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Emma Frost, clad in her Diamond persona, leaned back, staring coolly across at the group of Russian representatives that she was meeting with, and trying hard not to scowl. Scowling or showing irritation got you nowhere with Russians, especially when they were being deliberately obtuse. Those across the table included a banker, General Barisov, Duma Representative Mikalikovo, who had led the Russian delegation at the peace talks, an industrial magnate who, as Emma Frost, Emma had previous dealings with, and another Duma delegate. Combined, these men represented the very top of the Russian government at the moment, given how the presidential and prime minister positions had been so badly eroded after the Eurasian War.
Before he had departed, Harry had left what amounted to a troika in charge of the various portions of his holdings in the solar system. Captain America handled the military side of things with the remaining Custodes Mundi answering to him and Piotr. Beyond always being on call in case of alien threat, they followed Steve's lead in most things. The EDF was running well by this point, so it didn't need any specific oversight, although Steve could intervene if Carol or someone else felt it was needed.
Meanwhile, Sage handled the majority of the business side. Again, this was almost to the point where her special talents were no longer needed to keep the industrial, and most importantly, the medical, side of things going, giving Sage time to devote to other pursuits like espionage.
Diplomacy and following up on new businesses and new business partners were left to Emma. With her connections in the Hellfire Club, Emma had made significant inroads on that front. More in the area of distribution and the creation of small-scale items then anything major really, but Fortress Mars and the various Ravens Nests being built in orbit were certainly becoming far more habitable thanks to her efforts, with several hydroponics gardens and several hundred miles of tunnels.
But on the diplomatic side of things, Emma had also been in continuing Harry's program to reach out to Russia. The tunnels – a word that truly did not do them justice - that the Russians and their allies had created before being tricked into launching the Eurasian War by the Dire Wraiths made them a massive resource. One Harry wanted to weld to himself by helping Russia become an industrial powerhouse to a far greater degree than ever before. However, as well as Emma and Harry got along with some of the Russian leadership, they were still getting pushback about a few of the specific demands to continue providing them with the technologies they requested from Magical Minds.
Not the medical technology, though. Harry had been very firm on that score, if somewhat limited in scope. Any soldier who had been injured in the line of duty got access to Magical Minds' medical equipment and potions, regardless of their nationality. With Ororo and Harry gone, they could not heal amputated limbs, but they'd made tremendous inroads in on that score already before leaving. The resources they had left were slowly but surely dealing with the backlog of wounded and maimed.
It was also winning them a tremendous amount of goodwill across the entire globe despite some aspects of their social policies still being seen as controversial. After all, there were still anti-mutant groups and a few religious nuts who believed that the idea of aliens was some kind of American or British plot despite all evidence to the contrary. Fortunately they were few and far between in most of the world. The Middle East was… another matter.
This meeting was about one of the holdout points, or rather two of them. And while one was going about as well as she had hoped, the reaction to the other was honestly surprising her. It was unlike Mikalikovo in particular to simply be this obtuse and outright deny something and Emma was beginning to get annoyed.
Deciding to cut to the chase, Emma ignored the latest round of protestations and innocence to declare firmly, "Gentlemen. I can understand the desire to keep the full map of your tunnel system to yourself. I know how difficult it is to change a society's outlook on something like mutant rights, and you are doing a decent enough job there. Your concerns on that speeding up that task make sense and have been heard. But your unwillingness to admit you are still running a Super-soldier program is vexing. The so-called Winter Soldier Program has been on your books for more than a decade, and I fail to see how all of you can fail to recognize it."
She let the name hang in the air, but to her surprise, even with her telepathy active, she didn't detect any surprise or shock, only confusion from most of the men across from her. One was apprehensive, but that was all. Perhaps they really do not know? I need to probe a bit more, heh, before I do more probing of the telepathic kind.
"My companion, Sage, is more than willing to start digging into your systems further, but I thought as allies, we would give you the opportunity to come clean. What are you hiding, and why?" She leaned back, crossing her arms under her bust line, using the move to emphasize her chest in a way that caught the attention of one of the men across from her for a moment. The other men's eyes didn't even flicker toward her bust, and all of them still wore the glaring, defiant looks they'd had since Emma had called them out on their continued recruitment, perhaps illegally and unethically, of super-powered soldiers. "Not going to say anything? Sage, would you please enlighten these men?"
Tapping a few figures brought up a series of bank accounts and transfers, one superimposed to the other, then connected via a lone red line. "While the Winter Guard system has been shut down and its survivors all placed on a dual retainer from the Custodes and the Russian Government, there are still at least two money trails that are going into what I would term extra-special military endeavors." Sage began, the tint of the overhead lighting catching the red of her glasses almost ominously.
"One of them, I am actually pretty certain, is completely aboveboard at this point: the re-design and rebuilding of your mechanical armor suits."
"Which we're fine with up to a point," Emma interjected, causing her listeners to blink in surprise, and indeed several of them thawed considerably. Okay, I think we took an entirely wrong tack here to begin with. Time to soften my stance.
"We simply don't want mutants indoctrinated or people being experimented on, and we do not want your super-soldier programs to be turned against other nations any longer. Beyond that, we would like the Armor program out in the open, just like the American government's attempts to recruit Stark to make suits for them is occurring in the open. We would also want you to sign onto a nonproliferation treaty later. We don't want these suits to be active outside your borders. Certainly, no one would profit from such a design falling into the hand of extremist groups. But that is for the future."
Mikalikovo nodded slowly, looking over at his fellows. "That… that we can agree to, certainly. We will have to speak to the full Duma on it, but yes. Yet as I said, none of us have ever heard of the Winter Soldier program."
"Yet the evidence of its existence is irrefutable. I would be fully willing to let Sputnik check my work," Sage practically chirped. Showing a flash of good humor like that coupled with the threat would get under the skin of many of the men across from her. Despite his incredible sense of loyalty to Russia, few of the Duma wanted to allow Sputnik access to their internal computer network.
"Indeed, I think if this evidence is accurate we might have to," Mikalikovo murmured, to the shock of his fellows.
"While I am now willing to take your word that none of you knew of this program, someone in your security apparatus must know about it for this money trail to still be in use. We want this plan, whatever it is, shut down. We want every kind of super-soldier program that experiments or indoctrinates their victims, the kind which created Omega Red and those like him, shut down," Emma growled.
