FSE

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Surrounded, under siege, trapped. But only in appearance...

Chapter 32: Glacial - Who Dares Wins

The Predator wheezed as he quickly ducked behind the cover of the edge of the small trench as bullets ploughed the earth all around in a furious burst that threw up clouds of dirt. The whole world seemed to be trying to kill him, and his ears were filled with nothing more than the growl of machine guns, screams and with the loud rumble of explosions.

"Man down! Man down!" Someone shouted somewhere to the left, but he wasn't in the state to be of any help as enemy fire pinned him down ferociously...

"Get a MULE over there! There's an injured to send back!"

Other screaming followed, but it was lost in a new barrage of rumblings as a nearby Skyshield gun automatically engaged a barrage of mortar rounds before they could strike... And the Predator closed his eyes with silent, grateful thanks for the presence of those protective guns. In the last three days, the enemy had thrown mostly anything against them: literally thousands of Tiran tanks, continuous aerial assaults, UCWs and infantry coming ahead every few minutes to try and break their line of defense, and 24 hours a day of bombardments with artillery and mortars and even a few Short Range, Theater Ballistic Missiles, that had been used to try and destroy the runways of the airbase of Sangin, their only way to get reinforces and supplies as they defended that small "island" in the middle of the enemy territory. The combination of Skyshield guns and SMARTFIRE missile launchers hidden all around Sangin had made possible to hold the position, since missiles, planes and artillery shells were intercepted in midair, well before they could strike... But the continuous assaults were surely taking a tool out of the soldiers of the First Predators Division, the "Big Black One". The worst things, of course, were the waves of demons that tormented them at every hour of the day and of the night... Against those black, always-fighting-no-matter-how-badly-do-you-hurt-me most weapons of their feared arsenal were useless. In fact, you needed to shatter or better still chop neatly off their heads to have the demons falling down to never again stand up... And for that work, the best solution was still the old, ancient Type 0 ordnance broadsword.

The Predator pushed his rifle up, above his head, aiming the weapon over the edge of the trench and looking carefully on the screen-visor of his helmet, where just in front of his eye were projected the images from the digital camera mounted in the aiming sight. He moved the rifle swiftly to frame an advancing enemy soldier in the sight... and just as he started to pull on the trigger, the images faded into static, making him snarl furiously.

"It's gone crazy again!" He shouted raggedly to no one in particular, and someone howled in the same disappointment from the nearby trenches as he kicked into the ground hastily to turn laying on his belly, aiming out of his shelter at the old way and firing a quick burst into two RA riflemen that had by now reached the shore, killing both as small clouds of white smoke exploded out of the hit zones in the two bodies, which were knocked backwards against the steep embankment. Several other RA men all around immediately shouted raggedly in Farsi, orders being shared between a chorus of curses as they fired furiously towards the trenches on the other side of the river...

And the Predator was once more forced to lower his head under cover, wincing as a Tiran tank fired a cannonade merely one meter away from the trench, missing him for a puff as a huge cloud of dust and dirt was thrown up into the air, earth and rocks falling over him as he made a disgusted face and quickly rose the rifle to his shoulder again, aiming it skywards to fire a couple of grenades in a tall mortar-like parabola. There are so many enemies coming on the shore, that someone will be hit for sure, even if I don't aim...

And immediately after, he was relieved to hear the deep, loud rumble of heavy machine guns in the distance, behind his trench, knowing that the Heavy Weapons Platoon was in position and looking upwards with joy to see the streaks of yellow left by the tracer rounds as bursts of 20 mm rounds whizzed in the air above the positions of the Predators to tear into the ranks of the enemy past the river.

The Heavy Weapons Platoon was the support unit of each company of Predators, and it was usual tactic that it took the best possible firing position about one mile behind the first line, possibly taking possession of a hill to have a perfect aiming range for the heavy weapons they used. A Platoon was normally composed by ten WMKRV jeeps, five of which were normally armed with three heavy machine guns or Field Fire Support weapons or Grenade Machine Launchers, and a Javelin missile system. The other five retained a single machine gun because the rear of the huge all-terrain vehicle was occupied by a BLAM mortar system. The Platoon also comprised ten Snipers armed with the huge X13 rifle, a monstrous anti-tank recoilless cannon more than a true rifle, capable to pierce across an armoured vehicle at nearly 3 miles of distance and absolutely devastating against soldiers: it was capable to hit and literally shatter the body of a soldier with a full bullet-proof combat vest even if he was hiding behind a wall. They were capable to generate a tremendous, precise and powerful suppressive fire, allowing the Predators to fight back any sort of threat.

The Predator immediately stood again, quickly moving his rifle from side to side to aim for a target, but thick curtains of smoke were being raised by the RA to cover their moves as they tried to overcome the river, the metallic noises of tracks and the growl of the tank's engines growing deafening as shouts in Farsi came from behind the thick clouds...

And he looked all around to try and spot a target, but he only caught sight of his comrades, ready to face the new assault in their own trenches. To the right, a few hundred meters away, was the bridge they had captured the first night, the one bridge that supported the 43° Road moving out of Sangin... the structure was damaged severely by three days of struggle and fighting, but both sides wanted it intact, and it still was there... Even if currently the lanes were completely occupied by burning wrecks of a few Tiran tanks that had tried to break their way to the other side of the river and had been stopped by the Javelin missiles of the Predators.

The Assaulters using the powerful portable missile launchers were lined up in a couple of long trenches a few hundred meters inside the defense perimeter, well behind the position that the soldier was occupying. The men using the Javelins were crouched in the characteristic launch position, missile system at the ready as they used the thermal sight to acquire tank after tank... And of course, to acquire the helicopters and aircrafts that came bombing their positions at least once every hour from three days, with rising violence and frequency as the forces of the RA in all Glacial moved towards Sangin to break into the town and destroy once and for all the rebels, the Predators and the feared Wyvern himself.

"Bridgelayers!"

"Aim the Javelins over there!"

Shouts. Orders. Then the chaos as he saw the long, 100 meters foldable bridges of steel being unfolded and deployed over the waters of the river by the flat, turret-less Tiran Bridgelayers of the enemy sappers.

Behind him, came immediately multiple hisses as the Javelins were immediately launched, and he could see the missiles flying above him and the other trenches before they exploded in midair over the enemy vehicles, firing in the vulnerable top of the tanks a deadly projectile of burning, melted steel that flied at several times the speed of sound.

Several of the bridges fell into the water as the launcher-vehicles were destroyed, but many more were locked in position between the two shores, and the soldier immediately fired at the shadows that he started spotting as enemies ran over the bridges in the smoke, gunfire growing deafening as the first tanks emerged on their side of the river and moved up the embankment...

"Where the fuck is the air force...?"

An explosion nearby covered the shouts that answered the question, but the Predator had other things to think about as he ejected the empty magazine and slammed a new one in place, a huge Tiran tank climbing up the muddy shore and drawing nearer and nearer as the machine guns of the terrible death machine ploughed the ground all around the soldier, who tried to make himself as small as possible in his little hole, screaming in despair as he was pinned down under such heavy fire, a grenade launched by an enemy exploding just out of the trench... And it was just a matter of time before another could come near enough to throw one in the hole with precision.

And it was that the one moment when the Tiran exploded, hit by a well-aimed shoulder-launched rocket... and it was a particularly lucky and good shot because it had apparently hit a fuel tank, since flames exploded out of the wrecked vehicle, rising tens of meters into the sky with an angry roar... And the Predator blinked as Laura jumped inside the trench, throwing towards the enemies advancing the empty, still smoking single-use rocket-launcher she had just fired.

"Alright, boy?" She asked, sneaking a glance to the wheezing soldier, who nodded and quickly turned to fire out of the trench again as the muscular, beautiful female aimed her huge machine gun and fired a long burst into an Assault Boat that the enemy had put in the waters and that was quickly sailing towards their shore, loaded with firing riflemen.

The enormous bullets of her weapon nearly broke the steel-hulled boat in two as her fire maimed the people inside, but a moment later she snarled as a Harpy anti-tank chopper emerged from the distance, from over the hills, and roared towards their positions. Luckily, a missile coming from one of the SMARTFIRE pallet-launchers hidden in the area all around Sangin immediately come from their side of the sky, and it implacably slammed into the massive helicopter, making it explode in a ball of dirty flames.

Three more Harpy followed, anyway, and this time the SMARTFIRE evidently did not work: Vera had been interfering with their systems in and out for all the last three days, disabling now this and now that capability of the Joint Warrior System. She had many times blackened out their communications, obscured the visors, and often blinded their radars or just jammed the missile launchers, making everything more complicated... And considerably frustrating Siegfried, who was busy in a double battle: whenever he wasn't battling back the forces of the RA, he would grasp his rugged portable and concentrate his mind on the billions of lines of programming code that made up the JWS to try and eradicated Vera from the system.

But even as he kicked her out from a sector, Vera would easily make fun of him by piercing inside another section of the system, using her powers to reprogram the Net from inside... And admittedly, Siegfried had shivers of terror at the thought of what Vera was truly capable to do: she could have easily reprogrammed the whole Net to have weapons like the SMARTFIRE firing against the Predators themselves. She could have made the Skyshield guns crazy and fired them against their own owners... She could have made aircrafts like the Typhoon crash just by taking control of their ultra-sophisticate Fly-By-Light control system, literally stealing the plane from the pilots on board... There seemed to be no limit at all at her capabilities, and the work of Siegfried and thousands of REMFs back in Kesteven seemed to mostly just slow her down a bit: no matter what kind of passwords, security systems and protections were in place to made of the Joint Warriors System an unassailable computer system, she could always break past. Luckily, she was evidently keeping faith to her word: she only disturbed part of the Net every now and then, and never too viciously. Even when she had taken the control of a whole section of four Typhoon fighters, she had just driven them away from Sangin and forced them on the route back for their base... When she could have easily used the planes to bomb the Predators themselves, or maneuvered the fighters to smash one into the other, or who knew what else.

The three Harpy came forwards unharmed this time, no missiles coming... But somewhere behind them, the relieving, rhythmic rumble of the classic ten-round bursts of a Skyshield gun came up, and the first two missiles fired by the Harpy exploded in midair with no harm for the troops battling below... But immediately after, as the automated gun engaged a new barrage of artillery shells incoming from the RA artillery in the distance, a Harpy fired a rocket towards the turret, and Vera stared in horror as this smashed into the Skyshield battery and exploded, destroying the gun to a wreck on flames.

"There it goes our protection from the enemy artillery..." She muttered angrily, before she fired another long burst, the belt of huge, long bullets of her machine gun disappearing inside the weapon rapidly, unfazed by the howitzer and mortar's shells that immediately slammed with fury in the ground all around their positions as there was no more protection, explosions shaking the ground tremendously as shrieks of injured men rose high and frightening...

And she crouched to snap another long belt of ammo from around her shoulder, snapping open the castle of her massive gun to push the rounds in position as the Predator at her side fired with his rifle.

"You stay here, boy." She commanded, jumping out of the trench and running to another position to the left that was nearly succumbing to the advancing enemy tanks. "Keep them on the other side of the fucking river!"

The assault of the RA slowed and then nearly stopped as the troops verified with certainty that finally their artillery was hitting strong, and the soldiers and Tiran tanks waited on their side of the river, letting the Harpy choppers and artillery hammer furiously on the positions of the Predators and rebels in preparation for the new thrust.

The Predator curled up in his trench, gritting his fangs almost painfully as he forced his body to stop trembling, sneaking horrified gazes all around himself to see enormous explosions plough the ground and the embankment, digging huge craters into the earth as the gigantic trees all around were snapped in two and shattered to slivers like they were toothpicks as thousands of enemy pieces of artillery rumbled in the distance outside town, unloading over Sangin a volume of fire that could not be stopped entirely by the Skyshield guns... Especially not in that sector, where now there was none of the "magic" guns.

The ground shook with such tremendous force that the soldier couldn't have stood neither wanting to, as his whole body was shook like a leaf by the tremendous force of the explosions all around, and wracked by the rising terror. Every moment could be the last, and every second seemed to last one whole year as he hoped for the fencing fire to stop... As he started to understand the meaning and the seriousness of "Artillery Shock"... that fear that made ex-soldiers hide in terror under the table and tremble whenever they heard a sound that reminded them how terrible such a bombardment was... The feeling of incoming death. The impotence against cannons firing from so many miles away... The chorus of agonizing screams from your wounded friends in the trench nearby. He had been trained to withstand this all.

He was one of the very best soldiers in the world. But yet, his nerves had a limit, a breaking point... and it was coming nearer and nearer.

He sneaked a gaze upwards to see a Harpy chopper explode in midair, hit by a Javelin missile, and he found himself screaming deliriously in revenge as he saw the burning wreck fall into the river... and then he caught sight of a MULE truck-drone advancing on its rubber tracks towards a trench to the right, and several Predators and rebels courageously ran out of the position, bringing on their shoulders the wounded comrades and putting them gently down over the flatbed on top of the robotic, tracked truck as other men quickly unloaded the drone of the crates of ammo and missiles it carried...

And he stared at this, admiring the courage of those men which worked frenetically even as Hell itself seemed to erupt all around with explosion after explosion... And he looked after the MULE as it turned and quickly rolled towards the town, bringing its load of injured soldiers towards the medical post...

And a moment later, a tracked HM206 vehicle emerged from the devastated forest as well, a Skyshield gun mounted on the flatbed trailer firing furiously at the grenades incoming from the sky... And he roared in relief and newfound bravery as he turned to take aim out of the trench, firing over the enemies on the other shore even as the terrible bombardment continued.

"Call the base! Call them, goddamn it! We need to suppress their artillery!"

"They are reloading the Firestorms! It'll take a few minutes!"

"Fuck...!"

He heard shouts coming from the larger trench, near the bridge, where probably was Siegfried in person, but the noise of the battle covered up the rest of the conversation.

He crouched again under cover only to reload his rifle... But he looked up in horror as new screams, different this time, filled the air and a furious hiss came from above... and he found himself facing one of the reptilian demons that had first been faced by king Wyvern and queen Alexis back in Sangin three days before, and that had been a continuous nuisance from then onwards.

He dropped the rifle immediately, throwing himself forwards on his belly as the monster slashed its mantis-blades after him, sinking the deadly weapons in the bottom of the trench as it moved forwards and hissed like the savage beast it was... And the Predator rolled on himself to lay on his back, slashing his sword up in a vicious arc, the long broadsword biting deep into the neck of the creature, chopping its head off.

The reptile vanished in a cloud of dark smoke, but the hissing told him that many more were assaulting their line of defense, and he had to repress a chill down his sweated back as he pushed himself back up to his feet, panting a bit as sweat rolled down his muzzle...

Things started happening way too fast as demons swarmed into the trenches from where they had emerged from the waters of the river, and Predators and rebels drew out their swords to fight them back.

