09-14-2016, 11:10 PM
"Hey Hernandez. Did your mother ever tell you that you were a special snowflake?"
Toni asked the corporal strapped in next to her who was porting the stubby SAW-K, a great burly man with coal black skin and steely whites. He was going to have fun fishing himself out of the drink carrying all that ammo.
The RAH-72 Arapahoe crew chief got up from his seat and flung the doors open. The cold blast from the downdraft of the helicopter rotor blades hit her. She looked out over the landscape. Wasn't much to see at night. Silhouettes of trees along the far ridge. The helicopter was skirting the spur around the ridge so as to approach the lake undetected from the other side. "Two minutes to the drop zone, Sarge," the chief said.
She nodded, and turned back to the corporal. He was scowling at her. Or maybe trying not to blush, if that were possible. "She did call you her special snowflake, didn't she? I know she did."
Toni patted him on the helmet. "Get your bib inflated, Snowflake."
The corporal pulled a string at his neck, activating the inflation device. It would be sufficient for him to maintain buoyancy, which was particularly vital when jumping from a craft like the Arapahoe because they couldn't jump with a hard duck. There wasn't room for one inflated raft, let alone two. That meant precious moments to get the raft inflated. The pilot broke in over her comm link. "Sixty seconds. Slowing to 10 knots and six feet."
"Rodger, sir,"
she replied. "Chalk 3 standing by. Request helocast from 20 feet. Don't want to make it too easy."
Snowflake didn't look very happy about that.
"Affirmative. Fifteen seconds."
Toni released her straps as the helicopter buffeted a bit and climbed a few feet. The land gave way to water and she could see the ripples from the rotor as they pushed out. This was the most dangerous part of the insertion, because they would be exposed for nearly half a minute while jumping.
"Go! Ducks in the water!"
she yelled, instructing her squad to exit. They pushed out, two at a time, one out each door, jumping feet first into the dark water. As the squad leader she took the position of "chalk pusher" and got them moving. Within fifteen seconds all twelve bodies had jumped. Toni gave her regards to the crew chief, activated the night vision on her Land Warriors, and stepped out of the craft.
The free fall took over a second, and she smashed into the cold water with a wet smacking sound. There was a moment of disorientation as she went under, before her bib pulled her back up. She was carrying a full ruck and it tried to drag her down. They hadn't put on flippers, so it was useless to try kicking her way back up. Maybe 20 feet had been pushing it, but aw fuck it, why not? You had to train like you fought, so you can fight like you trained.
She broke the surface and looked behind her. The duckies had been inflated and were moving toward her. They were filling up fast as they zipped by just slow enough for the Rangers to grab onto a side and pull themselves in. Toni always struggled with this part. That's why she was carrying the heavy ruck. As the craft neared her, she grabbed hold of the rope with her left hand, swung her M6 into the craft with the right, and used both hands to pull herself out of the drink. Grunting, she pulled her legs out of the water and over the side. Two hands grabbed her ruck and dragged her over.
Toni looked up. "Thanks for the assist, Snowflake," she said. She took the magazine out of her weapon and cycled it. All good. She slammed the magazine back in and loaded a round. With her Land Warriors she signaled to the other craft with an IR beam and painted the shoreline. They cut through the water. The lake wasn't large, but the point of the helocast was to practice the insertion technique.
They reached the shoreline and dragged the ducks into the tree line, stowing them out of sight. They wouldn't be able to use them to get out. Toni checked the map. The waterproof fold out map was obsolete with the advent of the Land Warriors, however it was important to not use the skill. Hell, at Camp Hoover her Warriors had been designed to fail. Every fucking time. Fucking cheaters. Okay. They would skirt around the ridge for about a mile and make a loop, and hopefully drop in behind the opposing force. "Scout team,"
she said, pulling her three-striper over to her. "Hoof it to the ridge line. Get eyes in the air and wait for orders. When we come around we'll see what we're looking at."
