All My Sins Remembered (17 page)

"We're being watched." Sergeant Carroway noted to Raijan, pointing at a camera on the wall near the corner of the office overlooking the loading dock, and then at another camera mounted on the wall opposite the office.  Raijan sighed and drew his mags, putting a round through both cameras.

"Engineering squad, secure that office.  See if there's a way to shut down the alarm, shut down the elevators, and secure any intelligence."  Raijan ordered. As the engineering team thumped off in their heavy armor, the Lieutenant seemed to hesitate for a moment, and opened the general channel once again to issue more orders.  "Corporal Dorfman, I need you at the loading docks to secure it.  I want Fireflies one, two, and three to set up a perimeter patrol pattern.  Alert me if you encounter any resistance."  The 'aye-ayes' came through the channel as Raijan pulled up the extrapolated map of the base.  According to the map, there was but two ways to the lower levels, an emergency stairwell and an elevator shaft.  He quickly realized that, after having a squad sweep and clear the second floor, he had no way of keeping it secure as both squads would be needed on the third and fourth floor to secure the chemical storage and production facilities.  He did not like that, but then again it was a risk he had to take.

"Squads one and two, I want you both to sweep and clear the second floor. 
Kill any combatants, restrain and report any noncombatants.  After that, squad 1 I want you to sweep and clear the offices around the production facility on the third floor, and squad 2, proceed to the fourth floor and secure it for our scientists."  Raijan ordered.  Even before he was finished handing out orders, squads one and two were already in motion, squad 1 making its way back towards the stairwell, and squad 2 prepping to hover down the elevator shaft to the second floor using their jetpacks.

"
Koun, Kaihei-tai
.  Good luck, Marines."  Raijan said softly. 

***

On board
The Fury
, Hawke, Nathan, and Major Kinny monitored the progress of the forces on the ground as sounds of gunfire and explosions reverberated inside the operations room, along with shouted commands, and punctuated by the occasional roar of defiance, grunt of pain, or scream.  On the 2D displays mounted on the walls around the room, live camera feeds from each squad member could be seen, and a fierce firefight was quickly unfolding on each camera.  Hawke hated this part.  The watching, and waiting.

The
Helljumpers
cleared the second floor with minimal resistance, which was surprising, and at first they had all hoped that the base was not as heavily staffed as they had believed.  They had restrained a few scientists and other base workers, who were quickly taken into custody by Corporal Dorfman and his force recon squad.  Bringing the prisoners topside, they quickly loaded them into one of the fireflies and returned to Second Lieutenant Raijan's makeshift command post in the office overlooking the entrance and the loading docks. Their problems began when squad 1 and two had split up, each taking one of the lower two floors.  They had run into heavy resistance in the form of several squads of special forces soldiers in powered armor.  By all accounts, it looked as if there were two enemy platoons entrenched there, outnumbering the Talon Marines severely.

"Pipe these feeds to Raijan's helmet." Hawke commanded urgently to one of the communications specialists sitting at a workstation not far away.  The communications specialist looked a little harried as he worked quickly to comply, a growing look of worry on his face.

"Sir, the system on the Lieutenant's helmet was not optimized for platoon level command.  It is having difficulty handling that kind of bandwidth."  The man replied.  Hawke threw a frustrated look Tasha's way, whom he had asked to accompany them to the operations room.  Though she still looked a little worse for wear, Hawke quickly came to realize that her skills were probably better than the communication's officer on
The Fury
, though Captain Yost had claimed otherwise.  Catching Hawke's look, Tasha nodded once and moved over to stand beside the communications specialist and began quietly conferring with him.  After a few minutes, Tasha straightened up and gave Hawke another nod, signaling that the video feeds were being transmitted.  The corner of Hawke's mouth turned up in a faint smile as he returned the nod, just long enough for Tasha to see it, but was interrupted by a particularly vicious explosion, punctuated by a thunderous crash as camera feeds of one of the Marines in squad 1 shook violently.

