FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The first steps of the war to liberate her home. The first act of a much greater opera.

Chapter 30: Glacial - Towards Sangin

The gigantic icebreaker-patrol ship suggested sheer might with her slow but secure movements as it sailed past the buoy that signaled the only, tight deep channel out of the Devonport's bay: it was a passage so narrow that it was already a challenge, especially for the boomers, the crews of the submarines, since the sea bed was irregular and rocks came up to further reduce the space available. The first challenge in the career of a Kesteven's submarine's commander was traditionally the task to guide a submarine out of Devonport, submerged, sailing prudently between underwater rocks and traitor, high sea bed. And it was something that many officers of most navies in the world considered a noticeable feat.

Now, anyway, the colossal Northern Empire's Ship NES Endurance was making its way out, helped by two much smaller tug ships that proceeded at her sides as the ships made their way out together at a quiet speed of just about 5 knots. The icebreaker Endurance was the ship that the navy used to ensure that, even in the worst winters, the other ships could exit the port and sail down the Syrane Channel, a long and winding sea passage that separated the northern coast of Kesteven from the arctic pack. It was nearly 700 miles long, from Devonport to the great, open and deep Dacca Ocean, the immense water expanse that covered most of the western part of the world, unless the three island-continents of Ural, Dacca and the mysterious Hez'Ranna, the one continent that, to the rest of the world, was even more outsider than the Northlands. But its length was compensated by its width: it was very narrow for nautical standards, perhaps three miles wide in its largest stretch... and with the winter expansion of the arctic pack, at times it would be entirely blocked by thick sheets of ice.

The Endurance, with its white and red hull and the enormous island surmounted by an helipad towering on the large, heavy aft, had a hull thick and heavy with steel, and was thought to literally climb over the ice sheets with the enormous power of its three-shaft turbines, moved by the steam of a nuclear reactor, and literally shatter the ice under its colossal mass: actually, it was famous for its capability to ram at three knots into three-meter thick sheets of ice the hardness of granite and break them like crackers with its might and mass. The sailors that manned it liked to fondly call it "king", in playful comparison of its power with the tremendous strength of Killer.

Its primary task was to keep the channel navigable 365 days a year, every year... But it was also a patrol ship, used to navigate north and patrol as close as possible to the North Pole itself: after all, the uranium mines of Syrtis were only a little sample of the richness hidden in the arctic, and even though most were still far too difficult to exploit, because of the extreme environment, Kesteven wanted to make sure that its part of the mineral deposits were not going to be robbed or attacked. The Endurance had a couple of CIWS radar-guided automatic guns to defend itself from missiles, planes and fast attack crafts, a large gun mounted in a turret aft to sustain its reason and 16 vertical launch missile silos containing a mix of Surface to Air and surface-surface missiles in order to protect itself. The Endurance was also a Fleet Replenishment Ship as secondary task, and carried nearly 10.000 cube meters of fuel, and depots of water, food, missiles ammunitions and spare parts, with a crew of nearly 500 men and the capability to operate up to six choppers from its two flight deck: an helipad on top of the island and the long platform that made up the stern section of the ship.

Now, on the flight deck were parked two Night Spirit VTOL cargo planes and several vehicles of the Royal Engineers, including four enormous bulldozers and six HM206 double-joined tracked vehicles that with their unmatched all-terrain agility were the only reliable mean of transportation of personnel and equipment even on the ice and the snow of the arctic. The Sappers would have been brought north, deep into the arctic wasteland, to prepare a suitable runway and forward operating base for a Wing of Typhoon fighters, a few Nimrod anti-submarine patrol aircrafts, air tankers and AWACS, to be based as close as possible to the eastern coast, facing the Glacial Seas, practically on the opposite face of the world...

And the old admiral sir John "Sandy" Hawkwood couldn't help but grin a bit to himself at the majestic madness of the whole plan. Then again, from the very first moment he had been told about the plan, he had been greatly enthusiast of it and of the opportunity he had to be back inside the maneuvering room of a nuclear submarine, and in the last hours he had been greatly helping refining the plan. He had been called inside the operation directly by prince Alexander, who had descended from a Kite helicopter of the air force that had landed directly in the middle of a road of Devonport, just outside the tavern where Sandy was slowly sipping whisky while looking nostalgically out in the distance to the docked, new Unseen class submarines. He had needed perhaps 15 seconds to accept the proposal to command once more one of those deadly attack submarines and throw a few bills towards the bartender to pay for his count while he followed Alexander out and into the chopper, which had been waiting with the engines growling... The Kite had brought both to the Navy Headquarters in the base of Devonport, where they had had their briefing, while outside the personnel of the base finished carrying supplies and torpedoes into the black, threatening vessels.

Sandy deeply and gratefully aspired from the long cigar he held in his mouth, smiling slightly as he stood on the bridge on top of the fin of the NES Unseen, probably the most advanced SSN nuclear attack submarine in the world, looking to the Endurance, which preceded them and opened the convoy. Behind him, in fact, four of the sisters of the Unseen were following: the Upholder, the Unicorn, the Ardent and the Artful, all the submarines that were available in Devonport. All had been mobilized for one only, great mission... And it that was the greatest naval squadron that Kesteven had put together in several years, excluding the two Carrier Vessel Battlegroups.

But this particular group, this pack of wolves of the depths, was even more terrific than a battlegroup made up by an aircraft carrier, 80 planes and twelve ships... Because the SSNs were likely the most perfect weapons in the world... and the Unseen class were the best of all.

The huge black vessel, pushed by a powerful Pressurized Water nuclear Reactor PWR capable to work for over 25 years without a replenishment that moved a huge Pump Jet propeller on a single shaft, could sail at more than 20 knots surfaced and reach over 35 knots when dived, down all the way past the 300 meters of depth. But the true reason of existence of the vessel was the group of six aft torpedo tubes, the core of the weapon system.

For use from those, the vessel carried 30 Spearfish active/passive homing torpedoes capable to hit a ship up to 35 naval miles away at a speed of up to 200 knots. They were the deadliest torpedoes ever designed, capable of such monstrous speed thanks to their super-cavitation design, and they carried a deadly directed energy explosive warhead, following their targets even down to 1000 meters under the surface.

In addition to that arsenal, for the mission the Unseen and her sisters had been loaded with 6 sub-launched anti-ship missiles that could be fired from the torpedo tubes, emerge and fly a few meters above the surface, brushing a speed 1.5 times the sound's one to hit a ship 180 kilometers away, or even a land target near the shore.

On board there were also four quadruple launcher capsules, each containing four Multimission Attack Missiles Triton. With the MAM missile system, the submerged submarine could engage enemy anti-submarine warfare helicopters or patrol aircraft, small surface vessels, vulnerable parts of larger vessels and land targets near the coast with the highest precision up to 20 kilometers away... Two of these launchers were already fitted into two of the torpedo tubes, so that the Unseen was in any moment capable to defend itself: a control console was fitted in the maneuvering room of the submarine, and from there an operator could guide every single Triton missile, the commands traveling along an optic fiber cable that the weapon deployed once launched, like an umbilical cord that allowed exchange of commands and images in the two directions.

Astern to the tall fin of the submarine, eight enormous vertical launch tubes filled a whole section of the hull: these tubes were thought to contain the sub-launched InterContinental Ballistic Missile ICBM L12, monstrous missiles weighting 180.000 lbs each, with a diameter of 10.9 feet and a range of 11000 miles, capable of a maximum speed of over 18000 mph as they exited the atmosphere, entered in orbit and launched their payload of destruction: each missile carried 16 Re-Entry indipendent vehicles with nuclear warheads, capable to hit each a different target, each with a power of 150 kiloton. Which was like saying the destructive punch of 150000 metric tons of dynamite. The L12 was the true weapon of apocalypse, and Killer had wanted such monstrous weapon in service to make of it the most effective strategic deterrent ever: always, 365 days a year, hiding somewhere in the most remote depths of the ocean, a submarine of the Unseen class was in waiting, with 8 of those missiles ready to be launched, ready to strike at any enemy, anywhere in the world, in answer to any attack. It was a brutal mode to sustain one's position... but Killer had long learned that kind words and right words had no effect whatsoever on certain people, and that strenght was the only secure mean of survival. Just like his brutal strenght and massive body scared everyone to death, automatically making law of his word, the nuclear submarines were out in the darkness to ensure that the voice of Kesteven was always kept in the highest possible consideration, and that no one, even a massive, nuclear-capable superpower like Ire could harm the empire lightheartedly.

And indeed, it worked. The Northlands had for so many centuries been emarginated and considered barbaric wastelands at the World Council and on the international scene... But when Killer had first stepped into the reunion of the council, his giant and muscular figure had immediately pushed everyone back in places more adequate... And when Kesteven had had his first nuclear-deterrance submarine, everyone had suddenly turned much more friendly.

Anyway, currently the NES Unseen and her mates of mission carried no ICBMs; someone else was in charge for such mission. Inside six of the huge tubes on the five vessels, instead, there were racks that held each 7 Thunder land-attack missiles, nearly supersonic missiles that carried conventional warheads with pin-point accuracy on targets up to 2500 kilometers away, flying at speed near to sound's one. The other two tubes hosted special Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for reconaissance and attack, the Sea Gull, that could be launched by the dived submarine thanks to a capsule that surfaced to bring the UAVs out of the water, where the small place could take off to carry on its mission autonomously, flying on a pre-programmed route... Or it could be commanded remotely with satellite links, from the submarine itself or from a base even on the other side of the world.

It was a monstrous firepower for a single unit, and the count become even more impressive moltiplied for the five vessels of the formation. Together, those subs had more than enough strenght to erase entire navies and nations from the map of the world, and it wasn't an exageration.

All that, anyway, would have been useless if the crew of 100 men hadn't had the right equipment to find the targets in the darkness of the ocean's depths. The submarine's eyes were mounted inside telescopic masts deployed over the surface from the top of the fin: there was a Reconaissance Mast, equiped with Surface-Surface and Surface-Air radars, plus a powerful thermal camera capable to survey the activity ashore from over 20 miles of distance. And there was the modern version of the periscope: instead of a tube exploiting a game of mirrors to allow the crew to see outside, there was a modern mast equipped with TV, infra-red and thermal cameras, that in two seconds could make a full scansion of the horizon at 360° and record the images for later consideration. And it was a huge advantage: even the small and apparently insignificant mast could betray the position of the submarine appearing on the enemy radars, and it was vital to be as fast as possible at deploying it, taking a look and fold it away once more.

The ears of the submarine, instead, were the sophisticate sonars on board: the main one was mounted in a semispheric, integrated suite of sensors that occupied most of the nose of the submarine. There was also an upwards scanning submarine, something they were going to need continuously in their incoming cruise deep under the thick ice-cap of the arctic, to see where they were sailing and avoiding crushing into the ice... and on each side of the submarine, there were three more sonar aerials to cover every direction.

And to cover the back, the enormous "black hole" that represented the section of ocean behind the vessel, there was a towed sonar array that could be deployed with a huge winch and stay connected to the stern of the Unseen with its thick optic-fiber cable. Each sonar on board could work in two modes: passive and active. Staying passive meant listening to every sound that traveled in the depths of the ocean, identifying any ship or submarine by confronting their noise with a huge internal database of sounds : and the sonar Type 2076 mounted on the Unseen was so sensible that during a test it had heard and identified a cruise ship starting its engine in a seaport right on the other side of the ocean, in Ural, nearly 7000 miles away. That was an exceptional event, of course... but the Unseen had formidable ears, and a smart use of the passive mode was the key for a long life as boomer: a sonar listening passively, in fact, does not emit any sort of signal, and thus it's impossible to detect.

Active mode is instead the famous and scenographic modality that actually emits the ping that everyone associates to sonars. It emits a signal in different frequencies and listens to the return echo to generate a precise map of the surrounding world, and it is extremely effective for both target acquisition and navigation... But of course the ping reveals your position to any kind of sensor listening.

The real weapon, and the real hope of survival for a submarine was its stealthness. Despite all the advancement in the technology, ocean is still impenetrable to any kind of sensor, and the only thing that can localize a dived submarine is a sonar, active or passive. The vessel has so to be silent. Very silent. Water is a terrific conductor for not only electricity, but for noise as well: water amplifies any noise exponentially, and a sound of any kind travels in the water at speed of several thousands meters a second... All factors that made any little noise dangerous for a submarine's security. The Unseen and her sister ships had been developed to be the most silent of all subs: their huge, nine-blades propeller was enclosed in a tube that muffled any noise, and their hull of steel was entirely covered by anecoic tiles to trap sound itself... And to further improve stealthness, the submarine was wrapped into rubber, that helped hydrodynamicity and made it even more silent. Inside, every local was soundproof and isolated, every engine, generators and computer system was mounted on an indipendent rack capable to vibrate, and before every single mission a crew of technicians made sure to control EVERY single moving part into the vessel, to the last screw: any minimum creak can be dangerous for the security of a submarine in ambush.