"Like the kind that your Guardian annihilated nine months ago? That base near Lake Baikal in Siberia was the largest Winter Guard training site we had going," one of the Russians Emma hadn't named before riposted, scowling. "You may deny it publicly all you want but let us not mince words here."
"I haven't been mincing words, nor will I deny that action," Emma said dryly, shrugging her shoulders. "Considering that Piotr, Nikolai, and his sister are under our protection and that Vanguard, in particular, is one of our noncommissioned officers in the Custodes Mundi, that would be remarkably stupid of us. We'll never admit it publicly, of course, and I'll have you know that any recording devices you had were shorted out when you entered this room." Emma smiled thinly. "To put it bluntly, you try to out that secret, and we will reply in the negative and then return fire in-kind."
There was some grumbling at that, but not a lot. Only two of the Russians were glaring at her now, while the others were thoughtful. One of them was General Barisov, one of the men who had been a part of the meeting on High Note. But Emma felt he was glaring at her for more form's sake than anything else, or perhaps patriotic annoyance? The other man was the nervous Duma rep.
Hmm… interesting. That man might not have recognized the name Winter Soldier, but he is hiding something. Is that enough to let me probe his mind further? Curse Harry and his ideas of morality, Emma grumbled mentally.
"You might have found this Winter Soldier program of ours, whatever it is, and I will say now that I don't know anything about it. But what I do know is what our own spies have reported. And that is that other nations have their own Super-soldier programs, not just the powered armor programs. What are you doing about them?" Barisov challenged.
Emma languidly waved a hand, counting off on her fingers. "First, your neighbors, China. Their Mutant Resource Exploitation Program, at least the Chinese never really tried to couch their wrongdoings in anything but reality, never recovered after the young mutant they labeled Chamber exploded like a nuclear bomb."
"We're still trying to figure out how he was in China at all, let alone how he had been captured and forced into that program, as he was originally a British citizen. We assume human trafficking," Sage interjected, and there was nothing teasing about her voice now. "Possibly connected to the now-defunct Brotherhood of Mutants. But we have yet to find the individuals who got him out of the United Kingdom."
"His eventual implosion not only killed an innocent young man, but also the entire faculty of the Chinese program, all of the scientists, and the majority of its officers. We're still not exactly happy with the fact that the Chinese are dragging their heels on the social side of things, but to put it bluntly, even with access to the Mandarin and his high level of technology, China doesn't offer anywhere near as much of a benefit to us becoming more closely connected with them as Russia does."
Emma paused, then held up her pinky with some amusement. "Australia is ostensibly running some kind of mandatory training program for mutants with dangerous powers. But that training is simply an extension of the Australian Marine Corps and is completely aboveboard if only about as humane as any marine training can be. Which I'm certain you know."
General Barisov scowled but waved that off. The one he was most interested in was America, of course, but since he had asked about every other super-soldier program, Barisov had to let Emma have her say no matter how annoying.
"Britain used to run a superpowered Espionage agency, but it was destroyed before the king contacted Harry for help. The only survivors are Psylocke and Captain Britain. Psylocke is a member of the Custodes, and Captain Britain is about as far removed as you could possibly get from the kind of unthinking uncaring super-soldier who would be sent off on assassination missions or any other kind of black ops."
"If anything, he is rather bizarrely connected more to the idea of some kind of Arthurian legend of the night than anything else," Sage snorted. "And the British government and our faction have been in bed with one another for a good long while. No attempt to create such a program has even gotten as far as the planning stage, and at this point it has been deemed unnecessary."
"And America and Canada?" Barisov growled, unwilling to let Emma continue to prove how well connected they were throughout the world by naming the other attempts to create Super-teams being run by other European powers. It wasn't as if most of them had made any headway, after all, nothing like what Russia had before the Eurasian War. "We have information that the Weapon X program of Canada was never shut down. Rather, it simply moved across into the United States. You cannot sit here and belabor us about our attempts at a black ops division of super-soldiers when that abomination is still ongoing!"
"I'd be very interested to see the information you were able to collect on the Weapon X program, as well as how you did so," Emma answered, but she was still smiling thinly, the man's words not surprising her as Emma gestured to her companion. "Gentlemen, we have access to Sage. We also have access to Pinoptes, one of several artificial Intelligences working for us."
The men in front of her squirmed, and Emma couldn't honestly blame them. Artificial Intelligences going amuck was a staple in science fiction for a reason, after all. Yet in the case of Pinoptes, working with Harry, Ororo, and, more importantly, Douglas and the children like Melody and Illyana had humanized him to a massive degree.
"And while Pinoptes is mostly dealing with defense measures and leading our education programs, any kind of computer is an open book to them. When we discovered the Winter Soldier Program, we started to look for others and found out about Weapon X and its mysterious Director. Even as we speak, that program is being shut down with extreme prejudice. And in a rather ironic fashion..."
OOOOOOO
As the Russians all turned to the man in question with expression ranging from interested to instantly distrustful, Steve looked around at the Marines in the Douglas C-133 with him, all of them dressed in black camo and loaded for bear. Falcon, Steve's friend Sam, was also there, along with two fireteams of his own Aerial Drop Commandos, as was Ghigau of the Custodes. Sam would be leading them to take out the Anti-Air defenses and the target's power grid. Captain America, Wolverine, and Ghigau would be going in with Marines.
Wolverine was still grumbling about that aspect, and though Steve couldn't blame the guy he wasn't willing to argue with him about it again. Logan thought he should be doing this on his own entirely, but that wasn't going to happen. Not after Emma and his meeting with the President the day before. President Northton wanted this handled instantly, but he also wanted it handled above board and by units of the American military, hence the Marines. Meanwhile, the president himself, with Paige, John, Scott, and Rogue in attendance under disguise, would face down the CIA director who had continued to fund the Weapon X program after it had been run out of Canada by Logan, Kitty, and Kurt after the idiots had tried to take control of Sabertooth and Wolverine again.
None of the other Custodes were going to be involved in either part of this operation. The President had requested this issue be seen to by Americans, even if their various loyalties didn't lie with their home nation. Steve thought it silly, but with the amount of regular firepower they were bringing to bear, he thought they could get away with being short-staffed on the super-powered side of things.
