Trish might’ve looked a bit ridiculous in her get up, as she was squished against Angel in the small, rusty transport they were using for this mission. She had a vest that was completely covered with her smaller tined explosives, and the spongy bombs. On her lap was the big bomb, with straps so she could carry it like a backpack once they got off the death trap they were in. At her hip was the last remaining buzz baton from those they’d stolen. She’d handed out a few of the tined grenades to each member. They were shock grenades, wouldn’t kill except for the most unlucky of situations, but could disable several people at once. She had a bandana slung around her neck and a pair of goggles sticking to her forehead, listening to the sand scrape by the outside of the ship.
She was thankful for the cover of the sandstorm, she wasn’t especially great at being stealthy, especially with the lack of cover the desert provided. She nodded at the captain’s commands, already knowing her job and how to do it.
“Once I set Big Boy here, I’ll return to the entry point, and blast our way in. It will be up to you all to make sure that the entry point, from the outside at least, is secured.” She looked over at Angel, smiling lightly, wanting to ask her to join her, since they’d worked together to escape Godwin. It wasn’t much, but she knew she could count on her to watch her back, and vice versa. But she didn’t want the captain to think her incapable as well. The ship was settled now, and she pulled up her bandana, up and over her mouth and nose, and yanked her goggles over her eyes, nodding at Angel, taking a deep breath in. She stood first, and walked out the rear hatch, swinging the Big Boy over her shoulders, taking one last look back at the crew, ready to set out, alone.
Angel watched as Trish rose out from the vehicle, then stood as well.
”I’ll go with you, just in case there is something waiting for us on the other side that we don’t expect,” she said as she reached Trish’s side. Angel, for the most part, looked no different than ever. She wore a pair of goggles and the drawstrings of her hood were pulled as tight as they would allow, but everything else was normal. Quite the contrast to the woman standing beside her, with her vest covered in explosives.
Trish smiled as Angel came to join her, stepping into the harsh winds, the sand finding every exposed piece of skin, which wasn’t much, and stinging it fiercely. Her father had said her mother was from a land like this, while his own people were from an area dominated by snow. Right now, she’d take the snow over this sandy hell. She could just barely make out the sandstone wall in the distance, not wanting to get too close, not knowing how many sentries, if any, they had, nor if they had tech to discern them easily. Since yelling was near impossible, Trish threw her arm forward, and began walking, hoping Angel had seen the signal. They needed to stay close, it would be the easiest thing in the world to get lost in this. She needed to find the corner of the base, which wouldn’t be too difficult. All walls lead to Rome or some such nonsensical saying.
Trudging through the sand, her eyes always locked on the wall, not minding anything else around, she continue onward. The Big Boy was heavy, but he needed to be, he was going to make a really, really large boom. She wished she had a better fuel source, but that would require a planet with a contact in the trade. They’d not been here long enough for her to find one, but it would still do. The main issue is that this one would be a lot more noise and flash than substance. The proper damaging things were strapped to her chest. She snuck a single look over her shoulder to make sure Angel was still there, before looking back. Was that the corner ahead? She tried squinting, but it really didn’t help.
A hand stuck out flat, to her side, trying to tell Angel to stop. She then pointed where she thought the corner might be. Her gait slowed, as she crept closer. There it was, the corner of the compound. And atop it was some sort of… she wasn’t sure what to call it, ‘turret?’, with a couple of men slumped against it. They didn’t appear to have noticed them yet. Now the question was, take them out so they could pass by safely, or attempt to sneak past. She got as close as she could to Angel, and shouted, though as quietly as she could muster while still being louder than the wind, [color=yellow][b][i]“What do we do about that?”[/b][/i][/color]
Angel followed Trish’s pointing hand, seeing the men on top of the wall. This was a chance to take out multiple guards without them knowing what hit them, yet they would be risking discovery by attempting to take them out.
”Leave them for now,” Angel decided.
”Once we make the diversion they won’t matter, and we’d only risk getting caught by doing anything now.” Despite being as tight as possible, she felt her hood threatening to slip off her head; Angel pulled it further forward to counteract it.
This wind is insane, she thought. Once this thing started she wouldn’t be able to risk stopping to make sure the hood stayed on, yet she had no choice. She would just have to hope that it wouldn’t cost them.
Trish nodded, and pushed on forward. Rather than attempting to skirt the wall by a wide berth, she made a bee line straight for it, crouching for additional cover within the sandy winds. She figured sneaking past would be more easily accomplished right at the wall, than possibly being spotted way out beyond it. Once she was against the wall, she looked up, only able to see the barrel of the gun, and none of the men. She quickly made her way to the corner, and peered around. There was a gate halfway down the length of the other wall, with two more sentries sitting atop it, huddled close to the wall for cover. She signaled behind her, using two fingers. The gate would be the ideal distraction point. Scare them by making them think someone is blowing down their front door. Staying low, she snuck out around the corner, pausing, just to see if it warranted any reaction from the sentries. There was none, so she continued, slowly, up along, her eyes never leaving the first sentry.
She hated being so terribly exposed like this, but there really was no way around it. It would take hardly any effort for the sentry to pick her off should he spot her. But she pressed on, each step slow and calculated, so that the darting movement didn’t attract attention out of the corner of his eye, should that be a factor. After many agonizing minutes, she reached the base of the gate, a large set of doors of welded scrap. She tapped it lightly with her buzz baton, hearing more of a tink than a thud. It was surprisingly thin. Perfect. She turned to Angel, pointing at her, then to her eyes, then upward, hoping she’d keep an eye on the sentries, as she started digging in the hard sand with her hands, starting to dig out a small hole for the Big Boy.
