Mercenaries and Planes: Writefaggotry

Planes and Mercs: the Writening

Since the main page was getting huge it was decided that the spinoff writefag stuff should go here instead. Be warned, some of these stories are graphic in their depiction of a battlefield. Enjoy.

Mission 2

Jean Claude in St. Claire by NF

Jean Claude had been living in the village of St. Claire for a few months, reporting on the increasingly unstable situation. He had heard word that the rebels were going to make a push, but hadn't expected them to move on this scale. As the mortars began to land he ran to the home of the family that had been hosting him in his time here. The roof was partially collapsed, Kanna, the father, was staring at a crater with parts of his wife in it. Jean Claude arrived in time to scoop up the family's two girls, 10 and 11, before they got a good view of the carnage.

"Kanna, we need to go NOW!" nothing "Kanna, your Daughters!" his grasp of the local dialect was rusty, but it shook the large man loose of his grief. Jean Claude handed him the older of the two girls, careful to cover her eyes. Kanna spoke, "To the boats, quickly."

They rushed from the still smoldering house. Jean Claude fumbled with his camera, taking shots as they ran. they hugged the alleys, waited for a few tense seconds when a technical swerved past, spraying machinegun fire into houses at random, and broke for it when it looked like the vehicle wasn't circling back.

Jean Claude heard a distant thump and turned, a pillar of flame was rising from the hospital that Doctors Without Borders had set up no more than a year ago. He snapped a photo of the acrid column and kept running. They cut out the side of the village, he swore, /swore/ he say aircraft overhead. The rebels didn't have this kind of advantage that he knew of, what the hell was going on? There was a force pushing into the village from behind them, apparently attacking the rebels. He could have sworn he heard distinctly clipped mother French.

They ran for the docks, anyone who had made it out of the village were now piling into the boats that had moments before disgorged a horde of killers into their homes. The boat was full to capacity, over flowing. He lost Kanna in the jumble. He clasped tightly to the man's daughter, Mary was her name, holding her close as the boat pulled away.

He turned back to the village, still snapping photos, and then pulled his satellite phone from a bulky thigh pouch. The jets were still strafing, multiple blooms of fire erupted from the heart of the town, he thought he saw the church go up.

He got the phone on and running, nervous fingers misdialing the home office twice. He wasn't getting a connection, the flimsy sheet metal covering of the boat was messing up his antenna, he leaned out the side for a better connection.

He got dial tone as a rocket scored a direct hit on the boat in front of him, turning it into a red hued fireball with a potpourri of limbs decorating the fringes, plopping into the water with sickening plumps.

He heard the receiver on the other end pick up when a cannon round severed his arm at the shoulder. The phone and the arm dropped into the river, hand clutching the shorted electronics all the way to the bottom. Jean had enough time to turn and throw himself over Mary, to shield her eyes and block out the screams of explosive shells disintegrating everyone around her, before he bled out.

Untitled by sukhoi

Pierre Desrochers sipped the cool water from the bottle, looking out the window at the scene on the street. A few people wandered between the dilapidated buildings, eyes low, feet shuffling across the dirt streets of the town. The air hung heavy in the late afternoon, the constant humidity clinging to every surface. Every breath in this hot humid air was laborious, it was like drowning in sickening dampness. Pierre looked up at the dark clouds obscuring the sky, but refusing to give up their cargo of rainfall. He put the bottle down, and began to put on his shirt and medical coat, and feeling them immediately cling to his sweat covered skin. 'This place really is the definition of hell,' he thought as he tossed a weathered copy of the King James into his backpack, 'Everyone is suffering and many die daily. It's intolerably hot, there is no reprieve, for water does not quench and sweat does not cool.'

Pierre knew that in addition to simply the environmental conditions was the added threat of political instability. Not a day went by that he didn't see a villager come in with horrific wounds. Bullet wounds were actually the easiest to deal with, they either died quickly, or a simple surgery and with luck, a slow recovery. No, it was the knife wounds. Some of the bandits, calling themselves patriots, found the most creative ways to torture and mutilate the human body. The worst were the “reprisals”, where a barely conscious patient would stagger into what passed for a hospital, blood pouring from several torn wounds, in which feces and dirt had been spread. If they didn't die from bleeding out, the infection almost inevitably took them. Pierre winced, and gripped the sides of his sink, trying to block out the sight of the young boy. In a daze, he grabbed a tablet of Ativan out of the bottle, and with shaking hands placed it under his tongue. He closed his eyes, and waited, waited for the images to disappear. Slowly a feeling of warmth suffused his muscles, and he opened his eyes, taking in his reflection in the mirror. He hadn't shaved in days, his coat was stained yellow with sweat and some congealed blood was partially smeared over the Médicins sans Frontières logo. His perpetually clammy skin, his hair matted against his scalp and his eyes staring back at him, bloodshot and tinged a light yellowish hue, signs of yet another third world parasitic infection.

A noise, a shallow thump from outside made Pierre turn slowly towards the window, just in time to see on oncoming shockwave race across the ground, tossing dirt off the street and shaking dust loose from buildings. The sharp clap of an explosion followed close behind, echoing down the streets. Pierre held his shirt up over his mouth to keep the dust slowly falling from the rafters out of his mouth, and headed out onto the street to get a better look.

He staggered out of the apartment block in time to see a dark shape dart past the river, followed by the unmistakable roar of a jet engine. Pierre's mind struggled to comprehend the information his senses were sending him. There was a large plume of smoke rising from near the river, close to where Pierre knew the main road bridge was. Several people were now in the street, looking at the rising column of smoke, some rushing towards it, others running back to their houses. Pierre began to see people stumbling out of the woods, shell-shocked. Most of them were injured, some dragging others away from the site of the bombing, screaming and yelling for help. A slight whistling sound tugged at Pierre's mind, trying to worm it's way past the other thoughts rushing through his head. He suddenly tensed, then threw himself to the ground, realizing at the last second what the noise was. A nearby shanty took the shell, it's tin walls seeming to expand outwards as the mortar charge detonated inside, before giving into the pressure and collapsing, the roof crashing down into the debris and smoke. Pierre pushed off the rusty brown dirt that formed the street, and stumbled back into his dwelling long enough to grab his backpack, before rushing back out onto the street as more mortar shells began to fall. There was nothing he could do for these people right now, he had to get to where he was of use. In a daze, he focused on the white two story hospital at the end of the road, and sprinted, as small muted explosions began to wash over the city in a deadly rain of fire and shrapnel.

