Saturday, March 31, 2007

Just 'cause - Chapter 13 - Mindfields

For every soldier doing guard duty, the unknown is the greatest threat: they are instructed to stay alert, to avoid falling into a rut, but complacency does not knock on your door and loudly announce its willingness to enter. Instead, it creeps up on every soldier, quicker on some and slower on others, until they start acting in patterns that require minimal physical and mental activity. Add to that the usually problematic duty rotation and the low appreciation, and most soldiers will quickly bleed effectiveness.

Suppose that you are one of said soldiers, a Hand of Glory operative manning the only street access to your mountain base at the Brazilian coast. A truck shows up at your roadblock, and you walk towards the driver, asking him for his ID and Fahrbefehl. He gladly hands both over, answering your queries in perfect German. The truck reads as a supply carrier, which checks out with your security briefing for the day. This is, in fact, the truck that was sent out three hours ago for just that purpose; you forego inspecting the cargo because, dammit, your shift is up in 5 and you haven't eaten anything decent all day. You walk back to the driver, hand him the papers and tell him that he can pass; he smiles - a small smile, impersonal but at least it's there - and makes his entry with a hasty "Schoenen Tag noch!". You wave him through, then you formally pass your duty to the relief soldier waiting for you to get a move on, secure your weapon and walk inside to have a microwave'd burrito.

You have just let Peter Krueger into your base.

---

Krueger did not, in fact, have any idea as to where he should be driving the truck, but that was not a significant obstacle; what little of the Hand base had been built to be level with the ground outside - if technically underground, by virteu of being built into the mountain - was designed for efficient operation, not obfuscation, and he quickly found the motor park; noting the light staffing, he parked the truck in a far corner, told the soldiers on duty that he'd be back to help them unload the cargo after he'd grabbed a bite, and walked behind the truck. Krueger had, in fact, just given them the right excuse to ease up on the unloading speed of the truck they were handling now; with his promise of help, it made sense for them to wait a few minutes instead of blindly jumping on it, not to mention the prior job was still in progress - work smart, not hard. Safely out of their sight, Krueger opened the passenger's door - and Trinity climbed out, a little shaken up after ducking down in the shotgun seat's legroom for ten minutes. She was also wearing a Hand uniform, though the fit wasn't as good as on Krueger. Then again, he was the one who'd had to make it through the inspection. Together, they hurried for the nearby cargo elevator and took it down.

"That was way too easy," Trinity said.
"We got lucky. Besides" - Krueger leaned on his accent - "zis ist meine 'hood."
"I'm glad you're working for the good guys."
"The other guys," Krueger replied; Trinity shrugged.

The elevator reached its lowest point; they were now in the underground storage facility, and among the stacks of boxes stood a logistics management soldier (read: crate-handler), who gave Krueger and Trinity a cross look; after reading their shoulder insignias to make sure they weren't officers, he came at them with an angry expression on his face.

"Was soll die Scheisse? 'Las-ten-auf-zug', oder koennt ihr nicht lesen?"
"Tut mir leid, wir hatten es eilig," Krueger said and stepped out of the elevator; he started looking around the place while the logistics guy closed in.
"Das kannst du dem Leutnant erklaeren!"

Krueger spotted what he'd looked for; he took another few steps forward, cocked his head to the side and said "Broom closet."

Before the soldier could reply, Trinity had him in a sleeper hold; after a few seconds of struggling, he slumped down, unconscious.

"Now what?" Trinity said. "We don't have anything to tie him up with."
"We are in a supply depot...drag him into the closet, I'll go looking for some rope."

---

With the soldier securely bound, Krueger slipped the man's epaulettes onto his own uniform for an instant promotion; Trinity decided that she might as well ask.

"So what rank was that before?"
"Obergefreiter."
"And now you're pretending to be..."
"Hauptgefreiter."
"...is that better?"

