Chapter 29 – The Eastern Base [Part 2]

“Sir,” an assistant voice comes through the projected hologram

“What is it.” the man responds, not looking up from the reports he was reading.

“There are people at ground floor waiting for you,” Answering calmly “they’re from the entertainment district.”

Still casually reading the reports “What is it about?”

“They said something about the deletion of certain sets of data,” pausing a second, she then adds, “They seem to be furious. Sir.”

“Send them away,” The man tells the assistant, “Schedule a meeting to be held in a fortnight.”

“A fortnight sir?” the assistant questions, “I don’t think they’ll be very happy about it.”

“A fortnight,” the man repeats sternly as he throws the reports he was reading down onto the table and cuts their communication.

Leaning back, he gives one big sigh before typing upon the table and waving a certain image away, establishing communication to The President.

“What is it Bryant.” He receives an instantaneous question.

“The Zulu,” Bryant sighs, “He’s alive.”

-----------------

Zulu

-----------------

‘So,’ Ten asks as she sits upon the dash of the aircraft currently being flown by her, ‘What do you think?’

Loading a rifle, unloading it and then reloading it again, “Of them?” he indicates the screen currently playing a live feed, “Or the aircraft?”

‘Both’ Ten tilts her head

“The aircraft,” he says still unloading and reloading the standard assault rifle, “It’s an aircraft,” He answers not knowing what to say about it, “But them,” he indicates those he sees on the feed, “They are more competent than I thought they would be.”

‘This aircraft was handmade by four!’ ten responds as if she was insulted.

“What’s so special about it?” Not looking back to her, and still loading and unloading the rifle, “I see nothing but a cockpit and a 3metre square of empty space, capable of projecting and playing holograms.”

‘I,’ she squeals loudly then pauses, ‘don’t know…but four made it and hid it! It has to be special!’

“Catch!” Zag shouts throwing a pistol and short sword at him.

Catching the pistol, but missing the sword, “What are they?” he asks as he picks up the sword and inspects them both thoroughly.

Handing a set to Zed, Zee and Zig, “A pistol and a sword.” Zag shrugs.

“Really?” he questions, not knowing if she really meant it.

“Can’t you see?” Zag states lifting her sword, “A sword,” then lifting her pistol, “And a pistol,” making a face as if wondering if he was alright, “what else can they be?”

“But.”

“Not everything Zag makes is like the katana, or that rifle,” Zed cuts in, swinging his sword, “It’s just better if we know where our weapons come from.”

“Can you find anything special?” Zulu asks, still loading and unloading the rifle.

Seeming to search frantically, but staying still on the spot, ‘No,’ Ten answers, ‘but why would she hide it if it wasn’t special!’

“You’re really asking why she did that.” Finally satisfied at his ability to load and unload the rifle, “You’re really wondering why she does things?” Zulu straps it to his right thigh muscle and places three magazines into three slots on his shirt, and four upon his pants.

Mumbling inaudible words, Ten quickly changes subject and states ’12 minutes till drop point.’

Equipment update

Knife

A. Rifle V1

A. Rifle V1 Ammunition – 192 shots

Pistol

Pistol Ammunition – 12 shots

Grenades – 4

Katana

Katana Ready in 5:00

Spinning the pilot seat around, Zulu faces the controls and the Video feed appears partially upon the windscreen.

Give me manual control

‘Aye captain,’ Ten imitates a salute and floats to hover just behind his left shoulder, ‘Why is it that you’ve stopped having long mental conversations with me?” she asks and points out, “You know you’re just wasting your breath.”

Taking controls of two sticks, one on his left and the other on his right, “Muscle memory” Zulu comments pulling the aircraft up, and making it ascend, “And I’m more used to it.”

Pressing a few buttons upon the sticks, “And I am sorry about before,” he states again as the aircraft picks up speed.

‘Its fine,’ Ten responds agitatedly and sits on his shoulder, ‘You didn’t know’

Going silent, Zulu keeps the aircraft ascending and continuous to increase its speed, having already broken the sound barrier, the G force he feels is intense, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

‘3km out!’ Ten shouts, making Zulu press a few more buttons and rapidly bring the aircraft’s speed down.

“What are those?” he asks as he finds there to be planes just ahead of him.

