Enter the Death Squad
Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2018 3:52 am
((Alrighty, folks. Here's the deal on the AT members: They are, for all intents and purposes, NPCs under the control of the staff. They are being run by staffers' accounts, rather than through SOTF_Help, to ease readability, since it's not just one persn taking them all, but they are not standard characters, and thus are not subject to rolls, inactivity, DZs, and the like. By this ruling, this thread does not count towards the thread limit for this area.))
Christina Stockton sat in tense anticipation as the helicopter descended, kicking up dust from the old logging road which had been pressed into duty as a temporary landing field. She was ready, geared up, armed to the teeth, and absolutely one hundred percent ready to go. A bulletproof vest, an assault rifle, a sidearm pistol, a couple fragmentation grenades, two combat knives (on in her belt, one in her left boot) and enough extra ammunition to give each kid on this island a shot or two. This was not going to be a disaster. This was not going to be a repeat of version three, where entire squads had been killed due to stupidity. Each of the team had a radio. They had a huge stock of spare cameras, in their backpacks and in the helicopter. The design was fairly modular; all it took to get a new camera going was yanking the plug out of the back of the old one and jacking the new one in.
They were landing on the logging road because it was close to the ranger station, which had been without coverage the longest. A group had holed up there, quiet and terrified, and done pretty much nothing until they got evicted by the morning's announcements. One of them hadn't even made it out. Christina didn't understand that sort of mentality, but, then again, she was the one with the assault rifle and body armor. She didn't have to get it.
After they fixed the station, it would just be a matter of following the trail of destruction Polanski had left, then cornering her like a rat at the end of it. After all, Polanski was a known element. She ran around, smashed cameras. She hadn't tried to fix anyone else's collar yet, so she could be considered fairly harmless. Likely, she was trying to work out a way to get enough privacy to do it. Christina sort of hoped that happened before they caught the girl. It wasn't any sort of specific malice, rather a general schadenfreude. You couldn't work this job without being a bit of a sadist, after all.
The helicopter touched down, the doors opened, and Christina was outside in a flash, rifle at the ready. She glanced at her left wrist, where a GPS unit was strapped. While a few students were relatively close, none were in the immediate area. Good.
"All clear," came the voice of Shamino Warhen, from the other side of the chopper.
"All clear," Christina confirmed. As the two more experienced ground-pounders on this mission, she and Shamino had point during loading and unloading operations, when they were at their most vulnerable. There would probably be a number of rendezvouses with the helicopter over their brief stay on the island, to replenish their stock of cameras and other equipment. It shouldn't be a problem, but, then again, a lot of things that weren't supposed to be issues turned into disasters.
Truth be told, Christina was actually rather excited about this whole thing, potential disaster or not. It was, in a way, counterintuitive; boredom was safety, after all. She hated sitting around waiting, though, hated doing nothing, hated that the biggest part of her job was putting up pointless little boxes that blocked cell phone reception.
Hell, she hadn't even been in full uniform in the field in a couple years. She'd only dressed out for exercises and training. Shamino got all the real jobs. He'd driven one of the buses, helped facilitate the extraction of the students from Minnesota.
Time for thinking later. The others were getting out.
Shamino came around the side of the helicopter, his bald dome hidden beneath a helmet.
"There are a couple of students fairly near," he reported, speaking both to her and into his walkie talkie. His other hand grasped his rifle, ready to fire at a moment's notice. "They may investigate the noise."
"Intelligence doesn't seem to run in this class," Christina said. "We've had, what, a dozen blow themselves up?"
"Just remember the protocol," Shamino said. "We're not here to kill people. We're not Kaige or Rice. We warn first."
"Yeah," Christina replied. Yeah, they'd warn first. That should end things. But if someone decided to press the issue, well...
She hadn't brought all these weapons out here just for the exercise. She didn't like killing. Felt sorry for the fuckers trapped on this island every so often. But she had a job to do, and she didn't really feel like getting wasted because some schoolboy with an AK got twitchy at the wrong time.
Christina Stockton sat in tense anticipation as the helicopter descended, kicking up dust from the old logging road which had been pressed into duty as a temporary landing field. She was ready, geared up, armed to the teeth, and absolutely one hundred percent ready to go. A bulletproof vest, an assault rifle, a sidearm pistol, a couple fragmentation grenades, two combat knives (on in her belt, one in her left boot) and enough extra ammunition to give each kid on this island a shot or two. This was not going to be a disaster. This was not going to be a repeat of version three, where entire squads had been killed due to stupidity. Each of the team had a radio. They had a huge stock of spare cameras, in their backpacks and in the helicopter. The design was fairly modular; all it took to get a new camera going was yanking the plug out of the back of the old one and jacking the new one in.
They were landing on the logging road because it was close to the ranger station, which had been without coverage the longest. A group had holed up there, quiet and terrified, and done pretty much nothing until they got evicted by the morning's announcements. One of them hadn't even made it out. Christina didn't understand that sort of mentality, but, then again, she was the one with the assault rifle and body armor. She didn't have to get it.
After they fixed the station, it would just be a matter of following the trail of destruction Polanski had left, then cornering her like a rat at the end of it. After all, Polanski was a known element. She ran around, smashed cameras. She hadn't tried to fix anyone else's collar yet, so she could be considered fairly harmless. Likely, she was trying to work out a way to get enough privacy to do it. Christina sort of hoped that happened before they caught the girl. It wasn't any sort of specific malice, rather a general schadenfreude. You couldn't work this job without being a bit of a sadist, after all.
The helicopter touched down, the doors opened, and Christina was outside in a flash, rifle at the ready. She glanced at her left wrist, where a GPS unit was strapped. While a few students were relatively close, none were in the immediate area. Good.
"All clear," came the voice of Shamino Warhen, from the other side of the chopper.
"All clear," Christina confirmed. As the two more experienced ground-pounders on this mission, she and Shamino had point during loading and unloading operations, when they were at their most vulnerable. There would probably be a number of rendezvouses with the helicopter over their brief stay on the island, to replenish their stock of cameras and other equipment. It shouldn't be a problem, but, then again, a lot of things that weren't supposed to be issues turned into disasters.
Truth be told, Christina was actually rather excited about this whole thing, potential disaster or not. It was, in a way, counterintuitive; boredom was safety, after all. She hated sitting around waiting, though, hated doing nothing, hated that the biggest part of her job was putting up pointless little boxes that blocked cell phone reception.
Hell, she hadn't even been in full uniform in the field in a couple years. She'd only dressed out for exercises and training. Shamino got all the real jobs. He'd driven one of the buses, helped facilitate the extraction of the students from Minnesota.
Time for thinking later. The others were getting out.
Shamino came around the side of the helicopter, his bald dome hidden beneath a helmet.
"There are a couple of students fairly near," he reported, speaking both to her and into his walkie talkie. His other hand grasped his rifle, ready to fire at a moment's notice. "They may investigate the noise."
"Intelligence doesn't seem to run in this class," Christina said. "We've had, what, a dozen blow themselves up?"
"Just remember the protocol," Shamino said. "We're not here to kill people. We're not Kaige or Rice. We warn first."
"Yeah," Christina replied. Yeah, they'd warn first. That should end things. But if someone decided to press the issue, well...
She hadn't brought all these weapons out here just for the exercise. She didn't like killing. Felt sorry for the fuckers trapped on this island every so often. But she had a job to do, and she didn't really feel like getting wasted because some schoolboy with an AK got twitchy at the wrong time.