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The war as a mean to save lives. The violence as a mean to find peace.

Chapter 33: Glacial â€" Assault on Argolis

On board the NES Unseen, a whole new kind of tension, and yet enthusiasm, had been spreading through the whole crew during the last hour. The navigation under the ice of the arctic had posed challenges impressive, that almost everyone on board hadn't even imagined before â€" in fact, it had been a whole new experience for anyone but the old admiral "Sandy" and his trusted sonar specialist, which had already done it in the past - but now, now they were in the crucial part of the operation.

The submarine was sailing at nearly 20 knots in deep water, nearly two hundred meters below the surface, leaving behind its aft the ice-shelf and its deadly, cold and obscure depths glooming with promises of death and sailing silently and invisibly towards the island of Argolis.

No one could see the Unseen and its sister ships as they sailed forwards, spaced out of nearly a mile from hull to hull now, and it was that invisibility the reason that made those machines so threatening and deadly. The reason d'être of the submarines themselves: to see and hit, without being seen and hit.

The new tension, palpable and visible in every man of the crew, was caused by the fact that the War Zone was nearer and nearer, and with every meter that the ship sailed, they were closer to the battle, and to the dangers and challenges it posed. They were sailing towards the greatest fleet that the world had ever seen gathered up in a single location, and the concentration on board was absolute. It wasn't a suicide mission: a nuclear submarine, or Submersible Ship, Nuclear (SSN), is the only sure way to sink a modern warship... But so much stronger were the enemy ranks, that an error of even secondary importance could have had made their mission suicidal in one instant.

Sir John "Sandy" Hawkwood was the one on board that felt the pressure to the greatest extent. He had been universally recognized as the best admiral that Kesteven's fleet had ever had, and he was in absolute the commander with the greatest experience in all the Northlands, and one of the best of the world, to say the very least. He had a formidable strategic ability, which emerged in every one of his decision and which made him an unbeatable player of chess... And of course, he had a degree in nuclear physic, but that was a trait rather common for the officers of the "Silent Service", as the submarine command was fondly called.

Son of fishermen, up in Faslane, he had lived on the sea from the very start of his life, starting to sail almost as soon as Killer started to fight. Barely mature, he was already able to guide a ship in the traitorous and always tempestuous waters of the Syrane channel, where cruel waves are always ready to hammer your boat into the ice-shelf on a side or the rocks of the low seabed on the other, and he would have been able to do it even earlier, if not for the surprising amount of raw strength it required.

Excellent studious, with a mathematic mind of sharpness uncommon, the young Sandy had ended his studies with excellent marks and then he had quickly joined the Navy Academy of Devonport, the major port of the Northern coast, just a few hundred kilometers north-east of Faslane. Here, he had proved to be the most promising of all cadets, by far the most gifted, and the navy had welcomed him more than warmly.

His career had been lighting fast. First command on a minesweeper, as of tradition for the navy, which used those small, but incredibly precious, expensive and highly-worked vessels to form excellent officers for the major units of the fleet, and then rapidly all the way up to commanding a massive Missile Destroyer in the northern seas.

But of course, it was in the Silent Service his star truly had shined.

He had commanded a small Diesel-Electric submarine at the start, facing the challenges it offered: while they a lot smaller and more agile than a big nuclear sub, the Diesel-Electric model sails surfaced with its diesel engines and submerged on electric ones, using the power gathered in the batteries. Evidently, the batteries have a limited duration, and the submarine is forced to spend quite a lot of time surfaced, or just below the surface, using the long breathing-tube known as Snorkel to feed its Diesel engines with air for traveling and reloading the batteries.

This, evidently, reduce the autonomy of the vessel to about 8000 naval miles, compared with the virtually unlimited range of a nuclear sub, and it also force the Diesel submarine to stay on the surface, where it's an easy target, for much longer time than you'd wish to...

But Sandy had proved to be an excellent commander in any situation, and even when the events had seen Kesteven once more menaced and he had set sail for his first true combat mission, he had been able to avoid detection, even if a night a week he had to snorkel to recharge the batteries. He guided his sub in a series of audacious and successful operations against both merchant and military fleet of the enemy and often worked in support of the Special Forces by welcoming on board of his submarines the so called "Forcibly Entry" teams of swimmers, who would use the ship as base and swim from it into the enemy ports to place mines over the keels of the enemy vessels, or to cause havoc in any other possible way.

And so, he had passed to the atomic submarines, where he had become the absolute master. Many of his actions had become legendary, starting from when he had entered in one of the most important and traffic-plagued port of Dacca without being detected, by sailing slowly into the streak of a destroyer heading for the docks, exploiting the waves it moved to hide the submarine to the eyes and to the sensors, and using the periscope to ensure he wasn't going to crash into the propellers of the ship ahead... Once inside, he had been hiding for three days in the depths of the port, maneuvering to avoid collisions with the enemy ships in movement on the surface and gathering invaluable intelligence data, before torpedoing two large Oil Tankers and leave rapidly and successfully.

Perhaps the mission that gave him the most fame, anyhow, was the one when he had shadowed the flagship of Dacca's fleet, an enormous missile cruiser escorted by two missile destroyers, for three days, without being detected. The third day of the hunt, when the admiralty had confirmed the order to kill, he had placed two torpedoes in the side of the cruiser and rapidly left, tricking the destroyers that tried to find and bomb him.

At the end of his long, amazing career, he had been offered the chair of commander of the Silent Service, and it wasn't a mystery that, if he had wanted, the place of First Sea Lord would have been his without any reserve... But he had refused. He wanted to be at sea, he still was eager to have a ship under his direct command, and he wasn't absolutely interested in "pushing pencils", as he had said with his usual, informal and direct, brutally sincere style.

He had retired, and bought a very nice estate outside Devonport, setting sail almost every day with his own little sailing ship, and spending a lot of time in a tavern, or on the docks, looking with interest and evident nostalgia to the anchored warships and submarines in the military port.

He had grown to regret his refusal of the charge at the Admiralty: not because he had changed his mind about pushing pencils, but because he would have been at least still into the action, if not on board a ship... And instead he felt like a nostalgic pensioner wasting his time throwing bread to the ducks in the pound of the park.

This was his new, and probably last, chance to command a warship. He hadn't expected to be recalled in service, even if he had long dreamed for it to happen. And for god's sake, I'll be exploiting this chance to the very best of my capabilities. And after the operation was over, assuming he was still alive and the Unseen back in Devonport, which for obvious reasons wasn't absolutely a certainty, he would have accepted any offer of work in the Admiralty. He lived for the navy... And stay in the great circus was all what mattered for his future. He had no family... he regretted it, of course, but he knew that the navy was his family now. His crew, all the one hundred young men on board, were his family.

And he knew why he had been called back with such urgency: he was the only one with experience for the travel under the Arctic, and he was the admiral with the greatest and most concrete experience of naval warfare. Many commanders of the navy had studied the warfare. He, instead, had fought the battles. And people like Killer knew the difference that ran between the two things.

Sandy's responsibility was thus massive, and through his icy eyes of silver did not show it, he felt all the weight and pressure of those responsibilities. The destiny of the SSN submarines Unseen, Upholder, Unicorn, Ardent and Artful, each with one hundred men on board, depended largely from him. He had developed a good plan, taught the other commanders of the fleet to follow its lines, suggested how to react in any kind of nasty situation, and done everything he could to prepare everyone to challenges ahead.

The travel had been hard and dangerous, under the ices, but he had always had the chance to talk with the commanders on board the other subs with the Underwater Telephone, and they all had worked like an enlarged team... But now it was time to fight an enemy numerous, well equipped and excellently armed, that would have been listening to the sonars with the greatest attention to find them... And use the Telephone was thus an idiotic, suicidal hypothesis. Any signal of that kind in the water would have been heard by the sonars like a shout into an ear. Every sub, now, was alone. Every crew, a single team. And they would have had to collaborate silently, to work in concert, but without chances to review the plan together.

Everyone will have to answer to the challenges to come on the basis of his own courage and astuteness...

"Launching Point approaching, five minutes to the LP." The navigator, Drew Shawn, announced calmly, looking up from his console and maps for a moment, and Sandy nodded to himself from where he was seating on the commander's chair.

He pushed forwards the console that had been in his lap and stood up with a bit of a grimace, anyway. Such technological console for the commander was common on the surface ships, but on submarines, it was a novelty very characteristic of the Unseen class, and much as it was comfortable to seat during your turns of four hours of service, and much as it was useful to have everything available on the computer screens integral to the chair, Sandy still preferred to stand up every now and then, and stay on his feet in the control room, just how he would have done years before in his old submarine, the Vanguard.

He walked a few steps forwards, then stopped and crossed his arms idly behind his back as he proudly looked around the dark control room. To anyone seeing him, the feeling would have been that he was somewhat irritated, for how severe and cold the look in his icy silvery eyes was... But it was his standard expression, in reality. Impenetrable, cool-minded and calculator... And somehow solemn, with the way his face was wrinkled, not from age but from a whole life spent on the sea, in the sea, in the briny air of the ocean. And admittedly, a passion for cigars had added its tool, probably... But yet, he was in formidable shape for his age, and he often said he planned to live very long. "... and base my longevity on cigars, whisky and wild, wild women."

So far, with how good he had aged, it definitely seemed to work.

"Sonar...?" Sandy asked, and the trusted, reliable Steve Hadley was quick at answering.

"Sonar to commander, nothing to report."

"Commander to launch room." The admiral announced with clear voice, and the small boom microphone he wore carried his voice to the very bow-end of the living compartment of the submarine, where the Weapons Team handled the six large torpedo tubes that were the reason d'être of the submarine. "Prepare all tubes to launch in four minutes. Depth-Surface Sea Eagle missiles."

The order was expected, and had been long waited for, but when it was heard, and when the torpedo room answered affirmatively, a shiver of danger seemed to run along the submarine and vibrate down the backs of everyone on board. It was the start of all.

They were at about 160 kilometers of distance from the immense fleet that was keeping Argolis and its stubborn, still resisting survivors under siege, and the plan was to fire their long range Depth-Surface anti-ship missiles to start the attack.

The plan was to act in coordination with the air force: the Forward Operating Base on the ices of the Arctic had been completed, and a couple of Squadrons of Typhoon fighters with support planes such as aerial tankers and Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) planes was now ready in there to support the rebels of Argolis.

Sandy had talked with Talon on a satellite link a few hours before, when they had finally emerged from beneath the impenetrable cap of ice of the North Pole, and the plan was to fire all the missiles from the sub from a precise Launching Area, and in a precise moment of the day: a squadron of Typhoon would have conducted an interdiction flight with Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles against the enemy fleet, and the subs would have added their own missiles to the wave.

Since after the launch sequence it is impossible to understand if the Sea Eagle missile is in Air-Surface or Depth-Surface mode, mixing up the weapons in a single wave would have offered multiple advantages: first of all, more missiles meant that the defenses of the enemy would have been much more probably saturated and overcome. And what mattered the more to Sandy, the enemy would have still ignored the presence of submarines in that slice of ocean that they believed unattainable for the Northern Empire's forces.

I just hope everything goes the right way...

Tom Baker, normally commander of the Unseen but second in command (XO) for this extreme mission, entered the Maneuvering Room, and Sandy gave him a silent but friendly nod of welcome, that the other, much younger tiger reciprocated with a slight grin of amusement for seeing the admiral once more standing, away from the seat.

Sandy, anyway, did not notice it, since he had already turned back to the room crowded of computers and officers to calmly command: "Periscope depth. Deploy Periscope, Radar, Communications and ESM masts."

The order was as usually repeated as confirmation as the officers in the room rapidly and surely moved to accomplish what had been requested, and everyone on board felt the little shake that the submarine gave as compressed air was pushed into the ballast tankers to push the submarine up until it was just fifteen feet below the surface, and it stabilized itself quickly as the ports on top of the conning tower opened and the telescopic masts grew out of them to emerge over the quiet waves.

As always, it took not even two complete seconds, but it felt an eternity to the people into the submarine. Every second of permanence so close to the surface, and especially every instant with a mast deployed over the waves was a serious, deadly-serious danger of being localized.

In that short time, anyway, the Integrated SATCOMM mast downloaded all the message destined to the Unseen from the satellites, the radar mast took a scan of the sea and the visual mast took a full 360° view of the surface in both visual, infra red and thermal specter.

"Depth 100 feet, 15 knots, route 1-1-0 for one minute." Sandy commanded calmly before heading back for the commander's seat, where Baker was already looking on the console's screens for the images gathered. He joined him, and a fast look to the radar image was enough to confirm that the area was safe... There were no ships and no planes around.

The massage coming from the SUBCOM was very clear: it confirmed the programmed order of launch, the area and the hour.

The Typhoons are already in flight for the target...

"I take vision that the order has been confirmed." Baker said formally, but his calm tone this time was a bit warped by the tension of the incoming fight. Sandy could surely understand that... But his coldness remained in place as he answered affirmatively.

Almost in the same moment, an officer announced that the missiles had been prepared in the launch tubes, and it was merely a moment later that the navigator announced they were in position, and they all felt the submarine slow down and then stop its course in the water.

Sandy looked to the digital clock in the top angle of the Maneuvering Room, and Baker walked to his side as he commanded: "Missiles armed."

"Affirmative, missiles armed."

The officers at the huge console that controlled the weapon system of the submarine turned a couple of keys from "Peace" to "War", and a series of icons turned from red to green as skilled fingers flew on the keyboards.

"Fire tubes from one to six."

"Fire tubes 1-6"

"Affirmative. Fire."

The whole submarine trembled as compressed air threw the six capsules out of the torpedo tubes at the front of the sub, firing one after the other, with a short break between one and the other, and everyone on board seemed to shiver in the same way, listening to the noise coming from outside the sub as the tremendous force of the steam pushed the weapons to the surface, 100 feet above...

The capsules broke out from the water, and they broke apart in pieces that resembled petals of a deadly flower, before a powerful rocket turned on at the missiles vertically took off, rising a cloud of flames and white smoke over the waves of the ocean.

Six Sea Eagles missiles took altitude and brutally accelerated on their course before stabilizing at merely sixty meters of altitude over the ocean as the rocket booster was burned away and dropped, leaving a Ramjet reaction engine pushing the heavy weapon forwards on its pre-programmed route at a speed that soon overcome the 1.5 Mach.

A couple of miles starboard, other six missiles did the same, and so along as all 5 submarines of the task forces fired their first blow towards the enemy fleet.

In the same time, a squadron of 24 Typhoon fighters flying low on the ocean had fired a total of 48 other Sea Eagle missiles, and now that amazing ride of Valkyries was roaring at supersonic speed at just a few meters above the quiet waves of the sea, as the first blow of revenge for the sufferance of the rebels on the island of Argolis.

120 seconds later, with the barrage of 78 missiles already at just one hundred kilometers of distance from the amazing fleet of warships anchored around Argolis, someone on board of an RA AWACS plane launched the alarm: the plane, coming from one of the aircraft carriers of the fleet, was flying at nearly 40.000 feet of altitude, its radar scanning the horizon for hundreds of kilometers in every direction.

The AWACS had already long signaled the incoming Typhoons, but the missiles, smaller and stealthier, had been spotted only much later... Not too late to organize an efficient defense, if the AWACS directed the interception, but that did not happen.

A second later, after launching the missile alarm, the AWACS plane was hit squarely by a Meteor missile launched by Talon and Maverick's Typhoon: a formidable "punch on the teeth" coming from more than 54 miles of distance.

The radar-plane was obliterated in the explosion, and nothing could do the little squadron of Mantis biplane fighters that had been launched from the carrier vessels at the first alarm. Now, the little but deadly VTOL fighters roared angrily towards the Typhoons, giving start to a formidable, harsh battle in the skies, but the RA fleet had lost the chance to early intercept the incoming missiles.

The Sea-Skimming Sea Eagle rapidly gained terrain, flying so close to the sea to stay below the radar beams of the destroyers that were desperately trying to acquire them as targets to shoot them down before it was too late.

It was only 230 seconds after the Unseen and its sisters had fired the missiles, that the RA ships first saw the threat on their radars: the Sea Eagle were at just 45 kilometers of distance from their hulls, and the first missile of the huge swarm had violently reared up and gained altitude with a "Pop-Up" maneuver.

