"Sometimes, when you're in a dark place, you think you've been buried, but you've actually been planted." - Christine Caine

Operation Grand Slam (D+5.4 hours)

A second gust of howling wind rocked the Mary Somerville on the port side. Whisper struggled with the controls to keep the zeppelin level.

“What the actual fuck?” Tauru growled.

Indigo grabbed the spyglass and looked through.

“Boss Kitty plowed through two apartment buildings,” he shouted.

“Fuck this shit, we need to get her,” Tauru said as he pulled out his brass knuckles and fixed it to his hands.

Then Heather’s message came through the internal mental network. Tauru, Whisper, and Indigo listened as Heather recounted the message from Yellow Bird. Triumph wined.

“What do you want to do? Go after Boss kitty or call off the mission?” Indigo said as he poked his head into the zeppelin’s control room.

“Naturally, we go rescue Boss Kitty, I won’t let her get captured again,” Tauru said.

“But if what Heather says is true, every Goldie will be gunning for us,” Indigo said.

Tauru and Indigo bickered back and forth in a heated exchange, their voices grew louder with every second. Amidst their argument, Triumph, filled with excitement, began barking incessantly.

Meanwhile, Whisper gazed out the window, her attention fixed on the sprawling cityscape below. As she attempted to focus on formulating a plan, the communication network buzzed with messages and ideas from T.C. and Heather, overwhelming her senses.

The relentless noise from the zeppelin's machinery and the chatter of her companions became an indistinct drone in Whisper's ears, amplified by the confines of the closed compartment. The cacophony of sounds and flashing lights overwhelmed her, rendering her momentarily paralyzed. Clutching her arms tightly, she rocked back and forth to ground herself as the chaos engulfed her.

Slowly, Whisper began to numb herself to the chaos, her mind drifting back to simpler times when following orders was all she needed to do.

Amidst the turmoil, her memories brought her to a time when clarity outweighed the confusion of the crushing weight of the moment.

TRADOC Battle Zone – City of Elzelwang

First Lieutenant Whisper and two kill teams entered the city from the northernmost section of the town under the cover of a rocket barrage. The plan she and her team practiced weeks before. In the darkened night the only light from the city came from the fires from the burning vehicles.

Their teams probed for weak spots and not discovering any, she had commanded her platoon forward. As per combat doctrine, she divided her teams into four four-man squads and slipped into the city with a minimum of resistance.

M-73 rockets screamed overhead and toward suspected enemy positions.

Instead of continuing further into the city, the rockets changed their trajectory and fell downwards.

The point man screamed down as the squad dove for cover. A pair of rockets detonated 100 meters away. Flecks of rocks and debris hit Whisper in the face as she looked up from the concrete barrier.

“Fucking spotters are blind,” Whisper snarled. “I’m going to gouge out their eyes with a spoon when this shit’s over with.”

The soldier next to her adjusted his helmet and answered with a half-hearted chuckle. The point man peeked up from where the rockets had landed and circled his finger in the air. He stood up and began to push forward. Whisper and the rest of the team copied him and rose to their feet.

Whisper checked her scanner, her team was 500 meters from the city hall, their primary objective.

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The two kill teams ran through the city, using cover from the building and burning vehicles as cover. The point man halted the two squads, once the city hall was in view. They fanned out in a line along the skyscrapers overlooking the limestone city hall. A courtyard separated them from the building.

The point man gave a wave, and Whisper signaled with a thumbs up. The first team bounded forward as the secondary team took up a defensive position alongside a hedgerow and concrete barriers.

Orange tails from the rockets screamed overhead. Then exploded in midair. A hail of shrapnel rained down and a team was gone.

A machine gun barked from the windows ripping through the edges.

“Shit, they are using kinetic weapons, intel said they were using the high-tech stuff,” she said. “Switch to kinetic dampeners!”

