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Between the Hammer and Anvil [part one]: Faceless Fear
Posted By: Turpertrator<pneumatika@netzero.net>
Date: 3 August 2006, 4:31 pm
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Between the Hammer and Anvil
Part One: Faceless Fear
"You should hate the UNSC for what it has done to you all of these centuries. Our great nations of the East were forced into their cauldron of melted mediocrity, there with the scum of the 'verse and the defilers of children. Now that we have freed ourselves from their bloody clutches they laugh at our small failures and mock our great gains. And why? Because we have something they only pretend to have: unity.
"… The People of Asia would rather have a principled dictator than the immoral decadence of the godless United Nations. I offer freedom to live as you know you should, they offer a peace that comes only through compromise. To have their 'peace' you must put to death your values on the altar of appeasement and tolerance. No true man wants that kind of putrid liberty. I offer you life, the life you were meant to live. I give you a reason to believe in yourself and what we can do as One People. This is our destiny together."
- Emperor Viktor Turpolev, "The Emperor to the United Asian People" 22 June, 2541
In a classroom somewhere in Malacca, Earth
"Children, do you remember our lesson from yesterday about the UNSC?" A dozen six and seven year-olds nodded their heads, three raising their hands to be called upon.
The young woman who was their teacher pointed at one of the girls raising her hand. "Yes, Suja, tell us what the UNSC is and why our nation fights them."
A smile spread across the girl's face as she proudly began, "The UNSC are the mean people all over space who fight everybody. They take away everything nice from people they don't like and they do lots of really bad things. And my dada says they hate us."
The teacher pointed to the boy who raised his hand, "And why do we have to fight them?"
"Because they want to kill us all," said the little boy.
"But what do we have?" asked the teacher, raising her voice in expectancy.
"Emperor! Purity! Nation!" chanted the children.
Like the clouds that were darkening the sky, an ominous feeling had been growing in soldier Yee Tan all morning. No parka could keep the sentry warm as he paced his rounds in the cold afternoon, some unnamed fear gnawing at him like a waking nightmare. He had heard a rumor that one of the sentries had seen something in the trees during the night. Kapral Tan had brushed if off as the garrison commander had done. There were still a few animals that actually lived in this polar wasteland.
Now, his own thoughts betrayed his earlier confidence. Stories of terrorists attacking the Magadan Air Base were running in his platoon like fire in dry grass. Whoever it was had damaged or destroyed every craft in the base, and no one who had seen the attackers had lived to tell the tale. Could the Clowns have come across Asia?
A quarter kilometer away, deep inside the largest structure of the Butugychag Defense Installation, a lone and hidden figure waited in the shadows. After twenty minutes of patience, the right moment came. Turpertrator arose, pounced across the wide hall, and slammed his boot into the reinforced security door keeping him from his objective. Strong as the door was, the force of the blow crumpled its frame and threw it into the base command center. The door hit one hapless guard, killed instantly by the crush. Before all of the eyes in the cavernous room turned, Turpertrator entered: an armored monster, a summoner of death. Everywhere he turned his rifle belched flame, semi-automatic bursts finding their mark and killing his victims.
Outside the installation, the similarly armored Simjanes triggered the virus to blast high-pitched white noise through every speaker and siren in the sprawling facility. Then, his reign of terror began. As every human in the complex tried in vain to protect their ears from the 120dB blast of noise, three sentries dropped dead before he reloaded his sniper rifle.
Just like the Spartan predicted, the entire east barracks emptied out onto the adjoining parade ground. Six of the soldiers were dead before the remaining realized they were under fire. Just as he selected his next target, Simjanes saw something he did not expect: children.
Mission 3 of Operation ROCKSALT began as a simple operation to eliminate the commander of the base, decapitating the military presence in this important Uranium mining region of northeast Asia. The mission should have been a simple task for the super-soldier team of Turpertrator and Simjanes. It would have, before an unexpected event thousands of miles away.
Another tactical team known as "The Clowns" had been effectively demoralizing the entire western theatre of the Bishkek Rebellion - a confederacy already in control of the entire Asian continent. It was in desperation that the United Nations Space Command had turned to the Office of Naval Intelligence to do something, anything from inside the rebellion to prevent earth-wide civil war even as the alien races of the Covenant were obliterating humanity's stellar colonies. Only, the rebellion must not be allowed to prove that it was the UNSC that was sabotaging their little empire. Secretly commissioned by ONI to disrupt and weaken the military rebellion, the soldiers of the secret Spartan II program - later revealed to be none other than Lexicus and Chuckles - had known no defeat and overcame every obstacle with deadly prejudice. Their Black-Ops unit was such a success that another Spartan team had been sent to northeast Asia to complete the rebellion's downfall.
