Samantha Dalton AKA Chaos
Astral Sea: The Sandbox just exploded
was not watching as the surface-to-air missiles launched and took out the Hind. She was too busy defending herself from the soldiers that came up on her unexpectedly from under the tarp. Sam was too busy trying to breathe when Skye commented on Stafford’s shot and issued him new orders. Her armor had stopped the bullet but the concussive force of the bullet at least bruised her ribs. She had felt like she had been kicked in the chest by a mule. She pushed through and managed to get back to her feet. Her side was on fire with pain but her adrenaline was pumping with endorphins which helped her move forward to take out the last guard she saw.
@FourtyTwoShe was standing over the guard her rifle pointed down at him as she heard Skye come over the radio.
"Chaos, sit tight there. Got your feed, you've got more moving near your position but I've got the flank on them. Don't let the bastards destroy it before we have a proper look." Sam just acknowledged the order knowing she was still in the fight but not moving as smoothly or as agile as she had been after taking that high-powered round to the chest.
“Chaos holding.” Sam kept her head up on and on the swivel since Skye had told her she had enemy troops closing on her position. She had a few stragglers trying to come at her from the sides. She was fighting an injury, so she chose accuracy over speed as she lined up headshots and took them out with 3-second bursts taking out six more of the enemy as they seemed to be working in pairs as she waited on Skye.
Sam spun towards Skye as she landed gracefully next to her. She took her finger off the trigger just in time. Skye’s face winced in pain as the quick movement pulled the bruised muscles in her chest. Recognition was quick but her reflexes even impaired by her injury were fast with the adrenaline pumping through her system. She nodded her head respectfully to her boss.
“Welcome to the party Queen.”Skye chuckled at her as she replied,
"Well, hello. You seem to have had some entertainment out here...and that's some fun bruising you're gonna have from that round, Chaos. Try not to get shot, ey?" Sam rolled her eyes at her boss.
Like she planned to get shot! You can’t plan for every contingency, even though they tried. Sometimes even the enemy got lucky. Sam gave Skye a cheeky grin as she replied,
“Well I didn’t want you to get bored. Besides you know better than anyone that no plan survives contact with the enemy.” She sighed as she gave the boss an honest assessment of her injury. She would need to know.
“I took a high caliber round to the chest. My armor caught it, but my chest is on fire. I don’t know how bad the damage is. I have bruising at least. It has slowed me down and weakened me on that side. The endorphins are helping the pain. I will push through.”Sam motioned towards the camo net. Skye moved forward first as they began to get a look at what was hidden under that large camo net. Sam chuckled as she heard the boss mutter
"Oh my word...that is quite the stash. Terrorist aliexpress really is getting impressive these days." Sam’s hit the record button in her HUD as she walked through the large tent with the boss. She recorded what was there. Her helmet had a satellite uplink to their secure network so that she could upload recon directly in case her helmet was damaged, or she was killed in the action. That way the intel got to headquarters either way. Sam went to the BTR-90. If she could get it operational, they would have a great way to transport the rods. She clambered up and then dropped down inside. It was a bit of a mess on the inside. Someone had cannibalized all the electronics in it. There were bare holes where components had been ripped out. The large tank could be repaired easily with the right components. She could jury rig something to make it go but she didn’t have that kind of time. Sam was climbing back out of the tank when she heard Queen’s report.
"That is a very copious amount of explosives at the back. PETN. And about a quarter of a tonne of it....which will make a very big boom, and not exactly shite we can leave in the wild. It's more than I'm safely comfortable managing. Detonating it with our own explosives is one thing or trying to make it safe with time is another. But I don't think we have that luxury. What we do have, is a drone with a large ordinance on it which can delete this. Delete the lot of it. But I think there's something far more concerning to look about all of this when we get back to base." Sam nodded knowing the post-op debrief would include pouring over any intel they had gained during this op. She moved to rejoin Skye.
Sam respected Queen and recognized the look in her eyes. She had seen it in the eyes of those who had seen the worst that humanity can do to each other. You can only see so much darkness and depravity before it leaves its own mark. You learn to function and move past it, but it takes a little bit more of your own humanity along the way. She knew her eyes didn’t carry the weight of experience that Skye’s did. She had her own list of shit; she would never be able to unsee. Sam did this work so that others could live their lives blissfully unaware of the depths of depravity that humanity could sink to. She did these so innocents like children could laugh and have joyful childhoods. Sam did this work so others would be spared the pain of experiencing the tragic loss of their loved ones. Whose lives were cut short by terrorists.