Pierre rushed into the Hospital, muffled explosions following. It took his eyes several seconds to adjust to the dim light inside the building, they were running on the generator again it seemed. A hit close to the Hospital shook the building, knocking what few pictures there were off the walls, glass shattering on the dusty tile floor. A terrified nurse ran up to Pierre, her face white, the muscles of her face strained taught trying to hide her fear from the patients that were in the reception. “Mon dieu, Doctor, what's happening out there?” Pierre grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, and trying to keep his voice calm, intoned “I'm not sure, someone's shooting at the village. Get the surgery prepped, break out the emergency supplies, and prepare to commence triage with the other nurses.” Pierre knew that these few early moments were critical, before the flood of wounded began to make their way through the doors, every second preparing for them was essential. He grabbed a bottle of nearby anti-septic and began to clean his hands, heading towards the trauma room. As he walked, a corner of his mind noticed that his hands were shaking again. Just as he entered the room, the sharp crack of gunshots in the distance began to make their way through the village. Pierre stopped in his tracks, hearing the shouts and screams begin outside the hospital, as automatic weapons fire erupted in the village. 'So, it's finally happening,' he thought as he approached the dispensary, 'the rebels are making a push, no matter the cost.'

The curtain at the far end of the trauma ward was thrown open, and two men rushed in, carrying a third, bloodied and screaming in pain on makeshift stretcher made of tin. “Put him down there” Pierre shouted as he rushed to the man's side, seeing gaping tear of flesh along the man's leg. It was a gunshot wound, and a few quick probes with his fingers quickly confirmed that the bullet had struck the man's tibia, shattering the bone in multiple places. Pierre quickly cleaned the wound, and applied a rough field bandage to staunch the man's bleeding. He turned to one of the men standing over the victim and shouted “Stop being useless, hold this here, like this, keep the pressure on, and you!” he turned to the other, “stop taking up space and get out of here now, this is for the wounded only!” More wounded were filtering in now, the one's who could be saved Pierre noted. From the sounds emanating from the hallway, the screams and shouts of pain, the nurses were doing their job, choosing who would live and who would die. The gunshots outside were getting closer, clearer, as was the shouting. The hospital shook and the lights dimmed slightly as another jet roared over, its engines temporarily drowning out all the chaos with their howl.

Pierre rushed to the window, and saw the aircraft in the distance, as tracers from the ground reached up, streams of brilliant staggered orange fire, seeking to swat the offending target out of the sky. He wasn't sure if the plane took a hit or not, because the pilot pitched the aircraft up, rocketing it quickly into the clouds and out of sight. It was then that the scene on the streets hit Pierre. The small garrison of DRC troops had taken a direct hit, and whatever remained was being shot at by bands of rebel soldiers. They were running down the streets, firing at whoever moved, firing into the air, shouting and yelling as they went. Ramshackle trucks with guns crudely mounted to their beds sped down the dusty streets, firing wildly. Most of the rebels had that crazed look indicative of paya, a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder that they snorted to get high before going into battle. They took it to make them feel invincible.

Desrochers saw a young girl on the street, and was about to shout a warning when a rebel suddenly grabbed her, and pulled her into an alley between two shanty huts. Without thinking, Pierre vaulted over the railing into the street, coming up in a hunched over sprint. He held his hands over his head, knowing even as he did so, that it was a pointless exercise should one of the bullets whizzing past him find its target. He rushed into the alley, quickly spotting the girl and her assailant, who was standing over her torn dress as she wept into the dirt of the alley. With two quick steps he arrived behind the coked out warrior, and swung his left fist hard into the side of the man's neck. The sharp blow dropped the bastard, stunned by the shocking trauma to both his jugular and spinal cord. Without waiting, Pierre kicked the man's gun away, and dropped his knee into the man's throat, the barest crack signifying that the windpipe and trachea had been crushed. Pierre turned to see the girl pick herself up and begin running away, out the opposite end of the sheltered alley, when suddenly, her body was ripped apart by rifle rounds, collapsing bloodily to the ground in a grotesque parody of a rag doll. Pierre's vision swam as the scene replayed itself in his mind, the chaos, shouts and gunfire all dulling to a drone as his mind continued to see the bullets impacting the helpless child. His body began to shake, and he collapsed on his side beside the dying rebel, trying to force the image out of his mind, trying to convince himself this madness wasn't real.

The ground around Pierre shook, and a wave of heat rushed down the alley, sending a blast of hot air peppered with dust and debris into the doctor's face. The superheated air ripped at his exposed skin, and tore the last of the air from his lungs. A terrifying rippling crack pounded at Pierre's eardrums, sending waves of pain deep into his skull, the sound seeming to physically impact his already tortured body. The agony lasted for what seemed to last for ages, but finally mercifully receded, and Pierre propped himself up on an elbow. Blinking as his head continued to reel from the sensory assault, he tried to focus on his surroundings. His vision swam, distorting the shapes and angles of the alley, and his ears rang, with only the vaguest sounds of gunfire making their way into his reality. Unsteadily, Pierre began to crawl towards the opposite end of the alley, smelling oily smoke and cordite as he pressed forward. Arriving at the exit of the alley, he collapsed into a sitting position with his back to the concrete wall of a building. The scene that greeted his eyes was nightmarish, a gruesome tableau of bloodied and mangled corpses mixed in with the odd whimpering casualty. At the far end of the main road Pierre could see a large white transport plane with the characteristic black stencil UN prominently displayed on the tail. Soldiers were dismounting quickly from the plane, as the sound of jets racing overhead again overwhelmed the shouts and gunfire that still raged throughout the village. Turning back to the street, Pierre's eyes saw several destroyed vehicles with flames raging inside them. One had a body half out the window, the crackling flames hissing and popping as they devoured the body's oils, the skin on the face slowly burning away, revealing the macabre outline of the blackening skull underneath.

