Cyber Wars Ch. 13: "Fallen Knights"

[Wolf99x]

OOC: Here is the new chapter.

BIC: It has been three months since Jade's imprisonment at an
undisclosed reformation prsion and Monk's disappearance into the
unknown. Wolf has now taken command of Cyber Force, and has installed
Wraith as second-in-command. The past 3 months have not been easy. The
General, still confined to his office but acting through his wormy XO
(and co-conspirator) have numerously tried to put the kibosh on Wolf's
plans for military counterstrikes against the latest set of
Mastermind's agressions in both worlds. However, Wolf has managed to
keep the unit intact, and, despite the loss of the team's dedicated
hacking specialist, Cyber Force has managed to force Mastermind into a
stalemate of sorts; neither side wishing to attack the other.
However, one side must inevitably make the first move...

***

Colonel Jason "Wolf" MacKenzie, backed up by 4 members of Cyber Force's
Delta Team, cautiously walked through the darkened hallways of the
weapons facility. They had no NVG, and only their flashlights provided
any illumination.

"Stay sharp, that ninja is still on the loose," Wolf said just before a
throwing star embedded itself into the neck of one of the soldiers,
dropping him to the ground with a gurgling death rattle.

"Take cover!" Wolf shouted as enemy soldiers came out of the darkness,
guns blazing. The remaining Delta troopers returned fire from behind
cover, dropping the enemies with controlled 3-round bursts from their
M16s.

Wolf looked around, and almost got a throwing knife in the head. He
moved away just in time and it embedded into the wall behind him.
Ducking back behind cover, he began issuing orders to what was left of
his team.

"Okay, I'm on point, Martinez and Slater are flanking. King, you bring
up the rear."

The 4 soldiers walked down the hall, weapons at the ready and pointing
forward. Wolf suddenly heard something drop down behind his team, but

by the time he spun around to issue the warning...it was too late.
King's throat was slashed by a survival knife, Slater got that same
knife thrown into his skull, and Martinez was gunned down point blank
with King's M16. Wolf leveld his gun, and saw the assailant, a lithe
black-clad ninja, leap over his head and toss two shuriken in his
direction. Wolf rolled out of danger and tried to track his target, but
the ninja was moving too fast for him to draw a bead.

"Damn it...hold still!" he growled.

The ninja threw three more knives in mid air, then paused for a second
on a rafter before preparting to leap again. Wolf was already tracking.
Firing his M16 on full-auto, he saw some of the bullets deflect the
knives, and walked his gunfire onto the leaping ninja, who fell to the
ground, 5 bullets in its chest.

The lights suddenly came on, and a synthetic computer voice echoed
through the room.

"Objective acheived, simulation ending."

The 'dead' soldiers, still blood splattered, but with their wounds
sealing, stood up. As did the ninja, who removed its hood to reveal the
face of Commander Kaitlin Vong.

"That was a good training simulation. Both sides performed quite well
under the circumstances" Wolf said.

Kaitlin nodded. "I agree...but I would have at least like to have taken you down with me."

Wolf lowered his gun and showed everyone the ersatz knife embedded in
his chest. "But you did..." he grinned. "Only the simulation had ended
so I didn't feel it hit me." He pulled out the knife and tossed it to
the ground, watching it vanish in a flash of pixels. "In real life of
course, I would have been screwed."

He turned to the 20 or so soldiers now gathered in the simulated

hallway. Some of them wore Cyber Force military garb, these were
members of team Delta, while the others wore Mastermind uniforms. The
'enemy' soldiers had been played by Cyber Force's Gamma and Epsillon
teams.

"Now, what went wrong for both sides in this conflict?" Wolf asked

Martinez raised his hand. "the attackers had a lack of proper equipment
and intel."

"Exactly," Wolf responded. "The attackers had no NVG, and no
instruction on how to turn on the power. What about the problems faced
by the defending force?"

Sgt. Laura Coleman of CF-Gamma provided that answer. "We underestimated
you, sir."