Steve had met the current President several times, and he trusted the man to get his part in the operation right. He also trusted the Marines, who had been handpicked for this operation: Sean McIntyre and his bloodthirsty band of ne'er do wells. Having fought on the Caucuses front, they had come through the Eurasian War relatively intact and with a reputation for being extremely competent and deadly. When he had been offered them, Steve been very happy for the chance to work with Sean and Marcus Greentree, his new First Sergeant, who had been transferred into his unit prior to the Eurasian War. Steve had remembered them from the series of meetings he had attended about the alien threat that Harry had clandestinely held before the EDF went public.
To one side of him, Ghigau sat, her full armor on, hiding her features but not her femininity. That was enough for many of the marines and a few of the commandos to give her some looks, but none of them had been so rude as to make comments, not with their officers sitting among them. She sat talking quietly to two of the marines who were Native Americans, chatting about their disparate backgrounds. But leaning towards her, Steve could tell that, like many of the marines, she was listening to heavy metal music to get herself psyched up.
Marines being Marines though, one of them just could not stop himself from trying to take those hills. "Hey Ghigau, I gotta ask, we're all wondering it, what's up with the bow? I mean, you don't even have arrows, and I mean, c'mon… a bow, in this day and age? You can borrow one of our guns for the op if you want something more powerful to play with. Trust me, a Marine's rifle never disappoints."
Ghigau turned and cocked her head to one side. Suddenly with a quickness that startled the Marines beside her, her bow was in her hand, shifting into a spear, then a sword, then a dagger, which she placed at her side. "I think if I was looking for more bang for my buck than a weapon like Sigyn's Gift, I would be out of luck. And as for your rifles' ability to satisfy, I could hardly be asked to comment, although I've found most men who brag about that kind of thing are those who most often miss the mark…"
The rest of the Marines laughed at her comeback, and Ghigau turned back to her previous conversation as they started to rib their friend for his failed assault.
Chuckling, Steve stood up, winding his way through to where the Falcon and the troops with him were waiting. "You good to go?"
"Always," his friend said, reaching up to clasp hands with Steve. Despite coming from two very different generations, the two of them had become fast friends, and that friendship had become one of the pillars of Steve's life in this strange era. That didn't mean Steve wouldn't tease his friends a bit. "By the way, did you have a chance to go over that program that Diamond sent to us?"
In public, they still used callsigns for people like Diamond who had their own private lives away from the Custodes.
"Yeah, I looked at it. I thought it was interesting. Although the suits they're talking about giving the program aren't finished yet. Are you certain that you'll be able to talk Tony into working on that kind of thing? He was kind of against the idea of the military, or anyone, owning suits like his," Sam answered, frowning as the question took his mind off the upcoming fight. Which was partly why Steve had asked, Sam knew.
"As I understand it, the suits you'd be using won't be anywhere near as deadly as the Iron Man suit. Limited online computer systems, and you won't have arc reactors powering everything," Steve shook his head with a snort. "That would've been overkill."
"There's no such thing!" the nearest drop commandos and Marines caroled, with a few going on to state the full joke. "There's only dead and not dead enough."
Sean looked up from where he had been going over last-minute details of the operation with Marcus, the two men checking their memorization of the maps of the target Pinoptes had been able to give them. "What are you all talking about? Because if you are making suits that even remotely come close to, say, Coyote or Ghigau's? I would re-up for access to that kind of thing."
"Famous last words gropos," said one of the aerial commandos in reply, twitching his wings this way and that as he used the shortened colloquialism for ground-pounders that Air Force troops had used since there had been an Air Force at all.
"In that case, yeah, I think it's an excellent idea," the Falcon didn't bother replying to these interruptions, instead continuing to address Steve. "Precisely for missions like this, and even larger scale if we can build up."
Steve nodded at Sean, flashing Sam a thumb's up. "We're thinking of creating a new branch of the EDF for if aliens ever manage to land a force on Earth someplace that can't handle them. Like Africa away from Wakanda, India, or portions of Europe and the Peloponnesian. Or, well, Asia outside of Japan and China, though don't tell China that, heh."
"Are you even going to be able to get the ability to act in those countries without it being an act of war ourselves?" Marcus asked, joining the conversation.
"We might be able to via working through the various organizational units, like the South American Resource Union or the African Defense Organization. We're calling it the Orbital Drop Marine program, or ODM."
Every Marine in hearing rang looked at one another then began to laugh. "Oh, Damns! Hell yeah!"
"That is the name of a Marine outfit right there. Right there! From Devil Dogs to Oh Damns, that makes way too much sense!"
This was the response Steve wanted to happen when he brought up the subject. Steve wanted everyone to be not just focused but also upbeat before heading into battle. And if I use this mission as an audition for the first group of ODMs, so be it.
"All right, you apes," said the voice over the plane's intercom, "We're coming up on drop-off point Alpha. All of you are using the gifts that God gave you to go the rest of the way get off my plane!" At these words, the hatch at the back of the plane opened, letting in the wild wind from beyond.
Chuckling, Steve led the way, reaching up to pound one fist against the top of the hatchway leading off the C-133. "Let's go, troops. Time to bag us some mad scientists."
"OOorah!" the Marines shouted while Ghigau simply stood up, nodding at Steve, then was the first one out of the plane, despite not having any visible parachute. And as they exited one by one, they all performed the same ritual, slamming one fist up into the hatch above them before leaping out into the night beyond, their parachutes opening one after another to let them fall gently towards the designated landing zone several miles away from their target. Although he was also still muttering under his breath, Logan did the same. His mutters had changed topic, now being about how Canadian Marines were better than American rather than the marines being there at all.
Those would've been fighting words in any bar where marines could be found, but this wasn't a bar. This was a combat mission, and instead, all he got was grins from Sean and Marcus. Both of them knew at this point that this whole mission was what amounted to an audition for bigger and better things, and they, and indeed all their men, were hoping to make the most of it.
Down below, Ghigau activated her hover boots. When they did so, she hit the foliage below, bouncing through the trees to the ground below. There, Dani opened her helmet, sniffing the air of the forest, letting the breeze flow over her face as she raised Sigyn's Gift to her forehead, pressing the flat of the blade against her skin. "May Tyr guide us to a just victory this night, may Thor give my arm strength."
In the months since having first come into contact with Hela via the goddess reaching out for her sleeping mind, Dani had become a follower of the Asgardian faith. It was not so much that she believed the Asgardians were all-powerful deities, no. It was more that she saw them as powerful spirits, much like the animal spirits of her ancestors, who could be called upon and, if the caller was found worthy, aid Dani in her endeavors. Like a shield captain lending his strength to a soldier, or an experienced hunter guiding the eye of a young one. And she well understood that each of them had different realms of influence. And if any of them would feel pain for those experimented on and twisted into beasts against their will, it is the god of the common warrior and the god of justice.