Pierre turned back, something in the back of his mind making him look at the UN plane again. Something didn't fit, the men clambering out were not wearing the characteristic blue helmets or berets of a UN force, nor were they comporting themselves like a peacekeeping force. As he continued to watch, he saw them splitting up, heading into the alleys and backstreets in groups of two or four, moving like highly trained assault troops. New sounds began to emerge from the village, short bursts of automatic rifle fire, short yells of surprise cut off by a quick crack and then silence. Something flashed at the corner of Pierre's vision, and he saw a family sprinting from their hiding place across the street. The mother was shouting as the father carried one of his daughters who was bleeding, and two little boys followed as they all rushed for the relative safety of a house or shop. One of the boys stopped suddenly, and reached down to pick something up off the street. As another aircraft blazed over the town at speed, Pierre realized with a start what had caused the destruction in the street. His eyes widened in fear and he began to shout but it was too late. The unexploded submunition from the air dropped cluster bomb, jarred by the boy's grabbing of it, detonated with a sickly soft pop, it's fragmentation covering sending razor sharp shrapnel tearing through the boy, quickly converting the vast majority of him to a bloody pulp where he stood. The family kept running, and Pierre realized that none of them had seen what had happened, none of them knew they had just had a portion of their lives brutally torn from them. He rolled over onto his side, and retched into the rust-colored dirt of the alley.

Pierre began to shake, small uncontrollable spasms that sought to contort his body. Desperately he thrust his hand into his pocket, seeking the bottle of Ativan. He pulled it out and unscrewed the cap, but in trying to pour out a tablet, his shaking hands spilled them onto the ground. Pierre needed the relief, and pawed at the dirt covered alley for them as the sickly sweet smell of spent powder and burning gasoline surrounded him. His outstretched hand finally found one of the tablets, and he quickly jammed it under his tongue, closing his eyes and waiting for the drug to take effect. Even with his eyes closed, Pierre couldn't block out the battle continuing to rage around him, the sounds and smells just intensified when he couldn't see. He heard shouts and footsteps, sporadic gunfire and cries of pain, the distant thump of small explosions. Sharp cracks quickly drew Pierre out of his drug induced stupor, as men in uniform rushed past him, firing at some unseen enemy. He started to get up, but was roughly pushed back into the dirt by another man carrying a rifle, who seemed to be shouting at him. Pierre shook his head, and pushed back the sounds of battle to hear the man telling him to stay down. The man was wearing the uniform of France but looked Hispanic. The man turned and fired down the alley, the piercing gunshots echoing off the concrete and tin walls and making Pierre's head feel like it was being split open from the inside. Through the dust and smoke, the patch on the man's sleeve caught Pierre's eye, a flaming fleur de lis, and the words "Légion étrangère" underneath it. The legion, they were here to stop the madness, and for a moment, Pierre felt a glimmer of hope as he sat in the alley, Legionnaires firing heavily at the building across the street.

As Pierre covered his ringing ears against the oppressive sound of high powered rifles, he realized with a creeping dread that they were firing at the hospital. Looking over the legionnaires, he saw armed militants on the balconies and in the windows of the hospital, and a ruined technical out front. The militants had commandeered the building at some point, and were now firing wildly at the Legion troops surrounding the edifice. One of the many legionnaires in the alley was talking hurriedly into a radio, while simultaneously giving hand instructions to the trooper beside him. The trooper nodded a quick agreement, then ran past Pierre before clambering up the wall of one of the buildings that lined the alleyway. Pierre heard and felt the troopers boots pounding on the tin roof overhead, and looked back towards the hospital where the firing had died down, apparently they were trying to negotiate with the militants holding the patients and doctors hostage. One of the rebels slowly emerged from the entrance, holding a white coated doctor in front of him as a human shield. The militant had his AK pressed up under the chin of the doctor, and as Pierre's vision cleared, he saw through the smoke that it was Rémi, a young doctor on her first tour. The legionnaires were shouting at the militant to drop his weapon, the militant was shouting something about freedom, and Rémi was crying, face white and etched with fear.

The confrontation continued to play itself out in the street, with both sides shouting and yelling at each other, weapons raised. Pierre got to his feet unsteadily, and added his voice to the multitudes, shouting “Rémi, restez calme, it will all be ok!” Her head turned, looking for the familiar voice amidst the shouts and chaos. “Ici Rémi! Over here” shouted Pierre, waving his hands, seeing her look towards him, tears streaming down her face. In the distance, Pierre heard a sound like rolling thunder and as he turned to look in the direction of the noise the legionnaires around him crouched down behind whatever cover they could find in the alley. Pierre heard the strained voice of Rémi just as he spotted the twin soot trails of the jet fighters arcing towards the hospital, “Pierre! Aide-moi! Au nom de dieu aide moi Pierre!”

They came in fast and low, the pressure wave from their wings and engines tearing tin sheets and canvas roofing from houses, like vortexes of destruction dragged behind the racing jets. Pierre saw small shapes drop from their wings, and in an instant both aircraft had passed over the hospital, twin shadows of blurred steel and fire ripping across the sky. A split second later the sound of their engines slammed into the ground, a terrifying banshee like scream, the fires from their reheat systems glowing like some demonic presence as the aircraft angled up away from the town, easily dodging the rocket trails some of the rebels sent their way. Ignoring his better judgement, Pierre flung himself out of the alley, trying to reach Remi, whose eyes were still locked in shock on the departing fighters. The militia fighter saw Remi, and began to swing his gun towards the charging doctor when the world turned into a maelstrom of fire and fury. Pierre saw Rémi and her captor outlined in a blinding flash as the hospital suddenly converted itself into an inferno. He slammed his eyes shut just before the punishing shockwave barreled into his frame, propelling him away from the hospital. The explosion knocked the wind out of Pierre's chest and sent chunks of brick, metal, and wood flying through the air like deadly projectiles, tearing through surrounding buildings and anyone unfortunate to be in their path. Pierre felt something impact his left leg, and a second later, a blinding pain seared through his nervous system, as if someone had poured sulfuric acid into his veins. He screamed in agony, gasping for breath as the fire and secondary explosions continued to rake the ruined hospital, consuming the air around it to fuel its flaming pyre.

