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Author: Rattler3
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“Bang, your dead,” I said quietly.
In front of me Dome sighed…
“Ah nuts… who woulda thought I’d be so easy.”
I decloaked and grinned. “Hey, come on… best 2 out of 3? I’m still figuring out this whole cloaking thing.”
He waved me off while he reached down and picked up the boomer I’d laid at his feet. This had been a test. Dome was to play the role of just a normal everyday sentry and I would try out cloaking. I had just finished basic training in it… but that was just read a manual and good luck once you’d reached my level. I was one of the rare highly trained low rank soldiers out there. I was a mere Seargent Major. Then again, I usually worked the jobs no one noticed. It sucked… but I enjoyed what I did.
“No way Rattler… I got some administrative shit to attend to.”
I nodded understandingly. Dome was the Commanding Officer of Death Hand, a special operations group that did the dirty work. I used to be the Training Officer of the group, but I quit… to much politics and frankly, I had no ability at them.
“Alright man, I guess I’ll go grab some chow… I like this cloaking and Combat Engineering stuff…” I gave a quick salute to Lt. Dome before turning and walking off the test area.
I headed down to the chow room and grabbed some unrecognizable soup… and it tasted like crap too. I sat down by myself and started to eat.
I’m called one of those ‘freaks’ who likes to work by himself. A ‘loner’. But I don’t really care what others think. Hey, I’ve proved time and time again that working with other people who are as trained as I am that I can work together. That’s what happens in Death Hand. Small groups of highly trained individuals working together. However, Death Hand couldn’t always be active. We were drawn from members of several platoons and squads, and only formed together for special missions.
I myself wasn’t assigned to a squad. Whenever they did try to assign me, I was just insubordinate enough to get myself kicked, but not actually cross the line. I didn’t do it on purpose… it’s just the incompetence of the general soldiery astounded me.
So instead I used my extensive knowledge in Engineering and Medical to defend the rear. There are lots of specialist groups out there who attacked generators and bases behind enemy lines. I responded to those attacks, dealt with the enemies and then fixed it. No one knew me personally… but they all knew someone was there. And on top of that… if there was no rear problems, I was a one man special ops teams, hitting generators, hacking bases, whatever to draw off forces.
Either way it wasn’t your normal cup of tea.
I finished up my meal before getting up and going for a jog. I had an old buddy, Rat, who I ran with. We were pretty much equals at running, though he had me at sprinting and I had him at long distance. And I also happened to be his same weight and height. 160 pounds, 6 foot 2’… The only difference was I didn’t turn traitor and go over to the NC…
I was 2/3 of the way through the 3rd kilometer when my beeper went off. I checked it. It was… I swore. Colonel ShadowScythe. Actually, I calmed myself a second later. The last 2 times I’d been called to talk to a Colonel, I’d been offered a promotion… which I soundly turned down. I was an NCO, through and through, and no way was I going to become a CO…
I finished up my 3rd kilometer and then hit the showers. The call hadn’t been labeled urgent… though I was due to head out with the rest of D2A in about an hour. After I finished showering I grabbed my formal uniform and headed up to Senior Command Wing.
“Seargent Major Jon Cosby reporting to Colonol ShadowScythe,” I said to the guard on duty. I stuck my hand in the IFF reader and I felt a prick as it grabbed blood physically. There was technology that they didn’t require it… but it could be foiled easier. My ID checked out and he cleared me through. I walked up to the Lance Corporal on duty and he directed me down a hall, room 213. It was about a 3 minute walk. I arrived and knocked.
“Come.” I opened the door, walked in, closed the door before snapping to attention.
He waved me off and motioned for me to sit down. I quietly sat down.
“Rattler… you don’t mind if I call you by your nickname?” he asked as he glanced away from his datapad for a moment to say it.
“no sir.”
He returned… I assumed studying facts from my last report.
“good… I was just reviewing your record… and I must say it’s a… different one.” I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. “On one hand your highly experienced and well trained, an asset. On the other hand, you’re a disruptive influence on any squad which isn’t up to your level. Case in point every single squad has requested your removal… we don’t know what to do with you. Standing orders dictate all members of D2A are to be assigned to a squad.” I shrugged. “Well, that won’t work… I’ve cleared you as to run as a loner for now... just be sure to run with Death Hand.”
I nodded.
“For now, your to rejoin a Death Hand squad for this push into Searhus. Your squad will be used to keep our flanks secure. Your meeting room is room 224. Dismissed.” I saluted, rose and left.