With the small benediction done, Dani, not bothering to close her mask again, moved off, silent as a shadow in the night.
As the rest of the Marines disembarked, Steve waited by the hatchway. When the last Marine jumped, Steve reached over, clasping forearms with Falcon, who smirked at him. "Don't worry, we'll do our part. You just be ready to take advantage of it when the power goes out."
"We will be. But if Harry does start up the orbital drop Marine program, you do know you'll be in charge of it, right? And thus an officer?"
The look on Sam's face as Steve pulled away was everything he could have wished for, and he leaped out after the Marines.
Landing through the woods was an acquired skill, but one that Steve had long since perfected on the battlefields of Europe during World War 2. In fact, with no flak or strobing security lights to avoid, it was a cakewalk. In the woods, he met up with the Marines, blending into the night with his own version of the nighttime camouflage as they did the same. Pulling down his mask, he smiled as the night vision goggles built into it activated. Thinner and better than the norm, they adjusted automatically between several different types of vision, shifted his view into an almost-daylike landscape.
"Wolverine and Ghigau didn't bother waiting for us," Sean whispered, keeping his voice low despite the lack of anyone but his own men around them as he looked at a compass in his hand. "We have a direction, sir. We need to move."
"Right. You know your people best, choose your flankers. I'll be Tail-End Charlie. Let's go," Steve ordered. The Marines moved off, racing through the woods, not silently - they had too much gear to be entirely silent - but as quiet as they could be.
On the other hand, Ghigau and Logan moved through the woods as noiselessly as animals. Ghigau moved like a deer, light on her feet even with her suit powered off. The suit was made so well it was silent as she moved under her own power through the night. Wolverine blended in so well even Steve would have never been able to spot him without help.
The two squads of special forces operators didn't see either of them as they moved through the woods around the perimeter of their target.
About five minutes later and way higher in the air than they had been, Sam shook his head, still somewhat stunned at the idea of being in charge of anything so quickly. He had been working with the X-men to integrate several regular human troopers into their ranks, the men chosen by himself and Hawkeye from special operatives throughout America. He knew that at the command level they were slowly starting to be a bit strained with so many of the Custodes out of the system, but that was a long way from being in charge of organizing an entirely new combat arm.
Shaking that thought off, he turned to his fellow drop commandos. "All right, folks," he said, pulling down his own helmet and fixing his visors over his face. "Now that the baggage is gone, perhaps we can really get down to business."
The other commandos laughed, the rivalry between the various military branches always a source of strength and good humor. Soon the C-133 was flying high, so high that the various detection devices of their target wouldn't be able to spot them, and thanks to the anti-radar coding, nothing stronger would either.
Once more, the pilot's voice shouted out instructions. "Alright, my fine winged fowls, we're over the landing zone in three, two…"
Red lights blinked on throughout the interior of the plane once more, and Falcon moved over to the entranceway, cracking his neck this way and that, straightening his shoulders, making the wings on his back flare in preparation. Then he reached down to his waist, where he pulled out two pistols, the same kind he'd used during the Eurasian War. He'd added to his battle rattle since then with a few flash-bang grenades and an expanded pouch like the Custodes Mundi had, which Sam, like many of the Custodes, could not think of as anything but bags of holding. The bag contained quite a lot of goodies, but as his initial offensive punch, the plasma pistols were hard to beat. Both of them were plasma-based, able to lay down automatic fire and retain the penetrating power of a plasma rifle, although their energy requirements were much larger.
The other drop commandos with him had a more eclectic grouping of weapons. One of them had what amounted to a gatling gun with a much shorter barrel than normal strapped to his side, with a correspondingly heavy weight on his other side, the drums feeding into the gun along his back through a specialized holster. He wouldn't be able to stay in the air for very long, but if they ran into real defenses below, his weapon might be necessary. I could wish he'd changed to an energy-based weapon system, but I wasn't going to push Raul on that.
"Let's get it done, son," Raul hollered as he leaped out, followed by the rest of Sam's team. As they fell, the Falcon's wings began to shimmer, the engine underneath his wings slowly flapping to life at his muscle's command. "Coms check."
The response came in quickly, and Sam smirked. "Pick your targets, and let's fly!" With that, the Falcon's wings flared out, slowing his descent. Moments later, as they moved directly over the target once more, what had been a simple drop became a power-dive, his weapons raised like talons underneath him as he closed at speeds more normally seen in rockets than falling men. And from his wings and the wings of his fellow's burst out a cloud of missiles, which followed them for a second before speeding ahead of them, exploding seven stories above the ground, flinging tiny aluminum plates all around them.
The target of this assault was a large mansion-like structure sitting on the outskirts of an upper-class strip of land near Lake Superior with several smaller buildings close to one another, situated like guest or servant's quarters might be, on a large-scale property. As far as the locals knew, the mansion was marked as private property rather than commercial. Although if you looked closer, it had more of the look of a laboratory than a mansion in certain aspects, despite its outer appearance.
As the commandos closed, several dozen square or rectangular portions of the lawn around the main building flipped up. From within, gun turrets deployed and instantly began to twist upwards, Anti-Air fire tracking up towards the descending attackers.
However, the cloud of chaff exploding around them fouled their targeting systems. Several of the guns started to just spin in place, unable to discover any target. Others began to fire randomly into the air, still dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as targeted fire.
The orbital commandos took those out first, destroying them with long-range rifle fire from several of the railgun armed rifles they had.
Falcon disdained those, moving straight down towards the roof of the main building. Several more defensive installations started to pop out from hidden bunkers, the crenulations coming apart to reveal heavy mortar barrels, rocket launchers, and several Gatling guns. These instantly began to track the closest enemy, the guns perhaps not automated like the others.
In reply, Falcon's pistols spoke, raining down fire onto them before the new guns could lock on him.
Several exploded, not even getting a shot off, but one of the surviving Gatling guns began to fire, spreading metal through the sky in a welter of tracer fire. Falcon jinked this way and that, flipping under and around the incoming fire while one of his fellows came in, raking the rooftop with his own heavy weapon. Then the Falcon was moving off, dropping a grenade on what looked like a generator.