He wasn't sure if he blacked out or not. His vision blurred as he opened his eyes, screams and shouts filled his ears. Then the pain came back like a sledgehammer, his leg seemingly on fire. He wiped the blood off his face and out of his eyes, unsure if it was his own, and propped himself up on one elbow, surveying the damage to his limb. Aside from the pain, Pierre felt amazingly distanced from the sight greeting his eyes. A large shard of metal protruded from his leg, embedded deeply into a wound sopping with blood. A multitude of other cuts from smaller debris had ripped his pants and shirt in various places, his clothes stained a wet sanguine red. Tentatively he reached down to the metal shard, and touched it. He almost collapsed in agony, feeling the embedded end scrape along his bone, his nervous system overloaded by the pain searing across his leg. Not even bothering to count them out, Pierre scooped his pill bottle and swallowed its contents, trying to drown out the pain. Mercifully, the soporific washed through him, dulling the pain to a bearable roar. Propping himself up again, he placed one hand firmly around the shrapnel, and with a decisive yank, removed the offending metal from his leg. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Pierre viciously lashed a scrap of his coat sleeve around the wound, fighting with each breath to remain conscious. He looked up, seeing through the blood and sweat partially obscuring his vision that the hospital was ablaze, half of it collapsed in on itself. Screams and shouts from withing the blaze were barely audible, and Pierre realized that both of his eardrums had likely been destroyed by the bombing. Placing a hand to his ear, feeling the fluid coming out of it confirmed his theory, and he screamed again, partly in pain, partly at the madness of it all.

Around him, the soldiers were advancing down the street, with a token few staying in the area. Pierre heard with dread the growl of the fighters approaching again, and covered his head with his hands, curling into a ball on the street, in some primitive form of survival instinct. The jets again passed low over the village, heading south towards where the fighting was the thickest. They roared over Pierre, pushing his body heavily into the ground and whipping up the loose debris that littered the street. In the distance Pierre heard the dull thuds of more explosions, and felt the ground shake as the munitions struck in the south end of the village. A terrifying explosion pierced through the grumble of detonations, and as Pierre opened his eyes to look south, he saw a massive fireball peeling into the air, as the village church's bell tower fell, seemingly in slow motion, into the inferno. A moan drew Pierre's attention back to the hospital. The heat from the blaze distorted the air around it, but through the haze Pierre saw an arm, blackened from heat, protruding from underneath a charred corpse. With a wince, Pierre rolled onto his stomach, and crawled towards the faint noise, shouting from his ragged throat, “Hang on Rémi!”, praying that he wouldn't be too late.

Pierre pushed forward, dragging his body across the street, every motion sending a dull pain through his body. The sounds of the firefight were getting more distant, only the moans and screams of the wounded, the crackling of the fires remained. He reached the arm, and heaved the charred and mutilated corpse off of the body underneath, fighting the urge to vomit as the smell of cooked flesh washed around him. The corpse rolled off, exposing Rémi, face caked with blood and dirt, underneath. Pierre examined her, shouting her name as he looked for obvious injuries. She had many, her ears were bleeding, one of her eyes seemed seared shut, in fact part of her face and the side of her body were badly burned. Wounds also speckled her body, cuts slowly weeping blood out into the dirt of the street. In many places her clothing had been burned or torn away, but the brunt of the damage from the explosion seemed to have been absorbed by the militia man standing between her and the blast. She was unconscious, and Pierre began to feel along her body for fractures, not wanting to move her until he knew he wouldn't injure her more. An explosion from within the hospital quickly changed his mind and he flung his body over hers as bricks and mortar rained down on the street, several striking him on the back. Gritting his teeth, and ignoring the pain, he roughly grabbed the back of Rémi's collar, and violently began dragging her across the street, away from the hospital, every step sending a wave of agony through his body. He had to get her out of here, out of this insanity. He stumbled and half crawled his way off the street, into the beginnings of the jungle undergrowth, heading for the river, and a boat. There was an outpost thirty miles downstream, she'd could be helped there.

He pushed through the undergrowth, struggling through the dense collection of branches and leaves, the sweat pouring from his brow a consequence of both pain and exhaustive effort. Pierre looked back at Rémi, his vision swimming in a dizzying blur. Her head was lolled to one side, blood slowly coming from her mouth, as well as several cuts and fractures on her skull. He returned his gaze to the light ahead, the light streaming through the break in the jungle canopy. They were almost there, just ten more metres. He grunted in pain and pushed out of the oppressive jungle, onto the muddy banks of the river. Several boats were in the river, heading to the south side, filled to the rim with people. He waved, shouting, at one of the raft's still near the bank to stop. He dropped Rémi, and stumbled down the bank, still shouting hoarsely. The people on the rafts seemed agitated, preoccupied, with something upstream. Pierre glanced in the direction people were pointing and yelling, just in time to see the ominous gray shape of a fighter descending through the clouds. Without warning, the western most boat exploded in a shower of water and wood, flesh and bone. Others quickly followed suit, as the aircraft's rockets poured down into the river area like a shower of fiery death. A nearby explosion threw Pierre into the air, and in the corner of his eye, he saw Rémi's mangled body flung into the air like an ungainly puppet. Her flight was cut short by a nearby tree, the impact into which made Pierre wince in horror.

