To say the ride to the safehouse was tense was a vast understatement. Despite his hardened exterior, Raymond quickly confessed that his troops, a mix of 75th Regiment RRC Rangers and Delta Force, were seeing the Soulless for the very first time and were taking heavy losses.
“We’re overmatched here, agents,” the colonel grimly announced from the front seat of the armored, bulletproof black SUV that was so popular with covert operations. “SOF assets are generally used in direct action missions, not manning a defensive line. JSOC just doesn’t have the experience in managing a combat situation like this attack! After being briefed on the Descendants and their capabilities, I determined that only your full team would help us see success here. However, only two of you show up.”
Raymond twisted to look at Val and Marcus sitting in the back seat. “Please tell me that one of you is the stone elemental, Jay Bamfield, at least.” “Water,” Val said, holding up her hand.
“Fire here,” Marcus added, then frowned. “Look, Colonel Raymond. Both Agent Alvarez and myself have more than enough experience fighting hyper humans in various theaters across the globe. The two of us are all you’ll need to beat these guys!”
“Says the kid that looks barely old enough to shave!” Raymond replied with a grimace. “No disrespect, Agent Gray, but we need heavy firepower to handle this. We need Agent Bamfield.”
“No disrespect, Colonel, but since this is the first time you’ve actually faced Soulless in battle, how can you possibly know what you need?” Marcus countered tautly. Man, this jarhead was starting to get on his nerves!
The determined fire primal went on before the sputtering colonel could respond to his hard question.
“While I understand you’re JSOC and have seen some shit in your day, we’re the experts on hyper humans. Not JSOC. Just get our team to the safehouse to rearm and we’ll take care of this problem for you!”
Thankfully they had just about reached the safehouse by that point so the two primals didn’t have to sit and listen to Raymond’s teeth impotently grinding in frustration and anger for too long. As soon as the SUVs carrying them and the RedSky operators skidded to a stop in front of the nondescript safehouse, doors were being thrown open and the RedSky personnel quickly trooped into the building.
Once inside, the CIA officer that was there minding the house, quickly led them to the armory, having been advised beforehand of their arrival. Clothing was changed, plate vests and tactical helmets put on, and weapons selected. Then they stepped back outside to find Raymond and the SUVs gone, but two Blackhawks were sitting in the street in their place, their rotors already spun up in anticipation of a quick takeoff.
“Colonel says we’re your ride to the line, RedSky,” said the helmeted airman with a 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment badge on the chest of his plate vest and on the shoulder of his flight suit that was standing on the edge of the street and out of the rotor wash.
“If you’ll follow me, we’ll get you situated, then into the fight!”
“Lead the way, Staff Sergeant!” Marcus directed, with Val on his hip and the rest of the team right behind her.
A quick run through the rotor’s downwash and they were scrambling on board and strapping in, the team divided between the two helicopters. Then the Blackhawks were jumping into the air at full downward thrust to swing out over the city and make for the fires burning in the distance.
As expected from 160th SOAR pilots, the team wasn’t dropped off at the fringe of the battle. Instead, the experienced pilots took them deep into the heart of the fighting. With weapons fire and elemental energies splashing all around them, the 160th pilots eased them to the ground within twenty meters of a raging gunbattle.
“Good hunting, sir!” the staff sergeant that had led them on board, shouted over the sounds of explosions, gunfire, and the helicopter’s engines as they hopped out.
“Thanks. And thanks for the lift!” Marcus replied with a nod.
“Any time, sir.” Then the Blackhawks were lifting away to let their door gunners hammer away at nearby dug-in black tag positions with their M134D miniguns, as their pilots added LOS firing from the Blackhawks’ fixed M240 miniguns.
Having visually plotted a couple of attack jumps as they were coming in, Marcus gathered himself to immediately go on the offensive. The sooner they hit Null Faction assets in the mouth, the sooner this fight was going to be over!
“Going hot for a quick strike,” he said with a look over at Val.
“Copy, but circle back after your first run so we can go over what we’re going to do here,” Val said as she used hand signals to direct her operators into position.
“Copy that.” Then Marcus skip jumped towards the nearest cluster of Soulless that were conveniently standing close to several small fires.
