04-30-2015, 05:34 AM
When I returned to the sorry state of a military barracks for the briefing, I zoomed past everything else so that I only had to interact with the jackass officer and ignore everyone else. I brushed past the front desk, forced my way through the crowd of pencil pushers and ground stompers, and gave the finger to one squad who were about ready to intercept me and I quickly entered Lt Jones' office while they were still taken back by the gesture. Didn't even give the officer a knock. I had enough of the Empire's people for today, and how many fucks I had to give was in short supply.
What I was expecting from the briefing was something more akin of the villain's introduction in a spy move than a proper briefing. The room would be at mood lighting, Jones' face would be framed by the glow of his computer monitor, he would have his hands together with the fingers steeped, I would get orders to kill some political rival or activist or something else that's slimy and seedy with some poorly veiled threats, and as soon as I left he would be making the call to have me killed soon after. It to my pleasant surprise then that the room was bright, files and data tablets were neatly arranged for my consumption, and Jones was in the middle of eating a reuben sandwich out of a styrophone container with a second similar container on my side of the table.
"Oh, Doomguy" he was surprised, since I didn't bother to announce my arrival and he was in the middle of wiping some thousand island dressing out of his beard. He waved me over to his desk with a same friendliness as the other day, and when I sat down he pushed the container towards me "You really should knock. But since you're here so quickly lets get to the briefing"
I pushed the little foam clam box off to the side without bothering to look, despite the generous offer, and went straight for the files. A vanilla folder opened up into a few page showing the profile of one Roger Mills, infiltration expert and Empire sleuth. Or so I figured, as his actual profile listed most of the information in the form of long black unreadable bars. You generally don't have your file classified like this if you're the janitor. The picture looked nice, at least, and I assume that's the reason it was even added to the file at all.
"As of o'six hundred today, our operative undercover in the Pianta Syndicate criminal organisation gave us a signal to be extracted from his position, and has since gone silent. We are unsure of the reason, but we're sending you to go in, do what you needs to be done to save them, and get him out. He will be under the false name of 'Jolt' and will be distinguished by a red bandanna on his sleeve" I didn't know bandanna were still in flavor for criminal dipsticks.
"What's the ROE?" I asked as I picked up the tablet, which had a map which pointed out my target. The Rules Of Engagements were what soldier followed by in a mission, or at least tried to. It's a misconception that soldier were just told to just go here and shoot up the place, but then I also expected that the Empire wasn't so bothered about retraining force against their enemies.
"You are cleared for lethal force. I would recommend to not engage unless needed, but my superiors encourage you to 'deal with the scum', in their words" Although my helmet prevent direct eye contact between the both of us, I still tried my best to stare down the lieutenant. Even if I didn't like gangsters, that kind of mind set was down right sickening to hear out loud and so boldly. I think he got the message, though "It's not MY policy, just the Empire's"
"So why not just send your own jackasses. Why put this on me?" He didn't look happy at the insult I threw at the officer's men, but he still answered my question
"To be honest? Deniability. We're meant to not just uphold order, but to keep an image of it. Stormtroopers breaching a warehouse or a store raises questions about what happened there to warrant it. But a single man with an unknown affiliation? That could mean anything. Crazy prime causing trouble, or pirates raiding a abandoned building, and that's expected for us to react to" my brow just scrunched more and more as I was hearing this. This kind of dishonesty rubbed me the wrong way, potentially putting people in danger for an image.
"Out of sight, out of mind, then." I paraphrased for him, but shook my head in disapproval. Not that I could do anything about it at the moment, and I would just have to self-regulate myself in spite of the 'superiors'. "Alright, I'll get your man. Don't wait up" Since I was done absorbing all the information, I grabbed the styrofoam box and then started to leave. when I opened up the cheap container I was surprised to find not just a sandwich, but also a large pile of cigarettes and and empty beer cans. I looked over to Jones, who stared back with a very serious glance.
"Please refrain from bribing my men in the future" he demanded in that subtle tone of someone holding back true fury, and I left with a sheepish grin and a sore reminder.
The building itself was nothing suspicious, although that was probably the point. It looked like your average five story projects apartment building, a mostly brick and concrete block with little in the way of style of personality of it's own, but plenty added by the locals in the form of one kind of vandalism or another. You probably wouldn't have even noticed the guards or the added defenses meant to weather a frontal assault, if you didn't know what to look for. That made my job more difficult, and the map provided was probably no long accurate with whatever the mobsters did to the inside. Going through the front door was right out, and the side doors would lead into a death trap. But that still left one entrance, and I hoped they weren't smart enough to figure it out: the roof access.