‘Planes,’ Ten answers plainly

“I know that! I meant what are they doing here?” tilting his sticks left a bit, his aircraft tilts left, “Didn’t the airdrops get cancelled?”

Waiting a few seconds, “Ten?”

‘Give me a second!’ she exclaims then proceeds to say, ‘It’s a bombing run.’

“Why didn’t you notify me?!” Zulu asks immediately in annoyance as he pulls up alongside one of the planes and looks over at the pilot, “Call it off.”

‘I’m sorry!” Ten states, “done, but!’ sounding afraid, ‘They’ve already started’

Looking away from the pilot and up ahead of his own aircraft, he rapidly increases his speed whilst dropping altitude at an extremely steep incline, “Show me Delia’s location!”

A green overlay appears upon the windscreen, then flicks off and Delia’s location appears with red markings alight. Upon the Video feed, still being displayed, he sees a person with no helmet moving dirt away and them in a hole.

Katana Ready

Pulling the aircraft into a level flight, he stops his decent and continues to increase his speed.

‘You’re below 300 feet!’ Ten voices out, concerned, ‘Less than 100m from ground level!’

Jerking his controls right, he sends his aircraft into a sudden barrel roll, then left and right again. Narrowly avoiding green projectiles rising high into the air.

‘What are you doing?’ Ten shouts trying to take back control of the aircraft, but finds that she is unable to without permission.

“You’ve,” he states pulling back hard on the two sticks and pressing two of the four pedals at his feet, “Never seen me,” making his aircraft come to a complete halt, with its nose pointing upwards, “In combat before,” he pushes a different pedal and flicks a few switches, “have you?” he asks sending the aircraft vertically upwards, like a rocket, at Delia’s location.

‘I’ve seen four!’ ten exclaims over the horrendous roar of the engines.

Smiling at the reply and pressing buttons that were just left of the left stick, “She was always the most reserved,” he lets out a small laugh as the windscreen begins its targeting system.

‘Reserved?!’

Flicking a few more switches on his right, “I’m glad that Zag kept this plane’s layout the same.” He states calmly letting lose eight missiles and opening fire.

With each missile hitting its target less than 50metres away from his aircraft, eight of the bombs that were being dropped explode with it in air, sending unavoidable shrapnel directly to him.

Passing through the explosion and pieces of metal, Zulu keeps his fingers on the triggers upon his two sticks. Ensuring that he hits the other bombs still dropping with its bullets. Causing more explosions and more shrapnel to hit the aircraft he flew.

With red lights blaring all around him, ‘Wings compromised!’ Ten shouts as the aircraft takes a sudden turn to a direction he did not want to go.

Flicking switches, pressing buttons, pulling sticks and pushing the pedals, Zulu finds that his back engine worked perfectly, but he had no control of where he flew. He was like a metallic tube, flying diagonally upwards.

Looking up through his windscreen, he curses silently as he watches the last two bombs slowly slip by him to the location he was trying to protect.

[table=#899ca4]Eject[/table]

[table=#899ca4]Eject[/table]

[table=#899ca4]Eject[/table]

Doing as the windscreen instructed, he releases his grip upon the two sticks and pulls a cord just between his legs. Causing the windscreen to blow out and him to fly out with the seat.

“Why?” he asks Zed as he practices sword movements learnt from Zig, “Don’t we ever use the army made equipment?”

“Military equipment,” Zed answers disassembling the pistol, “Isn’t always reliable,” tilting his head at Zag, who was absent mindlessly humming a tune, “Zag there is always reliable.” Then remembering what happened when they left him alone with her, “Reliable when it comes to our equipment.” Zed frowns

‘You blew up the plane!

You blew up Four’s handmade plane!’

Ignoring Tens apparent sadness of the aircraft’s loss, Zulu searches his seat for the parachute.

‘How could you do that!’

‘Four spent months making it!’

Where’s the chute?! Zulu questions not being able to find the cable for it. Where’s the chute?!

After a few more seconds of searching and not finding it, There isn’t a chute is there Ten?

Waiting a moment,

‘Apparently not!’

He hears her say it, as if he deserved it.

Pressing both his hands against his forehead in frustration, Zulu quickly calms down and sighs. Unclipping the buckles that strapped him to the seat, he kicks himself away from it and falls without a chute.