Operation ROCKSALT was already underway when two tiny villages in old Udmurtia were left untouched by the Clowns as they destroyed a full battalion in the valley between them. Every soldier in the battalion had been brutally dismembered - the horrible signature that said, "The Clowns were here." Even so, a startling discovery was made by terrified soldiers sent in to bury the dead. Two separate villagers had reported that an armored giant had passed them by while gruesomely killing soldiers all around.
Like a child with a new toy, the rebellion's military strategists thought they finally had some remedy to the Clown onslaught. Whoever these enemies were, the strategists concluded, they are not allowed to make unnecessary civilian casualties. The Clowns imposed such a severe and draining threat that within a week, every military facility and company-sized unit under dictator Turpolev's control had civilians stationed with them. Little did the strategists realize the conflict they would cause for these unstoppable soldiers: a battle in their minds they were not trained to fight. How could they ensure that they could keep themselves from being identified by survivors, as ONI had mandated, while also avoiding collateral civilian casualties? The UNSC's political masters believed that by sparing civilians and demoralizing the enemy's military that the entire populace would turn against the rebellion. Now ONI still wanted both.
The barrel was so hot it was starting to glow. Never stopping, never hesitating, Turpertrator reloaded with his third clip as he ran and leapt over a console. He landed into a technician, wrapping the uniformed specialist around another counter behind. Life escaped the body even as it fell limp and broken.
The war zone that was the command center was more like a massacre than a battle. Trained in war since childhood and armored in the most advanced battle suit ever created by man, one soldier had hewn down everyone in his path as if he were snapping twigs with a sledgehammer.
Only one guard remained between the hunter and his prey. The soldier thought himself hidden, and jumped up to ambush his adversary. He froze as he saw his own terrified reflection in the Spartan's visor. Already in a downward swing, the butt of Turpertrator's rifle crushed the soldier down and shattered every bone in his shoulder. As fast as lightning and as deafening as thunder, the weapon came down again for the killing blow. The storm cloud passed on, vengeance and death falling like a torrent of rain.
He felt others nearby, he felt their fear: enemies, around the corner. Perhaps it was a nervous intake of breath or a muffled cry heard through the piercing crackle of noise, but somehow he knew there was more than one waiting for him. Before dealing with these, he ran towards his primary target. The Polkovnik and commander of the base was standing, shock apparent on his face. He raised his pistol, trying to hit the blur of motion focused on his destruction. Without pause in his sprint, Turpertrator struck the dumbfounded officer with an uppercut so powerful that his jaw broke and was thrust into his brain. As the body fell, Turpertrator reached for a grenade.
A hologram leapt up from the commander's desk, and Turpertrator looked at the ghostly apparition with surprise. How did they get an AI? The image of an ancient Russian queen looked at him urgently, its synthetic voice and expression dripping with motherly concern. "Please, spare the children."
With a feeling that could only be described as dread, the Spartan silently crept to the corner and peered around.
"Sim," Turpertrator called for his cohort. "I have a situation."
All around were blood and smoke, and screams of agony from men left to die. Over twenty guards and command staff lay dead at the Spartan's feet, and a dozen children cowered on the floor near their little desks. The children were all crying and trying to block their ears from the terrible screech of noise. They had seen some of the slaughter that had taken place, and who could tell the scars those images would leave in their minds. But worse than that: they had seen enough to identify Turpertrator as a warrior of the UNSC, and with that knowledge came the price of death. "I have school kids here," he told the Spartan sniper.
Simjanes looked down on the base from his perch in the rugged hills. Before him lay the forested river valley and the new bridge and road which the base stood near as sentinel. The military base was in chaos, soldiers and civilians trampling the new-fallen snow in frustration, unaware of their peril. Others were wild with panic as doom clamped down on them like a vise. Yet, the defenses seemed better organized than he had anticipated. Not caring about what that would mean to children he saw through his scope and what Turpertrator was telling him about, he reminded his partner of their mission: "Plant that thing and get outta there." Even as he spoke into his COM, the field command display began chirping at him urgently.
"We have in-bounds, Turper," Simjanes declared. "You must have tripped an alarm on the way in. ETA: 2 minutes." No place now for denial: something had gone horribly wrong. The outlying sensor stations they had set up the previous night were tracking four airborne troop carriers and three more Pelicans likely armed with anti-tank rockets. Someone had been expecting ROCKSALT to call again, and now the reply was on its way.
