Col Towers - Hostage Extraction

Posted on 241505.04 @ 4:05am by Colonel Adam Towers

Mission: The Krigoran War [GQ]

=*= BEGIN LOG =*=

An MEU had one primary purpose: It was a strike force. A fast one. The idea was for the force to get into an enemy's face so quickly that they didn't know how to react.

And Colonel Adam Towers was a master at this kind of strategy. It fit his personality perfectly. While he was also proficient at stealth and intrusion tactics, long drawn out conflicts just weren't his thing. He preferred to just get into the meat grinder, scoop all the pieces together, and hack it out before dinner.

Which was why two flight elements of bombers from the MCS Vesuvius, attached to the 5th MEU, were streaking down into the atmosphere, directly at a Krigorian military base about 3 miles south of the main conflict in their capital.

Approaching the gates of the military base was two companies of armoured vehicles. Light and medium tanks strode briskly forward, their bulk protecting the APCs hiding behind them. Each APC was packed with a squad of light infantry.

The Krigorians had warned them that the prisoners would be executed if the Marines attacked the capital, and they would certainly be executed if the military base was assaulted.

General Sharpe had ordered Towers to go in anyway, and do his best to recover the marines if he could. There were no guarantees here.

Explosions rocked the sky as the bombers unleashed their payloads, obliterating the front gates and the guard towers on either side of them. Shrapnel rained down from the sky, killing more Krigorian soldiers in a hail of metallic fragments.

Within eight seconds of the explosions, while soldiers were still shaking the effects of the blast out of their ears, tanks were crunching over the wreckage of debris and bodies and opening fire on anything that moved. APCs pulled up sharply at the debris pile and dropped their ramps. Pissed off Starfleet marines, their weapons ready, poured out like angry hornets. They moved between and behind the tanks, firing.

The Krigorians were no slouches, but they had not been prepared for such a vicious, swift attack. One of their commanders yelled for a team to go and execute the prisoners. Even if the marines succeeded, he wasn't about to give them the satisfaction of the real prize they were here for.

The Krigorians also had not expected the fight to come to them here, with the majority of the bloody conflict happening in and around the capital.

Towers raised his rifle and squeezed off two shots, dropping a man who had picked up what looked like an anti-tank weapon.

A third shot went wide as his aim was thrown off by the vibrations of the tank beside him firing. The photon cannon tore a hole in one of the guard towers, leaving it leaning dangerously as the surviving occupants scrambled to get out of it before it collapsed.

Towers yelled for a squad to follow him, as he intended to make his best effort to save the hostages before they could be killed.

No weapons fire came directly at them as the whole scene was chaotic. Towers and a dozen men sprinted for the nearest door. It was locked, but that was solved in about ten seconds by a quick door charge. Towers knew, however, that those ten seconds could make the difference.

"Go!" Towers yelled, ushering his team through the door. No weapons fire greeted them in the stairway leading down to the underground portion of the base. The silence was eerie but it allowed them to make quick progress down to where they knew the hostages were being held. A few feet of dirt couldn't hide anything from a focused thermal scan.

Turning the last corridor, Towers and the marine beside him skidded to a halt. A door was slammed open as a marine in hand restraints came barrelling through it. He looked up to the approaching team with an expression of surprise mixed with despair. He didn't get a word out before two energy blasts hit him in the back, throwing him hard against the wall and to the floor.

Towers swore and threw any kind of proper military discipline to the wind as the made for the door. The squad's Sergeant hauled on his collar hard just as he entered the doorway, jerking him back just in time to avoid a dozen shots that would have burned clean through him. Instead they peppered the wall above the dead hostage.

Towers rolled from his position on the floor, and what he saw made him check. The other two hostages, clearly identifiable by their marine BDUs, had either been shot in the head and had their throats slit. The inside of the room looked like a butcher shop and it was horrifying enough to stun the Colonel.

"Cover!" Towers vaguely heard someone yell, and a spherical device was thrown in the room. His brain vaguely identified it as a flashbang grenade and he tucked his head into his arm to give some protection from the effects. It went off and still shocked him further, but having tightly closed his eyes just in time, he maintained his vision, despite the ringing in his ears.

Shock was replaced quickly by rage, and Towers go to his feet, dropping his rifle and removing the bat'leth he carried on his back. It was a gift from a Klingon officer he had fought beside in battle, and now would repay butchery with butchery.

The Krigorians inside were still recovering from the grenade when Towers and the others hit them. Twelve men with the butts of their phaser rifles and one rage fueled Colonel with a bat'leth made quick work of them.

Within two minutes, it was over. The battle upstairs still raged, the concussion of weapon impacts sounded dull this far down.

Towers sighed, leaning hard against one of the walls.

"We need to get back up there. Bring them, we can at least keep them separate from these pigs until we can get them home."

The marines nodded, and three soldiers moved to pick up their fallen comrades.

"No prisoners when we get back out there. Put them all down." Towers said, his tone deadly.

Nobody objected.

=*= END LOG =*=

Colonel Adam Towers
Commanding Officer, 5th MEU
Starfleet Marine Corps