The Unseen could spend entire months dived, without ever seeing the light of the sun... and communicating with a dived sub is another challenge. Ships and submarines are fitted with an underwater telephone system, which exploits Low Frequencies to talk from hull to hull, but in mission this is limited to the emergencies, because these transmissions are even easier to detect than the ping of the sonar in active mode...

And the bases on the land couldn't talk to the submarine when it was dived. No one could, unless using Ultra Low Frequency transmissions, the only ones capable to pierce inside the sea and reach the submarine in depth. But ULF are unfortunately very short-ranged... and require antennas long kilometers to be sent, so that they aren't very practical. Kesteven's subs were fitted with a towable antenna-cable that was almost two miles long... and that was used to receive transmissions from the Nimrod patrol aircraft. There four-engines jets towed 8-kilometer antennas and flied in slow, low circles over the surface of the ocean to communicate with the subs, but this method was used only for emergencies, like to communicate the order for an immediate attack on a time-sensible target... or for ordering the launch of a full scale nuclear-holocaust strike with the ICBMs missiles in answer to enemy's attack.

For the routine communications, the submarines emerged every few hours, coming just under the surface to extend a mast-mounted satcom antenna over the level of the sea to download, normally in two-three seconds, any message or order directly from one of the satellites of the Empire. This, of course, had a downside itself: coming so close to the surface made noise, and created surface waves that would betray the position of the submarine to a lucky radar near enough to catch the fleeing signal... It can seem an infinitesimal risk, but the submarine warfare lives of details like this. The Unseen, anyway, had a buddy to call in for this kind of dangerous works: the vessels of the Unseen class had as standard equipment a small Unmanned Underwater Vehicle equipped with cameras, a sonar, a periscope with thermal cameras and TV cameras for observing the surface world and a telescopic mast with antennas for satellite communications. It was connected to the sub with a 15-miles optic fiber cable and remotely operated from inside the sub, and it was used as a scout and for communications. When not in use, it had its "den" inside the conning tower of the submarine, but when deployed, it could go ahead, scout and gather intelligence and act as communications relay well far away from the sub. And even if the enemy spotted the drone, the submarine could be anywhere inside a circle of 15 miles of diameter: an area of more than 700 miles to scan in search of the most fleeting target in the world.

The last chance of survival for the submarine under attack was the use of its decoys and false-targets, also fondly called "rubber ducks": devices designed to simulate the submarine and lure torpedoes away from the real one. The vessel had tens of pre-loaded decoy launchers built in into its hull... and Sandy knew that they were going to need those devices in the mission to come... They were sailing to face the greatest naval task group that the world had ever seen united in one only place, after all... and soon or later, they were going to be spotted and chased after, no matter how perfect their subs and their tactics were. The greatest threat were the enemy submarines... it would have been a duel of mind, tactics and silence... and then, the launch of a torpedo to win the match. But even being the first ones to launch, Sandy knew that they had to expect a torpedo coming back as answer: the last move of a ship condemned. The torpedo would have come directly in the streak of their own... "Ivan the fool" tactic. When you are going to die, you at least try to bring down with you your killers. The targeted submarine veers and fires its own torpedo towards the source of the enemy one... And that's the moment when we'll need our dear, old rubber ducks.

"Nervous, sir...?" A calm voice asked from his side.

"Hell, no! There was nothing that I wished more than be back commanding a submarine." Sandy quickly answered to the amusedly grinning Tom Baker, the second in command on the Unseen, who stood at his side on the bridge of the conning tower in his own dark-blue uniform. "I'm just making up my mind for the mission. We've quite a mission in our hands..."

Quite a mission. Hear him. Old Sandy only lives to throw torpedoes at people... "I believe it's more than that, sir." Baker said with a slight smile as both officers looked in the distance to see the enormous Endurance finally veering to port hand and exiting the bay, out in the Syrane channel.

"We've got the best submarines of the world to get it done, XO." Sandy said firmly, chewing a bit on his cigar as he shifted it in his mouth, hands behind his back, eyes looking a bit to the side to his second in command, XO in the submariner's code. "We must make sure that no one spots us. Torpedoes will do the rest."

"We're all ready for the challenge." Baker answered with a nod, but he couldn't shake away his worries entirely. After all, how many sonars, how many radars, how many sonobuoys would have been chasing after them...? How many missiles and guns ready to break them down to shreds...? Not to count that they had to cruise under the ices of the arctic all the way to the other side of the world, an enterprise that alone was worth a career. Perhaps four commanders in the world could say they had done that travel... I'm just glad that Sandy is one of those. And that years ago, with a much more modest submarine, he was capable to silently follow an enemy ship for three days without being spotted, sunk it the fourth day and leave without being noticed by the escort ships searching for him. If there's one that can bring this mission to a victory, that one is Sandy.

Baker was the commander of the Unseen from the day when the submarine had been declared operational, a day not so far away in time. The vessel was relatively new, only a couple of years old, the commander was new as well... fresh of training course and with still little direct experience. And so far, he had never fought a real battle. The admiral sir John "Sandy" Hawkwood, instead, had a long experience, that included several successful combat cruises. And you could almost tell it from his look alone. It was hard to imagine him wearing anything else than the dark-blue uniform of the navy, his icy grey-eyes always looking far away on the horizon, almost like he could see things that the others couldn't even imagine. His muzzle was wrinkled, not so much for the age but more from a life spend in the briny air of the sea, and he still was a tall and athletic-built white tiger, always so disciplined and perfect in his moves, always apparently impenetrable to the fear and the worries.

And now he was idly smoking his cigar, eyes gleaming with happiness as he was finally back where he belonged, his irises following the Endurance opening the way with huge pride... And then he turned back to see the other submarines following out of the bay, and he smiled slightly to himself as the squad covered the first short stretch of its long and deadly mission.

The submarines gave a sense of danger incredible: it was enough to see them silently slide away on the calm water of the port to feel a shiver of danger. For someone.

Every man of the crew had spent at least an hour before the departure writing a will and a letter to their loved ones... just like before any mission. Life on board of a submarine carried so many dangers, so terrible that most avoided to even mention the possibilities...

And now on the hull of the Unseen was already starting to form a fine layer of hoar-frost and icy dust as the vessel sailed without efforts in the small waves of the channel, staying into the large streak left by the Endurance, now free of the tugs and sailing with its own power, gaining speed in the larger stretch of the Syrane passage...

Sandy wanted to dive as soon as possible, and vanish under the surface with the additional cover offered by the waves moved by the hulking hull of the Endurance, so that no one eventually spying them would have known the direction they were taking. Of course, the guys of the air force at the base of Flyingdales had been using their gigantic radar to scan the cosmic space and had given confirmation that the spy satellites of the various nations, Ire and Alfaya included, that kept Kesteven under control for a reason or another had already done their passage: the next one would have took place not earlier of two and half hours... but he wanted to be well sure that no one knew where they were going, so that everyone would have supposed they were normally navigating submerged down the Syrane channel.

"So... Mission starts." Sandy sighed, taking away the cigar from his mouth, inhaling a last breath of the smoke and throwing the remaining of the cigar into the sea. "Forwards one third, XO. Ready to dive in two minutes. Lower the flag."

Baker communicated the orders in the communication circuit of the submarine, and everyone felt the sudden increase in their speed as the two officers turned to salute the flag as it was lowered from its pole and tenderly folded away by a sailor as everyone entered the various hatches and prepared for the diving, taking one last look of the outside world, of the cloudy sky, of Kesteven's mountains. For perhaps months, they were not going to see any of that again... as he closed the hatch behind himself, Sandy thought that he hoped to have the Jolly Roger flag raised at the re-entry.

It was tradition: every vessel that sunk an enemy ship used to sport a Jolly Roger flag when returning to its port. He had done it in the past... and goddamn it, I want to have that flag on the turret once more.

Killer instinctively checked the safety of the Cobra as he silently walked in the night behind Laura, who opened a long tactical column of nearly sixty between rebels and Predators. Alexis followed behind him and provided constant information about any presence of threats, ranging from traps, mines or patrol of enemies even more than a kilometer away, so that they had been able to avoid any contact with the enemy and the march had so far gone without any problem. Murray was guiding another column, to ensure that there was a backup of authority in any situation... and so behind Alexis followed the five Praetorians, which had added the Predator's gear to their equipment but otherwise stayed wearing their... bondage-like dresses of leather. This fact, of course, had influenced Laura and Alexis both...

Laura was now used to wear jackets left always well open to show tight, molding shirts that largely showed her goods, and short, tight pants that also had their fly pretty low to let good part of her astonishing abdominals uncovered.

Alexis, on her side, had immediately countered to all this by making accurate choices for the clothes she had asked for her when Killer and her had asked to attach a bag of clothes to one of the pallets of supplies that the air force had been launching to support them.

She had gladly accepted the competition as a chance to get rid of any sort of combat vest, and this time Killer hadn't managed to convince her to do otherwise. And now she wore a tight, showy bra of black leather, a pair of black pants that were tight on her amazing legs and black combat boots that had the amazing detail of dizzy heels. Something apparently suicidal... But Killer knew well that Alexis could have likely fought an entire army while packed inside a smugly sack without troubles. Heels weren't going to affect in any way her agility, with how extreme her balance and mobility were.

That was it for her clothing... she only retained the black jacket of the field uniform of the Predators, which she wore open and loose. And with her traffic-stopping body and crushing, irresistible sensuality, she easily was the winner of the never declared war between the girls, who all seemed to have picked up the challenge of pleasing Killer in any possible way, even we asked nothing.

Killer grinned slightly to himself, but forced those thoughts away out of his mind to concentrate on more serious factors. Other tactical columns followed, every group spaced a bit away from the preceding for further security... Now, after all, there were not just the Predators but also several officers of the rebels equipped with the Joint Warriors outfit, so that they could communicate without troubles at all and follow the same path even if there was no visual contact between the formations, so much they were spaced up.

They were walking down in the plan at the feet of the mountains of the Aran Heights, between forests and fields that had been flooded and were now reduced to marshes and lagoons covered by a constant fog so thick that they had to use the thermal imagery system of the visor at times. It wasn't exactly the most pleasurable of marches, but Killer did not mind. He had had much worse... and he also reminded his service as parachutist in the hot, wet jungles of the east, where marshes had been plagued by ridiculously bothering, huge swarms of all sorts of stinging bugs on top of everything else.

And anyway, that was their third night in Glacial, counting also the very first one, and it was time to move on and attack, otherwise their advantage would have been cancelled even before they could exploit it, so that they were heading for the area chosen to become the Landing Zone Vanguard, all the night ahead available for the operation.

It could be worse, anyway... Killer quietly thought, and indeed, there was quite a good reason to be relieved. A couple of drones Dark Angel and the Zephyr that always flied high above them mainly to grant a communication relay had all reported that the Southern and Eastern Army Groups of the RA were moving up the highways to converge on their area to get the matter of the rebels over with, and the two enormous armies were collecting up the disbanded rests of the Western group as well... This means that my plan is already working.

It was what he wanted... Conquering Sangin and taking position in such small and enclosed area, and doing it with so little forces, Killer knew that he was going to look like a fool child trapped between angry and bulky adults. A bait so delicious that the enemy commanders were going to likely rush towards in as fast as they could, to have one day the chance to tell that they had been the ones defeating the legend.

Actually, instead, the little area of Sangin was perfect for Killer's plan: conquering the two bridges of the 43th Road that headed in and out the town and destroying the other ones left, considering the two rivers and the flooded plans that enclosed the area of the town, Sangin was going to become an island, and the enemy would have been pretty much forced to attack from one only place: the bridge north of the city.

Of course, in a later moment it is expected that they exploit their numeric superiority to make the larger turn, overcome the rivers somewhere far away from our lines and attack our backs, aiming straight for the southern bridge, the one we'll be using as re-supply route to reach the base in the Aran Heights...But we will be well ready for that.

The key of the plan was resisting in Sangin and possibly preserve both bridges long enough to lure in the area the two entire army groups... and at the right moment, the Seventh Armored Division was going to charge from Kesteven to break through the mountains passes at the border and flood in Glacial's territory, taking the highway and blocking the enemy supply line. Then, tanks and infantry were going to march down the road towards Sangin to take the enemy at the back, trapping the RA between the disciplined Empire's army and the rebels and Predators... Anvil and hammer.

In the last two days, Killer had been refining the plans over and over again with Alexis, Laura and Murray. The key was the rapidity: immediately after preparing a suitable landing zone, they would have been reached by other Predators and supplied with heavy weapons, vehicles and ammo airlifted to the area by Atlas and A400 Loadmaster planes. They were already flying from the bases in Kesteven towards them... preceded by a couple of wings of Typhoons with the task of silencing the enemy air defense.