Pierre came to, on the bank of the river, water lapping at his half submerged face. He could barely move, his legs seemed like dead weights. His vision was clouded, and he could taste the coppery tang of blood in his mouth. The water and riverbank around him was choked with blood and debris, here and there a few moaned, but the vast majority were silent, staring with the lifeless eyes into the nothingness like only the dead can. Mutilated and shredded bodies and limbs floated in the slow moving river, staining it a sickly muddy red, bobbing between the debris of the rafts and boats. Pierre leaned up on his arm, feeling a burst of pain, and seeing his wrist contorted at an impossible angle, his flesh torn, his hand barely attached by some remaining muscle and tendon. He fought back the pain, which was coming back with a roaring drone. Pierre heard another sound, and his eyes turned to the skies, rage filling him as he saw another jet sinking below the cloud cover like an avenging prehistoric bird of prey, traveling on a spear of flame towards the grisly slaughterhouse of the river. Pierre saw the flashes from underneath each wing, and screamed in useless defiance at the aircraft as the cannon rounds traced their way down the river bank towards him. He never felt the round that killed him, so sudden and violent was its impact. His entire upper torso was ripped away by the heavy shell, designed to peel away the armor of a tank, human flesh and bone barely slowing it's murderous progress. The round's shockwave that followed the round did the rest, converting what remained of his organs to a bloody pulp and tearing his body open from the overpressure it created in his body cavities.

She felt lulled by the ever present drone, the gentle caress and slight motion of her bed. Then the pain flooded in, and her eyes shot open, looking around in panic as the agony siphoned it's way through her body. She tried to move but couldn't her hands and legs bound tightly, her head barely able to turn at all. There was something on her face but she couldn't see it, she couldn't see well at all and she realized one of her eyes was shut. She struggled and tried to scream, tried to force her eye open but she couldn't. Her vision was tinged with red, but she saw light overhead, and grey. Piping and cables ran over the ceiling, crisscrossing in a melange of overlaps and turns that was dizzying to look at. The walls bowed outwards, tapering towards the ceiling, nothing made sense. A face appeared over her suddenly, smiling, but with eyes that seemed to stare past her. It was a man's face, gruff and with a shadow of stubble. Dirt and small flecks of blood covered most of the skin on his face, and the heavy helmet he wore was emblazoned with a red cross on the front. His mouth moved but she couldn't hear his words. She felt something prick her arm, and a feeling of warmth began to flow over her, quelling the pain, covering her like a warm blanket. The man continued to look into her eyes, and put a finger to his lips, and she stopped fidgeting. Rémi felt her body relaxing, her vision beginning to grey and drift. Before the blackness took her, she heard the man say in french over the drone “Sleep now, you are safe. Dormez.”

Mission 2 Interlude

Bushwhack by Skyhawk

Paul De Groot swore silently at the growing collection of razor grass cuts on his hands as he followed his local guide through the tall grasses and viciously tangled trees that surrounded the airfield outside of Kisanagi. The Dutch photographer gritted his teeth and attempted to push aside yet another large clump of grass that had somehow survived his native guide’s machete while simultaneously husbanding his cameras exposed telephoto lens from any dirt or whipping branches that might suddenly swing its way. ‘Next time you decide to go bush whacking,’ he mentally berated himself, ‘at least bring some gloves.’ He looked down at his camera and brushed at a bit of grass it had collected halfheartedly. ‘And the camera bag. Don’t forget the camera bag.’

It would be worth the pain and annoyance he kept telling himself. If the rumors were true and he could get some clear shots he’d have news agencies begging to buy them from him. ‘Either that or French agents trying to steal them,’ he thought in disgust. He’d already lost one camera to a sneering french man this trip. The bastard had flashed a holstered pistol, muttered something about nosy reporters, and snatched the little Nikon from Paul’s hands. Paul hadn’t bothered to argue or seek help...it was a waste of time in places like this where anyone toting a gun, and there were a lot of them about, could make his own laws.

The sound of a jet engine ramping up somewhere up ahead pushed Paul out of his funk and added a bit more spring to his step as he navigated the narrow trail. Coming around a twisted tree trunk he nearly ran into his guide. The local boy pointed with his machete at a gap in the razor grass several meters away through which Paul could distinctly see open ground and, beyond that, the pitted runway of Kisanagi’s airfield. Paul grinned and dug out another small wad of cash. “Rester ici,” he said in french, handing it over. ‘I certainly hope he stays,’ Paul thought as he turned and began his careful approach to the edge of the wild grass, ‘otherwise I’m gonna have trouble getting back.’ He’d had enough guides run out on him in his three years covering rebellions and civil wars in Africa that he knew unless he told them up front that he’d pay them half again as much if they got him home again they weren’t likely to stick around for very long.

The view from the edge of the razor grass wasn’t the best he could have gotten but the guide had at least gotten him to the proper side of the field. A small collection of tents and shipping container barricades at one end of the field drew his trained eye. It looked deceptively shoddy. Third rate tents, beat up shipping containers, and just enough local looking people milling around that anyone not looking for something suspicious might miss them. But he knew what to look for. New weaponry, alert guards, just enough well placed clutter and barricades to make getting a good view difficult...all the signs of a well funded and well armed mercenary outfit.

There were a lot of foreign mercs in Africa these days but only a few who could pull off what these guys were rumored to have done and still remain relatively discrete. He’d heard about the massacre at Bania. He’d heard about the rebels, the government forces, the Foreign Legion, and the fight that had left the town nothing but a scorched ruin full of the dead and dying.

Stories like that were a dime a dozen in Africa these days. But what had peeked his interest had been the mystery air force that had supported the FFL. The kind of aircraft survivors had reported weren’t common in this neck of the woods...and neither were the munitions they carried or the careless way in which they were used. Bridges, hospitals, markets...it didn’t seem to matter to them what they hit. Even boats full of fleeing refugees.

Paul grinned coldly as his telephoto lens zoomed in on partially concealed aircraft revetment and the warplane it contained. ‘Click, click, click’ went his camera. Aircraft types, weapons, maintenance equipment...faces. His camera captured them all in stunning detail.

