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Stage 2:

Location 1: Downtown Barton Town.

An old granite building. It was dwarfed by the newer brick, and steel buildings on either side of it. Right int he heart of the town, massive stone steps leading up to the door, flanked by two lions, stone bodies roaring throughout the ages. The place was close, locked up, as it had been since 8 PM. No lights, no signs of life.

That is, until They approached. 4 men made their way up the stairs, no lights shone on their forms. They seemed strange, humanoids bundles in the dark. Each held a weapon, a short assault rifle.

The front one bounded up the last step, holding up his closed fist as he inspected the door.

Just a simple alarm. Nothing to it. Who bothers giving a library state of the art security after all? He fished around his body, pulling out a hand sized, slender object which he slapped up onto the granite wall.

Location 2: Aekea West Hills

Late night in the small, new town. It was a fairly busy night, over here in the ER. The Memorial Hospital waiting room was cramed. People with everything from coughs, to bleeding open wounds. The night staff was overworked, struggling to keep up with the influx of patients. Old men bitched and moaned about how they should be taken care of first, children sobbed while mother's nursed their injuries and fretted. Fat middle aged guys sat there, wondering if this was hell, or just training grounds for the DMV.

Two ambulances were screaming up the street, sirens wailing as the screeched into the Hospital Parking lot, and up towards the Emergency exit.

Loctaion 3: ????

"Visual Confirmation?"

"All craft are in formation Captain."

"Any signs of the enemy?"

"No Sir."

"Fox 3 should be breaking off, confirm."

"Fox 3, Confirmed."

"Time to Target?"

"6 Minutes Captain."

Lightly the captain pulled back on the stick, sending the craft into a shallow climb. He pushed the throttle open just a little more, imagining the stars, the moon, were getting just that much closer.

Nice, deep, slow breath. He released, the worry oozed out. Just the calm, collected pilot remained.

"Time to target?"

"4 Minutes Captain."

Dead Strike Corp. HQ (Underground) - Personnel Quarters, Level C, Room 106

Miseri lay on her bed finishing up the last chapter of a rare out-of-print book she had gotten from the Barton Town Library. While the DSC did have an on-site library, as part of the Ancient Archives Department most of the books there were in long dead ancient languages that no one knew anymore. And even the books she could read were all about military strategy, Logistics, Tactics... after a while with the whole damm library only filled with books on the varies areas of military science all the books from there tend to get a bit... boring.

She closed the book and put it along with the others she borrowed, and had a look at the clock. 21:53. Well it was still early so she got up and left towards the Level C Kitchens for the leftover pizza in the kitchen fridge. All she had in the mini-fridge in her room was micro-film, vodka, and beer.

[Talon Hyoji - Perimeter of Marine Barracks]

The armored figure left through the front gate of the barracks. Walking the streets of Barton was a calming exercise this late at night, but as he passed the library something didn't seem right. The front door was swinging lightly in the breeze.

Talon walked up the front steps slowly, stopping at the entrance to inspect the area...

Location 1: Barton Town Public Library

The door was open just a crack. Just over 2 inches, the french doors, both opened inwardly. There were impact marks around the locking mechanisms where The RAM had been used, and the whole thing looked beaten up and twisted enough, wood splintered off, that the doors would have to be replaced before they'd ever close again. Inside, it was dark. No lights. Strain and strain to hear, and you might just pick up the occasional scuffing noise, very faint. Whoever was in there was making an effort not to be too loud.

Of note, there was a small slim black box attached to the wall to Talon's right, about one foot from the doorjam. It looked small, about the size of a cell phone. It was hard to make out anything on the box, at least in the dark like that, without any vision enhancement.

But, if you did get some light, or some damned good eyes, or really close, you could see it had but a single sliding switch, located on the Top edge of it. It seemed to be stuck to the wall with some quick use adhesive.

Location 2: Aekea West Hills Hospital

With a few whistles and hand signals, the team was forming up. The 5 spread out, taking up positions where they could to secure the bottom floor of the hospital. Two took up positions behind the reception desk in the front room, where all the sick kids, skinned knees and old complaining people were. They were keeping low, trying to remain behind the cover as much as possible. Their rifles were sweeping the room constantly. Most people panicked, started whimpering and calling out "No, please!" and "Don't kill me!" or even the occasional "Take me but leave my kids alone!" you know, like all those damned hostage movies. Like such things really ever made a difference.

Two more took the Emergency exit. One taking a length of chain, wrapping it around the doorhandles. Not like he had a lock, it was just something to slow the enemy breeching. Everyone back there was out, dead or wounded. They were already moving stuff around, making barricades across the hallway there, scouting out their firing positions for when the s**t hit the fan.