In a moment of chaos, the little trench that had first hosted only a solitary Predator was filled with powerful, flexing bodies of soldiers and demons battling. The ranks were so closed and chaotic that there was no space to do anything, as in the space of a few seconds the whole shore turned into a throng of warriors snarling and furious, busy body and soul into a hand to hand fight against twenty-foot tall gigantic demons that could be killed only by chopping their head off. It was a chaotic fight, that no matter how it finished, would have been won by muscles and bravery, and not by strategy at this point. Things were made even worse by the RA forces on the other side of the river, which fired furiously in the battling crowd with everything they had got, well knowing that the bullets were not going to faze the demons unless they destroyed their heads, while the predators and soldiers in the fight were vulnerable. And anyway, the demons seemed to born from nothingness, and they keep coming and coming... lose a demon wasn't an issue at all, for the RA.

The Predator was pressed into the snarling crowd, as he tried to move forwards, as he slashed his sword from side to side, trying to hit up to the heads of the black-scaled creatures, anguishedly fighting his way to survive... But it seemed like one of those nightmares where nothing goes your way and everything goes torturingly slowly, except the forces that threaten you.

He even saw a rebel being brutally pierced by a burst of machine gun, the bullets having torn uselessly their way first across the demon that the unfortunate was battling, but the crowd was so thick that the corpse didn't even slumped to the ground immediately.

The demon now turned towards him, snarling savagely even as its chest was maimed to gore by the bullets that had just pierced it from side to side, and the Predator was hit by the flat of one mantis-blade and fell down on his back with a howl of pain and fear as he immediately pushed back up to a crouch to avoid being stepped over.

The armour he wore had absorbed the powerful blow well, but he saw the demon attempting to advance to hit again, and he readied himself... But Laura emerged from apparently nowhere, jumped up the back of the monster and wrapped a strong arm around its thick neck, the female snarling as the beast arched its back and tried to shake her away... But as soon as it rose its head up, Laura snarled in vicious, victorious satisfaction and slashed her sword into the beast, pulling back on its head as she coldly severed it off.

The Predator was pushed away by the moving bodies, and his blade sunk in the neck of a demon, but he was sent staggering again before he could kill the beast, and a voice inside his mind cursed him because he wasn't able to stay up erect and fight... There was black goo and red blood everywhere, and he tried once more to assault a demon, but someone fell over him and gargled his agony into his ears, making him wince and crawl away as he fought back panic, stretching up and pushing away someone - impossible say if enemy or friend - to stand up again, only to take awareness that he was now disarmed and to be once again brutally slammed to the side, and then down on his abdomen as a demon was assaulted and slammed backwards by a rebel and a predator working in collaboration.

This time the soldier did not manage to push back up, reaching only to stand on his knee in a crouch as enormous bodies crowded all around him... And then someone to the right called him, and a hand appeared, fingers stretched friendly towards him. He grabbed that thankfully, and immediately he stood again, shouting a warning as he clearly saw a deadly-sharp mantis-blade descend in a vicious slash. There was a shriek, a splatter of blood, and the helping hand was cut neatly away at the wrist, and the disarmed Predator stared at the giant demon as it hissed and charged forwards, the eyes of a dead man reflecting into the monster's red eyes.

The unknown friend that had helped him to his feet had another brave initiative, anyway, as he aimed the severed wrist to the monster's muzzle, blinding the demon with the splatters of blood that fell on the four, fire-red eyes...

And almost in the same instant, the head of the black, hellish reptile was neatly severed from the body, which vanished in a black cloud as Siegfried landed from his attack with a snarl. The prince looked to the Predator with a severed hand, his eyes filling with the deepest respect and admiration as he quickly ordered him to try and leave the fight and search for help as soon as possible, and the tall, mohawked liger turned to the disarmed other, throwing him one of his heavy, long cleaver swords.

"Fight them back!" Siegfried commanded as he charged forwards once more... "Just fight! This is not a good place where to die. Try and see if you can pull forwards and die somewhere else!"

And the Predator immediately assaulted another demon as the battle cruelly continued all around, a confused crowd of death, sweat, blood and pain.

It seemed to last forever, but the Predators and rebel repealed the demons back once more, even if they could not tell exactly how they managed to. For every single soldier, it had been a struggle to survive, a personal fight... and for everyone, the chaos surrounding had been total.

It wasn't important, anyway, since in the meanwhile the RA had put in place tens of mobile bridges and tanks and infantry and IFVs were crossing the waters to continue the assault... and the exhaust Predators moved back into the trenches to resist once more.

Loud, rumbling, roaring thunders signaled the incoming of powerful fighter jets, and someone howled from a trench in horror at the thought that the RA planes were once more back to bomb them...

But the howls of disappointment turned into a massive, choral roar of triumph and relief as no weird black biplanes, no massive Su 30 appeared, six white, black-striped Typhoons emerging from the clouds instead, diving over the battlefield like angels of vengeance, their wings threateningly loaded with the triple rails of the Brimstone missiles. Six rails on each fighter, 18 tank-killer missiles ready for each plane of the swarm as Talon leaded them in a vicious attack. Maverick was also with him: the valiant cheetah hadn't been persuaded by his nasty wound to stay down in the rear echelon, and had practically demanded the permission to continue to fly at his place and fight. And the Typhoons from three days were flying without a break, carrying out Close Air Support mission after CAS mission... and the tremendous number of wrecked Tiran tanks all around Sangin was there to prove the value of those valiant pilots and of the machines they leaded in battle.

For the exhausted Predators, it was a relief and a vengeance as the Brimstone missiles left the rails and roared in their dives towards their targets, Tiran tanks exploding from one side to the other of the battlefield, huge armoured vehicles turning from unstoppable machines of destruction to funerary pyres as the bridges just layered over the river were destroyed...

And yet the Typhoons made another pass after finishing the missiles, firing with their guns over the infantry and the vehicles left, before they quickly left to get back to base for embarking new weapons...

And the Predators continued their fight as 108 Tiran battle tanks and bridgelayers burned furiously on the other shore. No one of the deadly, merciless Brimstone missiles had missed, and the thick armour of the tanks had managed nothing against the double, piercing warhead of the missiles. The mortal thermobaric charge of explosive of the main warhead had then completed the work, completely destroying the struck vehicles.

And yet, just like in a nightmare, new RA forces were advancing along the various passages, moving between the wrecks of the burning, destroyed vehicles as they continued to charge towards the bridge, infantry and demons following close...

But the exhausted predators finally shouted in victory and relief as two well known figures charged along the shore of the river in the hands of the enemy, assaulting the RA ranks directly and slashing their way into the enemy lines like Death itself.

Killer and Alexis charged into the columns of demons and infantry with roars that made the Predators shiver in vicious anticipation, revenge finally coming over the enemy forces that had so mercilessly assaulted their positions, as the huge male liger flipped over a Tiran like a toy, squishing the soldiers that had been on the other side as he fired a few golden spheres of energy towards the other nearby tanks, Alexis tearing her way into the enemy ranks as enemies fell in front of her like crop before the scythe in harvest time, even before her sapphire aura was unleashed with blazing light and blue, white-hot flames appeared over the soldiers and demons all around her, even over a couple of Tiran tanks... And everything was melted and burned away as she fired her own balls of energy over the enemy.

"Who's the bitch now, you bastards...?" The soldier shouted with all the air he had in his lungs, cackling as he panted in mix of fatigue and deep, soul-shaking relief at the awareness that he was still alive...

"Look how fast they run!" A rebel in a nearby trench snickered, wolf-whistling and catcalling towards an unfortunate in particular, a bulky RA rifleman that had seen Killer erase a whole team in a couple of seconds and had wisely turned and fled as fast as he could.

Not that he went too far away, anyhow, since Alexis reached him effortlessly and decapitated him with an easy slash of Blue Vixen.

"I think I never saw before people running that fast!" A Predator laughed from his trench, his arm squeezing friendly a rebel who had shared the same small cubbyhole under the bombardment of the enemy... And the rebel reached up to push the helmet of the comrade away to ruffle his hair with his fist as he laughed.

"No one messes with our sovereigns!"

Finally, after the long moments of despair, after the long, merciless fight, the exhausted Predators stared into the distance to the enemy, as the RA army quickly retreated away from the fury of Killer and Alexis, the soldiers catcalling and cheerfully celebrating from their trenches every single stunt of the two ligers.

And the Praetorians now charged, too, deadly scythe-swords cutting from side to side as the skilled slave-bodyguards of the king maimed the enemies in close combat...

And finally, the Ra understood that the assault was once more failed, and it started to retreat again, moving back away from Sangin to reorganize and choose another point to try another forceful assault.

Back in town, at the air base of Sangin, the Kesteven's artillery was almost ready for a new, mortal salvo: a whole battery of eighteen Firestorm Multiple Rocket Launchers was being loaded with new missiles to launch.

The Firestorm was an MTRV 500 vehicle fitted with a turret sustaining a massive armoured cage that acted as Launcher/Loader module, since it was built to host four Rocket Modules: each module was a package ready to use, containing either six GAR180 artillery rockets or, alternatively, a deadly accurate Novastar surface-to-surface missile.

The cages of the eighteen vehicles were currently lowered at 0° elevation, and hydraulic booms were extended from the rear of the cage, over the flatbed of a truck. Each truck transported several modules of rockets for the reloading, and the servants were now locking those at the extended booms. Once secured the payload in that way, the booms retreated into the cage, bringing the rocket module in firing position, a computer system automatically interfacing the rockets with the Combat System of the vehicle, which was immediately ready to aim its target and fire.

The Firestorm was the most effective weapon of the Empire's artillery: informally, it was fondly called "Sectors Exterminator" or, referring to the whole service of the rocket artillery, "Grid Square Removal Service". Both names came from the fact that military maps are separated with grids delimiting sectors of one square mile... And with a salvo of rockets, a Firestorm could water a whole sector with a mortal rain of submunitions, since every rocket carried several hundreds of guided or "dumb" bomblets to release on the desired area.

Now the servants looked with attention as the booms started to retreat back into the cage, bringing inside the launching bays the modules, which leaved the production facilities with their rockets ready to launch already sealed inside. The engineers of the army made sure that everything was ok, while the men of the crew of each Firestorm made sure to make a check on the diagnostic computer of the vehicle to control that every module was ready and working...

And then the reloading trucks moved away from the back of the launchers, stopping to a safe position a few hundred meters away as the huge cages were raised up into the air and aimed in the distance to the target areas. The RA artillery and several huge groups of enemy forces all around the area of Sangin were the designed objective of the new wave. The enemy had rushed in service several Close-In Weapon Systems to contrast the rockets and artillery shells in their incoming travel in the sky, but those were so far deployed only in the largest camps and positions... And it was vital to exploit the rockets at maximum effect in the unprotected areas until it was possible.

It took just a few seconds to each Firestorm to fire all the 24 rockets just loaded in the launcher, hell seeming to erupt from the back of each cage as the flames of the rockets engines roared out with a deafening roar and huge clouds of smoke and dust that hid the whole, long line of eighteen Firestorm vehicles as no less than 432 long, thick streaks of white smoke and fire climbed up in the sky as the rockets started their mortal parabola to reach their target, about 54 miles away.

Each rocket had a maximum range of 180 kilometers, and could carry a variety of payloads, from radar and communications jammers to the very-fashioned submunitions to a massive, unitary warhead that could hit with a Circular Error Probable CEP of less than 1 meter, to a load of mines to create a solid barrier whenever it was needed from a safe distance.

A barrage of 24 rockets carried as much as 15.600 bomblets, each capable to destroy even a main battle tank, or 720 anti-tank mines... the Firestorm was by far the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the army... and it made perfect faith to its name.

Barely one hundred seconds later, the tremendous salvo of rockets reached the target area, and each GAR130 opened its wrapping of steel in four "petals", releasing the stack of bomblets contained inside, which were dispersed in every direction, watering whole square-mile sectors with a rain of fire and slivers that immediately killed everyone that wasn't behind the protection of a solid cover. The huge howitzers of the RA artillery were smashed to wrecks by tens of explosions, the ammo reserves were pierced across by slivers and the tanks made unusable as the deadly, less-than-can-sized submunitions pierced across the roof, were the armor was thinner.

A whole area was rapidly transformed in one hell of corpses, agonizing injures and burning wrecks... And the "Grid Square Removal Service" was already loading another series of those "silver bullets" inside the barrels.

Sir "Sandy" Hawkwood was walking calmly along the NES Unseen, a ship that he was still taking confidence with, while the quarter of guard of the second in command drew towards its end. Fifteen minutes later, "Sandy" would have been back into the Control Room crowded of computers and LCD screens to command in first person the ship in its navigation as the XO retired to rest... But for now, the veteran admiral had some more time to learn more about his new ship. The formidable submarine was under his command from barely three days, but "Sandy" by now knew the position of every single screw. The Unseen was the ship of his dreams, pretty much. The nuclear reactor gave such power that, if needed, they could squeeze out from the sub a speed of almost 40 knots, even if the declared maximum speed was of 35. The old Vanguard was very fast at the times I commanded it... but it never overcome the 31 knots...

The speed was, anyway, a requirement not vital for a submarine. It is useful to approach your operation area, fire your missiles and flee rapidly, before the enemy gets his hands over you... But if you are chasing a ship, or worse a fellow submarine, what you truly need is silence.

And the Unseen kept faith at her name. At 8 knots, the submarine was virtually silent like a grave... and at 6, "Sandy" was sure that no passive sonar or hydrophone in the world would have managed to hear the ship moving.

The Unseen used a pump jet to move, and the nine-blade propeller was wrapped in a tube that muffled every noise. The entire hull was wrapped into a thick layer of rubbery material that muffled every sound coming from inside and allowed the water of the ocean to flow along a perfectly smooth surface, generating no noise at all... And everything inside the ship, even the computers, was mounted on isolated platforms free to vibrate, so that no vibrations at all were caused to the hull itself... and everything was sound-proof. There was also a wrapping of anechoic tiles all around the hull to reduce as much as possible the signature of the ship to an active sonar.

The Unseen had also several other good points: for example, it carried double the number of torpedoes and weapons in general, without even taking in consideration the capability to use unmanned underwater vehicles as support and even launch aerial drones from the depths of the sea. Capabilities that went past our imagination just a few years ago when I was still into the game. It makes me feel so... old.

The submarine had, besides, a smaller crew, thanks to greater automation... and everyone has his little personal bunk, erasing the tradition of the "hot bunk", where two men working on different turns shared the same bed. A tradition that dated back to the very start of the submarines' adventure... And another revolution of the Unseen class was the fact that the old, traditional periscope was gone, replaced by a much more flexible and effective non-hull-penetrating mast topped by a series of cameras capable to scan the whole horizon in little more than a second, taking perfect images in high definition at day and night, and even in the Infra Red and Thermal specters. The images were shown in real time on the screens of the Control Room and on the console of the ship's commander's seat thanks to the optic fiber system of the submarine, and the images were also stored for later consideration... Something that made obsolete the need for the "eye of the submariner". Once, the commander of a submarine had to develop the vital ability to impress in his memory the images he saw in the periscope in the very few seconds when this was dangerously elevated over the surface, where the enemy radars were always in ambush.