Appearing in the heart of the first cluster, quick hands leached most of them out before they could react to his presence. Then, with the stolen energy, the fire primal blasted the remaining two back with devastating firestorms, bludgeoning the life out of the survivors.
Nodding in satisfaction, Marcus quickly repeated the lightning quick attack two more times before the fourth group, close enough to see him devastate their comrades, were more ready for him when he blinked into sight. The young fire primal had barely enough time to coalesce in the heart of the fourth knot of Soulless when he was being battered by stone hail propelled by gale force winds.
“You made a mistake attacking us, primal,” an earth Soulless snarled as Marcus desperately threw up an expanded air shield to deflect the slashing stone particles. Deflecting and superheating before redirecting them at the earth Soulless, who shouted in alarm before screaming as they tore into him. Then a battering ram of force was slamming into the beleaguered primal’s body and he found himself getting flipped over and driven into the ground before he could react.
“That … hurt!” Marcus managed to groan before a shadow moved over him.
Looking up the fire primal found yet another earth Soulless looming over him, fists sheathed in stone.
“And now you die, primal,” the Soulless grated in a voice that sounded like rocks rubbing together.
Before the rock sheathed fist could descend onto a stunned Marcus, the earth Soulless’s head snapped back. Then he was dropping bonelessly to the ground facing a wide eyed primal, his eyes vacant of life and a nine millimeter round hole in his forehead leaking blood and pulped brain tissue.
Marcus twitched then as the remaining Soulless in the team he had attacked, also started quickly dropping, twisting like macabre marionettes getting their strings cut before tumbling to the ground. Then he was the only person left alive, the last Soulless, a water shell, twitching before going still just as the first bead of blood and brains finished oozing down the earth Soulless’s forehead to drip onto the ground.
Then he was being pulled out of the shallow depression in the ground his body had made on impact by strong grips on his arms.
“You need to come with us, sir,” a hard, male voice said in his ear.
Looking around, Marcus found himself in the middle of a knot of US 75th Regiment Army Rangers. Besides the two that were holding him up, there was a full squad equipped with a mixture of FN SCAR, and HK G28 rifles with suppressors held at the ready as they checked the downed Soulless for usable intel and to make sure they were dead.
“This way, sir,” a grizzled staff sergeant stepped into his field of view to direct with a knife hand, his other holding his SCAR in a readiness harness against his chest. The ranger was in full combat kit and dappled camo battle dress, both dusty and stained from seeing heavy fighting throughout the day. His voice immediately identified him as the one who said he needed to go with them.
Turning to the direction the staff sergeant had indicated, Marcus saw two helos drop out of the swirling smoke: MH-60M Blackhawks, their side doors open to let their mounted M134 miniguns move freely to cover nearby space. Shields painted on the sides identified them as belonging to the 160th SOAR birds, also known as the Nightstalkers. As a unit dedicated to inserting and extracting America’s Spec Ops assets into hot battlefields all across the globe, it made perfect sense that not only were they there to drop them off into battle, but to extract them out of it as well.
Even as his eyes fell onto the regimental badges on the helos, fire balls began dropping all around Marcus and the knot of Rangers, the seething clusters of energy exploding on impact to send ripples of percussive force washing over the battlefield.
“Double time it, damn it!” the staff sergeant snarled as the staggered Rangers steadied themselves and pushed forward.
“Let me catch one of those,” Marcus began to mumble, his words slightly slurred. “I can turn it back on whoever …”
“No fucking way, sir,” the staff sergeant growled even as he waved the two Rangers holding on to the suddenly disoriented primal forward. “I was told to extract you from the battle and get you clear. Not let you play hot potato with artillery rounds.”
He paused to look at the fireballs still raining down all around them.
“Or whatever the hell these things are!” he muttered.
The Rangers with their primal charge in tow, managed to make it intact to the helos to stuff Marcus into one. Then, after the Ranger squad climbed in beside him, and into the other chopper, the two Nightstalker Blackhawks lifted off, their miniguns chattering as they sprayed the Soulless positions sending the fireballs at them.
That was the point that Marcus, now sporting a pounding, dizzying headache from the blow to the head that drove him into the ground, finally passed out, unable to hold the black of unconsciousness back any longer. As the darkness closed in, he could feel the hands trying to strap him in even as the helicopter bucked and shifted with the fireballs exploding all around them, the mini’s in the doorways firing almost continuously in an attempt to cut their way free. Then he was gone, floating in a sea of silent ebony, the outside world locked away on the other side of a vast, impenetrable wall.