Krueger looked at her for a second, sunk into brief thought, wanted to say something, then thought better of it. He considered his answer once more, raising his finger as if to lecture her, then rethought his position, stroked his chin and finally shrugged.

"It's got three bars," he said. Trinity gave him a look, but decided not to press the issue.

"Now, where did they bring the missiles?" Krueger asked, more rhetorically than anything; Trinity pointed to another door slightly behind the elevator. It read "Schwerlastaufzug".
"I do know some German," she said.

Krueger pointed to the padlock securing the door; in response, Trinity walked over to it, concentrated for a second and then ripped it clear off.

After a moment of hesitation, Krueger said "I'm glad you're working for the good guys."

---

Doctor Krueger's first reaction was to stand there with his mouth agape; by sheer coincidence, that was also his second and third reaction, and given the odds, it may very well have been his fourth, fifth and sixth, if Trinity hadn't yanked him out of the doorway and behind a few conveniently positioned crates.

"Nobody said they had aircraft elevators!" he whisper-screamed; Trinity rolled her eyes.
"They're the Hand of Glory, Doctor. They think big."

In this case, Krueger's inability to focus on anything but the first ludicrously big item he'd seen was an actual boon to his mental stability, for if he had looked past said elevator - currently in the slow process of lowering an entire heavy cargo flatbed truck with one of the missiles aboard -, he might have noticed that they were standing in what was, for all intents and purposes, a WW2 era submarine pen, only built into a mountain; the underwater exit was, well, completely underwater, making the installation invisible from prying eyes - except for the tunnel entrance outside. Without the time advantage of travelling via Dr. Algernon's fringewalk, they would never have had the opportunity to follow the missile-bearing trucks and locate the base.

Speaking of which...Trinity sat down to concentrate while Krueger got a few more looks at the ludicrousness of it all and took mental notes for his yet-to-be-devised plan. A minute later, the color faded from Krueger's vision; he turned around to see Algernon crouching behind him, wearing that strange trenchcoat of his over body armor and holsters. One more convert to the Simmons School of Fashion, Krueger noted with some resentment, then turned to the recently-conscious Trinity.

"There's something down there in the water, but I can't see it from here," Krueger said. "Uh...my idea would be to find a computer terminal, maybe I can do some damage from there..."

A gargantuan, ceiling-mounted crane moved towards the elevator; a baker's dozen of Hand operatives moved to a) undo the chains that held the missile to the truck and b) attach other, heavier chains for moving the missile with the crane. Algernon peeked out from behind cover and spotted a large underground vehicle storage, with three empty carrier trucks; the area was mostly unguarded, with an adjacent fuel depot - and the stairs leading up to the pen's control center.

"Let's get to it, then," Algernon said and reached beneath his coat, retrieving his 1911A1 and a Mark 1 Trench Knife. "I'll distract them."

---

There was, in fact, another set of intruders in the Hand of Glory base. As fate would have it, they were not interested in the Hand's activities in the least; indeed, with their rationality long gone, they simply hungered for revenge upon one man - the one man within 10 miles who could fight them.

Gray blades at the ready, they closed in on their target.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Just 'cause - Chapter 12 - Jesus Walks / No Man's Land

When Jesus said "No man cometh unto the father but by me", he presumably had a good reason to do so, but his departure from our world left things in a somewhat hovering position, insofar as that there was no physical Jesus to ask for forgiveness. Churches made do with depictions and statues, but this had kicked off a twisted sort of arms race to build the most magnificent tribute to the Lord and His Son. Over the centuries, this had produced uncountable stunningly beautiful works of art and architecture, but artistic value is hard to judge in some cases. The Brazilians, ever crafty people, had decided that their commemoration of 100 years of Independence would settle the debate - if not in objective, universally-agreed on beauty (though they certainly aimed for that), then in sheer physical size. It was hard to fault them for their dedication, and for a roaring 80 years, Christ the Redeemer had watched over Rio de Janeiro, all in a glorious, 30 meters high display of oneupmanship.