The first Sea Eagle rose high up over its brothers, and it was followed by a few others: one every 24 missiles, in fact. The three missiles that rose were the leaders of the salvo, and now flied at high altitude to locate and recognize the target, using their radar in active and passive modes. They listened to the transmissions of the targets ships, the radars of which had already locked on them, making a first map of the position of the ships of the fleet from the source points of the radar and radio transmission, and then they used the active mode to take a first quick "look".

Immediately after, the Leaders turned off the active radar to increase the penetration probability by vanishing from the enemy passive ESM sensors.

The leaders continued to take quick looks every few seconds, mapping the position of the enemy ships to sink: each scansion of the horizon with their radars covered the whole area of several square miles that had been assigned to them as target. A powerful computer inside the monstrous, one ton HE warhead of each missile started to analyze the signals coming from the radar, recognizing the ships it had in front, and choosing the targets in order of importance as the leader missiles cooperated closely to ensure the most successful of engagements. The computers easily recognized the immense and extraordinary-precious aircraft carriers first, and they started to acquire the targets for the whole wing assigning targets to all subordinate missiles and communicating with the other lead missiles in the massive salvo to coordinate the attack.

Precious seconds passed, and the Sea Eagle were now at merely 40 kilometers of distance from the targets, merely 80 seconds of time to react, and every single instant took on an incredible value on the RA ships: the destroyers that made up the first line of defense immediately reacted, and while their radars tried to lock on the three leaders Sea Engle, someone deep into the Maneuvering Room of the ship punched the buttons of the Decoys, and a series of eight-barreled mortars on board of the ships in line vomited huge clouds of Chaff into the air, despite the fact they were late of at least a couple of minutes.

The enormous clouds of fine strips of metal danced in the wind, forming a wall of fake radar signals on the computers of the Sea Eagle missiles, but it was too late for the destroyers to actually maneuver and take the right position between the clouds of decoy, too late to calculate the correct position to assume to vanish behind the wall of false targets that would have tricked the missiles incoming.

50 seconds left before the impact, and the first interceptor missiles were launched from the escort ships in formation around the carrier vessels, despite the fact that only the leaders missiles were giving a concrete radar signature to chase after, while the sea-skimming mass of Sea Eagle below was still giving only fleeting, evanescent and short echoes.

40 seconds, and the Leader missiles were engaged by the incoming SAMs of the enemy ships, but with the cold, emotionless efficiency of the machines, they started their defensive countermeasures: each Sea Eagle had an onboard Integrated Electronic-Countermeasures Suit for avoiding enemy anti-missile attacks using a combination of manoeuvres and deception jamming. Just like the ships they were going to attack, the leader missiles fired a cloud of Chaff and made violent, strict veers to try and avoid the enemy blows.

The first leader avoided two interceptor missiles, tricked by the chaff, before one exploded close enough to damage the missile seriously: the Sea Eagle continued stubbornly to fly and guide the attack, anyway, since many vital parts of the missile had been armoured to increase penetration chances against highly defended targets by increasing survivability to CIWS's fire and fragments of closely exploding air-defence missiles.

The second leader had less fortune, and it suddenly exploded to shreds when a SAM missile struck it squarely, and the third soon made the same end.

Immediately, anyhow, two of the remained missiles in the swarm automatically popped up and took their place to continue the attack without additional troubles, and now the impact was truly imminent.

Other interceptor missiles rose with huge clouds of white smoke and red, hellish flames, shot straight up into the sky from the cells on the decks of the escort ships, and they quickly turned to roar towards the incoming Sea Eagles, and a few seconds later even the Laser Phalanx CIWS systems on the ships of the fleet automatically turned to engage the incoming threats with their deadly beams of coherent light.

Several anti-ship missiles were wrecked and destroyed by the lasers and the last barrage of SAM missiles, some others were tricked by the decoys that had been launched in clouds from the ships of the external lines of defence of the fleet, but still, some managed to strike their targets.

The first destroyer in line was manoeuvring to hide itself between the clouds of anti-radar chaff that its eight-barrelled mortars continued to vomit in the air in barrages to confuse the radars in the noses of the Sea Eagle missiles, and the crew onboard cheered when the SAM missiles they were firing took down four enemy weapons approaching.

Another Sea Eagle was blasted away a second later by the Laser Phalanx mounted on the roof of the helicopter's hangar aft of the huge ship, and another missile, tricked by the chaff, made a tight turn and smashed uselessly across a cloud of the decoys, exploding in the sea with a colossal ball of fire and a tall tower of water, almost two miles aft of the ship.

But the luck of the huge ship was finished. As the two Laser CIWS on board engaged other missiles in the incoming barrage, a Sea Eagle skimming the waves dived and smashed into the side of the destroyer, about amidships and just above the floating line, tearing effortlessly across the hull of steel and piercing deep into the ship before the delay timer ticked to zero and the huge warhead exploded, deep into the destroyer.

The explosion was colossal, and the destroyer was nearly broken in two parts as bow and aft both rose from the water for a second, the ship almost making a V as furious flames erupted over the decks and the weapon systems on board ceased to operate, the huge tower sustaining the radars and communications antennas collapsing down and crushing the compass bridge under its monstrous weight, the unit tilting violently on its starboard side and rapidly filling with the water of the ocean, even as the Damage-Control teams tried to save the warship.

Every effort proved useless when a second Sea Eagle smashed into the aft and nearly vaporized the last sixty feet of the unit, which had to be evacuated immediately.

Four miles aft, another of the destroyers in the defensive line was wrecked by three nearly simultaneous hits that left no hopes at all, since the once-powerful warship turned into a burning-white wreck that rapidly sunk under the surface.

In those waters, anyhow, the life expectation was as low as two minutes... And it would have been hard to come in time to save any survivor at sea.

Another warship managed to shot down nearly all the threats incoming, and was only damaged by the huge slivers of titanium on flame that hailed into her from the explosion of a Sea Eagle, intercepted at barely half a mile of distance by the CIWS on board... And a few other ships were seriously damaged by other missiles smashing into the target. A frigate exploded when a Sea Eagle smashed into the missile silo, and the column of fire that rose to the sky left behind only a huge stain of fuel on flames over the surface, only sign that an 8000 tons missile warship had been in there.

Most of the swarm of anti-ship missiles, anyhow, had been targeted at the aircraft carriers, and the Sea Eagles were stubbornly trying to make their way across the ranks of the enormous fleet to reach the immense vessels in the middle of such powerful defenses.

Most of the missiles were shot down along the travel, as missiles, automatic guns and lasers and decoys all acted against them to protect the carriers. Even the Mantis fighters that had been launched from the carrier vessels dived down from the sky and gave chase, making a true slaughter of the Sea Eagles, which fell in wrecks and slivers into the sea...

But such stubbornness was praised, at least in part: the nearest one of the carrier vessels was hit by four missiles in rapid succession, all along its titanic starboard side: the explosion were terrific, and gigantic holes were torn open in her hull, the flames of a furious arson immediately engaging the crew in a fight for the survival or the destruction of the ship... And the carrier violently tilted on its side, so much that some of the planes parked on the flight deck broke the chains that kept them secured to the bridge and slid down to smash into the sea, killing several of the hundreds of men of the service teams on the deck in their crazy, self-destructive run.

The ship wouldn't sink for so little, no... A modern aircraft carrier is a behemoth of steel and technology, with perhaps as many as two thousand or more watertight compartments, and even the arson was being isolated as colossal fire-retardant armored shutters of steel closed to separate the colossal hangar in five different zones, to ease the work of the automatic fire-extinguisher system and of the emergency teams. The ship would have survived... But, for a time at the moment impossible to foresee, would have been unable to carry out any air operation: with the ship so tilted and on flames, launch or recover any kind of aircraft was impossible.

Sandy couldn't know it, but as the five submarines silently sailed towards the enemy fleet, they had already caught a few very significant successes.

It was only hours later that the submarines entered in the area were the fleet was stationed, and Sandy was bent over the sonar console, Baker at his side, Steve Hadley listening with the greatest possible attention to the passive sonar, frowning as he tried to discriminate the sounds that crowded his headphones, helped fortunately by the enormous power of analysis of the computers of the Unseen.

"We definitely sunk something..." Headley murmured, more to himself than to the two high officers behind him. The air force had launched another attack while the subs were sailing towards the fight zone, and the new barrage of Sea Eagles had managed some more successes, evidently, because the passive sonar was overwhelmed with the deafening cacophony of screaming metal, thuds of impacts and the echoing, never ending sound of broken glass that signals the sinking of a ship, and that echoes for an eternity in the depths of the sea. "At least two different ships, I'd say." Steve continued, frowning a bit more but grinning slightly nonetheless as Baker looked equally pleased, while Sandy simply resembled a statue of ice for how cool and apparently indifferent he looked.

"Well then... the noise should have covered our own entirely." The old admiral observed. This submarine is wonderful, after all... The Vanguard was noisy like a train, compared to this... "Depth 300 feet, six knots, route 1-4-0."

The officers in the room tasked with the conduction of the submarine confirmed the order, and they all felt the ship obey and follow the new route, slowing down even more and becoming now virtually silent as a grave as it sails in the depths, slowly and coldly.

"The enemy must have his own SSN in ambush in the depths... Of course, they don't expect us to come here, but I'm sure they did not want to undervalue the possibility of an attack of some sort." Baker said calmly, and Sandy nodded solemnly, before talking with the experience of years of warfare and command.

"They sure have... We must expect at least one, two SSN for each aircraft carrier group, which means that at the very least we are going to face six subs. And they have currently a formidable advantage on us... They are motionless, in waiting, listening to their passive sonars and searching for the first suspect noise they get." Sandy looked coldly to the screens of the sonar console, where the confused, brutal lines of the noise of the sinking ships were finally fading slowly away with its strain of echoes behind. "Motionless and in passive listening. It means they are completely silent. Black holes into the ocean, that we can't hear, and thus we can't detect... And as silent as we are, soon or later we'll move close enough to them that they will hear us, and we will be torpedoed before understanding what's happening."

"Or they could warn the rest of the fleet and then destroyers, frigates and helicopters would start dropping sonobuoys and sonars everywhere to find us and sink us." Baker added, making a bit of a grimace.

"Exactly." Sandy nodded calmly. "So, I guess we must be the ones finding them first... And to do it without being torpedoed as soon as we let out the first "ping" of active sonar, I guess we must use our new trick. The one when we fake to be a farting whale, or a belching shark, Hadley."

The admiral had said it with a cool, calm and educated voice, that the seriousness of the phrase all but made it even more amusing. Baker covered his barely repressed laughter into an awkward cough, and Hadley snickered as silently as he could manage. The admiral was talking of the latest technologic idea of the Admiralty Research & Development office: it was a system installed on the sonars of the Unseen class submarines, capable to distort the sonar sonic signal to emit, from the usual "ping" that everyone imagines, to one of a whole database of registered sounds of the ocean. In particular, sounds like the call of the whales or of the dolphins. Signals of that kind are quite common to be caught on the sonars when sailing in the open oceans, and so it was virtually possible to illuminate the depths with the new system, without raising too many suspects in the enemies eventually listening. It all depended from the ability of the sonar specialist â€" and Hadley is the best in this field â€" and from simple common sense: use too often the system would have raised concerns and eventually turned into a complete giveaway of its secret. And of our position, moreover...

"It will work, commander." Hadley ensured with a nod, not hiding his grin this time. "I was there when the system was first trialed... And damn, it works. They will not even suspect our presence."

"Of course, if it does not work..." Sandy playfully countered, "... we will be a bit too dead for understanding that it didn't work."

"Sonar active, Hadley. One scansion only, and dress up the signal as good as you can manage. I trust you, but no errors, for god's sake. I get the feeling that these boys of the RA must be trigger-happy at the very least, and I wouldn't like them firing a torpedo down the throat of our singing dolphin." Sandy ordered, and even he bit lightly into his lower lip, moving his tongue nervously against his teeth as he looked to the screen and waited with nervous impatience and, admittedly, curiosity. When he had commanded the Vanguard, such a system hadn't even been hypothesized yet... While Baker, who was at his first true experience of war, had tried the new active mode of the sonar only in one major exercise once.

Hadley was by far the most trusting of the three, and his fingers quickly moved to pass the sonar mode to active, and send out the masked ping. "I'll send them the noise of a big whale shaking its dick, Commander." The sonar specialist joked, and even if Baker frowned in a mix of horror and surprise at such freedom of language, the old admiral grinned and nodded.

"Excellent choice."

The sonar made its masked transmission, and the singing of a whale traveled in the deep water of that tormented area of the northern oceans, scanning every aspect of the seabed of the Glacial Seas and bouncing back to the NES Unseen. Each echo was quickly processed by the computers of the ship, calculating distances and positions, until a 3D image of the seabed appeared on one of the large flat-screens, flanked by a precise image coming from the database of the sub.

The comparison was easy done: the seabed was covered by wrecks and relicts that before had not been in there...

But in that moment, the attention of everyone in the room was conquered by Hadley, who announced: "Eight tracks, named from K1 to K8, confirmed stationing SSNs."

"Return to passive." Sandy commanded, his voice a bit sharp as he looked to the screen and saw that the first contact, named K1, was merely eight miles ahead, on a 45° angle starboard. "Speed two knots, veer starboard... for 3-5-0, and get to a smooth stop."

Baker understood what was going to happen, and he added his own order. "Commander to Torpedo room. Prepare tube One, Spearfish torpedo."

"Tube Two as well, chief." Sandy added a second later. "I want to be sure."

"So... how we take it out...? We can use a Spearfish torpedo and keep them under direct control for all the run, slow speed, tight leash, keeping the seeker in passive mode. We fire it to the K1, and the first sound we detect in the depths must be it, right...?" Baker suggested with a calm that rarely he had shown in the last hours. The fight had triggered something in his personality: aspects that the "Perisher" training of the submariner, the most feared course of formation in the world, had trained sharply but that had been masked by the tension for all the time... And now, when they were needed the most, they stepped out.

"Right. We keep them under tight control and guide them under the keel of the surface ships... we'll set a minimum depth of 14 meters for the torpedo, so we are sure to leave the surface ships untouched for now. No release of the torpedo until I say it. I want to be absolutely sure to hit the correct target, not a decoy or a fucking ship. I want a clean work."

"Commander from Torpedo Room, torpedo ready, set for 14 meters minimum depth."

All the weapon systems of the submarine were operative and in perfect order, and the Weapon System Officer added his own data: "Distance 12600, angle 90, good launch solution available for K1."

"Ready. Track target." Sandy commanded with cold, formal precision.

"Tracked."

"ONE OUT! Torpedo two ready."

"Torpedo one out."

They all felt the gloomy, metallic noise of the torpedo leaving the tube, the slight shook that made the submarine tremble a bit, and then, the silence, as the big torpedo was pushed forwards, slowly but surely.

"Torpedo under control, commander." The officer tasked with the control of the torpedoes announced, his voice only slightly tinged with a bit of tension as his hand moved with the precision of a surgeon on the small joystick, eyes locked on the screen where an Infra Red image showed the torpedo moving forwards.

Behind its slender, long body, the solid, fine optic fiber cable that connected the weapon to the submarine and carried the various commands to the computer mounted just behind the warhead of the torpedo was regularly unrolling itself in the water.

No one talked. The silence was total, when suddenly the torpedo caught a passive noise signal and prepared itself to attack the track, who was a few meters above, port side.

"ABORT!" Sandy immediately roared. "It's the towed decoy of a surface ship, ignore it! Don't release the torpedo."

The officer hesitated for a fleeting instant, but then he rapidly aborted any attempt of attack from the torpedo and guided it onwards calmly, a pearl of sweat rolling down his forehead as the torpedo now caught the low, regular noise of the twin propellers of the colossal warship as they lazily slapped the water, pushing the destroyer forwards at just a few knots of speed...

The thought of such colossal unit, armed with all sorts of guns, missiles and torpedoes, capable to destroy even the Unseen in a bare second, sailing so close to them was frightening at the very least.

The torpedo continued to advance, gaining terrain and listening... listening... But the enemy SSN was motionless, and silent like a grave.