Angel nodded that she understood, and turned her attention to the men standing directly above them as Trish worked. The gates seemed exceptionally thin, so the bomb meant only to be a diversion will make short work of them. It seems awfully arrogant to put such a flimsy gate on an otherwise structurally sound (to her untrained eye, anyway) compound. No matter; that wasn’t their problem. She glanced down, seeing that Trish appeared to be nearly done. As Angel began to turn back to the sentries, a particularly strong gust caught her by surprise and blew her hood off. Alarmed, she hastily pulled it back up, a bad idea since they were directly under the sentries’ noses. But they don’t seem to have noticed, fortunately.
Trish was just about finished digging, having come across some wiring buried in the sand. It seemed to be leading to the gate, which her eyes followed, looking up it, then over to Angel, just at the instant the woman’s hood was blown back. Her eyes grew a bit wide at what she’d seen in the brief moments before Angel had managed to return the hood to its proper state. Just as Trish had on her arms, Angel had severe burn scarring on her head and neck. There was still hair but it was patchy, growing in some places, and not in others. Instinctively, Trish found herself rubbing at her tattoo covered scars on her forearms.
Looking back down, Angel realized that Trish was staring at her before the bomber nodded curtly and returned back to work. Angel had no idea as to if she had seen anything, or if she had simply noticed the swift motion in her peripheral vision. She hoped for the latter, but knew that if Trish
had seen anything, she’d have the tact to leave the subject alone. For now. Trish went back to studying the wires in the sand, not even sure why they’d be there. She considered testing them, cutting at one and resetting, just to see what happened. She touched at them with her multitool and received a rather painful shock, eliciting a string of hissed curses from the woman, in a language she didn’t know, words she’d picked up from her father. They weren’t just live, but pumping a lot more power than they should’ve been. Quite suspicious now, she wondered how far out the wires went, or came from. Something wasn’t making sense.
Setting her multitool to wire cutters, she decided that it would be best to find out. In a single cut, she sliced through the wires, grinding her teeth hard as the electricity flew through her body briefly. Nothing seemed to happen immediately. Then there was a shimmer along the gate, and it glowed briefly, before the light dissipated, now being coupled with a rather loud Klaxon. Panicking, Trish quickly placed the Big Boy and buried him, now realizing what she’d cut. It was a high kinetic shield, that would stop things like bullets and explosions, but not simple things like the tapping on the gate she did earlier. That was how they’d justified the thin gate. The level of power required to maintain such a thing though, would’ve been immense, more than the compound could normally handle, so they probably had some massive generator or substation out in the desert, hidden, just to feed the shield.
Standing, she saw that the guards had been busy looking out over them, thinking that someone had attacked the power source further out. But soon one of the pairs of eyes had found them. The bomb was set and hidden, but they were caught out, as the first guard raised his rifle, the second his radio.
”So much for stealth,” Angel muttered as she clung as close to the wall as possible, minimizing the guards’ angle on her. She moved closer to Trish, grabbing a stun grenade as she did so. Speaking directly into Trish’s ear,
”Get ready to move. The others better be ready.” Quickly estimating the height of the wall, Angel pulled the pin and flung it upwards with her Psyche power – much more precise than throwing by hand, which was necessary given the severe conditions. A shout of alarm preceded an explosion, heavily muted by the sandstorm.
”Come on, let’s go!” she yelled, leading the way the way they had come, staying close to the wall and already pulling out another stun grenade to use on the sentries that were surely waiting for them up on the corner of the wall.
Trish had nodded as Angel set to action, watching the woman do what she’d volunteered to do, and do it well. She grabbed a stun grenade of her own, more as a precautionary measure than being ready to use it. She wasn’t sure she could toss it up the wall, especially in the winds. She began moving quickly along the wall to the corner, where the gun was mounted, not sure if they’d even noticed what happened to their gatekeeping companions. The large gun would be useless against them this close to the wall, but they’d have to get back out into the storm at some point, to skirt the rest of the compound to the side the other team hopefully secured. She couldn’t even hear the Klaxon now, the storm far too loud, and she thought that Angel had disabled the guards before they’d managed to call reinforcements.
They’d gotten lucky. She was almost completely sure that the gate was isolated from the rest of the compound’s attention. Even inside, people wouldn’t want to be out in this mess. That meant they had some time to work with, to escape at least, since there was no way they’d find the Big Boy before she set it off, nor would they have been able to disable it. Her dad had made sure to teach her enough about false switches and trick wiring to fool even the best of the best bomb defusers. She pointed at the gun, then out to the storm from where they’d originally come, indicating for them to just go right by yet again. Taking the lead, she moved quickly along, out past the corner and toward the cover of the swirling sands, in the general direction of the ship. She continued to look out over her shoulder as Angel followed, seeing that the guards never even bothered to move from their cover. Once they were far enough out, she got in close to Angel, [color=yellow][b][i]“I think we’re clear for now, we need to get to the others, and get this show on the road.”[/b][/i][/color]
It wouldn’t take them too long to skirt the compound in a wide arc, keeping the wall in sight, looking for where their companions might be. Trish already knew how’d she’d get them in, courtesy of the charges strapped to her chest, and the trigger to the Big Boy was built into the glove on her left hand. She was ready, because she knew that soon it would be a race through hell.