After what seemed like an eternity spent floating in that sea of absolute black, Marcus’s eyes fluttered open. And found a bright light burning into them.
“Welcome back, Agent Gray,” a dry, dusty voice said in the way of greeting. The light then shifted to the side and Marcus could see it was a doctor’s penlight, held lightly in a gloved hand.
“We weren’t sure you were going to wake up any time soon,” the voice went on to note even as the light came up to check his other eye. “Dilation abnormal. Confirmation of brain trauma and concussion. Although, considering how easily similar blows have been crushing skulls all across the battlefield, tactical helmets notwithstanding, we’re somewhat puzzled as to how you managed to survive getting hit in the head with what has been described by battlefield observers as a living avalanche.”
“My head is harder than most,” Marcus said, his voice hoarse. He grimaced then lifted a hand to his still aching head. Thankfully the pounding headache had eased to a more manageable roar, versus the consciousness-consuming howl it was before he blacked out.
He blinked and the dry, dusty voice resolved into the lean figure of a doctor in an army officer’s uniform, caduceus on the lapel. African American, with his short cut hair touched with a hint of gray and his face crinkled with wrinkles, he was a man that looked like he had seen some shit in the world. Then he was refocusing on the man’s voice as the doctor, a white lab coat draped loosely over his uniform, stepped back and frowned.
“So we were briefed,” he said, his startling dark green eyes narrowed as he studied the grimacing primal. The doctor then folded his arms.
“Normally I’d be sending you back Stateside on a medical. But …”
“He’s too valuable an asset right where he is,” Raymond finished for the doctor, the Ranger colonel stepping into view. The lean SOC officer was now in full battle kit as well, a SCAR in a ready harness across his chest, and a tactical ballistic helmet under his arm.
As Marcus looked over at Raymond, the lean officer smiled wryly.
“Considering you just took out a full half of their hyper human assets, Agent Gray, I think I owe you an apology,” he said. “You and Agent Alvarez are indeed well-equipped to handle this enemy. However, I would caution on overextending again. Sergeant Channing was this close to pulling a corpse out of that firefight.” Marcus heaved a sigh and nodded.
“I let my momentum get the best of me, Colonel,” he said, slowly stretching his neck and grunting as the bones popped back into place. “A jump into a group that wasn’t within visual range of the last one I took out would’ve been significantly more useful.”
“Maybe,” Raymond conceded before looking over at the doctor. “I need to take him, Captain. You good with that?”
“Do I have a choice, Colonel?” the doctor quickly replied. To which Raymond shook his head. Sighing, the doctor then picked up a clipboard that had been sitting near by and made a notation on it before looking back at the grim SOC officer.
“He’s all yours, Colonel.” The doctor then looked at Marcus as the primal began to slide off the examination table. “Try to avoid another one of those blows to the head, Agent Gray. You may be more resilient than a normal human, but even your skull can only take so much.” Marcus nodded.
“Can’t make any promises, doc, but I’ll do my best,” he said. Then, with a final nod of thanks, he was following Raymond out of the makeshift field hospital and back into the surge and flare of the battlefield.
The fire primal hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps beyond the field hospital’s entrance when a familiar presence appeared beside him.
“Did you forget the part about circling back, mijo?” Val asked in a low, taut voice.
“No,” Marcus fired back, his face twisting with a hint of annoyance. Despite her age and seniority, she wasn’t the boss here. If he wanted to quick strike a bunch of …
Then his thoughts were interrupted by a light hand against the side of his face.
“Dios mio!” the water primal hissed in dismay. “Why didn’t you say you had a grade three concussion, Marcus??” The hand shifted slightly. “Micro fractures spider webbing all across your skull, non-brain soft tissue damage, and level four brain trauma … why did the humans let you walk out of that hospital on your own??”
“Well, I …” Marcus began before Val gave his face a push.
“Shut up. It was rhetorical.” Then the hand was back and the frowning fire primal felt a tingling rush reach out from it into the depths of his head.
