‘Boss, I’m not going back to 2 Para.’
The Old Man looked up from the desk to glare at Psycho.
‘You don’t have a choice, Sykes, you haven’t served out your court-appointed term yet. If I drum you out of the Regiment, I assure you, you will be going back to 2 Para.’
‘Any options, boss?’ Psycho asked, worried.
The Old Man just continued glaring at him.
‘Well, it seems your little stunt impressed our American friends,’ the Colonel said, finally. He tapped a folder on the desk. ‘It’s RTU or this.’
Psycho glanced at the folder. It had the words “Raptor Team” printed on the front.
2020, Nellis AFB, Nevada
‘Well, you look a lot better than you did the last time I saw you,’ Psycho said.
Barnes shielded his eyes from the glaring desert sun with his hand. He was surprised to see the Brit still wearing a leather jacket in this heat.
‘I wanted to say thank you,’ Barnes said.
‘No issues, mate. Call sign Prophet, right?’ Psycho asked. Barnes nodded.
‘I think it’s someone’s idea of a sick joke,’ Barnes said. He was sure the nickname had come from his now highly-classified after-action report from Columbia. ‘Nice tattoo. Very subtle.’
Psycho ran his fingers over the highly-stylised winged dagger tattooed on the back of his shaven head. It had only just finished healing.
‘Thought I’d wave the flag, y’know, whilst I’m over here on secondment with Delta Farce.’
Barnes nodded, smiling.
‘I’m sure we can find some way to impress Supply And Services.’
‘Should be a laugh this, though, right?’
‘Michael? I’m going to see if I can help you,’ The voice said.
You can, the wretched thing that had once been Michael Sykes thought. You can kill me.
Chance — Part 2
Prophet leapt out into the cold Siberian air, high over the frozen street. Searchlights from the VTOLs tracked him in the air. There were so many lines of light on the suit’s Heads-Up Display from the threat tracer, showing possible bullet trajectories, that his vision was almost washed out. He shut down the suit’s proximity alarm in mid-air due to information overload. With a thought he wrapped the lensing field of the suit’s stealth system around himself. To the CELL gunmen in the street it looked like he’d disappeared. Then they opened fire.
That’s it, you draw their fire my son, Psycho thought as he dropped out of the attic window stealthed. Above him he could hear the spec ops team they’d sent into the attic find the line of claymores he’d set at head height. He landed on the street hard and noisy. He needed a moment while the suit’s systems stabilised him. The noise of his impact hadn’t mattered so much. Everyone in the street was looking up and firing at Prophet’s aerial show. Above him he saw one of the VTOLs drift over the brothel. Dealing with the pain, he squeezed the detonator for the remote explosive charges they had set in the roof.
Prophet had a moment to register just how much he was getting shot when the roof of the brothel exploded. The fireball and debris shot into the air, engulfing one of the CELL VTOLs. The overpressure wave from the force of the explosion hit him in the back with the force of a steam-hammer, as the burning wreckage of the CELL VTOL dropped through the brothel. The explosion’s concussion wave drove Prophet through the wall of the building opposite. The suit’s ionic electroactive polymer liquid armour, incorporating colloidal-doped ceramics and a copper nanolattice in an ethylene-glycol bucky-ball matrix not withstanding, and his dead flesh not withstanding, being hammered through a wall had really hurt.
He was in a large dormitory room filled with beds. The room was illuminated by the searchlight shining through the windows from one of the remaining VTOLs as it hovered outside. As Prophet staggered to his feet, the suit starting to mend the damage he’d just received, the furniture and much of the floor disintegrated in front of his eyes as it was torn apart by the VTOL’s cannon fire. Visible now, Prophet started to run. The VTOL was keeping pace with him, firing as fast as it could. It looked like the walls themselves were being eaten away by the cannon fire.
Psycho was keeping an eye on his energy as he continued moving stealthed. He reached under the APC and attached a REX. All eyes were on the VTOL firing round after round into the building opposite the collapsing brothel. He moved rapidly to the next APC and then did the same. At the third APC he was kneeling down next to it attaching the REX when the lensing field failed and he became visible. He stood up to find a terrified-looking CELL gunman staring at him.
‘Yeah, there’s two of us, sunshine,’ Psycho said as he crossed the distance between them, quickly drawing his combat knife.
Getting hit by the VTOL’s cannon felt like death. It felt like it should have burst his body and scattered it around the building disintegrating around him. It spun him around. Red warning signs from the HUD told Prophet he couldn’t take another series of hits like that. Prophet reached the hole in the wall where a window used to be and jumped out over the street. He had a moment to register the look of panic on the VTOL pilot’s face. The floor of the building he’d just jumped out of collapsed from the cannon fire, and clouds of dust and powdered debris shot out into the night air.
Prophet landed on the armoured glass of the VTOL’s cockpit and immediately started slipping off. He pulled his fist back and hammered it into the glass with all the power the suit could muster. He punched through the windshield and opened his fist. The now slightly-misshapen grenade fell out of his hand and into the cockpit. Prophet slid off the front of the VTOL.
The kid had died quickly at Psycho’s hands, knowing the terror of inevitability in his last few moments as he had desperately tried to bring his Feline SMG to bear. The kid’s death had left the nearby CELL soldiers in no doubt as to Psycho’s presence.
A number of them were turning towards Psycho. There was a Bulldog light transport vehicle in the middle of the street. Its heavy machine gun was being turned towards him. Then one of the VTOL’s exploded in mid air. For a moment the CELL soldiers were distracted. Psycho leapt high into the air, squeezing the detonator for the REX charges.
Prophet landed on the frozen mud street in trouble. The suit was still trying to fix him. Fortunately the CELL troopers, like him, were more concerned with scrambling out of the way of the VTOL that he’d just dropped a grenade into. He ran and threw himself forwards as the wrecked VTOL hit the ground. Secondary explosions blew CELL personnel into the air. Flying debris tore more apart.
The force of the explosions sent Prophet tumbling across the street into the side of a Bulldog LTV. There were more red warning signs from the suit. He was taking fire again. His speeded-up perception, provided by the suit’s systems, made the HMG tracer fire coming at him look like a slow and graceful arcing light show.
Then further down the street, next to the burning brothel, three of the CELL APCs exploded.
Psycho was in the air as the three APCs exploded. He’d placed the three charges on one side of the vehicles. The force of the explosion flipped them. Sent them tumbling into the street, crushing more CELL personnel and damaging other vehicles.
I live for this Psycho thought as he landed in the back of the Bulldog LTV. Air-stomping it. Hammering his power-assisted foot down so hard it broke the back of the vehicle’s chassis. Two of the six CELL troopers in the back of the Bulldog were catapulted out of the vehicle and into the street. Psycho grabbed one of the remaining CELL troopers and threw her across the street into a wall, hard enough to break her back. He kicked another one. The force of the power-assisted blow powdered the trooper’s rib cage and sent him flying over the side of the Bulldog, his body tumbling like a rag doll. One of them scrambled over the front of the Bulldog to get away from the nanosuited killer. The fourth one was too slow. Psycho punched him in the base of the back as he was trying to escape. He couldn’t hear the spine snapping over the gunfire and screams.