A Dragon's Tale #Watty's2015

Going In Hot

“GO!”

Ator smashed his paw down onto the detonator and the door vanished in a cloud of splinters and smoke. Ator began spooling up his minigun and I transferred controls to my 48 as we ducked inside. Much to our surprise, we were not met with AKM barrels, but an empty, unfurnished room.

“Zero inside contact”, I called on the coms, “teams two and three advise!”

“Negative”, Vez said, “no enemy activity.”

“Unless that bat that just dive bombed me counted”, Trent said, “negative as well.”

I wasn't sure what to think. In 22 years of Class Two Marine service, I'd never had contact outside a building, moved in, and had none inside, not ever. I didn't like it, it was somewhat terrifying.

“Rolland”, I called, “can you and the snipers see anything on FILR? We have zero inside contact.”

“Negative”, Rolland said, “only heat sources for miles around are ours and that truck you sent to the highway in the sky.”

“This makes no sense”, Ator said shaking a little, “the guys out front died protecting an empty house?”

“Maybe not”, Hudson said walking in behind us, “Tyro, come see this.”

I followed Hudson from the kitchen that we were in into a big main room. In the middle of the room were two camping tables, covered in files. What stood out were pictures of a jet black dragon with a metal mask over his face and no wings. There was a huge red R on the picture and there were blueprints for a 105 millimeter rifle that was intended to be operated by a two person sniper team. There were also boxes of tapes and CD’s. A few of the tapes and CD's had recordings on them that were just a bunch of jumbled garbage, to damaged to even try to decode.

“Raven 2-2 to Talon 4-4”, I called, “Shadow, you guys got anything?”

“Nothing yet”, Shadow said, “perhaps intel was off?”

“Well then intel is about to change”, I replied, “this safehouse is a diamond mine.”

“Oh hold that thought brother”, Shadow said, “we've got a chemical beep on B3rd floor, call ya when we got the source, Talon out.”

“Raven copies your last”, I said, “out.”

“Tyro”, Hudson said, “the hell does this mean?”

Hudson played a tape with a red stripe on it. The recording was in Draconian, my native language and one that was nearly impossible for humans to learn. I didn't understand it because it was all jumbled letters and numbers.

“It's code”, Ator said, “it's a coded message, but it's in Draco.”

“I been around Project Draco long enough to know military dragons speak that stuff like shit”, Hudson said, “so who the hell'd be sending codes in Draco?”

“It wouldn't be between two military dragons then”, Ator said, “it would be between two EX military dragons who learned it like Roland, two HDR ones like the boss, or two natural ones like me and Val.”

“Major”, Vez said, “listen to this one.”

“22 HG, 32 HJG, H347, SFR, 33WLA,119NELO, SSW.”

“Stop!”, Ator said holding his paw out, “those last six seconds, replay them, slowly.”

“33WLA,119NELO, SSW.”

“That's a grid coordinate”, Ator said, “but I'm not sure for what.”

I replayed it in my head.