For a long moment the tingle raced through his head, reaching every part with enough force that it almost made him dizzy. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. And, for the lack of a better term, he felt fucking fantastic!
“Holy shit!” Marcus breathed, eyes wide as he exulted in the sensation. “Did you …?” Only to be interrupted by another push to the face.
“Again, shut up!” Val tersely directed. “We got pulled out of position to help extract you after you overextended, Marcus.” The water primal looked straight ahead as their RedSky team fell into place all around them, her expression stormy.
“So, you are going to make sure we get that position back,” she continued without looking at him.
Marcus bit off the angry retort that nearly made it past his lips at Val’s taut words. If that last knot of Soulless hadn't seen him jump into the previous group and lay waste, they wouldn't have been waiting for him. And they wouldn't be having this conversation.
His expression then tightened. If they hadn’t … He needed to stop chewing that if right here and now. Because overthinking the ‘if’s’ was a sure way of driving yourself crazy. There was no point in rehashing the situation now. It happened. Time to move on.
“We’ll get our position back,” he said in a low, intense voice. “I just need a place to start.”
Then both Primals were falling silent as Raymond led them around the corner of a storage unit and onto a small airfield, where a trio of Nightstalker Blackhawks were just starting up their rotors. The SOC officer took a couple strides towards the helos before turning around and facing the RedSky team.
“We’ve established a fire support base overlooking the Centennial Bridge, which crosses the canal at Paraiso,” he tersely indicated in a voice that sounded a lot like he was giving a pre-battle briefing. His next few words confirmed it.
“The enemy is trying to take control of the bridge. We need you to stop them from doing so, without destroying the bridge, which is a major component of overland north-south logistics through Panama.”
A small tablet appeared in his hand and Raymond paused just long enough to glance at it.
“Recon has at least three to four company-strength enemy units deploying on the bridge’s southern perimeter,” he then continued, looking back up at the RedSky team to do so. “They are designated enhanced, with unknown capabilities, and are reinforced by hyper human assets.” The tablet disappeared.
“Instead of returning you to your original insertion point, SOUTHCOM and JSOC both want to deploy you to the southern perimeter to hinder this enemy battalion in its effort to take that end of the bridge. RedSky Command has been consulted on this plan of attack and has greenlit the operation.”
Raymond folded his hands into the small of his back as he went full command briefing mod.
“With a full half of their hyper human capabilities already degraded, thanks to Agent Gray’s initial strike, they’ll be forced to deploy their random mods against your team. You will continue to degrade their capabilities, interfere with their forward movement, and eliminate them when and where possible. They cannot be allowed to take the bridge and cross over to the city side of the canal.”
The SOC colonel paused there to quickly scan over the intent faces in front of him, including the two Descendants.
“You will be the initial on the battlefield, with elements of the 75th RRC as support. Any questions?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Marcus growled. “Why are we still standing here??”
The flight from the operating base to the fire support base was a short one. But it was more than enough to give the two Descendants a look over the changing battlefield.
Gone was the surge of black flags and Soulless against beleaguered SOC positions. The artillery the Americans had been using in a vain attempt to keep the Null Faction forces at bay had also fallen silent, leaving an almost eerie calm hanging over the battlefield.
Yet, in the midst of that calm, Marcus could feel a palpable sense of tension, like a bowstring pulled to the point of breaking. A tension created by the build up of Null Faction forces on the far side of the canal, visible from the helicopters as they moved to drop the RedSky team close to the bridge’s near entrance.
Leaning out the Blackhawk’s door beside the gunner, the youngest Descendant pulled his eyes from the massing black flags to the fire support base they were now dropping towards. It was a small yet tightly put together position, bristling with mortars and howitzers and crawling with artillery teams. Even as his eyes swept over them, he could see some of them wrestling around two of the tow-behind howitzers into place to cover the bridge’s far end.
Then the helos were hovering a couple feet from their wheels to the ground.
“This is your stop, RedSky,” the Nightstalker pilot indicated over their headsets. “Good hunting.”
Marcus tightened his expression with resolve as he flashed a thumbs up to the pilot then made to jump down. Only to have a hand on his shoulder stop him. Looking at the gloved hand, then up at its owner. Which happened to be his fellow Descendent.
Before he could ask her what she was on about, she silently handed him one of the tactical ballistic helmets her operators were wearing.