They'd probably execute a classic pincer move. They'd lay down a fire base on one side and sweep down on them from the other. The sergeant nodded and signaled his team to move. They'd deploy the MPRAQ-12 Cardinal, a handheld reconnaissance drone system that would give them a real time bird's eye view of the battlefield.
It took about fifteen minutes to make the long loop around the ridge. Toni had them move two at a time, expecting to make contact at any moment. The OPFOR was forever trying to find new ways to trip Blue Force up, even putting out deep patrols from their encampment. They swung around to an approximate 90 degree angle to the scout team. She sent the heavy weapons moving down the spur to the right and took the last four of her squad members down a narrow draw, making all too much noise with snapping twigs and dead leaves. She winced.
There were lights up ahead. Toni motioned for the squad to halt and they dropped to the prone position, taking up guard. She switched her Land Warriors on. Okay. The drones were in the air. And now she saw why they didn't bother to send deep patrols out. The camp was in the middle of a large clearing. The tree line was almost three hundred yards away from the first sentries. And they were heavily fortified. She counted three machine gun emplacements just on this side, protected with heavy sandbag cover from mortars. Two Joint Strike Vehicles with light armor, one with a Mk19 grenade launcher and the other with a heavy anti-air battery. Plus an Electronic Countermeasures dome. That thing, when switched on, would attempt to overwhelm their frequencies and render their electronics incapable of communication. There appeared to be an entire platoon of personnel, if not more.
Aright. This was doable. "Get the bees out,"
she whispered. Toni dropped her ruck and ran up the spur to her weapons team. Snowflake was unburdening his SAW-K and popped it up on the bi-pod. "See that ECM dome? On my mark, hit it with the AT4 and lay down suppressive fire."
He nodded, and patted one of his soldiers on the arm, who prepared the rocket tube. A shaped charge of molten copper fired at hypersonic speed would knock out a dome just as well as a tank.
She crawled back down the slope. The squad members she'd left behind had unloaded several long, thin cases from their rucksacks, clearly marked in blue lettering "TRAINING ONLY." They popped them open in a line. Inside, cradled in individual protective foam beds, were dozens of little tiny drones, each one smaller than her palm. Extraordinarily inexpensive and easy to replace. The MAQ-4 Lethal Autonomous Weapons System. Also known as the Killerbee. They hypothetically had a range of about 40 miles. Each one was capable of firing three tiny shaped charges with pinpoint precision. This squad was only packing a couple hundred of them, and she'd wondered why they were told to carry them at all on this mission. Until now.
The LAWS came with a handheld touchscreen, though it wasn't required to use. She could operate it with her Land Warriors or even halfway across the world, with the right signal. But the closer you were to it, the less likely a jamming system could overwhelm the signal. They packed advance electronic counter-countermeasures including frequency modulation and encryption, and each device kept in contact with all the others. However a powerful enough transmitter could render them unable to communicate with each other for a short period of time. Likely a much more powerful jammer than the OPFOR carried. Best be safe, however.
Toni switched on the touchscreens. The tiny drones came to life, beating miniscule wings just like real insects. They rose up, one by one, until they'd formed into an undulating swarm of mechanical insects, dispersing into the trees. They silently dispersed across the target zone. Radar wouldn't pick them up. If it was tuned that sensitive, it would pick up every insect out here in the Georgia hills. Toni set the LAWS to targeting mode with manual kill trigger required. The entire system could automate. With her overview fed to her by a conglomerate of the things' cameras, she began to see targets light up in red, indicating that one of the Killerbees, or many, had a bead on the target. Pretty soon every identifiable soldier was lit up. And the weapons systems. And the vehicles.
Toni sent a digital message out to the squad over the local link. "Await my mark. Do not leave cover."
The drones started to descend upon the camp, fluttering down like little silent snowflakes. Silent snowflakes of death.
"Mark."