"We must be close. Pass to active homing." The old admiral ordered, and the torpedo was immediately turned in active mode, its internal sonar emitting its first ping and immediately finding the submarine target with the echo, straight in front of itself.

It locked the target, immediately, and it started its attack automatically. This time Sandy gave his assent: "Release torpedo one in self-guide."

The Spearfish dropped the optic fiber cable, and it suddenly accelerated to the absurd speed of almost 200 knots. It was the latest and most deadly submarine weapon developed: a super-cavitating torpedo, capable to be so hydrodynamic to literally pierce into the water and create a bubble of empty, open air around itself, so to reduce the resistance and move forwards like a thunder. And its target was motionless and at barely 270 meters of distance. Little more than three seconds of time. Not enough, not even for a desperate launch of decoys.

The torpedo smashed into the enormous and powerful SSN just under the conning tower, and it pierced the external hull even before it actually exploded, opening a mortal wound of several meters in the pressure-hull inside, and crashing open a door for the tremendous power of the ocean, which immediately flooded into the sub, killing and destroying.

In less than a minute, the pressure had warped the submarine as it sunk rapidly, and in less than two minutes, it was over: the SSN smashed heavily on the seabed already crowded of wrecks and tilted on a side awkwardly, a dead and silent grave full of men died even before understanding what was happening.

On the Unseen, no one cherished particularly. They had caught an important success, but no one could be happy anyway... They had killed perhaps one hundred or more submariner like they were. They had ended their life in a second... and the worst part was the awareness that, in any moment, it may have been the Unseen's turn to be torpedoed in that way. Their turn to die, to vanish forever from the face of the planet.

No one is able to know the exact fate of the submarine, silent and invisible, when it sinks without having time to communicate anything... without time to even launch to the surface the expendable buoys of communication... without anyone close enough to hear the unmistakable noises of the sinking on the passive sonar. A sub is the most difficult thing in the world to search and find... when it is dived, there's nothing that can spot it. So, if something goes the wrong way, no one knows, and for some time, the ship would be listed as SUBMISS, submarine missing... And only when the hopes were lost forever, it would have been declared SUBSUNK, even if no one, not even the families of the dead ones, would have ever had a real idea of what had happened. It was the terrible, cruel possible fate of every submariner... And everyone on board of the Unseen knew it well. Much as they tried to seal it out of their minds, it was an ever present fear... And the reason why everyone had written his wills out and their letters of farewell to their dear ones and handed them over at the Admiralty to be conserved in a vault before the start of the mission. A ritual that took place every time the submarine set sail.

This time, anyway, the enemy was sure that the submarine had been sunk. Sandy was well aware that the very same frightening, echoing sounds of the agony of the sinking submarine that were currently crowding their passive sonar with noise, were also being heard by the many other sonars of the RA fleet...

And while everyone on board took a moment to overcome the feelings of the tragedy, as everyone fought to seal away in their mind the thought of what could happen to them, of what they had just done to so many persons, Sandy's mind, made cold by years of experience, worked frenetically.

He silently listened to a headphone, hearing the signals captured by their passive sonar as he stared in Hadley's eyes, the expert sonar officer staring back with knowing expression. The destroyer that had been passing bay was veering, and undoubtedly listening with attention with its towed passive sonar.

It is slowing down... And veering to scan with the sonar its Blind Corner...

Every ship or submarine has a sonar blind corner, that's the back. To eliminate this area of danger, a sonar array is towed, attached at a long cable... But to fully scan the area behind the ship, it's wise and normal to veer every now and then, so that the towed array can receive and transmit in every direction around.

And now, what happens...? They have heard the explosion... they know that one of their SSN is sunk, and that every attempt of helping the crew would be useless anyway. But they don't know it's been a torpedo. The old admiral thought, listening with attention and waiting nervously to hear the ping of an active sonar scanning the depths... But it did not come, for the moment. They are convinced that this area is impossible to reach for our submarines... And they have no other enemies. So they'll value the other possibilities... First of all, the chance that the batteries on board may have exploded... Possible, but pretty rare an event... And so along, until they reject all the possible faults and start thinking about enemy attack... They may first think that the Typhoon fighters may have fired not only Sea Eagle missiles but Stand-Off torpedoes as well... But they will grow to reject this chance too.

"4 knots, silent navigation, rudder to descend, move to depth 300." Sandy ordered, and the officers at the navigation consoles immediately carried out the operations needed. A few seconds, and they all felt clearly that the submarine dived down, closer to the seabed.

It's only a matter of time... If their officers have a minimum wisdom, they'll soon understand that they have a submarine threat around, much as it must seem impossible to them... If they have a commander in their ranks that's smart enough and with the right dose of imagination, they will soon realize that we might have sailed our subs under the ices of the Arctic... And then, they will all be searching for us.

The Unseen descended to the new depth, three hundred meters below the surface, and Sandy listened for a few more moments to the sea. Still no active sonars searching for them... But he heard instead a couple of weird signals... A dolphin's call, and some other kind of sound of the ocean... And he turned with a questioning frown towards Hadley, who looked back for a second before nodding with a slight smile.

A moment later, a new explosion resounded on the passive sonar, followed by the echoing sounds of the sinking of a ship...

There was no way to know if friend or enemy... But there were good chances that, seen that the signals caught on the sonar had most likely been the active sonar concealed transmissions of another Unseen class sub, the exploded one was another one of the enemies.

A moment later, anyhow, several enemy sonars turned on active mode, and at least ten different pings resounded in the depth of the ocean.

Killer shifted a bit in the seat, looking out of the thick, bullet-proof ballistic ceramic of the side window of the vehicle with a frown. It was a few kilometers by now that they did not met enemies, or had contacts at all... And it was unnerving to say the least.

He was seating in a Blast-worthy armored seat which, just as most things in the world, was quite uncomfortable and tight for him, especially with the plates of Kevlar and armor that protruded from the sides for additional protection.

The seat itself was connected to the wall behind his back, and not to the floor of the vehicle, so that the blast of a mine had no direct chance to slam into his spine and hurt him... And the seat faced not forwards, but to the side of the car, facing the large window of armored glass. At his right side sat Alexis, and then there were two Predators. Behind their backs, facing the other side, four more of the special soldiers were seated in their own places, and in the rear, facing backwards, sat the vehicle's gunner, a soldier who had a console with a large flatscreen that showed the images of the outside world taken by several cameras mounted on the car in the 360° range. The console also had a joystick, and that was used to aim the machine-gun mounted on the remote weapon station on top: for the gunner, hit the enemies outside was almost like playing a videogame. Move the joystick, frame the target, squeeze the trigger. Fast and easy.

In the front of the vehicle was the driver alone, who was guiding the huge jeep in its suicidal-looking run in the rough terrain of Glacial's countryside.

Four more of the huge All-Terrain vehicles were running along with them, roaring with the full power of their engines as they ran almost 60 mph off-road, making the travel an hard, uncomfortable and shaky one, despite the normally excellent, almost excessive comfort of the Joint Light High Mobility Vehicle, which was basically an armored, mine-protected all terrain 4x4 vehicle built from the start as an agile, fast and relatively cheap battle-taxi, designed with all the possible smart measures to make it as resistant as possible to any kind of threat. The soldiers at times fondly called it "tank-like car", and it was quite fitting a definition, even if the official definition for that kind of vehicle was MRAP, Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected.

It was only a day from when Killer and Alexis had slaughtered Khaari and Kolna with their two armies, and just a few hours that every fighting around Sangin had ceased: the 7th Armored Division of Kesteven, guided by Alexander himself, had reached the area with its full ranks and quickly occupied the crossroads to imprison the remains of the RA armies, destroying the retreating troops and making a few hundred prisoners, finally ensuring the town of Sangin after all those days of tremendous fights. Just a few hours had passed from when Diana had had to rapidly return to Heaven, where her absence was by now so evident that a wide scale search was going to begin in minutes... So, the angel had had to rapidly leave, but with the promise to be back again sometimes soon.

Killer grinned a bit with himself, and Alexis at his side smiled amusedly, shooting him a playful and teasing glance from the corner of her eye, shadowed as always by bangs of golden hair. She knew exactly what Killer was thinking... Diana had been incredibly ravenous for him and for sex after all the countless years she had waited to meet him again, and she had been more than happy to play with Alexis at the same time he banged her for the hundredth time from behind, despite the fact that Diana was usually a shy and extremely modest girl.

Besides, it had also been very evident that as an angel she had whole new levels of energy and physical resistance. As a mortal, she could have never taken Killer's whole hugeness into her without being ripped apart and split literally in two like a toy... And instead, much as she bleed around his huge member, she had been asking him to go as rough as he liked, which, Alexis had to admit, had been spectacular. Alexis herself had had a few tries of him... including one where the blond ligeress, laying on her strong back, had cradled Diana over her abdomen, the angel's head resting between the ligeress's sumptuous breasts and Alexis's hands often playing with the angel's own much less impressive bosom as Killer penetrated them alternatively, until he came all over their eager bodies, hosing them both in his seed. At the end of it, despite the fact that Diana was normally black furred and Alexis was pure white, the two could be distinguished only thanks to the fact that Alexis was a lot taller, shapely and muscular. It took at least half an hour to the two females to lick reciprocally their faces clean of his potent essence...

It lasted until dawn, and it would have lasted even more if Diana hadn't to go... She had enchanted Blue Vixen with a sizeshifting spell as well, and the angel had also used her healing powers to heal the wounds of the Praetorians, of Murray and of as many soldiers she had managed, saving many lives and many limbs that normal medicine, as technologic as it was, couldn't have saved. She gave all of herself in her tasks of Healer until she really couldn't wait anymore for returning to Heaven...

And immediately after she had left, Killer had started the briefing for the next operations.

The successive move had been launching a strong push in the early hours of that day, when the 7th Division pushed north-east from Sangin in an armored sweep towards the coasts of the Glacial Seas, with strategic target the port of Zangwill, just in front of the island of Argolis, where the situation for the rebels was getting more and more desperate with each passing minute. The idea was to avoid advancing on Glacial itself for the moment, and instead break the siege around the island to save the rebels remained as soon as possible, before the vicious attacks of the RA could kill everyone. The little news that filtered from Argolis, after all, speak only of destruction and slaughter... And the demons guided by the RA captain Regina, who was in reality a demoness, were torturing and maiming the prisoners in disgusting ways. Regina was already known for crimes of tremendous ferocity: she was wanted for war crimes on the basis of a world-wide condemn of the World Council... But it seemed that she was just getting more and more vicious.

Simultaneously, four Night Spirit VTOL planes carrying 160 men from "The Big Black One", or rather 1st Predators Division, swooped ahead of the advancing convoys of tanks to secure nearby key ground and a few strategic bridges north of Sangin.

The 1st Armored Division and the 3rd Mechanized Infantry division had assaulted a pass in the south of Glacial, coming from Kendrew, and the two formations had started their advance into Alexis's homeland, rapidly crossing the area of the Aran Heights and the large slice of countryside secured by the rebels before moving south of Glacial to face the last big, organized army of the RA in the kingdom, the Southern Army, which was still at full ranks and barricaded in the southern area of Glacial, around the mountains of Walcheren and the air base of Ayr.

The JLHMVs that Killer and Alexis were traveling on were the vanguard of the 7th armored division, launched ahead of the endless convoy of tanks, IFVs and other vehicles. They all were running off-road as much as possible, because it offered major promises of safety: the leftover forces of the RA were retreating towards Zangwill along the roads of the whole region, and they were placing potentially lethal tracks and roadways strewn with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), mines and other kind of traps, doing everything they could to slow down the advance of the Empire's forces.

Cut through the countryside gave much greater safety: after all, not even the RA could place mines and traps everywhere, and avoid the roads was the best way to avoid stepping on a mine.

One of the convoys had tried to move by road, but they had found and defused no less than 55 between mines and IEDs in just less than three hours... So this gives an exact idea of why roads are a no-chances way.

Killer looked out of the window to see one of the other jeeps roaring past them as they had to slow down a bit, the vehicle bouncing hard as it overcome a ditch and then climbed up a rocky, steep embankment... And Alexis made a grimace at the way they were shacked like the ingredients of a drink.

The jeeps emerged from the embankment between the trees of a large wood, and soon they reached a secondary road... And much as they would have preferred not to, they had to follow it for the moment, since the forest was way too thick, the trees way too huge to try and pass across it. After all, the jeep wasn't a tank. They couldn't just run into a tree and smash it down.

Alexis frowned a bit deeper and closed her eyes silently, and Killer didn't say a word, nor disturbed her at all, knowing that she was probably using her powers to the best of her capabilities, to sense the threats that may lay ahead...

For a few moments, it was silence. The powerful electric engines of the jeeps were silent, after all... And the greatest noise came from outside, noises of their ride, sounds of the gravel that was scattered as their roared up the crumbled asphalt and into the road, the communications that passed on the vehicle's radio, the messages that their driver every now and then answered to...

And then, all of a sudden, Alexis's eyes snapped open and she turned towards the driver with a single snarling word: "Mines!"

The driver immediately stomped on the brake, and he scrambled for the radio at the same time, even before Alexis ordered: "Say to that moron to stop!"

But the jeep ahead of them almost in the same moment passed on a mine, and the blast of fire and fragments invested their own vehicle as they skidded noisily to a violent stop in the middle of the road.

The JLHMV ahead was burning, the lower section of the chassis completely destroyed and the wheels shot away all around like bullets... but the Security Cell that contained the crew and the passengers was built to resist to such attacks, and it had been neatly separated from the mount by the blast of the mine itself.

The armored cell was slammed on the asphalt by the strength of the explosion, and it rolled violently upside down, crushing the turret mounted on top before slamming into a side and skidding finally to a stop, sparks coming up from the asphalt as the steel scratched over it...

And immediately, an RPG coming from the woods shot towards the cell.

Fortunately, the Electro-Magnetic active defense system was still operative, and one of the modules attached to the top of the safety cell immediately kicked into gear and fired a blast of invisible electric energy, so hot that they could see the air vibrate and dwarf, before the blast invested the incoming rocket and nearly vaporized it when it was still a few meters away from impact.

"Let me drive, it works better!" Alexis growled, standing and awkwardly moving to the front of the vehicle as Killer and the Predators stood up and pushed out of the hatches on top to fire with their rifles as gunfire resounded from outside and bullets began to noisily smash into the thick armor and creaked several of the windows.

The gunner in the back of the vehicle moved the joystick to the side and squeezed the trigger, and immediately the loud, deep and unmistakable booming sound of the enormous machine gun in the top turret firing overcome every other sound.

Well, everyone but the booming bursts of Killer's Cobra. After all, much as he stubbornly defined it assault rifle, it was a customized heavy machine gun fitted with a sophisticate optic and a grenade launcher as well.

The other jeep stopped in a semicircle and fired with their own Remote Weapon Stations, bursts of automatic fire and enormous 20 mm bullets smashing into the trees to the side of the street and neatly shattering the huge trunks to slivers of wood, slaughtering the enemies behind those as other RPGs and gunfire were fired towards the vehicles...

And Alexis drove forwards rapidly, moving the jeep between the mines hidden beneath the ground, until she managed to stop her course just beside the burning wrecks, shielding the safety cell with the jeep.

Finally, the soldiers still closed inside and pinned by the furious gunfire could push their hatches open and crawl out, and a couple of Predators jumped down from the vehicle to help their comrades: once more, the JLHMV had worked well. Despite the violence of the explosion of the anti-tank mine, they only had minor wounds and lesions of modest importance. Most of them immediately sprinted to the corners of the jeep and fired from behind that secure cover, adding their own firepower to the equation as most of the soldiers on the jeeps now descended to fight dismounted.

Alexis bad temperedly kicked open the door and jumped out of the massive vehicle, drawing out one of her Desert Storm handguns and Blue Vixen in the other hand in the same swift, almost danced movement. When the spiked soles of her high-heeled boots slammed into the cracked asphalt, she had already turned and blasted a shot that neatly decapitated an enemy rifleman firing from behind a large trunk, much as he was trying to cover and conceal himself.