1300 metres

Staring down at the ground below him and with the help of his head gear, Zulu sees the devastation that the bombs had caused upon the land. Craters that measured 20 metres in diameter could be seen littered randomly all over the place. Slugs still fired, but there were a lot less than previous, planes above him were still present, but their numbers had dwindled quite a bit and were still performing evasive manoeuvres.

Incoming

“Bats” he mutters as he sees cloud of smoke rising up at him. Changing his centre of gravity, he allows himself to unbuckle and equipment the Assault rifle strapped to his thigh muscle.

Opening fire at the cloud of black smoke rising towards him, “Identify targets!” he shouts above the rushing air pushing against him.

Through his eye piece, it switches view, from that of standard operating nothingness of day time, to night vision then to infrared. Staying upon infrared, it picks up the bodies of the Bats and outlines them in the smog of black smoke.

With each of them outlined, he sees that the creatures were ignoring him, seemingly not caring about one man falling without a chute. Staying come as he takes aim and in turn makes each of his shots hit, six of the eight bats fall back down, through their own smoke before he is forced to reload.

Going through the motion of unloading the rifle, Zulu spots one of the last two fly back and perform a shriek with no sound.

More Incoming

Finishing loading his rifle, he opens fire at that one first, stopping its shriek and making plummet down alongside the other.

Spinning around to get a view of what’s above him, he finds there to be debris falling a mere 10 metres away from him, and sees other bats flying to his location. Spinning back around, he clasps both his arms to his side and dives diagonally away from the fiery debris. Number

36

Running through the possible courses of actions he could take in his mind, he quickly decides upon one and spreads his arms open, creating more friction between himself and the air rushing up at him, allowing him to slow down and steady his aim.

He opens fire upon those closest to him, using the recoil of his rifle to stay in a controlled spin. Giving him the ability to fire all around him.

600 metres

14

Unloading his forth clip, a bat claws at him, forcing him to deflect it with the rifle and lose it in the process. Ultimately cursing at the loss of it he closes his left eye, as now being surrounded by more than a dozen of them the black smoke made it impossible to see via normal means.

Force into a close combat situation whilst free falling, he sees first hand at just how large these creatures are, he who stood at a height of 6 foot 2 was easily toweredby one of these hunched, wolf faced beasts.

Thinking on his feet, he grabs another one of the beast’s claws as it strikes at him, finding it to not only feel leathery, but dusty at the same time, making it difficult to hold on and quickly forcing him to pull onto it in order to be dragged close to its main body.

The creature seems to shriek, but again makes no sound, as it uses its other limbs to cut and strike him off, but finds that with each time it struck, Zulu simply grabbed onto that limb and went with it, thereby avoiding and reducing the creatures ability to keep stay stable with its wings.

The other beasts, upon seeing this occur move in to help, constantly circling the falling pair and moving to strike at his exposed back. Only to have it backfire and have him come to them.

With the cloud of black smoke surrounding them, what was happening in the fight was chaotic in a sense. He had to keep on his toes, grabbing the limb just above the claws at every strike, and constantly move.

200 metres

The beasts back suddenly stop trying to attack him and back off. Leaving him only with one that he holds.

Knowing full well that the creature’s ability to fly with him upon it was hindered, Zulu makes his way from clawing limb to clawing limb up to its neck and holds it from behind. As if riding the creature, he holds on tight and when his head gear indicated only 50metres to ground, he brings out his knife to stab it in its throat, thereby making it go limp and stopping its struggle to be on top.

Crash landing in one of the many craters that had trees surrounding its edge in such a fashion, he feels the jolt of the ground through the soft flesh of the creature, hearing bone snap and seeing blue coloured blood splatter all around.

Bone Fractures detected

With black smoke still surrounding and thus hiding him, Zulu rolls of the bat, coughing up blood as he does so and lays on his back staring up at the 13 remaining still flying 100 metres in the air.

In a circle, they surround and look at him as he looks up. They flap their wings only to stay in flight, but they stay 100 metres high and look down upon him, upon him who lies there breathing heavily.

If it were not for his infrared ability, it would have looked like 13 balls of black smoke encircling him. If it were not for their bodies being outlined, these creatures would have been annoying as hell to deal with.

