The Agent looked out from behind his hyper reality visor, the hostile orange glow marking out his enemies in the distance, hiding behind their cover up above the final checkpoint. The scorpion tank needed to pass through.
His name was unimportant; however, his designation within Blacklight was Deadman. Right now, his situation could be summarized in one useful acronym: FUBAR.
It was supposed to be a simple job, HQ said. There were only regular Order militia guarding the Scorpion, they said.
He deactivated his hyper reality visor, a scanning technology which allowed agents to locate targets regardless of the, sure once more of the location the enemy had fallen back to. Nothing was that simple, though. The Order had not only their regular militia here, but they happened to have some of their very own agents doing their rounds nearby, and they popped in to give support.
Deadman continued to step through the now cleared area. It was truly unfortunate that a few of the Order had fallen behind, and he had been picked to play clean up.
Flashing his HRV again, he noted this time the blue location shapes indicating the position of of all his allies, who were standing beside the currently downed Scorpion Tank. Much to his joy, though, the tank quickly stood back up, and one of his fellow Agents climbed into it.
“Taking the driver’s seat,” he heard come over the speakers on the inside of his helmet as the tank began moving along once more. This is what he was here for, he thought, The regenerative tech on that thing was the same technology as on the armour of an Agent, scaled up like never before. That sort of tech could prove invaluable, and they could NOT afford the Order having this technology beyond a testing stage like this.
Pressing on, he saw the bridge the remaining enemies were barricaded on, as well as the blockaded checkpoint below. Directly below the walkway, the metal ridges of the barrier rose from the ground, stopping his squad quite effectively from escorting the tank to the objective.
Deadman took cover behind a large shipping container as the scorpion tank came out from behind a corner on the primary path, steadily approaching the barricade. It would surely come into sight of the barricade soon, and that would give them an opportunity to take it down, stalling his squadron even further. That would be unacceptable.
He looked around once more, searching for an alternate route before hitting the jackpot: a passage leading underground. Taking one more quick flash of the HRV, he confirmed the location of his enemies, as well as the path of the tunnel to the other side of the blockade, before taking off towards the corridor.
As he entered the corridor, he flashed his HRV again, as he was trained to do. Thankfully, the enemies didn’t seem to be moving. However, the HRV revealed something that he rather didn’t like: that being the distinctive weapon symbol of an anti-armour stinger rocket. He ran down the hallway like a bat outta hell, as delays were unacceptable under the Blacklight doctrine. Holding his light machine gun close to his body, he slowed slightly as he approached the end of the corridor to the other side, and said into his mic, “Force their hand, I’ll mop.”
“Confirmed,” a flat voice responded, “Swarm incoming.”
Deadman paused for a second, making sure to keep his head down, before starting to aim down the sights of his LMG, to prepare to clear the corner as soon as the opportunity arose. Not a second later, he heard the distinctive whir of the a swarm incoming. This is going to be good, he thought, a dark smile coming to his face under his helmet.Then, he heard the missile split as he had many times before, as well as the cacophony of explosions as the proximity to hostile targets triggered additional splits and explosions tore apart the cover of the unfortunate militia and enemy agents.
His legs carried him out from the passage before he swung around the corner to run up the stairs before holding down the trigger at the mass of stunned looking Order soldiers.
The heavy crack of the machine gun was music to his ears, as well as the impact of the bullets against the armour and flesh of his opponents. There must be no chance given for them no chance to recover, not after the rocket first impacted. Although the poor bastards did not stand a chance, a small smile graced his face. Truly, this was what life was about!
As he turned around to walk back down, his suit gave a warning as a bullet pinged against the back of his suit of heavy armour, dealing some superficial damage to the regenerative surface of his armour.
The Agent whipped around and ran towards the pile of mangled bodies, putting away his LMG and pulling out his breach hammer. When he said he was going to mop up, and he was going to do it.
Quickly, he spotted the hostile, one of the barely armoured militia with a peashooter of a pistol trying to down a fully armed and armoured Agent.
The man was propped up against the remainder of their cover, and there was a look of fear on his face, seeing his impending death stomp its way towards him. The militiaman began to fire as quickly as he could, dumping his magazine of low calibre bullets downrange into the mass of armour in front of him. The small rounds continued to prove ineffective against his armoured target.
As soon as Deadman was within striking range of the soldier, Deadman immediately lashed out with his free hand, gripping the pistol barrel before yanking it away from the milita. The soldier tried to
The look of fear upon the amateur’s face seemed to heighten as the gun was yanked away, and one of the man’s hands started to move, possibly going for an explosive or knife. Deadman did not allow this, of course.