Sir John "Sandy" Hawkwood was proud to have been given the chance to get back in service and command such a wonderful ship, and so far he had been well impressed by all the 100 members of the crew. Apart obviously from the sonar specialist, Steve Hadley, that had been working with him on the Vanguard years before and that had took part in the cruise under the ice of the arctic, and Tom Baker, the commander of the Unseen that had been moved to the position of second, of XO for this particular mission, he liked a lot the Navigator, Drew Shawn... And that was good, because during the cruise, all of these officers were the most important for the success of the mission.

Sandy reflected once more over the events of the last three days as he walked towards the Control Room. He thought to the reality of his situation, once more commander of a long tube of black steel advancing in the ocean under more than one hundred meters of water, in absolute secret, invisible even to the friends, a war machines deadly, mortal for anyone and anything opposed to it.

He thought to the particular friendship and team spirit that was classical of the submarines. He felt that he was already a friend for life with all the members of the crew... and he knew them from three days at the most. Submarines had that effect... being in such danger, with so little chances to escape if whatever went substantially wrong, being so close and with so little privacy during all the cruise, united the persons. And helped everyone to see only the good points of the others. Also because professionalism on board of such ships was absolute and total.

Sandy stepped inside the soft darkness of the Control Room, looking with a slight smile over the two queues of computers on the two sides of the room, to the operators bent on the screen from which came the only real light in the room.

He stepped past the Commander's seat, a sort of ultra-technologic throne that sat in a slightly raised position in the middle of the room, from where Baker saluted him silently, smiling a bit as he sneaked a glance to the watch at his wrist.

Sandy immediately rose a hand and gently signaled with a finger that the time hadn't come yet. "No worries, XO, I'm early on the schedule. I'll be back for the change of turn at the planned hour." As much as the commander was tired and by now wishing for his turn of rest, Sandy knew well that Tom wouldn't have took well being pushed out of command early. No one did, after all... it was a sign of respect and confidence in each other to stick to the schedule.

Baker smiled and nodded. "Thank you, Admiral."

Sandy walked towards the sonar console instead, were Hadley was calmly keeping under control the multiple screens of the complex sonar system of the Unseen. One, the largest screen, reported the positions of every contact, while a couple more screens were filled with the graphic lines that represented the signals "heard" by the sonar working in passive mode.

"Hello, Hadley..." The old admiral said calmly, bending forwards a bit to look at the screens. "Everything calm...?"

"Everything, commander. The Upholder is following us, devious of about a mile starboard..." The other tiger in dark blue uniform answered, pointing with a finger to the screen of the rear-scanning towed sonar array. "The other submarines follow us no problem, we hear clear the sound of their engines."

Sandy looked over the graphic on the screen, were the sound's line heard by the sonar was compared with the large internal database... and a message blinked in the corner of the screen.

"Unseen class machinery, match 100%", for all the four contacts they had.

"Good work, Hadley. Keep your eyes open, anyway." Sandy said before heading for the navigator console, where Shawn was bent on the huge, digital map of his console.

"We should be close to the limit of the wild arctic, right...? Like... 6 miles away from where things start becoming complicated." Sandy observed, and the navigator nodded.

"Exact, Sir, exact. I feel safe with an admiral like you, you give me confidence. Coffee...? I just asked for some."

"I could use one, yes. Thanks Shawn. It'll help keep my attention up for the next four hours. My turn is about to begin, and we are going to face 4 complex hours." Sandy agreed with a kind nod, taking the small cup that the navigator officer filled up from a thermos and offered.

"Indeed, sir. Actually, we are sailing at full power under a few thousand square miles of ice, but we'll need to slow down when we step out from under the ice-cap and make our way past the peripheral ice shelf to the open ocean." Drew said calmly, nodding a bit as he went back to draw the next route.

The old admiral instead moved to the next sonar position to gaze at the screen of the upwards-scanning sonar, looking for a few moments to the computer that continuously drew the profile of the "roof" of ice of their world: a sailor was busy keeping the computer under control as the line on the screen drew the silhouette of the ice-cap, that was in that point well over 2 kilometers thick and that extended with cornerous, cold indifference about 180 meters above the turret of the Unseen.

One moment later, the instrument seemed to go mad as it suddenly drew a descending fang, a cruel formation of ice that descended perhaps 40 meters in depth... The sailor did not even communicated it, since it was still well far away from them and represented no danger, but the young tiger saw the admiral standing behind and asked: "Seen, commander...? It was a few miles we hadn't one of those readings... Nothing worrisome at the moment, but I've never been really sure of what causes those formations of ice, Admiral."

Sandy smiled slightly, giving a slight nod as he crossed his arms. "Pressure, simply. Those are peaks of pressure... You figure two enormous tiles of ice, each weighting several millions of tons, colliding from different directions, pushed by winds and currents... The clash causes these weird growths, both up and downwards. And as you know well, those are one of our worst enemies in this cruise under the ice, so keep your eyes attentive."

"Alright sir, thank you." The sailor answered, never detaching his eyes from the screen.

"Keep your eyes open for all the possible polynyas we meet, and keep mapping them all." Sandy added, and the sailor nodded professionally, showing respectfully the small book where he was registering the coordinates of every polar-pond, or polynya. Basically, those were small lakes of sweet water that, especially in the summer, grow to punctuate the ice cap. Those corresponded to areas were the ice shelf was very thin, and represented the only points were the submarine, needing to, could emerge by breaking its way across the ice to surface. Find a polynya, anyhow, was a very complex task, since those ponds could vary from puddles of a few meters to true lakes of a few hundred meters of diameter: the upwards scanning sonar was of some help, since it gave a precise estimation of the ice's thickness, but the only really effective method was to use the images from the cameras mounted in the conning tower of the submarine to detect the light.

Under the ice cap, of course, there's little to none light, but since a polynya has a very thin cap of ice, the light filtrating to the depths is much greater. Sandy looked up to the screen of the tower's cameras, but currently the darkness in the images was mostly total...

They had mapped half a dozen polynyas big enough to eventually allow an emersion of the Unseen or of the submarines following. Sandy had no intentions at all to emerge, if all went like it should... But there are a number of tragic events that can force a submarine like the Unseen to emerge as soon as possible, and he needed to know what chances he had to do so, in order to decide. The worst possibility was a reactor shutdown. The Pressurized Water Nuclear Reactor of the sub was responsible not only for the propulsion and the generation of the energy needed by every system of the sub: it also ensured that oxygen was created from the crew with reverse osmosis from the water. The reactor was vital to survive... and if it had a problem and it turned off, the submarine was left moving only thanks to the batteries. But those had short life... And there was probably enough energy for a single attempt to turn on again the reactor.

And if that failed, they would have needed to emerge and get air for the diesel generators of the Unseen, to reload the batteries and try to again start the reactor. But air, of course, was the only thing they did not have underwater... and without a polynya, they could not even get it.

If the reactor shutdowns, it's my responsibility and nightmare... Should I keep it off and sail on batteries to the last polynya we detected and emerge, or should I risk and try to get the reactor running again...? It is the worst possible scenario... because if I make the wrong choice, we all die.

Sandy nodded and told the sailor to continue his work before walking away. So far, everything had gone for the best. The first hours of navigation, the first day, had been very complex, as they made their way under the ice shelf at the northern border of the Syrane channel. The space was very reduced, and find a breech in the ice large and deep enough to allow the passage of the submarines had been a long and difficult work... it had been like trying to exit from a labyrinth. The icebreaker NES Endurance had been of some help, by breaking the cap of ice and opening a corridor that the submarines following had exploited... but after that, they had been alone, blocked under the ice, in places where the depth of water between the floor made up by the sea bed and the roof of thick ice had been barely enough to allow the passage of the subs.

Enormous peaks of pressure in the ice had generated what looked like gigantic stalactites of ice that descended from above for tens of meters towards the sea bed, further reducing the space available... and besides, some of those peaks were sharp and pointed like spears, and the granite-hard ice had the potential to cut into the submarine with terrible effects. They had sailed in that deadly trap at a maximum speed of five knots, scanning with attention the surrounding world with the active sonar, especially the upwards scanning one, to be sure to choose the right passage... The Unseen had been all the time the first of the formation, scouting ahead of the others and using its Unmanned Underwater Vehicle to explore the depths of the Arctic Ocean in search of a passage... Sandy in person had guided the whole fleet in those difficult moments, talking with the commanders on the other subs following with the Underwater Telephone, a communication system in ultra-low frequency. Luckily, the Arctic had not the added challenge of enemy units in ambush, because on the sonar passive, an underwater conversation like that made a lot of noise... and an enemy would have had easy game in torpedoing them all, one after the other, like targets at a firing range.

Even before the subs had set sail from their docks, the whole ships had been controlled, re-controlled and then checked all over again, but every crew had made another strict review of their own ship before descending under the roof of ice: no one wanted to have a fire on board, or a steam leak, or worse still a leak of carbon monoxide, which could easily kill everyone if it rose over the 4% of the air in the sub... All cases that required a fast emersion, and that meant enormous troubles when the ship was sailing under a roof of ice that near the pole had been more than 3 kilometers thick, with no chances at all to break out, obviously.

It had taken nearly twelve hours to sail from the Syrane channel, under the cruel, merciless outer ice-shelf to get under the proper ice-cap... Twelve hours that had seen Sandy up all time, using his experience and talent to guide not one, but five nuclear submarines in the deadly labyrinth of ice. Twelve hours of tangible tension, that had left everyone sweating cold... Then, finally, things had started to improve. They had sailed past the continent and reached the submarine continental slope that represented the end of the Northlands, where the depth of the sea changed radically from barely 80 meters to over 1800, and there finally the Unseen and the others had stepped free of the nightmarish world of low seabed and oppressive roof of ice to descend at over 150 meters under the ice-cap, with over 1500 meters of water still under the keel.

For more than a full day, they had sailed with nearly no troubles at all, as Sandy guided the whole fleet in deep waters , drawing personally the route with the navigator to avoid the tall, submarine guyots and abyssal hills that came up from the seabed to almost reach the surface. Finally, they had sailed into the proper Arctic Ocean, where more than 4500 meters of depth were still under their keel before the abyssal plain beneath, even if they navigated dived at nearly 200 meters of depths. For nearly two full days, they had sailed at 35 knots, covering 1452 naval miles of their long travel.

Sandy had guided them past the Arctic continental slope, that climbed from 4000 meter of depth to less than 800 in barely 20 miles, and then he had ordered to veer for three-one-zero, to avoid the North Pole, to avoid the so called "Roulette of the Longitude": past the 87° parallel, the gyroscopes and compasses start to go mad because of the Coriolis effect, that is reduced progressively as the rotation axes of the planet comes closer. Of course, when you are at the Pole, everywhere you go is going south, but Sandy wanted to avoid having to choose the direction blindly with all the compasses on the sub going crazy.

Sandy and Baker had guided the fleet along the Syrtis peninsula, a prolongation of the continental shelf that pushed itself north for nearly 800 miles under the thick ice cap and that held the famous mines of Uranium managed under international treaty. They had overcome Cape Borea and then veered to the east entirely, sailing at 35 knots whenever possible as they ran right towards the Glacial Seas.

Sandy calmly sipped his coffee as he walked back towards the Commander's Seat in the middle of the room, well knowing that the worst was yet to come: in the next hours they had to sail under the outer ice-shelf of the arctic once more, and it would have been nearly as bad as in the Syrane channel. And after that, they had to veer south south-east for over 300 miles to reach the area of the true fight, were the largest fleet ever put together on the seas of the world was their target. Where silence and strategy, merciless professionalism and coldness would have decided either their survival, or their death for lack of air, sealed inside a coffin of black steel on the seabed...

Tom Baker smiled a bit as he stood from the seat, in perfect time with the end of the turn, and the young captain welcomed Sandy with a nod. "Ship's yours, Commander."

"Affirmative, ship's mine, XO." The much older admiral answered in professional, formal tone as he walked up the platform and sat down in the comfortable black seat, pulling the mobile console in his lap and giving an attentive gaze over the multiple screens, which reported the most important sonar readings and the images from the cameras mounted in the turret... Then he turned up to look at Baker with a quiet smile.

"Go and have some rest... the worst is yet to come." The admiral said kindly, and the younger captain nodded with an amused smile.

"Thanks for reminding me..." Tom observed playfully, then he stretched slightly and pushed a bit up his forehead the beret with the golden inscription "NES Unseen", gazing softly over the control room and the tens of specialists and officers busy over the consoles, fond of the professionalism of the best submarine of the navy. His submarine. "I think I'll have a snack before I take a nap. Should I send up something for you...?"

Sandy nodded with a quiet smile as he absently rose his own beret up to run a hand in the long white fur on his head a bit. "I guess I could use a sandwich or something, thanks."

Baker left the room, and Sandy immediately made sure to control once more the readings from the sonars. They were still in deep waters for now, with no obstacles around...

"Maintain route and speed, depth 150." He commanded in firm, professional tone, and the officer at the ship's console nodded and repeated the order just received as confirmation, as the admiral rose the small telephone in the arm rest of his seat and contacted the engineers of the Reactor Room to be informed about the huge PWR reactor that pushed the Unseen smoothly and silently... and he was relieved to hear that every parameter was perfect.

"Sonar to commander!" Hadley called from his position, gaining immediately the attention of Sandy as he looked up. "The drone found a very small polynya eight miles north-east. Only ten meters of diameter, but the ice is very thin... The drone could surface there."

The old admiral nodded firmly and looked to his console to gaze at the readings coming from the small Unmanned Vehicle's sonar, and he calmly ordered: "Have the drone emerging. Deploy the SATCOM mast and the ESM mast."

A few miles away, the miniaturized, unmanned submarine-scout quickly emerged, pushed up by the compressed air released from the many high-pressure bottles inside, and the reinforced top of steel of its mini-turret smashed into the thin ice, the drone breaking a breech in the ice-shelf and pushing up two tall telescopic masts.

The largest one held the SATCOM antenna, and it immediately aimed to the sky to lock to one of the Kesteven's satellites, downloading every info available in just 2 seconds as the Electronic Support Measures mast scanned with attention the surrounding area, ready to detect any radar or sensor "illuminating" the drone as it rested at periscope-depth...

And barely three seconds after it had emerged, the drone folded away its masts once more and dived rapidly back into the obscurity of the ocean.

"2.9 seconds, commander. The ESM received nothing... there's no radar or radio in a range of hundreds of miles. No one is searching us. We have complete surprise on the enemy." Hadley communicated with a bit of a satisfied grin, and Sandy nodded with a brisk, professional "alright" as he read rapidly over the messages downloaded from the satellite.