That was a huge waste of time… he could of sent a runner or comm message instead of wasting his time. Which meant there was an underlying meaning to this meeting. I must be dense… I ain’t reading it here. I hurried over to briefing room 224… where I walked in to find 5 other soldiers. I recognized none but 1… Dome himself, out to lead a Death Hand expedition.
“Rattler, at last you’re here. This is DrPhil,” I snapped a salute off to him which he casually returned. “We’re running with 3 newer soldiers. This is Valentine.”
I looked over to who he pointed at. It was a lady already in full armor… not usual in the sanc. She even had weapons, a Decimator and a… stolen Jackhammer. Not unheard of… just uncommon. I nodded my head, which she returned. Wonder how one gets the nickname valentine…
“This is Bumper.” He was a lithe man, and was tossing a set of keys up and dropping them… driver I guess. He seemed to buzz energy, and he smiled at me. I didn’t return it… but he didn’t seem bothered.
“Finally, we have Tyrant.” The man was a hulking beast… and had that look about him that he’d sooner kill you then meet you. I glanced at him, and the withering stare he gave me made me want to shoot him dead right there. Tyrant was an apt name.
“Alright… the general plan is that we’re going to take and hold a tower at the base we’re attacking. Just as we arrive at the tower in the vanguard of the force, a cloaker should of hacked the tower. We will then hold the tower while the rest of the armed forces go on the offensive. Bumper will drive the raider. Rattler will be taking a skeeter. When we get there, Tyrant will get a MAX suit to help defend.” That explained why he was on the squad. Death Hand did not take well to people like him. They were usually dis-honorably discharged within a week. This guy was probably a temporary soldier because of the desperate need for a MAX. Death Hand rarely has MAX’s.
“While those of us in the deliverer hold the tower, Rattler will work his combat engineering magic to weaken them before they even reach us. Once it becomes to hot to do so, he’ll retreat and help us hold the tower. Questions?” The briefing was a fairly brief one… but almost all Death Hand ones were. The simple fact was to get in it you went through a strict training program that drills everything into you. It makes for an efficient, if not sometimes dull group. Seeing as I did a large part of designing the training program… to be honest, 90% of it had originally been mine, with changes being made over the course of it, I never actually went through training. Training for Death Hand takes something from you… like a piece of your spirit. I wasn’t missing that… so I wasn’t quite so uptight as most in Death Hand were.
“None? We move in 20… I’ve uploaded WP 1 to your HUD’s… whenever you do bother to get your stuff. Meet there. Dismissed.” I hung around with Dome and DrPhil, as the others filed out. I took a seat, put my feet up on a table and leaned back.
“Well… an interesting group. Only one of them really fits the normal I’ve seen,” I said.
“Ya… Beamer and Tyrant are not actually part of Death Hand… Beamer is pretty energetic, and we just need Tyrant. Valentine just finished Death Hand Rearguard Training,” replied Dome.
“Ok… so, whats the actually target?”
“Dunno… somewhere on Searhus… not to many places. We’re thinking Sina is the likely target. That would give us a considerable boost.” We controlled the south and the west. The VS controlled the center and NC controlled north and west. The VS were well dug in, so a large part of the fighting was between us and the NC. It has been going on with little gain on either side for a month now. The TR were throwing in a whole Division… 3 regiments. D2A was composed of 2 regiments of varying units. The composition of units was generally set, but could change.
The largest is Brigade, which is made up of 2-5 divisions. These were incredibly rare. Searhus had a brigade of it on it… 2 divisions. A division is further broken down into regiments, featuring 2-4 of those. Beneath a regiment is a battalion. In a regiment there was 3-5 battalions.
Battalions consist of varying strength depending on what unit is being used. The base value is a medium tank. Battalions have 3 or 4 companies within them, the normal is 3, and in each of those companies is a dozen tanks, or whatever there equivalent is in infantry, air, artillery, whatever. And then those dozen tanks are usually even further subdivided into 3 groups of 4, called platoons, and within those platoons were squads. This system gave untold versatility, and kept things simple. D2A has 4 companies of armor, forming one battalion. They had a battalion of fighters, then a 3rd battalion of support vehicles. This ranged from Galaxy aircraft pilots (not squads) to AMS drivers to scouts.
2nd regiment was the infantry regiment. 2 battalions mechanized infantry, using deliverers, raiders, and sunderers. Then there 1 batallion of Galaxy dropping troopers. A 4th battalion was a mixed battalions. It involved a company of combat engineers, a company of security troops… they were left behind at the base we were attacking from to safeguard it, and then a company of sniper soldiers. The 5th battalion was composed of the loners… there was 2 companies of them, not quite an entire battalion but it was slowly being filled up.
