A Miner Problem , Chapter 4

"A Miner Problem"

Chapter Four

Morning found DM on the bridge, looking over the aft parts of the ship, the passengers lounging poolside, the gaming tables starting early, along with the more sporting individuals catching a first round of tennis or jogging. Just a deck or two below them a major commando raid was setting into motion, planes and helicopters being serviced, dragons and humans checking and organizing weapons. Just a faint smile on his muzzle was the only hint of it all.  

 As the last of the breakfast patrons moved through the dining area, mixed with them were the planners getting breakfast as well, before returning to satellite photos, images from the air recon and even the results of operatives and agents now on the scene, such as Bryce (Drakko) Brighthorn and Chill’. They always liked to get in early on any plans.

   Peering through the leaves from the tropic forest, a minicam mounted on Bryce’s visor notes the camp where the group of family members of the mine slaves are held as hostage. He selects send to uplink the footage to the Council room onboard the Rio, while whispering a rough count of the beings there. The contamination of the mining is pervasive even outside the mines entry way, as all the visible captives are reptilians.

  Taking a side glance, Bryce notes the rails of the new line, which enter the mine opening as well as the captives camp. He follows them over to a building further away, carefully entering, he stops to examine the contents, activating his audio pickup and whispering “Here is their rail group, I count four locomotives, plus a dozen each passenger coaches and ore hoppers. We’ll need Donut Cereal on this, bigtime and probably have to borrow some pilots from Air group to help him, Danielo and Rex, maybe.”

  A door opens as Bryce fades into the shadows. He knows the party has to wait until nightfall, and despite a sling carrying flashdark’s along with grenades filled with venom, the word for now is stealth. The security man, another reptilian walks through the engine house and exits at the far end . “Note to self, these reptilians must not have the same scent abilities that we do, one just passed with 30 feet of me and didn’t get a thing, while I knew what the goon had for breakfast,” whispered to the microphone.

  After a careful exit of the rail shop, Bryce heads to a jungle spot which is only a map coordinate and waits. Before long, Chill joins him, saying “Got the airfield, very well hidden, there are still 4 Su-35’s there after their losses yesterday,” He responds “No problem there, the Air guys will take care of those, How many guards so far?” She notes about two dozen, a handful on the airfield plus the rail center the rest all covering the captives.

  After updating the uplink narration with this, he sits back with her, saying “That’s about it for now, we’ll go inside the mine itself later this afternoon so we can be in place by midnight.”

   Several miles away, at a large Mansion:

  “No, Barry... I’ll take your word for it. I’m just a silent member of this syndicate, unless I see something foolish happening or someone decides to tell me. Last week a laborer escaped and not recovered, now you are telling me that a group of mysterious aircraft overflew this site and when challenged- destroyed more than half our air group yesterday?”

  “Yes, that’s what.....” a henchman started before being interrupted.

  “SILENCIO!”---”Unless perhaps you would like me to assign you to more time in the mines that is! You might look good in green skin!....”shouted the crime lord, to a gale of laughs around the room

   “You will find that escaped man and be more alert to any threats. There are gangs who would enjoy taking what we have made here. If you want your share to up and disappear, I could care less but not when my part of it could go with it !”

   One of them picks up a cell phone to inform a cohort “I want your sniper team on their stations tonight, start them at 5 p.m. until the Morning”.

  The group walks out onto a balcony, deep in their own plans and schemes.

 As the group is heard out on the balcony, a shape materializes from out of the room air, seated in a chair near the Crime Boss’ desk, A blood red Dragon with a white scaled chest, carrying a walking stick. Calmly listening to the banter among the gangsters, he waits.

   Soon the Crime Boss is bellowing again, “What do you mean less ore per week?!!”

   “It may be due to the health of the miners, the Reptilian ones are getting worse” comments another.

   “Well, you have dealt with that before, do it again, today at dusk, every last one, then go get a fresh group from the next nearest villages and start again, there are plenty of them, ha ha.” from the Crime Boss.

   The dragon, listening suddenly turns a bit pale, he has just heard an order for a mass execution slaying! He wants so much to step onto the balcony to burn all, but he is there to report. Having to calm down to use his abilities...He finally cloaks again, making his way from the room.

  By Noon, everyone on the  Rio’ has been awake for a few hours, lunch came and went as the Council began to gather in the chambers for their final brief. Then it will be a matter of passing some 7 hours until take-off so that they arrive at midnight on the site. There is a banter around the table until the last of them seat.

  “Listen up, Operation Minecraft- Final briefing- Raid to start at Midnight plus 0.01.
The following teams after a slight modify:
AIR... Edge, Rex, Daniello, Timberwolf.
INFILTRATE....Bryce, Chill, Crazikc, Hatkah - all of them already on site and awaiting!
ASSAULT.... Robinton, Zorath, Abria, Shinkou, DoughnutCereal.
MARKSMAN....Kitsuna, Draco Draconis, Keane Tan.
MEDICS.... Doc Torkos and Gilead

  Suddenly a portal appears, it is ragged and there is barely enough room to enter, a Dragon comes through horizontally to drop and skid to a halt. Picking himself up, he covers the last few feet to the Council table, breathing hard.

  “Hatkah, that was very dangerous to do, all of our portal energy is on Enerin’s project for the next several hours! You may have not made it here.” said Doc Torkos.

   “Couldn’t be helped, Doc, this is a tragic new wrinkle to the whole plan!” Hatkah continued.
 
   “While monitoring and getting information on the syndicate owners as planned, I overheard the leader give instructions for the Guards and the henchmen to ... