The hit at the ‘Dangerzone’ nightclub in upper downtown hadn’t gone as planned, somehow Cray’s 3 little would be assassins had missed the window of opportunity and ended up going in the club after the target. Admittedly they had succeeded in the task but Cray was not at all happy with the 188 dead SLA employees, 40 dead SHIVERS and operatives and about a thousand dead civilians. They had literally leveled the building the club occupied with 10 kilograms of high explosive, expended 400 rounds of ammunition and about half a dozen grenades. Someone had shot Marr with a 12.7mm pistol and it had gotten him ‘upset’ is how Waylon described it.
It took awhile to get the full facts out of the trio, while they where picking slugs out of Marr and Gary, both had barely made it back. There had been 4 unarmoured bodyguards in charge of an 18 year old girl who was the daughter of a department head, not just any department head, but Jacob Vade’s daughter and he was in charge of the department of Investigation.
Over the next few days while the remainder of his section where convalescing Cray managed to get the full story about the hit out of Chicane who had reconnoitered the club a few times over the last month. Found out who was going there and told high command about it, they ordered the hit and where apparently quite enthused about the whole thing as being a display of Thresher power and force. So Cray couldn't really discipline his troops for what they had done, but he didn't agree on their methods and wouldn't allow it again. It was also going to attract more attention then anyone needed right now so his decision would be to lay low for awhile, the worst was confirmed when they received an intercept of the BPN that was issued to take them in.
Alive, for questioning and for a lot of money, lifetime sponsorship, perks and an SCL requirement of 4. Cray didn't know a lot about the SCL system but Chicane so succinctly let them know that it would mean that the operative squad that took it would be a hell of a lot more skilled, equipped, funded and would grind them into dirt. They where officially in ‘the big boys league’.
For the next two days the reality of the situation sank into the rest of the soldiers and they started appreciating their former, mostly care free lifestyle up until now. Cray was about to start heading them deep into the depths of Downtown and go to ground, far from the eyes of SLA, when he had a message on the Aleph with a file attachment.
Their little spy had found them a new LAD facility being constructed and now high command wanted it captured, looted and destroyed. Anything portable was to be taken, examined and stored until further notice. The building was due to go online in 3 days, it was also suggested that they strongly make this a priority above everything else. Which basically meant to Cray, "do it now or be left here to rot."
He’d heard vaguely about the SLA bringing back their dead soldiers a few years ago and wasnt sure if he believed about it. There was something inherently wrong about doing something like that, which made Cray feel uncomfortable about the whole idea. Like it wasnt enough to just make horrible biogenetic monsters and inflict them and other monstrosities upon the population, but they had to bring back the dead just to up the ante on all the other horrors. He didn't want to understand this society of Slayer’s creation, the more he knew the more he wished he didn't.
Preliminary reconnaissance of the site revealed that security wasnt all that heavy, that they could see yet but Cray thought it prudent to have a distraction elsewhere just to divert attention away from the LAD facility. So he got Gary and Waylon loaded up with the HERF gun and a grenade launcher loaded with white phosphorus grenades to go make some trouble 5 kilometres away. Using the HERF they started taking down TV and communications towers, bombarded with pulses of radio wave energy they started shutting down with their sensitive components fried. Then just for a bit more chaos a series of spot fires where started with the launcher, within 4 hours he had an area 20km in diameter that had no TV, no radio and parts of it where on fire. Devoid of their TV the SLA civilian population decided after awhile they where bored and didn't like SLA or each other very much.
Within 6 hours there was a riot the size of which no one had ever imagined.
Gary lined up the guard in the little pillbox at the front gates to the facility, from position 6 feet back inside the room he could see the entire compound in a window facing out in a nearby tenement building. Three squat little grey bunkers arranged in a triangle with a heliport in the middle and a 90 metre high, steel radio tower. Two of those biogenetic dog things wandered around in the place looking for the entire world like they owned it. Dangerous critters those but the man at the front gate would get the first bullet tonight as the green SHIVER APC rolled up to the boomgate. The servo’s in the Oneway armour purred quietly as he stood up in the room and raised the THAR sniper rifle, one thought and the gun cocked the firing pin back and switched the scope over to thermographic. Locked the target into the fire control system networked to the combat computer in Cray’s armour, panned over to the second target, the dog and locked that into the gun. The beast kept walking around not knowing it was a simply a red blip now in his HUD and locked in the second dog and brought the rifle back over to the first target smoking his cigarette.
The APC pulled up to the gate the man in the Crackshot armour stood up and the tone over the comms told him he had authorisation to fire, the man fell back into his chair as the 14mm low velocity round cut a clean hole through his chest with barely a thump or flash from the gun. Swinging the weapon around the compound he followed the red arrow until it lined up on the dog’s head, it fell over with one rear leg twitching spastically. The THAR cycled the third round in smooth as a breeze from its gauss assisted feed and the magnetic bolts held the steel casing while the breech closed, tone again and the third dog died much the same as the first. He cleared the targets out of the combat computer and the APC rumbled forward through the front gate crushing the boomgate under its wheels and moved in. Gary paused to collect the three empty shells at his feet and resumed his watch.