He did something that the movies had drilled into him as a sign of power, even if it would be typically ill advised if he was fighting someone who actually had the weaponry to hurt him. Deadman grabbed the man by the neck and lifted him up from his previously sitting position to high in the air. For no benefit other than his own, he slowly and deliberately brought back the breach hammer before swinging it with as much force as he could into side of the man’s head.
His grin further spread at hearing two very familiar sounds. The first was the echo of the crack as the breach hammer’s captive bolt triggered, magnifying the force of the strike, and the second was the comforting noise of breaking bone and flesh beneath it. A small portion of the viscera sprayed on the visor of his helmet, the hammer, and his arm as the man’s skull practically exploded from the blow, leaving nothing of the head intact except for a brief section of the lower skull, where it attached to the neck.
He wiped the blood and bits of brain matter off of the front of his helmet as he chuckled lightly underneath his helmet, dropping the body and pulling the mechanism on his hammer to ready the bolt once more. It had been so long since he had the opportunity to close in and use the hammer that he almost forgot how much fun it was.
The Agent put his hammer away and withdrew a small red injector connected by a tube to his backpack and slid the needle into a small port on his left wrist. The cool medical gel made Deadman lightly shudder as it it flooded his veins, rapidly regenerating any damage he had taken both in that fight and earlier. His armour may be regenerative but he was not.
“Checkpoint cleared; proceed and load the scorpion on truck,” he heard the robotic voice of HQ say as another agent managed to slip below the bridge, and hack the panel that controlled the barrier. Looking out over the bridge he saw that they were just in time as the tank immediately began to proceed under the bridge.
Deadman took that brief respite to look through the carnage he had caused, before something caught his eye: Another LMG, and one with quick magazines no less! Might as well replenish his ammo without walking to a depot, he figured.
Walking over to it, he took out his machine gun and discarded his partial magazine, before checking the corpse that sat beside it for more ammunition. As he checked through the pockets of the corpse, to his joy, he discovered quite a bit of ammunition. Counting the mags he still had and the ones on the body, they totalled up to the full complement of five eighty round magazines.
Quickly picking up the ammunition, he fitted one of the full magazines into his gun, before walking back the way he came, and then down the stairs. As he got down the stairs, he turned left and left again before walking out, towards the main lane and where the scorpion was about to pass through. While he walked, he reached up to the side of his helmet to activate his hyper reality visor once more, bathing the world in the familiar and comforting blue. Although a few enemies could be hiding back in fortified positions with a HRV Blackout covering them, he did not see any spots of orange as he looked around. If they were hiding, they were inconsequential. His squad had just about completed their objective and those militia or agents who were hiding were not likely to be a threat considering that the truck was only a scant dozen meters away. Jogging up to the scorpion tank as it was approaching the objective, he heard a rather disconcerting sound: the sound of an incoming brimstone airstrike.
Looking up, he saw where the cluster bomb split: right over him and the tank.
Deadman looked back down and closed his eyes. Knowing what was coming, he was certain there was no chance that he would be able to get out of the way of the explosion. There was neither not enough time to get out of the way, he had not the speed. Well played, Order. Well played indeed.
Then everything went white.
The pounding of his head woke him from what felt like a deep slumber. Rolling onto his side, Deadman wondered silently what the hell happened to leave him in this state. The brimstone airstrike should have killed him, not just make him wish he was dead. Forcing his eyes open despite the pain, he immediately slammed them shut as he was blinded by an almost impossibly bright-seeming light that assaulted his retinas quite effectively.
He laid there for a few seconds before trying to open his eyes again, pushing past the pain which immediately attacked him. When his eyes adjusted, he immediately wished that he just stayed down for a while longer.
Going against all logic, before him was a long, white marble corridor. It was most definitely not anywhere near where he was before, or even anywhere he had seen in his life. To him, it looked more like it belonged in a Disney movie rather than in the real world for how much it looked like a stereotypical castle some the good guys would live in.
What transpired? How did he get here? The Agent forced himself up from the ground, wincing as the light seemed determined to drive its rays into his eyes in the way that aggravated his newly formed migraine the most. Despite his encroaching headache, he would stick to Blacklight procedures until HQ contacted him with orders.
"Objective: Eliminate hostile Agents,” he said to himself just as headquarters had said to him many times before.
Raising up his hand, he turned on his Hyper Reality Visor, trying to get a grip on his general area and find any hostile targets.
What he saw, however, was not what he suspected. Beyond the walls, he saw rooms of grandeur structures, and even more surprisingly, he saw small equinoid shapes going about the castle in a manner that was closer to human action than anything else.
Some had horns, some had wings, some had neither, and he saw a few sitting in a room together who had both.
What the hell did he get himself into?