"Sir, we're pinned down and they're throwing
conc-bombs at us!" Yelled a Marine over the general coms channel. "They are dug in at the other end of the hallway"  Major Kinny looked like he wanted to jump through the camera and into the action as his hands gripped the banister around the large holoprojector and his gaze fixated on squad 1's camera feeds.

***

"Sir, we're pinned down, and they're throwing conc-bombs at us!" Yelled a Marine over the general coms channel.  Raijan was thankful for the video feeds someone had somehow managed to transmit to him from
The Fury
, though he knew that doing so should have been impossible.  He switched to a live feed from squad 1 just in time to see a cylindrical object explode, and the air ripple as the sound impacted its surroundings with a high degree of force, sending one unlucky Marine who had happened to peek out from cover at that precise moment to catch some of the force of the detonation and go flying down the hall to crash into a wall and slump to the ground.  Concussion bombs, or 'conc-bombs' as they were called, was a favorite of Rejaian Special Forces.  It was a cylindrical object that was launched with compressed air from a tube, or if they were desperate enough, could be thrown.  They detonated by suddenly displacing air so brutally that a concussion is created, the same kind of concussion you would experience from a large, explosive charge, but without the fiery explosion.  Though Marines caught in the blast of a conc-bomb were rarely killed, thanks to the efficiency of today's power armor, the concussion would frequently blast them out of cover, and perhaps even stun anyone caught in its area of effect.  If used frequently enough, conc-bombs could even damage hardened electronics, or eardrums.

"Squad three, on me.  Corporal Dorfman, you and your team keep the entrance secured.
Staff Sergeant Carroway, with me." Raijan said, making a quick decision while running towards the elevator shaft.  As Raijan, Carroway, Corporal Serms, Lance Corporal Grobnak, and PFC Delgato hovered down the shaft and landed just inside the elevator entrance to the third floor, the loud BANG's of the conc-bombs could be heard, along with a copious amount of gunfire being exchanged.  Pulling up the schematic for the base, Raijan noted that the extrapolated layout had changed as the Marines had conducting their 'sweep and clear' operation, replacing the extrapolated portions of the floor plan with the new, verified layout.  What he saw was that squad 1 was pinned down at northwest corner of a hallway, and was receiving fire from further down the hallways to the south and east.  The enemies to the south had entrenched and office at southwest corner with a window facing towards the north, using it as cover while lobbing conc-bombs up the hallway towards the Marines.  Meanwhile the other forces down the hallway to the east of the Talon Marines were attempting to advance on their position.  The elevator shaft had brought them in behind the office from which the Rejaian soldiers were lobbing conc-bombs.  With a grin, Raijan walked up to the wall that also adjoined the room, and placed a breaching charge.

"You're crazy!" Carroway yelled at Raijan, a split second before the room filled with a deadly roar and the wall blew into the
office with debris reaching towards the backs of the special ops squad inside, slamming some of them down to the ground from the force.  In the clearing dust, Raijan leapt through the breach, drawing what looked to be a glowing red katana, and drove it through the back armor, and body, of the nearest soldier who was holding his helmeted head while trying to clear it.  With a scream, the soldier went down, while the other soldiers turned to face the unexpected threat.  Drawing his mags, Raijan put a slug through two of the soldiers' helmets as they tried to struggle to their feet, causing them to collapse like puppets whose strings had been suddenly cut.

Then the fight was joined as Grobnak, a Marine so large his armor had to be specially fitted to accomodate his bulk, bu
lled in, crashing into another SpecOps soldier who was bringing an assault rifle around to bear upon Raijan.  They collided with such force that their impact against the fall wall caused it to give away, spilling them both out into the cooridor.  Carroway, Serms, and Delgato followed in the wake of Grobnak's charge, both with wicked-looking combat knives which were made to scale for their powered armor, resembling something more like swords than knives had they held them without the benefit of their armor.  Raijan managed to withdraw his katana and turned towards the remaining soldiers who had regained their feet, and grinned as he advanced upon them.