Down the street, I took a fire escape up to the top and poked me head over the edge. No guard, alhtough there might still be one inside, and there was a door into the building. Good start, I wasn't royally fucked. Any start where I wasn't fucked was a good one. I kept low to the concrete and jumped from roof to roof, my eye out for anyone who might have looked my way as I got closer to the target building. The streets were almost deserted , everyone with a brain kept away from this part of the city and those that had no choice kept to themselves and walked quickly. So they weren't on the out look for a soldier in dayglow green jumping across buildings. I reached the last building without incident, and I got my shotgun ready to infiltrate the base.
I grabbed the door handle and slowly turned it. First problem: locked. I could just kick it down, but then every gun trotting asshat in a mile would be coming down on my head. That might have stopped someone else, but with prime privileges I could just whip up the right tools in just a few minutes. My lock picking skills might be rusty, or non-existent, but there's not a whole lot of skill needed in a blow torch and a screw driver. There was a slight CLUNK as I knocked the melted lock out of it's socket, and I was inside. No one was on the other side, and a glance down the stairs had no one at station. I kept the shotgun close to my body so that it wouldn't signal my position to whatever idiot was around the corner, and started sweeping the top floor for my target.
The building itself was in a miserable state of disrepair. Holes in the wall from violence or stupidity had been covered up with newspaper and cardboard if at all, and with a complete negligence there had even been pits starting to form. The rooms were empty of any life or furniture, and offered nothing but a haunting silence and the possibility that some crackhead or gangster would see me passing by I would be left shooting my way out. I walked as soft as my armored boot would allow, eyes peeled for the red bandanna or some jackass in the wrong place at the wrong time. The floor was thoroughly abandoned, and it only made me more worried about what was below. I reached the stairs down to the rest of the complex, and there I saw the first wifebeater wearing asshole guarding the way down.
The poor bastard.
His attention was down the stairwell itself rather than the door separating the hallway from the stairs. his job was shoot down anyone trying to sneak up rather than anyone coming down, and the top floor was a secondary concern. Smart, but only if the guard had been taking his duty seriously, and what I saw was a dumbass with beer in his hand and an over-sized pistol tucked his pants. He was a dead man before he I even opened the door. By the time he even noticed me I had already on top of him, driving my shotgun's stock right into his jaw with a satisfying crunch. He almost went over the railing and met a terrible end snapped in two and giving away that I was here. I sure as Hell couldn't let that happen. I reached and grabbed his neck, pulled him back to solid earth, then switched my grip to the back of his head and rammed the criminal's face into the floor where he was knocked out cold by the blunt trauma. I waited in silence for any response. No yell up in demand, or the stomping of feet running up to see what happened meant I was safe. Either they didn't hear, or they really didn't care.
As I went down to the next level, it was then that I could start hearing activity under my feet. Patrolling and shit-talking, moving product, and the occasional pained scream from something I'd rather not mention. I held back the urge to jump down into the crowd of them and lay waste to them, but the mission was the priority. The floor was largely just as abandoned as the one above me, with only the occasional drugy spacing out or blockhead too busy to pay attention to the heavily armed man sneaking through. I had thought that I would have to risk venturing down into the far more crowded floor in search of the objective when I saw him in one of the few furbished rooms.
I didn't even need the fucking stupid bandanna to spot him out. Roger had been so engrossed in his problems that I could have summoned a truck behind him and wouldn't have noticed, and I got a good look of his face. Aside from a few minor alterations, he looked just like the picture in his profile. I leaned into the room and snapped to get his attention, and we were eye to helmet visor.
"Alright, I'm here to get you out, lets-"
That's about as far as I got before he interrupted me with a .45 magnum to the chest.
"You won't get me, you Empire bastard!" the infiltrator yelled out in a panicked frenzy. He was about to fire off another bullet to finish me off, but I wheeled around back out the door to catch cover behind the wall. The armor caught most of the force of the hand gun bullet, but I still left my sternum cracked by the bullet itself and the insuring aggravating flash pain from every breath . A quick finger down the bullet hold told me it pieced skin, and it was only because my ribs caught the slug that I wasn't dead on the spot.
"You fuck wit!" I scream, half wondering if I should shoot back "Jones sent me to extract you!" I yelled back, holding my shotgun in both hands as I heard confused yelps coming from down stairs. I peeked my head back through the door frame, risking another shot to see if Roger got a clue. The look of terror on his face as he realized he just threw the both of us under the bus at least meant he figured it out, but that was too little too late.
I rushed into the room, not wanting to be out in the open with the shithead comity came in to welcome me. Even though we were at the corner of the building, neither of the windows had access to the fire escape, and it was too high off the ground to just jump for it. It looked liked we were going to have to fight out way though.