From where Rowena was standing, it looked much less impressive.

Rocinha had once been a favela, that is, a shanty town section of Rio. As far as such things went, it had improved greatly with the years, but despite the brick buildings and asphalt-covered streets, Rowena could feel the tension around her in every step. She was making ripples in this pond, though admittedly things could've been worse; her uncertain ethnic character and re-purposed fatigues helped her blend in somewhat, and those that did pay attention to her also saw her handgun. She'd always been able to walk with confidence, and it showed here - the biggest challenge in not becoming a victim was to look like a hunter among many. She wondered with syndicate was in control of this area; she'd have to play nice with them, if only for the duration of her stay.

She was being tailed, no doubt about it; the bairro's protectors were watching her from the rooftops and shadows. She tapped the USP on her hip absentmindedly, ready to translate her tic into a quickdraw at a moment's notice. The truce was uneasy, more of a mutual commitment to being nice until it was time not to be nice. There was a payphone on the corner ahead, and for a brief second she contemplated stealing some money and using it - then thought better of it. No secure line, not enough useful intel, no assurance that she wasn't the setup for a new trap - and, perhaps above all, she didn't want help. The sun stood high over the ocean, casting Rio into harsh, orange light. It looked like Rocinha was burning.

Then, a moment later, it was.

Rowena dodged behind a telephone pole just in time to miss the bullet with her name on it; the guards on the rooftop were now firing at everyone that looked like a threat, and the sounds of more gunfire from the North settled it: she'd walked straight into a turf war. Darting from pole to parked car to behind a brick wall, Rowena took in the situation: three gunmen, about 40 meters out, armed with shotguns and one AK. She had enough cover to turn this into a shooting match, but not the gear for it - with only 13 bullets in the gun (and one reload), she had to make every shot count.

A still fighter is a dead fighter. She could almost hear Mark say it in her head.

She dashed out into the open on the other side, vaulting over a bicycle and onto the main street, then rushed over to the other side and into an entryway; more fire poured down the road from the north, and she pressed herself against the door to have some meager amount of cover. A close shot blew out a whole cloud of brick dust right next to her face, and the only saving grace was that she wasn't looking that way when it happened; instead, her eyes focussed on the door's lock, and she blew it out with a trio of shots.

10.

Rushing inside the building, she put both hands on the gun and brought it up, quickly scanning the room for threats. Finding none, she slammed the door closed behind her, then grabbed a nearby cupboard and shoved it against the door to barricade the entrance. She could hear noise from above; with the door secured, she whipped around again and took off for the staircase. One of the guards came down, shotgun against his shoulder; Rowena double-tapped him once, dodged out of the way, then fired again when he tried to get up.

7.

She tried going for his shotgun, but the wall above her tore up as the Kalashnikov opened up on her from above; she crouched down as low as she could, letting the plaster and wood splinters rain over her. She heard him come down the stairs; her eyes were still closed against the particles in the air, but she stuck her gun-arm around the corner and fired twice, bringing the Kalashnikov gunner tumbling down in the same manner as his friend. However, Rowena's newly opened eyes saw that she'd only grazed him; he turned around and opened fire on her while she darted into the next corner, snapping off three more shots to force him behind cover.

2.

A whole rain of Jesus figures came down upon her as the gunman peppered the decorated wall above her; Rowena kicked off the wall in the corner and backflipped onto a table in the middle of the room, rolling off to the side to dodge the next burst. She came to a stop with her back against the entryway; too late, she realized that there was no more solid cover to dart for, and the downed gunman raised his AK with a grin.

Click.

"It's called reloading, asshole," Rowena said, then double-tapped him again. This time, her shots were true; the last of the trio was now hurrying downwards, but Rowena stayed cool. Without taking her eyes off the staircase, she dropped the magazine from her handgun, slipped in the spare and let the slide ride back forward, chambering a round.