While the Gadari Marine powered armor was made more for soaking up damage,
the Rejaian powered armor that Raijan wore was specialized for the covert ops team he had once been a member of back before the four great empires dissolved their standing armies.  It sacrificed some of its ability to soak up damage for speed and agility, perfect for teams needing to get in, and get out of places quickly.  Raijan moved suddenly, leaping forward and planting a fist into and through the faceplate of one of the soldiers facing him while sweeping his laser-edged katana across the soft neckplate of the other.  Both went down, one missing a head, and the other with his face crushed to a pulp from the amplified force of the blow.  Turning back to his team, he saw that they had made short work of the enemy squad, bringing a successful completion to their ambush.  The previously pinned marines of squad 1, realizing that they were no longer stuck in a crossfire, and that no further conc-bombs were being lobbed their way, renewed their attack on the other enemy squad attempting to advance on them from the east, finishing them off quickly.

"Squad
1, report." Raijan ordered.

" We have one injured, but ambulatory, and we're clear."  Hefernan, the leader of
squad 1, reported.  Raijan nodded.

"Let's finish clearing this floor,
Squad 1." Raijan ordered, then added, "Send your wounded to the entrance to aid Corporal Dorfman's team if they need it.."

"Sending our wounded topside, yes sir." Hefernan responded.  Satisfied that things had settled down here, Raijan pulled up his schematic of the fourth floor, where
squad 2 were supposed to be, and noticed that they seemed to be inside the room where large tanks spanning two floors were.

"
Squad 2, report."  Raijan called.  He waited a moment, but received only silence.  Concerned, he tried pulling up the live video feeds from their cameras, but only received static.  Switching to the command channel, he contacted
The Fury
's operations room.

"
Black star to Talon One, I'm not getting a feed on Squad 2, nor can I get a response, can you ascertain their status?" Raijan asked as he frantically pulled up the remote medical readouts for squad 2.  The readouts seemed erratic, though it he had no idea whether it was from interference caused by the structure, or if his squad was in trouble.  Quickly switching back to his general channel, Raijan ordered squad three to follow him as he charged back through the hole they had blasted into the wall only minutes earlier, and back towards the elevator shaft.

***

Tasha Altihkova scowled in thought as she absently bit her lower lip, then indicated for the communications specialist she had been helping earlier to get up and let her sit at his station.  As she sat, she began working furiously, pulling up several windows and examining several readouts.  Hawke, having noticed the troubled look on Tasha's face, quietly walked over to her while Nathan and Major Kinny's eyes remained fixed on the live camera feeds and the holographic projection of the area of operations.

"Trouble?" Hawke prompted.  Tasha absently held up a finger, indicating that Hawke should wait a moment as her eyes scanned myriad readouts as if looking for something in particular.  Then, having found it, sighed as she turned towards the Colonel.

"The Second Lieutenant's helmet didn't have the proper software installed to command anything larger than a squad, much less a platoon.  I'm afraid the live video feeds caused a part of his communications suite applications to crash.  They are rebooting, but the data from squad 2 has been lost.  Communications will be sketchy at best for the next three to five minutes while his helmet reboots the selected applications." Tasha reported.  Hawke grimaced.

"We can't reboot it faster?"  Hawke asked.  Tasha shook her head as she vacated her seat, allowing the communications specialist to resume his post.

"
Nyet
.  It is the best we can do.  We did not have time to upgrade his software over the wireless network."  Tasha replied.  Hawke nodded, and turned back towards the holoprojector as Raijan's voice came over the command channel.

"Black star to Talon One, I'm not getting a feed on
Squad 2, nor can I get a response, can you ascertain their status?" Raijan asked.  Major Kinny looked at the live feeds for squad 2, and saw that they were engaged in a firefight inside the tank room as Special Forces soldiers performed a fighting withdrawal out of one of the two airlocks, and frowned.  Nathan looked askance at Hawke, who informed the two of the situation.  Nodding in understanding, the Major gave Hawke an expression as if to say, "May I?"  Receiving an approving nod from Hawke, the Major opened a com channel to First Second Lieutenant Raijan.