With the first wave of reinforces delivered, they would have moved ahead in two columns: one, running with protected vehicles and tanks, would have secured the road 43th, while another, moving forwards faster across the country, would have reached the river Cartina, south of Sangin, to secure the bridge that leaded inside town. The vehicles then would have rapidly crossed the bridge to aim for the other one north of town... while the soldiers would have attacked and conquered the airbase outside town to receive yet another shipment of equipment, reinforces and vehicles, with others landing at the LZ Vanguard. Enough to conquer the town and set up a strong defense...

Killer mused also about the time he had so far spent with the rebels... And he couldn't help but smile a bit to himself as he reminded the wonderful way he had spent the very first night of his stay, sharing a trench with Alexis and Laura. It had certainly been one of the best nights of his life... and he sure couldn't think to a single other occasion when a trench had looked so welcoming, warm and beautiful. It had also been rough, of course... One of our roughuest go, most certainly... He grinned a bit, remembering the many times he had mounted each female, the many times hot juices had washed his member blissfully... After he had first taken Laura, Alexis had wanted another go herself, and then of course Laura was all hot and hungry again... He did not know how many times they had done it, for how many hours, but by the end of it, the sun was already high over the horizon, dawn by now passed and gone... And both females had been exhausted and bleeding, Alexis having required a much higher number of sessions but now wheezing just like her friend, even if they both smiled widely, eyes gleaming with pure erotic bliss up at him as they clung at him tightly... And he had been bruised by their claws, panting and bloodstained, even if still hard and powerful and grinning... And finally they had rested, the two girls lovingly clunging at him as they curled up under his mighty form, squeezing his enormous shaft between themselves and giving it loving pecks and squeezes and strokes until they fell asleep, the huge male blanketing them with his body, lovingly covering them as his muscular arms embraced the two females and kept them closer to him, one squeezed into each side of his broad, masculine chest.

The very awkward thing, anyway, had been reaching the showers of the base, in the middle of the day, when the three of them were bloodstained and covered in juices, that for the two girls meant thick layers of his seed... And Killer had been embarassed, but nonetheless he hadn't managed to restrain his laughters once they had been showing together, washing each other tenderly after Laura and Alexis had practically paraded to the showers room, walking in front of him proudly, just like the obscene amounts of seed covering their bodies and the clothes that they hadn't been prevident enough to hide in a safe place at a safe distance were a sort of prize, of reward... And the most amusing aspect, perhaps, was the fact that the Praetorians and all the other girls that they had crossed path with had looked to the two tigresses with expressions that made pretty evident that they considered it effectively as an inestimable gift... the envy and amazement in their eyes had been even more worth than the shocked and envious gazes of the males.

Pamela and the other Praetorians had been trying desperately to be the next ones receiving such reward, and when he had entered his room after the shower, he found many, many little gifts piled up for him, near his still never-used bed... food, of all things. That's impressive, with how little food the rebels get, and how often they have to stay on an empty stomach...

He had secretely brought all the food back to the larder, because it felt like a crime to accept, and refusing the gifts would have only saddened the girls making them, as he had learned by the way the Praetors reacted every time he wasn't pleased by their actions... And on the way back to his space, he had been approached by a few more girls, daring enough to hand him their gifts personally, even if they had all blushed furiously...

And that gentle siege had continued all the time, with girls trying to hit on him at every corner, and females giggling and chatting every time he stepped by, which had been pretty awkward when he had committed the error to try and have lunch in the common mess. As much as he tried to just act like a common soldier, every move he made seemed to look exceptional to the eyes of the other rebel... And the way with which everyone stared in awe at him as he tried to eat had been quite bothering. He couldn't help but rise his eyes from his meal every two seconds to meet so many faces staring at him... and he had eventually renounced and literally walked away from the base, climbing up the ivory rocks of the mountain until he sat on a high, solitary peak where he could finally stay without being observed so intently... And Alexis had reached him there, of all things, and they had fed each other lovingly and quietly, looking in the distance over the plans, over Sangin in the distance, looking over the snowy, beautiful land of Glacial as far as the eye could as he held her gently in his lap, rocking her gently against his chest as she clutched at him lovingly.

In the afternoon, the Praetorias had continued trying to seduce him... and it wasn't like he was immune to their call, to their seduction, but he really wanted to train himself with Alexis and have her trying to teach him the energy-spheres trick, at least... And unexpectedly, once informed of this, the Praetorians had been satisfied, at least temporally, by just helping out with Killer's and Alexis's training... And Killer had to admitt that all five were warriors formidable. Their strenght had been amazing, and the ability they showed in the use of their scythes had been quite scary, also considered that they were targets almost as fleeting as Alexis was, with the agility they demonstrated. They had provided him and Alexis with a heavy, demanding workout as he and the blond female battled without mercy and the five Praetorians fiercely attacked the both of them from every side, again and again and again. Later on, even Laura had joined for some time, since she had taken a moment of pause from her second work at the base... Killer had in fact learned that she wasn't just one of the highest officers of the resistance, she also was an excellent mechanic, and had an ability that almost matched Roger's: the huge male had been amazed of learning that, if everything from a pocket radio to a main battle tank had a problem, Laura was called in and generally managed to get it going better than even before with her talent...

Darkness found the five warrior females tired and sore, but happily smiling as they sat in a circle, allowed to see his training with Alexis... Actually, he wasn't so enthusiast of having a pubblic as he failed over and over at both trying to unleash his aura free to awaken his powers and at creating anything with his energy, even if Alexis guided him step by step with incredible patience. In fact, she had been the one wanting the five slaves to stay... Officially hoping that their presence would have compeled him to give his best and finally manage at the attempts they were making daily by long time by now... Or perhaps, only to humiliate him a bit for punishment. As patient and loving as she was towards him, he was getting the feeling that the continuous failure was starting to get her irritated. More because she did not accept lightheartedly the idea that her teachings might be enadequate.

The night had been so busy that at least he hadn't had to do anything to protect himself from the sexual avances he was tempested with... They had been busy receiving the forecasted shipment of pallets of ammo and supplies at the concorded LZ on the mountains and bring all the stuff back into the base... Something that would have normally required a long time, but that this time had been a much easier task, thanks to the enormous strenght of Killer and Alexis, who had carried alone entire pallets all the way to the depots, under the amazed eyes of the rebels, that opened up the wrappings to carry on their shoulder each one or two of the many waterproof crates filled of food, missiles, ammunitions, radios and tactical visors that were piled up in each pallet. Killer, instead, had just grabbed two complete pallets and balanced each on one of his huge, mighty shoulders, and he would have carried more if the sheer bulk of the objects didn't make it impossible. The much shorter time requested by the transport of the supplies had left time for a raid down in the plan, and Alexis, Murray and Laura had helped him build up some knowledged of the locations, of the paths and of the villages as they marched silently and rapidly along the path.

They had raided a small town to the east of the base, one where the rebels could get some food, both by stealing the supplies of the local RA garrison and getting help from the population... And it had been a very succesful raid, since the enemy soldiers were apparently terrorized of what had happened to their comrades the night before, and had ceased sending out even the normal patrols: a rapid reconnaissance of the village, carried out with the use of a Buzz drone as well, had confirmed that all the RA men had simply barricated themselves in the group of large farmhouses they had long ago requisited to use as barracks and tried to prepare the best possible defences in there.

The rebels had so had no problems at going to every house to meet their contacts, reassure the population and receive the little they had to offer... While Killer and Alexis had attacked directly the barracks, supported by the Praetorians and by several snipers that Ken had guided on the highest roofs of the town.

Killer had smashed past the gates of the garrison, and Alexis had rapidly wrecked every vehicle parked in the large yard with her deadly spheres of energy, and then they had took care of the soldiers. That, as a supplement, had left the large larders and magazines of the local force available to their raid, and they had needed to steal a couple of trucks to bring everything away with them.

The successive day, Killer had been training even harder, from early in the morning to late in the evening... And quite amazingly, he had first shown significant progresses with the use of his own energy. He had finally got to see his own aura, for example... and it had been quite amazing see flames of warm, bright golden light dance around his right arm and dark ones surround his left. Just like Alexis had said him, his aura was mighty and made of both light and darkness... which left him wondering bitterly about just how much eradicated the cruelty he used by now to call Black Killer was inside his being...

Of course, anyway, in the following hours he had managed next to nothing, despite all... He managed to do pretty much nothing of concrete with his energy, until Alexis had walked towards him with a snort and grasped him by the wrist, as the five Praetorians sat in a wide circle around them stared curiously.

"I know how we can fix this..." She snorted, pulling his hand up as he stupidly blinked a few times in surprise and curiosity while the blond femme fatale guided his hand towards her... and she had placed his palm over one of her huge, firm and now mostly-exposed, leather bra-wrapped breasts.

"Yeah, the way you know how to... grope that boob, feel it..." Alexis had commanded as his fingers had first hesitatingly squeezed in her soft flesh... and the seriety she had had on her features while she instructed him had been quite an amusing aspect as he squeezed and rolled her swell lovingly, then roughly when she incited him, and after some time, she had half-lidded her eyes with the lightest of moans, her lips curving slightly in a grin.

"You are exploiting this, arent't you...?" He observed mildly, grinning a bit himself, and she had smiled to him amusedly, tilting her head to the side a bit.

"A tad, yes." She had shamelessly answered, grinning as both of her hands guided his movements on her somptuous bosom as the five slaves around them hungrily watched... And then, finally, she had stepped backwards.

"Now, try not to disappoint me, lover. If you like my body half as much as you say, you cannot fail." She had stated, standing at a few feet of distance and crossing her arms as she stared at him. Killer swallowed a bit, nodding as he concentrated himself... I cannot fail, then... You know that I love you, Alexis...

I hope you do, indeed... Her voice had gently whispered back, caressing him directly in his mind with her melodious tone... and he had blinked in surprise. "Did you read in my thoughts...?" He asked hesitatingly, and she shook her head softly, smiling.

"Not this time." She stated gently, but she immediately rose a hand as he brightened and started to grin victoriously. "But it does not mean too much, since I practically chosen you as the only one capable to access to my mind when my powers awakened... And for you there's always an open door across my eyes."

His grin had immediately died away, but he had smiled slightly nonetheless, touched by her words.

"So... let's see if we can take something good out of this..." She said, closing her eyes for a moment to think at the best way to try and get his energy floowing out as he wanted, and not as it wanted... "Close your eyes, Lion... rise your hand and stretch your palm..."

He complied, and concentrated as best as possible, letting her gentle voice flow inside him, her words caressing his soul as they carried the instructions for him to follow...

"... Don't move your fingers... But concentrate on your hand. Feel the warm of my breast back on your palm... figure my flesh still touching you..."

Sweet, warm and soft... so pleasant to me... so soothing... so heavenly to me, no matter whatever is happening around us...

"... you want to squeeze me, to please me, to make me moan as you always do... but you can't move your fingers. Concentrate your warm towards your hand..."

I feel it... what a torture would be if I couldn't touch you... how useless my life would feel... He finally started to feel his energy flowing, and he knew, even as he kept his eyes shut, that his aura was back again dancing softly around his form... And now he could feel it sneak down his muscular arm, towards his hand...

Like that, Lion... like that... Her voice, her wonderful voice soothing his soul, within him, just like she could caress his very being, and not just his body...And he heard the giggling of awe of the Praetorians and the light clapping of Alexis's hands... And he snapped his eyes open.

A huge sphere of golden energy was floating in fron of his palm, and he stared at this in surprise for a moment, until Alexis emerged at his side, taking his wrist gently in her hands as she leaned closer to kiss his cheek lovingly, purring a bit as she nuzzled at his neck before pulling back.

"It's true, then... You love me." She whispered playfully in his ear, her voice so low that even he fatigued to hear her... And she blushed a bit under his glance as he murmured back: "Of course it's true... How could it be false, darling...?"

She smiled tenderly up at him, bending forwards to kiss his huge bicep as she winked... and then she straightened and got back to her normal tone of teacher.

"My hypothesis is that this energy can be used both to strike and to heal... but this is something we'll have to explore and learn together with time, because even I know only to hit things and eventually form a barrier around me at the most... And besides, your energy carries an enormous strenght, lover... even now that you barely control it..." She grinned, pushing her body gently against his stretched, muscular arm. "Try and throw it, now..." She looked around a bit, then her eyes settled on a thick, huge peak of rock that climbed up towards the sky from the side of the Aran Heights, behind their back... And she pointed at this. "That will do fine as target."

He nodded, keeping his concentration as he brought his arm up and prepared the launch... And this was the easier part of the deal, and he don't missed, the sphere whizzing in the air like a knife would have, when launched with his brutal strenght... And they stared as the sphere smashed into the stone, for a moment seeming to pierce across it, melting the rock away... and then it exploded with blinding light and a terrific rumble, followed by a rain of tiny frangments of what had once been part of the Aran Heights, making him gape stupidly as Alexis grinned in amusement and at least half of the rebels and of the personell of the base running out towards them to stare at the slowly fading cloud of dust and dirt.

