Emily looked around at her new home for the next fifteen months. Warner Airbase was a large joint service air base. Warner Airbase was home to special warfare command which included both the Third Army Ranger Battalion as well as the Seal Team four when they were not on deployment somewhere in-country. The marines had their spec-ops here as well but they were on deployment somewhere in the south. The Navy Seal Team Three had a hanger on the other side of the base where they kept their exoskeletons. Emily was dying to take a walk over to the Navy guys clubhouse and check out their exoskeletons. The Army Special Forces, The Jolly Greens, also had a small building where they had set up command and control to do their thing.

Warner looked like a normal base back stateside. It had normal looking streets with normal looking buildings. Really the only difference was the barbed wire, the heavily armed gun towers that ran along the base outskirts, and the cement roadblock labyrinth all over the place. That and there was nothing green but the palm trees. It was all white and tan everywhere. Warner was located in northwest Afghanistan in the green safe zone just west and slightly north of Kabul.

Emily’s barracks was an ugly brick three-story building. Emily found it strange that she lived in a normal barracks. In the movies, the troops lived in the rough in tents or crappy man-made sandbag bunkers. She knew that when they were deployed they would be living in the rough but still she found it strange.

“But the palm trees are nice.” Emily thought, looking at the two tall trees that sat on either side of the entrance to the barracks.

She had just come back from eating lunch at the chow hall. The line to get lunch was insanely long. She had to wait nearly thirty minutes to get a crappy cold pulled pork sandwich, chips, and a cookie. To make it worse she had to go alone. Jan was in medical doing whatever medics do when they are not deployed. Wonder’s squad pulled detail duty and spent the day cleaning and fixing stuff.

Emily walked by a picnic table where a bunch of headquarters people who were talking to each other about conspiracy theories.

“I'm telling you, Lori, it’s all about the war profiteering. This war is about rich guys getting richer.” One of the guys said to the woman excitedly.

“And the civilian flights? Are you sure?” The woman called Lori asked the man who was talking.

“Ducks, you tell her.” The man said leaning back.

The man called Ducks looked up from his book and smiled. “Welcome to the story, Lori.”

Emily kept walking past them to the Ranger building. It was a plain two-story building with a really large garage in the back where most of the company was hanging out doing stuff. Emily adjusted her pistols holster on her waist. Her pistol didn’t have any bullets in it at this time but she did have several fully loaded clips that she could slide in at a moments notice. It was strange to always go armed and know that this wasn’t training and the bullets were live rounds. She tried not to think about that she might be shooting real people soon or that they might be shooting at her. She thought that the Halloween feeling would go away once they were settled in but it was still there. She was wearing a Beretta .50 cal pistol with armor piercing rounds guaranteed to penetrate low B immunity Brute, or lower, protective skin.

Her rifle was an M9 20mm a handheld machine gun with Raufoss Mk 218 Ap rounds. The rounds exploded on contact sending a jet of molten lead to burn through a Brutes protective telekinetic shield. It worked all the way up to Brutes with class B immunity. If anything it will knock around Brute no matter what the immunity class they were. Back at Ranger school, they assured her that she was capable of withstanding the rounds for near indefinitely.

The smallest round designed to kill a brute with a class A immunity was a super killer (SK) round which was 120mm in size. There were two things needed to penetrate a brutes immunity, velocity and penetrating power. Any less than 120 mm lack either the velocity or the penetrating power. Even over the shoulder-fired weapons systems lack either one or the other. The canons capable of firing an Sk round required some form of a mounting system like on a tank. There was bulky portable carried canons that had to be put together in the field and attached on something hard enough withstand the recoil.

The rifle was locked up in the office when she was on duty and the armory when she was not. Command was worried that someone might shoot themselves if they went around carrying their weapons on a green base. Technically she wasn't supposed to be carrying her pistol around either but she was on duty.

She entered the Ranger building from the front door. Inside was a small waiting room with a reception desk that was blocked off with bullet resistant glass. She entered her code on the lock and went to the desk. Jackson was currently sitting in front of the desk in front of the security monitors.