The last of them was a woman, maybe 25; she wore a floral-patterned blouse and fatigue pants, with a small crucifix amulet dangling from a silver chain around her neck. She had an Ingram MAC-11, a tiny SMG fit for her tiny hands, but she didn't have much of a grasp of tactics - she'd walked right into Rowena's little ambush.

With a shuddering click, the USP's firing pin impacted the .40 S&W bullet's case, igniting the primer. The gun's chamber was flooded by the gasses - gunpowder undergoing oxidation - and pushed the bullet against the barrel's rifling until it dug in and began to spin. Still pressing against the bullet, the gas expanded yet further, finally forcing the projectile clear of the barrel. The gun's slide shuddered, then rolled back as the deflageration inside it dissipated; the mechanism unlocked and let the slide roll back, snapping open the ejection port and throwing the spent case across the room. In the air, the bullet clawed its own way through the mass of air in front of it; soon, it tasted something harder and wetter as it dug through the woman's skull.

Marie Cruz, it read from that red thing inside her skull; as it wandered, Marie Cruz felt, for the briefest moment, as if she was flying, then falling, ever faster and faster until she could no longer even feel the chilling wind whipping past her. She lost all control, then all feeling, existing for the briefest moment only as a mass of information and instructions that had nowhere to go. The bullet, however, had met her skull again, and forced its way out through the back, enjoying its brief freedom before coming to a rest inside the next wall. Inside Marie Cruz, things were not looking well; the impact had started a chain reaction, and like a tidal wave devouring all that crosses its path, the hydrostatic shockwave pinged through her head, disrupting most of her brain before liquefying it. Her heart still beat, for it was stubborn and strong, but there was nothing left to do or save; soon, everything in her body would grind to a stop.

It had taken half a second, and Marie Cruz dropped, as good as dead. Rowena lowered her gun, then went to search the trio of gunfighters. It was time to leave this place.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Wayward Son - Intro - Out to get me

The courtyard of Sendai Castle was dark and unwelcoming to Park Yun-Hee's eyes, trying to confuse her with some dark corners and the glare of white snow in others. Finally, her night-vision goggles settled into a somewhat comfortable pattern of amplification fluctuations. Still, she could see everything with relative clarity.

"Overwatch ready, you're green," she subvocalized, trusting her Archer standard cochlear implant to do the grunt work of figuring out what she wanted to say, then sending it on an encrypted frequency. Mark Simmons - sitting beside her - had yet to put in the hospital time to get an implant himself and relied on a headset/throat-mike combination to keep in touch with her.
"Catch you on the flip side," he said, then slipped down into the courtyard and began his search.

A minute of intense nothingness followed as Mark searched the castle's courtyard, and Yun-Hee found her thoughts wandering to Michael Simmons. For as his bravado and their unfamiliarity, she had a way of reading the discomfort right from Mark's face on the entire train ride. That had been the face of someone who'd taken everything life had thrown at him in stride only to snap at the latest prank. She briefly wondered how she'd react to getting an evil clone; for a second, she had to actively resist that word, evil, because -rationally - she knew that she was merely on one side of the conflict, and not anywhere near "Good"...but it was convenient to think of enemies as the bad people.

Her watch buzzed, belying its PsiTech origin - it had to give off an innocuous signal that wouldn't be confused with an ordinary "It's 6 AM, you've had enough sleep" alarm, and buzzing seemed like one of those things one could almost accept being built into a watch. Maybe something built for salarimen on the go, having to juggle an alarm clock function on their watch with sitting in meetings all day long. Surely, it'd be a popular feature for people who wanted to leave at the right time without giving that away, avoiding continued stares at the watch and a loud alarm. Rather nifty idea, that, one could think looking at the watch, and maybe make a quickly-forgotten note to watch out for that feature next time. This, however, was no ordinary silent alarm, and Yun-Hee knew that. She shouted "Abort!" and jumped off the wall, attempting to escape.