He went through two memory cards before he felt he’d gotten enough. He slithered back into the denser brush and escaped to where he’d left his guide. He shouldn’t have been surprised when he found the tree and its surroundings devoid of people...especially young native guides with machetes...but he couldn’t help it.

“Godverdomme!”

St. Claire Homecoming by NF

Roslyn was the name her parents had given her. Well, her mother had given her. Mother loved the Lord, daughter of french missionaries, and Father, simple African fisherman, loved Mother, so Roslyn it was.

They'd raised her in St. Claire, the village her missionary grandparents had helped construct. Easy life, only child for years. Her sisters would come later 10 years later, for a time it was a simple family as happy as one reasonably could be in the third world. Then the government began to destabilize, crumbling. They lived in fear of rebel attacks, the village swelled with displaced refugees from the north. Doctors without Borders arrived and built a hospital to serve as a staging ground and to care for the stream of mutilated victims coming from rebel controlled areas.

With them came Jean Claude.

She'd arrived back home from a university in France to find the intrepid reporter living in her home. The summer they spent together had begun with subtle antagonism towards the person who'd invaded her family life and evolved over the few short months into sneaking off down to the river and sitting under the quay to watch the sun go down, the fumblings in the dark when night fell. Mother would never approve of moving so quickly and Jean Claude was scared to death of her father, so they kept quiet. Still, he was waiting for her behind the house before she left for the job at the embassy, held her a little longer than he had to, kissed her quickly and said "Write mon amour."

She'd worked at the embassy for a few brief months, savoring the letters from home. She ate cheap food from a stall down the block from her apartment for a month, bought ruggedized waterproof camera with it. She sent it off with her next reply to Jean, the shipping cost more than the camera did. She'd always been telling him that the expensive Canon he'd brought with him wasn't going to last long out here, he never listened.

Then the letters stopped coming. The newspapers read that the rebels had made a major thrust, and were plowing through settlements like a homicidal whirlwind. Then word came through embassy channels, shortly after on the news, that the French Foreign Legion had fought a decisive battle against the rebels, at St. Claire.

She got leave, her supervisor was understanding of that at least. By jeep, shit heap of a Cessna and jeep again she arrived a week after the attack. Smoke was still coming out of the village, the town's single pump gas station stubbornly refusing to be quenched. The FFL had set up across the river. already bridging vehicles had spanned the rubble of the crossings obliterated in the opening minutes of the attack, and a footbridge made of the few remaining boats bobbed gently down river.

She made her way into town on foot, the jeep driver wouldn't go any further, "To much death." was his only explanation. She wandered the streets, the landscape had changed so much it was almost difficult to find her way home. Children sat in the streets, to tired to cry, covered in brick and mud dust. Adults wandered the streets like ghosts, no one looked at her. A man was perched half on top of a mound of rubble that might have bee a house once. The blood and dust on his face had congealed into a kind of clay, gluing one of his eyes shut. She wondered why he hadn't bothered to scrape it away, then realized that he probably had the right idea, nothing to be gained from seeing this kind of devastation in further detail. As she walked nervously past she was struck by a stench, one she would have been happier not realizing that it emanated from the man's now obviously gangrenous leg, looking for all the world like a worm ravaged piece of meat having been shot through with shrapnel.

When she finally found her house she sat for a while on the low china cabinet. All the other furniture in the small kitchen was gone, mortar round having come in through the roof and landing in the middle of the dining room table. Her mother's corpse was in the resultant crater.

The flies were buzzing, the smell was absolute hell, but Roslyn didn't register any of these things. next to her mothers crumpled form were the remains of a fine china serving dish, a gift from her father. scattered around it were croissants, flaking and crawling with flies. She'd loved croissants.

She was to numb to cry, she stumbled from the house and made towards the river bank. Word was that some of the villagers had made it to the far bank in boats, although the official line from the FFL was that the rebels had killed many as they tried to cross. She didn't want to hope that her father and sisters had made it, didn't want to think about Jean Claude, afraid she couldn't bear the crash that would follow if she was optimistic and wrong.

As she neared the bank she saw white tents. The remaining personnel of the hollow crater that was once a hospital had set up a triage center, they were doing what they could, but still she wondered why so many wounded were in the streets. As she passed through the clinic the answer became clear. There were maybe two or three people with any medical training here, all clearly at wits end, ordering around some villagers who had volunteered to help. All the medical supplies had been in the hospital, these people were operating with kitchen knives for scalpels, inner-tubes from bikes as tourniquets and alcohol serving as everything from antiseptic to pain reliever. She approached one of the doctors, washing his hands in rubbing alcohol. "Shouldn't the Legion be here, helping?" her french was practiced and clipped, unconsciously doing her best Embassy Official voice.

"The Legion saw fit to do triage as they moved through town, and donated a medic and some supplies. The Medic left after we objected to the froid salauds marking our hospital for an airstrike, and we ran out of most of the supplies within two days. We await resupply, but Médecins sans Frontières is hesitant to move into an area so soon after an assault, especially one that killed so many of their people, so for now we wait." The man was clearly haggard, but she had to ask.

"Where did the people who made it across the river go? Is there some kind of list of who made it, any way I can find out if..." She wouldn't let herself finish the thought.

The doctor looked at her wearily. "Mademoiselle, I spent the last hour tying off arteries in a man's amputated leg, and I will spend few trying to pull pieces of his femur out of his wife's back in the hope that she can move again without risking a shard of bone nicking her spine. I wish I could help, but I simply have n'ont pas le temps. Those that made it are either back in the village, hiding in tents near to FOB the Legion set up on the other bank or scattered to the four winds. Those that didn't are either at the bottom of the river or in that trench."

She made her way to the long pit, found easily enough by the stench of corpse rot and lye. She pulled a handkerchief with the Embassy logo on it from her pocket and pressed it over her nose, it didn't really help.