She dropped the bag she was carrying down on the desk. “All they had was either pulled pork sandwiches or chicken sandwiches. I got one of each for you guys.” Emily told him sitting down beside him.

“Ah man, you're late. Jonah got us some frozen pizzas from the base exchange. We still have some soda left if you want some.” Jackson said smiling.

“Coke, Mountain Dew or that Bull stuff?” She asked him.

“Taurus of course.” Jackson replied leaning back pointing to the red and black bottle of Asian Super Caffeine drink. “Guaranteed to keep you up forever and with just the low low price of pissing blood.”

“I'll pass.” Emily said frowning at the bottle.

“Some super soldier you are.” He replied. “Afraid of a little kidney damage.”

Emily smiled at Jackson and grabbed a radio from the recharger and put it on her belt. “Anything up?”

“Yea bunch of brass came by just after you left. Jonah thinks we might have a mission coming up. He says that there is a lot of chatter going on in the shack.” Jackson said smiling. Jonah was an Air Force combat controller and he operated as a scout/spotter in the Ranger Company.

Emily felt the Halloween feeling zing through her body. Any mission that came up would involve her as the company's primary mission was to find and kill enemy Main type supers. The Rangers primary missions in Afghanistan was search and destroy. Most of the time that meant going house to house searching for enemy supers but occasionally they would be sent somewhere pretending to be a normal company sending out patrols as bait to attract an enemy super. Either way when they got enemy contact from a Main Type Super then she would be deployed to bring the enemy supers closed enough for the SK crews to go to work.

“Cool. Keep me updated.” She told him as she left to wander around the building patrolling. In the Army, they call her patrol fire/security watch.

The first floor of the Ranger building was where the enlisted worked. That included that garage and armory out back. The second floor was where the low-level brass and the high enlisted had their offices. The third floor was the Headquarters floor. The third floor was where everyone who was important had their offices. Sitting smack dab in the middle of the third floor was the Command Control Center (CCS) or as its normally called the shack. The shack was basically what you saw in the movies. It had a bunch of computers, some large screen TVs, and the wall was covered in maps. It was the communication hub the Rangers.

Emily wander around the first floor for a while then headed up to the third floor. She was supposed to make her patrol as random as possible so she told herself that's why she skipped the second floor. She took the stairs instead of the elevator. The third floor was boxed shape with the Shack taking up the middle of the floor with a hallway surrounding it. The door to the shack was on the opposite side of the building from the elevators and across from the CO's office.

All though she had never been inside the CO's office she had heard that the Colonel's office was really three offices. The first was his secretary's office. Then to the left was his private office and the office to his right was a conference room where you went if you got in trouble.

She wandered by the office and looked inside. The Command Sergeant Major was sitting on the corner of the secretary's desk on the phone. The Colonel's secretary, a Sergeant whose name Emily couldn't remember, was on another phone. The door to the Colonel's office was closed but the door to the conference room was open with a bunch of people inside looking at a map that was laid out on the conference room table. The Command Sergeant Major looked up at Emily and frowned at her. She quickly looked away and made her way past the office walking fast trying to look like she was just doing her job on fire watch.

Her watch was four hours long and by the third hour, she knew that the company had a new mission. “So from what me and Never overheard, First Platoon if going to be deployed for an extended amount of time may be a couple of months. The second Platoon might be deployed in reserve.” Jackson said into the phone. He was talking to his friends in the Second Platoon.

Emily sat down beside him pulling her radio off her belt and putting it on the charger. She grabbed the trash from the trash can and replaced the bag before putting the trash beside the door. She grabbed her rifle off the rack behind the desk and slung it over her shoulder and then sat down waiting on her replacement on fire watch.

“Yea man the old man hasn't put us on ready alert yet but it's coming. So I think no one will be leaving until morning maybe early afternoon.” Jackson said to his buddy on the phone. Emily was watching the clock waiting on her relief when the red phone went off. “Hey man, I got to go. I'll talk to you tonight.”

Jackson hung up the black phone and pick up the red one. “Front Desk Corporal Jackson speaking.” He said into the phone. He was quiet for a few minutes then he said. “Yes, sir. Ready Alert for all platoons.”