The AT4 made a popping sound. Her Land Warriors picked up the sudden IR flag on the target. Obviously they couldn't use a real rocket. The ECM dome was flagged now as "destroyed." The squad opened up fire, weapons blazing in a line. Her ears filled with the sharp crackling sounds and her vision clouded with flashes of fire. They were firing out blue chalk rounds and probably giving the emplacements a good dusting, but probably not causing much of an impact. It stung when you got hit with one, though. Especially since they weren't wearing power armor for this exercise.
Toni only let the suppressive fire go on for two seconds before she pulled the trigger on the swarm. A moment later came a sound like a thousand loose pennies hitting a coffee table. This almost takes the fun out of it.
Targets neutralized.
"God-Fucking-Damnit!" Toni could hear the cursing all the way out at the tree line.
Never mind. That made it worth it. "Hooah!"
she yelled back. "Haha! Is that you Johnson? You've just been punked by Blue Force, you little bitch!"
She motioned for the squad to close in and put the touchscreen back in its case. The bees would be returning to their cradles. But she wanted to see the look on that asshole's face herself.
And sure as shit, there he was, Staff Sergeant Johnson, the same sad sack of shit that he was back in Ranger School, at the second machine gun emplacement. There was a smudge of blue on the side of his face and another on the back of his helmet. He had his hands up in the air. "How does it feel to be dead, fucker?"
she smirked, tapping him in the chest.
He scowled. "I'd ask you how it felt to be a bitch, but you got to have feelings first. The face? Really?"
She shrugged. "It's not supposed to do that with the training rounds. Guess you got unlucky."
She patted him on the cheek. "Suck it up, you fucking snowflake. You want to live forever?"
Yeah, that suited Johnson much better than that other snowflake. Toni had carried his ass all the way through Ranger School. Damn blue falcon. He was much better on the OPFOR, cause then she could fuck with him so much more.
Her squad moved through the camp to search for "survivors," but there was hardly any point. The bees had done their job well.
"All right, squad,"
she called out, bringing them in. "Good job, squad. Take five. Hell, take ten. Then we round up the equipment and debrief. Smoke 'em if you got 'em."
Yeah, winning was a lot more fun than losing.
Toni asked the corporal strapped in next to her who was porting the stubby SAW-K, a great burly man with coal black skin and steely whites. He was going to have fun fishing himself out of the drink carrying all that ammo.
The RAH-72 Arapahoe crew chief got up from his seat and flung the doors open. The cold blast from the downdraft of the helicopter rotor blades hit her. She looked out over the landscape. Wasn't much to see at night. Silhouettes of trees along the far ridge. The helicopter was skirting the spur around the ridge so as to approach the lake undetected from the other side. "Two minutes to the drop zone, Sarge," the chief said.
She nodded, and turned back to the corporal. He was scowling at her. Or maybe trying not to blush, if that were possible. "She did call you her special snowflake, didn't she? I know she did."
Toni patted him on the helmet. "Get your bib inflated, Snowflake."
The corporal pulled a string at his neck, activating the inflation device. It would be sufficient for him to maintain buoyancy, which was particularly vital when jumping from a craft like the Arapahoe because they couldn't jump with a hard duck. There wasn't room for one inflated raft, let alone two. That meant precious moments to get the raft inflated. The pilot broke in over her comm link. "Sixty seconds. Slowing to 10 knots and six feet."
"Rodger, sir,"
she replied. "Chalk 3 standing by. Request helocast from 20 feet. Don't want to make it too easy."
Snowflake didn't look very happy about that.
"Affirmative. Fifteen seconds."
Toni released her straps as the helicopter buffeted a bit and climbed a few feet. The land gave way to water and she could see the ripples from the rotor as they pushed out. This was the most dangerous part of the insertion, because they would be exposed for nearly half a minute while jumping.
"Go! Ducks in the water!"
she yelled, instructing her squad to exit. They pushed out, two at a time, one out each door, jumping feet first into the dark water. As the squad leader she took the position of "chalk pusher" and got them moving. Within fifteen seconds all twelve bodies had jumped. Toni gave her regards to the crew chief, activated the night vision on her Land Warriors, and stepped out of the craft.