Killer grinned a bit as he reminded that... and what was best, is that after the first launch, Alexis had told him to concentrate on something, someone he hated intensely, and focus his energy on the intent of hurting, of killing... The sphere resulting had been black, of a darkness so dark that he had been left staring at it in amazement as it crackled with electricity and pulsated with power: everything seemed to be almost aspired into such sphere, that was smaller than the golden one but seemed much more dense... Wind had come from the nothingness, so strong that even the trees around actually had bent towards the sphere in his palm, almost like they were being pulled physically towards him... And they had felt a power so terrible inside the small sphere that he hadn't dared throwing it, making it fade away as he relaxed and closed his palm in a fist...

That's been quite scary...

It had happened only a few hours before, and the memory was still extremely clear in his mind, and in his body as well... he could still almost feel that enormous energy still sizzling in his fingers and palm, and he was somehow glad that he would have soon be busy with other tasks: the memory, the feeling of such darkness was rather disturbing, and he could feel Black Killer trying to break free from where he had repealed it in his mind... And the last thing he wanted was another confrontation with his infinitely crueler and much stronger alterego.

"There! See that...?" Laura exclaimed, pointing of in the distance, and he rose his eyes over her, shaking his head a bit as he was so suddenly awakened from his thoughts... He stopped, standing by her side as Alexis pulled up near him and gently brushed his arm, giving him a gentle supportive smile as she wrapped an arm around his waist. She was feeling his worries, his burden... for no one more than them, it was valid the consideration that lovers share the burdens of life, after all.

But now both looked in the direction Laura pointed to, and Killer's eyes narrowed with a frown as he saw fields that weren't flooded, weren't occupied by the mess of razor wire, mines and traps that the rebels called Riaku's Fangs... but also were definitely uncultivated, left abandoned to be conquered by weed and vegatation. Definitely not normal, when everyone is short on food and needs fields to cultivate almost like he needs the air to breath...

And then he saw them... Small metallic cilinders with huge, frightening jutting spikes, that hovered almost magically a few meters above the ground in a thick, enormous wing. Hundreds of them gloomed above the ground, ready to massacre whatever came close enough.

"What the Hell..." He muttered, understanding they were deadly, flying, composite mines.

"Yeah." Laura muttered, nodding a bit as she closed her fists with rage over the massive machine gun she was cradling in her arms, an enormous RPK caliber 14.5 mm, a weapon that once had been carried by an RA member, one of so many that she had... terminated, in her words.

"There's a powerful Electro Magnetic Field generator hidden somewhere in the middle of these fields... it keeps the mines hovering in the air like that. Between the mines there are also smaller Eyeballs floating... Small devices with thermal cameras on each side. When they see someone or something come close, the Eyeballs set the mine field active, and mines start literally leaping at you until you aren't slaughtered for well." Laura explained, making a faceas she snorted.

Killer looked with more attention on the nearest floating object... and indeed, he recognized what appeared to be a couple of jet-thruster working with compressed air at the two extremities of the cilinder: a propulsion system capable to move the mine with jets of air towards the targets locked by the floating Eyeball sensors. The mine itself was probably full of plastic explosive, and he could see the prefragmented wrapping of steel, knowing all too well the deadly effects of the explosion of such device: all around, in a thirty meters range, mortal slivers of burning metal would have torn everything to shreds. And he also noticed that each mine had eight deadly-sharp cones of steel, arranged in groups of four at the two extremities... And you don't need that much immagination to know that each is a self-forging anti-tank hypersonic round. Beautiful, just beautiful...

"The RA is trying to get this system, which they call Decapitator, in place in all the areas suitable for an assault from the air from when our attacks started... they know that the Riaku's Fangs are vulnerable, and we can destroy them to clear a Landing Zone, after all." Pamela added from his other side, nodding slightly as she looked coldly in the distance.

"The Decapitator is a very tough client to deal with... you can get close to that. You cannot survive. Mines will keep chasing after you until you are a bloody heap on the ground..." Crystal added, and the other Praetorians grunted in grouchy approval.

Alexis nodded silently. How badly was her homeland reduced! A wasteland of traps and mortal devices, put there to become the grave of whoever came to try and save the kingdom... for me, I guess I should say. A whole nation, a whole population's destiny, put on the table as a sacrificeable chip in the game against us... They had already saw, even if from the distance, the huge vaults of steel that surmounted the Road 43, and they knew that every road, straight and flat and large enough to be exploited as a makeshift runway for an aerial assault had been protected with those enormous semicircles of steel, tall enough in the center to allow any truck and vehicle to travel, but also solid enough that any aircraft trying to land on the road would have smashed into them and crumbled to pieces. It was terrible... and it was cruelly smart. The RA was taking no chances against them: they had knew from the very first moment that Alexis and Killer would have come, soon or later...

"Murray, we got another area cursed with Decapitator in place. They must have planted this in the last two days, not earlier..."

Alexis turned to the side, looking to Laura as she pushed the boom-microphone of her visor close to her mouth and talked with the old colonel, reading his answer directly from the mind of her best friend.

Killer, meanwhile, reached up a hand and enlarged to full screen on his visor the images coming from the sensors of the Zephyr drone hovering miles above their heads, making sure that the path they had choosen for the soon-to-be LZ was clear...

"Murray suggest to take a larger path, moving to west a bit. It's always better to stay far away from the goddamn flying porcupines." Alexis quietly said, turning slightly towards Killer as Laura opened her mouth to speak, only to close it with a grouchy expression as her words were anticipated. "Thanks, Ale."

Alexis blinked, then smiled a bit as she tilted her head to move away a few long bangs of golden hair from her eyes. "Sorry, Ra. Habit."

"There's also very good possibilities that the team of the RA that did this work is still camped somewhere around here... The work is very recent." Laura continued, looking to Killer with professionalism. "Try and take a look for them. You may manage to see trucks hiding somewhere..."

Killer nodded silently, zooming the images until he could see himself and their whole group with amazing definition in the black and white thermal image, then he moved his finger calmly over the small trackball on his wrist-mounted control console to move the Thermal Imagery Camera on the UAV in a direction and then in the other, scanning the area with attention for any little detail.

"Here we are..." He murmured, grinning a bit as he found a solitary soldier standing and apparently smoking a cigarette as he moved lazily on the spot were he was making his work of sentinell... and soon he took into three huge, eight-wheels trucks that had been parked as near as possible to the trees and further, skillyfully hidden with several camouflage nets. Perhaps twenty more soldiers and workers were camping near one of the huge vehicles, and a bit further along the narrow passage that had once been a country road for the owners of the fields all around and their vehicles... All fields that now were flooded and abandoned.

Opening the convoy was a military jeep surmounted by a remote weapon station with a machine gun, but overall it was nothing too worrysome. "I've them framed, three hundred meters ahead, to the east, on the road. Take a look, everyone."

He waited a moment, as everyone with a visor took his own vision of the enemy positions, then send out his orders. "We must terminate them before we move to the LZ, and we should do it silently if it is possible. Laura, take a few men with you and stay ready to give cover fire if you see it's needed. Me and Alexis will go ahead and take care of the guys in there."

"Fine." Laura nodded, grinning coldly as she patted a bit the massive machine gun in her hands.

Rapid and silent nods were the answers of the rest of the column as they walked silently towards the crossroad between their path and the road, and they stopped, hidden by a couple of huge trees as Killer stretched the Cobra out from the corner made up by the thick wooden trunk and let the camera in the aiming sight send images on his visor, looking after the sentinel, who was quietly looking down the road, in the other direction, smoking calmly and without any fear, resting nearby the first truck in line.

The others watched Killer, in waiting for a signal, and he silently nodded in affirmation, Alexis immediately sneaking her way out on the road, rapid and silent as a shadow, Killer following at a few steps of distance as they cam closer and closer to the sentinel, silent as shadows, eyes staring to the enemy and a hand at the ready to run for the handle of their huge swords at the first sign of the sentinel turning...

But he did not hear his incoming death. Alexis briskly grabbed him from behind, pressing her hand on his mouth and grasping his head, snapping his neck like a twig with an easy pull as he let out a suffocated whimper before lay still, dead, as she lowered it to the ground.

She turned rapidly to the side, anyway, as she heard a movement, and the door of the huge truck at her side was pushed open by a soldier that had been resting inside, his eyes opened wide as he took in the sight of the feared femme fatale and rose his rifle to the shoulder... But the ligeress was far faster in jumping up to the door, gritting her fangs as she slammed the cut of her hand into the nose of the unfortunate, sending him crashing backwards inside the cockpit with a splatter of blood and gore as the bones of his skull cracked open and his nose was pushed up to smash inside his brain, killing him immediately.

The corpse, anyway, slammed into the driver, who had been sleeping, leaning on the wheel, and he looked up with a grunt and a curse... And his eyes widened in terror as he found the shattered corpse of his comrade leaning against him and he saw the tigress lash out her strong punch. It was the last thing he saw, his face literally exploding in a bloody mess that splattered the glass of the windows... and everything fell silent as she descended from the vehicle: the middle seat, the one of the gunner of the vehicle, who could stand up and fire from a hatch in the roof, was empty. Evidently, the sentinel had been the one filling it.

Killer nodded to her silently, and she read in his thoughts to know that he had been verifying the load of the enormous truck... Decapitator mines. We are just in time... Some more little waiting, and the whole zone would have turned into a mine field...

The huge male took the lead now, drawing out Wyvern as they approached the second truck in line... And he leaned cautiously up to spy inside from the side window. All three the members of the crew were sleeping inside... But they had to be careful, since in front of the vehicle, in the large space left before the last one parked truck, twenty between soldiers and workers were camping around a small electric fire accurately shielded so the light would not give away their position. They could hear the chatting... And Killer tilted his head towards the truck, Alexis nodding and silently reaching up for the handle as he approached the muzzle of the vehicle... and then both attacked in the same moment.

Alexis slammed her hand down on the nape of the neck of her three contacts, knocking them unconscious with a snort as Killer emerged between the astonished group... and even before they could recover from the surprise and terror enough to scream an alarm, he had slashed Wyvern twice, to both sides, blood splattering up on the windshield in front of Alexis as she leaned a bit on the cockpit, crossing her arms with a grin.

No sounds followed... and when she descended, Killer was already gesturing her that the last truck's cockpit was empty. That left the jeep, loaded with four soldiers and the radio and communications equipment that could have sent a general alarm in no time... But the huge male liger took no chances about that. He grabbed the tall antenna with a hand and pulled with a snarl, his brutal strength tearing it away along with several meters of cable, torn out of the vehicle, terrified faces turning to stare at him across the bullet-proof glass as his grip bent even the armoured door of the patrol vehicle, his fingers sinking into the door as he took hold of the jeep, the soldier inside crawling away on the seat as the claws of the liger ripped inside... and he grinned as he effortlessly lifted the heavy military 4x4 above his head, muscles flexing with tremendous power as he hurled it away like a toy, looking coldly into the distance as it smashed with terrible violence in the middle of one of the surrounding, flooded fields, landing heavily on the roof and sinking immediately under the water, skidding on the ground for several more meters, such was the strength with which it had been launched. Large part of the wheels stayed emerged... but it was enough, because no doors were opened. Everyone inside had died with the impact... or had been hurt badly enough to don't have the strength to crawl outside.

"Gods, that was hot." Pamela snickered as the Praetorians approached him while he straightened, and he allowed himself a slight grin as Crystal and Nikita come closer still to brush into his sides, letting their breasts push a bit against his muscular chest as they reached up a hand to stroke his large pecs.

"Wait to see him doing that with tanks, you slut." Laura observed mildly as she passed by, grinning with a defiant tilt of her head and a wink to the larger male as the Praetorians glared at her a bit. Laura had made no mystery of the fact she had had the honour and delight to be mounted by the legend on the first night of his stay... And practically every female at the base had been terribly envious of that result. The Praetorians in particular, also because the most they had been allowed to offer him had been sucking him off that same morning... Obviously, on suggestion of Alexis. It had been glorious, and had left all five of them drenched with his thick, powerful load... But of course, on the other side, their hunger for a ride had just grown even greater.

"Huh... I believe we should go on, you know..." Killer mildly observed as he felt Kate and Valery wrap their arms around his thick, massive body from behind, and they were quick to stand to attention at this, at least, marching around him and Alexis in a well spaced tactical formation. "Everything Master wants, as always." Pamela gently explained with a bow. "But please, if we can be of any help for the wishes and desires of your majesty... We live to serve our Master."