Wolf nodded. "Damn right you did. Even though I was outnumbered, I was
able to take down most of the defenders...until their secret weapon
made sushi out of me and my team." He grinned at Kaitlin again, who
grinned back. "Of course, I underestimated too. The real lesson to be
learned from this is that you never want to underestimate your enemy's
capabilities, especially if it's Mastermind."

Suddenly a message window opened up right in front of Wolf. It was a
message from the ops room of Cyber Force's base in the Los Angeles
area.

"Sorry to interrupt, Colonel," the comm officer said, "but we have a
helicopter requesting permission to land. The person I'm communicating
with, a Captain Miles Miller, wants to speak to you personally."

Wolf paused in thought. Miller...what could he want...?

"Tell him I'll be right there. Give him landing clearance to Hangar 2."
he said as he closed the message window with a wave of his hand.
He turned back to the soldiers. "Good job today, you're all dismissed."

Everyone logged out almost simultaneously.

***

Wolf left the training room and headed for Hangar 2, Kaitlin following
him close behind.

"This is the same Captain Miller who saved us on Mt.
McHale, right?" she asked.

"Yes...but I don't know why he'd come here personally...unless FLAG
needs the help of Cyber Force."

"Well, we're certainly qualified to dispense that
help." she said with a smile.

"True...which reminds me. Where did you learn to throw knives like
that?"

"Well, it's part of my heritage...and I learned quite a
bit of knife throwing from some of my father's friends who worked for
him at SysDef. I decided I was going to give you a demonstration
instead of outright telling you. Todays training sim was a perfect opportunity"

"Well, I'm just glad it wasn't real." Wolf laughed slightly as he gave Kaitlin a quick peck on the cheek before opening the doors to Hangar 2.

As they entered the hangar and waited for Miller's copter to land, Wolf
called Wraith on his PDAP.

"Wraith, I want you to have all of CF-Alpha and CF-Beta ready to deploy
at a moment's notice."

OOC: For clarification: CF-Alpha is made up of all the PCs, while
CF-Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsillon are made up of NPCs we can use for
missions if need be.

[Squishy Cheeks]

Coyote as usual was busy being fatherly to one of his favourite humans. While he couldn't bust Jade out, he could make her stay as comfortable as possible.

"Father," A young childlike coyote said. "Uncle Wolf has been succesful again."

"Good."

[batgirl]

The long drone of the siren went off like it did everyday, work was over. The prisoners of the Rikers Maximum Reformation Prison were wordlessly herded into they solitary cells. They were the size of little 9x9 boxes with a cot, toilet, sink and mirror all crammed together. The solid steel door to the windowless cell creaked open, and a chained Jade was thrown in. After the barred inner door was closed, she put her hands through the bars and got her chains unlocked from the guard who spoke the same words he said every night: "Don't die on us girly, we want to have more fun with you tomorrow." With that, he shut and bolted the door. Jade was left alone in the cell with only the dim yellow lights from the ceilings like for the past 3 months of her life. She exhaled deeply and walked the two steps to the sink. She was the same Jade as always, but a little worse for wear. She had an orange prison jumpsuit on and her hair was a little longer than before. Her jumsuit and face were smudged with dirt and she had a nice sized shiner on her left eye from the last beating the guard had given her for resisting their "reformation." Her nano-augmentations were taking care of the heavy injuries and she knew how to take a beating, but it was getting more and more difficult to maintain them. Soon she wouldn't be able to maintain them at all and she'd be at the mercy of the guards. She absently scratched at the back of her neck and was reminded of her new addition to her body. On the back of her neck was a barcode tattoo with numbers on it. The guards used it to take roll every morning, but she hated being treated like a number. She settled into her cot for the night and hoped that the others were doing better than she was.

[Wolf99x]

OOC: That...was a training mission JADGuy...but still, I guess taking successes in training is a good thing.

BIC: Wolf got a good look at the Iriquois-class stealth transport helicopter that Miller was arriving on. In his own opinion, Wolf was surprised it was still flying. There were blast marks all over it, and the cockpit windscreen was bullet riddled. Smoke was also coming from the engine. Still, it managed to make an okay landing, even though the landing gear seemed to groan under the strain.