This put a lot of firepower at D2A’s disposal. They were usually shifted to the hottest spots, which suited me fine. Joining us was a bunch of smaller outfits, ranging from company size to batallion size, equaling 4 batallions of men and units. This addition of firepower, with the 2 divions already on continent, would bring the total forces up to 8 regiments…rated to 33 battalions. Forces that size usually couldn’t be sustained on a single continent for long. The amount of supplies, sleeping quarters and vehicle requisition just can’t be maintained on a single continent. 25-28 batallions is about the size a force can be on a continent and not cause problems. Also, the shifting of such a large number of battalions to a single continent would leave the TR weak on another continent… Senior Command was taking a risk, but whatever. I just followed orders.
Either way, I took my leave of the 2 Death Hand officers and headed down to the armory. I wished I wasn’t in a mosquito… I preferred to use ReXo, the added protection and carrying space made it much easier to fight with. I grabbed an agile suit, carrying a cycler and a nano gun, along with a pair of ACE’s. I also carried the Med tool and Armor Repair gun. Some clips for my cycler rounded out my arnament. I used the teleporter to get to the North East Villa… where WP1 was. I then got a skeeter and landed at WP1. Everyone but dome and DrPhil was there, so I hopped out of my skeeter and we chatted it up for awhile. Pretty boring stuff, but I figured I should at least get to know them.
Right on time Dome and Phil showed up… I ran to my skeeter and lifted off, following the Raider. It took us about an hour of driving to get within striking distance of the target, Sina, as we had predicted. Dome went off the channel for a bit… I assume talking with the cloakers. I moved off to a higher Altitude. I was 100m behind them and a 150m above them, able to respond quickly but not exposed.
“Alright, we’re go. Stand by. Rattler, hot drop on the roof.” I double clicked my mic, and then accelerated. As I headed into the tower my radar lit up with a pair of enemy skeeters querying my IFF code. I ignored them. I’d be inside and out of danger before they could respond. A channel lit up as they tried to contact me, but I shut them down. They streaked in towards me.
“10 seconds,” I reported. Beneath me the Raider would be slamming on the brakes. As I crossed over the tower I ejected. This causes the canopy to deconstruct, then the seat pushes out with a set of light rockets. It lifts you away from it, then deconstructs itself. This would leave you in a tight spot… potentially fatal, but inertial dampeners slow your landing. Mine engaged uneventfully and I hit the ground just as the tower turned friendly. I laid a mine at each door at the top and then engaged my darklight implant. It was clear, so I headed down cautiously.
“2nd floor clear,” I heard over the radio. That would be the entrance floor. “Split.” Tyrant and Beamer were to go and secure the spawn room, where Tyrant would get a MAX suit. Meanwhile, the other 3 would proceed upwards. I went down the first stairwell uneventfully. I peaked around the corner to see the Control Console of the tower. There was a dead Terran Cloaker there… I flickered on my darklight… no one rehacking. With my cycler out, I slowly descended the steps. I hit the bottom.
“CC and above clear,” I said into my mic. I then proceeded down those steps. I heard a noise then. It was from around the corner. I cursed and backed away slowly. At close range there Jackhammer would tear me up. I hit the top of the stairs when I guess he got impatient of waiting for me. He sprung up, running.
“Contact,” I said as calmly as I could into the radio as I opened up on him. The bullets chewed into his armor, not quite piercing him, but he slowed down and I heard him grunt. He first return blast was at range… I only felt 3 pellets, and none of them pierced my armor. His second blast on the other hand… he was at close range, and I’m pretty sure they all hit. I staggered heavily but continued pouring ammo into him. Lucky for me he never got his last shot off as he dropped.
“Clear,” I then said. I took off his helmet and put one more in the head, just to be safe.
Beneath me I heard the roar of a Jackhammer, Minichaingun and then what sounded like an AMP.
“CONTACT!” came a very panicky ‘Val’ as we had opted to nickname her instead for ease.
“Clear,” said Dome… normally the person who said Contact would say if it was clear… she probably died. She probably panicked… Though why… she would have to be experienced. Didn’t matter. I pulled out my medical device and started pumping the liquid into me. I instantly felt better as flesh mended itself, my blood was replaced and some painkillers were dumped in. I then fixed myself. At last came up the group. Phil was in the lead followed by Dome. Behind them was a very pale Val.