“The local Soulless now know what you look like,” Val explained as he took it from her. “And what you’re capable of. They’re not going to let you easily hit them again. So, change it up a little. Keep them guessing.”
“Copy that,” Marcus said with a nod and a rush of realization telling him that she was precisely right. If that last group he struggled with managed to get off a description of him, all the rest would have to do was look for a Descendant matching it and they’d have him. And be ready for any attack he might launch. Which also meant he needed to figure out a different way of hitting the remaining Soulless.
Something they wouldn’t be anticipating or prepared for.
Pulling the tactical ballistic helmet on, he then turned back to the door and smoothly jumped down the handful of feet to the ground. Where he was quickly joined by first Val, who was also wearing a tactical ballistic helmet, then the rest of her RedSky operators, each armed as well as the armory at the CIA safehouse could allow them to be and ready to rip some Null Faction scumbags into pieces.
As soon as the final operator had boots on the ground, the Nightstalker Blackhawks were pulling away to head back to the operating base they had dispatched from. Which left the RedSky team alone for the moment.
“Tanner, where’s that fire support base?” Val tautly asked as she gave her long gun, a MK17 FN SCAR a quick inspection before slamming in a fresh magazine.
“A klick to the north, by northwest of our position, ma’am,” one of the operators quickly replied. “Ten degrees up slope.”
“Do we make for the fire support base, ma’am?” That from Dunham, the operator that had flown the Hercules out of Nicaragua.
Val studied the intervening territory for a long moment. She then pulled out her binoculars and turned them on the bridge that was nearly directly west of their position and about a kilometer away.
There was a relatively long pause as she spent some time studying the structure. Then, as abruptly as she had pulled them free, Val was slamming her binoculars back into their case.
“No,” the water primal replied, looking first at Dunham then at the rest of her team. “Null Faction has seen the choppers come and go so they’re expecting a team to move to the fire support base where they’ll pick up a company or so of Rangers before sallying to the bridge to make their move.”
Val’s expression tightened with resolve.
“We’re not doing that. We’re going to ford the river and attack the Null Faction forces on their flank. With enough pressure, we can dislodge them from their end of the bridge, allowing the Rangers to advance across and secure a beachhead.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Marcus noted before looking down the slope at the broad expanse of the canal streaming by. At this time of day it would normally be filled with massive cargo ships, oil tankers, and cruise ships transiting from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or vice versa. Thanks to the Null Faction attack, however, it was devoid of traffic of any kind.
And its surface was completely exposed to attack from the enemy forces on the far bank.
“So, how are we going to get across?” The fire primal looked back at his fellow Descendant. “I don't see any boats we could use. And no container that I could skip across.” Val’s expression became thoughtful.
“A boat would be too exposed, anyway,” she noted, echoing Marcus’s earlier thought. “And having you skip us over like you did with the Hercules, while useful, isn't possible as you just pointed out.”
She paused there to look down at the canal herself, obviously considering the problem. Then, unexpectedly, snapped her fingers.
“So we go under the water!” Val brightly exclaimed with a smile. “Let's double time it down to the water. The less time we give Null Faction to prepare, the better off we’ll be!”
Thankfully the terrain between their insertion point and the slope was densely treed, giving them cover as they advanced to the slope that marked the bank itself. That bank, however, had only sparse cover to allow construction and maintenance equipment to move close in case of damage to the canal, or a ship running around and needing rescuing.
Which meant their descent was much more furtive and tactical, with frequent pauses to take advantage of what cover was available. And that translated into a fifteen minute trek turning into closer to an hour, all made with the heavy weight of anticipating weapons fire, or elemental attack from the Soulless.
So, by the time they reached the river, the team was already feeling fatigued. That fatigue, however, was pushed aside as Marcus and the team watched as Val descended to the reinforced water edge. There she knelt to hold a hand over the greenish water, which visibly stirred in response to her presence.
A handful of seconds were spent in studying that reaction. Then, with a twitch of her hand, a square space opened in front of the kneeling water primal.
“I’ve opened a corridor,” she reported, her voice thin with strain. “But I can't keep it open across that distance for long. We need to move. Now!”
“You heard the lady,” Marcus said with a growl. “Double time. Or learn how to breathe underwater!”
