[TheFightingSpirit]

Incursion Fourteen: Genocidal.

General Bryant slammed the door of his office. The base was getting too loud. Too much interior activity not enough exterior. Not enough defeating the damn Black Water.

The Cross Rangers… the spanner in the works, the one reason he couldn’t focus solely on enforcing his quarantine.

He coughed into a handkerchief and hacked up a wad of black ichor. The Cross Rangers insisted on petty squabbles and distractions, and wasting time he didn’t have.

If the wall were to fall now no one would be prepared, but woe betide anyone who mentioned the wall to him.

Bryant cleaned himself up and checked his new eye patch was in place. He took up his cane and pushed on towards the hanger. The troops would be waiting for him to give his verdict on the captured deserters.

If he could have had his way, he’d execute them. How dare they forsake the cause and side with the betrayer, Captain Austin.

Oh but he couldn’t have his way, could he. A decorated military general wasn’t allowed to kill people. Not anymore. His job, despite being trained in the art of death, along with countless others before and after him, was to keep peace, not disrupt it.

General Bryant was too visible, but Black Cross was not...

o0o

The general arrived to reverent silence, just as he liked it.

His elite guard—black body-suit wearing soldiers with their polished full visor helmets looking like something straight out of science fiction—stood in a one-deep line marking the boundary between the general and the riff-raff of the lower ranks.

“We are at a crossroads, my friends.

“Since the first fragments hit ground south of here, since the first mutant attacks on civilisation, we’ve been reacting. Refugees turn up on our doorstep. We build them temporary accommodation. One too many mutants break into the city. We build the quarantine wall. No more. From now on we’re done reacting. We will take more proactive, preventative steps in ending this conflict. This plague will not get the best of us.

“But, ah, we have a problem. Don’t we?”

A cheer went up in the assembled mass. “Yeah!”

“The Cross Rangers. They purport to be heroes. They say they have the country’s best interests at heart. But what exactly are they doing? A few days ago they foiled an attack at a school. Commendable, yes, but insignificant. Before that, they attempted to defeat a giant mutant on a path toward the city… of course, we solved that problem for them.

“They. Are. Amateurs. Picking away at the surface. Getting in our way.”

He paced across the makeshift stage of hard-cases and paused to watched the soldiers before him. To him they represented this country’s last bastion of hope.

“Ridiculous amateurs with ridiculous power. If they won’t stop using their abilities, then we will take it from them. I believe they’ll come for us. Their leader Lieutenant Catherine Moses, now she’s joined forces with Captain Maria Austin, has a vendetta against us. She believes we’ve kept her out of the loop, she believes we are keeping secret an arsenal she can use to effectively defeat Black Water.

“They must not get in the way of real progress.”

Before General Bryant could continue, the chug of helicopter blades sounded from beyond the open hangar doors.

The privately registered helicopter, hovering just on the edge of the runway, twisted on its axis revealing its profile to those in hanger. Standing there in the open cabin doors were the morphed Cross Rangers and a combat ready Lt. Moses.

The elite guard, the only permanently armed personnel on site, fanned out around the lower ranks. As they levelled their semi-automatics at the rangers, the general jumped forward to join them.

He armed his morpher and pushed through the front lines.

“See?” he called back to his troops. “I said they’d come for us, didn’t I. But are we ready for them?”

A roar washed through the crowd.

Bryant grinned, and turned back to the rangers. He raised his voice to be heard over the rotor blades. “What do you hope to accomplish, Moses? You’ve hardly picked a quiet spot to infiltrate the base, have you.”

They leapt from the cabin doors and the helicopter peeled away in to the distance.

Lt. Moses stood in front of the Cross Rangers. “I never wanted to infiltrate quietly, sir. Consider this a demonstration.”

“A demonstration of your foolishness?”

“No, a demonstration of yours.” She slipped a com unit onto her ear and settled the microphone into place, and called, “Now!”

Almost half of the lower ranks turned on their fellow soldiers, pulling hand guns from their beneath their uniforms. More troops poured into the hanger; Maria’s squads freed by yet more dissenters within the general’s own ranks. The landlady had done more than get them a ride.

“Cross Form!” Bryant growled, morphing into his black and white magi armour. “Guards. Seize the traitors.”