The sight that confronted her beggared belief. Rebels were mixed in with the townsfolk, limbs had been heaped in along with whole bodies, all caked with the white dust of sodium hydroxide. She found her middle sister and father first, head peaking out from beneath a jumble of legs and arms. She did them the courtesy of not vomiting directly into their grave.

She made her way down the trench, forced herself to walk and look, she had to know. Still each step felt like walking through quicksand. At the other end of the trench she found him. Jean Claude lay face up, at the top of the pile, his body baking in the sun. Mary was next to him, tossed into the pit in such a way that one of her arms rested across the reporter's chest. The tableau struck something like jealousy in Roslyn. She found it almost funny that she would feel something like that, but her ten year old sister was the last person to hold the man she had loved in her arms. She walked away without noticing that Jean had but one arm with which to return the dying embrace.

She sat under the quay were she and Jean Claude had spent those few happy nights, and finally let the tears come. She sobbed, wept. She held her knees under her chin and let the sorrow wrack her body, rocking back and forth. She opened her eyes after a while and spied something that stopped her quiet quaking.

A small yellow case had washed ashore. It was, she realized with a start, a camera. She got to her knees and shuffled a few feet towards the water lapping gently at the moors of the dock. Grabbing the camera by the strap she lifted it before disbelieving eyes.It was Jean's camera, the one she had sent him from the Embassy. Hesitantly she pressed the power button; when the device came alive she rushed back to her previous position and began eagerly paging through the photos.

Shots of her family, of the hospital, one of Jean Claude smiling at himself in the mirror, one of her as she walked out of the village towards a waiting jeep, full of hopes and ambition. Then shots of what she realized was the attack. A picture of her home, out of focus and shaky, on the run. One of a column of smoke and debris shooting up out of where the hospital had once stood, although she didn't know enough to recognize colored marker smoke mixed in with the black soot, nor the streak of jet exhaust in the upper corner of the photo. Shots of destruction in the streets, some of the same people she had seen on her way through, running down the road. A picture of a truck full of rebels firing a 12.7mm machine gun into a crowd. A picture of the boats. These were all at odd angles, she realized Jean must have set the camera to just take a picture every few seconds as he ran.

The last ones were clearly taken from the boats, the crowds packing into them, a close shot of his ever present satellite phone. One of the boats exploding, the trails of what were unmistakably even to her untrained eye rockets streaking into the water. A shot of an aircraft coming right at the camera, a gout of flame erupting from the nose. An arm holding a satellite phone spiraling away. then a splash of the arm disappearing beneath the water. The camera spun, people and faces, some caught in the middle of popping apart under cannon fire. The last shot as the memory card filled was of Mary's face, Jean must have collapsed atop her.

What stuck with her was the look on Mary's face, the sheer horror. Jean had by sheer happenstance managed to get one of those photos that would define a conflict even with one of his arms gone and his camera on autopilot hanging around his neck.

Then it occurred to her just what he was holding. Planes had hit the boats. The same planes that the Legion was being so evasive about explaining. The rebels hadn't hit the refugees, these pilots had. Someone had to see these, but she knew enough about world politics that she was holding molten plutonium. These would never see the light of day, no matter who she handed them to. As soon as she made their existence known they'd disappear, and she might go with them. She resolved then to do this herself, not really thinking of what it would take. She remembered Jean's words, something he had once told her about chasing a story "The smallest details are often the most important mon amour. You can tell much from them."

She paged back to the shot of the plane bearing down on the boats, zooming as close as she could. She was happy that she'd bought him a good camera, and the plane was ridiculously close. There, above the roaring spew of flame pouring from the gun was a word written on the craft's nose. In pixelated Teutonic script she could just make it out. "Baron" it read.

It wasn't much, but it was a start.

Mission 3

Osprey encounter by Skyhawk

It was a thankfully peaceful night in this particular stretch of the South Atlantic and Ensign Kamal Benayache of the Royal Moroccan Navy was glad of it. Any dog watch was a pain in the rear at the best of times but at least quiet ones didn’t leave you feeling like camel dung the next morning.

Kamal had dealt with rough nights on watch before. The Atlantic was not a forgiving place and many a night had found him concluding his watch in the middle of a raging South Atlantic storm. The placid seas outside the bridge windows tonight were a blessing and he offered up yet another prayer of thanks as he got up from his seat to stretch his legs. Not that there was much room to stretch in on the cramped bridge of the RMNS PV-7.

The Osprey 55 class patrol boat was one of the smaller warships in the Royal Moroccan Navy but the four vessels in the class were coveted posts for young officers looking to gain command experience. Not only were they at sea a good deal of the time but they were also known for allowing ensigns more opportunities to stretch their fledgling command authority in duties that weren’t just training exercises. There was a lot to do on a fifty-five meter vessel with a crew of only thirty-six after all.

Finishing his stretch Kamal circled the bridge. The man at the wheel was obviously tired but he’d straitened himself up when Kamal had gotten up to stretch and was even now looking much more awake than he had moments before. The ensign nodded to him and stepped up close to give the radar screen a brief scan. Nothing...’Just as it should be,’ he thought contentedly. But even the powerful surface search radar wouldn’t pick up everything. Small rafts, bits of garbage, and even modern zodiacs wouldn’t show up as more than a flutter on the radar screen...and just one missed contact could ruin Kamal’s night. That was why, even with modern technology, the Mk-1 Human Eyeball would never fall out of use.

Kamal left the radar screen and stepped out onto the tiny starboard side wing platform where one of the pair of duty lookouts were posted. It was a cramped space, meant only for one, but often occupied by many more on certain occasions. The seaman on duty didn’t seem to mind the intrusion in any case as his attention was elsewhere. The huge pair of night-binoculars he held looked like they’d been glued to his face. Kamal wasn’t sure how the man did it but whenever he came out here the binoculars were there...attached to his face like some strange limpet that never came off.

“No sightings?” Kamal asked, even though he knew the answer.

“No sightings, sir,” came the man’s reply; The same reply he’d given dozens of times and would probably continue to give even after Kamal was long gone from the PV-7.