She looked up at him with a slight smile, in her eyes a plead for him to use them as he wished... and she brightened up like she had been blessed by a divinity when he smiled back softly, before looking up as Nikita and Crystal bad temperedly threw down on the ground at his feet the three truckers of the RA that Alexis had knocked out.

Her blows had been strong enough that the fainted, bulky soldiers did not react in any way neither when they slammed face-first into the ground.

"Your orders for this junk, Master...?" Nikita asked, making a grimace of disdain as she looked down to the three, her hand tightly squeezing the handle of her unsheathed scythe, the thick blade threateningly gleaming in the moonlight.

"We made sure they have no explosive devices over them, majesty. It's not first line personnel, nor are they fanatics like the RA first liners, evidently... they are bare of any kind of suicidal explosive charge, and we disarmed them." Crystal added, the snarl that she had saved for the three bodies on the ground turning to the gentlest of smiles as she looked up to the huge liger, waiting for his commands.

"Just have them tied up and make sure they cannot escape or make any noise that might betray our position when they awaken... We'll have them questioned. We may manage to dig some info out of them." He said simply, and the five Praetorians bowed a bit, fist closed on their heart as they took his orders... and in a few seconds, they had already produced solid nylon ropes and tied and gagged them up tightly, leaving no chances of escaping as they easily carried the three on their shoulders... only to irritably slam them down as they finally awakened several minutes later, when by now the LZ was in sight and they were marching the last stretch.

They quickly put the prisoners in line, and made them walk with the sharp scythes pricking into their backs every now and then as the column walked slowly across a flooded area where luckily the water barely reached their knees... And finally they climbed the embankment to step into the large area chosen to become the LZ, separating themselves in teams to clean up the area faster.

A couple of Buzz drones were hovering in the air over them to provide early warning about the arrival of patrols or enemy forces in general, and to provide them a Bird's Eye view of the whole area.

It was made up by several once-wealth fields, flat enough to be perfectly suitable as runway for the rugged military cargo planes, and high enough over the surrounding fields that the water of the various floodings had left it uncovered. Now, it looked almost like an island... an island covered by a sick forest of death.

Killer was at the first close encounter with what the rebels called "Riaku's Fangs", a simple but deadly-effective system of traps that had made of that entire area, and of many of the plans in Western Glacial a useless, inaccessible wasteland. Basically, it was a forest of beams of steel and rails recovered from old train tracks planted into the ground to make up an insurmountable obstacle for any aircraft, parachutist or chopper or glider trying to land. It also prevented any vehicle from moving across the fields... And since every beam was wrapped in a confused, chaotic net of barbed and razor wire that spread its mortal strings in every direction, nothing could dare to approach the area. Besides, for added sympathy, almost every beam carried a large anti-tank mine on top... I can't even try to imagine the massacre of a group of parachutists-laden gliders trying to land over these things...

"Impressive, huh...? It is so fucking sick." Laura muttered from where she had pulled up at his left side, and Alexis at his right made a disgusted face at the mess of rusty metal that soiled her land and that was one of the reasons why her people was suffering shortage and hunger.

"It is monstrous." Killer stated simply, nodding with a grimace... But then he rose his head back up as he grinned slightly. "But at least, it already failed its goal. They wanted to make sure that to have Kesteven's army helping you in Glacial, I had to move my troops exclusively across the tight and fortified mountain's passes, without having a support force inside the kingdom... But we are here, and soon that force will score the first points."

Both females nodded silently, Alexis grinning slightly, even if her mood stayed unusually dark as she looked over the destruction that had been brought on her home... And then they turned to the side as Ken approached, pushing upwards his helmet a bit as he looked up to Killer.

"We are going to start immediately the cleaning work, if you're ok with it. I've sent the first patrols out to start digging trenches and protected positions around the perimeter, as planned." Ken reported, pointing in the distance behind himself with the modified, enlarged Enfield bolt-action scoped rifle he used and loved so much. "Murray is already arrived, and the other columns are arriving one after the other."

"Fine. The Explosive Rope will be perfect to deal with the beams..." Alexis answered, turning to look absently over the huge forest of steel poles in front of them as Killer nodded and they followed Ken towards the area where the Predators and the rebels had already started their cleaning work.

A Predator Assaulter, that was in charge of most of the explosives and of the mine-clearing equipment of each section of the special force, had already climbed on top of a tall, slightly-bent beam surmounted by a big, circular anti-tank mine, and was expertly setting in place a Dragoon candle, aimed at the explosive device.

"Ok, stay back now! You can never be sure of this kind of things..." The armoured tiger commanded as he jumped down on the ground below, looking upwards to give a last control to his work before he started the Dragoon with a remote control.

The candle immediately hissed as a 2000° Celsius degrees flame burst out of it, piercing effortlessly across the mine, melting it away, along with the charge of explosive inside, which was melted and disabled without an explosion taking place, to great relief of everyone around as they all stared with interest at the gleaming, blue flame melting away even the top of the beam before it slowly died as the combustible inside the candle ended. It was a silent, effective and safe device used by the engineers to disable explosives devices without setting them off... And now the Predators were redistributing tens of those candles to the rebels, so that the work could be done as fast and smoothly as possible. Once cleaned of the mines, and thus made safe, the beams were wrapped in a couple of turns of Explosive Rope, a particular, light and reliable inert explosive device that looked like a normal cable... but that once set off with a detonator would burn at a rate of 8000 meters for second, cutting even across steel and concrete, chopping everything in two with surgical precision. Cutting down the whole forest of "Fangs" would have been a work relatively fast, thanks to such devices... But after all, time was precious. They had little more than two hours before the planned arrival of the first wave of cargo planes loaded with troops and equipment of reinforce.

"Wait, I think I can help with that... I should be able to do it much faster." Alexis stated, walking forwards a few steps towards a group of Predators that had been opening a sealed, water-proof crate full of Dragoons to distribute to the others.

Killer turned to her in slight surprise, curiosity making him and everyone else stare at the tall ligeress as she set herself in a ready position and closed her eyes, swiftly concentrating with an ability and prowess that made the huge male shift a bit in loving envy and self-shame... And he smiled a bit when her sapphire aura come into sight, warm flames seeming to cover her whole body as she summoned her energies, her aura dancing like an arson around her beautiful body as the rebels and Predators around stared in awe, gaping a bit as they stepped backwards instinctively at how the air itself seemed to distort around her... And matching sapphire flames started to appear, engulfing one after the other all the mines on the tall beams, little but blazing arsons of blue energy coming into being all along the field, making it looking almost like a gigantic set of candles inside a cathedral...

And her frown deepened slightly as everyone stared at this in amazement, soldiers chatting to each other and sneaking gazes to the blond femme fatale as she let her energy focus even more... And the flames turned white, the heat rising to incredible levels as Killer felt the air becoming almost burning-hot, a pearl of sweat streaking slowly down his forehead as he stared at the white-hot flames melting away the mines with searing-hot fire.

Alexis opened her eyes with a grin, her aura fading slowly back inside her as she looked slowly and cheerfully from one side of the large field to the other, catching in her sight the colossal, rusty beams of steel gleaming of a bright, luminous red as the steel melted away for a good two-three feet at the top, the mines literally vaporized as several long strings of barbed and razor wire snapped and curled up on themselves as they were cut away where the heat had melted the metal away.

Killer gaped at this slightly, blinking as he turned to stare at her cheerful grin for a moment as she straightened, and then he said mildly: "You are scary." He walked a few steps towards the nearest beam, which was thick as the trunk of a fairly-sized tree and towered a good two feet over even his extraordinary height, despite the nearly three feet that had been melted away like ice cream, then he turned back to her and flailed a bit. "Like, how the hell you manage to get such hold over your powers so rapidly when it took me ages to just get my aura out...?"

"Hey, it's not the first time I go saying I'm the better one in the relationship." She grinned, tilting her head to the side playfully as she reached him and moved a step towards another of the beams as he grabbed his one with an amused snort.

"I want to see you saying that after the next train duel we have." He countered as his huge hands seized the thick steel of two beams into a deadly vice, the metal groaning as his hold was forceful enough to crush the beams on themselves. He grunted a bit, and with a mighty tug he uprooted both neatly out of the ground were they had been deeply planted, lifting them up idly as she snorted lightly, grinning amusedly as she easily snapped her own beam out of the earth.

They both turned in surprise at the collective gulp that welcomed this, blinking a bit in surprise before a grin surfaced on their muzzles, the two lovers almost mirroring one another as they looked over their awed comrades, Laura and Ken only snickering quietly in their corner. They had both had quite a few chances to see the tremendous strength of the two ligers in action, in much more impressive ways as well... But most of the presents weren't as much well informed, and a group of rebels that had been tying Explosive Rope around the base of a beam stared at the two tall warriors with a swallow.

"Come on, guys...! Nothing to write home about. You can all join his fan club later... we got a whole sector of junk to clean up right now. Quit staring and get that fucking explosive rope in place!" Laura shouted firmly from where she was working to prepare her own rope of explosive, her brisk commanding voice bringing everyone back to duty as somewhere to their left an explosion was followed by a long queue of neatly sliced beams of steel smashing noisily down into the ground as another team started setting off the charges of explosive.

"We don't want them to beat us down at this game, right...? Get those asses moving!"

Several miles away from the next-to-be LZ, Talon let his careful, sharp gaze wander from side to side as he looked out of the cockpit of his Typhoon fighter. He gave a good, prudent glance backwards, as well, well remembering the first lesson that Maverick had given him... In every moment, but when you are attacking an enemy especially, watch your back. When you are all taken into your chase, an enemy will come at your back and shoot you down.

"It's clear..." Maverick stated calmly from his position in the rear ejection seat of the tandem cockpit, smiling a bit in his oxygen mask. Good Richard... you never forget the rules... "I take care of the rear sector. You keep the rest under watch."

"Alright." Richard "Talon" answered from the front, getting his gaze back to the front, to give a rapid glance over the three multifunctional LCD colour screens that made up his cockpit, right in front of the stick, which stood between his legs, with the throttle on the left, tightly held in his gloved hand. These screens showed every parameter he needed to master every aspect of the flight... But he needed to glance at them only every-so-often, since the Head-Up Display reported everything he needed... And besides, there was always the Head Mounted Visor of his helmet, which acted as screen to report him every useful info, no matter where he looked. A small eyesighting camera system determined in every moment the position of his eye, so that the info were displayed of consequence... Particularly, the aiming sight of the missiles loaded on the plane, which he could aim in whatever direction he wanted just by watching out of the cockpit and staring at the target to hit while exploiting the vocal commands to select the missile to launch.

His Typhoon was part of a wing of eight fighters, and he was the leader of all the formation, apart from being leader of the Blue section, made up by four of the planes, with the others part of the Red section.

They were flying low and fast, and in a double Offset Box formation, with the Red box flying nearly one mile beneath the Blue, which also flied a couple of miles ahead of the other. In each box, the planes were separated in couples of leader and gregarious, with the latter flying behind the leader and slightly moved to the right side. It was a standard formation... not the easiest to maintain, but it offered great chances of reciprocal support and cover, it was a very good defensive position and it was quite difficult for the enemy to discriminate the various planes in the box.

They were flying at about 15000 feet of altitude on a Suppression of Enemy Air Defence mission, with the goal of locating and destroying the radar systems of the Surface to Air missiles and Counter Air Artillery of the enemy to blind their defences and have the arrival of the cargo planes of the first wave and all the future air operations on Glacial smooth and successful.

In order to do so, each Typhoon carried six Alarm missiles in addition to a standard load of 4 Meteor and two CAAM missiles for air combat and self defence... And of course, they had the cannon as well.

But the core of their mission was the Alarm itself, a missile designed to destroy the capability of the enemy of targeting aircrafts in flight by destroying their radars on the ground. The missile had an intelligent microprocessor controlled passive homing receiver, designed to recognize the characteristic Pulse Repetition Frequencies (PRF) of programmed threat emitters. The seeker was thus capable to detect a transmitting radar, locate it and attack it at a speed of nearly three times sound's one.

The Alarm could be launched directly against a detected and locked target, and even if this was turned down, the missile was still capable to hit, because it could memorize the GPS position of the transmitter and chase after it implacably... Or, in alternative if the rules of engagement were more restrictive, the Alarm could climb in quote, loitering for some time and listening to find enemy radars: the missile employed "flex" logic to select the highest value alternate target, should the primary target go off the air.

The Alarm was a missile extremely advanced, and it made the pilots feel safe and protected. It had been developed to be better and more effective than any other Anti Radar Missile ARM available in the world, and the result had been more than flattening. In fact, conventional ARMs home primarily upon the mainlobe and horizontal sidelobe and backlobe emissions of the target, attacking the target in a shallow dive trajectory. Modern radars with very low sidelobe antennas will thus present a "blinking" target to an approaching ARM, which must estimate the real position of the target from the intervals of active emission, when the antenna is radiating in the direction of the inbound missile. In the terminal phase of the ARM's flight, a slowly rotating antenna on the target may be pointing away from the missile, which will therefore have to follow an inertially steered trajectory based upon previous measurements of the radar's position. As a result the missile will more than often not hit the target directly, but pass within several meters of the target, using its proximity fuse to set off the warhead. This imposes the need for a larger warhead to achieve acceptable lethality.

