alertcommando | Operation: Dark Night

"Oh, great." Tanya mutters, slapping the explosive on the wall and switching the proximity sensor. "Armed in ten, nine, eight..." She speaks for Annabelle's benefit while heading after Bonzo. "We have to hurry."

Annabelle growls something profane in Arabic and follows Tanya at a run.

Standing in columns is going to prove to be a very bad idea. Her Hell pistols pack enough punch to get two soldiers for the price of a single bullet that way.

The sound of gunfire is nearly deafening in a closed space.

Bonzo keeps up the fire as they press forward, away from the impending explosions. Two bullets whiz by him at very close distances, making him wince...but not let up on his attack as he tries to get as much distance as possible.

Fortunately, they seem to be getting through most of the Russians, and any that aren't dead from the shooting are probably not going to combine their injuries with the incoming concussions too well.

As the explosion goes off, Bonzo leaps forward through the air, probably landing behind any of the remaining Russkies. He'll explain that later.

Tanya might ask later; right now she is busy helping Anabelle finish clearing the hallway.

A bit ahead they will run into something different, two soldiers wearing powered armor.

You never saw a commando duck out of the way so quickly, and right in time as the Tesla troopers send arcing bolts of charged-hot plasma down the hallway.

Annabelle puts some of her Klingon profanity to use as she dives toward the ground. The very edge of one of the plasma bolts singes the edges of the back of her armored vest as she hits the floor.

She rolls behind the bodies of several soviets, using them as cover. That kind of armor calls for more firepower. She un-slings the sniper rifle and chambers a round of the HEAP ammo.

Then she brings the rifle up and fires at the joints in the armor. One of the Tesla troopers screams in mortal agony as the HEAP ammo hits the joint holding his right arm to his body and destroys it in a spray of gore.

Bonzo puts his blaster back in the holster and gets out his lightsaber. It's glaringly obvious that simply shooting bolts into this thing is going to be like blowing really hard at a hurricane, so he's not going to try. What he does do is get behind a metal crate in the hall and keep his head down for the moment...he's not going to try and charge these guys.

The bloody mess he sees raining in the hall a moment later surprises him. Looking at the other trooper, who's walking by, he runs up the last few feet before sliding under his left arm and swinging his lightsaber past at the knees. It won't kill him outright, but it should distract him. Losing your lower legs will do that, y'know?

And provides just enough distraction for Tanya to finish them off with shots into the visor plates.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is teamwork in action.

Now the control room is just ahead. "Can your glowing sword take care of the door lock?"

"Nice work," Annabelle says to her teammates.

She gets to her feet and reloads the rifle.

She's going to ache a bit once the adrenaline wears off, but she's otherwise unharmed.

To Annabelle: "You, too."

To Tanya: "Unless it's about a foot thick, it should do." And if it is, he can probably melt his way through. Getting to his feet, Bonzo walks forward and takes a swing at the lock. "Worse comes to worse, I can just cut the door down."

Not a whole foot, but is very reinforced: cutting it might be a good idea.

While they handle that, Tanya backtracks to the last hallway intersection to leave another motion sensor trap.

Annabelle keeps an eye out for trouble while Bonzo works on the door and Tanya lays another trap.

Now is not the time to let their guard down, after all.

When the single swing doesn't do the trick, Bonzo simply shoves the blade as deep into the door as he can at the lock, and starts cutting through it, slow as the process might be. They will be getting through, even if he's looking a little warm from standing by the melting metal before too long.

Not too long, no... a bit of melting, poking, cutting, and the door gives in.

And look, all the blue jumpsuits and white labcoats are gathered in the same room.

"Ladies and gentlemen." Tanya steps in, guns trained, speaking in Russian. "Step away from the consoles now, or you will be killed."

That's convenient.

As all the Russian Annabelle knows is of a profane nature, she's just going to back Tanya up and try to look as threatening as possible.

Bonzo keeps the lightsaber at the ready, ignited, just in case.

"Anyone want to lose a limb, just speak up and we'll arrange that."

At least one person doesn't seem convinced, so Bonzo adds a bit more. "We do heads, too. They count."

With Annabelle and Bonzo watching her back, Tanya crosses the room towards a bald, bespectacled man with a pinched expression.

"Comrade Ivanov, I presume." She continues in Russian, her pistol moved close enough to the man's face for him to catch the scent of burnt propellant and feel the warmth of gunmetal. "Would you please initiate the full shutdown of the Western Missile Command? If you do so, I can guarantee you a safe prison cell far away from Romanov, Vladimir and Yuri."