“Out of nowhere…” First experience with a cloaker? It IS freaky. Out of thin air bullets appear and rip into you. I had a few nightmares about running into cloakers… though I usually came out on top. I had no enmity to cloakers. They were skilled users… in there own way. Not to mention I was now a cloaker.
“Cool it val… your fine,” said dome rather roughly. She didn’t look fine… I thought she’d throw up.
“Eh, we all went through that. You’ll be fine soon enough. Alright, time to do my job.” I ran downstairs, passing Tyrant and Beamer. Sure enough my radar was filling up with enemy contacts. I grabbed my cloaking setup with ACE’s and dropped mines, spitfires and motion sensors around as much as I could, returning to re-supply when needed.
As I dropped my last ACE after my 3rd run I noticed a slight glimmer to my right. I immediately dove to the right, drawing my knife, the only weapon I had, and slashing out. I heard a muffle scream and then a body appeared before me.
“Ah shit,” I said simply. I’d killed a friendly cloaker… though they would of killed me… that didn’t make it any better. And of course, those words were picked up my an enemy with audio amp, who came over and put a few gauss rounds in my back.
The worse part was he didn’t finish me off. My suit shorted out and I dropped down… They burned… but pain was something you got used to in the war… I shunted it aside, drawing my knife in close, figuring I’d take him with me. He came closer and kicked me in the back. I arched my back, involuntarily grunting from the blow as I tried to bring my knife into play… and discovered I couldn’t move… now that’s the worst thing that can happen. I couldn’t move anything! Good news was I lost all feeling beneath my head. I spit out a curse at him, rewarding me with another kick. I laughed. I think he realized what had happened cause he shot me in the head. Either way, I came back to in the respawning tube.
“Rattler, now that you’ve died, we need some ammo up here. The main battleforce is about a minute out, we just need to hold that long.” I grabbed as much ammo as I could carry and ran up the stairs, dealing with a pair of enemies with Gauss’s that I ran into. I came around the final turn to run up when I got shot in the back. I cursed my luck as my legs failed me and I dropped down. I managed to role onto my back and drew my cycler into line, stitching lines up the soldiers leg and into his stomach. He was just in agile, and the rounds penetrated. His return Jackhammer shot just made an even bigger mess of my torso… which is to say there wasn’t much left. I couldn’t breathe and slowly lost conciousness. To my relief, I came to this time where I had died, Dome looking over me. He dragged me up and helped me up the stairs. Reviving left a person rather groggy… the symptoms wore off within 10-20 seconds… but during that time your pretty useless. When I recovered I dumped out ammo. Tyrant, val and Phil were at the front, firing away at the NC, who had renewed there assault and were now coming up with a dozen infantry and a few MAX’s… no way we could hold. We woulnd’t need to however as Aircraft overflew and a galaxy dropped a squad of reinforcements on the top. I went over and helped to fix Tyrant some more as a D2A squad lead by Drnkn himself came down and cleared out the tower.
He remained at the top while he talked to dome.
“Nice work. Death Hand may… may have a future here… for now keep on guarding the Tower CC… but consider it light duty.”
Dome saluted as drnkn turned and walked down the stairs. Finished repairing, I went and lay in a corner, resting my back against the wall, Cycler in my lap.
“Well… that was fun. Let’s check the Kill register, shall we?” The technology that our helmets used was amazing. Using just our eyes we could draw up stats, maps, that would display over the helmet. I drew up my Kills sheet… All my kills, including CE, equaled 23 for 30 minutes work. Tyrant had the best with 43 kills… but he had a MAX. Our total kills was 213… for a squad of 6. As impressive number. Our deaths was about 70… but with revives what did those matter really. Either way it was time for some relaxation while we waited.
We spent 8 hours there, guarding that tower, while we pushed on Sina. At last we were relieved to go to a field base and grab some chow. We did so willingly and eagerly. We inhaled the food before we received orders to disband. We were to rejoin our regular squads, or in my case, run solo. I called up the section, ‘solo forces’. This was where commanders placed requests for a solo soldier to help out. There was only 1 up… find suitable AMS location. I ignored that. A dozen other soloists already had there name attached to it, they’d find a good one. Then a flashing alert came. Generator dropped at our staging base… Perfect. They reported 2 galaxies worth of troops. I signed my name to it and ran to the AMS, and requesting transfer to the tower nearest the base. My request went through seconds later and I reappeared in the tower. I grabbed armor and weapons and jogged out, back to what I do…
This is a work of fan fiction. Planetside & Auraxis are copyright 2003 by Sony Online Entertainment. All rights reserved.
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