The vertical attack Alarm instead is designed from the outset to home in on the vertical sidelobes of the threat emitter. Since most air defence radars are designed for high bearing accuracy, they tend to have good horizontal but poor vertical sidelobe antenna performance. The ALARM exploits this, as no matter what direction the main beam is pointing in, the ALARM sees a steady albeit fluctuating microwave emission leaking upward from the target's antenna. This allows the ALARM to home in precisely, indeed the missile is designed to select an aim-point about 1 metre away from the target antenna/electronics enclosure. The intelligent seeker knows what type of radar it is attacking from a wide database of information inside its computers, and therefore also knows what the elevation of the antenna is above the ground. This information is then used to select the most suitable altitude for warhead firing, typically when the missile is directly abeam the antenna or electronics enclosure. This scheme was specifically designed to defeat mast mounted antennas, which are a very popular means of improving the low altitude coverage of ground based air defence radars. There was no way to escape the punch of an Alarm, once one had locked its target.

But especially, and that was a truly unique feature of the Alarm, the missile could loiter on an area, hanging by a parachute and searching for enemy transmissions. The parachute loiter modes were adopted in order to force threat emitters to remain shut down for as long as possible after the launch of the ARM. The classical defensive tactic used by a radar operator is to shut down if an ARM is seen to be launched, thereby denying it a signal to home in on accurately. Once the ARM falls out of the sky, the radar can be lit up again. As a result, a clever operator may force an incoming SEAD aircraft to expend several conventional ARMs, if the SEAD aircraft's rails are empty then the Surface to Air Missile system can resume operation while aircraft are still within shooting range, and possibly score a kill. The parachute loiter modes of the ALARM leave the Sword of Damocles literally hanging over the radar operator's head, as soon as he lights up the missile dives on to him. The ALARM typically loitered for several minutes at medium to high altitude, subject to the initial launch profile... and it ensured that the attack planes could do their work unharmed by the SAM units, either by destroying them or forcing them to stay shut down and blind.

The Alarm was a merciless predator... the Nightmare of the Air Defence crews, so much that Typhoon's pilots targeted by enemy radars used to shout in the radio the codeword "Alamo", which means 'ARM launched' in the air force's standard codes, even if in reality they had no Alarm at all on board. It usually scared the enemies enough to turn their radar off, dropping the attack procedure in order to save their lives.

That night, it was no different from any other SEAD mission that the long-experienced Maverick had ever had a role into... The enemy SAM radars were all turned off, hiding themselves in the forests and villages below, in complete radio silence, waiting to understand what the enemy planes were doing... waiting for an error, for the best moment for launching their missiles and take them all down.

But the pilots of the Typhoons had experience and training to counter that move: they had already launched a good four Alarm, which now were loitering at over 12.000 meters of altitude, hanging from their parachutes and only waiting to detect a single radar signal to dive down and strike...

"Give me a radar scansion of Sangin's Air Base, Maverick." Talon calmly asked, looking down at the blinking red alarm light on the cockpit that from by now a couple of minutes was warning him that they had been "illuminated" by the radars of the airport.

"Alright." Maverick nodded, his expert fingers immediately moving on the enormous 50'' touch screen that made up most of his own console, the radar in the nose of the Typhoon immediately answering to his commands and turning slightly to the side to scan the airport just outside the town of Sangin, immediately showing four tracks that rapidly turned red on the screen as the Identifier Friend or Foe IFF in the radar's aerial questioned the four planes and received the wrong answer.

"Four contacts, confirmed Bandits, named 01, 02, 03 and 04, taking off. They are scrambling for us!" Maverick stated, his voice staying calm and professional as his fingers touched the four red icons on the screen, preparing a Meteor missile for each target. Immediately, the Typhoon shared this data on its Secure Data Link with the other elements of the Blue section, so that each of the four Typhoons prepared to take care of one target, and no one was going to run off of Meteor missiles in just one go.

"Engage!" Talon coldly commanded, and four Meteor missiles were immediately launched by the Weapon System Officers (WSOs) like Maverick, with the coded message "Fox Three" , the missiles roaring in the night as they accelerated to nearly four times the speed of sound and headed straight for the enemy air base, just 70 or so kilometres away... A distance that they covered in less than 52 seconds.

The enemy fighters, that had been ordered a defensive scramble to intercept the Typhoons, were still busy in the taking off and formation-assembly operations when the four missiles made their Warning systems scream, the Meteors coming out of the darkness of the night with their hellish streak of white smoke and flames.

The first massive Su30 jet fighter was climbing at operative altitude after a perfect take off when the Meteor punched with tremendous violence right inside the fuselage and exploded with horrible violence, shredding the plane with the hail of deadly, high-speed armour piercing slivers of tungsten. There was not even time for the pilot on board to eject...

And the second fighter was destroyed almost in the very same instant where it was loitering in wide circles over the base, waiting for its comrades to climb up and join him in formation, and the two left were disintegrated in two balls of fire that smashed heavily down into the runway they had just took off from, skidding for nearly three hundred meters on the concrete before they sunk deep into the ground at the end of a runway until stopping.

"Four gone." Maverick emotionlessly confirmed, and Talon nodded slightly out of instinct... But the Typhoon's pilots had not even the time to cheer for their multiple victory, because their attack seemed to have acted like a 'start' signal for the enemy air defence units in the whole region, several radars turning on all around them and illuminating them, making their Radar Warning alarms scream in the cockpits. And a fraction of second later, the Missile Warning added its own much more threatening voice as tens of missiles were fired by the launching batteries hidden in the forests below.

The four Alarm missiles that had been loitering patiently in ambush, anyway, balanced that out a bit as they immediately locked the nearer radar plants and dropped their parachutes to dive down at them, destroying four antennas in just four seconds, with explosions that Talon could see even from inside the cockpit of its fighter.

Richard dived brutally as the Missile Warning shrieked its alarm into the cockpit, the Typhoon's self defence electronic war suite automatically firing several cartridges of Chaff & Flare decoys to trick the incoming SAMs, and Talon turned slightly to the side to look outside at the other fighters making their own escape manoeuvres as several streaks of light and smoke whizzed between them, roaring past them like comets going their travel on the contrary, climbing towards the sky instead of falling... But the missiles all missed, either lured by the effective decoys or simply not managing to follow the agile Typhoons in their tight manoeuvres.

In the meanwhile, the headphones of Talon filled up with shouts of "Alamo!" as the Alarm missiles were launched one after the other, Maverick and the other WSOs like him making sure to target and destroy every enemy sensor detected...

And then Talon winced and made a grimace as the Missile Warning went mad, and his eyes caught sight of a whole barrage of Air-Air missiles seeming to come from nowhere roared towards them, forcing the Typhoons to break their formation and escaping on different routes, even the gregaries having to abandon their leaders, that usually followed everywhere, constantly protecting their backs...

And Richard snarled as he caught sight of a comrade being hit by not one but two missiles, the Typhoon exploding in midair... And he felt no relief at all, but only searing pain in his chest as he saw both parachutes opening but descending towards the deadly forest of traps and mines and barbed wire on the plan beneath, where death was certain destiny...

He ignored the chaotic chorus of courses of the other engaged pilots on the radio, and he looked furiously and nervously out of the cockpit, from side to side, searching desperately to spot the enemy as he growled in tension and frustration, which only grew worse as he lashed a glance down to the radar screen to find nothing...

"What the fuck, Maverick...?" He snarled in helpless rage...

"I dunno. No radar signals at all... We can't see them!" Maverick shouted back, working on his console to try and scan attentively the sky around them with the PIRATE thermal imagery sensor that was mounted in a small transparent sphere on the muzzle of the fighter... and then his eyes caught a strange track that appeared on the radar screen only to vanish almost immediately. Stealth fighters. We really did not need this...

"Radar contact, fleeting, 0.8 seconds, 3-hours position!" He shouted, turning immediately the PIRATE in that direction as Talon veered and cursed under his breath. The thermal sensor turned and gazed in the wanted direction... and immediately the expert eyes of Maverick picked up the signs of fuselages heated by attrition with the air and the heat of jet engines. Surprisingly little signature, anyhow... they are almost invisible. Cooled down and well shielded, that's evident...

"Three, no four, I repeat four Bandits...! The fuckers are stealthy as Hell... even the thermal signature is very low... and they are flying at nearly mach 3!"

Curses and maledictions flied on the radio at that information, and Talon himself snarled as he turned the Typhoon in the direction of the enemy... Mach 3! That's bad...

"Red section, keep up the SEAD mission, and get on the way home as soon as possible. Blue, keep the enemy fighters on a leash!" He briskly commanded on the radio as he tried to aim its three Meteors left... but there was no way to lock the unknown enemy fighters with a radar track strong enough for an engage. Their super-missile, the Meteor, the never-missing silver bullet that could wreck a fighter nearly 180 kilometres away was useless against such stealthy rivals... Fucking gods...!

And Talon's eyes widened and he panted a bit as he snarled a loud curse, pushing the stick forwards violently to dive suddenly downwards as one of the four enemy planes roared at suicidal speed in a route that would have brought to a collision.

"Son of a bitch...!"Talon snarled as he pushed the stick forwards, guiding the Typhoon in a violent dive, avoiding the collision for bare metres, the might of the enemy's engines shaking the plane like a leaf as the enemy fighter roared just above their cockpit... And Talon looked upwards across the cockpit to stare in awe at the small, agile and tremendously fast fighter that flied just above him. It was painted of black, and had apparently no cockpit... the muzzle of the plane was small and pointy, aerodynamic to the extreme, and the fuselage was shaped almost like a bullet, suggesting pure speed even when motionless on a runway, he could swear that. The fuselage was smooth and painted of night black, but what was more impressive were the wings... It was, amazingly, a biplane, with two pair of wings overlapped and connected at the extremities by solid winglets. These acted as connection for the engines, besides... The strange plane had two engines, caged inside aerodynamics pod capable to move in a full 360° range on the vertical axes, while e system of vectorial thrust similar to the Typhoon's aided the black plane in the turns on the horizontal axe. All together, the mysterious plane had to have an agility absolutely unmatched... And Talon's muzzle crested in a snarling grin of both rage and excitement, feeling adrenaline run in his veins as he felt clearly the thrill of the battle as he turned on the afterburner and pushed the Typhoon up to follow the tail of the fast enemy, trying to keep his eye locked on the target, the aiming sight on the visor of his helmet fatiguing to acquire such fast and stealthy target.

Richard growled as he followed the enemy plane, which was almost a full mach faster, despite the Typhoon going at the maximum of its power... And Talon snarled as he saw two small doors opening in the belly of the rival plane, a missile being ejected out of the weapon bay inside the fuselage and starting forwards with a flash and a roar, chasing after another Typhoon as the doors immediately closed.

"Come on! Track him!" Talon cursed as the sensors of the Typhoon struggled to acquire the solution of fire and he was way too far to use the cannon... And finally, the circle painted on his visor around the enemy fighter turned red, and he immediately fired a CAAM missile, shouting in the radio the relative code: "Fox one!"

The CAAM accelerated in an instant to mach 3.5, then even faster, covering the distance rapidly as it locked into the heat coming out of the twin engines... But when the impact was imminent, the jet engines of the black biplane turned on their connection to push with their full power towards the ground, the fighter jumping vertically up in the air in no time, the missile missing as it surpassed its target and then tried valiantly to turn backwards to continue its chase, but in vain.

Talon could not avoid surpassing the now hovering, motionless fighter as well, ending up in the perfect position to be hit as the enemy was suddenly being his tail, the prey become predator... and Richard closed his eyes with a snarl as he turned the stick violently to the side, forcing the Typhoon to turn upside down as it turned to the right and dived at the same time, leaving him wheezing, his eyesight dazed for a moment by the effects of the G force.

"Engage Blue Section, engage! We have to keep these bastards away from the cargo planes and the Reds!" He commanded into the radio, receiving a few alrights. They weren't as many as they should have been, but he was so busy and stressed into the fight that he didn't even manage to count the answers and determine how many comrades he had lost...

"He's behind us!" Maverick shouted, turning to look backwards to see the enemy fighter easily following, calmly gaining the best possible firing position... It was faster, it was agiler. For the first time ever, the Typhoon was the helpless prey.