And the last one, well, he was making his way towards the Freight Dock, just one they had behind the hospital, were all the drugs and supplies were dropped off at a regular schedule. This late it was empty. The man smiled, found some corner away from the windows and the frieght door and holed himself up.

Meanwhile... well, you'd love to know what those other two are up to, wouldn't you?

Location 3: Cranky Old Men.

"That thar plane's runnin' without lights. See it, right there. Blockin' out the stars, eh?!"

The man looked about ready to fall into the grave. Probably one of thsoe old timers that rant about how kids don't have no respect these days.

He was pointin' it out, jabbing at his wife, an overweight old bird who looked just as old as him.

"Some jackass gonna crash like that. Come on, give me that phone!"

"What are you going to do?"

"Call the damned FAA. Tell them they got some young punk out there... Maybe get his flight liscence revoked!"

Yup, so the old man spotted the craft, and made the call. The Operator was no help, after all, governments were closed this late at night. Nope. So he got to bounce around, make some phone tag, leave messages, and finally get in touch with the GPD about it.

(UFO spotted (Not Aliens, just Unidentified Aircraft) in the North Western seas, by a cruise ship going towards some nice Alaska type location. Number, Unknown. Type, Unknown. Approximate speed "Fast", altitude unknown. Bearing "North by Northwest".)

[Don't get ahead of yourself?]

Location 1: BTPL

Through the doorway wasn't entirely clear. As he peeked through with his low light amplification, something nice and BAD appeared there. Crouching, inside the door, about 10 feet from the entrance was one of the Intruders. His tac helm clearly stated something more than I Didn't Want to Pay a Nickle Late Fee. Including a nice set of what appeared to be multioptics goggles.

They were locked right on Hyoji.

And more importantly, the man was holding a pistol rock steady, trailed right at him. The angle was just right, Talon could see right down the barrel, it had to be pointed right at his nose.

(Time to Mission Target in here, 4 posts. Does not include Extraction. )

Location 2: Aekea West Hills Hospital.

The sharp pfft of a silenced rifle sounded. Just one shot. It was in the reception room, a middle aged woman was left with a hole where her forehead should have been, a nice, clean execution shot came from the man on the left behind the counter.

"She had a phone on... locals know we're here," he whispered to his compatriot behind the desk.

He nodded, and tapped once on the side of his helm, "Hurry it up. We got inbound, civvie defense most likely."

There was an affirmative grunt coming over the commlink. The men stopped working on fortifying the emergency admission area, and look up their firing positions on either side of the hallway, kneeling behind two overturned tables, nice steel ones. Their rifles were pointed right at the doorway.

Even the man in the back room snapped to attention, crawling up into a spot where he'd have a good firing platform for anyone trying to come through the back's vertical coffin.

Location 3: Orbital.

Beep, beep, beep!

They weren't quite yet in position, but close. The clock went off, the attack was supposed to be starting now. The Weapons Officer in the back looked around, straining to see if he could spot the first shots.

"Eyes Forward!" the pilot barked out. "I'm going in for the first run. Stay sharp, I'm on Unfriendlies."

The weapon's officer nodded mutely, his attention going back to the console in front of him. Several small targets came up. Soft targets, or at least, nothing that he had to worry about the weapons being too ineffective against.

The pilot held a steady course. His head was constantly moving, scoping out everything he could out here on the dark side of the planet. He could see one large shipyard, and large ship in the distance. Far enough though that he believed them to be safe. Their sensors wouldn't pick them up. And well, it wasn't extactly easy seeing a black spot in space.

He smiled.

The attack started. The Weapon's Officer pushed down on the trigger.


Around this time, whatever lacky was in charge of the keeping watch on orbital assets was probably shittin' a brick. Something horrendously BAD was happening. Several dozen sattelites just went offline on the Dark Side of the planet. Some of the Communication Sattelites, some of them Orbital DOOM, some of them spy sattelites. There seemed to be no real pattern to what was being attacked, rather than all their Low Orbit assets were disappearing first.

The Captain smiled, he saw one go up in a fireball in front of him. Dumb bastards didnt' even have a Missile Lock warning. Flying blind they were, no active sensors, no running lights. It felt almost medival. And he loved it.

"Deploy Barbs, set up for the second run," he said, as he flew past the space where said sattelite used to be. It had looked like a Communications one. At least no weapons he saw. Could have been a spy sattelite though.

The Weapon's Officer nodded again, flipping a switch. As he did so, something fell off the ship, a small round object about 2 feet in diameter occupying the same space as the sattelite.

And the craft was already off, going out for its second attack run.