Immediately after, she fired two rounds in rapid succession, and the massive magnum-explosive .50 rounds of the Desert Storm smashed into the trunk of a huge tree, the second bullet slamming into the first one as it sunk deeply into the wood, and finally breaking out on the other side, where the shells, even if broken down in fragments, had still more than enough energy to send down another infantrymen by maiming his face neatly.

When she was in a hurry, it wasn't wise to waste her time.

"Slow, isn't so...?" Killer asked idly as he pulled up towards her into the fight, and the two stood back to back in the middle of a large group of assaulting RA soldiers. His voice made her grin, despite all: as always, it was calm and relaxed, like he had just politely asked what hour was.

"Fucking slow, yeah. We'll never be at Argolis before they are all killed if it's this way every few kilometers." She answered, snarling as she slashed Blue Vixen and neatly decapitated the first soldier who had daringly stepped forwards, twin daggers at the ready. The others backed off at a distance immediately as she glared towards them, but it was useless as she rose her sword in an arc and squeezed the small golden trigger of the handle, the submachine gun hidden inside firing a long, growling burst that took them down with cruel coldness as several bullets fired at her smashed uselessly into the barrier of sapphire energy that surrounded her like a shield.

Killer sighed even as he slashed Wyvern out: the massive blade was bigger than it had ever been before, and it matched perfectly the new, massive proportions of his body, the blade nearly fifteen feet long and glowing with his golden energy as it effortlessly cut three soldiers in half and sent further four crashing backwards against their comrades as they were hit by the flat of the blade.

Actions of rearguard... Since the RA seems to be mostly made of fanatic killers and psychopaths and demons, I guess they don't have many difficulties in convincing bunches of their own men to stay back and fight to death to slow our advance... And when we get to Zangwill, their defenses will be strong and prepared...

"You are right as always." He said softly, and he immediately spoke into the small boom microphone of his headphones even as they continued to fight back to back. "Siegfried, move your ass with that Assault Team. And stop by to pick me and Alexis up."

"Kind and gentle as always." Siegfried grumbled from the other side, and Killer grinned amusedly despite himself. "We are already in flight anyway... I foresaw that it would have ended this way." The younger tiger continued, and Killer could indeed hear the hiss of the reactors of the Night Spirit in flight.

"Good work, Cold." Alexis snickered, using her personal nickname for Siegfried, the one that he had earned at their first meeting, for how always formal and irreproachable he was in his behavior, with anyone and in any situation. His voice was always formal, almost haughty at times... But he was one of the nicest persons she had ever met.

In that very same moment, she spotted an RA soldier emerging from behind a tree with a massive, drum-feed grenade launcher: a bulky, short and massive rifle that used a revolver-like clip filled with HE grenades that could be fired nearly one kilometer away... And she grinned with vicious amusement before quickly spinning on her heel and sprinting in his direction, knocking him flat with a blast of psychic force that sent him crashing backwards so strong to crack a tree in two when he committed the error of turning towards her with a terrorized look and a trembling finger that was about to squeeze the trigger.

The massive weapon flew up idly into the air, and Alexis easily leapt up for it, throwing her Desert Storm up high into the air and grabbing the bulky grenade launcher with her single now free hand, spinning on herself rapidly and grinning as she fired a grenade into a small group of riflemen that were engaging a couple of Predators from behind the cover of the trees.

The tremendous recoil of the bulky weapon left her unfazed as she used the huge weapon like it was a normal handgun, which alone was more than enough to terrorize some of the soldiers that saw her so much that they turned around and quickly fled... only to fall over face first as ropes of her sapphire, gleaming energy surged from the ground and easily restrained them by wrapping tightly around their legs, and then up around their arms as well.

She quickly spun on herself into the air, cackling as she fired grenade after grenade, never missing her targets, until the weapon was empty and she threw it away unceremoniously, landing on her feet with her usual grace and idly rising a hand to grasp the massive, silvery handgun as it fell back down, grinning with merciless amusement as her eyes glowed with sapphire flames, and the leftover enemies hidden around them in the vegetation shrieked in horror as they were forcefully lifted into the air by an irresistible, invincible force that dragged them all towards the centre of the road.

Killer stared at this with quiet amazement, shaking his head a bit as Alexis walked closer with a wide grin on her features, slightly moving her hand into the air and knocking the two most agitated fluctuating enemies into the trunk of a large tree, making them all slump into boneless unconsciousness against their invisible bonds of energy... And then she grinned a bit wider as two of the RA riflemen tried to struggle against the invisible tentacles of energy that were imprisoning them, and she sent the two bulky tigers smashing head against head, knocking these down as well...

And Killer winced slightly when one of the soldiers in black uniforms tried to reach up a hand to activate the explosive-jacket he was wearing... And Alexis glared at him, and it was enough to make him pretty much explode in a splatter of blood and gore.

Strangely enough, all the others ceased immediately to struggle and let themselves being dragged in the middle of the road, where they were tied tightly up by solid ropes of sapphire energy that appeared from nothingness around them as the Predators approached, weapons ready and aimed as they quickly searched and disarmed the immobilized enemies, several of the special soldiers gaping at Alexis as she smirked slightly and idly sheathed sword and handgun.

Killer turned towards her with a strange, amused but questioning expression, that scolded her for how powerful she was and praised her at the same time, putting a grin and a frown together, but she only shrugged lightly, grinning widely before they both turned upwards to see four Night Spirit VTOL planes approaching rapidly, announced by the low, regular hiss of their jet engines.

Killer quickly walked up to the closer officer he could find, and he gave rapid instructions on how to continue the operation, ordering to the jeeps to continue scouting ahead of the main forces of the 7th division, staying off road as much as possible and clearing or signaling to the convoy following the position of every enemy strongpoint. The objective of the 7th wasn't changed: the port of Zangwill had to be reached and the town cleared out as soon as possible. Every minute was life and hopes lost for the exhausted men under siege at Argolis.

A few minutes later, he quickly jogged back to Alexis just as she easily climbed on board of one of the Night Spirit planes, which had come hovering just a couple of meters above the ground, without even touching the ground as the two ligers effortlessly lifted themselves up from the edge of the open loading ramp aft of the large stealth aircraft.

Killer climbed inside and slowly stood up as the ramp immediately started to reclose itself, the plane shooting vertically up in a fast, violent take off... And the huge male couldn't help but admire, and admittedly envy a little bit, the way Alexis seemed absolutely unfazed by the movements, even as she walked on her high-heeled boots. It still never ceased to amaze him.

The cargo bay was rather dark, illuminated only by a few small, green lights along the roof, and the wide load area was filled up by two long, slender Assault Boats of steel: their hull was armored and designed for high speed, and the boat was propelled by a waterjet system that ensured both maneuverability and speeds unmatched, helped by the surface-piercing foil, sharp like a knife, in front of the craft.

Aft of each boat had a small, thickly-armored forecastle with several sights, and there seated the driver... Beside this, on a mechanic mount, two huge, long multi-barreled miniguns were at the ready for use by the gunner. Two long belts coming up from a large ammo reserve in the boat's hull feed the mighty weapon to support its capability to throw up clouds of thousands of rounds every minute, to force the enemy to keep his head down under cover.

Along the walls on the two sides, at the foldable seats, were resting twenty Predators in full, high-risk equipment: their bullet-proof tactical vests Osprey had been filled with all the additional plates for maximum protection, and they were wearing the MK2 helmet, which covered the head integrally, looking like a motorcycle helmet... But of course, the MK2 had the usual feats incorporated in its blackened visor and the helmet was fully bullet-proof, and besides it included a respirator system to ensure the survival and fightability of the soldier even in an environment extremely hostile. Be it the waters of the ocean, or a battlefield covered by clouds of pollution either Nuclear, Bacteriological or Chemical. Four sailors of the Royal Marine corps were seated further forwards, near the cockpit.

All the soldiers stood immediately up to salute their sovereigns by pounding a fist on their heart before standing on attention... And they waited until both Alexis and Killer rose their hands in kind answer, dismissing them with a slight, kind smile, before Siegfried walked out of the cockpit and reached for them, stepping around the two boats secured on the parallel loading rails on the floor.

Killer and Alexis sat down with Siegfried and exchanged the last updates about the general situation at hand... But as to the blond femme fatale, she quite soon quit the conversation to reach for one of the side-doors, standing beside the Minigun mount there and idly leaning a hand on the massive weapon as she looked out of the window to see the trees whizzing away at dizzy speed under the fast-flying plane. Occasionally, hails of tracer rounds rose to the sky around them, but the bursts of bullets were always late and never really dangerous: the Night Spirit were stealth, and they were flying low and fast, skimming the trees and exploiting the protection offered by the mountains on the two sides of the deep valley to further conceal themselves, and avoid dangerous engagements with the mobile SAM launchers of the RA.

Once, the swarm of Night Spirit planes roared close to one of the roads in the valley, and Alexis spotted a long convoy of retreating RA troops and vehicles, included a couple of SA6 Hayate vehicles: essentially, the body and tracks of a Tiran battle tank with a different turret equipped with radar plant and a battery of three Surface to Air Missiles capable to engage targets up to 25 kilometers away, guided by the radar on the launcher. It was an autonomous, independent TELAR system: Transporter, Erector Launcher and Radar, capable to transport the missiles, aim them and fire them without help from outside...

And in the middle, front and rear of the queue of soldiers and vehicles marched also three SA35 Hayane, a vehicle mostly identical to the SA6, but with yet another kind of turret, employing a radar and thermal imagery sensors to engage targets up to 3.5 kilometers with a complex of four automatic 35 mm guns, very effective for low-altitude defense.

The pilots of the Night Spirit quickly veered away from the threat, anyhow. Much as Alexis wished to attack, it was better not to challenge such firepower with four planes that, even if fast, stealth and well armed, were still cargo aircrafts, and not fighter-bombers. Besides, these are not our target...

She tried to focus her powers, anyhow, her energies that still reserved to her great surprises, and that she still didn't know the full extent of... And just before the convoy of vehicles vanished from her sight, she blasted out a tremendous blow of her psychic force, and she almost backstepped in surprise as the Hayane at the head of the convoy exploded, followed by the vehicle following immediately behind... Before the convoy finally vanished from her sight, leaving her staring out at the dizzy display of confused landscape whizzing away behind their backs as the planes flew at full speed towards the coast...

And Alexis couldn't help but feel her lips slowly bending in a grin of vicious amusement as she took in yet another capability of hers: she had thought to need... A firmer grasp, or sight, at least, to influence things with her psychic powers. She had thought distance was a very limiting factor, and she had never dared to hope to be able to pretty much vaporize a tank â€" at least two, to be sincere... maybe some more, even... - at such distance with just a fleeting glare from a fast-moving plane kilometers away...

But soon, her attention was drawn away by other elements of interest, and other considerations.

The sky changed briskly and unexpectedly, from the cold but serene and clear sky blue, stained here and there of white, soft clouds, they suddenly flew into darkness.

Every head inside the cargo bay turned nervously to the small windows in the side doors as unnatural darkness filtered into the plane from outside, even Killer turning with a bit of a frown outside as Siegfried stood up and walked quickly into the cockpit after shooting a frowning gaze out of the window himself.

Alexis looked after him for a moment, then traded a gaze with Killer before turning back to the window and looking up: the sky was covered by enormous, thick and black clouds, dense and dark as she had never saw before. Red lightning roared continuously from a cloud to the other, then shattered down to the ground below with deafening thunders that shook the plane like a toy, the whole world outside dark and shady like it was night. A night without moon and without stars.

"I don't know, I don't know!" Came the nervous voice of the navigator from the cockpit. "I can't understand it... The Weather Radar signals no clouds and no frigging tempests at all... All the other readings are wrong, too. Humidity, air speed... The instruments signal no wind... And feel instead! It seems like we are fucking dancing!"

Alexis made a bit of a face and nodded. Tremendous winds were indeed shaking the four planes in the formation... And she could see from the window two of the other three Night Spirit: they had quickly changed formation and spread their ranks a lot wider, and they also were gaining some altitude, because it really wasn't safe to fly clustered and skimming the trees with the way the planes were shaken and battered from side to side violently.

Alexis looked out to see the world suddenly illuminated by one tremendous lightning that smashed into a forest and added yet one more terrible arson to the many already there... And she felt her heartbeat speed up as a grimace of horror came over her beautiful features at the sight of how her homeland was reduced.

As far as she could see, the valley was on flame, or already destroyed to ashes. Craters covered the whole ground, making it look like the moon... And the devastation was total. It only had left a trail of ashes and debris and ruins, and Alexis stared at this, even when the darkness come back hiding most of it, feeling a tremendous rage rise into her... and feeling a great urge to let go the tears that she felt rising to her eyes as her mind gave her back a memory of how beautiful, green and wild that valley had been.

Huge, strong hands embraced her from behind, wrapping around her waist with infinite gentleness, and she smiled slightly, leaning her head against Killer's as he posed his own over her shoulder, nuzzling her soothingly and softly.

It was like being hugged by a titan, despite how tall, muscular and powerful Alexis was... and she at times found herself wondering just how it had to feel for most girls back at home, who often were barely ten feet tall. And so many in the world that weren't even six. She couldn't help but grin a bit, turning to kiss his muzzle gently.

"Not a normal storm, huh...?" Killer asked softly after a moment, his own icy eyes staring out with interest, the horror he felt at such sight hidden deep behind the coldness his gaze always bore.

"No..." Alexis confirmed sadly, shaking her head slowly. "Definitely not normal. Gods, what are we fighting...?"

"The gods." Killer answered, whispering in her ear as he made a bit of a face himself. They had talked of it with Diana... tried to... find a way to turn around the spell that prevented the angel from giving any info about the RA and especially about the hostile gods... But the spell had revealed its perfection, and the angel hadn't managed to speak a single word, even when they had tried to just make her share a few clues that could help Killer and Alexis understanding... Whoever had cast the spell, anyway, had been either extremely smart or tremendously powerful. And probably both.

Alexis, just like Killer before her, had taken with cold indifference the news that Hell, Heaven and the gods themselves were either planning to kill her and him or have them both as super-weapons to dominate each other forever... She had instead been thrilled by the fact that even the gods feared so much their power. Killer's immense power, moreover...

It wasn't anything new... But things were getting worse with time: so far, they had never seen such tangible demonstration of the tremendous, ancient and limitless powers they were facing and fighting. Powers that they had never believed possible or real... and that now were coming back for a revenge.

"We know it by now... Our path is blood-red." Killer said gently, and Alexis grinned and nodded.

"With not even crossroads to choose from." She added, grinning a bit wider and winking to him. "I guess we just gotta run to end of it and smash everything and everyone down along the road."

"Pretty much." The huge male replied in amused agreement, squeezing her a bit around the waist as he laughed softly, and she closed her eyes to just enjoy the way his deep, powerful voice shook her being, causing her a pleasure that was almost physical, with just his voice.

"Stop laughing, it's nothing fun, actually." Siegfried said from behind, and Killer looked flatly at him from over his shoulder, making his younger and smaller brother back away a little bit, rising his hands and grinning stupidly. "Laugh if you please. I'll say nothing."

"Better." Killer grunted, and he caught the sheet that the other mohawked tiger was offering, reading down on the paper rapidly before rising his glance with an ironic frown. "So technically the Weather-radars of the whole swarm say we are flying in a sunny, bright day...?"

Siegfried coughed a bit, as both huge males looked out of the window as another tremendous lighting roared closer, and he made a bit of a face before admitting: "Yes."

"Bah. You could turn them off now... In this area, normal weather ceases to matter, anyway. There's some... tremendous demonic force in the whole region around Argolis, it's evident."

Killer turned his visor on tentatively, but as he had expected, the system barely worked, much slower than usual and already tending to fade to static every now and then.

I just hope it will not affect this way the aircraft's systems, as well...

"Oh, no..." Siegfried whimpered exasperatedly as he turned his own visor on and was faced by the very same kind of problems, his muscular shoulders slumping with tired frustration. "Not again... Fuck, this is happening way too often lately..."

"It's either Vera still disturbing our systems, or this very same energy in the air that acts this way on our communications." Alexis said calmly from where she was staring at the outside world across the thick bullet-proof window. "I can't say which one is... it may even be a combination of both causes, even if I propend for the second possibility."