The sub had transmitted a message, confirming that all five the ships were fine and the cruise was going well... A message that will surely be welcomed at the Admiralty. It was two days we did not manage to send out any message... I guess they were getting worried for real.

In exchange, the satellite had rapidly sent to the Unseen weather forecasts for the next days in the eastern zone, a report on the state of the ice in the eastern ice-shelf and the orders for the mission, that he knew coming from king Wyvern in person. Nothing is changed... Gods, it will be harsh...

"NORSUBCOM: (North Submarine Command) Argolis island still resisting to the siege. Orders unchanged: deploy to the eastern sector and supply support to the Glacial's rebels. Maximum priority should be given to sinking the aircraft carriers, but the attack is left to the experience of Admiral Hawkwood and to the chances at hand. Follows report and satellite images of the fleet at sea."

The excitement in the camp of the 7th Armored Division of the Empire's army was growing steadily from the very start of the campaign of Glacial, and in the last three days it had grown literally exponentially as everyone developed the consciousness that the order of the attack was going to come very soon. Indeed, the news from Sangin were always the same, in the last two days: every report spoke of repealed assaults, that grew more and more vicious by the hour, as the RA threw more and more of its troops into the cauldron to try and break down the resistance of the rebels and of the First Predators Division that were valiantly resisting, clutching to their defensive positions and blowing tremendous blows to the assaulters. The aerial reconnaissance had confirmed that the whole Northern and Eastern Army groups of the RA had moved in to surround Sangin, and the Southern Army Group was, instead, only sending a little part of its troops. It was clear by now that, even waiting further, they could not lure them up to Sangin... And anyway, it was by now time to move. Move fast and resolutely forwards to complete the trap plan.

Alexander looked into the distance with a powerful binocular, seeing clearly the massive fortifications that punctuated the steep sides of the mountains on both sides of the narrow, winding road that was the Brenner Pass. The last place where you'd send an armored division with three regiments of tanks, three of self propelled artillery and a crapload of other vehicles... Gods, if we make an error, we'll create the worst traffic jam in history, I swear...

The RA considered the Brenner Pass unsuitable for a large offensive: the road, that was supposed to be a highway, had been limited by the conformation of the mountains to a bare two-lane path that climbed laboriously along the cruel slopes and then overcome a large number of tunnels and bridges. But knowing Killer, they had left nothing to the case, and had erected several huge bunkers in the mountains, from where anti-tank cannons, missile launchers and machine guns pits could target anything that moved along the road. Every bridge and tunnel had been predisposed to be blown up with a minimum notice and block every possibility to enter in Glacial from there, and a well equipped force of soldiers, supported by a large brigade of Tiran tanks, were based in the Pass to protect it.

Yet, Killer wanted to move in right from that one pass. The RA felt too secure of its positions in there, and hadn't even been particularly impressed by the obvious arrival in the area of the 7th Division: of course, the RA reasoned in terms of tens of divisions when it prepared an offensive, and the idea that someone might break across the Brenner with only one armoured formation must have looked laughable to them...

What an error to undervalue us...

Assault teams of parachutists from the Parachute Regiment and sappers from the Royal Engineers had been infiltrated on the mountains the night before, with the cover of darkness, by a handful of Night Spirit stealth transports, and those teams of battle-hardened, sharply trained assaulters had moved down the rocky slopes like chamois, reaching the tunnels and hanging bridges to erase the little garrisons that defended each and especially, to cut the detonating cables and remove the charges of explosive that ensured to the RA the possibility to lock definitively the door for Glacial.

And now it was time for the 7th to advance and break the enemy lines.

Alexander looked around himself to see the three regiments of Firestorm launchers already in firing positions: three long lines of 18 launchers each, each line separated by a few miles from the successive one, covering the whole length of the sector... The infantry was standing at the ready just behind him, with a long line of MTRV 500 IFVs, while the MTRV 500 Mobile Gun Systems were lined up in front of all the others, rail guns already aimed to the valley held by the enemy, ready to open fire as soon as the command came...

Alexander handed the binocular to the officer standing at his side, who took it with a quiet bow and retreated of a few steps as the white liger rose a powerful, muscular arm up into the air, stretching upwards even his fingers as he stood motionless for a second... and then his hand came down rapidly to point to the valley, and immediately, 180 rail guns and 54 Multiple Rocket Launcher fired, all together, with a rumble that shook earth all around for a good few miles.

Several of the rockets were loaded with a massive, armour-piercing unitary warhead, and they were aimed accurately thanks to the GPS to hit the thick bunkers of reinforced concrete along the slopes of the mountains, the massive 280 mm rounds fired by the rail guns adding to the chase as each bunker was hit over and over again, cracked, broken down and erased as explosion after explosion tormented with fury the fortified positions in the mountains...

And as the IFVs, the Mobile Guns and the infantry charged forwards resolutely, the other rockets were just finishing watering the valley with smart submunitions, which descended slowly, dangling in the air from their small parachutes as their Infra-Red seeker searched for targets, scanning the ground below... And as soon as they found a target, they dropped the parachute and dived at it to destroy it with an explosion that generated both a rain of deadly slivers and a cascade of fire as a small ring of zirconium in the warhead burned at over 4000 Celsius degrees... And the submunitions that did not find a target to hit exploded safely in midair, so to leave a clean and safe area for the allied soldiers advancing, and not a dangerous mine field of unexploded bomblets to walk over.

And finally, the second phase of the trap was started, and as Alexander lead the 7Th Division up the mountains and into Glacial, the plan of Killer moved ahead smoothly.

Killer walked past a group of exhausted soldiers, that had sat down on the ground to take a breath, after three days of fighting without a single break. He had to admit he was tired, too... the continuous fighting was starting to take a tool even on him.

He answered kindly to the cheerful, grateful salutes of the Predators and soldiers, who were apparently never too tired to look up at him with admiration and salute his passage... And he walked past a mess where soldiers and civilians were sharing a meal. It wasn't the best way to go at it, he had to admit... In a "normal" war, it would have been a crime, since an enemy attacking the military camp would have to either drop the attack mission or kill the civilians... But of course, since the RA hits everyone indiscriminately, civilians and soldiers are a distinction entirely useless...

He smiled and saluted back as he spotted a couple of cubs cheerfully waving their hands at him, and he tried once more to overcome the sense of horror and fury that rose into him against the RA every time his eyes brushed the inhabitants of Sangin.

They are... nothing but skin and bones...

The proportions of the cruel, merciless behavior of the RA were impossible to understand if they weren't seen firsthand with one's eyes: the town had been sacked of everything by the soldiers of the garrison, with no worries at all for the civilians, which had been left without food and without medical cares. They had also been very often kicked out of their houses, which had been taken over by the RA officers for themselves...

And it was just thanks to several heroic medics that had continued giving their help and support, visiting people hidden in ancient undergrounds facilities and basements that very serious epidemics had been avoided.

Just after the conquest of the town, scrawny civilians had left their hiding places in the basements, and Killer and Alexis had been left horrified of such spectacle of misery and destruction. No matter the difficulties it caused, they had immediately organized a program of airborne resupplying, to deliver in town the hundreds of tons of food and medicines and goods needed to give back to that population a normal, dignified life.

Not Alexis, and even less Killer had managed to get used to being watched up as the precious saviors sent from the sky to save them all... But the population, on the other hand, did not care, and those so terribly undernourished persons continued to gratefully look up at both ligers with awed reverence, and come at them to bow deeply and even just touch the "saviors". It made Killer feel terribly embarrassed, because it was different from what he used to already know... and of course, see that people reduced in such state was always a blow for him. On the other hand, he had fully retained his usual success with females... and while not always it was pleasurable to feel longing gazes size you up from every direction and hear girls giggle cheerfully and chat after your passage could become a little bit irritating, it still was the part of all that unwanted attention that he liked more.

In three days, anyhow, he had had absolutely no time to even regret sex. Sincerely, he hadn't even had still a moment of time to investigate about the changes he had undergone downstairs with his sudden growth spurt... And that admittedly puzzled him a bit. If he had a vanity, that was his penis, after all... And when he had received from home his new black armor, forged after the design of the preceding one and fitted with the usual neck of Dark's fur, he had also had new, larger clothes to wear... and the sneaked, curious glance that he himself and Alexis had launched at his crotch as he changed his underwear and pants had left both particularly hot. The increase had been massive... and the wish to take a good measure of just how huge he would be when at full, glorious erection had been just as enormous.

But in three days, he and Alexis had done nothing else than running from a point to the other to help their troops repealing the assaults of the RA.

He was used to wars and fighting, but this had been worse than most. Normally, a battle lasts a few hours, one day at the very most... and then, both fronts want to take a break, to take a breath before crossing swords again. Hell, even Wycherley's battle, hellish as it was, lasted one day alone...

The RA was giving them no relief: the fact that they had two whole Armies putting Sangin under siege meant that even if one of the two took a pause, the other continued to attack... And besides, the hellish demons and monsters that supported the RA seemed unlimited in their number, and needed no rest at all, so that their assault was continuous.

The casualties had been very numerous, and a lot of injured soldiers had been so seriously wounded that they had been evacuated urgently away from Sangin with the cargo planes, towards the Kesteven Military Hospital, and the Third Predators Division had had to send in Sangin two of its three regiments to help repeal the attacks... and the third one was going to be airlifted in theater as soon as possible, too.

Nonetheless, the enemy counted its losses in the thousands. The whole area around Sangin was by now a torn, tortured wasteland, and countless wrecks of tanks and corpses cover it... Luckily, the demons vanish, at least, otherwise, we would be surrounded by mountains of corpses by now...

Killer and Alexis had spent the last three days running from a side of the town to the other, to intervene and repeal the attacks of the RA as they were launched along the whole perimeter of the "island" as the enemy tried to use the force of numbers to simply drown down the defenders of Sangin, as the RA tried to find a weak, vulnerable point of the defenses where it could open a breech: once, Killer alone had had to run in and force back an assault of amphibious tanks that had been trying to overcome the river Cartina north-east of town to make a pincers move to entirely surround Sangin from behind... And Alexis had been chasing deep into the enemy lines to spread terror in their ranks. Undoubtedly, it had worked, at least... The blond femme fatale had sneaked her way across the positions of the RA all the way to over 6 miles in their rear lines, killing everyone she came across and destroying every vehicle, ammo depot and artillery piece on her way, causing true panic in the enemies, stunned of being hit so far away from the front, where they felt safe. Besides, she had caused so much devastation that they had been pushed to believe that the Predators had made a full out counteroffensive, and that had caused true chaos for a few hours as they searched even under their beds to see if there were Kesteven soldiers hiding in ambush...

Killer grinned a bit at that recent memory, and sneaked a gaze to Alexis as she walked at his side, the blond femme fatale looking up at him with the corner of her eye in the very same moment, grinning slightly as she tilted her head a bit with that amused, suggesting look she always gave him.

They were both sweated and bloodstained, their clothes and fur covered with splatters of blood, from the battles they had sustained until just a couple of minutes before... But now, luckily, the Ra was taking a bit of a pause, and the situation was normal enough that the Predators and rebels could easily hold the line by themselves.

Killer looked around himself from over the heads of a group of soldiers stepping by to reach the first line, and he easily spotted Siegfried, who was seating on a shattered, fallen tree trunk, keeping his rugged, black portable computer in his lap and typing away at the keyboard with the amazing speed his hands only were capable of. His twin swords had been dropped at his side, both blades red of blood all the way to the handle after the ferocious battles of today, and he was just as ruffled and bloodstained as Killer and Alexis, but he also sported a much more frustrated look, and bags under the eyes that were starting to get very evident.

"Huh... How do you feel, bro...?" Killer asked hesitatingly as he and Alexis walked closer to him, the younger liger snorting absently as he continued to key commands into the computer for a moment. Then he blinked all of a sudden and turned to Killer with a frown.

"What...?" He asked morbidly, and the older brother coughed a bit into a massive fist. Gods, this is worse than I feared. This is really not normal for Cold... "You are getting uglier thanks to those bags at the eyes, little bro. You don't look good at all." Killer said quietly, and Siegfried flailed his arms with a loud snort of contempt.

"Course' I don't look well. I'm fucking frustrated, that's it!" Siegfried exclaimed loudly, making Killer wince and backstep a bit in surprise as his brother rubbed a hand nervously in his mane and shook the computer irritably with the other. "Couldn't you just... fucking rape Vera...? Kill her, have her sucking your dick so she would stay busy and happy and meow like a fucking kitty... I dunno, something!" Siegfried huffed, hands getting back to the keyboard as he started again inserting long strings of code in the Joint Warriors System. "But no! You have to be the chivalrous knight in shining armor! The fuck, Killer! Vera keeps breaking into our systems, and it's a Hide and Seek game that's getting me mad. MAD. I might even love programming, but it's been... It's three days that I type fucking code every second I'm not beating people up...!"

"Let's go away before he gets worse or asks us to give him a hand. Fast!" Killer murmured in Alexis's hear as he smiled stupidly to his cursing brother, and the femme fatale gave a nod and smoothly, silently walked backwards and away, followed by Killer as Siegfried cursed with violence for some more time, apparently unaware that the two ligers had swiftly left.

"Gods... I'm sorry for him. I remind my own experience with programming and code, and truly it's not something I'd like to do again." Killer muttered. "And not against Vera, surely." She can reprogram a few thousand lines of code in blink time, using just her mind...to me it takes minutes to come up with a stupid program where pressing a button the computer salutes you. Hugh, why had I to pick up computer science, of all things...?

"Signed and approved." Alexis agreed with a nod, making a bit of a face herself as they silently, swiftly walked away.

Finally, Killer and Alexis stepped in a circle made up by the Praetorians, by Murray and Laura, who were all trying to rest their sore muscles for a moment as Laura used a portable computer to get the latest images from the satellites and reconnaissance drones.

The Praetorians immediately brightened when Killer came in sight, and tiredness seemed to vanish from their beautiful, bloodstained bodies as they stood and bowed deeply, seating back down only after the king and the queen had done so. Murray, who was standing and sipping hot tea from a small cup, bowed a bit as well, welcoming the sovereigns with a tired but sincere and respectful smile. The battle had been harsh and exhausting for everyone, and it was perfectly understandable that the ancient colonel, who had anyway fought without any reserve and shown that his punch was still formidable, was tired.

"So... We have the confirmation...?" Alexis asked calmly to Laura after a moment of silence. The other female looked up from the screen of the computer and nodded quietly.

"Both Kolna "Silver Wings", the commander of the Eastern Sector and Khaari "Red Wings" of the Northern one have been spotted and photographed in two enormous fortified camps north-east of here... Their presence is confirmed, along with their two complete battle-groups." Laura said with cold professionalism, and she turned the computer to show the two black and white images coming from the drones, and Killer nodded as he gazed with a slight frown at the two winged tigers.

Even took from twenty kilometers of altitude, the image was still good enough that Killer could see several interesting details over the two feared RA commanders... and he pointed his finger towards the huge wings of hovering objects that loomed in a large cloud all around the two warriors. "Those horribly resemble those Decapitator flying mines we saw..."

