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Verdict - Family Ties - Chapter 3

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    The courtyard was mostly empty, barren.

   
    It was completely devoid of anything of notice, save for several corpses. Tall buildings covered in many windows surrounded it, and at the far side stood a huge, intricately designed building. A bright, golden cross stood at its peak, shining in its brilliance. At the bottom of the huge building lay around 6 U.N soldiers, surrounded by a well fortified wall of concrete and rubble. The soldiers were prepping and checking their equipment. A large, high powered rotary plasma cannon stood in the center of their blockade. At the top of the building, a lone figure lay casually on the roof, staring at the sky. "Weird." She thought to herself, as she continued gazing into the dusty, cloudy abyss where the stars once lay visible. "Why even have a place like this? It doesn't serve any real purpose, does it?" She mused. She picked her head off of the destroyed concrete and stared at the glimmering golden cross that loomed above her. "Well... I guess it's pretty to look at." Her train of thought was quickly interrupted by an incoming transmission. She stood up and put a hand to her ear. "Yeah? What's up?" She started.

    The voice of a young man spoke through her communications device, "Our scouts report a massive assault is about to happen on our forward positions. I doubt they'll make a full breakthrough despite the size, but you better be ready to take down anyone that manages to sneak their way to your position." The man briefed.

    "Or, y'know, I could just kill them all while they're preparing, if you'd be so kind." The woman replied.

    "Not a chance. There's literally thousands of them." The man stated.

    "Then give me a team or something. Come ooon... it's so boring over here, I finally get to see some action again and I don't even... well... see any action." The woman replied, acting childish. "These guys got everything under control, just let me go out there and-" The man interrupted her.

    "Look. Blake told me to keep a close eye on you, and I'm starting to see why. I know you're not a one man army, and those men down there are the only thing preventing the enemy from attacking our HQ. We don't have the manpower right now to replace them, and if the enemy gets past them, we could be in serious trouble. I need you to give them support. This next assault could have enemy specialists leaking through the cracks of our defenses, and who knows how many. Our men at the front can handle most of those leaks when they happen, but not all of them. This is the last time I'm going to say it, do not move from your current position. Understood?" The man was clearly getting very frustrated.

    The woman gave out a long and frustrated sigh. "Fine. There better be stragglers or I'm gonna be really upset, Wolfy."

    "That's Wolffe. I'm not your dog." Wolffe replied.

    The woman had a quick laugh. "Oh, now I'm gonna call you that aaaaaaall the time."

    ...

    Boss and Jeg were walking down the steps of the destroyed building. Boss looked up to see the rest of her squad all around the destroyed table, waiting for her to brief them on the plan. She motioned for everyone to huddle around her and quickly pulled out the digital map. "Ok, we're here." Boss pointed at the far south end of the field of rubble. "The offensive is going across the entire field, and our little gun emplacement is over here." She pointed to the northern side of the destroyed field, after the field there was a long series of narrow pathways that led to a large courtyard.

    "I'm assuming the large cathedral is where our gun emplacement is?" Jeg remarked, getting a quick nod from Boss.

    "Ok, so the plan is to move with the eastern side of the assault, if we make it to the far end then we'll be right next to the alleys that lead to the courtyard. If we give our men some support we might be given a good opening to move into the alleyways. From what little intel we had, these ways are almost completely unguarded, they've chalked it up to lack of man power."

    "I'd like to chalk it up to lack of brain power." one of the recruits, Sergei, stated, getting no reaction.

    Boss made a quick sigh, "Honestly, the only thing we've got here is to move with the soldiers through this several mile stretch of no man's land until we reach the end, then pray to god that we all survived, followed by killing or sneaking our way through whatever defenses they have at the far side. And there we go, we're at the courtyard, and we'll plan everything out there once we get there." Boss put away the digital map and looked around. "Alright, any questions?" A pause of silence filled the room. "Alright, let's move!"

    Walking outside was a completely different world for Kasumi. She completely forgot how loud the outside world was, when compared to the occasional earthquake and subtle ambiance of remaining inside the destroyed building. Countless soldiers moving left and right, bodies littered the streets around her as they soldiers moved into position. Large, deafening cannons fired off into the distance. Theta squad continued to move forward, through the various emplacements their fellow soldiers had set up. Finally, they reached the front line, where countless soldiers massed in the trenches for the assault. They all got into 5 rows of 2, with Kasumi at the back with fellow recruit Sergei. Boss was at the front with Jeg. She turned around and tried to scream over the artillery, "This formation isn't going to do us much good once we start moving, just keep running forward, even if you can't see us anymore, just keep going! You'll find us, or what's left of us!" Boss shouted. Kasumi, now more nervous than ever, looked to her left to see Sergei. Seeing her nervous state, Sergei gave her a quick thumbs up, followed by a pat on the shoulder, in an attempt to calm her down. He didn't speak, probably because no one would be able to hear him over the sounds of war.

    A minor commissar, signified by his blue coat and hat, was at the front of the trenches making a speech. He was too far away for any of them to hear, until finally, the commissar slowed his speech, indicating he was finishing. The commissar pointed forwards, "CHAAAARGE!" he roared with all of his might.  Thousands of soldiers cried in unison and leapt into the barren, ash ridden abyss of the no man's land.