Whisper peeked around the corner to see if she could discover the location of the machine gun nest that had her team pinned down. A distinctive whine of power generators roared, as the building shook. Bits of limestone shook loose from the building. Her team fired back; bright orange streaks of laser fire struck the building.

A white streak of light tore through the night air, temporarily blinding them. Another streak of light followed, nearly hitting her where she last fired.

“Fucking lasers are giving away our position, switch to slug rounds,” she ordered.

The railgun fired again, striking two more of her teammates through the concrete barriers. The point man, an older man with a grey bread ran towards her and slid under the cover of a concrete barrier.

“They are tracing our laser fires back, we need to switch weapon modes Lieutenant,” he shouted.

“I know, I just said…” Whisper shouted back.

The machine gun fire stopped. The courtyard was silent. Whisper pulled out a pocket mirror and checked the surroundings. From behind a hedge, she saw the flash of a knife. The blade touched One of the soldier’s neck leaving a red ink imprint.

The soldier’s wrist communication chirped three times followed by a solid beep. He sat up and looked at the display screen.

“Beheading? Really?” he said rolling his eyes. “Sorry, Lt.”

The soldier waved and disappeared with a fizzle. Soldiers appeared wearing dark blue uniforms with masks. The point man was stabbed in the chest, the blade stopped by his body armor, by an opponent half his size.

“Kidney failure? Military-grade body armor my ass,” he said staring at the chirping wrist display.

The soldier stabbed him again. Red paint ran down his uniform where he was knifed in the heart. The point man smacked his wrist display screen.

“Cardiac failure, there we go,” he gave a salute to Whisper. “See you in purgatory status Boss Kitty.”

With a loud fizzle, the man was gone. Whisper sat up and rested against the concrete barrier.

The soldier who had stabbed the point man took off her mask revealing a youngish teenager-looking girl with white hair and purple eyes. She crouched down and stared at Whisper.

“Field Marshel Estelle of clan…” she started to say.

“Yeah, yeah I know who you are, White Witch,” Whisper said in a huff.

Whisper turned away, refusing to look at her in her face.

“White Witch isn’t a name I am fond of, I assure you,” Estelle said. “Is this someone else’s operation?”

“No, it was mine. That’s all you will get out of me,” Whisper said as she casually stared back at Estelle. “If division green-lit my original operation I could have easily routed your battalion with more troops.”

“Battalion? We’re down to 15 people,” Estelle said cackling.

“What?!?!” Whisper said snapping to her feet. “You mean you are holding off two divisions with only 15 soldiers?”

Estelle stood up and offered her hand in assistance to Whisper, but she waved it away.

“Why are you bothering with taking Elzelwang? This city offers little if any strategic value,” Estelle asked.

“We were expecting to sweep your battalion off the map,” Whisper said.

“The Dropp Bears have been trying for seven days, unsuccessfully I might add, to take this place. What does your operation orders say anyway?”

Whisper sighed deeply and stared at the darkened sky.

“Victory conditions state that we need to route the enemy and push them into the mountain range.”

Estelle smiled happily and poked Whisper in the nose.

“In retrospect, it appears that my compatriots were afforded a seven-day window to fortify their positions within the foothills, erecting defensive structures and delineating strategic kill zones,” Estelle said gazing skyward then back to Whisper. “Conversely, it seems that the victory conditions of your mission were ignored by you and your superiors. Word of advice keep your eyes on the prize and ignore superfluous distractions.”

A series of rockets flew overhead, their tails leaving an orange streak in the sky. Estelle tapped her communications earpiece. Her eyes glowed bright purple and faded back to normal.

“I believe your relief team is coming in from the south, how predictable...I’m en route,” Estelle said pushing a microphone closer to her throat. “Hopefully, I’ll see you around?”

“I double that,” Whisper said as her face soured.

Estelle half curtsied and swiped her blade across Whisper’s throat leaving a red streak. The wrist communicator device chirped and then beeped. The display read: decapitation.

***