Siegfried sighed and pulled out his black, rugged portable computer from the tactical backpack on his shoulders, heading for a seat, half-moaning: "Either way, I'll see if there's something I can do."

Killer looked around the cargo bay, and he saw the Predators shifting uncomfortably in their seats, a couple of them walking up and stepping nervously back and forth.

The two Section Leaders let it be, and Killer ignored the slight infraction to the general not-written rules: he could understand the mounting tension.

As special as they were, the Predators were soldiers. The veterans, the biggest and strongest men, the most battle-hardened ones... but soldiers. They wouldn't have broken a sweat at the order of assaulting a warship by swimming under its hull and mining its keel, they would have coldly fought enemies enormously superior for number-firepower and kicked their asses savagely... But they were heading towards the unknown. An unknown so powerful and nasty that presented itself with unnatural, supernatural tempests, desolated landscapes of death and destruction and such waves of energy that not only they could feel the force against their bodies like a physical touch, their ultra-technologic equipment was affected by it, and made nearly useless. That very same equipment that had so great part in the exceptionally low rate of loses of the Predators: after all, when you are an expert soldier and have the advantage of knowing in advance the enemy position or all sorts of useful data, or when you can aim a too-hard-for-me target with your rifle and have a missile coming from a launcher hidden somewhere kilometers away coming to pulverize the threat, there's little that can stop you. But without it, they felt... naked. They were back to the basics... And as strong as they all were, they were back being simple soldiers, facing something that went far past their understanding. They had tried, after all, dealing with Alexis during the trainings and exercises... But no matter what, she always kicked their asses implacably. Now, the thought of going straight up facing threats like her, or maybe powers even greater, was clearly unnerving.

No need to add further strain on them...

"Here we are..." Alexis calmly observed as Zangwill came into view from her window, the whole town in ruins and crowded by soldiers, vehicles and batteries of guns and missiles. The pilots were flying even lower over the ground, veering towards the east to put a few miles between them and the defenses and batteries of SAM missiles of the town where the remains of the two slaughtered armies of the RA were setting up their last strongpoint... And Alexis impassibly looked over to see a field battery of SAM SA6 missiles on towed launchers fire a few rounds towards them, the missiles either missing, tricked by the self-defensive decoys launched automatic by the Night Spirits, or exploding in midair as she used her tremendous psychic power to create insurmountable shields on their approaching paths.

At the same time, the Predators all looked up with the same, almost-mechanic and nervous movement to see a small red light turning on over the door that lead to the cockpit, and the two Section Leaders stood immediately, each making a silent gesture with two fingers to order to his own nine soldiers to stand up and follow.

The Predators rapidly climbed up into the two boats, a section of ten men into each, and the Royal Marines climbed up to occupy the roles of driver and gunner on the two assault crafts, Siegfried looking up from his computer and standing to climb on a boat as well, putting the notebook back in his lap as soon as he sat down, everything else seeming of little importance to him for now as he tried to get the Joint Warriors system back to full operational capability.

Alexis and Killer stayed by the door for slightly longer, enough to see a tall, dizzy and cruel-looking cliff of dark rock hammered by even crueler waves pass beneath them at breakneck speed... And Killer winced a bit at just how dark and cruel the cold ocean looked, gazing down at the tremendous, eight-meter high waves that whipped the cliff with clouds of white foam with a very bad feeling. The ocean was so dark to look almost black... and its fury wasn't natural, either.

I wasn't expecting it to be so nasty when I planned this... Oh, fuck...

Alexis looked up at him with a grin nonetheless, and he couldn't help but answer with his own very characteristic, and admittedly a bit cocky smirk as they quickly walked over to the boats and easily climbed up the bow of the first one, taking place ahead of the Predators as Alexis all but laid down on her muscular abdomen over the long, sharp bow, taking the massive X13 rifle from her back and putting it in firing position, her hand quickly working the bolt to push an enormous 20 mm armor-piercing round in the chamber, a vicious grin on her features.

She never wanted the semi-auto or automatic version... Sniper until the very hand. And anyway, she somehow manages to fire triple the rounds of another sniper with an automatic rifle, if she wants to...

"Bro, put that damn thing away..." Killer said idly, poking his brother's portable, but Siegfried didn't look up immediately, giving instead a neutral grunt as he continued to type away at amazing speed...

"Bro..." Killer insisted, and finally Siegfried looked up, eyes widening as he felt a noisy clank and took in the sight of the light over the door turning green, his head turning to look backwards to the rear of the plane, where the loading ramp had been opened and lowered, giving full, open sight over the roaring sea, the waves arching up so much to reach barely meters away from the belly of the plane.

In the same time, the two boats, unleashed from the safety block system that held the cargo in place during the flight, slid rapidly backwards along the rails, and Siegfried paled a bit as he rapidly snapped closed the computer and forced it into his backpack, one hand grasping an handle in the side of the boat tightly as they literally flied out of the back of the fast-flying planes, falling straight down towards the water. "Damn!" Siegfried howled, and Killer had just enough time to suppress a laughter at how ridiculous the light curse came from him, especially since it was carried in the usual cool, formal and detached tone of his, before the two boats slammed into the ocean in tempest, rising clouds of water around them and almost throwing them all off-board as the hulls slammed into the top of one of the angry, enormous waves.

Alexis grunted bad-temperedly, but that was all, as she barely moved from her ready-to-fire stance, and Killer admired her strength and composure once more as he winced and cursed angrily under his breath instead, just like most of the Predators. Some were also particularly vocal.

But as the two boats roared forwards, accelerating towards their full, exceptional speed of nearly 60 knots, literally jumping over the ocean in tempest, flying from wave to wave as the bows cut into the dark waters like knives, he had much more important and interesting things to notice as he looked around than any of the various curses that rose around him.

The Night Spirits were already roaring away, veering tightly to the east to put distance between themselves and the enemy missiles and guns: the other three planes had also dropped two boats each, but those, much as they looked identical to the one he was in, had a fully enclosed, armored compartment that held a couple of tons of powerful, inert explosive in place of the seats for the soldiers.

The six explosive Assault Crafts were also crewless, remotely operated from, in this case, on board the planes, and all six roared away at full speed, slapping their bows over the waves as they sailed to the west to hit their targets.

And Killer's eyes stared in amazement in that very same direction, to see the unbelievable spectacle of hundreds of ships covering the sea, crowding the ocean for miles... The greatest fleet ever gathered up in one single place in History was in front of his eyes. But he noticed with satisfaction that one of the immense aircraft carriers looked quite miserable, tilted sharply on a side and apparently kept floating with the help of two large destroyers secured to the struck flank, which was warped and blackened by the flames that had followed a direct hit. Or more than one...

Another couple of ships were sinking in the cruel, cold ocean, and a large frigate was completely blackened out and consumed by flames that had recently died away, leaving on the surface only a useless, smoking and incandescent wreck.

The second good thing he noticed was that the fleet was apparently very busy, and had no time or attention left to care of their two small assault crafts: several destroyers and gunships were firing furiously towards the island of Argolis, throwing up tremendous barrages of artillery, rockets and missiles. The trails of smoke of the missiles were so numerous and thick to form a single, solid wall of white smoke against the sky: it was frightening even to just look at it from the distance.

But most of all, keeping the huge fleet busy was an attack of the Typhoon fighters coming from the Forward Operation Base in the ices of the arctic: a new barrage of Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles was incoming, and the destroyers in the successive lines of defense around the aircraft carriers where already more than busy either exploding or shooting down the incoming missiles.

Killer turned forwards to stare at the Island of Argolis, finally... And he was surprised at the look of magnificence she had, seen from a tiny craft in the middle of a furious, tempestuous ocean. After all, Argolis was just a little island, barely five miles from northern coast to southern one, most of the length occupied by the long, magnificent runway of the island's air base, which could welcome every kind of plane in the world...

Argolis looked imposing mainly because of the fact that it had no beaches, no low coasts at all, but only tall, vertical cruel cliffs of dark rock that made an effective amphibious assault impossible. A One hundred feet tall clog of sharp, hard stone climbing up from the seabed: that was Argolis. One only bay, and small, in the south west corner, had allowed the construction of a small port: it could hold only a few ships at a time, but thanks to the deep sea bed of the bay, it could welcome even the heavier and more massive ships of what used to be Glacial's navy.

Killer looked towards the narrow entrance of the bay: two enormous walls of Cementitan, further reinforced by several massive rocks piled up around them, protected the bay from intrusions and waves... and at the "door" of the bay, the two walls both were surmounted by large turrets armed with huge cannons, just like the turrets that arm the warships themselves.

Now, of course, both turrets had been hit and wrecked... Even the tall, red-and-white lighthouse had been struck, and the only thing that remained was a racked stump, blackened by flames.

The importance of the island, anyhow, was in the other port. Into the bay, works lasted years had dug an immense cave in the cliff, which had later been reinforced by building a massive, bunkerized port into it, protected by immense walls of super reinforced concrete.

Three colossal shutters of titanium closed the three doors to the cave, which was the homeport of the submarines of the Glacial's navy: a home safe from every kind of threat, since not even a nuclear bomb could have endangered them once docked into the bunker.

The whole island, in reality, had been dug into: along the years, the military of Glacial had built a complex web of tunnels and underground bunkers and facilities: everything from hospitals to ammo depots. Underground, deep out of the reach of the enemy bombs, was a true town destined to the survival of the Navy's forces and command staff, and of the Highest Orders of command of the whole kingdom: the island had been thought like the place from where, even during a nuclear holocaust, the royal family and the commanding staff could continue to direct the nation in the fight.

Even the airbase on the island was fortified: along the runway, 7 massive bunkers existed, each capable to contain a fighter-bomber plane and a workshop for its maintenance... Besides, each bunker had, in the rear, a lift which could carry planes and weapons and stores from the bunker itself to an immense underground hangar-bunker that could hold tens of other planes.

The island was defended automatically by a vast array of weapons granting a colossal firepower: there were other gun turrets along the coasts of the whole island, smaller gun mounts operated remotely from inside the bunkers granted the close defense against any attempt of landing or against low-flying planes, batteries of Surface-Surface missiles protected the island against any enemy warship sailing too close, several CIWS systems in turrets along the coat even ensured a last defense against incoming missiles and there were a few great underground Vertical Launch Missiles Silos that could fire powerful SAM missiles to keep the sky clean.

Argolis was unassailable. The fact that, after a siege so long, there were still rebels alive and resisting in the deepest bunkers was the proof of it... But now, most of the defensive systems had long been destroyed or conquered: the gun towers had been destroyed one by one, same going for the batteries of Surface-Surface missiles.

The RA air force, after long and bloody attempts, had managed to bomb down to shreds the vertical missile silos, dropping laser-guided bombs exactly over the armored hatches of the launch cells, until the bombs had pierced inside and exploded in massive hells of flames as the missiles stored went off as well... The air base had been viciously bombed, and the air operations of Glacial's rebels had ceased months ago: the glorious, immense runway that once could have easily handled even the greatest aircrafts now was so full of craters and cracks that even the RA, after conquering it, had managed to base in there only a few Mantis VTOL fighters or helicopters used to land on the small decks of the warships. Nothing more.

Argolis looked majestic also because of how scary it was, currently. The sky was even darker above and around the island, and the weird, monstrously powerful red lightnings struck over the island with a frequency and ferocity absolutely impressive.

Besides, straight over the island, the black clouds circled slowly around a vortex, almost a black hole in the complete darkness that stretched upwards into the sky looking like the eye of a hurricane with the way the dark clouds circled around like solid walls... And the fact that the hole stretched far higher than Killer could see looking up added some more dark majesty to the whole image, admittedly.

The visibility on top of the cliffs had to be next to none, besides, since the whole island was covered by haze and clouds of smoke and dust as explosions tormented the island continuously as new and new barrages of artillery fire came from the bombarding ships around.

"Gods. Fucking ugly place to come and have a holyday at sea..." Siegfried said absently, and Alexis glared at him a bit from over her shoulder, silencing him immediately as he gave a small, dumb grin of apologize, as most of the Predators on board looked nervously out in the distance, towards the enormous warships of the fleet, waiting for guns to fire towards them, for missiles to come and hit their small crafts as they shot like bullets over the frightening waves, the gunner aiming the miniguns nervously from side to side...

And suddenly, a boom caught their attention, everyone turning with a wince to the side to see a frigate far in the line of ships firing its main gun at them as the driver immediately attempted an evasive maneuver... But as fast as they were, they had no hopes against the long, thin cannon's dart, which besides was radar-guided from on board the warship towards its target.

It all happened in a fraction of second: Killer stared up in amazement as Alexis kicked up to her feet, spinning in the air to land on toeclaws over the edge of the boat's flank, even as the craft reared up and slapped down onto the waves like a restless stallion trying to unsaddle her, hands straightened towards the incoming round, a snarl on her beautiful face...

And they all on board felt clearly the terrible blast of force coming from her hands, feeling like a giant had slapped them all, and they gaped as the round seemed to slow down from several-times-the-speed-of-sound to almost none in the space of a meter, all but stopping in midair before it went into fragments even as it was slapped away in an impossible arc over their heads, the shattered shell falling in the ocean more than sixty feet away on the other side of the boat.

Alexis panted, but a grin spread over her features as she straightened and let her powerful arms drop to rest at her sides, and everyone gaped at her in amazement.

Killer thought absently that, just for the fact that she was standing on the tip of her boots on the narrow parapet of the running boat, he only could admire her forever.

"Fuck." He said stupidly, grinning widely at her, and Alexis turned slightly towards him, smirking amusedly as she rose two fingers in the V of victory and winked to him, idly side stepping to sit back down into the boat, near the massive rifle she had dropped. "Gladly, lover. As soon as we possibly can." She teasingly answered, a light of complicity and lust in her eyes as he smiled back.

The frigate, meanwhile, had been destroyed by one of the Assault Boats which had smashed into the bow section and set on fire the main missile magazines, causing the ship to put up an acceptable imitation of a nuke as she paid the price of her formidable firepower, and, fortunately, no other ships seemed to have noticed their presence. Impossible to tell if the other explosive boats had hit something with success... Several ships were burning, but it could have been a missile from the Typhoons - or a torpedo from Sandy ... - too. Anyway, what mattered was the one boat they knew had hit its target.

Killer looked back towards Argolis, now much closer and looking even more imposing as the cruel cliffs towered over them in all their majesty. We might get there without too much troubles, finally...

"We've got visitors..." Alexis muttered, glaring upwards to see a couple of assault helicopters coming from the ships in the distance: evidently, the frigate had had the time to send an alarm, and the other ships hadn't managed to spot the two small, stealthy assault crafts on their radar, and had decided to send a couple of choppers investigating... And the Helix choppers were powerful: they had the very characteristic double, counter-rotating rotor system with two five-blades rotors one over the other on the same axis, which allowed them to have a very slim and clean tail, without the secondary rotor that you usually see on helicopters. They were very fast, agile, and extremely well armed with missiles, rockets and machine guns, which were kept hidden into the fuselage until the last moment to keep the chopper as stealth as possible.

"We are sitting ducks!" The Section Leader muttered, before he turned to his men while he rose his rifle to the shoulder and removed the safety with a fast, easy movement of the thumb, looking in the distance towards the fast approaching threats: even the side doors of the Helix were opened, and into each door was a gunner crouching behind an enormous minigun with eight long, thick barrels. "Dusty, keep that machinegun ready and spray the cockpit with all the fire you can manage! Cloud, try snipering the gunners when they are close enough... All the others, with me. Fire all you can against the doors. No economy of ammo, take the fuckers down, no matter how."

The Predators nodded and immediately moved, each one preparing his weapon to fire as the thick, bulky and muscular gunner of the section, Dusty, turned to rise his machine gun towards the incoming choppers, Cloud rising his long, scoped sniper rifle as the assaulter of the Section tried to load a SAM missile into the Javelin launcher, preparing himself for an emergency launch.

Killer and Alexis rose their weapons as well, and stared to the choppers in the distance: they initially made a wide turn, well ahead of their effective position... Evidently, their radars have difficulties finding a target so small and fast in these so furious waters... I never thought I would have said it, but bless these fucking crazy waves...