"They are." Laura nodded immediately, making a bit of a face, Killer frowning a bit more as he traded a grimace with Alexis. So he walks around with a hundred mines flying around him. Nice life he chose. "Both Kolna and Khaari requested express modifications to their Improved Combat Suites to be able to control a whole wing of Decapitator mines directly with their eyes. The rumors are that they both have computers in their eyes, connected to their brain and to the modified Spirit device they have... So, additionally to the tens of nasty things they can do, both of them can aim the mines at any kind of target, in any moment, all around themselves, just looking to what they want to hit thanks to the 360 degrees vision system of the Senses Augmentation System helmet they wear. It makes them extremely dangerous, since they can blow up a whole army in a few seconds... Even Aaron was a piece of cake compared to these two." Laura turned the computer back to herself, and tapped a few commands to try and enlarge the image further without losing too much quality.

"We had a couple of encounters with them... And it was a slaughter. There's no way to go close to them with those mines waiting only for a chance to leap at you and explode... we had more loses in five seconds of fight than during the first three years of our resistance." Murray murmured sadly, and he nodded quietly as Alexis gave him a supportive look.

"I tried killing Kolna." Nikita muttered a second later, and Killer and Alexis turned towards her with interest as she stared to the ground in front of herself with a grimace. "Fine work, I'll tell you... We managed to sneak in an RA facility and I made my way to the parking of the vehicles and put enough C4 explosive under the jeep I know he would use that it could have blown a tennis-field sized hole in the keel of a warship. When his driver turned the key... it was like a new volcano had erupted on earth." The blond mare grinned, tilting her head upwards a bit with obvious pride for her enterprise. "To be sure, I had mined also the two other jeeps of the escort... And on a wall nearby, placed a small termite incendiary charge to use to get rid of the Emergency Teams coming to help after the explosions... I was spying on it all from a nearby roof, and I had the remote command to detonate the termite charge. Everything went perfectly: the three jeeps were blown to shreds, and when a team of military firefighting team, I blown up the incendiary charge and burned them and their vehicle before they could react." Nikita nodded, then she closed her hands into fists and snorted, punching into the ground with her right hand. "I was sure I had killed the bastard... and instead, he come out of the flames on his legs, mostly unharmed..."

"More correctly, on the mechanical hands of the exoskeleton-suite that makes him look like a sci-fi movie subject." Pamela muttered from the side of the mare, who gritted her teeth and nodded with a curse under her breath. "We had to fight our way out very fast... And it's a miracle we are still alive. One of his Decapitator mine had enough time to explode as we fled... and it was close enough that it still filled us with slivers, even if not to deadly effect." Crystal completed sulkily.

"Exoskeleton, huh...? Bad stuff. We know something precise about that machine...?" Alexis asked immediately, looking deeply interested as she moved to look at the images on the computer with Laura.

"It gives an impenetrable defense at the whole body... We still don't exactly know the material it's made of, but we know for sure that there is Neotitanium into the alloy, just like in the armor of the UCWs. A series of nanomachines-muscles and electric actuators into it increase the strength of the subject wearing the exoskeleton of several hundred times... We don't know the exact rate, but it's very high." Laura muttered, making a face before she softened and looked up to the huge male with a purring smile. "I saw only you, Killer, show a strength comparable... and this means saying a hell of a lot." The female said, grinning a bit as she met the sapphire eyes of the huge male, who smirked slightly despite all.

"Those artificial muscles also sustain the weight of the exoskeleton, of course... the one wearing it feels no weight at all, and thanks to the actuators, Kolna and Khaari not only are completely unaffected by the tremendous weight of hardware they bring around, they are also much faster and agiler. We know for sure that they can leap forty feet up into the air no problem, and we don't know how far they can get above that..." Pamela added, and Nikita and the other Praetorians nodded with snorts of frustration.

"To be sincere, we don't know the true extent of the power of those two monsters." Nikita muttered, turning to Killer with a guilty, exasperated expression. "Much as we tried, we never managed to find anything that was enough of a challenge to compel those two to truly show what they are capable of." Nikita shuddered, looking down sourly and the other Praetorians nodded with matching grimaces.

"In fact, we always tried to avoid direct confrontations with the Four Winged Commanders of the RA." Murray stepped in, and Killer and Alexis both turned at the wise, old colonel with attention. "The few times we did not manage to... It was terrifying. Never seen anything comparable... they both are protected with EMP shields, and something else that goes even beyond that. They walked right through the gunfire and everything we threw at them, and nothing would slow them down. It left us all powerless... A whole army wouldn't be capable to stop them, if not for short time, until they blow apart everyone." The ancient tiger made a face, and then nodded. "Which does not take too long, with those Decapitator hovering around them at the ready."

Laura finally stopped, having reached the maximum level of size and detail for the pictures, and she turned again the computer to show the two RA commanders to Killer and Alexis.

"Kolna is the fugly one with the tentacles." She muttered, and Killer nodded with a grimace.

"What the hell..." Alexis snorted, looking after the enormous tentacles of steel that grew out the back of Kolna's exoskeleton and arched up well above his head, which was entirely masked by the SAS helmet. Each long, metallic appendage had to be at least thirty feet long, probably more... and Alexis was almost sure there was twenty or more jutting out from the back of the robot-looking commander, each tentacle finishing into a sharply edged triangular speartip.

It sure looks nasty enough...

"Well, better than nothing. At least we won't walk in entirely blind..." Killer sighed, rolling his shoulders a bit as he went back seating after he had stretched forwards to closely look after the pixelous details of the enlarged picture.

"What do you plan to do...?" Murray asked immediately, looking towards Killer with a frown of surprise, and somehow, suspect, which made Killer smile slightly in amusement. I bet he already imagined what I'm thinking...

"It's three days that we resist on our positions to lure them here... now that we got them at hand reach, I'll strike on them." The huge liger stated simply, grinning a bit as he crossed his arms, and Alexis snorted and shoved him to the side as she grinned as well, closing her eyes for a moment as she nodded.

"WE will strike on them." She corrected firmly, and the two traded a grin as Murray, Laura and the Praetorians exchanged a worried look, Kate looking horrified of the idea. "It's the last thing they expect from us at the moment... We will have the surprise on our side as well."

"Who dares wins...?" Laura asked with a grin, and both Killer and Alexis nodded with matching expressions.

"They may be too much even for you two, majesties." Murray said, looking deeply worried despite the confidence he still shown for the two formidable warriors. "We don't know how strong they really are... but they are already scary with the little we know, without even speaking of the mysterious capabilities they have."

"To get to them, you'll have to make your way across the two camps of the RA armies... it means... fight off a whole army, just to get to the target." Pamela hesitatingly underlined, looking up to Killer softly.

"There are whole troops of Faceless warriors, with the latest combat gear, inclusive of an exoskeleton... and who knows how many demons." Nikita added, but she was grinning as Killer and Alexis only calmly nodded.

"We know you can tear apart their ranks... But when you reach the commanders, you'll be already tired, and we don't even know the full extent of their capabilities... We can't put your lives at such risk, Master." She added after a moment, but Killer and Alexis shook their head softly.

"It's all part of what makes the challenge interesting." Killer grinned, and Alexis nodded, trading with him a gaze loaded with battle lust as she licked her lips a bit. "We'll have a group of the Artillery firing a barrage of rockets over the two camps before the assault... They have CIWSs in place, so we will manage little more than a pin's sting to their formations, but it should be enough to cause some chaos." The huge male explained, and the blond femme fatale nodded, crossing her arms with a slight grin.

"Just enough chaos to waken up everyone and compel the grunts to walk out of their tents... The more they mass up, the more chaotic and scared they are, the easiest to wipe them out." Alexis said with dark, frightening anticipation. Her voice, and the malicious gleam in her icy eyes, made it evident that she was all but eager to go, and knew exactly what the two ligers were going to face...

Yet, she only lusts for a battle this absurdly unfair. Swarms of demons, two armies of robotically-enhanced freaks, two sort of mega-robots with tremendous strength... against two warriors alone. You expect the two to at least have some fear... Laura grinned as she sneaked a gaze up to her friend Alexis, and she wasn't surprised at all seeing that Killer was just the same. You'd say they are kids happy and impatient because Christmas's gifts are on the way... If we have a chance, only one, to survive this war, that's Killer and Alexis. Without them, we would have been wiped out three days ago...

"Normally, I would ask to Siegfried if he wants to come with us, and he would answer something like 'Hell yes!', but I'm not going to, this time..." Killer said in what sounded almost like a sigh as he stood and made a bit of a face. "Have you seen him...? He's miserable, right now."

"Vera is making him mad. In three days, he fought and programmed, programmed and fought. Every time there's a moment peaceful enough that he hasn't to kill things, he drops the sword and picks up the computer. I tried to persuade him to have some rest, but he's mad at the thought that someone can manage to violate his cherished computer system." Laura said flatly, nodding as she made a bit of a grimace.

"Yeah." Alexis nodded firmly. "That's why we didn't even tell him of the operation. He will bitch afterwards because he's been kept out of the game, but for him it's safer this way. He's way too tired and frustrated for a battle this big."

"So... are we going...?" Killer asked, turning to Alexis as she settled a bit better the huge Blue Vixen resting on her back, and the blond ligeress nodded with a grin.

"It's madness, but let's go." Pamela said with a smile, standing quickly up and patting the SMG9 that rested at her hips, the huge scythe-sword secured on her back as Laura, Murray and the Praetorians followed rapidly, their faces showing the deepest possible confidence in the two ligers as they lined up to follow.

Killer frowned, anyway, and Alexis crossed her arms with a flat look that froze them all in place as Laura stared stupidly back at her old friend.

"Who said you are coming with us...?" Alexis asked, gently but firmly.

"We said." Laura exclaimed with a grin. "Think we will let you go out entirely alone...?"

"No way." Killer said firmly, closing his eyes and shaking his head slowly. "This is way too dangerous, and you all had already too much fighting in these days. We won't expose you to this crazy risk we are taking."

"Where Master goes, we follow. Be it Heaven or Hell, it does not matter... our lives are Master's reign. We will fight for you against demons, angels, and the Gods themselves." Pamela said gently, standing in front of Killer with loving reverence as she lowered her head a bit.

"We know we would be only dead weight against Kolna or Khaari, Majesties, but we can at least follow at a distance and keep the enemies busy as you deal with the monsters." Murray calmly added, and Killer sighed, trading a glance with Alexis, before both ligers smiled slightly.

I'd need to knock them out to leave them here... "Fine, fine... But don't get yourselves killed, please."

Killer and Alexis sat side to side in the comfortable but a bit too small for them blast-resistant seats of the fast-moving MTRV500 IFV.

The IFV module was a thickly armoured room that could house ten soldiers and that was mounted over the back of the normal chassis of the MTRV vehicle. Thus it was completely separated by the crew station, with the two men seating side to side in the front of the vehicle, and it was also just connected to the chassis, so that if a mine exploded below, the security for the soldiers inside was maximum: in the worst case, the module would be thrown away from the chassis by the force of the blast, but the chances that the explosion could pierce inside the module was next to zero. The soldiers sat down on armoured seats connected not to the floor, but to the wall, so that the force of a mine's blast was not transmitted directly to the spine of the men insides, preventing any serious damage... and there was an automatic Fire Extinguish system that used jets of a safe gas to suffocate the flames in roughly a second, before it could get very dangerous.

Differently from the normal APCs, the soldiers sat not facing each other, back to the walls of the room, but sat in the middle, back to back, the armoured wall supporting the seats separating them in two rows of five, both groups facing the walls of the room.

In front of each seat was an armoured port that could be opened to fire outwards with the personal firearm, aiming thanks to a small panel of transparent ballistic ceramics and in the roof above each seat there was a hatch, which worked also as fast escaping route in emergency.

The soldiers were rapidly deployed thanks to the armoured, electrically opened rear ramp, while the front wall, the one that kept them separated from the crew of the vehicle, was covered by flat screens showing various useful images to the infantry inside: satellite map, images coming from the sensors of the IFV itself or from external sources, and whatever else the soldiers needed to run out of the vehicle and into the fight with clear ideas on what to do, where they were, and what they had to expect from the enemy.

The winning soldier, after all, is the one that knows always where he is, and where the enemy is...

Killer and Alexis sat on a side of the armoured wall, Laura and Murray staying in other seats in the same row of five, but at a distance, leaving them some silent privacy as they all tried to concentrate and prepare for the fight to come.

The Praetorians were on the other side, and from a couple of minutes, everything was silence, since they all had finished cheeking and cleaning and reading their own weapons, and now they were preparing their minds and souls. The vehicle itself added almost no sounds at all, advancing surely and silently on its electric engines, accompanied only by a quiet humming. The two drivers in the front were driving the MTRV in the night, lights turned off and Infra-Red cameras scanning the outside world as they made their way silently cross country, past the wastelands of wrecks around Sangin and the positions of the besieging RA troops: so silently and stealthily the vehicle moved that they had calmly made their way in depth past the enemy lines...

And now, as Killer sneaked a glance to the large flat screen showing the satellite map, he saw that they were by now very close to the two square, fortified camps of the two RA Armies, which were separated but close enough to support each other if there was an attack on one...

But still, with how surrounded and outnumbered we are, they should not be waiting for us... we should have the surprise on our side...

He absently patted the massive Cobra rifle resting in his lap, dwelling on how bad things were getting... He had been fighting wars all of his life. Tens of years of first-hand experience of battles, and he had faced any kind of threat, from assassins to entire armies, to technologic monstrosities to warriors gifted with incredible powers... But from the meeting with Vera, his life had steered violently towards new and new heights. Vera had powers that went far beyond reason and even imagination. Yet, Alexis had revealed to be just as amazing, and she was steadily growing stronger, developing her powers with a rapidity and an effectiveness that was stunning.

And even me... I never thought about having... weird powers like these. And yet I'm so eager to find them out, now. And so scared at the same time. Lust for power is the ruin of everyone... and mine in particular. I can't, I can't let my power grow, with the darkness that lurks inside me. With the monster that it's me, and that I can't control... I can't...

And even after that... demons, nothing less, were coming to shake his very convictions, his beliefs... How do you keep believing in a straight world, where legends are fairy tales and gods are inventions, after you fight with actual demons...?

And now, Kolna and Khaari... Not just technology that's an age ahead of even ours... But new, weird abilities that no one know. I wonder if they have something to share with demons themselves, at this point... What's the true extent of this war we are fighting...?

He blinked and turned rapidly to the side as fingers squeezed his own gently, and he found Alexis looking at him with a soothing smile, that told him she had been thinking the exact same... And reading your thoughts, too. You should not be scared of your power, lover. You'll grow to control it, just as you control your huge strength. And that day, even the gods will bow to you...

He couldn't help but grin slightly, even as he shook his head slowly.