What the hell happened to that chopper? Wolf thought as he saw Miller and a couple other FLAG soldiers debark from it. He noticed that all of the soldiers had varying degrees of battle wounds. For that matter...what the hell happened to them?

He walked up to Miller. "What the hell happened to you?" he asked.

"It's a long story." Miller said. "The net result of which is that FLAG needs your help...and fast. I can explain better if I had access to some media..."

"Say no more. I'll get medical attention for you and your men, and then you can tell us what happened in briefing room Alpha."

Wolf radioed for medical staff to head to Hangar 2, then he called up Angel and Wraith.

"You two get over to briefing room Alpha, I think we've got a situation arising."

If FLAG needs help...then the shit has hit the fan indeed.

[Darth SS]

Angel got the call in a middle of a simulation. They'd decided to test how some of the recruits handled facing a superior force while in the Cyber World. Angel filled the role perfectly.

The scenario for said test was a darkened, yet amazingly good condition mansion. Angel smirked as he thought of how Coyote would probably be envious. Angel himself was up on one of the higher pillars, glancing down at the team.

Heavy Flak vests, assault rifles with laser scopes, night vision, the works given the situation. Angel sighed and thumbed his katana abscently. However, that was convential tactics for dealing with a convential assault styled team.

He glanced at a chandelier, and cut it off. It plummeted down and hit one of the trainees. In the Real World, he snapped out of the simulation suddenly, and swore. Laser scopes showed where their guns were.

Angel grabbed an overhanging beam, and swung around to the other side of the pillar, grabbing hold with his knees and fingers. He heard one of them starting to round the pillar. The major downside to laser scopes was that they showed where they were aiming, and thus looking.

Angel waited until the laser was almost right next to him, and starting to rise, that he let go. His wings caught the air, depositing him noiselessly before he flew as fast as he could at the trainee. With his attention diverted upward, he didn't even see the black blur that slashed his throat open in an explosion of gore.

After finding another hiding place, he gave the team extra points for how they handled the situation. Two dead, four left, no one had even seen the attacker. Almost abscently, Angel drew his two katanas, and whispered, "Now let's test their reactions..."

His wings dissapeared and he slammed down right in the middle of them. One of them was jittery and fired before fully seeing Angel, actually nailing one of his teammates in the head. The remaining three instinctively backed up, and took aim.

The second fired, but Angel had noted his tensing, and pulled to the side so the bullets only caught bits of trenchcoat. He then proceeded to underhand the gun, slicing it clean in two, then twisted behind the rookie giving a human shield. They didn't fire, but re-aimed for Angel's head.

He cut the rookie's head off, and dived at the second last trainee. To his credit, he didn't fire blindly, nor did he run. Instead, he whacked Angel in the face with the butt of his gun. Angel neatly backflipped, and threw one of his katanas in a scything blow, and without waiting to see the effect, turned to two hand the last trainee.

Who had his combat knife out. He squarely met the blow, then shot Angel full in the gut.

***

In the Real World, Angel woke up, and stood once unplugged. He glanced at the assembled team. "Kudos to you guys. You got me. Now, what were the major mistakes you made?"

One sighed, and said, "We knew the enemy was hitting from the dark, so he must've had good night-vision. Ideally, we should've tossed chemical flares into the darkest areas. Surprise him, and give us a better view overall."

Another raised a hand and said, "We should've payed attention to the line of the bloodsplatter. That would've let us have an idea of where you were."

A third muttered loudly, "And make sure there's nothing that can crush us above."

Angel let them work it out and he fled the room, barely pausing to grab a coat. Three months had changed Angel greatly. No longer was he the scrawny programmer he used to be. Instead, he had really filled out, and now had quite the layer of muscle.

Incidentally, he constantly talked in a swedish accent to try to get a date with some of the girls. His favorite was, "Have you seen my beach-ball, it's-" then he made a muscle and finished with, "THIS BIG."

He was pulling that stunt when the briefing room door opened. The girl shook her head, said "Perv." and left.

Angel walked in. "Right right right...what have I been called for."