"Unless you can fucking fly, I suggest you get behind me and keep that gun pointed towards anyone but me. When I'm done saving you, I'm going to rip your head off"
What I was expecting from the briefing was something more akin of the villain's introduction in a spy move than a proper briefing. The room would be at mood lighting, Jones' face would be framed by the glow of his computer monitor, he would have his hands together with the fingers steeped, I would get orders to kill some political rival or activist or something else that's slimy and seedy with some poorly veiled threats, and as soon as I left he would be making the call to have me killed soon after. It to my pleasant surprise then that the room was bright, files and data tablets were neatly arranged for my consumption, and Jones was in the middle of eating a reuben sandwich out of a styrophone container with a second similar container on my side of the table.
"Oh, Doomguy" he was surprised, since I didn't bother to announce my arrival and he was in the middle of wiping some thousand island dressing out of his beard. He waved me over to his desk with a same friendliness as the other day, and when I sat down he pushed the container towards me "You really should knock. But since you're here so quickly lets get to the briefing"
I pushed the little foam clam box off to the side without bothering to look, despite the generous offer, and went straight for the files. A vanilla folder opened up into a few page showing the profile of one Roger Mills, infiltration expert and Empire sleuth. Or so I figured, as his actual profile listed most of the information in the form of long black unreadable bars. You generally don't have your file classified like this if you're the janitor. The picture looked nice, at least, and I assume that's the reason it was even added to the file at all.
"As of o'six hundred today, our operative undercover in the Pianta Syndicate criminal organisation gave us a signal to be extracted from his position, and has since gone silent. We are unsure of the reason, but we're sending you to go in, do what you needs to be done to save them, and get him out. He will be under the false name of 'Jolt' and will be distinguished by a red bandanna on his sleeve" I didn't know bandanna were still in flavor for criminal dipsticks.
"What's the ROE?" I asked as I picked up the tablet, which had a map which pointed out my target. The Rules Of Engagements were what soldier followed by in a mission, or at least tried to. It's a misconception that soldier were just told to just go here and shoot up the place, but then I also expected that the Empire wasn't so bothered about retraining force against their enemies.
"You are cleared for lethal force. I would recommend to not engage unless needed, but my superiors encourage you to 'deal with the scum', in their words" Although my helmet prevent direct eye contact between the both of us, I still tried my best to stare down the lieutenant. Even if I didn't like gangsters, that kind of mind set was down right sickening to hear out loud and so boldly. I think he got the message, though "It's not MY policy, just the Empire's"
"So why not just send your own jackasses. Why put this on me?" He didn't look happy at the insult I threw at the officer's men, but he still answered my question
"To be honest? Deniability. We're meant to not just uphold order, but to keep an image of it. Stormtroopers breaching a warehouse or a store raises questions about what happened there to warrant it. But a single man with an unknown affiliation? That could mean anything. Crazy prime causing trouble, or pirates raiding a abandoned building, and that's expected for us to react to" my brow just scrunched more and more as I was hearing this. This kind of dishonesty rubbed me the wrong way, potentially putting people in danger for an image.
"Out of sight, out of mind, then." I paraphrased for him, but shook my head in disapproval. Not that I could do anything about it at the moment, and I would just have to self-regulate myself in spite of the 'superiors'. "Alright, I'll get your man. Don't wait up" Since I was done absorbing all the information, I grabbed the styrofoam box and then started to leave. when I opened up the cheap container I was surprised to find not just a sandwich, but also a large pile of cigarettes and and empty beer cans. I looked over to Jones, who stared back with a very serious glance.
"Please refrain from bribing my men in the future" he demanded in that subtle tone of someone holding back true fury, and I left with a sheepish grin and a sore reminder.
----
The building itself was nothing suspicious, although that was probably the point. It looked like your average five story projects apartment building, a mostly brick and concrete block with little in the way of style of personality of it's own, but plenty added by the locals in the form of one kind of vandalism or another. You probably wouldn't have even noticed the guards or the added defenses meant to weather a frontal assault, if you didn't know what to look for. That made my job more difficult, and the map provided was probably no long accurate with whatever the mobsters did to the inside. Going through the front door was right out, and the side doors would lead into a death trap. But that still left one entrance, and I hoped they weren't smart enough to figure it out: the roof access.
Down the street, I took a fire escape up to the top and poked me head over the edge. No guard, alhtough there might still be one inside, and there was a door into the building. Good start, I wasn't royally fucked. Any start where I wasn't fucked was a good one. I kept low to the concrete and jumped from roof to roof, my eye out for anyone who might have looked my way as I got closer to the target building. The streets were almost deserted , everyone with a brain kept away from this part of the city and those that had no choice kept to themselves and walked quickly. So they weren't on the out look for a soldier in dayglow green jumping across buildings. I reached the last building without incident, and I got my shotgun ready to infiltrate the base.