Kamal nodded and opened his mouth to reply when the world turned itself on its ear.

Mission 4 Interlude

IMINTnent Domain by NF

Smith was a data analyst. He lived comfortably in a 2 floor apartment near his job, got payed well to do what he did. He had a mind and an eye for pulling information from the tiniest details. His specialty was intelligence analysis, especially video or photographic surveillance sources. It was a skill he'd honed during his time as a counter sniper with the Treasury Department, but he'd always thought there might have been a some nepotism in his hire to The Company.

Regardless of how he'd gotten the job, it had brought Smith into this dark room in Langley. It was an overlong conference room with not enough furniture. Veneer paneling, gray carpet floor, some poor interns had hauled a monster of a conference table in here and deposited some office chairs in a corner. Smith was in the process of rolling one of these across to the monolithic table when there was a rap on the door. Opening it Smith was confronted by the craggy features of one Operations Officer Partridge.

Partridge nodded to him and pushed past, dropping the cardboard file box he was carrying unceremoniously on the table. Smith stared at it for a moment, it sat slightly askew in the middle of the table, exuding an almost palpable sense of foreboding. Partridge was at the other end of the table now, fiddling with a projector.

"Ander, pull the screen over there down and take a seat."

Shiiiit... First names already, this was not going to be a good news day. Still smith did as he was told, bringing the thin white screen mounted on the wall down with a yank and pulling his chair up along side the box.

"Been following the news lately son?"

"Nothing aside from what comes across my desk sir."

"You should do it more often, less tendency to get myopic about whatever corner of the world they've got you putting under a microscope. Few days back, you might have heard, the Liberians moved on the Crown Prince of Morocco."

"Jesus."

"More or less my words. The first operation involved the Diplo flight getting rerouted in the air by a merc outfit the Frogs have been working with. Of course that got the attention of the APLAA and MENA boys pretty quickly, and then that got the ball rolling. That's where these come in."

Partridge pointed to the screen, the projector now running and throwing a surveillance photo up on the screen. A port in the Congo, Pointe-Noire, according to the notation in the corner. Three objects were highlighted in red marker, aircraft.

"Same jets from the diplo take down?"

"The very same."

Something clicked in Smith's head. It'd been nagging at him as soon as he saw the shot, but now he knew what it was.

"Wait a minute. What is this, Congo? We didn't have any KH-11 KENNANs over there, and this looks too close anyway, I can count the flaps on that Sukhoi. Come on, Partridge did we have a bird in the air?"

This only elicited a nod from the old man.

"Well what did we send out there that that Sukhoi didn't just pick it out of the sky?"

"SR-71U"

"Partridge, there's no such thing as an SR-71U..."

The old man cleared his throat "Not at your pay grade no, do you want to see the rest?"

Smith stifled his curiosity and nodded. A nagging voice in the back of his mind wanted to tell him what that "U" probably stood for, but Reaper Drones creeped him out enough and he stuffed the thought into the hole from whence it slithered and tried to forget it. Partridge continued.

"The Liberians gunned straight from the airstrip to the border, made a mess in the doing of it. Morocco squeezes the DRC, who hardly need the urging, and this is where things go a little funny. We got that bird in the air for a different reason, the whole Moroccan situation was just icing on the cake. Few minutes into the hell storm these boys bring with them a number of things stop making sense."

"I'm guessing that if they hadn't I wouldn't be here?"

"Smart boy." Partridge clicked and the image advanced, drastically zoomed. Three Hummers made up a roadblock. Another click, and the roadblock disappeared. Smith mulled this over, nothing particularly weird about that, surplus wasn't hard to come by. Another click, two more Hummers, but something was off.

"Fuck."

Partridge just nodded.

"An Avenger?"

Another nod. Click, the Avenger mid firing. Click, What looked like half of a Mirage spiraling out of the air, the pilot rocketing out at an oblique angle. Click, further back again, four ovoid tubes plummeting to earth. Click, the whole dockside industrial complex bathed in flame. Smith actually gaped, an expression not common on the face of an IMINT spook.

"Jesus Christ Partridge, they naped it?"

"223 incidentals is the latest count, anything we might have traced or anyone we might have talked to directly bout where that hardware came from is now melted into the asphalt."

Smith sat for a minute. "Well what are we waiting for, this is actionable, let's get it moving. We can drop the hammer on these guys, probably their whole company with this."

Partridge shook his head slowly "The hammer goes nowhere, and we're going to make sure of that. We've got them nailed, and we're going to keep them that way." Smith gave him a bemused look and Partridge sighed. "Keep up now. These guys went megaton when one of their pilots got splashed, they dropped a helicopter on a traffic jam, little while back they blew up a hospital because the Frogs tossed a smoke grenade at it. This is what we call an asset, and thanks to these" he gestured at the screen "They are a free one if we need them."

Smith raised his eyes at the hospital part. Partridge caught it. "Now you're getting it, yes, these are the ones you let slip, these are the guys that you let the director of APLAA find out about on CNN. That--" Partridge pointed at the box."Is your second chance. You fucked it bad, here's your second chance. The box is aircraft specs, company background and dossiers for the pilots as well as some of the support staff. Keep an eye on them, indefinitely. It's in your power to yank on the leash a bit if you need to, and keep us appraised of anything you think warrants our attention, but other than that it's your call. While you're cutting through that you're also following up any leads you come across of suss out with that beautiful brain of yours as to how one of our stinger trucks got into the Congo without me putting it there. My money's on somebody skimming off the Chilean order, but that's for your to figure out."

Smith sat numb for a beat, this was not what he had been expecting. Transfer, demotion, not this. Partridge offered a final shot as he left, "Don't fuck this one up son, this is your new office now, I'll have a coffee maker and the rest of the files sent in shortly." He didn't quite slam the heavy door on his way out, content to let it "thunk" shut with all the finality of a nail being driven into the lid of a coffin. Smith sighed deeply, slumped a bit, and pulled off the top of the box.