‘Get up!’ Ten sounds out in the seemingly quiet situation he is in, ‘get up!’ Ten says again frantically floating around him, ‘There are more incoming.’

Getting to his knee, he grits his teeth as he gets onto his legs, only to stumble and force all his weight upon his right leg.

Healing in progress

His left leg was completely shattered, and was nothing more than dead weight until more of the bone in it was fixed.

Looking back up again, at the 13 bats still encircling and flying above him, he waits and does not move.

‘What are you doing?’ ten questions his unmoving self.

“They’re talking to each other.” He replies, “They’re talking to each other and we cannot hear them.”

‘Talking about how to kill you!’ Ten shouts what she deems to be the obvious.

Nodding at her answer, “I want to see.”

‘You want to see how they kill you?!’

Smiling at the statement, and how stupid it sounded, “Yes.” He pulls the knife out of the creatures back and move to sits upon the sharp slope of dirt created from the bombing, “I also want time for my leg to heal.”

‘Aren’t you here to save the base!’

“It will be easier when I am able to run.”

Finding no way to retort his last rebuttal, Ten goes quiet and watches the 13 flying beasts as they wait.

Only half a minute later does he hear the sound of tree branches snapping, and feel the wind shift, as if announcing their arrival.

’12 Tri-legs’ Ten counts as they appear from one direction at the top of the crater.

Getting to his feet, “I’ll only have one leg,” he smirks taking out his pistol and getting ready to move.

‘You might want to turn red?’ Ten says hoping that he does.

Staring at one of the 12 Tri-legs as it stares back at him, “There is no need,” he replies with a smile, leaping 10 metres towards it just as the wind dies.

Grabbing hold of it via the neck, he slices its throat with the knife and uses it as a pivot point in mid-air, changing his trajectory to leap at another whilst firing his pistol lip empty at those lined up. Stabbing the one he flies at in the slits of its helmet, the lands with his knee upon its collapsed chest.

Only now with two dead do the rest of the tri-legs react. With him so close and in the middle of them, they don’t open fire and chose instead to go for the hands on approach, of bring out their black retractable blades.

Leaping again at another, Zulu reloads his pistol and opens fire upon the six he had previously shot at, hitting the same location as previous, only this time killing them. With knife and empty pistol, and in a proximity to close to do anything, he prevents the rest from ever swinging a full swing. Stopping some swords with his pistol as a shield and stabbing/slicing at them all.

In less than a minute he finds himself with 12 bodies around him. In less than a minute the so called threat was disposed off, and he finds himself sitting again in the same slope of dirt, waiting for his leg to heal.

‘They’re that weak?’ Ten asks as the 13 bats again talk in silence.

“No,” he answers, “they were just not ready.”

This time however, he waits for a couple of minutes, a couple of minutes he surely needed.

‘Four Six-arms’ Ten states as they appear from the same direction of the previous 12. ‘you are going to turn red this time yes?’

Getting to his feet, Zulu finds that he is able to put some weight upon his left leg, but also finds that it’ll snap and break again if he tries to put his full weight upon it. looking at the four that appear looking at the 12 dead bodies, He sees that upon each limb, their back and torso, these creatures had some hard shell like features, but its joints were empty and flesh.

Looking at the faces of the four Six-armed creatures, they look right back at him. The head of these creatures, were not covered in any of the seemingly hard materials its limb or other parts of body were, instead it seemed to have an abstract, but almost human like head. Dark in colour, or maybe it was the helm that it wore that made it seem dark, he could not tell.

The eyes however, there were not that of a beasts, they were not crazy, nor were they monstrous. They looked human, they held intelligence and he could see them thinking.

Human

Are you playing a joke on me Ten?

‘No!’ Ten states seemingly equally surprised

Then an error. He dismisses his headgears reaction to the creatures. These things were not like him, they were not human.

Dropping both his knife and pistol, he places his hand against his arm guard, down low, to slowly draw out his orange katana. First making the hilt form in his hand then pulling it out in an arc like shape, allowing the blade to slowly materialize from hilt to tip.

‘What are you doing?’

Be quiet

With it in his hand, he breathes in and breathes out and breathes in again, changing his eye colour to that of the colour red. They four that watch him discard their own projectile weapons and bring out their retractable blades. Each of them carrying six, all similar to one another, all sharp, black in colour and seemingly releasing a cool blow of chilling air.