The other buildings had their own generators, that combined to create an energy grid for the property. Soon they were all bombed out, and the majority of the automated guns, and a laser defense grid around the property, went down.
Out in the woods, the guards on patrol instantly started to turn, racing back to the lab. But then Wolverine was on one of the squads coming out of the darkness like a wraith, his claws slashing. The other squad fell to Ghigau, who came out of the dark, Sigyn's Gift in hand, so quickly that they never got a shot off before one was dead. The others put up a fight, but with her armor on, none of them had anything that could actually hurt her.
By this point, guards were spilling out of every building on the property, firing up at the attackers. They weren't having much luck, but were taking up defensive positions, and the commandos were too busy dodging to fire back very well. All of the defenders had excellent gear, the same rifles that the Marines would normally be using, and the same night vision goggles, so the lack of lighting didn't bother them.
But the defenders had not split their attention as they should have, all of them firing up at the attacking commandos. This cost them as the Marines charged out of the forest, covering the open area that should have been a killing ground. Several of them dropped to one knee, firing downrange at the defenders to provide covering fire as they moved in from every direction at once in almost platoon-sized troops, each led by one of McIntyre's lieutenants, while the weapons platoon waited with Sean himself. Others took up position in the woods behind trees.
Several of the defenders fell as the Marines moved forward, their guns speaking in staccato rhythm. But the defenders, despite their momentary mistake, were extremely well-trained too. They instantly began to return fire, both sides now using short, controlled bursts or precise fire from a few sniper rifles. The defenders also used fire and maneuver to spread out from their barracks and the main building further to link up in a defensive cordon. Their fire control was so good, several of the marines fell, and the advance slowed as more marines went to ground as best they could. Worse, the buildings seemed to have a hidden level of battleship grade steel under the outer concrete, meaning the plasma bolts and gauss rifle rounds couldn't quite penetrate.
Seeing this, Sean ordered his weapons platoon in, and the mortar squads instantly began firing. Swiftly the mortars did their work, destroying the defender's defensive positions.
Under this covering fire, the machine gun squads moved forward towards the barracks, one of them getting into position to cover the door, making it death to come out into its fire, their own position covered by several other Marines who did a good job clearing the two windows that could train on them. The men in the windows were replaced by more enemy riflemen, but they couldn't get a shot off. Meanwhile, the machine gun team's corporal waited for a chance to use the grenade launcher underslung on his rifle.
Steve barreled forward, his shield in front of him, as he crouched down low, putting as much of his body behind the shield as possible, charging forward into the clump of soldiers still coming out from the main building. For a second, the defender's fire falters, staring at the circular shield with its red, white and blue image coming out of the flickering darkness, but then every attacker who was able began to fire at Steve, only to find the shield ricocheting their bullets right back or to the side, with no damage to the shield visible.
Reaching the battlefield himself, Logan closed with the barracks from another angle entirely. Doing so, he avoided notice, closing while the defenders were too busy with the Marines. Reaching the building, Logan hurled himself through a first-story window into a defender firing from there, cutting him down quickly and rolling on the floor, coming up and charging into a clump of men who had been waiting for a chance to get out and into the fight, the other windows already in use by a few other defenders.
The men inside the barracks all turned, staring, as one of them dropped some kind of large-barreled gun that they were going to try to use to clear the machine gun team out of their position. Then Logan was on them, and the screams began. Several of the defenders went down to his claws, and then two rifle teams charged the door.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, another round of mortars had landed, decimating what was left of the defenders positions, while Steve had reached the main building. He crashed bodily into the defenders there, his shield taking one man in the face, then hacking to the side, shattering a shoulder as Steve's other hand punched out, downing a third man. "Go, go, go!" he shouted, "in, in, in!"
Above them, Falcon raked the defenders with fire, then ordered his own commandos down to the various roofs. From there, they provided cover fire, helping the Marines finish off the defenders remaining on the ground outside the building.
Two Marines were down, one fatally, the last just knocked unconscious by a bullet that caught his helmet at just the right angle to knock him senseless. The overwhelming firepower that the attackers had brought to bear, not to mention that these Marines had been fitted with enhanced Kevlar body armor, had seen them through. Four other Marines had been forced to retreat with various wounds but were moving under their own power with a corporal to lead them back to the evac point, as the last of the defenders retreated from Steve, leaving him in control of the entrance.
"Falcon, maintain overwatch. Marines, split and divide, clear the other buildings and maintain guard. Ghigau, you're on patrol out here, your power skates give you a speed advantage we might need if someone does a runner. Remember, we want at least some alive for questioning, but it isn't a priority. Your lives are and making certain that this den of filth is dealt with. If they surrender we don't kill them, that's it."
"Damn it, and here I was all set to chew you out for sidelining me, and you had to have a logical argument," Ghigau scowled inside her helmet. But she couldn't deny Captain America had a point.
"Acknowledged," Sam answered, also grumbling a little. Still, he knew that his specialty was open-air environments, not close-quarters combat.
In contrast, Wolverine and Steve were probably the best in the world at just that kind of thing. Now finished in the barracks, a somewhat gore-covered Wolverine led the way in with Steve beside him. And instantly, the shield came in handy, bouncing back a grenade into a line of entrenched defenders at the far end of the entryway, the main door opening up into a hallway around ten yards long.
As the explosion went off in the defender's position, Logan charged forward, leaping up over the bulwark and hacking through the soldiers there. In turn, Steve bounded over the carnage, hurling his shield forward at a gun mount that had apparently been waiting for the soldiers to get out of the way before firing. The gun mount shattered, his shield crashing through it then careening up off the ceiling and then back to Steve, who rolled as he caught it on his arm, smashing it down into one soldier, almost using him as a mount to carry himself down to the ground.
There Steve rolled, thrusting the shield out sideways into another soldier, then reached up, grabbing the gun of another one who had thrust his gun down towards Steve, pushing it out of the way as it went off. Still retaining that grip, Steve twisted around and up into an uppercut that took the man in the chin, breaking his jaw and hurling him backward.
Steve then barely got his shield up in time to deflect a hail of bullets coming at him from another gun mount which had not waited for the soldiers around him to get out of the way. The few black-clad soldiers around the two attackers fell, then Wolverine was charging past him, taking the bullets himself but not stopping until he sliced the gun mount into pieces.