The free fall took over a second, and she smashed into the cold water with a wet smacking sound. There was a moment of disorientation as she went under, before her bib pulled her back up. She was carrying a full ruck and it tried to drag her down. They hadn't put on flippers, so it was useless to try kicking her way back up. Maybe 20 feet had been pushing it, but aw fuck it, why not? You had to train like you fought, so you can fight like you trained.
She broke the surface and looked behind her. The duckies had been inflated and were moving toward her. They were filling up fast as they zipped by just slow enough for the Rangers to grab onto a side and pull themselves in. Toni always struggled with this part. That's why she was carrying the heavy ruck. As the craft neared her, she grabbed hold of the rope with her left hand, swung her M6 into the craft with the right, and used both hands to pull herself out of the drink. Grunting, she pulled her legs out of the water and over the side. Two hands grabbed her ruck and dragged her over.
Toni looked up. "Thanks for the assist, Snowflake," she said. She took the magazine out of her weapon and cycled it. All good. She slammed the magazine back in and loaded a round. With her Land Warriors she signaled to the other craft with an IR beam and painted the shoreline. They cut through the water. The lake wasn't large, but the point of the helocast was to practice the insertion technique.
They reached the shoreline and dragged the ducks into the tree line, stowing them out of sight. They wouldn't be able to use them to get out. Toni checked the map. The waterproof fold out map was obsolete with the advent of the Land Warriors, however it was important to not use the skill. Hell, at Camp Hoover her Warriors had been designed to fail. Every fucking time. Fucking cheaters. Okay. They would skirt around the ridge for about a mile and make a loop, and hopefully drop in behind the opposing force. "Scout team,"
she said, pulling her three-striper over to her. "Hoof it to the ridge line. Get eyes in the air and wait for orders. When we come around we'll see what we're looking at."
They'd probably execute a classic pincer move. They'd lay down a fire base on one side and sweep down on them from the other. The sergeant nodded and signaled his team to move. They'd deploy the MPRAQ-12 Cardinal, a handheld reconnaissance drone system that would give them a real time bird's eye view of the battlefield.
It took about fifteen minutes to make the long loop around the ridge. Toni had them move two at a time, expecting to make contact at any moment. The OPFOR was forever trying to find new ways to trip Blue Force up, even putting out deep patrols from their encampment. They swung around to an approximate 90 degree angle to the scout team. She sent the heavy weapons moving down the spur to the right and took the last four of her squad members down a narrow draw, making all too much noise with snapping twigs and dead leaves. She winced.
There were lights up ahead. Toni motioned for the squad to halt and they dropped to the prone position, taking up guard. She switched her Land Warriors on. Okay. The drones were in the air. And now she saw why they didn't bother to send deep patrols out. The camp was in the middle of a large clearing. The tree line was almost three hundred yards away from the first sentries. And they were heavily fortified. She counted three machine gun emplacements just on this side, protected with heavy sandbag cover from mortars. Two Joint Strike Vehicles with light armor, one with a Mk19 grenade launcher and the other with a heavy anti-air battery. Plus an Electronic Countermeasures dome. That thing, when switched on, would attempt to overwhelm their frequencies and render their electronics incapable of communication. There appeared to be an entire platoon of personnel, if not more.
Aright. This was doable. "Get the bees out,"
she whispered. Toni dropped her ruck and ran up the spur to her weapons team. Snowflake was unburdening his SAW-K and popped it up on the bi-pod. "See that ECM dome? On my mark, hit it with the AT4 and lay down suppressive fire."
He nodded, and patted one of his soldiers on the arm, who prepared the rocket tube. A shaped charge of molten copper fired at hypersonic speed would knock out a dome just as well as a tank.
