| From: | ANGLISS BRIAN EDWARD <angliss@****.Colorado.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Nuclear Demolition, Maxim raid part 3 |
| Date: | Sun, 10 Mar 1996 19:18:10 -0700 (MST) |
the middleman and appeared in my account already formatted for release.
Somebody up there likes me.
+++++ Include Simsense Download +++++
Unlike last time, there's no maddening static to screw with your perceptions.
But you almost wish there was, since the sense of disorientation is
impressive as you suddenly find yourself not only somewhere else, but in
someone else's body. Again. Luckily, this section of simsense picks up
precisely where the last left off.
You're lying on the ground, with the smell of cordite and caseless powder in
your nostrils. You spin your HK227 around to cover the appearing Maxim guard
who is scurrying up the embankment that marks the edge the partially buried
bunker you are lying on. Waiting until your smartlink beads in on your
target seems to take forever as your body's reactions speed up and you
activate your cyberware. Finally the green crosshair replaces the red one
in your eyes, the signal that the Smartlink 2 has locked onto the intended
target, and not an instant too soon. You back off the firing mode from full
auto to a mere burst of APDS, which is more than sufficient for the only part
of the guard's body that's visible: his full armored helmet. The rounds
punch small holes, leaving the usual shatter pattern in the hardened plastic
facemask before the impacts and final muscle spasms throw the body back down
the embankment.
Unfortunately, with all this autofire, there's no way that you've not drawn
attention. If you're lucky, the deckers are keeping the security
communications occupied, but you're not planning on it anymore. You're here
to do a job, and as much as you'd like to break radio silence, Maxim could
find you that way even with the deckers in the system. Your instant of
discomfort passes, and you see a black winged shape descending a little
faster than a Nightglider should, coming nearly directly at you. You realize
just as it stalls out several feet above the bunker that it's been damaged
severely, probably beyond it's ability to ever fly again, and the pilot is
wounded as well. He's taken a round in his shoulder, probably from the Maxim
guard's Tower rifle since one of the HMG anti-air rounds would have taken the
arm totally off. His landing is terrible, but considering the pain he's
likely in, he does well to still walk away. Another rueful smile crosses
your face as you remember the axiom about good landings. Behind him come
the three others Nightgliders, landing in two cases almost as expertly as
your team could.
Off in the distance, you see flashes from autofire weapons, probably Tower or
Devil combat rifles from the sound of them, firing at the combat mage as he
runs across the zone between the two bunkers. The troops guarding the armory
perimeter apparently know you and the rest of the team are inside, and are
moving to cut you off from the gate and surround you. Your enhanced hearing,
with the sound filters operating properly, hears the footfalls of your
instructor and his associate running forward across the top of the bunker.
One set of footsteps stops suddenly and you hear a shuffle. You're too busy
to visually verify what you're hearing as you begin laying down suppression
fire, centered on the muzzle flashes coming from various locations around the
armory. You know that your HK227 won't threaten the Maxim troops at this
range, but maybe it will keep their heads down. Your teammate is still
running when you see something take shape, for an instant, around him, and
suddenly he is running faster than any unaided human possibly could. From
behind you, you hear a single burst from an M22A2 rifle, and one of the
muzzle flashes suddenly stops.
Unfortunately, at this same instant, the remaining Maxim soldiers actually
succeed in pumping several rounds into the running mage and your second in
command, tripping his run up and causing his telltale to again change from
green to amber. You again see your instructor's cybernetically enhanced
speed as he runs out to help your fallen teammate to his feet. You see that
your teammate is limping badly as the two of them, while you provide cover
for them to make it to the comparable cover of the bunker you are still atop
of.
One of the glider pilots, the mage, gestures to another glider pilot, an
explosives expert, who removes a small amount of C-12 form his webbing. Your
instructor takes careful aim at the door of the bunker you're on, from a
crouched position, and fires a burst from the attached shotgun. The burst,
obviously doorbuster type ammunition, fills the half buried security door in
smoke and noise, while at the same time the magician casts a spell at the
corner of the facing bunker. The ram spell blasts a hole in the side of the
bunker as part of the planned diversion and also sends debris flying,
hopefully distracting a couple of Maxim troops who have been firing at you.
The bunker door here, however, remains unopened. The door is obviously
stronger than your instructor had expected.