They were waiting for me, Turpertrator thought to himself. Could this AI be a predictor? Had it guessed his next move? The command center had been on a high state of alert, but nothing his deadly skill could not overcome. He might never have answers, but he had a mission to accomplish.
He was already unpacking the bomb he had carried in on his back when he spoke to the grandmotherly teacher that was with the children. "Get the children out of here," he commanded. "Go to the village, now."
Ignoring the Spartan's sincere attempt to save her life, she bent over and grabbed the rifle of a fallen guard - and with that simple action transformed from non-combatant to armed enemy. Turpertrator's training took over. A short burst from his unslung assault rifle, and she collapsed in a bloody mess. Turpertrator just stood and stared at her dying body. Sometimes, he hated his job. All of the children were screaming. One wailed, "Babushka!" above the screeching flood of noise.
The shimmering hologram tsarina turned to him - but it had changed. Gone was the urgency and motherly protection, replaced now with a look of neutral analysis. It even put a finger to its temple as if in deep thought. "You will not escape. The Terrorism Task Force is coming for you."
It was then that the Spartan realized that the Colonel had been preparing his escape. All of the security on the most expensive item in the command room had been removed. The AI's crystal cartridge was ready to be withdrawn from the command console stack, except for the manual eject button. There was no way an "oracle" would have missed what he was about to do. As he pushed the button, the hologram protested only to fade out. Didn't see this coming, did you? The cartridge disengaged with a click, stowed away to answer questions later.
Simjanes now had more targets than he had time to neutralize or even suppress. He counted six squads of soldiers that were setting up chain-gun turrets at all of the exits to the command building. How did they know we would be coming? "You've got turrets at your Alpha and Bravo exits," he informed Turpertrator. Another two rounds fired from his rifle and he said, "Delta is cleaned off."
"But Gamma has a clear field on it," Turpertrator finished. From the security monitors in front of him he saw that the turret squad was already set up. From his position, Simjanes could not even lay down suppression fire on three of the gun squads, only observe their movements through his hacked-in security camera display. Turpertrator observed another 6-man heavy weapons squad entering the building he was in, cautiously working their way to the command room.
"They must've liked your rocket work at that airbase last week," Simjanes remarked. He respected the counter-measures he was seeing his enemy putting in place. This was going to be a worthy battle.
When ROCKSALT's ONI handler had added an objective to the original mission, just hours before it was to begin, Turpertrator had accepted with eagerness. Bombing the installation would take the rebellion months to recover their control in the sparsely populated area. But now that he had civilians to somehow protect, he struggled to begin the bomb's countdown.
Specifically commanded not to use nuclear weapons in any aspect of their missions, he had brought along a little present of C12 still capable of immolating half of the hardened base, surely killing all of the children in front of him. Several knelt over the teacher, shaking the old woman's shoulders as if their wailing cries could bring her back from the dead. The rest sat motionless, staring at the armored soldier, eyes burning with hate. I can't kill these kids, he thought. Already Turpertrator realized that even if he held their hands, he could not lead them far enough away from the base before the preset timer on the bomb ran out. He fired his assault rifle into the ceiling and screamed at the children to run. In terror, they fled for the entrance that they had been using for over a week.
"I'm changing the timer," he told Simjanes.
"Negative," the sniper replied. "They'll be on you before you're done."
With no other options he could think of, Turpertrator began the work anyway. He had to finish his mission, and his orders for this one were specific.
He finished the first of three steps only to catch some motion on one of the displays. The children were running, reaching out, and screaming for help from the soldiers whose uniform they knew and trusted. But these soldiers were no longer their protectors. The gun was activated, and the children were cut down like wheat before a scythe. The exit way churned with deadly projectiles until nothing else moved.
Turpertrator just stared with bitter shock.
"I guess you'll be coming out that way," oozed the cynical voice of Simjanes into his helmet. With only precious moments before the strike team arrived, Turpertrator rearmed his bomb in a rage barely under control.
Simjanes did care not whether he was to kill unarmed children, cut down an enemy soldier, or look into the eyes of a victim he was torturing slowly - if that was what it meant to get the job done. But he knew that Turpertrator hated civilian casualties. Now he was going to have to keep him alive long enough to get off this base before it blew sky high.
[ . . . to be continued]
__________
Turpertrator is the author of "Between the Hammer and Anvil"
Visit the archives of the Grand Rapids Frag Pile: http://bungie.net/fanclub/grfp/GroupHome.aspx for more exploits and articles by founders Lexicus, Chuckles, Hogg, Turpertrator, and others.
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