I grabbed the door handle and slowly turned it. First problem: locked. I could just kick it down, but then every gun trotting asshat in a mile would be coming down on my head. That might have stopped someone else, but with prime privileges I could just whip up the right tools in just a few minutes. My lock picking skills might be rusty, or non-existent, but there's not a whole lot of skill needed in a blow torch and a screw driver. There was a slight CLUNK as I knocked the melted lock out of it's socket, and I was inside. No one was on the other side, and a glance down the stairs had no one at station. I kept the shotgun close to my body so that it wouldn't signal my position to whatever idiot was around the corner, and started sweeping the top floor for my target.
The building itself was in a miserable state of disrepair. Holes in the wall from violence or stupidity had been covered up with newspaper and cardboard if at all, and with a complete negligence there had even been pits starting to form. The rooms were empty of any life or furniture, and offered nothing but a haunting silence and the possibility that some crackhead or gangster would see me passing by I would be left shooting my way out. I walked as soft as my armored boot would allow, eyes peeled for the red bandanna or some jackass in the wrong place at the wrong time. The floor was thoroughly abandoned, and it only made me more worried about what was below. I reached the stairs down to the rest of the complex, and there I saw the first wifebeater wearing asshole guarding the way down.
The poor bastard.
His attention was down the stairwell itself rather than the door separating the hallway from the stairs. his job was shoot down anyone trying to sneak up rather than anyone coming down, and the top floor was a secondary concern. Smart, but only if the guard had been taking his duty seriously, and what I saw was a dumbass with beer in his hand and an over-sized pistol tucked his pants. He was a dead man before he I even opened the door. By the time he even noticed me I had already on top of him, driving my shotgun's stock right into his jaw with a satisfying crunch. He almost went over the railing and met a terrible end snapped in two and giving away that I was here. I sure as Hell couldn't let that happen. I reached and grabbed his neck, pulled him back to solid earth, then switched my grip to the back of his head and rammed the criminal's face into the floor where he was knocked out cold by the blunt trauma. I waited in silence for any response. No yell up in demand, or the stomping of feet running up to see what happened meant I was safe. Either they didn't hear, or they really didn't care.
As I went down to the next level, it was then that I could start hearing activity under my feet. Patrolling and shit-talking, moving product, and the occasional pained scream from something I'd rather not mention. I held back the urge to jump down into the crowd of them and lay waste to them, but the mission was the priority. The floor was largely just as abandoned as the one above me, with only the occasional drugy spacing out or blockhead too busy to pay attention to the heavily armed man sneaking through. I had thought that I would have to risk venturing down into the far more crowded floor in search of the objective when I saw him in one of the few furbished rooms.
I didn't even need the fucking stupid bandanna to spot him out. Roger had been so engrossed in his problems that I could have summoned a truck behind him and wouldn't have noticed, and I got a good look of his face. Aside from a few minor alterations, he looked just like the picture in his profile. I leaned into the room and snapped to get his attention, and we were eye to helmet visor.
"Alright, I'm here to get you out, lets-"
That's about as far as I got before he interrupted me with a .45 magnum to the chest.
"You won't get me, you Empire bastard!" the infiltrator yelled out in a panicked frenzy. He was about to fire off another bullet to finish me off, but I wheeled around back out the door to catch cover behind the wall. The armor caught most of the force of the hand gun bullet, but I still left my sternum cracked by the bullet itself and the insuring aggravating flash pain from every breath . A quick finger down the bullet hold told me it pieced skin, and it was only because my ribs caught the slug that I wasn't dead on the spot.
"You fuck wit!" I scream, half wondering if I should shoot back "Jones sent me to extract you!" I yelled back, holding my shotgun in both hands as I heard confused yelps coming from down stairs. I peeked my head back through the door frame, risking another shot to see if Roger got a clue. The look of terror on his face as he realized he just threw the both of us under the bus at least meant he figured it out, but that was too little too late.
I rushed into the room, not wanting to be out in the open with the shithead comity came in to welcome me. Even though we were at the corner of the building, neither of the windows had access to the fire escape, and it was too high off the ground to just jump for it. It looked liked we were going to have to fight out way though.
"Unless you can fucking fly, I suggest you get behind me and keep that gun pointed towards anyone but me. When I'm done saving you, I'm going to rip your head off"
![[Image: oGzCtPC.png]](http://i.imgur.com/oGzCtPC.png)