"If you don't, I am afraid you and all your comrades here become useless, and after we do the shut-down the hard way, we will have to leave you all to explain to your merciful, magnanimous leaders why Mother Russia can not threaten western Europe with nuclear annihilation anymore."

There are a few long moments while the man ponders his options. "Please? Don't make me paint the observation window with your brains to make your second-in-command more amenable to the situation."

Indeed, one of the walls of the room is a huge observation window, overlooking the main silo.

One fellow, who may be the second-in-command, looks like he's briefly considering protesting this demand until Annabelle points her rifle in his direction.

His mouth shuts with a nearly audible snap.

Bonzo is looking for anyone making a move towards a weapon. Truth be told, he'd rather not have to lop off any heads or arms right now, but if he has no other choice...

As he's moving around slowly, trying to get a glance at anyone who's trying to slip a gun out from behind a table, there's a loud "CRACK!" and immediately thereafter he feels a sharp pain in his side. He spins around to catch one of the Russians pointing a gun at him, and only gets a hand up in time to stop a second bullet aimed at his chest, albeit with a sickening crack as about a half-dozen bones in his hand crack, the bullet stopping as it comes out of the gun.

You can count on there being a loud, loud howl of pain from both shots. He drops his lightsaber, and the guy with the gun dives for it. He grabs it, but accidentally turns it back on before he has it pointing in the right direction.

Bad move, Mr. Russkie. Welcome to the One-Hand Club.

His membership of the one-hand team is very short-lived, thanks to a malady known to strike down Russian military personnel near Tanya: lead poisoning.

A thing to note is how she kills Mr. One-Hand without looking that way. "That was really stupid. Really, really." She jams her gun onto the white-coated man's neck. "Shutdown, now, or I will leave you for Vladimir." Casually, she puts a bullet into the arm of another tech who moved too much. "I have to remind you ladies and gentlemen that you are eight and I have sixteen bullets left. How lucky are you feeling?"

There were Soviet soldiers coming to the rescue down the hallway. Annabelle takes aim and opens fire, also without taking her eyes off the scientists.

Reflective surfaces are all over the room, after all. They die, one after the other, their bodies collapsing to the floor and blood oozing over the tile.

"How badly are you hurt?" she asks Bonzo, expression grim.

Bonzo pulls his lightsaber back over into his hand, putting it back on his belt, and then tries to get to his feet. He doesn't quite succeed, but he's at least not laying down.

"Son of a bitch..." He looks down at where the bullet hit him, and reaches over with his uninjured hand, feeling the wound carefully. He can feel a fleshy mess, but it's not a hole. He feels along it...

"I think it broke one of my ribs..." He then feels his back. "Body armor pushed it aside, though." Said armor, not terribly strong, has a small crack in it where the bullet clipped it.

And of course, all of this doesn't change the fact that he has a nasty, painful, bloody mess in his side right now. On the bright side, it's not spurting too badly, so no veins were severed.

For now, the Reds seem to have decided being heroes is not their thing.

The head technician, after a moment of hesitation, turns to the console and starts working, while Tanya observes for signs of treachery.

"Here," Annabelle says to Bonzo, handing him a Stimpak. "This will heal you up a bit if you inject it into a vein and hold the edges of the wound closed."

Bonzo complies with Annabelle's directions. He winces as he puts the needle in and holds the wound together, but...it seems to work. After a few more moments of pain (the wounds healing themselves), he pulls himself to his feet, looking at the scar on his side and the remaining bruising on his hand.

"Thanks." Pause as he looks down at the dead Russian and at his hand. "Damn, that hurt."

While this, the man in charge finishes. The consoles all beep, and a female voice with a mechanical timbre echoes in Russian. "[Attention all personnel: Facility shutdown engaged, please evacuate at once. Facility shutdown engaged, locking silos, powering down systems, gather your belongings and proceed orderly to the nearest marked exit...]"

"This is not going to help you." Says the man, frowning. "They will just bring a backup site into the grid."

Tanya grins to him. "They will try, I'm sure." Too bad right now they have a four-inch-tall saboteur keeping the data lines on a nerve pinch. "But by the time they manage that, it will be too late." The 'nerve pinch' is recording all the silo locations for the next move of the war.

"Now, if none of you plan to be suicidal, it is time for us to leave." She nods to Annabelle and Bonzo, gesturing for them to take point. "We just need to get back to that big intersection."

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