But it did not last very long: the head chopper soon veered tightly towards them, since the navigator had noticed the bow-waves of the approaching crafts... and the two Helix shot towards them rapidly, the deadly turrets under the nose of the two war machines turning to life and unfolding to reveal a mortal pair: a long, multi-barreled 30 mm gun coupled with a coaxial grenade machine gun.

The two choppers charged forwards, crossing their path to move one on either side of the two fast boats, and Alexis frowned with a snarling-grin as she muttered: "Stagy fuckers...", before the weapons of the two Helix began firing, still well out of their own firing range.

The driver of the boat veered violently starboard-side, speeding up the boat as much as he could, the other boat going port as they tried to flake out past the choppers, but the turrets turned implacably, locked over their thermal signature and firing barrages of armor-piercing rounds and grenades that exploded in the flail of the boats, rising waves of dark, icy water that soaked everyone on board.

The boat swerved again, violently, and a grenade exploded very close starboard as several bullets noisily slammed into the flank of the armored, titanium-made craft as the boat shot towards the chopper as fast as it was possible.

The gunner of the boat began firing furiously when they were still out of range, but the pilot of the Helix evidently had no wish to face the twin vortex of rounds from the massive miniguns, because it violently veered away as it saw the tracer rounds rise with long, shiny golden streaks into the air, the gunner on the boat shouting a furious scream of fear and challenge at once.

The first getting the right range was Alexis, who crouched quickly and balanced the monstrous X13 against her shoulder, firing three rounds in the space of a blink, her hand moving with such incredible rapidity that Killer blinked, missing most of the action as her fingers rotated, pulled back and pushed forwards the massive bolt of the weapon three times in perhaps one second.

Less than one, I swear...

Her aim was perfect in a supernatural way, as always: the first enormous round slammed into the thick armored-glass of the cockpit, sinking deep into it but remaining stuck in the ballistic ceramic... Before the second round slammed in the back of the first with impossible perfection, and finally fragments of the two massive bullets of depleted uranium exploded into the cockpit, hurting the navigator/gunner and the pilot both.

The third bullet, even more amazing, pierced across the hole left by the firsts and hit the gunner squarely in the face, under the protection offered by the visor he was wearing, shattering effortlessly the oxygen mask and making the unfortunate's head explode in a splatter of blood.

Shouts of victory and admiration rose from the Predators as she grinned, staring in the distance to see the Helix immediately veer away to safety, the deadly turret of the chopper turning straight downwards and firing crazily in the waters below until the whole ammo reserve was empty: the gun was aimed by a mechanical system commanded by the visor of the gunner's helmet; whenever the gunner looked, the gun aimed in that direction automatically... And now what was left of the soldier's head was laying down on the screens of the cockpit, together with the special visor.

"Set the world on fire. That's what I'm good at." Alexis grinned as she kept the rifle aimed, ready to take down the chopper as soon as it veered back into range, which undoubtedly it would have done soon or later. Unless he tries to take revenge from the distance...

And in fact, as soon as the pilot understood that the gunner was dead, turned on the spot and clicked the buttons to open the side doors of the weapon bay, and missiles and rocket-launcher pods slid rapidly out in firing position under the short wings of the Helix.

The rockets were unguided, but the chopper carried 160 of them in four launchers of 40 each, and the long, thin rockets had a range superior to even the SAM missile of the Predator's Javelin, and the pilot evidently thought they were the best shot he had, and he hammered on the launch buttons.

Each launched erupted a cloud of smoke and long flames as the rockets flaked out in a barrage, a microscopic fraction of second between one and the successive, ten rockets roaring out of each launcher and shooting towards the assault craft.

Killer heard curses of desperation, and the driver, aft in the boat let out a whine of exasperation at the awareness he couldn't get out of the way fast enough as the rockets whizzed forwards on a too wide front, and even as he violently veered â€" avoiding for a puff a collision with the other craft as it roared over the waves to try and escape from the other Helix â€" he knew they would have been hit.

The huge male did the first thing that passed in his mind and dropped the massive Cobra rifle to rise both hands towards the incoming rockets â€" Don't go fucking on me now, it's not the moment... - and he tried to gather quickly up his own energy, that so often still refused to come up at his will, since his grasp over his own powers was still far, far away from the levels of confident mastery that Alexis had...

But nonetheless, perhaps because of the deadly danger for their life, his palms immediately glowed golden and an enormous force exploded out of his hands, the waves of raw strength almost knocking the Predators around out of the boat as the boat himself suddenly slowed down, propelled backwards by the sheer force of the twin blasts.

Golden energy smashed like not one but two hurricanes into the barrage of rockets, and the ones that were directly hit vaporized away entirely, as several others exploded uselessly in the air and most of the others broke down to fragments with the sheer waves of raw force that came from the giant male liger... But he understood soon enough that he had messed up, as he saw the two immense blasts of energy shatter across everything they touched and lose themselves in the distance of the dark sky.

"Too powerful..." Alexis explained with a shrug as she idly rose one hand and made a slapping gesture in the air, the last incoming rockets being effortlessly slapped away and out of trajectory to smash into the waves behind them and explode uselessly. "You have way too much power inside yourself to lash out in that way... you will just destroy everything you hit, but still, you may not achieve the objective you had set for your action." She explained with a slight grin, ignoring the shocked stares of the soldiers around, and Killer, impervious as much at the amazed looks around him, grumbled an ironic thank you.

She grinned amusedly, before turning back to stare at the chopper, which was now shooting forwards, low on the water towards them.

"Oh, finally." Alexis exclaimed with a merciless, slight smile of murderous amusement. "Enough bullshit already. Get those fucking machine guns up, finger steady and eyes open."

Alexis pulled back up her massive rifle, and as she rose it to the shoulder, her aim was already taken, a round booming out of the gigantic, cannon-like weapon and neatly tearing away one of the blades of the upper rotor of the chopper, then another, as Alexis cackled with dark amusement.

Gods... I think that if she was my enemy, I would surrender immediately. Killer thought suddenly as he readied his massive assault rifle and began firing a long burst himself.

Hey, that's actually one great compliment. Alexis's voice answered directly in his mind, making him grin slightly to himself. But not even I could stand up to your strength.

The Helix come low on the waters, and it veered quite awkwardly, the pilot fighting to keep the chopper under control as Alexis systematically blew away the blades of the rotors, and it maneuvered to attack them from the side, the gunner in the side door aiming his massive Gatling machine gun towards the small, uncovered boat as the two choppers now maneuvered together, roaring side to side between the two boats, so that their side machine guns could work in collaboration to hit each boat with two deadly, simultaneous barrages of rounds, each coming from a different side, leaving the Predators on the two boats without hopes.

The only chance was fight back, and fire the greatest possible amount of bullets.

Killer and Siegfried jumped up, spreading their legs a bit as they rose their massive weapons â€" Cobra for Killer and a matching, belt-feed massive machine gun for Siegfried â€" and began firing a furious, double endless burst towards the first incoming Helix, well before the Predators could add their own firepower with their much lighter weapons.

The Predators fired with all their weapons: Dusty fired the whole magazine of his machine gun straight into the open door in the side of the Helix, the others tried to focus on the massive engines just under the spinning rotors, and Killer and Siegfried fired with fury, roaring a challenge as they watered the cockpit with massive armor-piercing rounds until their weapons clicked dry and they quickly slammed new belts in position.

Alexis, on her part, fired a round from her sniper rifle that pierced across the minigun of the Helix, killed the gunner by opening a huge hole in his chest, flied out of the other side of his devastated body and across the room of the chopper to kill the gunner at the opposite door by shattering his head, before it finally lost its monstrous kinetic energy by killing yet another gunner, on the other chopper, sinking deep past his armor vest and into his neck. "And now fucking beat this shot, if you can."

Maybe because of the engine, maybe because of the furious bursts of the boat's miniguns or probably because of the furious bursts of the monstrous weapons of Killer and Siegfried, maybe something else, but nonetheless the first Helix first erupted flames as it roared past the boats, clearly out of control, and it turned crazily on itself before smashing into the ocean at more than 150 mph and disintegrated itself into fragments.

Thanks to the formidable speed and incredible aim of Alexis, the gunner had been killed before he could have a fair chance to kill, and on their boat everyone was safe...

The other craft had not been equally lucky, despite the courage of the soldiers on board: before the concentrated fire of all of their weapons and the launch of a SAM from the Section's Javelin missile launcher had took down the other Helix, the gunner on the chopper had managed to water to uncovered bullets with a tremendous hail of armor-piercing rounds. Four soldiers had been killed, further two wounded, over a section of just ten men. It had been a sad start for the assault.

The two boats approached each other again, sailing rapidly towards the island, side to side, but the mood wasn't obviously very high as the injured were attended as carefully as possible, despite the rough travel on the ocean in tempest.

The two boats were even made stand side to side, as close as possible, so that the medic specialist of the "lucky" section had managed to jump on the other boat to help his colleague and comrade, before the two fast boats had spread a bit wider again for safety reasons.

Killer exchanged a look with Alexis, making a bit of a face as he sighed slightly, and she nodded with a stony expression that told him she was feeling just as bad as he was... But unfortunately, it was the math of war. Math is evil, but war math is the worse one...

He looked around the boat, keeping his expression as cold and measured as he could, and immediately noticed that, yes, of course the nervousness was over everyone. Siegfried looked back at him with a knowing grimace and a slight nod: the Predators were anxious to get down of the frigging boat and fight, that was definite... but it was also impossible to deny that the mood wasn't the best one.

By now, they were very close... But it didn't mean just that they were almost there, it also meant that they were entering the firing range of the enemy defenses: the RA had conquered all the coastal defenses that hadn't been earlier destroyed by the furious bombings that had lasted night and day for months, and it was possible that troops of the Ra were stationed around the coast with their own weapons to prevent a landing of enemy forces.

In any moment, bullets could start raining on us, now...

Everyone knew that single fact, and much as they tried to hide it, every soldier was shrinking a bit into the seats to lower their bodies as much as possible under the protection of the armored flanks of the boat, eyes roving nervously over the immense cliff of dark rock that they would have soon challenged and climbed, their gaze searching any possible hint of the presence of enemies in ambush...

And meanwhile, the martial, mortal music of the continuous bombardment coming from the RA ships and hammering the island savagely rose and grew steadily, deafening, as they drew closer and closer to the island and to the west they could see the bombarding ships firing again and again and again, the destroyers staying anchored in a semicircle with several Replenishment ships full of ammunitions and missiles that tens of choppers airlifted to the warships in a continuous cycle.

Thousands of hissing, flaming, enormous artillery-rockets blasted off the ships to arch into the sky and fall back down over every single square meter of Argolis. Hundreds of enormous cannons fired shell after shell, 22 shells a minute each, practically continuously, all day long, as pumps fired water over the barrels to cool them down...

To the soldiers, it seemed unconceivable that something could survive at the weight of such massive bombardments hammering down again and again, from months, with vicious, merciless precision and method. The island was covered of smoke and haze, countless columns of black smoke rising lazily towards the sky... And still, the defenses of the RA were still silent. The two boats advanced steadily, rapidly, and now the Predators could see the "beach" they were about to land over: a narrow stretch of huge, sharp rocks at the base of the tall cliff.

The rocks were horrible, cruel and traitorous like the soldiers and demons that were waiting for them on the island, and plus the rocks were clustered with mines made even more sensible by the water. And there was that vertical wall of more than one hundred feet of rock to climb, too...

Nothing and no one in sight over the cliff. No shots. And the boats were closer and closer to the landing. Between cruel waves high meters, the two boats advanced, slapping their hull down on the water as they were pushed forwards by their powerful engines.

They were perhaps one kilometer away from the landing when Alexis leapt up to a crouch on the bow of the boat and rose a hand in front of the face of a shocked Predator, the femme fatale frowning with a silent snarl even as everyone stared at her stupidly in surprise...

And then there was a weird sound coming from the Predators as they saw the huge, long bullet stopping in midair, in front of her palm, leaving the soldier that had been saved trembling violently in complete shock.

"T... Thanks..." He babbled, but Alexis didn't even notice it as she grasped the bullet with her other hand and stared at it shortly. Long, big, Magnetic rail and completely silent...

"Mordred..." She snarled, looking of in the distance towards the cliff as she closed her hand tightly into a fist, the bullet snapping with a loud, metallic crack as it was effortlessly crushed by her monstrous strength.

"Hadn't you killed the bastard already...?" Siegfried asked loudly from his position even as Alexis immediately reached back for her huge rifle and took rapidly and efficiently aim, focusing her senses as much as she could.

"I believed so!" She snarled, moving the rifle from side to side and looking into the scope at the general direction from where she had felt the bullet coming... But it wasn't easy, because of the Invisible Uniform that Mordred used and that hid him entirely, shielding even his thoughts and vital energy, so that even Alexis's powers couldn't catch wind of him. "You tend to think that a fucker is dead when you hit him squarely in the face and see him fall from a fucking tower, Cold. Shut up and let me work!"

Siegfried backed immediately off with a wince, and he traded a gaze with Killer as the boat made some violent maneuver to make things harder for the enemy sniper... But of course, Alexis had troubles, too. And much as they tried, the others, even Killer, could help very little: if the powers of Alexis were blind, even more useless were all the technologic systems of the Predators.

Mordred was simply invisible.

Alexis gritted her fangs in frustration as she moved the rifle from side to side to keep the area of interest under sight even during the escaping maneuvers... And it was hard to concentrate with the noise and rough movements caused by the waves, which continued to work to move her weapon crazily around much as she tried to stay motionless. Fuck. It's like... aiming from on board a fucking rollercoaster...

But then she gripped the rifle tightly, so tightly that her strong fingers threatened to break the massive weapon in two like the small stick of an ice lolly, her strong body flexing as she isolated herself from the outside world and steadied her firing line as she caught an imperceptible anomaly in a rock of the cliff: small cracks that gleamed slightly in the weak light of that day hovered absurdly in front of the rocks in a niche of the cliff. It looked like a small, hovering and moving piece of glass which had been hit by something in the middle, and which had several cracks spreading from the impact point outwards. Found, you fucker.

She fired, a single round, the boom of the enormous rifle echoing against the cliffs like an explosion, and the round didn't miss: it smashed with its incredible force exactly in the back of the .50 bullet that Alexis had pierced in the armored glass the last time, and this time there was no way to resist. The massive, anti-tank round shattered the mask in microscopic slivers of gleaming glass, and the head of the best sniper of the RA exploded in a splatter of blood that tinged of dark red the stone of the cliff, and as it had happened the last time, the Invisible Uniform ceased to work, and everyone on the boats stared in the distance to see the black-dressed, headless corpse fall down for more than eighty feet before it landed with a sickening crack on the cruel rocks below.

But that little, fundamental victory went soon forgotten as the RA troops that had been around the area ran forwards to take position on top of the cliff, and all the weapons they had available opened fire.

The artillery thundered in the distance, hissed over their heads and raised columns of water around them as the first shells exploded in the waters of the ocean, throwing icy and unnaturally-dark water over them and into the boats. Mortar shells rained down from above with tremendous fury.

And above all, over that frightening, hellish racket, a sound rose higher, more menacing: the metallic one coming from the machine gun rounds bouncing off the armored hulls of the boats as the Predators lowered their heads and tried to hide behind the parapets desperately, aiming their weapons over the flanks and towards the top of the cliff, keeping their head low and aiming whenever it was possible with the images coming to their visor from the digital camera of their weapons. But most of the time, the screen was still filled with static and disturbs of any kind.

The gunners on the two boats made their best to use the monstrous volume of fire of the twin miniguns on each craft to counterbalance, but the enemy riflemen on top the cliff had a perfect view of the whole area. A perfect firing range.

Killer fired up towards the cliff, planted a grenade precisely over a machine gun that was firing down over the boats from above, but what he realized was that they all would have been dead already if it wasn't for Alexis, who was amazingly firing the enormous X13 with just an arm as he kept the other high up to help her aura stay concentrated in a true shield of light above their heads, against which the bullets bounced back powerlessly, but still making such noise that he had difficulties hearing his own thoughts, despite the headphones of the visor protecting his ears.