‘You turned red’

Stop talking

Stepping away from each other, the four move slowly and deliberately around the Zulu, and he lets them do so, keeping an eye on them and allowing them to stand equally spaced apart in a square like position, with him in the centre.

‘You let them surround you!’

Shut up, Zulu states to Ten with an extremely violent tone.

“Are you ready?” Zed ask as they surround him in a square like formation.

With a short straight sword in his right hand and a pistol in his left, he nods in response.

Smiling, Zed lowers his sword and points his pistol to the ground, tilting forward a small bit and lowers his head, low enough to acknowledge that he was ready, but not so low that he could not see him.

Zee, Zig and Zag do the same from their respective positions. Copying the movement, and performing what Zig taught him, he follows suit, lowering himself to each of them individually, and when he pays his respects to Zag, they all stand up straight, straight sword and pistol at the ready.

Once in position, the four of them cross their own arms in front of themselves and tilt slightly forward, with a lowered head, low enough that they seem to acknowledge him, but not so far down that they cannot see him.

Like a ceremony, Zulu stands perfectly still then points the katana down with one hand to his side, a posture that Zulu 3 had taught him, performing a small bow to each of them, and when he bows to the last one they all look back up.

The air is silent, the slugs have stopped firing. The planes above still flew, but the bats had left them. It was as if every one of them were watching this fight that was soon to begin.

Then they started, and they started fast. Four of them jump forward, whilst he jumps upwards. High into the air, as if he knew that this was how it was going to play out, because this was a fight he had had before, and it always started the same way.

Clashing sword, and firing his pistol. He dodges and slashes and dodges again. Breathing heavily, he focuses on the movement of them and does his best to try and control his own movements.

“Remember!” Zed shouts with immense concentration, “This isn’t about who is the fastest, or who is the strongest.” Firing his pistol at the location He was about to land, “This is a game of chess and endurance.”

Looking down calmly at the four beasts below him, he analysis the steps he needs to take. Not being able to alter his course of movement in the air, he changes his centre of gravity to be up on his chest, allowing him to fall back down arm first with katana at the ready.

Swing the blade at the first, it is stopped by six of the black swords, surprising him, as the blade has never been stopped before, but not enough to make him stumble. Altering his centre of gravity again, he places his feet of the arms of the beast, kicking off whilst slicing upwards to make it jump away, allowing himself to backflip and land on his feet, and face the four, now in front of him.

To those who did not know this fight, it would seem like the 4 would have the advantage, to those that were not skilled, this would have been true, but these four and him were skilled in swordplay, true though it maybe, they had the numerical advantage, the 4 however had the extra burden of not getting in each other’s way, of not striking the wrong target.

“Keep moving!” Zed states in annoyance as he comes crashing down from above, and barely misses “If you don’t know where to go, just run away!” pausing a second with pistol pointed at him, “Run away and come back later.”

Jumping back towards the trees as two rapidly close the distance upon him, Zulu blocks three blades and dodges the rest, smiling whilst doing so. He sends on diagonal downward slash back at them as he twist his body to barely move between two tree trunks to place his feet against a third.

“Never lose sight of those that you’re fighting,” Zed continues speaking to him, making him search and find that he has lost Zig.

Smiling as he pushes himself of the tree trunk and back through the two trees he had just come through, he slashes at the two he passes, but is again, blocked. Having past two of them and again not being able to land a clean hit, he continues his rush forward at the two behind them. Diving into a roll, he dodges their blades and gets to his feet to send one slash at their backs.

However them having six blades, prevents him from landing a single cut, forcing him again to jump away.

For a time, this pattern continues, he slashes and dodges, he hits but is blocked. Under this constant barrage of moving blades that goes from open space to dense trees and back to open space, Zulu comes to understand why these creatures were feared. They were skilled.

In a perfect scenario neither side should win, in a perfect scenario, all of them should be equal in strength, equal in speed, equal in intelligence. In a perfect scenario, both sides should lose strength and simply give up.

This however was not a perfect scenario. The Zulu, though out handed (quite literally) was better than them. He was faster, though not by much, he was more adept. Each of his strikes was more accurately placed, and each of his steps landed on the ground with more precision.