The elite guard swung about face the troops, training their semi-automatics on those they’d once called colleagues. They may have been better equipped, with more experience and better training, but the lower ranks had numbers on their side.

A standoff.

“The thing is General, we’ve all seen what you’ve become the past month or so.” Lt Moses wagged her finger as she spoke. “Yet you refuse to admit to it.”

“Why do you insist on destroying the effectiveness of the Agency you championed?” Yellow Cross stepped forward. “Betraying me or the soldiers beneath you is … nothing in the long run, but you’ve betrayed the people. How can you possibly enforce the quarantine if you’re running on a skeleton crew?”

Black Cross sighed. “If you came here to fight. Let’s just do it.”

It was hard to say who fired the first shot, but the elite opened fire not long after, cutting through men and woman loyal and rebel alike and the rangers leaped to their rescue.

o0o

The fire fight, along with the Rangers and Black Cross, soon spilled out into the hallways and the rest of the base.

While the others dealt with Black Cross himself, Yellow Cross, now reunited with her squad mates, accompanied Catherine in fighting through great swaths of Black Cross’ men.

They came upon the labs only to find them empty.

“Damn it.” Catherine slammed her fist against the door. “He’s cleared it out.”

They both knew what they had to do next, but neither wanted to be the one to order the soldiers under them into sure danger.

Yellow Cross said it first, never one to mince words. “We’ll have to hit the armory.”

o0o

Somewhere along the line the rangers lost sight of Black Cross. They holed up, along with about ten or twelve regular soldiers who’d joined them from the other side, in a smaller secondary hanger.

Red Cross activated his suits com line. “Maria, report.”

A grumble came through first, followed by “The labs are empty. We’re going to hit the armory.”

“We should regroup and hit it together. How far are you from my position?”

“Too far no doubt.”

“Have you even checked?”

“I’ve got some good soldiers here, Robert. And it’s like you and Catherine are always telling me. In the field is no time to be arguing. My squad can hit the armoury in minutes flat. We’ll clear it out, rearm and contact you then.”

“What if-“

She cut him off. “Yellow Cross out.”

He turned to White Cross. “Maria and Catherine are going after the armoury without us.”

“Bryant’s figured that out and is headed there already, I just know it!”

“I tried, Allison, I tried.”

Their next move passed unspoken between them, but before they could file out into the corridor, a single black-suited Elite soldier strode into the hanger, his boots thumping against the concrete floor.

There he stood, silent, unmoving.

“Well?” said Red Cross addressing the soldier. “Got anything witty to say?”

The Elite unlocked the clasps on his helmet and lifted his visor.

“There’s no one in that thing…” Blue Cross gasped.

Beneath the Elite Guard soldier’s helmet was an empty space, pure pitch black.

White Cross readied herself for a fight. “What the hell’s Bryant doing up here?”

“Nothing good, I’d say” said Green Cross.

The Elite guard strode forward. The soldiers ranked up in front of the rangers trained their handguns on the headless enemy, and opened fire.

The bullets that struck home bit into the guard’s chest armour, knocking him back a step. He faltered only momentarily, before advancing once again.

“Uh…” Blue Cross mind called back to the ranger’s last fight in the halls and hangers of Agency HQ. “Anyone remember those animated corpses we fought that first day?”

Green Cross paused and made a sound not unlike dry-heaving disgust. “Animated co- you’re not saying that’s a zombie, are you?”

The soldier’s let off another round in an attempt to pin the Elite guard down a while longer.

“The last time we fought here, the uh, Black Water got in via some dead Agency troops... so …” Red Cross cringed beneath his helmet, and sucked air in through his teeth. “Let’s just go with zombies, shall we.”

The guard crouched suddenly and sprung forward, bowling the soldiers over like pins. Shots fired wildly as they tried to get the situation under control.

White Cross ducked and weaved through the melee and grabbed the ‘zombie’ by the neck. She twisted in an effort to pull him off his feet. The guard leaned the other direction and flipped White Cross onto her back.

Red Cross and Blue Cross seized the guard by the arms. Green Cross gathered water around his fist and punched him in the gut. The Elite guard took the hit without flinching, spun and tossed the red and blue rangers into Green Cross like they were nothing.

The three rangers tumbled across the room.

“I hate this guy already,” said Red Cross, picking himself up.