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Operation New Dawn The room got warm with the noon sun shining through the window. My absent looks scanned the desert spread out in front of my quarters. For miles all I could see was the hot sand and the occasional wreck. Brave men had tried to attack the base in a valiant endeavor to take down our command centre. But our fortress was heavily defended by turrets and Sentinels. Looking down to the base perimeters I saw a small group of shadows patrolling the thick concrete walls. Walls that were scorched by laser fire and missile impacts. Every now and then you could see a clean part of the wall, marking the swift rebuilding that was done after each attack. The rival corps were getting bolder each day, sending out more droids in each attack. Word out on the web was that several corps were allying against us and were planning a major assault this very minute. The news had reached me, but I didn’t spend much thought at it. The VTS headquarters had survived major assaults in the past, it would take a lot of effort to break its defenses, effort that most corps could not bring up. My mind wandered off again. Days had gone by since my promotion from Foederati to VTS. Last week I was still fighting to serve corp, tempting death in every mission… Now I was a captain and in command of my own battalion of Foederati…. Funny how one heroic act can change your destiny. The high pitched sound of an incoming transmission refocused my thoughts. I stepped up to the console and entered my password. I made a mental note to come down on the network engineer who messed up the speed of the internal network. Moments later I gained access to my mailbox and opened the new transmission. To: Caruma From: VTS mission Briefer Subject: Mission Briefing time Captain Caruma, You are expected at the mission briefing at 1800 Report to briefing room C at sublevel 3. End msg The message was short and clear, I was getting my first mission… excitement filled my heart, as well as doubt, was I ready to command troops in battle? The briefing was still 6 hours away, and I decided to get some rest. The moment I put my head into the hard, yet comfortable pillow a memory of my time in Foederati flashed before my eyes: large sleeping halls with dozens of uncomfortable bunks. Luckily we did not have the luxury of sleeping much, so we were happy to have a roof over over our head and a blanket to cover ourselves. So there were little complaints there. Blinking, I felt a cold tear run down my cheek, a tear of happiness. A restless sleep soon followed. BEEEEEEEEP The sound of the alarm woke me from a weird dream, I was walking through the desert on my own, no droid, no suit, just my torn up uniform. Bruises covered my body as if I had been in battle and came out on the losing side… I dismissed the dream from my thoughts and got out of bed. One hour till briefing, I stepped into the shower and turned the setting to cold. Best way to clear the sleep from my head I found. The briefing room was deserted when I arrived, I checked my watch to assure myself I had the right time, 19.58. Guessing that punctuality was not one of the strong sides of my briefer I took a seat and started doodling on my clipboard. The briefing room door swung open at 20.00 sharp, it seems my briefer did not like being early. Scorpion entered the room and saluted me. I stood up and returned the salute. ‘Be seated’ he spoke in a calm, controlled voice. I wondered if I was the only one to attend this briefing, but not for long as Scorpion continued almost the second I sat down. ‘As you probably know from rumors throughout the web, various corps are uniting in an attempt to bring us down.’ He looked up at me to see the reaction on my face, which was indifferent yet a little surprised. ‘Although we are not concerned with these futile corps having a go at us we do want to react to the growing resistance against our corporations position in this quadrant. We need to show them that it is futile and unwise to attack us!’ His voice trembled with pride as he slammed his fist on the briefing pedestal. ‘Your mission is to find out who is organizing this resistance, locate them, and crush them once and for all. That should be enough to reestablish order in the quadrant, OUR order.’ I noticed the evil grin on scorpions face when he spoke those last words, and I felt the urge to do the same. ‘Any questions?’ Although I did already had an idea on how I would approach this mission, I posed the question pro forma :’How am I supposed to take out the rebels, sir ?’ ‘You are free to do it anyway you please, as long as you get the job done. The only thing you need to remember is that we want it to be a statement towards any future rebels out there.’ The words were like music to my ears, I was given carte blanche for my operation. The rebels would wish they never crossed VTS once I was through with them. ‘If that is all, I wish you good luck with your mission, keep me posted captain. Dismissed!’ Scorpion turned around and left the room, leaving me alone once again. I decided I needed to do some planning for my first mission so I got up and headed back to my quarters. The terminal windows green color was hurting my eyes. It was 0500 and my head was thumping with the signs of an upcoming headache. I had been on monsternet ever since I came back from the briefing room, gathering information about the rebel factions uniting against VTS. It looked like my endeavors were finally paying off, I had made contact with someone from the rebel alliance and established a basic form of trust with him. The conversation had started with me replying to an open topic on the forum about uniting to bring down the oppressors. The thread seemed to be a general complaint about no corp in particular, but if you read between the lines, you could see it was a request to join the rebels in their efforts in bringing down VTS. Not long after my reply on the thread, with an anonymous nickname, I got a transmission from a sympathizer. Scans for the origin of the message turned up a wild goose chase as it was bounce via several satellites and fake addresses. This confirmed my suspicion that the sender was indeed linked to the rebel organization. In the hours that passed I had met the rebel in a private chatroom and made it clear that I was willing to join their efforts. Though still reluctant to give up much information about locations of meetings, I did manage to get the name of the leader of the rebels, and a hint as to who was supplying them with weapons and frames. The leader went under the nickname of Darth_Fool and the resources came from a small yet powerful organization whose name was never mentioned. Already I had dispatched some spies to find out the base location of this Darth_Fool, but the search had not brought up anything of value. After spending another two hours fishing for information my contact became more eager to talk, as I led him to believe my droid was well equipped and had lots of kills to his name. We finally agreed that I would join them in their next meeting to discuss the attack on VTS. Exhausted I logged out of monsternet and poured myself the last swig of coffee left in the thermos. I felt good about what I had accomplished, in mere hours I had made contact with the rebels, and only hours from now I would get the coordinates of their next meeting. It would probably also be their last meeting once I had had my way with them. I sent out a last transmission to my squad informing them to prepare their droids for battle, and be ready to move out at my command. With that done I retired to my bedroom and fell into a deep sleep almost instantly. A high pitched noise woke me from my sleep prematurely. I had new messages waiting in my mailbox. Still half asleep I stumbled to the console and logged in. Quickly scanning the messages I found what I was waiting for, a reply from my rebel contact with an update on the upcoming meeting. In a second I was wide awake and alert. Opening the message I discarded some unimportant mumbo jumbo about being pleased to have me on board. Near the bottom of the mail I found what I was really interested in, the date, time and location of their next meet. Today at 2300 at an still undisclosed location. The location would be transmitted to me moments before the meeting. I slammed my fist on the keyboard and left it in shambles. Damn those slick bastards. Setting up an ambush would be very hard now. Still, all was not yet lost. This was just a minor setback to the operation. I got up an took one of my spare keyboards from a box under my workbench, I really should do something to my anger problem, this was getting expensive keyboard-wise. The teleporter emitted a peaceful hum as I stepped out of the transport room in the Foederati base. The time had come to brief the troops of the upcoming mission. Mission data was kept classified up to the last minute, to minimize the risk of exposure. Some people would pay top dollars to know what missions we were about to embark on. As I followed my escort to the briefing room I remembered the time I walked these halls on my way to briefings when I was still Foederati… back then we were never escorted, we just kind of wandered into the room to find a good spot in the back. Right now I was on the other side of the desk and it filled me with a distinct feeling of power and confidence. As I entered the briefing room I observed several familiar faces, some of them were filled with joy, others were green with envy. Nevertheless all foederati saluted me and showed me the respect I had earned through my position. ‘Be seated’ I spoke, feeling my voice tremble, I never thought I’d be nervous for an event like this, but fact was that my legs were shaking behind the pedestal. ‘Tonight we will deal a mortal blow to the rebel alliance who are have been plotting an attack on our base. We will go take out their key players and thus eliminating their driving force.’ ‘Tonight at 2300 I will proceed to a still undisclosed location and engage in a meeting with the rebels. At 2330 I will transmit my coordinates through a secure channel. At that time you will teleport to my location and surround the meeting.’ ‘At my signal you will move in and take out all present droids. We will let a few of them escape to tell spread the word of their defeat.’ ‘Gear up and prepare for combat’ I saluted and left the room. The briefing was short and to the point, no melodrama about the how and why of this mission. Just the simple facts and outlines, all would become clear to those with questions in due time. I found that the less they knew, the less they had to fear and worry about. The only thing I was worried about, was one of those rookies accidentally firing on me. But I decided to have a little faith in the Foederati, after all, I had been in their shoes not too long ago. The buzzer in my pocket sent a chill running up my spine. I had a message waiting… The nights out in the desert were cold as hell. Temperature would drop well below 0 once the sun went down. Luckily the droids had central heating installed in their life support systems. Nazgul was heading towards a nearby teleporter at a steady pace. The engineers had removed all visible signs of the VTS corp from its weapons and hull and sprayed it in a nice grey color for the occasion. Hopefully the rebels would not perform any in depth scans of my systems since the energy signature from my scanner still matched that of VTS. The mail I had received was brief and to the point, as I had expected, a set of coordinates for a teleporter. As I arrived at the teleporter I did a final check of all systems to make sure there was nothing left that could give away my true identity. Once the checks turned up clear, I stepped into the teleporter and dialed in the destination coordinates. My surroundings turned blue and the faint humming of the teleporter put my mind at ease. Somehow going through a teleporter always seemed to have a calming effect on my. The teleportation sequence completed and again all was black, with the exception of the dim blue light emitted by the device. I redialed the new coordinates, since this was only a waypoint I had chosen to take, no need in taking the risk of the rebels tracing my origins. The sequence restarted and soon I emerged at the rendez-vous point. The mission had started. There was no turning back now. ‘Step out of the portal and power down your weapon systems’ a voice over the comms ordered me. I did as I was told and disabled my weapons array. Looking around I became clear of the welcoming committee. 4 mammoths were guarding the teleporter and from what I could hear there were 2 blackwings patrolling the skies. My first impression was amazement, these rebels were well decked out apparently. Their anonymous supplier seemed willing to go to great lengths in order to destroy us. The display warning light blinked to inform me of an active scan going trough my systems. A bead of sweat rolled down from my forehead as the possibility of being found out grew with each second. The light eventually went dead meaning the scans had finished. ‘Ok you are cleared to proceed. Keep your weapons powered down and proceed to these coordinates.’ I fired up the servos and sent Nazgul walking towards the meeting point. When I came out of the mammoths active sensor range I sent out a transmission over a secure channel informing the troops that I had arrived. I also warned them about the droids guarding the portal. They would never make it out of the portal alive, so I advised to scan the area for other portals and take alternative routes. After a short walk I came up to the set coordinates. Expecting to find a welcoming committee I found myself alone. Was I the first to arrive at the meeting? Doubtful… The earth trembled beneath me. Checking my surroundings I noticed the sand around me rising… I was going down. The lift stopped and I found myself in a huge hanger, several stalkers, shadows and walkers were standing there, offline with no life signs detected on board. This was an odd turn of events since I had expected the meeting to be held out in the open. More improvising would be required to take out these rebels. ‘power down you systems and exit your droid’ the comm-voice instructed me. I set the systems to standby and while powering down I sent out the go signal with my new location to the troops. Error sending transmission, too much interference was the response I got from the system. I cursed and slammed my fist on the control panel, leaving a dent and sparks flying all over the dashboard. The underground hanger was shielded against transmissions, I was on my own it seemed. As I got out of nazgul the large blastdoors slid open and a man walked up to me. ‘Come with me please, the others are waiting.’ He said as he turned around and started walking back through the doors. He led me through a series of hallways finally stopping in front of a double door. I stepped through the door that was flanked by two troopers and was invited to take place at a large oval table. The table was marked with an unknown logo as was the rest of the room. ‘Welcome Carter. I am Darth_Fool, leader of the Dark Rebellion. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by our security teams, we trust you understand why we have to conduct such strict checks on all new members.’ He spoke in a calm and controlled voice, showing no emotion what so ever. ‘No problem, I fully understand the risks of this operation.’ I said as I settled into the comfy chair at the table. ‘Now that we are complete, let us start with the order of the day: the downfall of the VTS corporation’ While the attendants were discussing the various tactics to be used in the assault on the VTS headquarters, I pretended to listen carefully, while scanning my surroundings for ways to proceed with my mission. The base was well shielded so a bombardment would be out of the question. The only option I saw was to eliminate the attendants from the inside. But even that seemed impossible since I was unarmed and the two guards at the door were paying close attention to every move at the table. Suddenly a the lights in the room went from white to bright red and a high pitched noise screeched through the speakers. ‘RED ALERT , RED ALERT? FACILITY UNDER ATTACK !!’ The attack had begun, my troops had arrived and were probably battling the sentries on the surface. ‘Control room, REPORT!!’ Darth_Fool was shouting franticly into the intercom, apparently the leader of the rebels was not as cool as he led out to believe. ‘We have incoming attackers from multiple vectors, base sentries have been taken out, what should we do sir?’ ‘Deploy all available droids, this base is too valuable, DEFEND AT ALL COSTS !!’ His face was red with fury as he slammed the intercom back onto the wall. ‘Gentlemen, we have a situation, we are under attack and we need to defend ourselves. It is time to show those attackers that we mean business, lets get to the hangar!’ Everyone got up and ran towards the door to get to the hangar, I hurried along with them as I saw this was the break I had been waiting for all night. As I jumped into the cabin of Nazgul I punched in some commands and the systems came out of standby. The timing could not have been more perfect as most droids were still powering up their systems. I walked backwards onto the elevator platform and waited until I started moving up. The platform was set in motion and I was slowly gaining altitude, the black sky above me was lit with laserfire and missiles searing from all sides. As the gap between the elevator and the surface became smaller, I pressed the launch button on my anti-matter launcher and sent a volley into the hangar. The gap closed as the missiles impacted on the droids and I felt the ground beneath me tremble. Scanning the area beneath me I found no signs of survivors. A grin appeared on my face as I set out into the battlefield. Through the comms I contacted the rest of my squad to learn their locations, it seemed I had emerged at the rear of the enemy resistance which gave me the ideal position to do some heavy damage. Scanners targeted the nearest enemy droid and I powered up my deathrays and sent out a blast of raw energy towards the lone mammoth advancing away from me. The impact went right through the weaker aft shield and hit the reactor core of the droid. A bright flash lit the battlefield as the reactor went critical and exploded, sending debris flying in all directions. Strike one for me. Leds began flashing all over my dashboard as nuclear shells impacted my rear hull. Swiftly I turned nazgul towards the origin of mayhem and faced two stalkers, DIS (droid identification scans) revealed the identities of my opponents, Darth_Fool and Faulcon Delacy stood before me, guns blazing. They must have emerged from another hangar since I was sure no one survived my missile volley in the hangar I came from. I returned fire by sending an antimatter missile towards their position. The impact set their droids spinning and left me with 2 disoriented stalkers to pick on. My palms became sweaty from squeezing the control sticks and my finger cramped around the trigger. My minigun belched fire upon Faulcon and within seconds I had taken out his left laser, leaving his chassis smoldering and smoking. With Faulcon temporarily disabled I focused my wrath on Darth_Fool next, sending two well aimed blasts from my Death Ray towards his lower torso. The blasts impacted on his hyperwave armor and a bright blue bubble was visible as the bolts were absorbed. Before he could get a lock on Nazgul I sent out another missile. The impact was swift and his shield went down instantly. Advancing on his position I scanned his systems… reactor at 10% all systems down … Good, time to finish the job. As I charged my Death Ray I put the barrel up against the chest of his droid. My comms system garbled some message :‘You will never break the rebellion!! We will survive and bring down VTS, no matter what!’ ‘Too bad you won’t be there to witness it then’ I said with an evil grin as squeezed the trigger. A blue bolt of energy leapt out of the barrel piercing the hull of the stalker and emerging at the rear. The reactor was disintegrated along with the rest of the stalkers torso. The head, arms and legs fell to the ground turning the sand into glass from their heat. Comms messages were blurting reports of enemies retreating in all directions, and orders were given to persue and destroy. ‘All units, mission accomplished, leave the survivors to run, they got the message, no one crosses VTS without punishment! Stand down and return to base. The rebellion has been brought down.’ I couldn’t help but smile when I gave the order, it had been close but luck had been on our side…. This time…. The debriefing was short as I was eager to return to my quarters and start on my report. I congratulated the soldiers on a job well done and stepped out of the room saluting them all for the last time and observing the proud looks on their faces, I had earned their respect tonight. Written by Bart