Talon snarled, pushing forwards on the stick with all his strength and diving violently once more, getting the Typhoon stabilized only when he was literally brushing the top of the Riaku's Fangs that covered the whole plan below, seeing the mortal stringsbag of razor wire, mines and beams of steel whizzing out of the cockpit at tremendous speed. "Follow me down here, you bastard. We'll see who flies best!" Talon growled, before the Missile Warning screamed into the cockpit once more, and Richard waited for the very last moment, feeling his own pants and his sweat streaking down his face into the helmet as he waited and waited... And then he pulled the stick towards him and slammed the throttle forwards as far as it would go, the plane roaring as it climbed violently, almost vertically upwards, the missile missing and smashing in the ground below, exploding in the forest of trees of steel. Talon immediately pushed downwards again, anyhow, trying to break the contact with the enemy as the Radar Warning kept shrieking, reminding him that he was locked by the enemy radar inexorably...

"Veer, and slow down almost to stall point! He'll surpass us!" Maverick suggested, turning backwards to stare at the black biplane as it shortened the distances even more... "Now!"

Talon accomplished, snarling as he stomped on the pedal that commanded the rudder and the one of the vectorial propulsion as he pushed the stick violently to the left and pulled back the throttle almost to minimum, making the engine howl a dying whistle as the power output dropped so suddenly, the Typhoon making an extreme turn that changed into a full, tight U conversion...

And Talon pushed the throttle back forwards immediately as he turned backwards to stare in horror at the black biplane roaring past them only to once more almost stopping itself in the air, turning completely on itself to continue the chase, the weapon bay in the fuselage opening once more...

The missile missed, but only because Talon made a crazy, full rotation on itself to the right, and the missile was incapable to turn so violently and smashed into the trees just below...

And now Talon had once more locked the enemy biplane on his Helmet Mounted Visor's aiming sight, and the last CAAM missile he had got roared as it took off from its rail, accelerating to over mach 3 before it steeply climbed into the air for an half-loop turning backwards to give chase to the deadly-agile biplane.

Talon grinned as he saw the missile by now so close to impacting on the rival... But then he gaped with a curse as it amazingly slid straight to the side, like it was moving on tracks, the CAAM whizzing past and slamming into the forest with a tremendous explosion.

Talon pushed the throttle forwards to Emergency power, the two sonic bangs shaking the Typhoon violently as a dust of steam formed outside as they overcome mach 1 and then 2 in just a couple of seconds of burning acceleration... But he gritted his teeth and started moving his stick from side to side, the Typhoon dancing to try and stay out of the aiming sight as the much faster biplane chased easily after them, coming closer and closer, firing now with four large-calibre miniguns in the lower wing, the multi-barrelled guns drawing a mortal barrage of yellow streaks of light all around the cockpit as tracer bullets whizzed past them...

And then, the inevitable happened, Talon almost slamming with his face into the HUD as the plane was shaken by several hard, powerful impacts that seemed to echo inside the very structure of the Typhoon... And Maverick screamed in agony from behind, falling forwards to rest his helmet against the touch screen of his console.

"Maverick!" Talon shouted, cold sweat running down his face at the agonizing groan coming from behind... And the tiger closed his eyes with a snarl that was of both fury and relief when he heard the weak voice of his WSO stammering that he had been hit at the leg.

"I'll get you home in a moment, Maverick!" Talon ensured, but he sweated even more now, the bullets still chasing after them in bursts... And he turned on 'Armed' the three Meteors he had left before making a desperate turn, bringing the throttle all the way back, almost shutting the engines as the agile delta fighter made for the second time an incredible U turn on the spot...

And Talon fired the three Meteors blindly, without managing to track the target, firing with the Mauser gun as well as he snarled in fury... And then stared stupidly as the biplane climbed upwards to try and slide out of the way of the three missiles...

But the Meteor were even faster than it was... and even if they hadn't locked their target, launched from so close, one of the missiles roared past the biplane so close that the Proximity fuze went off, detonating the warhead and sending the deadly slivers pummelling into the fuselage of the black biplane.

The fighter was badly hit, flames exploding out of the right engine, and the aircraft tilted to the left side, out of control for a moment because of the shockwave... and they were flying so low on the ground that its wing struck one of the mined beams of the Riaku's Fangs below, setting the mine off. The explosion was tremendous; shaking even the Typhoon as Talon quickly pushed the throttles back to maximum power as he felt the plane stalling for the absence of propulsion... And the tiger stared as the enemy aircraft on flame and wrecked was catapulted in an awkward loop, passing just above the cockpit, so close that Talon shivered, wheezing in his mask as he quickly accelerated to fly away, climbing back up into the sky... and turning backwards to stare as the wreck of the biplane slammed once more down into the forest of beams and barbed wire, bouncing a few times before it finally exploded into slivers, leaving a huge arson raging in the middle of that sad wasteland of traps and death...

And Talon took a breath of relief, slumping a bit in the seat and closing his eyes for an instant as he guided the Typhoon on the route for the base, flying as fast as possible.

"Here Talon. Blue section, can you hear me...?"

"Here Cloud, Red leader, on home course." Was the answer that come after a second of silence. "Talon, there's not Blue section anymore... the biplanes took them all down before they vanished. We feared you had been taken down as well. You... you are alone, commander."

"We all are..." Talon murmured with despair to himself... Then he closed his eyes for a moment and tiredly, laboriously regained some of his composure. "Maverick is wounded. Have everyone at the ready at the base... I'm coming back as fast as possible."

The radio was crowded for a moment by disbelieving and terrified curses and sadness at the news that Maverick was in danger... But they immediately got the base contacted and the Emergency Teams ready on the runway.

"Resist, Maverick, I'll get you back home." Talon promised once more... And only in that moment he felt pain at his shoulder as well, seeing a splatter of blood on the left screen. The adrenaline running inside him had been shielding him from the pain of his own wound to that very moment, but now he winced a bit, slumping and feeling weak and tired like never before... Fortunately, for what he could tell, the wound wasn't too deep or bad, and he still managed to pilot...

"I'll get both back at home, I promise..."

Killer climbed easily up the side of the huge A400 Loadmaster cargo plane, until he was at level with the side window of the cockpit, which the co-pilot immediately opened with a stupid gaze of sheer surprise.

"Take this. General Alexander will be on the runway waiting for this parcel here..." Killer quickly spoke, pushing a sealed metallic box in the hands of the aircrew, who looked back stupidly in surprise at the sight of the huge king hanging outside the window, headless of the fact that the plane was rolling to get to take-off position in the just prepared runway, not minding at all the terrible whoosh of air that came from the two enormous propelled of the turbine-engines on the wing. "For gods' sake, don't you go crashing somewhere. Give this to my brother Alexander." Killer underlined again. "There's my seal on the box, so keep your curiosity down or they'll know that you opened it. It wouldn't be nice for you. Get this delivered, boys, and good luck."

The other stared a bit at the box as he silently nodded, looking at the sealing wax printed with the imperial coat of arms on appliquéd on the opening, not knowing that the box contained the Sense Augmentation System helmet and the vertebrae still fitted with the Spirit computer system that had both once been of Aaron, the feared commander known as White Wings.

"Of course, Majesty. Thanks, majesty..." The co-pilot babbled, cradling the box in his lap... But Killer was already gone, jumped down the plane and crouched to stare at the majestic aircraft turning on the taxiway to enter the runway, pushing immediately the engines at full power for its take-off run... And he smiled slightly, pride undoubtedly present in him as his eyes traced on the now busy "airport" that barely two hours before had been a thick, chaotic forest of traps and mines and razor wire.

Now there was a runway long enough that the huge Loadmaster cargo planes could land and take off effortlessly, and the gigantic Atlas winged-body cargo planes could fly low, ten or so meters above the ground, and release the vehicles they carried with the low-altitude extraction method: basically, it meant that the cargo plane flied very low and slow, and opened the rear Roll-On Roll-Off loading ramp in the tail while flying along the runway, and the vehicles in the cargo bay inside, secured over thick plates of steel connected with enormous parachutes, would be pulled out by the force of the wind inflating the parachutes.

The huge platforms then would fall onto the ground and rapidly skid to a stop, and the crew would come out of the vehicle to disconnect it from the platform to enter in battle. It wasn't the easier of manoeuvres, but it had some advantages, since the plane don't needed to land and thus could deploy forces in areas were landing was impossible. That was even truer for the Atlas, a truly gigantic aircraft with intercontinental range of action and the capability to transport a good ten MTRV 500 vehicles in its cargo bay. It was so enormous it could have easily contained in its mass several jumbo planes... and it obviously needed a lot of space to actually land and take off.

With the Low Altitude Extraction, instead, they had already managed to bring to the LZ quite a few heavy vehicles... At least thirty IFVs and Scout vehicles MTRV 500 had been delivered by three Atlas planes in the last half an hour, and now the enormous, winged-body stealth planes were heading back for the base in Kesteven to load other tanks up. With their intercontinental range, they could do that short travel several times before they needed to be refuelled, and for all the rest of the night they would have continued to bring in reinforces and equipment.

In the meanwhile, the huge, but much slammer A400 turboprop cargo planes continued to come from Kesteven, landing to deploy the soldiers and the vehicles they carried. Each plane carried only a couple of MTRV 500... But the A400 had nonetheless been the first to come when they had managed to prepare a runway by eradicating the Riaku's Fangs from a large strip of terrain long almost three full kilometres.

The very first A400s had landed and deployed soldiers of the Royal Engineers and Terrier combat tractors to help with the preparation of the LZ: the Terrier was a MTRV 500 vehicle fitted with an engineering module and digging equipment. Commanded by two crew members seating under secure armour protection, the vehicle had the same mobility of the tanks themselves, and it was thought to support troops by removing obstacles and opening routes, even under enemy fire or across mine fields, providing useful assistance on operations of any kind, including peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

The sappers loved the Terrier: the heavy, tracked armoured earthmoving engineer vehicles was a formidable cross between an armoured vehicle, an excavator and a loader, with the two men of the crew seating comfortably in a in a state-of-the-art crew compartment, air conditioned, NBC-sealed and well protected from enemy fire and mine blasts. They had a full, day-night vision of the surrounding 360° degrees all around the vehicle thanks to the images coming from the suite of cameras deployed on the entire Terrier and they had remotely operated smoke-canisters and a remote weapon station to defend themselves while staying under armour. Besides, if things were going to be seriously too dangerous, the two men of the crew could remotely control the Terrier in its work from up to a mile away with onboard camera systems providing the operator with a close-up view. The vehicle's environmental control system allowed the crew to work comfortably in all conditions from desert to arctic, and thermal imaging cameras permitted both day and night operation. It was a vehicle equipped to fulfill a variety of military tasks. The bucket at the front and the side-mounted excavator arm enabled the two-man crew to carry out a variety of digging and carrying operations, predominantly to clear routes for other vehicles and deny routes to opposition forces.

Its quick-hitch mechanism meant the bucket could in any moment be rapidly dropped and replaced with other front-mounted equipment including a device for clearing mines from road surfaces by both pressures of huge steam rollers and by the action of devices capable to replicate the magnetic signature of a tank to trick magnetic-fuzed mines. Similarly, the vehicle was designed so that different tools could be fitted to the side excavator arm enabling it to be used to dig holes, lift objects, drill into the ground or shatter concrete. And the terrier was also capable to tow the fully-loaded engineer trailer and deploy fascines (pipe bundles for filling ditches) and trackway (rolled metallic sheets to create temporary road surfaces) to assist other vehicles in moving around the battlefield over muddy or impracticable terrains.

And so, the first Terriers delivered had started quickly wrecking and roughly pushing aside all the Riaku's Fangs, immensely accelerating the work of preparation of the LZ. They had made the runway solid and safe by deploying several kilometers of metallic trackway, so that even improvise, monsoonal rains wouldn't have managed to make the runway impracticable. They had dug trenches all around the perimeter and used the earth to create an embankment of protection around most of the new base, and then they had started digging deep holes to use as protected depots of ammo and fuel.

Meanwhile, other A400 had started bringing in the area ground personnel of the air force and portable tanks of fuel, so that the simple runway of flat terrain had been changed in an airport capable to support and refuel planes and choppers... And the traffic had been continuous from then onwards, as vehicles and soldiers were quickly brought in theater from the air bases in Kesteven.