In the corridor beyond that gun mount, the hallway split. Steve assumed one direction would lead around the building's outer edge, looping back on itself, the other deeper in towards what looked like an elevator and a few doorways on either side. He looked at Logan, who shrugged his shoulders, pointing in one direction. "I like going right."
Steve shrugged and moved toward the elevator as two of the Marine platoons came in after them, having cleaned up the few survivors behind them, leaving the rest of their men to keep watch.
"I want a hardpoint here, Top," Captain McClintock said, looking at his First Sergeant. "I want one squad here dug in hard, then get two of those commandos out there, bring them in for added firepower. The one with the gatling gun in particular."
Logan snorted at this and raced off, and Sean rolled his eyes. "Top, take a squad and follow Cap. I will follow Wolverine with another squad. I want two more squads following both and spreading out as needed. Don't shoot anyone who isn't attacking, but no one gets out of here under their own power. Let's clear this building, fuckers!"
'Yes, sir," Marcus replied, shaking his head at the Captain, moving forward with the troops. Still, doing so was part of why Marcus respected Sean McClintock, despite the very different backgrounds the two men had.
By the time the Marines caught up with the two superpowered heroes, they had run into the first real hurdle. For Steve, this came in the form of two individuals who looked as if they had been genetically crossed with a gorilla and a cat, respectively. "Okay, this just got weird," Steve muttered as he blocked the punch from the gorilla, which proceeded to pick him up and hurl him back down the hallway.
Rolling as he hit the ground, Steve slung his shield back down towards the gorilla man. The possible mutant tried to catch the shield but unless you were Steve Rogers, touching that shield was no longer a viable option. Thanks to Harry placing some runes on the interior of the shield, the shield had become enchanted. Anyone touching it that wasn't Steve would be electrocuted, and if they tried to pick it up anyway like if they were immune to electricity or something, its weight would increase into the metric-ton weight range.
The gorilla stumbled backward, not hurt much by the electricity but still shocked. Meanwhile the cat man leaped forward, clawing and kicking at Steve, who blocked the blows with difficulty. The cat man was fast and powerful, and soon Steve's arms and shoulders were showing tears, his helmet torn along one side. Thank goodness my helmet's been reinforced somewhat. With how dark it is in here, I'd be almost blind without it. There were only a few emergency lights on at the moment around them, either due to the building no longer having any power or what power it did have being conserved for something else Steve didn't know.
Then the cat man was forced to dodge around a well-aimed round of bullets, throwing him off balance. Steve took advantage instantly, grabbing his arm in a hold and pulling him further off balance before hammering in elbow the cat man's face.
A high kick caught his chest in turn, and now Steve's body was blocking his ally's shots. But Steve took the kick without being knocked back, coming up and redirecting another kick. A second later, he landed a punch into the other man's lower leg before extending his arm around that leg as he stepped forward and twisted, throwing the man back towards the gorilla man.
The gorilla man had backed away from the shield by this point, shaking out his hands from the shock he had taken. This allowed the cat man to land on top of it and be electrocuted in turn. "Gyaaaa, what the hellllll!" the cat man screamed, the first words either animal-like man had spoken.
Then Steve was on the cat man, bearing him to the ground. This forced him to remain in contact with the shield, which kept on electrocuting him, while the array doing so also started to drain him of his bio-energy. Even as the man thrashed and tried to get away, Steve got a chokehold on the possible mutant.
This made Steve turn his back on the gorilla man. It also got him out of the firing way line of the Marines behind him.
"Put that son of a bitch down!" Marcus growled.
The Marines were not as heavily armed as the Custodes Mundi would be. However, they did have a few rail guns and plasma rifles among their rifle platoons, one of which Marcus was using. The railgun round went straight through the man's shoulder, right where it met his chest, causing him to cry out in pain, but he retreated quickly around the corner, protecting his wounded arm but in one piece.
The cat man that Steve had been wrestling with soon fell unconscious thanks to the combination of chokehold, electricity, and having his bioenergy siphoned off him. Feeling that, Steve lifted the body off of his shield, asking one of the Marines to come over and put some of the extra sturdy handcuffs on the individual in question. "Look alive, folks, there's probably more where they came from."
There were indeed more, and Logan was dealing with two others. Moving along the hallway had brought him, and his following squads of Marines, into what looked like a long row of cubicles, each of them had their own computers, and for some reason, a Post-it note in one of them caught his eye as he passed by. 'Remember, it's not rocket science. It's harder.' Next to that was another note declaring that 'Scientists do it with imagination'.
Looking at that note, Logan had an urge to claw his eyes out for a second before shaking his head and moving on. Luckily there were no people around, and they passed through quickly.
However, the corridor started to break up. To one side, there was a stairwell, while the hallway itself once again split in two, one leading to what looked like a dead-end and another row of cubicles. The other continuing around the outer edge of the building, maybe. Although it did also seem to open up into what looked like a cafeteria.
"I don't get the layout of this place," Sean muttered, scowling irritably. "Nothing on the interior matches the exterior. Was that deliberate, made to make this place hard to invade?"
"Not invade. Confusing to leave if you don't know the way out," Logan answered grimly, popping his claws out of their sheets, as he crouched down, sniffing the air. "I'm smelling people downstairs, and a lot of blood that way, closer than the entrance. I'd guess that someone is trying to clean house."
Scowling, Sean organized his men, asking Logan to wait for the moment while he led a fireteam straight around the building's outer edge. Logan scoffed and went on his own way, slicing open the door to the staircase, finding it only led down instead of both ways as they had thought. Regardless, he moved down the stairs, leaving the marines behind.
Scowling, Sean radioed the squad they had left in place, ordering them to pass the duty on to one of the heavy weapons teams pulling them from the perimeter for a moment. Leaving one rifle team at the hardpoint inside the entrance, he ordered the remaining two fireteams forward. When they reached his current position, Sean ordered one fire team forward along the hallway back to their starting point. Despite Logan's assurances that there was no one left alive along the outer hallway, Sean was taking no chances.
Despite that, once the rest of the first floor was cleared, the Marines eventually followed Logan down the stairs, finding that he had been slowed in turn by several security doors and guns set into the stairwell, which he had destroyed. Several stories down, they somehow came out onto what looked like an observation area over some kind of testing ground.
And what waited for them as they cautiously moved out of the stairwell was several dozen mounted guns in the ceiling, all of which twitched their way. Logan had a second to note that they would all have been originally facing inwards into the testing zone before the guns opened up on them.