She crawled back down the slope. The squad members she'd left behind had unloaded several long, thin cases from their rucksacks, clearly marked in blue lettering "TRAINING ONLY." They popped them open in a line. Inside, cradled in individual protective foam beds, were dozens of little tiny drones, each one smaller than her palm. Extraordinarily inexpensive and easy to replace. The MAQ-4 Lethal Autonomous Weapons System. Also known as the Killerbee. They hypothetically had a range of about 40 miles. Each one was capable of firing three tiny shaped charges with pinpoint precision. This squad was only packing a couple hundred of them, and she'd wondered why they were told to carry them at all on this mission. Until now.
The LAWS came with a handheld touchscreen, though it wasn't required to use. She could operate it with her Land Warriors or even halfway across the world, with the right signal. But the closer you were to it, the less likely a jamming system could overwhelm the signal. They packed advance electronic counter-countermeasures including frequency modulation and encryption, and each device kept in contact with all the others. However a powerful enough transmitter could render them unable to communicate with each other for a short period of time. Likely a much more powerful jammer than the OPFOR carried. Best be safe, however.
Toni switched on the touchscreens. The tiny drones came to life, beating miniscule wings just like real insects. They rose up, one by one, until they'd formed into an undulating swarm of mechanical insects, dispersing into the trees. They silently dispersed across the target zone. Radar wouldn't pick them up. If it was tuned that sensitive, it would pick up every insect out here in the Georgia hills. Toni set the LAWS to targeting mode with manual kill trigger required. The entire system could automate. With her overview fed to her by a conglomerate of the things' cameras, she began to see targets light up in red, indicating that one of the Killerbees, or many, had a bead on the target. Pretty soon every identifiable soldier was lit up. And the weapons systems. And the vehicles.
Toni sent a digital message out to the squad over the local link. "Await my mark. Do not leave cover."
The drones started to descend upon the camp, fluttering down like little silent snowflakes. Silent snowflakes of death.
"Mark."
The AT4 made a popping sound. Her Land Warriors picked up the sudden IR flag on the target. Obviously they couldn't use a real rocket. The ECM dome was flagged now as "destroyed." The squad opened up fire, weapons blazing in a line. Her ears filled with the sharp crackling sounds and her vision clouded with flashes of fire. They were firing out blue chalk rounds and probably giving the emplacements a good dusting, but probably not causing much of an impact. It stung when you got hit with one, though. Especially since they weren't wearing power armor for this exercise.
Toni only let the suppressive fire go on for two seconds before she pulled the trigger on the swarm. A moment later came a sound like a thousand loose pennies hitting a coffee table. This almost takes the fun out of it.
Targets neutralized.
"God-Fucking-Damnit!" Toni could hear the cursing all the way out at the tree line.
Never mind. That made it worth it. "Hooah!"
she yelled back. "Haha! Is that you Johnson? You've just been punked by Blue Force, you little bitch!"
She motioned for the squad to close in and put the touchscreen back in its case. The bees would be returning to their cradles. But she wanted to see the look on that asshole's face herself.
And sure as shit, there he was, Staff Sergeant Johnson, the same sad sack of shit that he was back in Ranger School, at the second machine gun emplacement. There was a smudge of blue on the side of his face and another on the back of his helmet. He had his hands up in the air. "How does it feel to be dead, fucker?"
she smirked, tapping him in the chest.
He scowled. "I'd ask you how it felt to be a bitch, but you got to have feelings first. The face? Really?"
She shrugged. "It's not supposed to do that with the training rounds. Guess you got unlucky."
She patted him on the cheek. "Suck it up, you fucking snowflake. You want to live forever?"
Yeah, that suited Johnson much better than that other snowflake. Toni had carried his ass all the way through Ranger School. Damn blue falcon. He was much better on the OPFOR, cause then she could fuck with him so much more.
Her squad moved through the camp to search for "survivors," but there was hardly any point. The bees had done their job well.
"All right, squad,"
she called out, bringing them in. "Good job, squad. Take five. Hell, take ten. Then we round up the equipment and debrief. Smoke 'em if you got 'em."
Yeah, winning was a lot more fun than losing.