So, in my most recent delirium, I came up with something in a "non-canonical" setting and decided to throw it out here. This is most assuredly not your grandparents' Baldur's Gate, but is, instead, something vaguely fitting the "gritty science fiction" mold. Anywho, I have only one request: the line for those wanting to lynch me starts to my immediate left - I ask only that you keep things orderly. Thanks muchly.
I: Innocents
Arkellian Station
Torillian Confederation Colony World Caliban IV
2 Alturiak, FY (Faerunian Year) 2268
0518 Hours, Local Standard
“Omega 2 in position. Tangos in sight, requesting permission to engage.”
The reply, suffering only slight voice distortion, was prompt. “Negative, Omega 2. Sights are cold. Stick to the plan.”
The next sound over the open communication line was either a sigh or a burst of static; it was somewhat difficult to tell which. “Lead, I have a shot…”
Even though the two speakers weren’t face to face, Omega 2 could pick up on her squad leader’s growing frustration. “Two, I repeat: sights are cold. One wrong move, and that hostage is a wet spot on the wall; wait for Alpha Group.”
Another unidentifiable noise. “Copy, Lead.”
Omega 1 reached up and tapped the small communications device she wore in her right ear. This simple action switched her over from one comm frequency to another. She adjusted the boom microphone which dangled down from the earpiece off to the right side of her mouth, and spoke quickly, without mincing words. “Alpha 1, Omega 1… sitrep, over…”
Weapons fire could be heard in the background, but the responding voice was preternaturally calm. “Omega 1, Alpha 1… encountering resistance. On station in thirty seconds.”
Omega 1 frowned to herself. “Encountering resistance?” From the sound of things, Alpha Leader and his unit were engaged with the entire Dominion 7th Infantry Division. Then again, Alpha 1 had always possessed an odd penchant for understatement, she mused, as she checked her rifle’s power levels for perhaps the fifteenth time in the past three minutes. Crouched down as she was, hiding behind a row of empty storage lockers while waiting for Alpha group to get into position, there wasn’t much else to do.
Abruptly, she felt a faint tingling as the comm unit began to pulse softly in her ear, signaling an incoming transmission. She tapped the small device again and heard the strained tones of Omega 2.
“Omega 1, acknowledge…”
“Go ahead, Two.”
Omega 2 came back in a harsh whisper. “Lead, tangos are moving, I repeat, tangos -are- moving…”
“Damn it. Weapons free, Omega 2. Take the shot. Take it!”
-----
There were six of them… and they were getting antsy…
A little over an hour ago, Caliban law-enforcement personnel, acting on an anonymous tip, had stopped a freighter trying to enter orbit without having first received proper clearance from planetary-traffic control. Upon boarding the cargo vessel, the crew of the intercepting system patrol craft had discovered that the ship’s holds were filled to the brim with contraband.
As expected, however, they never got the chance to pass that information along to anyone else. Acting quickly, the smugglers had overwhelmed the small detachment of customs officers, broken free from the boarding craft, and dived into the planetary atmosphere. Local defenses, both ground-based and spaceborne had managed to damage the ship heavily enough to force a landing. The freighter, though heavily wounded, put down smoothly; the crew fled to the nearest bastion of civilization: Arkellian Station – the major ground-transit hub for this area of the planet. Upon their arrival, the score or so of surviving smugglers had swarmed the area and taken hostages.
The criminals, fairly well accustomed to dealing with law enforcement personnel, were heavily armed, and well versed in the use of their weapons – more than a match for the local constabulary.
And so, Omega 2, an elite member of the Torillian military, found herself on a catwalk above one of the main thoroughfares of Arkellian Station, crouched in the shadows, holding a heavily modified M-4 laser carbine in her small hands, pointing it at a man’s head, and wondering just how in the worlds she could help end this with a minimum of bloodshed.
Out of the small group of six, the one holding a heavy pistol to the temple of a young blonde woman, appeared to be the leader. “Check those doors again…” he growled to nobody in particular, and one of his lackeys hastened to comply.
“What are we gonna do now?” another asked, clearly overwhelmed by the turn that events had taken.
Omega 2 tuned out their conversation, instead narrowing her focus to the tactical situation. Six possible targets – and she had a fairly clean line of sight to each of them, with one exception. The leader, shielded as he was by the hostage, would be a difficult takedown to make, but if he stayed in one position, she was fairly certain she could hit her mark. The trick was downing the rest once she’d fired that first round.
She took a breath and let it out slowly so that it disturbed her aim only slightly. The small headset she wore projected a holographic heads-up display barely a half inch in front of her right eye. The display could be tailored to show all sorts of useful information, but at the moment, it was set to a very basic configuration, projecting little more than a standard weapon targeting reticule. Said reticule wavered only slightly as she exhaled.
“Omega 2 in position. Tangos in sight, requesting permission to engage,” she whispered softly into her communications uplink.
“Negative, Omega 2. Sights are cold. Stick to the plan.”
The plan had Omega 2 designated as a backup shooter – not the primary. It was her job to wait for Alpha group to come barging through the nearest door, and only fire her own weapon if it looked like Alpha wouldn’t be able to neutralize the hostiles in time. From her vantage point, however, it looked more and more as if that were going to be the case. Alpha group was already a few seconds late – probably still stuck engaging enemy sentries, she figured. Whatever the case, the six tangos down below were starting to get twitchy.