Finally, they felt the bows of the boats scratch up over the rocks, running aground on the ridiculously narrow "beach" of stones that was dominated by the cliff, and the Predators quickly ran out of the crafts, firing madly upwards to counter the enemy offensive, and each special soldier going down to his knee soon or later and firing the Assault Hooks at the comrades covered him.

The small rockets, which pulled behind them long, strong cables of nylon whizzed up vertically along the cliff, before they fell back down in an arch to get a solid grasp over the rocks or into the thick orders of razor wire in spires that had been put in position on top the cliff.

Here and there all along the cliff, soldiers of the RA poked out and fired down furious bursts of bullets, threw hand-grenades and tried to get to the hooked ropes to cut them or remove them to stop the Predator's assault, and the Predators answered violently from below, the regulators of the machine guns all set for "Full Auto" and regulated to shoot at the maximum rate of fire possible. It was a matter of firepower and courage: the first who was forced down, pinned down, was dead. And the Predators kept faith to their motto, fighting like demons. No pun intended, with what we have to face... But when Killer saw that even the two badly wounded guys had managed to run to a little hole between two rocks and were firing upwards to cover their comrades in the best possible way, he thought that truly his guys were up to the challenge. And he couldn't say that they only missed the knife between the teeth, because one Rifleman that jogged past him and up a rope actually had it.

"Climb up and clean the way, it must be nuts up there." Siegfried shouted over the tremendous noise, to which his firing machine gun and the shooting Cobra of Killer at his side added considerably. "I'll stay back to give cover, and then we'll come up with the second wave!"

"Dealt!" Killer shouted back, and quickly stepped forwards as he let the empty plastic box fall away from his rifle and slammed in place a new drum, ensuring to fit properly the first bullets of the long, 180-rounds belt into the multiple chambers of the rotating shutter of the enormous weapon before firing another burst into a group of RA riflemen that appeared on the cliff to throw down a new hail of grenades.

Killer touched lightly Alexis's shoulder, and she turned with a grin as she stood and followed him out the boat... But keeping the barrier in place, especially while she walked and stubbornly fired the anti-tank gun that she called rifle with one hand alone all at once, was visibly straining her.

She fired until it was possible, until they were at the base of the vertical cliff, and she had to shoulder the enormous X13 to jump up the rocks and climb the cliff with bare hands and booted feet, Killer climbing at her side.

They avoided the ropes, even if at least one had surely been free, and they really didn't regretted it that much, especially when one of the Predators fell down with a scream when his rope was cut from above.

They all saw him fall on the rocks beneath, broken like a doll at the impact, and for a brief instant everyone seemed frozen by the frightening spectacle. It felt like a whole life had passed before the falling soldier had smashed into the ground and died.

Killer thawed suddenly and moved his strong hand up immediately when a burst of automatic gun raised a hurricane of dust, dirt and fragments of rocks dangerously near to him... And he heard Alexis grumble a strained apology as they climbed up together.

Now that she had all of her strong body busy, keep the deep concentration needed to maintain the barrier active around all them was even greater, also because the fire of the soldiers down on the beach, much as it fought back the enemies, often riddled the top of the cliff and caused a true rain of dust, dirt and rocks to fall down over the climbing men.

Not that Killer could dare complaining, especially after a soldier of the RA that had suddenly appeared on top and aimed his rifle down at him with a sadistic grin had been slaughtered by a furious bursts of huge rounds coming from Siegfried's machine gun. The huge liger had been very pleased, admittedly, to see the maimed enemy fall down the cliff and splatter on the rocks below, cruel as it may sound.

But finally, Killer emerged on top the cliff, pulling himself up easily with a powerful arm and jackknifing the edge of the rocks as Alexis grasped the top of the cliff with both hands and lifted her body up, spinning in the air once to land on her feet with a snarling grin as she looked around and neatly blasted an astonished RA rifleman off his feet and sending him crashing bonelessly nearly sixty feet away with an enraged lash-out of psychic force.

The huge male, on his part, was surrounded by spires of razor wire in every direction, and he snarled irritably at this, finding no better or faster option than grabbing the cables and ripping away with his monstrous strength: unsurprisingly, but still impressively, most of the sharp poles of steel that kept the spires in place were ripped off the ground along with the tangles of wire as he threw it all idly away with a flex of his mighty musculature.

Alexis had already sprinted forwards and drawn out her Desert Storm handguns, firing off to both sides as she shattered a machinegun post with another crushing blast of force, and when the huge rounds of her twin pistols started to send corpses crashing backwards, most of the RA soldiers still alive quickly turned their backs and run for their life. A bulky soldier passed by Killer, running away and carrying a heavy machine gun on the shoulder, and the huge male quickly slammed a fist out to smash into the unfortunate, sending him flying backwards and down the cliff with an howl of agony, before the liger pulled Cobra down his shoulders and began firing short, accurate bursts that took down all the targets that Alexis's attacks still hadn't reached.

It eased the way for the ones who followed as the RA was chased back away from the cliff: Alexis and Killer had been the first reaching the top, thanks to their superior, incredible physical might, but now the Predators came from every side, running forwards to take cover in the craters of the explosions, that were literally everywhere and so easy to find.

To their eyes, Argolis appeared like a fantastic, incredible vision: months of bombardments, cruel and continuous, had left behind a desert, arid wasteland riddled with craters, which looked worse than the Moon's surface. Wherever vegetation had been, at the most there was the broken stump of a shattered trunk. A violent, terrible no-men's land.

Killer looked back down the cliff, anyway, as he heard the noise of yet new gunfire, and was horrified at the sight: Siegfried was firing off towards the sea to force back at least eleven raiding crafts crammed full of soldiers that were coming from the RA fleet offshore.

The boarding teams of several destroyers had taken the ship's launches and now were quickly heading for the area of the fight, and Killer could see yet even more boats incoming, as the Predators left on the "beach" hurried up to climb the cliff, a couple of the soldiers on top pulling up the injured who had been tied to a rope as gently and carefully as possible, the four Royal Marines abandoning the by-now indefensible boats and climbing up as well and Siegfried fighting alone to keep the overwhelming wave of enemies at distance, standing on the rock between the growing waves, legs spread wide and enormous machine gun firing endless bursts.

"You stupid... movie-like... fucking hero." Killer muttered as he turned towards the sea to fire a mortal burst of 20 mm rounds that almost tore in two the first of the crafts, slaughtering the soldiers cramped into it with a frightening spurt of blood that tinged the dark waters of red.

Alexis, back leaning against his, faced in the other direction to fight off the RA soldiers that still tried to defend the cliff. She was back to her favorite work: emptying eight ten-rounds clips in sixty seconds with a bolt action rifle, without missing a single shot. Killer was pretty sure it was an absolute world record.

She ran rapidly out of targets, anyhow, and turned towards the sea herself, standing at his side as he blew up another craft by firing a grenade straight into it.

Siegfried was out of sight, now, but the tens of soldiers incoming on the crafts were firing a hurricane of fire towards the top of the cliff, and Killer wasn't going to leave the field until his brother wasn't safe.

Where the hell are you...

Killer aimed at another boat through the 4x scope of the Cobra, the laser-rangefinder tracking the target and measuring quickly the distance to set the fuze of the grenade he fired... And the 60 mm High Explosive round exploded straight above the raiding craft, killing everyone inside it with a cruel hail of slivers that tore large holes in the hull now crammed of shattered corpses, as he already blasted off another to sunk yet another boat, shrieks and howl of terror and agony now coming from the foot of the cliff and from the boats incoming, which all but grew higher when Alexis fired one of her impossible shots, making a bullet from her handgun bounce back and forth several times between the walls of steel of a boat, maiming many of the soldiers on board as everyone else jumped in the water and tried to swim quickly away...

And to everyone's horror, enormous, supernatural black tentacles rose from the water and wringed the unfortunates like dish towels, pulling the bloody remains hungrily under the unnaturally dark waters.

I'm so glad no one of us fell out of the boats...

Of Siegfried, still no sign, and Killer now was feeling truly quite worried. Too time was passing.

Hurry the hell up...!

Killer fired another burst, before a hand tapped on his huge shoulder a couple of times, and he turned quickly to see Siegfried crouching behind him and reload the massive machine gun. He was covered in gashes and cuts, but nothing serious.

"Can you believe it...? They cut my rope two times before I managed to climb up all the way. Fucking bastards." He told with a mix of irritation and amused surprise, talking of his two falls down the tall cliff like they were an amusing fact he had seen while walking out to the mall.

Killer gave him a flat look, but he couldn't help but admit that, much as he hid it, he was amused of the dumb grin of his brother, and most of all, he was relieved to see that he was safe.

He turned around with a wince as they heard two loud explosions, and he looked down the cliff to see the RA troops had destroyed both of their boats with a bunch of grenades.

"Well, there have been strategists before of me who sunk their own ships to push their soldiers to give their best by knowing there's no way out anyway..." He muttered with a grimace, and Siegfried tilted his head a bit. "Technically, I think that we call those guys 'bastards', not strategists."

"Whatever..." Killer grunted agreeably. "Ok, it's getting a bit too hot in here. Let's move forwards rapidly. Up to the airbase, as planned." Killer ordered, and Alexis nodded as they all stood up and sprinted out of the crater and forwards into another, and then another one: it was a frustrating route, rough and full of obstacles, but it had at least the advantage of keeping them covered for most of the time as they charged forwards.

Of twenty Predators and four marines, Killer counted eighteen soldiers, two of them injured quite seriously and clearly incapable to follow the assault for much longer, even if another bulky Predator helped them on the devastated terrain: leave them behind, after all, would have been a sentence of death, with the RA troops coming from everywhere and storming towards them with definitely not friendly intents.

We'll have to find a place where we can resist to the assault and put those two down...

They charged forwards on the lunar terrain and up a bit of a steep embankment riddled of craters, and once on top, they settled down for a moment, the Predators spreading in a large, circular formation and going down to a crouch, protecting their own comrades in the middle and keeping every direction under aim with their weapons.

And from there, the sight was incredible.

In the sea perhaps two hundred feet below, merely three kilometers away, was the formation of RA ships tasked with the bombardment of the island. The rest of the fleet was in sight, too, but in the distance, as it stood halfway between the continent and Argolis... Everywhere they looked, there were warships, of all sizes and kinds, anchored or maneuvering.

Killer noticed a few frigates moving in zigzags along the ranks of the fleet, moving now rapidly and now slowly, briskly changing their speed perhaps as much as from 26 to 6 knots, and he also saw several choppers flying low over the waters, throwing down sonobouys or hovering and lowering a sonar array hanging from a thick cable into the water, and he realized that a full scale submarine-hunt was going on...

And especially, he realized that his order had brought under those terrible waters five submarines and five hundred men. The thought gave him a shiver down the spine, and he felt his heart sunk for a moment with horrendous thoughts of submariners dying crushed by the pressure of the ocean invading their hulls... and he saw even the tentacles of earlier, and it just added even more to his bad feelings.

He sealed all those away, keeping his mind as cold as possible as he planned the next moves... But it wasn't easy, with the breath-catching sight in front of their position: one of the new super-battleships of the RA, a behemoth of the Retaliation class, was in position in front of the island as flagship of the bombardment group.

They had so far seen such monster only in the satellite-photos, marveling at the absurd sizes and power of the new warships, astonished by the fact that they seemed to have appeared from nowhere, suddenly. No one had seen them being built. No one had seen from which port they came... With all the recon satellites of the Empire, it had been a hard blow to have missed such things... and it had been a definitely impossible to understand event, too.

Of course, from when Diana told me that they are hiding their preparations and positions with a mix of impossible technology and divine protection from the gods, it all looks a lot more possible...

Now, anyway, see the ship from so close was a whole new experience. The ship was the most massive weapon Killer had ever seen. It was actually even greater than they had estimated, well over the half-mile from bow to aft, and actually it had to weight well over the 200.000 tons. It had an enormous Trimaran hull which gave the ship wide room for weapons and payload and offered incredible stability even in the rougher seas. Besides, the semi-gliding design of the triple hull had great part in the speed of over 40 knots that the immense ship could amazingly develop thanks to its nuclear propulsion.

The endless bow section was topped by two stealthy, immense gun turrets, that when folded hid away even the barrel of the gun to vanish from the enemy radars. Currently, anyway, both turrets where active and turned towards the island, revealing the immense barrels of the monstrously powerful Rail Guns which fired continuously against Argolis.

Behind these two turrets, a massive expanse of thick hatches of steel hid a good 200 vertical launch tubes for missiles. Then there was the enormous castle, topped by the compass bridge. It climbed up, high as a skyscraper, with its walls accurately inclined and shaped to be as stealth as possible, massive, flat electronic-scansion array radars covering most of the walls and ensuring a formidable, continuous surveillance of the world around. Smaller guns of the Kashtan kind covered the ship in every spot, uncountable: and the Kashtan wasn't little stuff. It was an automated complex, with its own independent radar and thermal cueing sensors, armed with two monstrously powerful 7-barreled 30 mm Vulcan guns capable to pulverize mostly everything... And each Kashtan turret had also eight short-range multimission missiles at the ready, just for added safety. And it wasn't over yet, oh, no. Behind the caste, another long, flat deck followed. Along the two flanks of the ships, other endless rows of hatches signalled yet even more missile silos, and three more Rail Guns turret were positioned in a row in the middle of the deck.

The two lateral hulls were topped by two decks covered each with a row of foldable, armoured Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, very similar to the Firestorm artillery of Kesteven: each launcher of the ship, anyhow, was incomparably more massive, and each single pod was filled with 40 ready to launch artillery rockets much bigger as well. The Retaliation had 9 launchers on each flank.

Aft of the ship there was still space for a long, huge flight deck, where Killer could see five choppers being refuelled and rearmed simultaneously.

And to protect all that from any missile incoming, 13 Laser Phalanx were fitted in strategic points of the ship.

"My god..." Siegfried muttered, and Killer silently nodded, hearing the worried murmuring that run between the ranks of the already proved Predators team.

But they all fell silent and stared as the nine launchers on the flank of the Retaliation that looked towards the island unfolded and turned in firing position after being neatly reloaded by a fully automated system... And they looked in silent amazement at the astonishing show of 360 enormous rockets rising high into the sky, hiding the immense ship with the smoke and flames that their blastoff rose in huge clouds.

The racket was deafening to say the least, and it only got worse when the whole barrage of rockets, added to the incessant bombardment of hundreds of guns coming from the Retaliation and who-knew-how-many other ships, exploded a few miles north of their position, where the rebels had to still be resisting in the deep bunkers.

"I don't know you, with those crazy powers you two have, but me and the boys are surely not going to reach the area alive under such rain of fire. They will not even find our molecules in the air afterwards, if we try running through those barrages." Siegfried said quietly, crossing his muscular arms with a bit of a grimace as he nodded.

And Killer staid silent, because there was nothing he could say. It was true... asking them to follow would have been like ordering them all to suicide. And anyway, I'm really not willing to bet we can walk there, either...

"Lucky bastards we are." Siegfried suddenly amusedly exclaimed, and Killer quickly looked up to see yet one more barrage of Sea Eagle missiles coming from the open ocean... And quite a few were roaring towards the super-battleship, which, huge as it was, appealed particularly the self-targeting computers on the massive missiles. "The Sea Eagle will crumble the goddamn ship for us."

The missiles arrived fast, skimming the furious waters as they roared menacingly a couple of meters above the tempestuous surface of the sea, and the Predators started murmuring in excited satisfaction and anticipation at the thought of seeing the monstrous ship explode... If they hadn't been hidden in a crater in enemy territory, they would have shouted an ola like in the stadium for cherishing the heart's team.

There was a muttered no each time a Laser Phalanx or a SAM took down an incoming Sea Eagle, of course... But still several ones were by now very close to the immense Retaliation ship...

"We'll do it, come on!" Siegfried exclaimed... But, suddenly, the missiles smashed against an invisible wall and exploded, well far away from target, as for a moment a sphere of energy that surrounded the ship glowed white, showing them than the ship was protected from all sides, even from below the surface.

"Fuck!" Siegfried muttered, kicking at a small rock irritably. "From when fucking EMP shields have been engineered, there's no fun anymore in this fucking work!" He snorted, then crossed his arms and glared to the battleship a bit. "Next idea...? We may call one of our submarines in Deterrence duty and ask it to fire four or five nukes against it. Maybe we manage to sink it." He muttered irritably.