What the watch had warned her about was a laser painting her; her fast reaction was vindicated when the wall behind her disappeared into a brilliant explosion, courtesy of a laser-guided XM395 PGMM smart mortar round. (This was a piece of information Yun-Hee would have been unable to process, had she been aware of it - to her, that thing just went BOOM.)

The frozen ground outside was hard, but Yun-Hee had little choice in determining her landing zone; she just rolled with it, knowing that her ankle was sprained at the very least, and came to a stop rather unceremoniously when she hit a tree outside, cracking a few more ribs for a good cause.

Her eyes were stuck half-open until she could summon the strength to rip the busted goggles from her head. There was a firefight going on inside the courtyard now, but she was in no condition to help Mark; instead, she fished out her cell phone, unlocked the Archer-specific gadgetry and triggered "Panic Mode", setting the cell up to broadcast her position. It meant advertising herself to Tsong's loyal PAC agents, but she knew that Black Tiger had an extraction team nearby to cover them - now Mark only had to manage to fend off the local PAC and Shop forces. She wandered off, leaving the firefight behind her; she had to get away before they could sight her.

There was a whistle in the air; she was too hurt to react in time, then felt the cellphone being torn from her hand. She followed the trajectory - it was now neatly pinned to a tree by a Sai. The hairs in the back of Yun-Hee's neck stood up; she turned around slowly. A woman appeared from nothingness - a chameleon suit, Yun-Hee realised upon seeing her -, hefting another Sai in her left hand and a peculiar-looking pistol in her right one.

"Sorry about the phone," Dareka said, then raised the pistol and fired. Yun-Hee felt the dart hit her neck; her vision dimmed before she hit the ground, out cold.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Just 'cause - Chapter 11 - Escape

Rowena found herself standing in endless white, a room devoid of dimensions and texture like she had never seen. Everything in her head was blurry; she turned around to inspect her surroundings, but found nothing. On a hunch, she bowed down to touch the ground, but couldn't reach it - it was as if her feet were anchored in place, with her in the middle of an impossibly large, empty sphere of uniform whiteness.

Suddenly, there stood a silver surface before her, and she saw herself in the mirror-like surface; she appeared older, with hard lines tracing her cheekbones and jaw. Her dress was all one large shadow of blackness, and the longer she looked at herself, the more gaunt her face became, drained of life and spark to resemble nothing but a death's head. Shocked, her hands shot up, only for Rowena to feel the wetness on her skin; she looked down onto her hands to find them encased in smooth, black fabric, dripping blood. Her eyes shot back to the mirror; in it, she was holding two USPs and wore a smirk on her face.

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent," Mirror-Rowena said. "That's because competent people use it much earlier."
"I'm not like this," Rowena said.
"She's right, kid," came another voice, and the woman in the mirror was joined by Mark. Rowena couldn't help but notice how alike they looked. "Seems to me like we don't have much of a choice. Your Daddy's got plans, and he's making us dance. Kinda begs the question, doesn't it?"
"You'll say, 'what question?'. The question," Mirror-Rowena said, "has been on your mind for a long time."
"It's simple, really simple," Mirror-Mark added.

Rowena tried to look away, but she couldn't avert her eyes.

"What is Daddy hiding from us?" Mirror-Rowena asked.
"You see," Mirror-Mark said, "where I come from, havin' a Daddy means havin' a Mommy."

---

For a few seconds, Rowena wondered when Mark had started speaking German before she fully came to and realized several things:

a) that wasn't Mark,
b) her hands were cuffed behind her back,
c) that her current location was rather un-aircraft-like - in fact, it sounded and felt like the back of a truck tacking a dirt road, but Rowena didn't feel like opening her eyes and announcing her return to consciousness.

"Die Strasse wird wohl auch nicht kuerzer..."
"Hast wohl vergessen zu pissen?"
"Du kannst mich mal, Schmitt."
"Amuesier dich doch mit der Schlampe."

She realized that they were talking about having their way with her.