With Marcus in the lead, mostly to provide a pyro kinetic ball of light to lend illumination to their trek, the team entered Val’s corridor. Initial examination suggested it was formed by her abilities pulling the water out of the way to create the space. But closer study yielded she had somehow solidified the water itself to form not only a surface to walk on. But walls and ceiling to keep water out.
Ignoring the darkness of the air, and how Marcus’s light made the surfaces steam, the team quickly descended the forty meters or so to the bottom. Then it was a sprint across the two hundred meters of space that separated the banks close to the canal’s Pacific set of locks to reach the far end before Val ran out of energy and the corridor collapsed.
With the surface underfoot textured to give traction, the team quickly and easily climbed the far bank, Marcus in the lead and Val bringing up the rear, the water primal collapsing the corridor behind her to conserve energy. And then they were on dry ground, looking up at the Null Faction positions clustered around the bridge’s southern end.
“Well, that was fun!” one of the operators commented in a low voice as they all checked their weapons for water compromise.
“Kinda thinking skipping might’ve been better!” another added before the ex spec ops operator that took command of the team after the rescue in Nicaragua, growled:
“Cut the chatter,” he rumbled before looking at a clearly tired Val. “Do you need a moment, ma’am?”
Wincing as she pulled in lungfuls of the damp air, Val shook her head.
“The humidity will recharge me on the fly,” she explained as she did a quick stretch, already looking better. “How’s the approach?”
Several sets of binoculars were lifted into place, including Marcus’s. And he felt his expression tightened at what he saw.
While he could see they had remained undetected, thanks to their underwater transit, what he could also observe through the binoculars’ powerful lenses was enough to send a tingle of dismay rushing through him.
Like they had seen in Nicaragua, the black flags Null Faction had added to this attack were obviously military. That was evidenced by not only the well-thought out positioning of their dug-in positions, set up to repel any attacks coming across the bridge. But they had also organized their muster points, supply dumps, and marshaling areas like a standard forward operating base. And they moved in tight, squad-sized clusters from position to position as they moved equipment and vehicles into place for their own push across to the other side.
As for the remaining Soulless, they had grouped themselves into squads as well, patrolling the perimeter and providing support for the vanguard as it prepared to advance. They would make striking the black tag forces difficult, requiring a strike through them to reach the illegal mods. And a quick strike wouldn't be sufficient, with the Soulless teams basically doubled up. They needed full assaults to break through.
Abruptly Marcus's eyes narrowed as something occurred to him. Before he could say anything, though, the team's de facto commander was talking.
“Looks tough, ma’am,” the ex-SEAL tautly reported, his voice now tightly professional. “The perimeter is manned and patrolled by hyper humans and the black tags have built what amounts to a forward operating base, with layers of defense and variable fire power.” The ex officer paused slightly.
“I would recommend softening them up with artillery from the fire support base. Or an airstrike to degrade their capabilities.” Val’s expression tightened.
“And risk both the road and the bridge, Jenkins?” She shook her head. “We need to preserve as much as we can. Or Null Faction will achieve its goal in disrupting global traffic through the canal space by blocking the canal with bridge debris within view of the Pacific locks.”
Val let her gaze quickly swing over the rest of the team, all veteran spec ops operators.
“I need options, people. I need solutions. Other than calling in an airstrike!”
That was followed by a round of murmurs that mentioned various campaigns in unpleasant parts of the world, complete with overwhelming odds, implacable enemies, and impossible situations. And something about not having the time to plan an operation against a fluid objective instead of a static target.
Marcus’s expression tightened. In other words, they were as confused by the situation as Raymond’s JSOC operators. For good reason: this was a regular forced issue, not a special operations issue.
Unless … they somehow could make it a spec ops situation. And he had an idea about that … “We need to punch a hole in the Soulless perimeter then slip in a demolition team to take out those dug-in machine gun nests,” the fire primal began, his elemental energy-enhanced brain spinning up to full speed.
“A second team to hit those transports and a final team to hit the supply dumps.”
“In broad daylight?” Jenkins countered with a frown. Marcus jerked a nod. But it was Val that spoke next.
“All we need is a distraction,” she said firmly before looking at Marcus. “Have something in mind, young matchstick?”
****