Sam nodded to Queen as she told her.
"Keep an eye out for me would you?" Samantha’s only reply was
“Roger that.” She moved to a location where she could see what was coming from both sides of the large ammo tent. Sam utilized her sensors to highlight any movement caught in the area. She kept her head swiveling and scanning as Skye inventoried the remainder of the tent. Skye finally came out of the tent with her MG3 in her hands. Sam nodded acknowledging her orders to drive them back towards the rendezvous spot as Skye gave official orders over the radio.
"Alright then lass, drive us back to the rest of the crew. All callsigns, clean up your sectors, and regroup at the position I've pinged to your display once you're done wasting these wankers." Sam left her automatic rifle on the tactical sling so she could get it in a hurry. She got behind the wheel and started up the DPV. Her movements were a little stiff. She was driving them towards the rendezvous spot Queen had designated when she told her.
"You held up well today, Sam, nicely hacked. I'm shipping you and Xander, mind. I haven't seen him this excited to work with someone since...well, about a month ago." Samantha laughed at her boss. She guffawed incredulously to hear Skye giggle.
She never thought her straight laced workaholic boss would giggle. Laugh yes but a girly giggle? Never! Samantha just grinned and laughed as she shook her head as she replied.
“Thanks boss. I aim to please.... Xander has his charms. For all, I know he is only interested in his next beer. He hasn't indicated that he is interested in anything. I do find him highly entertaining.”
-----------------------------------------------------
Samantha was waiting at the DPV on her next set of orders. The operational mop-up was nearly done. The resistance the team had faced was wiped out with a few stragglers here and there. Sam kept her head on the swivel and occasionally fired on a hostile that came towards their vehicles. Skye was nearby looking over the field of combat and talking on her radio. Sam couldn’t hear what she was saying as she was in the command channel. Sam assumed she was talking to HQ. She was looking out over the sand when she heard Skye start barking orders.
"Shit! Bomb drone's been hacked, everyone, fucking run and split!" It took a second for Skye’s words to penetrate. Sam began running in the opposite direction away from the DPV and the ship. She began to run in a crazy pattern to make her a harder target to hit from the air. The concussive blast from the explosion knocked her off her feet and into the sand face first. The force from the secondary explosions were enough to flip her over onto her back. The helmet protected her head, but her battered body was slammed into the ground hard even as the ground shook with secondary explosions from the ship. The world went black as her eyes rolled back in her head, not that anyone could see that since her helmet covered her face.
Sam came awake gasping for air. Her chest was on fire. Her body bowed in pain. Her HUD was cracked, and the screen was full of static. Samantha couldn’t hear anything. She tried to suck in a deep breath of air but felt like she was trying to breathe through a small straw. She felt as if tight constricting bands were around her chest. She fumbled with her visor but couldn’t get it to open. She fumbled with the straps to her helmet. Her hands felt heavy and clunky. She eventually managed to pull her helmet off. She lay there breathing deeply. Her chest was still on fire, but she no longer felt like she was suffocating. The constricting bands had loosened some. She began assessing if she could move the rest of her body. She managed to push herself into a sitting position. Her manual dexterity seemed to be coming back. She felt weak and shaky but her gross motor skills seemed to be functioning. As she held her helmet, she noticed a piece of metal shrapnel sticking out of the visor. She looked down her body to find her armor had taken a beating. She was covered in an dark greasy sooty dirt. Her armor had bare plate showing in spots. She dug into the pouch at her waist for her backup earwig. Her hand shook as she managed to get it into her ear. Samantha got the backup shortwave radio piece connected and active in time to hear Skye giving orders.
"Ogre, bury and tag the rods for now. You and Frigga need to hide in the intact end of the ship and come out only when they're right in front to take out the infantry, and go head on into the IFVs at point blank, and destroy any Trophy System or anti-missile systems they have, likely one or two has one for sure to help protect the cluster. That gives your various weapons systems the best chance to work and you can run at the bastards getting out, mortars, direct energy, anything to basically blast them open. I'll be with you above on the ship, so I'll cover your flanks from anyone trying to give you shit. If you can take the weapons out of one of them, see if you can make it spare to steal. Hornet, you're with me on top of that ship, see if you can grab any anti-tank, RPGs or anything that might be able to help us defend." Samantha shook her head trying to comprehend what was happening. She looked over at the smoking pieces of the ship and the huge shrapnel field that spread out from the point of contact toward her.