Rowena flinched a bit listening to that, but kept quiet. Judging from all the movies she'd seen, this should've been the point where her fragile female psyche shattered into a pile of shards, leaving her a sobbing, paralyzed mess - but instead, she only felt cold anger. She opened her eyes slowly, hoping to catch a glimpse of her guards; one man was sitting on a bench inside the cargo area of the truck, the other one was driving. Apparently, they didn't feel that she warranted a serious threat. It was time to prove them wrong.

She waited for the guards to resume talking, and just as she'd thought, the soldier's attention slipped away from her as he turned his head to face the driver's cabin up front. Rowena had to move fast; with well-practiced grace, she drew her legs in, slipped the cuffs under her feet and darted towards the rear without a sound. It took the guard a few seconds to realize something had happened.

"Halt an!" he shouted, and the truck stopped obediently; he hurried to the back of the truck and looked out, trying to spot Rowena; but all he saw was a flash before he was pulled up. Rowena was lying on top of the truck's softcover, using the cuffs to choke the guard. Without conscious thought, she sat up and whipped her legs around, then braced her feet against the structural beams below; she put her back into it, and her arms, and her legs.

Something snapped, and the guard was dead.

Rowena wasted no further time; she angled her fingers the way Mark had shown her and pulled, ignoring the pain as the cuffs stripped her skin, until she was free again. The driver made it to the back of the truck just in time to see the guard drop to the ground, the cuffs' chain still wrapped around his crushed windpipe; the driver pulled his sidearm and turned around, but that only served to rotate his face into Rowena's snap kick. He stumbled backwards, his weapon still ready; Rowena pushed forward, easily brushing his attempt at aiming the gun towards her off with her left arm. Her right arm showed a V as she went for the eyes, blinding the driver; without slowing down, she punched his nose with the flat palm of her left hand, then grabbed his shoulders and rammed her knee into his crotch. It was a testament to his toughness that the driver was still standing, though he was in no shape for a fight; Rowena took a step back, spun around and delivered a jaw-shattering roundhouse kick to his face. The driver finally fell back, landing on a splintered tree stump that turned his liver into mush.

Rowena grabbed the gun from his hands - she noted that it was a USP, albeit in .40 S&W. She checked the gun - the magazine was loaded, but she'd have to pilfer the guards for spare magazines. No sense in letting valuable equipment go to waste.

"Du...du kleine...Fotze..." came the voice from below; the driver's face was shattered beyond recognition, but there was something in him, a spark, that kept him going.

She raised the gun, racked the slide and clicked off the safety.

"The name's Rowena," she said, then pulled the trigger twice. The first shot blew out the guard's descending aorta, the second one rattled around in his brainpan until there was nothing resembling a functioning human brain inside. She hadn't pegged the guy as a smart man, but it seemed like he'd gotten the message.

"...asshole," she muttered, then began to strip the bodies for gear.

She had a long way to go before nightfall.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Just 'cause - Chapter 10

For the record, it must be said that Dr. Krueger's advice to Rowena wasn't wrong: he did have clothes in his container office, even a relatively large variety given the volume limitations. However, none of them were in Rowena's size.

The shirt was the easiest to work with; Rowena simply unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled the sleeves up, trusting her ballistic vest to take care of the rest of the problem. Legwear was more problematic; after some digging, she went with tan-colored three quarter pants (Beachwear, Herr Doktor? How unprofessional of you...) with a tight belt, then slipped into some wandering boots and laced them tightly. It appeared that Krueger, for all his size, didn't have similarly massive feet, so it was not as bad as wearing clown shoes, but Rowena didn't wish to take an extended walk in these. Finally, she slipped back into her vest and sorted through the hardware in Mark's gift pack.