Logan twisted and leaped to one side, shouting out, "Cover!" Inside the stairwell, Sean ordered the same and his men ducked back into the stairwell as the guns started to chew into the wall, four of his Marines being cut in two by the guns before they could retreat, the gore flying everywhere.
They then switched targets to Logan as he advanced, crawling at first, then leaping up and racing forward, leaping down into the pit to get closer to the guns in question. This drew fire from the surviving Marines allowing them to roll out of cover and blast the Gatling guns to pieces. One after another, they shut down while Logan kept their attention on him.
However, from two offices on either side of the stairwell came two more mutants or possibly genetically altered soldiers. One was a frogman, the other a woman who looked almost like someone had crossed her with a lizard. The frogman had iron gauntlets on his hands and feet, which made them into lethal weapons, something he proved without a doubt by killing two Marines as he jumped out into their formation, getting so close they were now afraid to fire or fear of hitting one another.
The woman too tried to close with the Marines but had miss-timed her appearance, and Sean's shout of "Remember your quadrants!" had kept some of his Marines centered forward and to the right towards where she appeared rather than all turning to deal with the frogman. One of them was a railgun user, and his reflexive fire took the woman high up in the chest, punching through and sending her hurtling backward, dead.
Meanwhile, Sean stepped into the boxer's reach, ducking underneath the blow, then flicking some kind of dust into the frog man's large bulbous eyes. One thing Sean had learned while wrestling with a Russian Spetnaz who had been trying to exfiltrate back to his lines was that everyone in the world needed to see. And even the toughest SOB wasn't going to be seeing anything if you tossed fine ground pepper into their eyes. Or, in this case, high-grade Capsaicin.
It had saved his life then, and now the frogman squealed, both hands rising to work at his eyes. Before he could recover, Steve pulled out his pistol, placed it into the frog man's open mouth and pulled the trigger. And that pistol was a plasma pistol.
"Damn cap'n," one of his marines muttered, even as he moved to help his unconscious or badly wounded comrades.
Sean shrugged, holstered his pistol, and picked up a rifle, looking around and towards where the sound of combat was still going on. "See to your wounded sergeant, the rest of you with me. Second squad two after us minus one fireteam when they come down."
Even though the gatling guns had been silenced, that didn't mean the battle was over. From out from what looked like a cage set against the side of the testing area, an abomination had bounded, launching itself towards Wolverine the instant he could. The man across from him trying to tear Wolverine apart was only a little taller than Wolverine, but he was thin to the point of emaciation. Despite that, he had something of the same appearance as Sabertooth: the same blonde hair, long fangs, and claws on his hands.
But this creature wasn't just a knockoff of Sabertooth, or maybe his son, Logan didn't know. What he did know was that the man's claws were adamantium. He was also fighting back just as hard as Logan was. The two of them exchanged cuts and slashes, their regeneration mutations working to heal the damage the instant it was made. Luckily his bones don't seem to have gotten the full treatment yet!
Watching this, Sean shook his head. "Right, I'm not going to wait for this shit. We still have to clear the rest of this building, Wolverine!" When the man in question didn't answer other than shout and snarl, Sean shook his head. "Right, stun grenades, people! All of them, on three."
"Oh no, you don't, you asshole," Logan shouted, but too late. The Marines threw their stun grenades down into the pit, where massive blasts of sound and light burst out.
Both combatants shouted in pain and reeled away from one another, grabbing at their eyes, and Sean ordered his Marines to fire into the creature. The man stumbled back, but even with two fireteams of marines firing on him, the creature simply absorbed the damage.
Then Logan was up, and his claws cut and stabbed. The man, who even smelled somewhat like Sabertooth, was stabbed through the heart as Wolverine's other claws sliced his head off his shoulders. Whatever his regeneration ability, he wasn't going to come back from that.
"Sorry about that, Logan," Sean said in a tone of a man who didn't mean it. "But you two looked as if you could keep wailing on one another for days. And I don't know about you, but that is not my idea of a good time."
Logan snorted but exchanged a fist bump with the other man as his wounds from the fight healed. "Right, let's keep moving."
Against the far wall from where they had first entered, they found a doorway leading to what Logan thought of as the jackpot. Or at least one of two jackpots he had hoped to find here. They found the laboratories. The large-scale glass-like coffins, the banks of computers, the examination tables. It was all here, along with another dozen soldiers who had dug in among the lab devices and bodies of several scientists, who had apparently been shot by the soldiers.
Another firefight began, but with Logan charging forward and hacking at any of the defenders who couldn't get away, it was over quickly. Sean only lost one more Marine as Logan had again sucked in so much of the defender's attention that he and his Marines were able to get through the chokepoint in the door and spread out before the defenders could realize their mistake.
But looking around, Sean cursed. The damage had already been done. Most of the computers were destroyed, and a little over a dozen men in white outfits lay dead all around them. Moving around, Sean went from body to body, staring at the faces revealed, comparing them to information they had gotten via Pinoptes and Sage's invasion of the CIA's most protected, most secret computer networks. His curses became more vituperative, as he realized that nearly the entire scientific core of the Weapon X project were laid out around them.
Doctor Cornelius was by the largest computer console, connected to the central glass tube, in which another victim had been killed, some kind of green mix added to the water that had burned its skin away in large patches. Not a nice way to go. Dr.'s Duncan, Hines, Killebrew, and Thorton were all laid together, as if they had had been running for the door as one large group, only to be cut down. Zira, Rice and Alba, other doctors who apparently had been there for shorter amounts of time than the others, were spread throughout the room, dead to single shots in the back of the head, unlike the group who had run for the door.
"Crap. We're not going to get any answers here. I just hope Cap is doing better than we are on that score. The only one missing is Robert Windsor, and the director himself," Sean said, earning a grunt from Logan as he moved around the room, seemingly in a kind of daze.
Above them, Steve was not in fact having an easier time of it although at first, heading up to the second story of the laboratory, it almost looked like he might. The elevator was such an easy, obvious chokepoint that when he passed through it without tripping any traps or running into the gorilla man again, Steve was almost tempted to breathe a sigh of relief.
But he didn't. Instead, he kept situational awareness, moving forward slowly, shield held in front of his body, as his eyes scanned every which way before he came to the first doorway he could see. There he paused, waiting for the Marines to back him up. Behind him, Marcus and the Marines came up as well, slowly, with Marcus and two of the others going first and then staying by the elevator doorway as the others climbed up rappel lines.