And luckily, so far they hadn't been attacked... and their perimeter of defence was getting stronger and stronger: the cargo planes had brought in a couple of SMARTFIREs, palletized, autonomous Vertical Launch System for missiles, each with 16 cells, filled with ground-launched CAAM and Meteor missiles... And an Atlas had also deployed a Deployable Radar Post, essentially a complete radar station for air space control and missile guidance that was fitted in an armoured container complete with its independent air conditioning system and energy sources. Similarly, a Deployable Thermal Sensor and a Deployable Command Post had been brought in, and along the perimeter had been placed also a couple of Skyshield gun module. It was a defensive system particularly appreciated because soldiers are were used to see it guarding the perimeter of the bases and firing against incoming artillery fire, rockets, mortars or other threats to destroy them before they could reach the target. The gun module was fully unmanned and automatic, and it had the footprint of one standard pallet: it was made up by four foldable support legs that made up a solid base for the turret, which had an unlimited traverse and offered the single-barrel gun an elevation capability of almost 90°. In the firing position, the platform rested on the ground on its four supports; manually operated rough levelling was sufficient for accurate operation since the gun corrected automatically whatever inclination in order to obtain the best possible firing performances, unfazed by its base. Each gun had a detachable box with 550 rounds ready to fire, enough for approximately fifty engagement bursts without reloading, and the box was easily replaced when empty. The Skyshield was optimized to contrast low-flying aircraft and helicopters and used bursting rounds that exploded in proximity of the target, destroying it. The Skyshield Gun is a cannon that fires a unique AHEAD (Advanced Hit Efficiency And Destruction) shell that destroys incoming targets by detonating in proximity of them and watering them with deadly, armour-piercing pellets. It ejects 152 sub-projectiles that are released just ahead of the incoming target up to distances that go from 100 meters to almost 10 kilometres.The projectiles create a cloud of deadly pellets ahead of the incoming threat and penetrate it, inflicting enough damage to prevent it from striking its target. The gun is so capable to destroy or disable incoming missiles, rockets and even artillery and mortar shells, and it's therefore classified as Counter Rocket/Artillery/Mortar C-RAM system. Featuring a high rate of fire of up to 1,000 rounds per minute and electrical ignition firing, the gun knows no jamming and it is relatively light.

The presence of such defences made everyone much more tranquil.

Fearing future, violent bombardments of enemy artillery, the engineers had soon started building up shelters capable to give adequate protection to infantry and equipments, and several structures made up by Ready Bastions were ready or almost finished along the entire runway already. The Ready Bastions were the latest evolution of sandbags. A Ready Bastion, once deployed, is a huge bag of resistant, flexible Galfan Coated Welded Mesh filled up with sand, earth, rocks and whatever material is available, sustained by a light but thick metallic wire cage, that adds great resistance and stability. A single Ready Bastion is three feet thick and ten feet tall, and the bag can be separated into compartments with several liners, so that a zone damaged and pierced does not cause empting of the whole unit. The bag is highly resistant, fully waterproof and highly durable, and the large volume is perfect to accommodate large amounts of material to make the bastion heavy and solid. The corners of the external metallic grid are spiral hinged, allowing a solid and easy connection to other modules when deployed to build fortifications, and it also allows flat-packing for ease of transportation.

In theatre, two soldiers can easily unpack the Ready Bastions, pull them out and set up to the bags, joint the different modules as needed and then use a bulldozer to quickly fill up the bag and compact the material to obtain maximum resistance. Additional layers can be added as required, both to enlarge, raise or lengthen the area protected...

And the sappers had used a Terrier and the help of a few rebels to rapidly set up thick walls of piled up Bastions to create safe havens protected by the slivers and effects of a possible bombardment.

Besides, along the perimeter of what was rapidly becoming a huge Forward Operating Base in enemy territory, the sappers were building up a few towers for surveillance and protection: basically, they had piled one on the other a few containers that had been emptied of the equipment they had contained, and on top they had placed a Sanger module that basically was a standard container that has been thickly armoured to become a prefabricated, ready-to-deploy fortified position. Windows in bullet-proof ballistic ceramic had been open in the walls, and the container had been fitted with air conditioning system and NBC protection. On top of the Sanger was placed a Remote Weapon Station CROWS, equipped with sensors for aiming and surveillance at day and night and with a Javelin missile launcher system coupled with a Field Fire Support weapon, a hybrid machine gun capable to fire both normal 20 mm rounds and airbursting HE grenades over two kilometres away.

The CROWS was controlled from inside the container by the sentinel on turn, that could aim on its LCD screen and use the weapon thanks to a joystick.

By now, this place is secure enough... It'll take a huge effort from the enemy to try and take this back...

Killer walked quickly back along the runway, looking idly around himself as he was saluted by everyone he stepped by... and he stared with a slight, satisfied smile to a Terrier vehicle digging a deep trench on the perimeter, several Predators and rebels bringing in machine guns and crates of ammo as they took possession of each meter of trench as soon as it was ready...

And then he looked curiously to the young, calm and professional boy of the air force that was busy making coded signals to the incoming cargo planes with the two Infra-Red torches he had in his hands.

Such signals, invisible to the bare eye, were almost the only guidance for the pilots of the huge cargo planes that approached the runway in the dark night, searching for those precious indications with their night-vision goggles to know what route they had to follow, what angle they had to assume in the descent...

And the boy guiding them was so young that it was indeed quite an amazing sight... after all, with simple, almost bored gestures, he guided the vital maneuvers of planes costing several tens of millions. His expertise and calm was impressive.

The huge liger walked silently between ranks of Predators and rebels that were busy checking their weapons and equipment, preparing for the march incoming, and he turned around a Joint Light High Mobility Vehicle JLHMV jeep parked nearby.

It was a huge 4x4 capable of a mobility incredible, on nearly any terrain, up slopes of over 60°... And since, just like the MTRV 500, it was electrically propelled, it was silent as a shadow compared to normal vehicles. Amazingly for its size and weight, it could easily make almost 55 mph on country and over 90 mph on the road, and it was armoured enough to resist to small arms fire, armor-piercing rounds and slivers of artillery shells falling in a range of ten meters, but especially it was so damn secure against mines and explosive traps: the underside of the car was protected by plates of armour V-shaped to deviate outwards the force of the blast of mines, and if the explosion was too strong, the safe-cell containing the crew would detach itself from the chassis and simply letting itself being thrown away by the explosion. The shock for the men inside so was minimum.

The safe cell had a thick structure with several strong rollbars to ensure its resistance even if it turned upside down and bounced into the ground several times... and the crew sat on crash-worthy seats armoured and disposed in unconventional way: the driver was in central position, looking towards the front. The radio operator was back, looking at the back of the vehicle, while the passengers sat back to back, looking out to the sides, all across bullet-proof, transparent, windows of ballistic ceramic mounted so that from the inside they could be pushed open in a second for a fast escape. Top hatches on the roof allowed the passengers to stay out and fire with their weapons... and every JLHMV was fitted with a remote weapon station, stabilized and fired from inside by the radio operator, that aimed on a LCD screen and moved the weapon with a joystick control, even with the jeep moving at full speed.

On top, the vehicle was even fitted with Electro-Magnetic active Armour pods: these consisted of a Thermal sensor, an array and two or more conductive plates separated by some space or by an insulating material, creating a high-power capacitor. In operation, a high-voltage power source (the engine of the vehicle or an independent, dedicated fuel cell) charged the armor. When an incoming threat was spotted by the Vehicle-Mounted sensors, the main Self Defense computer calculated what kind of threat was incoming: if it was identified as small arms fire that the passive armor would stop by itself, the threat was ignored. But if it's identified as a missile, an RPG or another serious menace, the computer determines which block of armour is in the best position to respond and activates it. The electric circuit into the armor block is closed to discharge the capacitor, dumping a great deal of energy into the incoming penetrator, which may vaporize or even turn it into "cool" plasma, significantly diffusing the attack and making it incapable to pierce into the vehicle. For being a simple jeep, the JLHMV was a bone extremely hard to gnaw.

Alexis was seating idly on the bonnet of the jeep, talking calmly with Murray as he nodded a bit, Laura and Siegfried standing closely and the five Praetorians at the ready in a semicircle just behind, all of them smiling happily as he approached.

Killer grinned a bit at the sight of his brother: he had jumped out of the A400 first, leading out a full company of 100 Predators from the first division, swords held at the ready in his hands, expecting to find the LZ under the fire of the enemy... And then he had paused, cursed at the silence and tranquility of the area and bad temperedly sheathed his twin swords on his back.

"Fuck, I thought I was heading for some action, not for an after-dinner trip outside." He had snorted...

And now here he was, talking to someone probably back at the headquarters, fixing the screen on his visor and speaking softly into the boom-microphone, back to full professionalism. He was a perfect commander for the Predators: a formidable warrior, strong and audacious in first place... But he was also capable to use his mind whenever it was the time for it... And Killer envied that mind. After all, while the huge liger had studied computer science, but with fatigue and staying despite all a pretty basic expert, Siegfried seemed to literally speak to any electronic system... and with a keyboard in his hands, he could make literal wonders. His mind was sharp as little others were...

"Ready to move at any time, majesty." Murray stated with a quiet, professional nod, and Killer nodded in agreement.

"Well, then... Me and Alexis will take a company and take the southern bridge. Murray, Laura, you take the vehicles and get on the 43° Road. Secure it, and reach us at the bridge as soon as possible." Killer said calmly, looking to both with the greatest possible confidence: not only because he trusted Alexis more than he trusted himself, and if she had such idea of her two friends they had to be more than reliable... But because they had already largely gained his friendship and confidence in the not even three complete days spent together.

"See you there, then, awesome." Laura playfully stated in answer, winking to him as she climbed into the jeep, Murray seating in another as soldiers, both rebels and Predators, started to fill up all the seats.

Alexis stood up and rolled her shoulders a bit, grinning in that dark cheerfulness she always had before a battle... And Siegfried walked calmly forwards to reach the driving seat of the JLHMV, but stopped near his brother to murmur in his ear.

"Talon got back to base and managed to land perfectly despite his wound... Nothing really serious, but he lost a lot of blood. He truly is your son... the doctors still wonder how the hell he managed to stay lucid and not faint."

Killer nodded, trying to betray no emotions as soldiers all around stepped by... Talon was a hero for everyone, and so was Maverick. Less people knew about the events of the night, and less the morale of the troops was going to feel the bad effects. But he wasn't sure to manage to truly hide the immense relief he felt... Alexis, instead, managed to stay cold as ice, even if he saw her eyes gleam with happiness for a moment as she read in his thoughts.

"Maverick is not as fine... His wound his much nastier. He almost lost a leg, and he was in debt of blood when they landed. But he'll be fine again. Now they are both sleeping in the infirmary. But the other boys of the Blue section... there's no survivors. The enemy biplanes took down everyone... It's technology terribly advanced, Killer. Talon says they are VTOL and extremely maneuverable, and capable of mach 3... the Meteor won't lock it, since it's stealth... And we know for sure that the enemy still has at least three of them, the Hell knows where. They could take off even from a tennis field, so find them will be nuts. " Siegfried continued, idly adjusting the visor on his face as he murmured, hiding their secret conversation. Fortunately, the five Praetorians had formed almost a large circle around Killer, keeping everyone at distance with just their presence and coldness... and not even the friends, the Predators, dared to make any of those dangerous girls and their tremendous scythes angry without a good reason.

"It is pretty clear that the Typhoon is not capable to stand up against those." Killer muttered, nodding almost imperceptibly. "What can we do...?"

"I ordered to take some countermeasures... We are already powering up the thermal sensor of the Typhoon by cooling the seeker to make it even more sensible to external thermal signatures. And we are trying to design an Infra-Red seeker for the Meteor, instead of the radar one. We might manage to hit the stealth planes by following their heat." Siegfried quickly explained. "Other ideas...?"

Killer stayed silent for a second, and then closed his eyes in an almost imperceptible nod. "Make the radar of the Typhoon more powerful. Add a new alimentation module... and say to Roger to design a spherical receiving radar antenna that can be fitted on top of the Typhoon's rudder."

Siegfried blinked, and then looked up at Killer with a grin. "You are smarter than what you look like."

"Better seem it less and be it more than the opposite." The huge male readily countered.

It made sense... stealth technology basically means that the form of the plane is designed to reflect the electromagnetic waves of a radar signal away from the antenna that sent them, dispersing them in the sky around. That was extremely effective against normal radars, which used the same antenna to transmit and to receive the echo... But adding another antenna, capable to receive an echo from the whole 360° around, spaced away from the transmitting one, augmented exponentially the chances to receive a signal strong enough to track the target's position. "And have the work on the X57 prototype augmented... we need to start producing the new fighter as soon as possible. Have Talon collaborating with our designers as soon as possible."

Siegfried nodded, and finally stepped to the open door of the jeep, easily climbing into the driving seat and pushing the start button.

"Ok, bro. See you at the bridge." The tiger smiled, and then turned backwards to the soldiers in the car. "Strip yourself in, pussies. You are flying Huxley airline." He winked, and the doors closed, someone inside yelping as the jeep started forwards violently, accelerating brutally as it took the lead of the column of vehicles and moved out of the LZ Vanguard.

Killer and Alexis looked for a few moments the procession of JLHMVs and MTRV 500 tracked tanks covered of soldiers seated everywhere was possible moved out... And then they turned to look over their own column of Predators and rebels, waiting with discipline for orders, standing in line with the Praetorians grinning in the first positions...

And the two ligers traded a slight grin as they signaled to start marching towards Sangin.