the sprawl that is Phenom Penh,
Cambodia. Closer to the facility are more explosions, this time centering
around a couple of small vehicles. One flares and then stops moving while
the other, about 100m to the west of the first, fires up it's engines and
begins moving toward the southeast edge of the site you are still falling
toward.
Looking below you again, and with the second to last "Go!" heard from the
plane above you, you catch something that you'd been hoping not to: Several
flares from what you know are vertical launch missile bunkers, each capable
of holding somewhere between 50 and 250 missiles, depending on the type of
missile. These IR flares are leaving streaks not too dissimilar to those of
long range SAMs, and they are riding their rockets almost vertically, toward
your position and, more importantly, that of the plane. "Fraggin deckers
fragged up!", you think to yourself, but your discipline keeps this thought
from exiting your mind lest it reveal your team's location by breaking radio
silence. Above you, you hear the final "Go!" followed by "Evading. Good
luck." as the final member of your team, your commander and fellow cybered
combat expert like yourself, jumps to follow. The missiles, rising still,
jockey for position, and as they rise, you get a count. 5 SAMs, one from
each launcher, which will strike the plane and destroy it in less than 3
seconds.
Two seconds.....one second and not only did none of you get hit by the SAMs,
but you didn't get burned by them either. Above you, from where the plane
should be, you hear several large explosions, followed by a surprised and
pained gulp and gurgle, as if someone had a lung punctured. Your internal
team status monitor indicates that one of you is dying and that the parachute
and emergency parasail systems are destroyed. Your team commander will not
live too long, and you know that even if you could somehow save him from the
debris that even now is plummeting toward you as well, he wouldn't live
through the impact. You remember with a rueful smile the saying that it's
not the fall you're afraid of, but the sudden stop at the end.
Concentrating again on the ground and site rising to meet you, you see the
first of you deploy his chute only 20 seconds from the ground. From what
you see, he'll be close to the target zone when he hits ground.
Unfortunately, at about the time you see the second jumper and the man who
trained your team deploy his chute, five of the internal guard towers open
fire into the air, firing up at where you and the rest of you are likely
going to fall through. Again, you think "Fraggin deckers fragged up big
time!" as the guns blaze autofire into the sky at rates that indicate both
standard machinegun fire as well as minigun fire. By your internal
chronometer, you are 2.885 seconds from chute deployment yourself.
You hear a soft gasp as a stream of tracers streaking up at you misses you
but intersects with the descending body of another teammate. His telltale
blinks once, but stays green. Wounded, but not severely. You think
"Lucky...." He'll still be able to do his part once you reach the ground,
but it's likely that his drop will miss by a greater amount now that his
body isn't at optimum. Your chronometer blinks down to 0 and your chute
opens normally. Two seconds later and your wounded teammate's chute opens
as well, followed by the second to last surviving teammember's. The last
surviving member of the team, however, seems to have taken some damage to
her chute from the plane's explosion, and she falls past her deployment
point. Less than a second later, she deploys her back-up parasail, which
opens well. Unfortunately, the parasails are slightly smaller than the main
chutes, so she'll be hitting the ground at a higher speed than usual. But
you've all been trained for this eventuality, so you know how to minimize
damage in the process of landing.
Ten seconds until the first jumper, the only one of the seven of you who you
don't know, hits the target area. It appears that both he and the man who
trained you will be slightly off target, to the far end of the bunker rather
than the end where the entrance is. It is possible that they go the target
direction wrong, but it's too late to worry about that now, since it's going
to happen. Time to recover from the error. Your teammate, on the other
hand, will be right on target, as will you.
9 seconds until the first jumper reaches the ground, and the gunfire is
continuing. You are now at the upper limit of the lights of the facility,
but you're all wearing night camo which will make you difficult to spot
against the night sky. About this time the dead member of your team
plummets, limp and lifeless, past you to your left, and you watch as, only 3
seconds later, he impacts the ground and bounces. He hit between the bunker,
a missile tower, and a set of housing units. You can make out the silhouette
of an MBT, a Jackson if your implanted data is accurate, less than 50 meters
from the pulverized body. No-one has had the time to inspect the body yet,
but as you fall and see the lead man of the jumpers land expertly, you see
the first troops scramble toward the body.
Less than five seconds until you land yourself, your telltales indicate that
the wounded man, your only mage, has lost enough blood that his condition has
deteriorated. You could very well have to kill him, although you hope not,
if he is unable to escape with the rest of you. His body cannot be allowed
to provide proof of your team's assistance in this operation lest it provide
Maxim with another lever to push around your employers like some bully child
with a baseball bat.
Pulling down hard on your control lines, you arrest your descent at the last
instant, with your teammate landing almost perfectly alongside you near the
entrance end of the bunker. Looking up as you cut the weighted lines loose
from your armor and drop the quick-release harnesses from your torso, you see
the combat mage land to the west on a totally different bunker. You realize
that you'll somehow have to either kill him or cover him as he crosses the
100 meters between the two bunkers. Unfortunately, the last teammate, the
woman using the emergency parasail, falls totally outside the armory
perimeter, to the southeast of the target bunker.
You're scattered worse than you had feared, but you begin to collect
yourselves as you catch a quick glimpse of what appear to be black winged
shapes approaching from the west, along the line of least resistance between
the shadows. Your thermal eyes are barely able to make them out, and then
only by the well shielded electric fan motor, and they're well below the
radar, only meters above the fences when you spot them. You crouch down and
cautiously approach the entrance of the bunker from the top of the bunker
itself, avoiding the airvents lest your movement draw attention.
Off to the west, your wounded magical teammate has apparently stopped moving
for some reason. Without breaking the radio silence you are maintaining you
can't be sure why, but you suspect to deal with his wounds as well as to take
command of the team. Behind you, the two others on the far end of the bunker
are shuffling forward, carefully but quickly, with your trainer's cyberware
making him inhumanly fluid. The roar of Maxim's guns and rockets have
quieted down now, with the first stage of the distraction complete and fire
not being returned. Nearby, you hear the very quiet but distinctive whine of
a Nightglider on approach, and you see four figures less than 5m above the
ground.
Your teammate ahead of you has stopped and drawn his weapon, an HK227 with a
sound suppressor in place of a gasvent, and he appears to be taking careful
aim at a target just ahead of him. From your position 3 meters back, you
can barely see the crown of the helmet of the guard he is taking aim on.
However, before this can happen, at the same instant the telltale on your
wounded teammate goes green again, the roar of autofire fills your ears and
would have deafened you had your aural damping not engaged at the right time.
Rolling to the right and bringing your HK227 to bear, you see a crouched
guard sweeping autofire with what your internal data identifies as a Tower
combat rifle, over your teammate and toward you. Your teammate jerks and
spasms and his telltale instantly turns red, then black as his vital signs
indicate nearly instantaneous death, and you begin to return fire. However,
before you successfully intersect the stream of armor piercing death from
your SMG with the crouched body of the Maxim guard, his body locks up and he
jerks, then falls to the side just prior to his armor piercing rounds hitting
you. His weapon, with his finger locked in a grip of death, fires rounds
across the armory grounds for less than a second before the weapon's ROF
empties the clip. Luckily, his death grip didn't fire off the burst capable
integral grenade launcher or you'd not be alive.
As you turn to target the threat alerted guard, your senses are again
submerged in static.
+++++ End Trideo Download +++++
That's all for this time, friends. More later, I hope.]<<<<<
-- Trideo Pirate <16:34:14/03-10-57>