No one had even attempted to turn on the elevator. Again, it was just far too easy to sabotage the darn thing. Indeed, having made the climb, Marcus noticed several traps both inside the elevator and along the sides of the elevator tube. But all of the traps seemed to have needed power to activate, which meant that they weren't an issue now. This place really was more concerned with internal security than external. Oh, they had the guns and everything, but once we got into the building, we haven't seen much that would work better against an attacker than someone already on the inside.
Once the squad of Marines with him were ready, Steve looked back at them, his eyes and ears straining for any other sign of movement. The second floor of the mansion-cum-laboratory continued the odd, almost confusing architecture they had been running into since entering. First, there was a long, central hallway set probably in the middle of the second story of the mansion, with six large offices marked there, and a seventh at the far end. Between each of the offices were smaller, shorter hallways that a man would have trouble squeezing through. At the end of these small hallways was an iron staircase. These led to small cramped, control positions for the guns that had popped up from the roof earlier to try and fire on Falcon.
Of course, that meant that those tiny hallways were also places where people could hide, hence why Steve had waited. I don't think that gorilla man would be able to hide in there, but I'm not willing to take the chance.
Soon enough, Marcus was ready to go. Like his boss, he left a fire team by the elevator, watching the backs of the others as they moved forward, assigning two of the seven men he had with him who were using gauss rifles to that position with the rest of their fire team.
As they moved forward, the intercom crackled, it's voice almost tinny, perhaps caused by the overall lack of power." I don't know how you all discovered us, but you should know that this is a government sanctioned facility. If you all retreat now you might be able to run before the CIA comes for you. I'm certain the EDF and the World Guard don't want another war on their hands."
"Director Malcolm Concorde of the Weapon X program, you are wanted for crimes against humanity. By order of the President of the United States you are to come quietly, or lethal force is authorized." Steve answered, moving forward with the Marines behind him and kicking open the door to the first office.
At the same time, two Marines entered the small passageways along either side of the main corridor. At the end of them, they found the men who had operated those guns had died in the destruction of the guns above, holes created in the rooftop showing where plasma or Gatling gun fire had ripped into the rooftop dumping debris onto the men, and crushing their heads.
"I suppose I should've expected a self-serving, short sighted politician to not understand the greatness of our work. The need to have our own super soldiers, loyal to America, to American ideals, to the government rather than to one another and the whole of so-called mutant kind. I suppose you even believe that the aliens really are as big of a threat as Potter would have us all believe. The reality is…" Malcolm began again.
Unwilling to banter words with the man especially over an intercom, Steve cut him off continuing to the next office. "Considering you're Canadian by birth, your spouting about American ideals isn't really persuasive. And considering that I have battled those aliens, yes I believe they are that big of a threat. So big that we can't afford people like you running around trying to control their own private armies. Last chance Conrad. Come quietly or come in a body bag. I really don't care which."
The next office proved to be empty as well, but the passageways set along the walls of the hallway were not. On the floor of either passage, bodies were sprawled out on the ground. One of them looked to have been hit by a piece of falling debris in the back of the head. The cause of death of the other was not easily discernible, the man being face down, and sprawled out as much as possible in the small hallway, one hand under his body, the other splayed out.
Staring at the body, Marcus frowned thinking about why it looked so strange to him. Almost like it was placed to block the passage… "Back!" the First Sergeant shouted, grabbing one of his Marines and tossing him away from the entrance to the hallway before diving to the floor. The man's partner however didn't react in time, and had stepped forward, kneeling down and reaching towards the body.
The body came alive, suddenly twisting around, and on its chest was a pistol, held there by the hand that had been under the body a moment ago. At the same time, the man's movement seemed to have set off some kind of booby-trap in the walls to either side of the hall and in the two remaining offices along the sides of the hallway.
The Marine who had stepped towards the man playing possum flew backwards, four shots impacting his chest and face, while the fireteam who had entered the office nearby were caught in the explosion hurling one of them back out the doorway, his body broken, as he slumped against the far wall leaving a bloody trail. The other three barely had time to scream before they were all engulfed in the explosion itself. The rest of the Marines who had come forward from the elevator had ducked or rolled to the floor and came out alright, although singed, and somewhat battered from flying shrapnel.
From the farthest doorway came the gorilla man from before. He was favoring the shoulder which had taken a railgun round before, but he was still strong, and regular bullets didn't matter to him. Which he proved by charging through a hail of them and reaching out to grab at Steve, who was still in the point position and closest, having crouched and used his shield to defend against the explosion.
Steve now used his shield to batter aside the man's blow, then punched out, his fist slamming into the gorilla man's injured shoulder, causing him to howl in pain. The gorilla man's return blow was again redirected, upwards this time, and Steve rolled over a kick, landing behind the man, and bringing up his shield to block the blow full on. The man winced at the reverberations, then Steve grabbed his outstretched arm, twisting and hurling the stronger gorilla man through into the last of the six offices set into the side of the hall. The gorilla man had barely a second to widen his eyes, before the tripwire connected to several claymores broke, and he and the office in question were engulfed in fire.
With the gorilla man dealt with for now, Steve turned and raced towards Marcus and other Marines. They had mostly recovered and were firing into the man who had been playing dead as he came out of the passageway where he had been lying, moving back and away in pairs from the man as they did.
The reason for this was that their fusillade was having no effect whatsoever. The bullets hit, and they did damage, but they were pushed out again, the man's body healing almost as soon as the wounds were made.
From his belt, Steve took a grenade, and he tossed it into the hallway where the man with the incredible healing powers now stood, firing back against the Marines. The man barely had a moment to widen his eyes, the grenade impacting the wall right beside his head and exploding.
As that explosion roiled through the passageway Steve ordered the other Marines to duck into the various doorways as he did the same. This freed the firing lines of the Marines who had been left back at the elevator, who had been watching all this unable to intercede save for a few single shots past their fellows.
The gorilla man came out of the fire looking very much worse the wear, but still in fighting shape, only to eat several railgun rounds to the face and upper chest, which went straight through him, killing the man instantly.
However, to Steve's astonishment, from out of the explosion in the small hallway to the side, the man who the Marines had been firing at with so little effect came out looking none the worse for wear, grabbing up a fallen rifle and firing it in full auto towards the Marines.