"Glitch, Chaos, I need you both to go to the weapons cache, I spied a few guided AT launchers in there...you can steal those and some LMGs, then find a position in the remains of the ship to defend from. We'll use those to ambush the IFVs masse when they get close and the Trophy Systems are dead. Bring spares, and we'll then decimate them. There's nothing you can do about that network- the hack's hit mine and Oracle's link, so we aren't going to be able to patch it locally and without that, we have no way out. Once our network's online, we need to keep any hackers off our patch and ideally, light their server up before they try again."
"Stafford, Jaguar, set up a sniper position south of the ship, and get ready to snipe off troops coming in. Cloaking and camo will be needed- you need to make them confused from your firing positions, more chaos the better when they're figuring out who's shooting. Your systems might be fine, but don't count on them entirely." Her brain was finally rebooting from the jolt she had taken.
Right, the drone had been hacked. Skye mentioned IFVs. Samantha nodded to herself acknowledging the orders.
"We're going to let them come to us, so don't fire till they're close- I give us about five minutes till they arrive. They'll know we're here, but they just won't know where. Let's make them work for this arms deal in bits, aye? On my order, yous' can unleash hell, so let's show them some proper hospitality if they want to come visit, ey!" They had hostiles inbound. Samantha tried to get her shit sorted out.
She didn’t have time for injuries. She dug into her pack and pulled out the first aid kit that was designed for the team to use in the field. She pulled out the autoinjector in the kit. She placed the autoinjector on her neck before pushing the button. It was the only place not covered by armor that she could reach easily. Samantha winced as the needle jabbed into her neck. She gave a sigh of relief as the cocktail of antibiotics, painkillers, and stimulants hit her system. Samantha pushed wearily to her feet. She knew when the drugs wore off, she was going to go down like a marionette with cut strings. Hopefully, by the time the shot wore off, they would be homebound and out of danger.
Samantha pushed to her feet once more. She swayed a little bit but it was easier this time. She reached into the same pouch and pulled out the microphone strap that went around her neck. She quickly plugged everything in and secured the strap around her neck. She pressed the transmit button on the neckpiece.
“Chaos inbound to pick up new toys.” She didn’t bother to give Skye a condition report, this time. Skye already knew she was fucked up.
“Queen my favorite toy was in the DPV. Nothing was left of it.” Her eyes surveyed the blackened twisted pieces of the DPV frame and smoking debris pieces laying around. Queen needed to know that her laptop had not survived the fallout from the blast which had taken out their DPV. Chaos had nothing left to hack with. Well unless you gave her a cell phone. She might be able to work a minor miracle with that.
Sam heard Xander’s reply.
“Copy, mum.” His voice was hoarse with pain as he replied.
“Just… Give me a moment… Need to… take some medicine.” Sam suspected he was using his autoinjector too.
“Oh bloody hell that’s good shit!” She grinned as she heard his response to the injection.
“Yes, it is Glitch.” Chaos had begun moving towards the weapons cache. Her movements started out slow and jerky. As the injection went to work, her movements smoothed out and she sped up.
She heard Xander address her.
“Alright. One surprise party for Artemis coming right up. Let’s go, Chaos.” Samantha laughed as she was already in route. Samantha had managed to kick up into a run. She was approaching the cache as she heard Xander’s reply.
“I reckon we start with the AT launchers. Make sure we can deal with anything armored, then worry about LMGs. Worst case I still got a gun and a knife and those work pretty well on blokes. Tanks. Not so much.” Samantha chuckled as she headed towards the AT launchers and LGMs.
“Well Glitch, I haven’t gotten to show off my knife-fighting skills yet on this mission. A tank would not be my opponent of choice.” She tore down a side wall of the camo tent. She spread it out on the ground. She began loading ATVs and LMGs onto it. She also grabbed a case of explosives. Maybe one of the others had demolition experience and could rig some charges for them. Her plan was to use the heavy cloth wall as a sled to pull what she gathered across the sand. She dispersed the weight of the cargo over a larger area so it wouldn't tear the durable fabric. Once they were done loading everything they thought they had time and room for Sam turned to Xander.
"Let's work smarter not harder. I can take one side you take the other? Did we get everything?" She didn't need to tell him that she was not capable of lifting much. She could use her bodyweight to help her pull the stuff. It would be easier on her poor battered body than trying to make multiple trips back and forth. It would be faster too!
Member
FourtyTwo
Fetzen
Alby47
BigPapaBelial
Garth
Eviledd1984
Vampiretwilight
Single Malt