The hostages, too, were beginning to panic. The one being held at gunpoint started squirming, and even the muzzle of the weapon being forced tighter against her skin was doing little to “calm” her down.
“That’s it… we’re outta here…” said the leader of the six smugglers, his resolve clearly coming apart. His grip around the woman’s throat tightened, and he began dragging her to one of the room’s exits, the rest of his crew following behind, motioning towards a handful of other innocent civilians and signaling them to their feet.
“Oh, hell…” Omega 2 thought to herself as the group approached the exit. The hallway beyond the large steel door led to a veritable maze of maintenance corridors, and it hadn’t been possible to get units into the area to seal it off. If the terrorists managed to get far enough into that labyrinth, it’d be impossible to find them and their hostages. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
“Omega 1, acknowledge…” she said into her communications rig, putting far more calm and tranquility into her voice than she really felt. Her heart was threatening to jump out of her chest.
“Go ahead, Two.”
“Lead, tangos are moving, I repeat, tangos -are- moving…”
Omega 1 tumbled to the implications of that statement right away. “Damn it. Weapons free, Omega 2. Take the shot. Take it!”
Her attentions drawn completely onto other things, Omega 2 barely managed a hoarse whisper. “Affirmative…” Her left hand tightened around the barrel-mounted grip, and forced the weapon’s stock more snugly into the hollow of her shoulder. The fingers of her right hand closed around the primary grip, her index finger hovering nearer and nearer to the trigger.
But down below, blondie was reacting even more violently now, perhaps somehow sensing that her chances for rescue were slipping away as her captors endeavored to drag her and the other hostages out of the room. She kicked and squirmed, fighting against every inch of ground she was forced to walk.
“Hold still, lady… hold still, damn it!” Omega 2 whispered fiercely, fighting back panic as the flailing prisoner kept drifting in and out of her line of fire. Her comm channel was still open, transmitting that last harried statement to Omega 1.
One more shallow breath, in and out…
“Firing.”
The lead terrorist’s head erupted into a crimson spray as the laser bolt messily lobotomized him. What remained of the body suddenly went limp, like a marionette that’d just had its strings cut; it collapsed in a heap on the ground…
Omega 2 went dry in the mouth as if she’d just had a wad of cotton stuffed into it. “Tango down… engaging secondary targets…” she croaked out onto the open comm line.
Vaguely, she heard a familiar voice calling out over the all-squad net. “All teams, breach doors now! Go go go!”
On the catwalk, easily thirty feet above the main floor, Omega 2 closed her eyes as twin flashes of brilliant white erupted from two of the room’s entrances. The roaring sound of paired explosions rattled the teeth in her head, but the sonic nullifiers she wore in her ears eliminated the disorienting effects entirely. Her eyes, a soft blue with shades of gray, blinked open, quickly taking in the columns of smoke now wafting from the blown doors, the gray-clad figures hustling swiftly and precisely through the breached entryways, and most importantly, the five remaining hostiles, blinded, deafened, and filling the room with weapons fire.
Another swiftly targeted round from the M4 carbine laid one low, the laser blast traveling from weapon to target in the blink of an eye. The high energy beam punctured a lung, exiting out the man’s back as cleanly as it entered. He dropped to the ground, still feebly twitching.
A hailstorm of rapid-fire neutron rounds slashed upwards at the catwalk, turning parts of the metal grill into molten slag but doing no damage to the operative stationed up there. In fact, all it really -did- accomplish was draw the young woman’s attention. She snapped off a quick shot and for the third time in this engagement, a bright red-orange flash heralded the discharge of her weapon.
The powerful beam clipped its target only slightly, sizzling past his shoulder before expending the rest of its energy harmlessly as it impacted against the side of the pseudo-stone wall behind him. The impact, glancing as it was, however, was enough to stun him – at least long enough for one final round to burn through his stomach. He doubled over in pain, held that position for a fraction of a second, and finally crumpled to the ground. By the time the lifeless body had hit the floor, the other three tangos in the room had been incapacitated or otherwise neutralized.
The smoke from the door-breaching charges hadn’t even begun to clear yet.
Voices began ringing out from down below.
“Clear up!”
”Clear down!”
“Medic! Get the medteams in here! Hustle up!”
Omega 2 let out a ragged breath, feeling the adrenaline starting to drain away. She flicked the safety on her laser carbine and stood it up against the nearest patch of intact railing. She shifted position, allowing her legs and booted feet to dangle over the edge of the catwalk, and taking the tension off her knees, then slumped forward, folding her arms over one of the horizontal bars and resting her chin on her crossed wrists.
…
“You all right?” Omega 1’s familiar voice called to her from a short distance away.
”Closer than I would have liked, Lynn…” was the muffled-sounding response.
“Yeah… I heard your comm trans.”
“I didn’t have a clean shot… the hostage… she wouldn’t stop squirming… she was drifting right into my firing line… if I’d pulled the trigger a split second later than I did, those would be -her- brains plastered all over that wall.” Omega 2 swallowed, feeling a lump in the back of her throat. “How’d everyone else make out?”
“Alpha racked up a few outside… Delta got two or three in here… Minsc took a hit, but nothing major. He’ll be all right.”
“We got lucky.”
Major Falynn Llyr, Omega 1, gave her sister’s shoulder a gentle, affectionate squeeze. “Yeah, Im… I guess we did…”