You are still taking fire from Maxim troops in the armory, but your return
fire has quieted down some. The short man who you handed the C-12 to
crouches down in front of the door and carefully but expertly places the
explosive at points on the door that will enable it to be blasted off it's
rails. He obviously prepared for the strength of the door, and you make a
mental note to ask him how he knew about it. You begin to wonder, as you
return bursts toward the Maxim troops to keep their heads down, why you've
not run into any magical troops yet. Just as you complete that thought, an
earth elemental manifests in front of the bunker door, followed almost
immediately by another. As quickly as they appear, the two elementals
disappear back to the Astral plane again, and the demolition expert backs
out of the hole quickly, trailing a thin wire connected to a detonator, which
he hands to you while he pulls his pack off his back.
Again, the earth elemental appears, this time looking battered and wounded,
if an elemental can truly look that way, and lurches forward at your wounded
team mage only to be intercepted by a glider pilot wearing the outfit of a
modern ninja and wielding a katana. The two of them spar for an instant
before the katana slips through the elemental's powerful defenses and slices
through the torso of the manifest elemental, destroying it at the same time
that your instructor's associate throws multiple smoke grenades across the
armory, plunging it rapidly into thermal and visible oblivion. The
explosives expert makes a quick gesture, at which everyone you can see lowers
their gas masks, and you trigger the explosives. The blast knocks the ninja,
the person closest to it, off his feet and you hear the sound of a twisted,
destroyed security door bouncing around inside the bunker below you.
You arm the special gas and concussion grenades that the explosives expert
gave all of you when you discussed your plans and you drop one into the now
open bunker entrance. In the instants you have before it detonates, you and
everyone around you slaps themselves with anti-toxin patches designed
specifically for the toxin your grenades are pouring into the bunker. The
short man who developed the toxin told you that it would cause excruciating
pain and unconsciousness within second without the patches. You leap down
to just outside the bunker entrance and, along with the wounded glider pilot
and your instructor's associate, pump concussion and flash grenades into the
interior of the bunker, followed by gas grenades. You remember the short
man explaining that the armor was sealed, but that Maxim military helmets
were susceptible to concussion effects, so concussion grenades would create
small enough cracks in the faceplate for the toxin to penetrate the armor and
be inhaled.
Still covering each other, something else goes wrong. Something small and
resembling a small watchers appears next to you and you suddenly becomes
ground- zero for some area spell that catches almost everyone around you.
You know the effect too well: a Maxim mage in Astral just grounded a spell
through and now you're wounded. Luckily, you are able to fight off most of
the effects, but not everyone was so lucky, especially as you see your second
in command's telltale go from amber to blinking amber. He's dying, quickly,
he knows it, and none of you can spare the time or energy it would take to
heal him. All the carefully laid plans everyone had agreed on are already
useless. The glider mage sends in an air elemental to evacuate the gas out
of the bunker, whether it's done it's job or not and smoke and gas is
suddenly pouring out of the entrance of the bunker, enshrouding you.
However, with the masks everyone is wearing as well as the anti-toxins in
your bloodstream, no-one appears to feel the debilitating pain and lethargy
that the toxin produces.
You, your instructor, and the other HALO jumper are the first into the still
lit bunker. You fan out to limit your exposure, and your hearing indicates
that the rest of your combined teams are entering rapidly behind you. You
three advance rapidly up through the bunker, reaching the first guard. He
has an obviously cracked helmet facemask and is breathing, but his muscles
are locked and he's obviously unable to move in any way. Your instructor
finds a second guard, this one dead from an allergic reaction with the custom
toxin that filled the bunker. You turn around to see that the ninja and the
other mage have take position at the entrance and are covering it as best
then can. Your instructor is also moving to aid them with more firepower.
You can see the strange flashes of magical combat mixed with more mundane
explosions outside through the entrance, and you can hear the sound of
gunfire. Behind you the wounded glider pilot, your instructor's associate
and nuke expert, and the explosives expert are very carefully removing the
nuclear triggers from the devices and preparing to destroy them. You think
that you have only a minute or so before the smoke and confusion clears and
the drek hits the fan.