She'd gotten to the Benelli M4 when she felt a distant shudder vibrating the floor beneath her, followed by a series of hollow-sounding thunks. Must be the refueling, she thought, then grabbed the shotgun - gah, not loaded, thanks a lot. At least there was a box of shells in the bag, so she calmly fed a few into the gun, then loaded the saddle on the left side of the stock and stuffed a few more into the pockets of her vest. The bag also yielded a SCAR-L and some flashbangs; she slipped the rifle's sling over her shoulder, clipped the flashbangs to her vest, then chambered a round in the shotgun and went back for the container's exit. The door creaked again on the way out; there was another buzz from her cochlear implant when she locked up the container again.

"Incoming Call..."

Rowena tapped the sweet spot; it was Mark, and she knew what he was saying before she had a chance to decypher his screaming.

"COVER!" was his shout that bounced through her skull, at a volume that tempted her to fall on her knees and cover her ears - despite knowing that it wouldn't help. Instead, she dove towards the crates in the back of the cargo bay, narrowly avoiding a 9mm projectile that would've slammed into her side without much warning. She felt the echo of the gunshot ring through the bay, the original sound lost under the screams of two annoyingly overbearing mentors directly fed into her nerve system. Shut up, daddy, she wanted to shout back at them, I can swim.

She landed in a roll, already behind the cover of the crates, then brought up her shotgun while her assailant chambered another round; she was faster and fired, feeding the guard a solid slug to the midsection. The man crumbled to the ground, dead on impact.

"Stop that!" Krueger's voice shouted. "If you miss, you might damage something!"

Voices from the upper deck. Great, more of them. Rowena propped the shotgun on a crate and sighted down the ghost ring.

"Then you'd better stop distracting me," she vocalized.

Another guard tried to climb down the ladder; Rowena plucked him with a well-aimed shot, blowing him off the ladder and onto the cargo bay's hard floor. To his credit, he wasn't dead on the spot, but he was now the proud once-owner of a liver, and the bleeding from his cracked skull was nothing to sneeze at, either. In response, someone stuck a Glock through the opening and fired blindly; Rowena ducked back behind the metal crate and took the opportunity to feed two shells from her vest, topping up her weapon once more. She knew that there was no way to climb the ladder fast enough; she'd have to get them down into the cargo bay on an even footing.

"Stop shooting, now!" Krueger's voice came.
"You tell them!" Rowena mouthed back.

With a sudden clack, the opening above the ladder snapped shut; seconds later, the ladder unsnapped from its cargo bay floor supports and folded up against the ceiling.

"Did you see that?" Rowena coughed.
"Actually, that was me," Krueger replied. "Now they'll know I'm in the system, but I had to stop this."
"Now how am I going to get to them?"
"You could use the main stairs."
"...the main stairs?"

Rowena turned her head and inspected the ceiling; sure enough, there was a large, different-looking patch of ceiling above her.

"Neat," she concluded.
"In a cargo aircraft, you can't have things reaching into the bay. Everything has to be removeable - or retractable."
"So, lower the stairs."
"Two things. First, you need to clear the crates. I'll tell you which ones."
"Gotcha."

Rowena got up, shouldered the shotgun and walked over to the crates. Under Krueger's directions, she flipped several strips of floor around to reveal rollers, then shuffled some of the crates to the side. It took a few minutes, but finally she'd done it and wiped some sweat from her forehead.

"Okay, what now?"
"Well, now you have to actually secure them at their new location."

Five more minutes.

"There," Rowena said, then made an elaborate pointing move towards the crates. "I'm a natural when it comes to cargo handling."
"You're a bit slow," Krueger replied, safe in the knowledge that Rowena could not, at the moment, physically hurt him.
"Can we get on with the program, then?"
"Well, that brings us to the second thing I need from you."
"What is it?"
"Do you have a plan?"
"...huh?"
"A plan."
"Kill them all, not get killed in return?"

---

"You'll have to do better than that," Krueger said, checking the cameras. "They're already forming a defense up there, one guy's working on kicking me out."
"Pete..." Mark sighed.
"I can't have her shoot up the crew deck, she could bring the whole plane down."
"She'll manage. Now lower the stairs."
"I won't..."

Click.