Searching rapidly for Zig as he runs through the empty town, he fends of attacks coming from Zed, Zee and Zag. Always just barely getting away without a scrape, but he knew that he was being driven into a direction they wanted him to move in. He was being herded.

Sending an upward kick into the chin of one of the creatures, his smile turns into to a laugh. A loud and haunting laugh, one not because he did not feel danger, but because he felt at ease. He was driving them into a corner, he was now controlling their movements and the four knew it.

They felt that with each blade strike their co-ordination was weakening, that each strike their arms jarred a little, their reactions became tiny bit slower, their thoughts became a tiny bit more dis-organised. They felt fear for a mistake and this fear became pressure to not screw up, in turn leading towards a downward spiral that resulted in them becoming slower and less in touch with one another.

“You’ve lost control of your movements!” Zed states firing the last shot in his pistol, allowing Zee to send a horizontal slash that forces him into a building. “And in turn.”

“Ha!” he shouts as his blade comes down onto the flesh of a hand, across on a leg, diagonally upwards on an arm, and horizontally across a neck, before a kick to the chest to both push the body and enable him to jump back away from another of the creatures rapidly trying to slice him.

With three left he quickly jumps back once he lands, into the creature that tried to slice him, rapidly closing the distance, to that which is too close to use a blade. Elbowing the creature in its chin, he follows it up with a knee to the neck and a vertical slice down, splitting it in half, to roll in between the two halves and dodge the third creature.

Allowing his blade to continue its trajectory, he releases his grip upon the hilt, to catch it again as it flies just past his right shoulder, allowing him to jump and spin as he gets up. Sending the blade just between two left arms of the creature, and separating its upper half from its lower body.

Getting hit in the back by one powerful swing, “You’ve died.” Zig says appearing from within the building, “You’re lucky I only used my leg,” She states as she places her knee on his back, pinning him to the ground.

Looking towards the last of the four, standing a good 12 metres away from him. The laugh he had been unconsciously making ends. His smile disappears, and he again remembers that this, though similar to his past, was not training.

Giving one quick swing of his Katana, he flicks the black slimy blood that had accumulated upon it, before bringing it up in front of him and waiting for the last Six-arms to come to him.

The battle now had dramatically changed, from a 4 vs 1, where the focus for them was teamwork and him which was separation, to nothing but a simple duel, where the better skilled would win, and one he knew he would win.

Leaping forward at the creature as it was not leaping to him, the battle is fast and easy. Learning the trick to deal with these beings, he prevents the creature from being able to use a full swing, getting so close to it that they can literally kiss.

The creature tries rapidly to open a gap, but is unable to, until Zulu suddenly stops, to perform an upward swing, cutting off its three lefts arms in one clean blow.

“Good try,” Zed commands him as Zig turns him over to place her sword on his neck and knee upon his chest, “For your first time, it wasn’t bad” he continues to say as Zig pulls her sword away and he offers a hand, “But you’re very predictable.”

Slicing the last arms off the Six-arms, it falls to its knees and Zulu’s blade comes to rest on its shoulder. Looking down into its eyes, “You fought well.” It moves its mouth, as if speaking, but no sound comes out and then waits, as if it were asking to be finished off, accepting its end. Sliding the blade across and through its throat, thereby doing as he thinks the creatures asks, Zulu catches a little bit of a smile upon its mouth as the head falls to the ground.

Coming out of that battle without a single scratch, Zulu looks up, and feels something like regret come over him. It reminded him of a crude training exercise he once had.

‘That took only twelve minutes!’ Ten states floating just ahead of him, "And you haven't used the sand yet."

Seeing the bats start to fly away, “This wasn’t an invasion.” Zulu says out loud, letting his Katana dematerialize

Healing completed

A/N

Argh, how do people write so much. I find actions scenes to be the hardest thing to write. How other authors have so many of them, i don't know. Its hard T_T (but fun i guess)

I've read this quite a few times, i don't see any mistakes, but if you do find some contradictory things from this chapter and previous ones, do tell me. I've started to write things down, its finally too big to keep it all in my head ^.^

I tried putting in past and present, seemed like a good idea to me as i was doing it, do you guys think it works? [i am after all experimenting on this site (learning what i can and can not do in writing)]

That being said, Hope you all enjoyed it! Thank you for reading ^.^