The Predators slumped a bit, but no one bitched or said anything at all, a clear proof of how well disciplined and trained they all where.

Actually, one of the wounded ones looked up to see Killer standing, looking off to the ship thoughtfully and crossing his huge arms, and he asked cheerfully: "We'll found another way, sir, isn't so...?"

"Of course." Alexis answered as she coldly glared to the immense warship... and then she grinned a bit, turning slightly towards Killer as he stood at her side. "You know, this is when some overwhelming power steps in and resolves the situation with a huge bang."

Killer blinked a bit in surprise, and turned towards her with a slight questioning frown, the femme fatale grinning wider. "Think you could pull up again the blast of earlier...? I'm more than sure that you are powerful enough to sink any kind of ship. Even this one."

Blast that fucking bath-tub to dust and hurry the hell up. Black Killer barked in his mind irritably, and Killer had once more a fleeting vision of a black-furred, red-eyed and merciless version of himself laying down in a chaise-longue throne made of bones of some huge but unidentifiable being, before he forced himself to seal that part of his mind, with the painful awareness that, no matter how hard he tried, his dark side continued to be stronger... And it knows myself better than I do...

Do it and go kill things, it's a boredom here! Black Killer growled, even if the sound came muffled by the way Killer was trying to seal him away, in a sort of armoured box deep into his mind... And the huge liger found half-consciously himself standing with his palms already aimed on the enemy, immense ship.

It's impossible... I can't do this...

"I'll... try." He said quietly, and Alexis nodded with a grin full of confidence as he felt everyone's eyes stare at his back with incredible intensity.

Killer closed his eyes as he summoned all the energy he could feel in his being, and Alexis stared at him with a silent nod of approbation as the blazing golden flames of his aura danced around his powerful form, his mane dance lazily as if the wind was blowing into it...

And then, as the Predators kept their breath again, like when the missiles had been roaring towards the Retaliation, two enormous blasts of blazing golden energy erupted from his palms, wind coming from nowhere with the strength of an hurricane and almost knocking all of them sprawling backwards like bowling pins as the twin hurricanes of light hit the monstrous ship just below the castle.

And the thick, armoured and impenetrable hull of titanium, panted of dark grey and patched by stains of clearer or even darker grey for camouflage in the cloudy seas of the North melted away like butter, the tremendous blast shooting across the battleship from side to side and immediately making the Retaliation so incandescent that it burned red, then white, becoming almost blazing in her unnatural luminosity...

Before it exploded with the most massive blast of fire they had ever imagined, erupting fragments to an unbelievable height and distance, a column of fire rising to sky and burning water bubbling around the area as enormous waves crushed into the other ships of the fleet and against the cliff, seeming to make the whole world shake as the island trembled violently as Killer fell forwards to his knees, panting and holding himself up with his arms as he looked up with a gape to see the immense warship vanish and nearly vaporize under his eyes as the countless missiles and gun's ammo exploded in a endless hurricane of destruction, the closest ships in line being blown away by the massive blast like bugs.

This... this can't be...

Oh, yes, instead, little brother... Nothing special, anyway. If only you would let me do... you could finally, immediately have access to all of your power... of OUR power... Powers, strength that you can't even imagine... And the gods will bend in front of our rise. Black Killer teased, trying to coax Killer to let his self-control drop, to close his eyes and let it all go... But the huge liger gritted his fangs almost painfully, eyes shut tight as he panted and shook slowly the head from side to side.

Just fuck the hell off and die, bastard...

"Come on, lover, we must go!" Alexis called, and the urgency in her voice made him snap his eyes open as he forced his breath to settle and he pushed himself back up on his feet, looking around to see enemy soldiers incoming from the cliff, and from all the other sides as well. His attack had probably saved them all, but had also given their position away to everyone.

Killer saw Siegfried and the Predators gunners jump up and fire their machine guns against the soldiers charging forwards from the cliff, mowing them down in a hurricane of steel, but several helicopters were incoming from the ships in the open sea, and several Mantis VTOL stealth fighters, too.

"Break the contact, everyone!" Killer ordered with a roar, and he stood up with a wince at the effort it seemed to take as he and Alexis took the lead and charged forwards, towards the middle of the island and the air base, where they hoped to find a way to go down to the bunkers underground.

They all ran forwards, firing furiously to keep the enemy at distance as they sprinted from crater to crater and into the trenches that had been dug here and there, but suddenly a Mantis fighter roared above them, shooting past and flying to low that a Predator was nearly blasted off his feet by the jet blasts of the twin engines of the black biplane.

Killer himself stared ahead to see the deadly fighter that so much problems and deaths was inflicting to the units of Typhoons veering tightly and shooting back towards them, all of the four Vulcan guns in the lower wing firing furious bursts towards them.

They leapt forwards and out of the way by jumping into a small trench as the bullets tore into the ground all around them, and a valiant Assaulter quickly brought the Javelin missile launcher he was carrying into firing position, blasting off a SAM missile.

It missed, anyhow, as the VTOL fighter made one of his impossible manoeuvres, stopping in midair in the middle of a veer to the side and hovering as the missile, incapable to manoeuvre so violently, made a much wider turn and lost itself far away into the sky.

The Assaulter cursed, and another Predator helped him snapping the Javelin launcher and aiming console over a new tube with a ready missile, but in the meanwhile the Mantis turned on the spot and watered with bullets the ground all around them, pinning them all down in the trench as it shoot forwards and opened the doors of the bomb's bay in its belly.

Alexis leapt to her feet and blasted up a small sphere of her own energy, and it struck the massive bomb that the plane was just dropping over them as it flied above, the tremendous combined explosion resulting from the attack vaporizing the aircraft in a cloud of fragments... But other soldiers were now incoming to surround them even as they jumped up and charged forwards again.

There was no way to hide: not a bush, not a tree had been left behind by the fights and the bombings... only the craters offered a bit of cover, and those, luckily, were abounding. Hide, anyway, was impossible even in there, since the air was crowded of small VTOL drones, silent and nosy, which chased after them with their thermal cameras and gave continuous information to the RA men on chase. Worst of all, each drone carried two small multipurpose missiles, and the bothering machines did not miss a chance to attack and fire their weapons at them.

"I'm running out of ammo already!" The gunner of the first Section shouted with rage as he slammed in place another belt of long bullets and turned back to fire towards the enemies that chased on their footsteps like hungry hounds.

"We all are, bitch, fuck off!" Siegfried snarled, and two of the Predators growled at him like savage animals, drooling with rage... And Siegfried actually punched one of the two, sending him down skidding backwards several feet in the crater they were in.

"What the hell..." Killer muttered in a mix of horror and surprise... _This isn't normal at all...

And admittedly, I feel incredibly aggressive myself, too... I feel like... every hope is lost..._

The huge male turned to his smaller brother and wrapped a powerful arm around his broad shoulders, restraining him even as he kept firing Cobra with the other hand.

Siegfried looked out of control, and was all but clawing the air to get over the Predator that was now standing up with equal, absurd fury.

Killer looked at this with a gape of disbelieving confusion, his expression turned to one of horror as he saw the expression vanish from both Siegfried's and the soldier's eyes, leaving only empty pits that glowed white with fury, the two trying to get to each other to likely destroy themselves reciprocally like savage beasts... And Alexis, wincing as the unbearable mix of emotions in the air crowded her mind, stepped forwards and grasped the Predator with a hand by the throat as he leapt towards Siegfried to attack.

The other Predators stared at this in horror and confusion, only a couple of them by now fighting for everyone as yet two more soldiers went mad, their expression vanishing as they leapt with homicidal, animal fury towards the two injured boys that earlier they had saved risking their own lives.

The other soldiers, instead, started to tremble in unnatural, complete panic and desperation. They were crying, their expressions fading away as well...

What the hell... what's this...

Alexis snarled, her eyes gleaming more than usual, but thanks to the sky still HER eyes as she restrained a mad predator with a hand, lifting him up high into the air by the throat, fired towards the incoming enemies with the other hand and fought to restrain the other aggressive soldiers with leashes made of her psychic energy.

"What's this, Killer...? They are out of control... And I feel... strange, too..." Alexis asked, and Killer really didn't like the tone of worry of her voice... the fear he caught in it as she realized she was losing herself, as well... And the enemies were drawing a circle around them, running up and coming closer and closer...

"I don't know!" Killer shouted back with equal shock, and he felt his head filling with screams and shouts and whimpers, and over everything, Black Killer's voice that roared a single, lustful order, sensing the chance to get in control: KILL! KILL!

But more than everything else, he was horrified by the fact he had had to suppress the sudden instinct to lash out at Alexis, of all persons... And the very thought made him shiver.

"Brother, stop it!" Killer snarled, and he let go Siegfried only to use his hand to slap at his face savagely, sending the fellow muscular liger crashing into the crater, almost fainting...

And Killer panted, staring with horror down at him before he had to rise his hands to tackle the last two Predators, gone mad as well with homicidal fury and leaping at him menacingly.

"Hey!" Siegfried whimpered stupidly from the ground where he was sprawling, and Killer lashed a gaze towards him to see that his brother's eyes were back in place, and the younger liger was standing up slowly, looking dazed and holding his muzzle tight. "Fucking gods, your hands weight a ton each, what the hell did you think you were-" Siegfried stopped his whine as he saw the image of Killer and Alexis restraining the eye-less beast-like Predators as the other ones cried in despair and whined like a broken disk: "We'll all die, we'll all die, we'll all die..." and he gaped stupidly at the incredible event before he grasped his enormous machine gun and leapt forwards for the edge of the crater, mowing down the closer RA soldiers, that where by now at just meters of distance.

We got him back at least... For now, at least...

Alexis, who had seen with the corner of her eye the whole event, shrugged a bit and grinned. "Good idea."

She immediately slapped hard the bulky male Predator that she was holding up in the air like a bad tempered puppy, and she glared around to slap all the others as well with a wave of psychic force, perhaps a bit stronger than it was needed...

But it indeed worked, and everyone seemed to get back to consciousness, even if they all were wheezing and shocked and unaware of what had happened exactly.

Whatever it is that causes this kind of things, we must fuck off out of here immediately...

"Move, move, move!" Killer shouted, and they all ran out of the crater to sprint up towards the hangar-bunkers that were by now in sight through the supernatural haze and the smoke and the explosions... But they had made just a step, that suddenly enormous, red tentacles sprouted up from the ground, tearing out of the earth, and they wrapped around several of them.

A Predator was caught immediately, and before he could do anything, the enormous tentacle had wrapped around his entire body, lifting him up high into the air and starting to tighten, to strangle him, several smaller tentacles wrapping around his limbs, sharp and strong: in a second, they all heard the plates of the bullet-proof jacket shatter in fragments, and blood started to spray out of several wounds as the tentacles dig into the flesh, the soldier howling in agony.

He and another man were saved as Alexis drew out Blue Vixen and shot out lighting fast two slashes, first to the right and then to the left, before she cut another tentacle that ripped out the ground and shot towards her.

The two soldiers fell to the ground , the slashed tentacle falling away from around their bodies and the base of the thick appendages quickly retreating back underground with a loud whine of agony, and Killer drew out Wyvern and stabbed it point down to cut in half a thick tentacle that wrapped around his ankle.

"Keep moving!" He ordered as they ran forwards, pounding rounds upon rounds in the tentacles that tore up from the ground all around them, slicing them in halves with the swords and fighting the enemy soldiers back as different sorts of threats arose: Killer soon realized that they weren't fighting off only RA riflemen, no... There were just too many, after all. He spotted with horror that many of the charging creatures were actually moving corpses.

He hoped no one would notice they were fighting off zombies... And that no one saw his expression of horror as he was forced to blast to dust with a burst of Cobra a corpse in particular: the shattered visor and torn uniform told him that he had been one of the dead Predators they had left behind at the boats. It was terrible to have to... "kill" a comrade in that way... it hurt the soul like a burning knife.

Killer winced, and then traded a horrified glance with Alexis, and she nodded with a sad grimace.

Well, she knows, but she always knows...

The choppers and Mantis planes coming from the ships offshore were roaring closer, now, even as Alexis turned back on the run and blasted two Helix to fragments with lashouts of tremendous psychic force...

But finally, they emerged on the destroyed runway of the air base, and charged towards a bombarded, ruined hangar-bunker which was currently only a pile of wrecks, hiding there for cover as they fought back the hordes of enemies.

This is not an island... this is a nightmare...

"We must leave the island. Immediately." Vera exclaimed as she entered the dark room. The stink of death, sufferance and rotting corpses in that dungeon always horrified her to no end... And if it depended from her, the being that lived so happily in that deep bunker would have been long wiped away, destroyed, and her rests burned in the acid... But the Suicide-Maker had orders that she couldn't ignore. I'm not strong enough to...

"This is not true, and you know it. We must kill Wyvern, Alexis and possibly all of their little friends as well." Another voice replied, a feminine and slightly-hissing voice. Seductive, but creepy in more than a way. Serpentine, in a word...

"Killer is coming, he's already in the airport... And the boss needs you alive." Vera underlined the last phrase with a tone of pure distaste, and her expression was one of the purest possible disgust.

The only answer coming from the darkness was a single, chilling and deafening howl of the worst possible agony. "KILL ME! PLEASE... JUST... KILL ME!"

The serpentine voice talked again, ignoring the agonizing request, or rather musing amusedly at it.

"You seem to suggest that he's dangerous for my safety." The voice finally said ironically, and Vera crossed her arms with a grimace.

"He's deadly for your safety." Vera stated firmly. "When he'll find out which kind of game you amuse yourself with, he'll make you regret it all."

"What a hero..." The serpentine voice ironically countered, laughing at the inarticulate howls and shrieks of agony coming from the unfortunate she was bent over. "Wyvern will be dead well before he can reach me."

Vera snorted, grinning with vicious amusement. "What should stop him...? The demons...? The soldiers...? Or the security shutters of steel...?" The Suicide-Maker snorted ironically. "He could break open the heavier one with a hand if he was feeling lazy and sore."

"You seem to like him, don't you...?" The serpentine voice asked teasingly after a moment of musing silence, and Vera blushed a bit in the darkness, glad that the other female couldn't see her.

"He's the one I'm tasked to kill." Vera answered neutrally. "I won't undervalue his power."

"Of course..." The voice countered, but the ironic tone was so evident that Vera growled menacingly.

"Well, you know, just because he kicked your ass, it does not mean he can do it with everyone. If he's powerful enough to reach this dungeon, it means he's worth fighting against me in person. I'll kill him myself." The serpentine voice continued, going over the gargles of agony of someone that was clearly dying between the most horrendous torments.

"He's out of even your reach, Regina. And much as you disgust me, much as I'd like to see him kick your ass and make you chew on your own bowels, I'm tasked to bring you out safe." Vera growled irritably, making a grimace of disgust. I'd kill you myself if I could... "I must insist. Leave the island now, Regina."

"No. This is now MY island... And anyway, I don't need a mortal weak as you to tell me what to do." Regina countered with firm, irritable voice as she stood to her full height, towering well higher than Vera, her large cobra head making her seem even more imposing.

"Watch your ass, demon." Vera snarled back with rage.

And Regina laughed, stepping to the side to let the Doberman stare at the agonizing, horribly mutilated tiger tied to the "altar of tortures", as Regina loved to call it.

Regina had, between the other things, sawed the skull of the unfortunate open and thrown a handful of demonic bugs on the brain, left undamaged on purpose. The disgusting, cruel beasts were chewing on it.

Vera once more felt disgust arise, uncontrollable.

"Come here, instead, Suicide-Maker... with your interesting torture-skills, we should manage to inflict some more agony on this piece of shit here." Regina suggested with an horribly-eager, lustful tone, that would have shocked anyone.

Vera glared at her with a last grimace of disgust, drew out her gun and killed the condemned man with a fast, precise shot. No more sufference, at least...

"Never, never talk to me again, bitch." Vera snarled as Regina glared at her in fury. "I did my work. You decide to condemn yourself...? Fine. I'll be the happier one when Killer crushes your disgusting being out of existence. But don't blame me afterwards."