| From: | ANGLISS BRIAN EDWARD <angliss@****.Colorado.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Partial IFV Team Extraction, Maxim raid part 6 |
| Date: | Sun, 10 Mar 1996 21:14:49 -0700 (MST) |
>>>>>[Originally, I was only going to talk about how we got out of the
facility alive, but since AJ's not speaking to anyone right now, Gunny's in
a coma, and Jasmine seems to have disappeared for the time being, I guess
I'll have to do their stuff too. But I'll start with what I know, which was
us.
After the Thug was destroyed, some of us went off with Green Hornet in the
lead. Kato, however, saw something that gave him an idea: a chopper. Being
a rigger, he figured that the chopper, being a stallion, would be large and
powerful enough to get us out alive. The only problem with that plan was the
chopper was half a kilometer away, across open ground, with no cover, and
some of us were drained from casting spells or wounded from shrapnel or
bullets. And then there were the troops that we could see converging on us
from various sides. As you can imagine, this is not a good thing.
But it fell on me to keep us at least safer than we would otherwise be, and
so I cast another bullet barrier and sustained it while we ran. I also
called up all my elementals except one and sent them off to distract the
military troops who were starting to flank us. Those troops....they were
probably spread all over the facility by now, yet we were still facing at
least 30 of them, supported by drones that were swarming toward us. What
chance did we have against those odds? Fraggin little, and we all knew it,
but we had to try anyway. So we kept on running, scattering and hitting the
dirt when a drone came by. One of the elementals helped us keep the drones
from getting too close and we kept on shooting at the rotodrones too. The
grenades we had were keeping the troops a little further back than without
them, but we were still being hounded mercilessly. Green Hornet was the
first one to take a round, even through the barrier spell. It hit him in
the right arm and shattered the bone in the process. Doc Savage bound his
arm to his side and we kept moving. Next thing that happens is the ground
beneath us jumps for an instant. Looking to the west a small plume of dust
is rising from where the armory is. If we hadn't been in such dire straits,
we might have cheered, but none of us had the time or energy to devote to
that right then.
I felt the first of my elementals die about then, too. Nothing like pain,
just the feeling that a mage gets when an elemental they summoned dies. I
only had 4 left, excluding the one running drone interference and the one
I'd not called up yet. And then another one died. They were only going to
last us so much longer, and we still had a long way to run, so I called up
my last elemental. It was my only greater fire elemental, and I only had
one service on it. But it was time to move, or we'd be cut off. Next thing
everyone knows, they're all running MUCH faster than they were to begin with.
Fire elementals can do that, especially the greater ones, and we were
crossing the ground 6, maybe 7 times faster than we could have been before.
But, fraggit, something went wrong. Less than a hundred meters from the
chopper, the elemental just disappears and I literally feel it die, almost
as if it was attacked from the Astral. The sudden stop sends everyone
falling, and we all got bruised. Green Hornet, with one arm already useless,
couldn't absorb his fall well and cracked a couple of ribs. He was hurting
really fraggin bad, and there was nothing my magic could do about it. I'm a
combat magician, not a healer. That's Jasmine, and she was with AJ and
Gunny.
About this time I see what killed my elemental: another fraggin spirit, this
one looking like it was sucking up the light. I wasn't stupid enough to
catch a look at it astrally, since any Maxim mage in the astral could kill
us all that way, but it was big, dark, and looked fraggin dangerous.
Unfortunately, I had to drop my barrier to even try to nail it, and
something went wrong. My aura is really attuned to the background count of
the areas I'm in, even though I'm a mage, and I whipped up a really fraggin
powerful spiritbolt. Nothing. Not a fraggin thing. It just seemed to say
"Thank you ma'am, may I have another." Doc Savage, the physical adept of
the group, rushed it in an attempt to distract it and give us a chance to
get by and to the chopper. The spirit didn't do even move. Doc was at least
three meters away when he just rose into the air, spun around, and got
thrown at least 15 meters. When he landed, he tried to roll and reduce the
damage, but all it did was keep him from getting killed when he hit the
ground. This fraggin spirit, and I have no fraggin clue what kind of spirit
it was, could have eaten us for a midnight snack, but it just disappeared.
We found out later that it ran into the HALO team right after us, but it
never came back in our direction. Doc, on the other hand, had a collapsed
lung, broken shoulder and collarbone, both ACLs were torn, and his pelvis
had a hairline fracture. Jasmine spent a long time with him, putting him
back together on the way back to Seattle. Phantom picked him up with what
must have been a painful fireman's carry, and we got running again.
This time, though, I felt the last of my elementals get killed. The only
fraggin one I had left was the air running drone interdiction. However, it
was doing that job really fraggin well. Ever see an air elemental suddenly
suck the lift from a rotodrone's rotors? How about generate an instant
vortex, or really severe windshear? It's beautiful to behold the explosions
as the drones crash and burn. It was about this point that the calvary came
in. The Collussus wasn't interested in us at all. If it had, we'd have
been dead long before we got even close to the chopper. But overhead was
one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen: about half a dozen drones
and dozens of rockets detonating over the compound. Less than 3 seconds
later and we were almost home-free to the chopper, because all the troops
converging on us stopped to don gas masks or panicked when the chemical
alarms went off. Except for the special forces troops, who either had been
immunized against most chemical weapons or were in chemically sealed armor.
But none of us were complaining when the number of Maxim troops we had to
deal with dropped from 30 or 40 to 10 or 15. Much improved, but still
difficult considering that these were special forces.