Very little happens for most of the minute, with the exception of gunfire
from outside the bunker, a couple of expended arrows from the ninja in
return, many bursts from your instructor, and a tremendous explosion from
the southeast, either the missile bunker or the semiballistic. The experts
are nearly done, with one more trigger to rig for demolition, but the short
explosives man hasn't even started rigging his charges yet, almost as if he
knows something you don't. You hear something happening outside the bunker,
and suddenly the telltale of your physical adept teammember, who fell outside
the armory perimeter, blinks to black at nearly the same time your mage's
changes to red, indicating that he's nearly dead as well. It's only the two
of you now, and soon you'll be the only survivor of the whole team. That was
not supposed to happen.
The explosives expert leaves the other two and removes a couple of canisters
from his pack and places them centrally in the bunker. You recognize them as
a binary fuel air explosive, which, when combined with a small detonation
charge, will collapse the bunker easily. At the same time as the expert is
placing and arming the radio detonator, something else happens and you start
felling queasy. In your suddenly nearly deaf ears, you barely hear the an
alarm sound and start to lose consciousness as your internal status display
indicates dangerous stresses on some of your cyberware. The ninja is barely
standing upright and the your instructor shouts "Ultrasonics!" You remember
that the explosives expert gave you a small device he said would help with
the effects, and you slap at it as you begin to fade away and feel a warm
liquid running down your upper lip. The feeling begins to fade and you
lurch over to the two nuke experts, neither of whom are doing well. You
move as if in a haze, and you see the sparks of violently failing cyberware
around the datajack of the glider nuke expert before you activate his sonic
canceler as well. The pain from the small electrical discharges must be
severe, as he howls in anguish over the last of the effects. You, your
instructor, and the glider team's mage are the most unaffected of all of you,
and you rush toward the entrance just in time to see a large, obviously
armored approaching through the dissipating smoke, followed quickly by three
other figures in similar armor. It is obvious that you will need to buy some
time before everyone is fully conscious and aware again, so you take aim at
the Maxim Arms insignia on the chest of the front figure and fire full auto.
You suspect that you do very little damage, even with the APDS, and the
figures, likely a Maxim Quad, scatter and begin returning fire with weapons
that include a minigun.
Your internal status display indicates that your cyberears and their integral
systems are operating at 10%, but it's enough to hear the explosives expert
begins swearing loudly behind you. He looks up at the rest of the team, who
have now completed their demolition charges, and says "Sonic shattered
remotes. Someone has to stay behind." You're about to volunteer when your
dying team mage and second in command does so. Nobody complains, since it's
obvious that he'll die anyway. Seeing that your original plan of escape, the
entrance, has already been cut off, the glider mage stands off at the
northwest wall, appears to focus himself, and blasts a chunk out of the wall
with his ram spell. Your instructor's associate helps with his SPAS-22
shotgun and more doorbuster ammo, and within instants the hole is large
enough to get through. You break radio silence for a single transmission
and call the Distraction team: "Ripley, Tigger, out in 30 seconds. Commence
now." In reply you get a click from each. You see the guards at the
entrance being a quick but careful fighting withdrawal into the bunker.
>From what you see, your instructor is running low on ammunition for his M22A2
when one of the Quad members sends a stream of boiling liquid through the
entrance of the bunker. The interior of the bunker begins to fill with
noxious gasses and the floor is suddenly covered with the bubbling mess left
over from an acid bomb. The explosives expert finishes re-rigging the FAE
canisters and hands the dead-man detonator to the mage, and you turn to cover
the backs of the exiting members.
The wounded glider pilot who helped rig the nukes is coughing even through
his gasmask and appears barely able to breathe in the noxious, acidic air.
Your second in command tosses your instructor his HK227 and extra ammo. Your
instructor, firing one last burst with the shotgun at the Maxim figure in the
entrance, shouts "Could you please stop shooting at the thermonuclear
weapons?" and then scrambles up and out of the bunker. You chuckle and you
continue providing cover with careful bursts which seem to have very little
effect against the armor the Quad is wearing, until the last man, the other
nuke expert, is out. You pull a single grenade, throw it at the entrance,
salute your teammate who will stay and detonate the nukes and the bunker
around him, and then leave.
+++++ End Simsense Download +++++
If I'm lucky, I'll get more where that came from. ]<<<<<
-- Trideo Pirate <19:17:59/03-10-57>