You aren't helping my self-control, love, but inflating my ego. He countered playfully in his mind, and she rolled her eyes with an amused grin, snorting softly.

I don't know how far we'll have to go to win this war, lover... But it does not matter. I'm with you, and there's nothing to fear, not even Hell itself. Not even Heaven. And definitely not the RA and the NWOA. One day, everything will suddenly be clear to our eyes... and when we know who and what to strike, be it God himself, we will. And we will kick his ass so hard, that history will remind it forever.

Her hand squeezed his lovingly, and he smiled softly at her, drinking of her love, of the gleam in her sapphire eyes, before she grinned and hold up a hand.

"Rock, paper, scissor for who gets Kolna and who Khaari...?" She asked cheerfully, grinning widely up at him... and he looked at her in surprise for a moment, then frowned with a suspicious look.

"Not fair. You'd know what I'd play before even me myself knew." Killer said quietly after a moment, and Alexis snorted, looking sulky as she lowered her head a bit. "Laura can play for you." Killer added with a slight grin, and the other female looked up with a grin as she heard herself being called in cause.

One moment later saw Laura standing and playing with Killer as Alexis seating at the other end of the row of seats, crossing her legs proudly and idly playing with the golden round at her neck... And she grinned widely when Laura won, her paper wrapping Killer's enormous fist.

The huge male glared a bit at the blond femme fatale as Alexis stood and winked to Laura, the two friends slamming their palms together cheerfully before the blond ligeress stretched a bit.

"Tentacle-boy is mine. You deal with the other guy."

"You so cheated." Killer countered mildly, but he grinned slightly in amusement himself nonetheless... before the voice of the driver came clearly across the Interphone, spreading from small loudspeakers in the corner of the room.

"We are at the coordinates you gave us, Majesty."

"Thanks. This is our stop... wait here, and be careful if there's patrols around." Killer said as he stood, bent forwards awkwardly not to slam his head in the roof. He had supplied the two men of the crew with the coordinates of a waiting position that was just far away enough in the vegetation around the enemy camps to be hidden to the RA eyes... which included, astutely, thermal cameras hanging from anchored aerostatic balloons hovering silently over the base, 24 hours a day. Something we often use, as well... they are learning fast..."If you can hold the position, wait for us, otherwise get back to Sangin and we'll move out by ourselves."

"Sir, yes sir." The two men answered from the front of the vehicle, and Killer quickly followed Alexis and the others down the rear ramp of the IFV, stepping out in the cool night and turning on his tactical visor as Alexis nodded to him, her own mounted sight already slightly glowing as it kicked into gear.

They walked around the vehicle as the thick, heavy door hummed quietly and closed with a hiss as the air inside was pressurized again, to keep every possible chemical, biological or in any way toxic agent out, and when they reached the front, two groups had already formed, with Laura, Murray, Kate and Crystal walking in the footsteps of Alexis and Pamela, Nikita and Valery in Killer's ones, the lioness keeping her huge, black longbow loaded and ready. Killer had a similar weapon himself at home, and he knew how silent and deadly such a huge bow of carbon composite was... And he really did not envy the ones that were going to face the perfect aim of the Amazon. He had witnessed her ability in those days of fight... and she was never something to be undervalued.

It was a few seconds later, when they approached the open area surrounding the two enormous camps, that Alexis confirmed the order for the artillery attack, ordering to fire on the agreed-coordinates.

They spied on the desolated wasteland that surrounded the two twin bases: to improve their fire range, the RA had neatly cut down every tree around the camp... and it was a large area of completely exposed terrain that they had to cross charging, under whatever fire the enemy would throw at them. They had no alternative, after all...

Killer looked at the two fortified camps, which were all but identical: two enormous, town-sized squares, delimited by a deep moat and by a thick, enormous embankment surmounted by walkways protected by spires of razor wire, which also made an external perimeter halfway between their position and the ditch. Towers made up of containers were at each corner, and large gates were opened in the embankment roughly in correspondence with the cardinal points.

And the commander's tent - surprise! - it's in the perfect middle. These camps were cool thousands of years ago... if it wasn't for their CIWSs, it would be the best target in the world for artillery fire...

And just as he was thinking that, alarms screamed in the camps, followed by screams and shouted orders as a radar picked up the incoming barrage of rockets... Which, a few seconds later, came roaring in the sky, followed by a whining, frightening whistle that sent awkward, uncomfortable shivers down the spines, like a talon clawing on a blackboard, but hundreds of times louder and worst.

And Killer stared at the red beams of light that rose into the sky from inside the perimeter of the two bases as the RA's CIWSs intercepted the incoming rockets in midair with powerful lasers. The beams moved silently from a side of the other of the sky, targeting missile after missile with a speed and an accuracy that were scary at saying the least. Explosions illumined the sky almost like it was day as many, many of the incoming rockets were almost vaporized by the tremendous heat of the beam of coherent, concentrated light, the remaining missiles roaring closer to the target in what could only be defined as an attempt of saturation attack...

The technology of the RA was formidable: Killer had seen one of those CIWSs in the images coming from the drones, and had been deeply impressed of the level of the laser technology. Now, seeing it working, he could see how much it overcame even the very effective Skyshield guns: the laser beam was immensely more powerful and mortal than bullets, and obviously light was far, far faster in reaching the targets, and the system, which the RA called Laser Phalanx, could target a much larger number of threats in a much shorter timeframe, and it could start firing at longer range. Besides, the laser needed only to stay connected to its electricity source... no reloading of ammo was requested.

It was only an example of how far the RA had reached with its technology... And it left Killer bitterly staring as missile after missile was destroyed in mid-course, until finally a very few of the rockets managed to sneak their way in the air space above the camps and they opened up, the usual rain of submunitions raining down on the tents beneath, followed by rumble of explosions and shrieks of terror and agony, as the warriors in ambush looked ahead to see flames appearing from over the height of the embankments.

Killer and Alexis exchanged a nod, and the two groups immediately charged out of the forest, with the two ligers gaining a considerable advantage as they moved with much greater speed towards the embankments of the two separated camps.

Killer looked to the side to see Alexis one last time, smiling in amusement as she effortlessly leapt over the fences of razor wire in spires and flipped in the air above the anti-tank moat, chased after in vain by several enemy riflemen that were running over the embankment...

And he rapidly turned to look up the perimeter of the camp he was charging himself, the visor starting to crow up with red icons as he rose a hand and concentrated his energy into his palm, creating a small sphere of golden light that he threw quickly into the nearer corner tower of the camp as he jumped past the razor wire.

The sphere collided with the containers piled up and exploded, tearing the tower open and blowing shreds of warped metal all around as the tall structure fell, Killer charging rapidly towards the embankment as bursts of automatic fire chased him confusedly, shouted orders resounding from over the walls as the sirens of the RA alarms continued to whine horribly with their artificial crying.

A moment later, anyhow, Killer's eyes narrowed as his ears picked up a well-known muffled sound coming from the RA camp, and he jumped forwards and went into a roll to stand in a crouch on the bottom of the moat as a barrage of mortar's shells landed all around, exploding and throwing up hails of slivers and clouds of dirt.

He snarled as he sprinted back up the steep slope, jumping out of the moat just as a second hail of high explosive shells tormented the ground behind him, Nikita, Valery and Pamela jumping into the ditch themselves to escape as the huge male now charged up the embankment itself.

Killer brought the Cobra up to his shoulder and fired a quick burst as he approached the top of the walkway, the bullets tearing through armour and flesh to send a couple of RA soldiers crashing backwards in the razor wire in lifeless heaps, and another squeeze of the trigger fired out a grenade which exploded in the middle of a group of gunners that had been turning their heavy machine gun towards him.

The liger leapt past the razor wire and into the walkway on top the embankment, quickly looking from side to side as he rose the massive Cobra assault rifle with a hand and aimed outwards to the right, while his left palm glowed with golden light as he created a ball of sparkling energy, grinning coldly as he fired off in both directions.

20 mm armour piercing rounds and fragmentation grenades ploughed the walkway to the right all the way to the fallen, burning tower, slaughtering the soldiers that had been charging along the perimeter to fight him as crumpled corpses were thrown down the tall wall by the shockwaves of the explosions, and a hail of golden spheres of energy did even worse on the left, as explosion after explosion practically destroyed even the huge embankment, throwing up eruptions of rocks and earth and dirt as the other corner tower was annihilated into a blazing explosion.

Killer looked ahead as he quickly charged down the other slope of the embankment, charging towards a tent that had been tattered by fragments of one of the rocket's submunitions and from which came agonizing whimpers.

His eyes narrowed coldly as he saw a town, not a simple camp: huge camouflaged tents had been erected in ordered rows to create four enormous districts revolving around the crossroad of the two large streets coming from the gates. Every district apparently had a Laser Phalanx CIWS in the middle, mounted on a huge, eight wheels all terrain truck and complete with the huge power generators and accumulators... And most of the thousands of soldiers in the camp were currently crowding around the tents and vehicles on flames to try and suffocate the arsons, or were gathering up around the CIWS itself fearing new artillery attacks.

The large roads were crowded with soldiers like the streets of a town during the patron saint's feast. Clustered, yeah. That's how I want you to be. It'll make everything easier.

Just as he looked towards the nearer CIWS, anyway, the turret-mounted, enormous lens turned towards him and glowed threateningly, making him wince as he leapt away from the embankment just as the thick laser beam shot out and effortlessly vaporized a large section of the huge wall, losing itself in the distance as Killer landed safely near a tent, sweating.

The heat of that beam is tremendous... But they won't fire to me across their own ranks, would them...?

Killer snarled, anyway, as his instinct kicked him and he quickly sprinted to the side, an instant before the tent was neatly vaporized by another laser beam, which sent the remaining of the large structure on flames instantly as he rounded the corner and emerged in the space between two tents... And immediately, a screaming soldier on flames jumped out shrieking in agony from the ruins of the collapsing, burning tent, and Killer winced as he crazily jogged towards him, backstepping and rising Cobra to fire a single bullet in the head of the living torch, which was slammed backwards with a splatter of gore and blood.

Gods... but they really hate me...

Killer sprinted along the mostly desert, narrow paths between the tents, and the Laser Phalanx fired once more, setting three more tents on fire as he leapt to safety as the beam made the air crackle with insane heat barely meters behind him... and he snarled as he rose his hand and fired a blazing sphere of golden energy in direction of the CIWS before sprinting forwards resolutely, turning at the corner to advance towards the middle of the district.

A massive explosion followed, and he rose his eyes with a grin to look at the flames that erupted sixty feet up into the air from above the forest of military, camouflages tents that clustered his sight... And then he snorted and punched up his powerful fist, hitting squarely a terrified RA rifleman in the jaw, sending him down in a boneless, bloody heap as the night resounded with a sickening crack.

Other soldiers ran out of the corner of a tent as they fled from the burning wreck of the CIWS truck, and they emerged in front of Killer with a gape of terror as the giant liger charged into their ranks like a launched train, slamming a first soldier to the side and into a tent with an irritated slap and knocking down several others as he literally walked over them, combat boots stomping over muzzles and limbs as he snarled and continued to advance, no matter how many of the bulky, black-armoured soldier threw themselves at him.

Killer snorted, glaring down at the crowd that was pressed between his powerful form and the tents, and he snarled as he punched his free hand into the firsts in line, knocking them sprawling backwards, knocking down the ones behind as screams of chaos and terror filled the air, and the liger opened his palm with a growl, his golden energy concentrating once more before a large ball of light was thrown in their ranks.

It did not explode immediately, but it slammed the clustered soldiers and the tents down, flattening them with absurd force, before it exploded, slaughtering the soldiers all around and hurling torn and shattered bodies all around.

Killer stepped out into the small square of the district, only to find the wreck on flame of the CIWS truck laying on its side on the bottom of a large crater, surrounded by burning corpses, result of the large sphere of energy he had throw before... And he stared for an instant at this, before he turned to the side with a growl as RA riflemen flowed out of every path and into the small square.

This time, they were a lot more organized, since men of the Senses Augmentation Suite Troops advanced in first line, shielding themselves and the following lads with their foldable shields fully deployed.

Killer looked after them with some interest as he noticed that they had evidently been enhanced again: the fully-enclosed helmet had been strengthened, and now the super-soldiers fought inside a fully-armoured exoskeleton that also allowed them to carry a lot more equipment. They now were armed with a seven-barrel minigun that was secured on their right shoulder and that could be aimed by the single forward handle they tightly seized in their hand. The massive weapon revolved its barrels lazily thanks to a small electric engine mounted on the exoskeleton, and it was feed by a large ammo reserve on the back of the soldier. To the side of that, was secured a missile launcher: its handle stuck out at the ready from over the soldier's shoulder, and in any moment the man could have snapped his hand up and grabbed it, easily pulling the missile in firing position as the launcher stayed locked over secure rails on the exoskeleton.

The middle step between conventional infantry and UCWs... troops that have the same bulk of a normal infantry grunt, even greater mobility and the firepower of a battle tank. He grinned and quickly sidestepped as the first Miniguns started rapidly revolving, delivering long bursts of bullets with their typical, threatening growl. This may become interesting...

Killer leapt above the first bursts, and as he jumped high into the air, he aimed the massive Cobra downwards, squeezing both triggers as he pointed the barrels to the crowding soldiers below, firing a waterfall of bullets and grenades, until the weapon clicked dry and he snorted, landing into the crater of the destroyed CIWS as his HE rounds exploded between the ranks of the enemy, killing several soldiers as a couple of exoskeleton-enhanced soldiers were nearly knocked to the ground face-first by the shockwaves.

The huge liger quickly dropped the empty magazines and slammed two new ones in place with a fluid, expert move, but he shouldered the massive rifle in favour of the enormous blade of Wyvern as he grinned coldly. I wanted them crowded for a reason, after all...

Killer charged back up the slope of the crater, leaping high into the air as the soldiers incoming fired at him, and slashing viciously his huge broadsword in a vicious downwards arc to hit the first SAS super-soldier.

Amazingly, the Faceless soldier rose his heavy shield with the amazing speed of its powerful, mechanic arm to protect himself, and Wyvern only dug a deep cut in the edge of the titanium-made protection. Killer snarled and instinctively kicked at the soldier below the level of the shield, and his enormous strength knocked even the exoskeleton-strengthened fighter sprawling backwards, the soldier releasing a cry of pain and surprise as the thick armour that covered his chest warped in and crushed his ribcage, coughing noisily as he knocked down several more soldiers, blood streaking out from under his helmet.

Killer immediately hold up his free hand and fired a golden beam of energy into two of the shielded super-soldiers, electricity crackling between the two as they shrieked in agony as the terrible force melt their powerful exoskeletons away quickly, burning into their bodies... But the liger was now surrounded as soldiers and half-robots charged at him from all the sides, the whole RA army trying to strike at him as he roared and slashed his enormous sword with amazing speed and strength, a snarling grin on his muzzle as he tore his way into the thick crowd, cutting into the ranks of the RA men like he was reaping corn.