Ready Alert meant to get your crap together and be ready to go. Emily jumped up but then stopped herself and forced herself to sit back down. She wanted to get her stuff but she had to wait until she got relieved from duty. With a frustrated sigh, she leaned back in her chair and waited on her relief. Once her relief arrived she left to get ready. Her first stop was to the armory to get more ammo. She had two clips in her bulletproof vest and one in her rifle. She wanted eight more clips to fill up her vest pockets.

The Armory Sergeant was an odd but nice man in his late thirties who like to talk too much. He has always had some cool war story that he wanted to share. They were cool stories but she didn’t have the time to listen to them today. She collected her ammo adding a bunch of extra clips to throw into her to-go bag. She ran to her room in the barracks and collected her backpack adding a few snacks then followed the crowd to the garage where they mustering. Emily found the Sec Ops Platoon and sat down next to Jan and the rest of the combat medics. She got a couple of nods and a few smiles.

Emily sat with her platoon for nearly a half an hour waiting before the platoon sergeants walked in. Someone turned on a projector showing a map of some valley with four Forward Operations Bases (FOBs) along the ridgeline on both sides of the valley at the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the middle of the valley snaking its way west around the mountain range was a fairly large farming town that had a road that ran right into Pakistan.

“Attention!” One of the Platoon Sergeants called out. The entire Company stood up at attention as the Colonel walked into the garage.

“At ease.” The Colonel murmured walking to the front of the platoon. In the movies, everyone always had a chair when they were going over a mission brief. Emily found that in reality they just sat on the floor. “This is in the Barmal region a little over a hundred miles south of Kubal. The town is called Patsah Melah. The northern mountain range is referred to as Spera and the southern range is know as Gayah. Patsah Melah is right on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The road that starts in Patsah Melah is called the Spera-Gayah highway and it leads right into Pakistan. One Caliphate State (OCS) terrorist group has been known to use this highway.”

The Colonel paused to drink some water. “The Afghan Army has set up a checkpoint at the border. We have an army unit in these four FOBs. The northernmost FOB called Flores and along with FOB Nguyen, they designed to prevent the OCS from coming over the Spera mountain range. While the southernmost FOB called Gibbens and with Bennett, they are there to do the same for the Gayah range. These two FOB's here also provide overwatch support for the Afghan army checkpoint right in the middle of the pass here.” The Colonel said pointing at the two FOBs closest to the road on the map.

The Colonel paused to point out the FOBs on the map. “Gibbens has been hit four times in the past two weeks by some sort of IED. All they know for sure is that whatever is hitting them is coming in from at least a half mile away and there is no sign of a propulsion device. Intelligence believes that this might be a Brute who likes to throw an IED at the FOB. All the attacks come at night. The attacker is gone by the time any air support arrives. Also, the gunfire locator cannot distinguish what direction the IED is coming from so this gives credence to the theory that the explosive device is being thrown. Analysis from the explosion indicates the IED is some form of hydrogen gas explosive device that sets stuff on fire very well.”

The Company grumbled at this. “Who uses hydrogen gas as bomb and where the hell do they get enough hydrogen to make bombs? Emily thought to herself. “There are so many better ways to make bombs why use hydrogen?”

“Ok, that's enough quite down. At this time we have no idea what type of hydrogen solution they are using to make this bomb.” The Colonel said to the crowd.

“How about a dirigible?” Someone shouted from the crowd.

Everyone laughed at that one even the Colonel but he quickly raised his hand to quiet the Company. “We are going to relieve Gibbens with first Platoon and Bennett with the Second Platoon. We are going deploy all three SK Cannon crews surrounding Gibbens in bunkers and with patrols running nearly around the clock. We are going to have our Main, Never stationed at Gibbens in case this bastard get tired of throwing things and wants an up and close personal visit. We also going to have air support close by from McAlly air force base until we get this sucker. The third platoon will be stationed at Gardner Airfield in reserve at ready alert in case we need more guns on the ground. We leave at zero four thirty tomorrow so get some rest. If you have any questions bring them up with your platoon sergeants. Let's get this bastard before someone in the ASBL (American Super Baseball league) decide to draft this guy. That is all, dismissed.”