Cray had barely gotten the APC 30 metres inside when targets began illuminating on his HUD, the game was up but it was far from finished. Marr and Waylon hopped out the back with the Scythe and began bolting to cover which Cray illuminated on his map and relayed to them. Fluttering their jump packs so as to be as fast as possible the pair made it to the corner of a concrete mixer left there by the construction crew. Almost immediately they came under fire from a machinegun somewhere in front of them peppering the area with 12mm rounds and forcing them down. Marr could hear the sound of the APC engaging into reverse with a crunch of gears and the machinegun raking them stopped, the Sergeant heaved his own weapon up on the bricks and bags or mortar and swore as he saw the enemy.
313 stormers moving like lightening across the compound, taking in 6 or 7 metres in leaping bounds and firing their assault rifles and submachineguns, no one ever hit anything much on the run but it didn't really worry him. They would only be dangerous if they got in close, Waylon lifted the belt of ammunition and Marr began opening up at the incoming horde. There was still a good 40 metres to cover before they got close so he began raking it through them while Waylon kept linking the belts together from the hundreds of rounds draped over his chest. He knew Stormers where not the brightest of animals but it still surprised him that they kept advancing under the withering fire from the machinegun which blew holes clean through them and their black PP9 exo-armour.
By the time 20 of them lay on the ground the next wave came in from the 90 degrees to the right of him out of a second bunker. He was beginning to see the weapons barrel go from cherry red to yellow, he’d have to swap it out soon otherwise the nanohardened ceramic would melt the bolt to the breech.
Cray took over the job with the APC’s own reaper cannon and let loose on the second platoon. Even though its ammunition wasnt as powerful as the Scythe’s it still did the job, giving Marr time to eject his first barrel, take the second off Waylon and lock it in. "Hold em off for another eight seconds sir!" Marr finally broke radio silence and began twisting in the locking studs while the first barrel lay hissing and spitting in a puddle at his feet.
"The things on your left are getting back up sarge!" Gary saw the stormers had been lying ‘doggo’ to heal their wounds and began their second assault. The THAR read empty, ejected the empty magazine and was about to slap home a new one when movements on the AV stalk picked up something behind him.
With a sly grin under the faceplate he kept reloading his weapon as whoever it was trod on one of the mines he’d laid at the doorway under the dirty blue carpet. A SLA operative in his armour lay howling on the floor, his right foot was gone completely along with all the armour and flesh up to his knee leaving only a ragged shred of shin bone sticking out. For a moment Gary was perplexed at the disgusting injury, then wondered why someone would bother to paint their armour in urban camouflage and then spray the letters B – L – A across the forehead in the most lurid yellow imaginable. The ‘L’ was a good spot to aim so he double tapped the FLAY pistol into that and the screaming stopped. Time to move.
"Im up!" Marr crouched over the bags of cement and the roar of the Scythe let everyone know for miles around that he was back in business. Some of the stormers made it close enough this time to be burnt by the weapons 7 foot long muzzle blast but they still kept running and he kept shooting, ignoring the occasional 10mm round spraying sparks off his armour. He was glad Waylon was linking together the belts as quickly as he did keeping them in action, the boy was doing what a good soldier was supposed to. A far cry from the undisciplined youth they had first come here with when something heavy threw him on his back as the gun blasted tracers in to the sky above.
"The sarge is down sir! What do I do?"
"Pick up the gun and keep shooting them!" Marr yelled, his chest oddly numb and short of breath so he hit the auto-med to send the sprays of anti coagulants into his system around the area. For some reason he felt strangely calm and checked the suit status, it had been breached just above his collarbone and exited through his shoulderblade.
"The shooters high Gary."
"Where would it be?"
"Where would I be?"
He would have missed the suit of Silverback across the compound on the site’s radio tower, it was wearing some ECM coating on its surface that baffled the thermographic night sights. Except the fool made a fatal mistake of firing a second time at Cray in the APC’s turret with his MAL assault cannon, it was silenced but he hadn’t gotten around to putting the flash suppression on it yet apparently. Cray disappeared back in the hatch and buttoned up, that would only leave Waylon as the next viable target. Standing up and hosing down the remaining 6 mutilated stormers hobbling over to try and kill him.
Flicked the suits sensors over to tight beam radar and the SLA sniper lit up like a neon sign on his HUD, down below the sniper had something that let him know he was being pinged with radio frequency. Desperately the sniper began looking for who it was and then rolled off the steel beam and began fluttering down on his suits basic little jet pack system. That broke Gary’s firing solution for now but by the time he was nearly down the system locked onto him from the jetpacks hot gasses and it was all over for the sniper. A heavy DU slug blasted his chest open and he plummeted the remaining 30 metres to his death on the unresisting concrete.