He punched a soldier down, shattering his face to a bloody mush as he moved to slash Wyvern in a fast, diagonal cut that sent four more black-uniformed tigers crumbling to his feet with a splatter of gore... And a moment later he was leaping up into the air, stomping down on the helmet of a SAS soldier, his booted foot shattering through armour and skull to send the soldier falling down in a lifeless heap of flesh and ruined technology...

And he winced as he saw another SAS soldier resting at a distance grabbing his missile launcher and pulling it in position over his shoulder: the thick anti-tank missile left the tube with a quiet whoosh of air, before the proper rocket engine ignited after launch and it whizzed towards him, Killer raising his free hand to fire a thin beam of golden light that pierced the weapon from side to side.

It exploded in midair, just above the crowded soldiers, and there were shrieks of agony as slivers and debris on fire rained down on the tigers below, just as Killer landed on his feet by the wrecked CIWS truck and grinned coldly, his free hand going down to seize the warped metal, fingers crushing into the structure of the lightly armoured vehicle like it was made of butter as his vice hold squeezed the very chassis... and he lifted the huge, blackened vehicle up into the air even as he let out a challenging roar and slashed Wyvern outwards, spearing the enormous blade right across the chest of a charging soldier, who let out incoherent gargling as blood flowed out of his mouth.

And immediately after, Killer threw the enormous, wrecked vehicle into the thick, crowded ranks of the enemies, crushing tens of soldiers under the huge weight as the others stomped on each other in a chaotic attempt of running out of the way as the truck rocketed into the crowd and then started rolling on itself with loud, crying screams of metal as it bounced again and again off the ground, flattening everything under its form as it invested tents and men, thrown with such force that it looked like it would have never stopped...

But then, all of a sudden, there was a metallic crunch as something grabbed the truck in midair and amazingly stopped its crazy run... And Killer looked up to this as every soldier of the Ra gaped at the sight.

The huge, twisted and warped vehicle was thrown unceremoniously to the side as another SAS suite advanced: in this one, anyway, the exoskeleton and the helmet were golden. The newcomer advanced slowly and resolutely, the metallic hands that increased so much the strength of the already muscular, tall and bulky tiger wearing it closing and stretching their long fingers idly, almost like he was stretching after the little show... His shield was still folded away, and he did not have the minigun or the missile launcher, but two plasma blades, currently inactive, were secured at the belt and two nasty barrels stuck out from the large wrists of the exoskeleton: two large calibre guns of some sort. Dunno what they fire... and I don't see ammo reserves at all...

He did noticed strange, ancient runes and what looked almost like hieroglyphs carved in the golden metal that wrapped and protected most of the two mysterious weapons.

So, I have got the SAS Troops commander, here... Why Khaari does not show up... Coward...

"Audacious move to attack us here, Wyvern." A loud, deep voice came from under the golden helmet as the commander advanced calmly. "We weren't admittedly expecting such a crazy move, not even from you... You achieved initial surprise."

"That's because you have no military imagination at all." Killer replied with a grin. "After all, wherever else could I inflict to you such a great damage...?"

"What an audacious statement, Wyvern." The other replied with sarcasm. "But you are now alone. Alone against a whole army... Alone against our superior strength and technology. And your surprise is gone. You'd better to just surrender."

"You wish." Killer grinned with dark amusement, and he was about to add something else when his instinct shouted an alarm and he quickly ducked to a crouch, rising Wyvern up vertically: a black reptilian demon leaping at him all but sliced itself in two against the terrible blade, two severed halves falling to his sides...

But the demon hissed, and tentacles immediately sprouted out of both halves, wrapping around his wrists and ankles and even around his waist as he snarled and arched his back, flexing powerfully as he pulled with his enormous strength and slashed Wyvern down like a cleaver, neatly decapitating the remains of the beast even as he sidestepped and turned to avoid a series of vicious attacks from the soldiers around as the golden-armoured officer coldly commanded: "Kill him."

Killer snarled as he found a bulky tiger hissing at him as he leapt up to tackle him, and the first reaction of the liger was to smash a hand in his chest and knock him backwards: it worked, since the monstrous strength of Killer sent his ribcage collapsing into his vital organs, the corpse knocking backwards several more soldiers... But Killer had already swiftly turned to the side as a SAS soldier stabbed forwards with his deadly plasma blade, and Killer slammed his hand down over the handle of this, knocking the blade cutting a deep, sizzling wound in the ground before the liger spun his wrist and turned on the spot, slashing Wyvern out in a complete turn-around arc, sending the people around himself scattering around in pieces and gore...

And a moment later his sapphire eyes bulged as he saw a tremendous number of charging demons leaping towards the place of the battle, jumping high into the air above the RA soldiers and diving down at him, hissing and snarling savagely.

He quickly slammed Wyvern down to pierce into an unfortunate soldier like he was on the point to do, the blade shattering the poor body and sinking deeply point down into the ground as the huge liger kicked himself up into the air, and stood vertically up into the air with a snarl, hand on the pommel of the crimson sword's handle, head down and feet up, kicking out savagely in a turning kick that sent the demons crashing away all around with hisses of pain and hatred.

Killer grinned instead, and stomped down with joined feet into the face of a bulky tiger before he jumped away and out of the crowd, pulling Wyvern away with himself.

The liger landed with a soft, entertained pant as he stared over the enormous crowd of enemies facing him, and he quickly cut out Wyvern in a diagonal, upwards slash to the side to decapitate a charging demon...

And he grinned coldly, rising his hand and closing his eyes for a brief, fleeting fraction of second as sneaking flames of golden energy converged into his palm and into a large, blazing sphere of light that pulsated with power... And he fired it just as the combined army of soldiers and demons approached.

The blast was enormous, and the light so blazing and divine that the whole sky of that dark night was illuminated like a new sun had dawned, and a new day had born. Killer himself was almost knocked backwards from the force of the massive explosion, which vaporized away everything in a 60-meter radius, knocking all the soldiers and the tents in the district flat as the ground shook...

And terrified eyes welcomed Killer as he charged in with a snarling grin, his roar shaking bodies and souls to the very core as his new victims stared at him helplessly: hypnotized by his eyes, paralyzed by his voice. And even who managed to stand, did not managed to restrain the massive, muscular warrior as he charged and ploughed through their ranks, breaking a line, and then several others... Even if the golden-armoured officer continued to stand at a distance, the helmet covering his expression as he stared silently at the slaughter, arms crossed.

Impossible to tell what he's thinking...

Alexis charged forwards with a merciless grin as a beam of her energy torn open a large corridor in the thick crowd, the passage carpeted of smoking, burning corpses as she swung Blue Vixen out to the side, the huge sapphire blade gleaming as it cut its way across a hissing demon and a couple of riflemen in the same diagonal cut, and her finger squeezed the trigger in the handle.

Bursts of anti-armour rounds exploded in fast, angry bursts into the crowd, opening large holes in the enemy ranks as every single bullet chased a single target and mercilessly took it down with a splatter of blood as the femme fatale smiled of her snarling grin, eyes burning with flames of revenge and battle-lust even as soldiers and demons surged at her from all sides.

They practically did not dare to fire their weapons at her anymore, anyhow: they had been terrified to see their bullets and missiles either go mad when targeted at her, or in the worst case making a steep, impossible turn backwards to strike their own owners, and no one was willing to try it again.

On the other hand, in close combat they seemed to have even less chances to restrain her, since Alexis had torn into their lines like a reaper in harvest time, and the blond ligeress moved with impossible speed and grace, seeming to dance between the thick ranks of enemies as every twist of her body brought her out of the way of the enemy strikes... And Blue Vixen hit implacably every time.

She was sensual even when fighting. Perhaps, even more than usual, as she easily kicked her leg and smashed into the helmet of a SAS super-soldier hard enough to send him flying up and crashing into his comrades like a rocket, knocking several more of the grunting, shouting tigers to the ground like bowling pins. In the same time, she arched her back with a grin as several swords were stabbed at her, all missing as she moved out of the way at the last second, twisting her stunning, powerful body to turn and slash her sword in a swift horizontal arc on her side, cutting in half a couple of soldiers and pointing the blade upwards at the last moment to neatly decapitate a charging black demon, which vanished in the middle of its jump in a puff of dark smoke.

Blue Vixen completed half of a rotation, and Alexis quickly threw her weapons from a hand to the other behind her back, her blade moving to the left hand to strike viciously out in that side as her massive Desert Storm handgun moved to the right, her arm stretching up immediately to fire the massive, four-barrel gun into the snarling muzzle of another black reptile, its head exploding in a gout of gore and black matter before it vanished as well...

And already Alexis was tilting her head downwards to bite into one of the long magazines of bullets resting on the bandolier that crossed her chest, drawing the clip out with a growl and swiftly snapping it in place inside the handle of Blue Vixen as the sword came up from her vicious attack and her finger clicked the button to drop the empty magazine.

She kicked it as it fall lazily towards the ground, and the little metallic box rocketed through the enemy ranks like a cannonball with the power of her kick, taking down several enemies with howls of agony... And she immediately kicked the same foot outwards, a loud, sickening crack resounding as her blow smashed the plates of bullet-proof vest and shattered the insides of the unfortunate RA fencer.

Her foot lashed out again, anyhow, kicking another in the crotch as she cackled cruelly, dragging her feet back as the deadly spikes of steel of her boots torn deep gashes across the loins of the howling tiger, dragging out even part of his guts as the ligeress grinned.

Several soldiers on her other side tried to catch the opportunity of the moment and leapt at her, who to tackle her out of balance, who to spear her with swords, daggers and rapiers, but Alexis grinned darkly even as she took care of the other side, and her sapphire aura erupted around her form in crackling flames.

A couple of soldiers leaping at her were immediately wrapped by blue, supernatural fire and shrieked in agony as they crumpled to the ground and writhed while their forms were quickly burned and melted away, while the others quickly stopped their assault and backstepped quickly with gapes of horror...

Just before Blue Vixen lashed out at head level, decapitating four and then spearing three more in rapid succession as they ducked under the slash, taking them down with sprays of blood even before they got any awareness of her move.

"You better try something better than this!" Alexis teased, grinning widely as her flames burned even higher, blazing blue light gleaming from her before flames appeared around the heads of the demons and soldiers surrounding her, making them all look like some sort of frightening living-candle... And in an instant, even before they could actually freak out at the event, the flames grew unbearably hot, burning them away like paper as horrible shrieks rose to the sky and Alexis suddenly stood in the centre of a clear circle of at least eighty feet of radius, surrounded only of burning corpses as the rest of the army hesitatingly stared at her from around that circle of destruction. No one, after all, wanted so badly to be sliced or burned or kicked to a mush.

"Done already...?" Alexis asked with a teasing grin, standing in a ready position. "It's your leader I want... tell him to move his ass over here. I've not got all night, there are better activities I'd like to cover."

The soldiers around her exchanged worried looks... but the officers all around shouted ferocious orders in Farsi, making her growl. Kill her. Tame her. She grinned widely, then threw the empty Desert Storm high up into the air and aimed her now free palm out to fire a sphere of sapphire energy into the nearer officer, vaporizing him in the explosion as shouts of terror went off from the decimated army, before her hand easily caught the handgun as it fell back down. "You wish you could tame me, asshole."She stated in perfect Farsi, and many of the soldiers turned and fled, with several running to the tent of Kolna, to try and get him into the fight...

But the officers left quickly raised their weapons and fired, clouds of white smoke and splatters of blood erupting from the backs of the fleeing men as they were knocked down dead by the gunfire, and the other soldiers stared at this in panic, before new orders of attack followed... And Alexis grinned ferociously. "It means we need to do this the hard way, I guess..."

She threw Blue Vixen out like a boomerang as the terrified soldiers made a step forwards, and in the same time her fingers seized four new bullet-stacked barrels from the leather belt tied around her thigh as she aimed Desert Storm point down and clicked the button to release the four empty barrels, which fell down to the ground as she slammed the new one in place.

It took her perhaps half a second to accomplish the fluid, graceful move, and Blue Vixen slashed into the enemy ranks immediately after, spinning rapidly on itself as the massive sword made a full circle, sending down the whole first line with howls of agony...

And Alexis rose Desert Storm and fired quickly, point-blank over the approaching enemies, the monstrous kick of the huge .50 rounds shattering heads and sending bodies crashing backwards as her free hand glowed with sphere of energy after sphere of energy, explosions tearing open large holes in the enemy army, before she brought her huge sword back in her hand with her telekinesis. "Tired...? Because this is only foreplay. Get Kolna here, and you are out of the ring." She teased with a viciously amused grin, and the terrified soldiers once again hesitated... before ten SAS troops jumped high into the air and leapt above the whole army to land in the circle with a quiet hiss of their powerful, armoured exoskeletons as they faced Alexis.

They stood at the ready with their plasma rods already deployed, long, thin blades of burning fluid contained and shaped by a powerful electro-magnetic field... And she quickly holstered the handgun and shouldered Blue Vixen, knowing that both would have been of little use against blades capable to melt mostly anything in a blink.

She instead kicked up two folded plasma swords that SAS soldiers she had already killed had lost on the ground, hands grabbing the two anonymous-looking tubes of metal and thumb pushing on the small buttons to activate the EM field and release the super-heated plasma into it, spinning the two deadly weapons idly before she grinned and crossed the blades in front of her body.

"You are my new playmates, I bet." She teased, licking her lips slightly. "Let the game begin, then."

Killer grinned as Wyvern, now glowing with his golden aura as he fought to destroy the whole RA army surrounding him, cut effortlessly across the heaviest of armours, slicing neatly in two a SAS super-soldier as he expertly moved the enormous blade with a hand only, the other fencing a stolen plasma rod into the ranks of the enemies, melting everything it touched to incandescent liquid. Soldiers after soldiers, demons after demons came forwards to attack him, but he easily knocked them down dead or sent them sprawling over their comrades like toys, spearing across them with the long, straight beam of plasma and destroying them with the absurd power of the huge, thick crimson blade of Wyvern, batting even the huge, exoskeleton-enhanced soldiers backwards with the flat of the blade like they were rag dolls, sending large sections of the enemy army falling to the ground like bowling pins.

Despite the destructive force of his experience and brutal strength, anyway, the sheer numbers hadn't left him unfazed: the enemies trying to drown him in their number had managed to dig several minor wounds in his arms and legs in the harsh fight.

He chopped a demon in half at neck level, and then pushed the plasma rod up to pierce a soldier's head from the chin upwards, the plasma melting away the brain even before the unfortunate could cry out his agony...

And then there were howls, shouted orders in Farsi - I wish I could understand it just as well as Alexis... - and then the leftover lines of soldiers suddenly all ducked, only the demons continuing to charge, and Killer snarled as he spotted gunners behind the charging black reptiles, huge machine guns and miniguns immediately glowing with furious bursts of automatic fire.