[Wolf99x]

Wolf, Miller, and Kaitlin, along with the seven FLAG soldiers that Miller had brought with him, were already in the briefing room when Angel walked in after being shot down.

Wolf chuckled slightly. He's matured slightly...but he still ain't quite there yet.

Clearing his throat he looked around the room. "Well, Wraith still isn't here yet, so we'll wait a while before Miller begins his briefing. All I can say is...something's going down...and judging by the state of the chopper he arrived in...it's something big." Wolf tossed Angel a picture of the shot up helicopter.

[Darth SS]

"I didn't do it." He quickly said. There was a pause, and he shrugged. "What? Somehow I always get blamed for stuff like this."

He closer examined the picture, and said, "Wow. Anti-artillery shells. What'd they get themselves into?"

[Wolf99x]

Wolf decided that he needed to know here and now just exactly what FLAG had gotten themselves into; the suspense was killing him.

"Wraith's sometimes late...we can give him the details later." he said to Miller. "Why don't you go ahead and answer Angel's question?"

Miller took out a mini DVD from his jacket pocket and slid it into the holoprojector control panel on the briefing table. The image that was displayed at the center of the table was of FLAG's Skybase 2 flying through the sky.

Miller paused the image for a second. "The data from KAMO's ejection module provided us the coordinates of the holding area in Boston you had infiltrated. I lead a team in there a few weeks ago, launching a successful assault that rescued the 29 other Mastermind slaves. Afterwards we burned the holding area to the ground. I guess Mastermind wasn't too pleased about that...because 24 hours ago, he did this."

Miller resumed the video image, and suddenly numerous Mastermind fighter jets of numerous makes came flying at the Skybase, firing their weapons at it. A massive aerial battle raged for maybe 10 minutes between Mastermind's jets and the OTAVs belonging to FLAG, then suddenly a string of explosions wracked the back of the Skybase, sending it plunging towards the ground.

"We don't know how...but somehow Mastermind's forces knocked out the Skybase's engines, and it was forced to crash-land in Northern Canada." Miller hit a button, and it showed the crashed Skybase partially hanging over a cliff. "Mastermind wasn't done with us either. He's surrounded the base with troops and tanks, and has also managed to get soldiers in through some of the hull breaches. They are overwhelming us. Why they attacked us now I have no idea."

Wolf did. "Weapons."

"What?"

"Think about it. After I destroyed AKIRA, Mastermind lost the only piece of technology he had stolen from Knight Industries. Now, with the UN and Mastermind in a stalemate, he needs advanced weaponry badly...and Knight can provide it...all he has to do is steal it."

"And to achieve that Mastermind shot down a Skybase" Kaitlin added

Miller frowned. "It's worse than that...Michael Knight was onboard when Skybase 2 went down...if Mastermind gets to him..."

"Then there will be an endless supply of weaponry." Wolf finished

"And that's why Knight sent me and a team to find you. We almost didn't make it while leaving...as seen by the state of our chopper."

"So...Knight needs my help once again."

"Well...not just you, Cyber Force. He needs you to get all advanced weaponry off the Skybase and out of Mastermind's hands, and then lock down the skybase. Not to mention, save his life."

Wolf thought for a second "That's a tall order...locking down the Skybase would be difficult, since Jade's in prison, and we don't have a hacker as skilled as she was. As for getting the weapons off though...I think that can be done, as well as getting Knight out of harm's way. In any case, we're definetly going. Mastermind can't be allowed access to any of the weaponry or vehicles on that ship."

Beauracratic BS or not...we're going.

[Darth SS]

Angel raised his arms and said, "Whoooo! Goin' back to Ca-na-da."

He then dropped into a contemplative position and said, "Sorry, sir."

Then almost absently, he muttered, "Wait..." He then glanced at Miller and said, "Nunavut, Yukon, or Northwest Territories?"

[Wolf99x]

Miller shrugged. "I guess it was a bad idea to say Northern Canada. It's not really that far north. It's more like Northern Civilized Canada. It's off the coast of Newfoundland...hanging over a cliff over extremely deep and extrememly cold water courtesy of the Labrador Sea. Fortunately, it's not in any danger of falling."