    Barely able to hear Boss, Kasumi saw her hand gesture to start running, and so she did. Thousands of soldiers ran out of the trenches into the field, it was an almost breathtaking sight. Kasumi ran for her life, barely able to keep track of her squad mates as smoke and fog overtook her vision. She looked to her side to see Sergei, he noticed her as well and gave her another thumbs up, followed by a motion to keep running. Looking forward, Kasumi saw explosions going off left and right from artillery fire and land mines, thin, blue streaks of plasma flying around her. Parts of the mist glowed various colors from all of the fighting going off in the distance. Kasumi saw countless other soldiers, some overtook her, some she overtook in her sprint, others fell dead from enemy plasma fire. Others still went flying from enemy artillery. Eventually, a shell exploded right behind Kasumi as she ran. The explosion sent her off her feet, before Sergei quickly grabbed her and picked her up. "We have to keep moving!" Kasumi could barley hear him before they both continued the desperate sprint.

    Sergei, and the occasional random soldier, were the only things Kasumi could spot in the blinding mist that had come up from the intense amounts of shelling and plasma fire. She continued running, for what must've felt like hours. Her legs tired, near misses of plasma and artillery sent feelings of searing heat across her entire body. Eventually, her senses dulled from the intense assault, and she only looked straight as she ran, praying to see her fellow squad mates through the mist. Another near-miss explosion rocked her off her feet, sending her flying down into a crater. She felt almost paralyzed, and could barley see. Kasumi started looking around, seeing the countless soldiers move past her, plasma and fire bursting all around her. Kasumi felt she couldn't take it, and laid down in the crater, waiting for it to end. As she lay there, she felt someone grab her by the shoulder and pick her up. Her vision was still incredibly blurry from the explosion, and she couldn't quite see. It was a fellow soldier, who started pointing to a small, destroyed building that was close enough to be visible. With what little strength she had, she began running towards the building. The side of the building facing them was completely blown off, whereas the rest was almost fully intact, making it perfect shelter. She finally made it inside, where she proceeded to collapse from intense trauma and exhaustion.

    When she awoke, she looked around to see several blurry soldiers standing around her. Her vision finally cleared to see that it was the rest of Theta squad. A huge wave of relief overcame Kasumi, almost drowning out the still continuing assault. Finally realizing the battle was not over, she jumped up. "H-how long was I out?" Kasumi asked in a panicked state.

"Only around 15 minutes, luckily. Just enough time for us to come up with a plan." Spike said.

"P-plan? For what? Kasumi asked. Spike quickly pointed out of the window towards the enemy's side of the field, one of the alley ways was visible as the fog had begun to clear up. There was a large enemy gun emplacement, controlled by two U.N. soldiers, and guarded by three more. The gun was a large double barreled automatic plasma cannon, perfect for ripping apart vehicles and whole squads of infantry. The emplacement was near the alleyway, but not completely covering it. "S-so... what do we do?" Kasumi asked nervously.

"Well... there's a squad of soldiers held up in a makeshift trench not too far from here. If we uh..." Spike stuttered before being interrupted by Cosmos

"Wait for them to do a suicide charge." Cosmos stated grimly.

"Y-yeah. That could give us the distraction we need to move past that emplacement." Spike ended.

"Suicide charge? Why would they...?" As Kasumi asked this, she saw the veterans become visibly uncomfortable. The recruits looked as confused as she did. Before Kasumi could fully ask her question, she realized something. "O-oh! Wait! D-did everyone make it, is everyone here?" Kasumi asked, still a bit hazed to make her own headcount, or fully distinguish everyone from their armor.

"I counted 9 a few minutes before you woke up. I do not know who we are missing." Jeg said.

"S-Sergei! Where is that goof, did he get lost?" Ivan realized, suddenly starting to panic.

"Sergei was with one of us recruits, but I was with Grigori, and Ivan was with Andrei, so who..." Vladimir started, Theta squad quickly realized and turned to Kasumi. She could tell they had grim looks under their helmets.

"W-what?" Kasumi asked, getting more and more nervous. She started looking at them before peering down. She stared at her lower left leg, and the left side of her chest. They were stained with large amounts of blood, and her foot still had bits and pieces of human organs stuck to it. Kasumi made a quick scream before falling down, she started to hyperventilate.

"At first, I thought most of that blood was yours, after a closer looks though..." Jeg started, before being interrupted by Kasumi.

"T-that can't be him, I-it might be someone else!" She screamed in denial.

"Whether or not it's him, Sergei is either lost, captured, or dead." Boss said. She looked at the other recruits, who held their heads low. "Sergei's gone. I'm sorry, but... we need to move on." Their moment of silence was quickly interrupted by the war cries of fellow soldiers in the distance. The large emplacement began firing, the loud cracks as it did so were deafening.

"That's our cue! Let's go!" Spike shouted, as everyone ran out of the house. Sneaking past the emplacement was incredibly easy when it and all its soldiers were preoccupied dealing with the onslaught coming its way. As they finally sneaked their way past the emplacement, they were right next to the alleyway. Kasumi turned around to see the slaughter unfold, and turned back to grab Boss' attention.

"Boss, w-we're behind them, can't we flank them? H-help out those soldiers?" Kasumi requested of Boss. She turned around, Spike looked uncomfortable as Jeg shook his head. "T-theres only 5 of them!"
The recruits looked ready to fight, but Boss motioned for everyone to keep moving as the assault behind them continued. Kasumi looked back, the U.N soldiers stood unhindered under the mass of gunfire. She saw one of them get hit multiple times by oncoming fire, and continue fighting unhindered, firing off into the fog. Unnerved by this, Boss grabbed her shoulder and motioned for her to keep moving.

"Kas, I think it's about time I told you the one thing they didn't want you to know back in the academy." Boss said, in a very grim tone.


"Numbers aren't everything."
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