The liger ducked quickly himself, dropping the plasma rod to rise up his palm and fire a glowing beam of golden energy against the gunners as a waterfall of bullets torn across the demon that had been leaping at him and that flew over his maned head, hissing as its body was literally maimed in midair by the gunfire.

Killer's energy smashed into the lined up gunners with the might of a comet, and they were all melted away as several more soldiers were knocked crashing backwards, just as he rolled onto his back to avoid the mantis-blades of a black demon.

Killer winced in disgust as the creature turned towards him and pulled its blades out free of the ground, several rows of deadly fangs showing in its mouth and a bit of drool landing over Killer, who made a grimace and quickly kicked a foot up in the crotch of the beast.

It was androgynous, so the blow left less damage that what it would have, but the huge strength of Killer still sent the monster up into the air with a hissing cry of agony, and the liger slashed quickly up Wyvern to chop its head off.

The demon vanished, and the tiger kicked back up to a crouch as he swung Wyvern backwards, the blade chopping in half a couple of SAS super-soldiers before he angled it to cover his head with the flat of the blade, the swords of several snarling tigers bouncing off the enormous crimson weapon before Killer pushed his blade up across the chest of one of the RA riflemen, his free hand grabbing again the plasma sabre and lashing out with tremendous speed, gracefully spinning in a complete circle around his huge, powerful form and slicing in half everyone that was surrounding him in a eight-feet radius.

The liger exploited the fleeting moment as new enemies already charged forwards, and he forced his energy to flow into Wyvern before he stabbed the blade hard into the ground and roared as his energy flooded into the earth with tremendous power.

The ground around him gleamed crimson, before large cracks and fractures appeared, and golden light blazingly erupted high towards the sky, a terrible shockwave investing the whole enemy army and knocking everyone sprawling as most of the remaining enemies were melted like ice cream, the others hurled around with shrieks of terror as they crashed to the ground far away... And who managed to stand up again quickly fled.

Killer panted, closing his eyes for a second with a wince even as his golden aura burned around his body with warm flames of power and he stood, digging Wyvern out of the ground and grinning as he saw that of the huge army, the leftover was small groups of frightened tigers that waited only to be freed by the golden-armoured officer to disband and flee as fast as they could manage...

What kind of officer leaves his troops being slaughtered in this way...? Killer thought with distaste, and a second later, suddenly, the golden armour moved with tremendous speed and rose both arms at him, cannons gleaming with unnatural black light before a barrage of small spheres of pure darkness was unleashed towards him.

Killer was sent crashing backwards into the ground as the first spheres hit him in the chest with the rapidity of machine gun fire and the explosion of grenades at the very least.

Moron... Black Killer muttered in his mind. You and your distraction... letting you be hit by such a wimp. Just let me do, and I'll have it added to the dust in the air in no time.

Just shut up. Killer thought irritably as he kicked back up to his feet, snarling.

"A whole army destroyed... The legend is true." The golden-armoured officer said calmly, his voice cold with hate. "But it won't be of any help to your cause. I counted a few thousands kills... But they will be easily replaced."

And how...? Sending to front line the cubs...? Where the hell they get this much soldiers...? "Save the monologues for your next life, whoever you are." Killer muttered, making a snarling grin a moment later. "You'll be babbling in the Elysian Fields very soon."

"How rude, Wyvern..." The other countered with teasing calm. "You killed and fought and killed a million times more than any other mortal could ever hope to... I expected you to be smarter and nicer now that you have got your last blazing victory before you die."

"How many times do I have to hear this shit...?" Killer sighed with boredom, rolling his eyes upwards. "Do you know how many tried to kill me, and how many would like to...?"

"I figure." The other replied coldly. "But this time you don't face mortals, you face demons."

"I knew already." Killer replied sharply. "Those black lizards are freaks."

The golden officer laughed, a laughter cold and without true amusement, something that made it all the more irritating to the huge liger, who had always, always hated people laughing of me...

"Those are just lesser creatures... the demonic equivalent of grunts, and of low level, besides. You don't even imagine the powers that true demons possess." The officer said clearly, and then he held up the two cannons, the runes carved on them glowing red. "I've been gifted with a sample of these powers... And now, you'll be on the receiving end."

"Try your best, then, I suggest." Killer grinned coldly. "I hoped you were either a demon, or a warrior, but sadly you are none of the two. No matter how strong you may be... you are just a half-technology, half-magic freak."

The exoskeleton-wearing officer did not reply, but the twitch of his helmet betrayed his fury and the irritation that struck him: of anything Killer could have said or done, the simple statement of what was in the end the truth seemed to bother him more than anything else... And the huge liger grinned in the awareness that, no matter what powers may have been watered on the rival, he had an advantage.

Wyvern gleamed quietly with golden light, only shadowed of crimson as the blade itself seemed to pulsate with power, like the sword had its own life... And Killer's grin widened at this awareness, and at the memory of so many fights, of so many duels fought and won with muscles, mind... and this very blade.

The exoskeleton charged forwards, arms crossing on the chest of the half tiger and half machine as he seized both of the large handles of titanium at his belt, drawing them out with tremendous speed as Killer's eyes followed him... And the two tubes of steel suddenly gleamed when two large, enormous blades of plasma appeared, restrained inside a powerful electro-magnetic field: not the usual, thin and long rods, but two broadswords of red, super-heated plasma, that apparently was feed into the weapons by large tubes connected to the back of the exoskeleton.

The machine gave the officer a tremendous speed, and in a couple of long, leaping steps he was roaring, cutting downwards with both plasma blades as Killer snarled and quickly let himself fall, ducking and rising the thin blade of plasma he was still holding.

The blades collided, and lightnings and sparkles crackled out at the impact, as the three electric fields smashed together, and Killer stared with a snarl up to the expressionless golden helmet that loomed over him... And his snarl become a grin as his muscles bulged as he pushed upwards, his plasma rod repealing both of the enormous broadswords, pushing the mighty exoskeleton backwards even as the powerful engines and actuators of the machine screamed and tried to give the most power possible to crush him out of existence...

And even as sweat rolled down his features, unbearable heat coming from the clashing blades and making him feel almost on fire, Killer started to inexorably win the duel of strength, his grin growing wider...

And he could imagine the expression hidden under the helmet as it shook from side to side in denial and shock. "Impossible!" The officer behind it shrieked. "This is impossible, your strength cannot be this great!"

"Protest with the trade union." Killer growled back, grinning as he forced up to his feet and punched forwards the hand that was nearly crushing the handle of the plasma rod, such was the strength of his hold. The exoskeleton staggered backwards, and some part of the complex machine gave in as smoke and sparkles exploded out of a shoulder and an arm suddenly become much, much weaker... And now the huge, twenty-foot tall half-robotic creature was knocked backwards and viciously struck at a leg by an immediate swing of Wyvern, the blade cutting even in the thick armour and severing several cables before it dug, even if not too deeply, into flesh, blood spraying out of the breech as the officer staggered backwards and hissed in agony.

Killer charged forwards quickly, but the rival raised an arm and the cannon on his wrist glowed once more, before a hurricane of flames erupted from it. Flames that were, absurdly, black. The liger grunted at this, throwing himself off to the side and rolling on his shoulder to get out of the way as the flames reduced everything to ashes in one instant, drawing a line of destruction that had to be at least one hundred feet long, and he quickly stood and leapt high into the air as the robotic officer spun on himself and the typhoon of flames continued to erupt and twist in the air like a snake, worst than any mortal flamethrower could have ever been...

And the officer now cackled, stupidly laughing in victory even as the liger avoided again the snake of flames... And a second later, Killer spun on himself and fired a quick, small sphere of golden energy from a finger he rose from the handle of the plasma rod.

The rival quickly rose the other arm and an egg-shaped shield of darkness appeared all around him, the sphere exploding uselessly against this... But at least, the eruption of flames ceased, and Killer immediately charged towards the enemy, golden aura dancing around his form and throwing blazing light all around them as the small groups of exhausted soldiers left around stared and gaped at their duel...

And Wyvern and the plasma rod both slashed against the shield, from side to side, clashing with the rumble of thunder against the solid wall of darkness as lightnings flew high from the impact... But the officer inside laughed as every slashed was stopped by his shield.

"Seen...? Your physical power, enormous as it is, will not save you against me..." The irritant, and now worst of all amused voice came from under the helmet, distorted, and warped by the shield of darkness, almost like it was a dimensional tear...

But Killer's eyes widened with a snarl when the rival raised both cannons and fired point-blank against him. He quickly twisted out of the way, and a large beam of black energy lost itself in the distance... but a crackling sphere of what looked almost electricity hit him with the strength of a giant's punch.

Killer was knocked backwards on his back with a grunt, eyes shutting in pain as he coughed in what was almost a snarl of self-hate and complaint... And Black Killer, of course, attempted to get control on his mind immediately... Let me do, I say... You are simply incapable to even understand the full extent of our common power... Let me do, I'll crush him like a bug...

Fuck off and die! Killer internally snarled, eyes snapping back open with a snarl as he tried to push back to his feet... And his eyes frowned in a grimace as he took awareness of the enormous effort it took, and of how slowly he was moving. His eyes darted downwards - and how much time even that seemed to require...! - and he saw that very same strange, electricity-looking force crackling around his body, glowing spitefully every time he forced his limbs moving, electricity locked to the earth itself and wrapping around his arms, legs and waist, restraining him.

"Nice, isn't so...?" The very best weapon to restrain someone like you... there's no mortal chain that could ever stand up to your might..." The officer chanted in slow, teasing and horribly falsely affective voice. Patronizing. Killer almost jumped forwards with a snarl, but even his tremendous strength did not manage to break those magical restraints, and he made barely a couple of steps forwards before the chains pulled him heavily down to his knees.

The other stopped in his tracks, looking surprised of just how much Killer had still managed to move despite the magic, and despite the shield of darkness that still surrounded him and protected him. But he laughed, a nervous laughter that rose loud and artificial, an attempt to reassure himself more than to irritate the liger... "No way you break free... The more strength you use against those restraints, and the stronger they get! You'll never break free!"

He fears us like a hare fears a feral tiger... Let me go. I'll shred him in a second. One second only...

Killer could almost see the grin of his Black self... for an instant, he believed he saw in his mind an image of Black Killer laying lazily on a chaise-longue of gold and red velvet, grinning in amusement... Couldn't you just say me what I should do to break free? Killer internally growled, and Black Killer grinned wider, rising a finger to gesture a no.

Afraid I cannot. Come on, let me go. It's matter of a second.

It's the price that is not advantageous. Killer countered. After that second, you would never go away.

"I'll allow you the death that a dyed-in-the-wool warrior like you always longs for, since I'm so nice..." The golden-armoured officer continued, and he was now stepping around Killer to stand at his side, rising one massive plasma-broadsword to strike and decapitate him.

"Live by sword..." Came from under the helmet, and Killer snarled, pulling furiously on the restrains, which once more glowed red, blazing this time, and Killer stood, even if it took a tremendous effort, every muscle in his body bulging powerfully as his own musculature seemed on the point to explode out of his hide of skin and white fur... And no one can even imagine how much strength was applied on the chains of sizzling energy, but they did not break.

But flames of golden and black light alike erupted from Killer's form in a hurricane as he roared, a new dawn making noon's light in half of the sky and an obscurity of inconceivable darkness erasing the sight of even the stars in the other half as the exoskeleton-wearing officer was knocked away like a feather, and the restraints snapped broken, one after the other, as Killer turned with a low, deep and soul-shaking growl, his mane dancing slowly on his head, almost like the ocean's waves were moving the long bangs of fur... and the huge liger dropped the plasma rod with cold indifference, rising his open palm and firing out a tremendous beam of golden light that smashed into the shield of darkness around the officer, who shrieked and stared stupidly at the incoming death.

The shield shattered like glass, and the large beam invested him and vaporized the tiger and the exoskeleton out of existence, leaving nothing behind...

And Killer stared at this as he panted, his aura receding slowly into his being as he was left exhausted for a moment, the huge warrior dropping to a knee and breathing heavily, muscular chest heaving as he supported himself over Wyvern, buried point-down into the earth.

He snapped a couple of glares around himself, and most of the survivors of the army were fleeing... But he snarled and immediately slashed Wyvern back up as a few approached, probably thinking he was done, and that they could easily take him down now...

But he don't even needed to show how wrong they were as a light, deadly harrow of titanium flew past him, and he grinned, looking up just in time to see it sinking almost entirely in the eye of a charging RA soldier, knocking him down dead with the tip of the arrow poking out from the back of his helmet.

Valery stood up quickly from her crouch and swiftly moved another arrow in place from the sheath on her back as she straightened with a glare, aiming a new target and Pamela and Nikita charged forwards with their scythe swords at the ready, quickly maiming four of the audacious soldiers as he stood up and grinned. All three of them were covered in blood and gore, and they also had a few wounds here and there... But they still go strong...

"It took a lot... Found traffic...?" He teasingly asked, and Pamela snorted amusedly, giving him a grin of both admiration and tease from over her shoulder.

"A bit. A group of enemies tried to keep us away from our Master." Valery stated from her position, even as she let another arrow whiz in the air to strike another target.

"Not that their army managed that much, even if we weren't here helping you." Valery grinned mercilessly as she neatly chopped the head off another RA soldier with a swing of her scythe-sword. "It was the most incredible things I ever saw, Master."

"Thank you." Killer chuckled, and he looked with a grin over the three of them as they quickly and effectively dealt with the leftover. "It looks like you don't need instructions here. I'll be fighting Khaari myself... the bastard is hiding."

"Go." Pamela nodded with a grin. "We'll be keeping the others busy. Even if you did not left much to restrain..."

Alexis pulled Blue Vixen back out of the warped and half-melted exoskeleton that was still smoking quietly, and she grinned viciously as she rose the weapon back up in front of herself, ready to once more tear her way across the enemy ranks, which were now much thinner and weaker, with perhaps as much as the 80 % of the troops already laying broken and destroyed on the main road of the camp.

Still, amazingly, Kolna hadn't revealed himself... And judging from how the sky had trembled and had been illuminated day-like, Killer had been fighting a very hard battle.

That was so impressive, lover... You'll never cease to surprise me.

The ligeress charged forwards once more, and the swing of Blue Vixen drew an ample empty area around her powerful form... And in that same moment she grinned as a few shadows dived out from the darkness and long, curving scythes decapitated two more soldiers, as Crystal and Kate jumped into the battle with loud, challenging shouts. Laura, bloodstained but grinning and cheerful, emerged to the side of Alexis a moment later, trading a wink with her as she pushed her sword in the abdomen of another enemy, and Murray appeared on her other side a moment later.

"We can restrain what's left, majesty!" He assured, even as he panted heavily. "Get Kolna!"

And Alexis grinned and nodded with cold, dark amusement as she slashed open a passage in the crowd and charged ahead. "He's fucked." The ligeress promised, and her grin, her focused and darkly amused gaze and the fact that she had just slaughtered an army by herself made her word very convincing and reliable.