The drones helped keep them off us, though. Ripley with his RPVs and armed
rotodrones kept the occupied enough to let us get to the chopper. Kato was
actually the first one there, and the rotors were already turning as we
piled in. I was fraggin disappointed, though. Instead of a combat gunship
variant like I was hoping for, it was just a construction Stallion. You
could tell the difference between the regular military and the special
forces, though. Maxim's military is very good and well trained, but they
weren't prepared for the gas. I suspect that Maxim is changing that really
fraggin fast. But the Quad I tried to down with a hellblast kept on coming
at us. The three who survived the spell just rolled across the ground,
still coming at the chopper, until the fires were out, and then leapt to
their feet again and kept on running. Unfortunately, I was the only one who
could see them coming, since they were wearing thermal and ruthenium coated
sneaksuits. Well, I was the only one who could see them until I blasted
them, and then their suits, which have very little armor, got burned and
Green Hornet and Phantom shot at them and cut them down. The squad,
gratefully, was occupied by Ripley's drones.
So we got off the ground, but there was no way that Maxim was going to let us
go without trying to shoot down the chopper. And they fraggin near
succeeded. I was astrally perceiving at this point, something that almost
cost us all our lives. I had figured that, since my barrier spells and my
last elemental were still around, Astral was relatively safe. No fraggin
way. I was looking around when I saw a Maxim mage casting a spell at me. I
know a thing or two about magic, and so I dispelled it quick before it got to
me, but then jumped back fully into my mundane perceptions. Doc Savage,
still conscious, shook his head as I sat there and sweated. Well, Ripley had
lost half of his drones already and we could see where AJ and the rest of the
team were trying to get out, so Phantom told Ripley that they needed his help
more than we did. It was true at that point, but it still nearly cost us our
lives. Ripley's last drones took off, and I felt my last elemental die from
the mage in Astral. Beneath me, no longer hounded by the drones, the special
forces team settled down for an instant as we kept firing grenades at them.
Kato was keeping the smoke we'd fired between us and them really well, but
then something went very wrong. Kato shouts "Hang ON!" and before we even
have time to react, he swerves off to the side, loses several meters of
altitude, and a fraggin missile rips by. Then he shouts "Bloodkite! Strap
yourselves in, because I can't outfly that fraggin thing." We all strapped
ourselves in as best we could, but some of us just couldn't. Next thing I
see is a fraggin jet rip by us, without a cockpit, and the fraggin thing is
armed to the teeth. Green Hornet started shooting at the fraggin thing, in
the hope that he'd hit it, with no luck. Well, I was feeling pretty fraggin
bad at this point, but I figured I had one more spell left in me. But I
didn't need it. From way the frag away, over by where the magical team was
set up to help out the HALO team, a fragging spark of electricity arcs and
hits the fraggin drone. I fraggin near hit us too, but it didn't. Well,
the spark strikes one of the wing hardpoints and the drone just exploded.
Then the drek hit the fan. Kato tried really hard, and almost succeeded too,
but the Stallion ate a SAM in the tail, blowing it almost completely off. We
were a good kilometer from the perimeter, heading toward town when it
happened, but it forced us down. And we went down hard, too. Kato did the
best he could, but we still had to get out fast because we could smell
aviation fuel leaking from the tanks, and we didn't want to be around when
the chopper blew. We were barely beyond the point where we figured the last
of Maxim's assassin drones patrolled the jungle, but we didn't hang around
long enough to find out. Kato, still the least wounded of all of us, and
Phantom helped me carry Doc Savage, but we ran into one more problem. We
were trudging through the jungle when we heard an ATV coming through the
jungle from the south, where we knew some of the locals had set up a couple
of Grad-Ps for diversions. Just in case we were wrong, we hid as best we
could, but we weren't wrong. It was an ATV alright, with wounded locals in
it. We came out of hiding only to have them start swearing at us and
shooting at us. Well, this time we had cover, but they fraggin made me mad.
I've mellowed out since I had Arial, but not that much. I could barely
stand, but the last thing I remember is standing as if I'd found new strength
and coming out from behind the tree I was hiding behind, and then I remember
waking up with Phantom staring down at me and feeling really fraggin tired.
After I recovered my strength, I asked him what happened. Well, apparently
the locals shot Kato, but he was ok. But he said that I stood up and walked
from where I was out into the open. He said that my footsteps in the damp
forest floor ignited as if I was a fraggin elemental, and that the locals
were shooting at me, but the bullets were melting off a shield of heat in
front of me. He said that my hair started lifting as I started speaking in
Sperethiel, and my hair was moving as if blown by a wind, but that the air
around had grown deadly calm(his term, not mine). And then he said I said,
and I quote, "You just made me angry. You just fragged with the wrong
snitch, chums. _Never_ frag with the Mistress." And he said that he felt
some form of barrier rise around him and the rest of the team, and then the
fraggin forest exploded in fire. When the fires died down, there was
nothing for about 100 meters in every direction but burned husks of trees,
and that all the locals bodies had just fraggin disappeared, no bones even,
and I just passed out.
He said that he got everyone into the ATV, which was still around, for some
reason, although everyone in it was gone, and drove away as fast as he could.
I woke up in the contact building in town, and apparently Maxim sent a
barrage of shells at the new clearing I created, but that he'd gotten us out
before that happened.
Now, why the frag can't I ever remember doing this fraggin stuff everyone
says I do, fraggit!]<<<<<
-- Foxey Roxey <21:14:58/03-10-57>
>>>>>[You'll remember in time, my dear. When the time is right, you will
know and you will remember, but not until.]<<<<<
-- Etsy <21:18:06/03-10-57>