"Yes, you will," Mark said, USP lazily aimed in Krueger's direction. "Stairs. Now."
"...let the record show I was against this," Krueger replied, then tapped a few keys.

---

"Make 'em count, kid," Mark's voice came as the stairs lowered into the cargo bay. Rowena walked towards the metal stairs, shotgun pressed against her shoulder. The first guard rushed down the stairs, earning nothing but a massive slug to his left knee; the fall sealed the deal. Rowena circled around, shotgun still ready; two more upstairs, each soon decorated with a hole in their chests.

"Tango count," she whispered.
"3 left in the crew section," Mark replied. "One hacking, one guy with Glock coming your way, last one is unpacking..."

Then the link went dead.

"Connection lost," her cochlear implant said, in that tone of voice you'd program it to tell an agent that she was officially screwed. Rowena crept up the stairs; before she could clearly make out another opponent, she spotted his reflection in the shiny, mirrored ceiling. She had no time to think about the implications of the luxurious crew area, but she used it well; raising her gun above her head, she blindfired once, winging the guard and making him drop his Glock. Rowena climbed up as quickly as she could, then pressed her body against the doorframe to the next area. The guard tried to reach for his lost pistol; in response, Rowena aimed her shotgun at the weapon and shot it, leaving the Glock to bounce down the stairs.

"Don't," she said, giving her downed opponent a mean glare, then reloaded her shotgun. With a kick, she opened the dividing door, busting into the main work room - lots of consoles, one of them manned. "Freeze!" she shouted towards the hacker; the man raised his hands. After a few tense seconds, Krueger seemed to be back in the system; she gladly took his call.

"Everything under control here," she said.

This time, she didn't parse Mark's shout quickly enough; within a second she felt like she had a snakebite in her neck, and then came the fire, the pain, the darkness.

---

Mark watched in faint horror as Rowena crumbled to the floor, incapacitated by the Taser attack. The final guard went to secure Rowena while the hacker got back to work; after a few commands, Krueger was locked out again and all video feeds went dead.

"That went well," Krueger said; in response, Mark decocked and holstered the USP, then rubbed his temples.
"Okay, you win, you were right. And now?"
"She's not dead," Krueger said. "Also, since I figured something like this would happen -" if looks could kill, Mark thought as he glared, if looks could kill - "I activated the tracer subroutine in the Nav. They'll be so busy plugging the obvious holes that they won't have time to scrutinize the details. So we know where they're going."
"Keep me posted. I've got a phonecall to make."

Mark wandered off towards the hotel, finding Trinity and Done in a small professional chat with other mercenaries.

"You need to suit up, guys. We've got a situation."

To their credit, neither ex-Archer operative asked what that situation was; instead, the two got up, politely excused themselves and rushed off for their hotel room to get their proper gear ready. For his part, Mark wandered away from the building and snapped his satellite phone open again; with a few keystrokes, he was hooked into the secure communications network again, but this time he wasn't out to call Molly.

After a generous minute of ringing, the call was finally picked up.

"It's 4 bloody AM," came Lothario Algernon's voice from the other side. "And why are you calling the secure line?"
"Authenticate Paladin, bird of the day is Green Condor."
"...Green Condor confirmed. Passphrase Alpha-Echo..."
"...Oscar-November."
"Authenticated. Now, what's this about?"
"Mobilize Division Nihil."

There was a deep breath on the other side of the line.

"Understood," Algernon finally said. "Do you have a beacon ready?"
"I've got Trinity."
"Good enough. Be there in ten."

Mark clicked the satellite phone shut, then closed his eyes and smiled a weak, painful smile.

There was the clicking of safeties being disengaged behind him; Mark carefully turned around and saw that he wasn't the target of several assault rifles, but that didn't serve to improve his mood; instead, Dennis Gray stood behind him, with a weary smirk and holding a blob of PsiTech - probably a personal cloaking device.

"I always forget to change the batteries," Gray quipped.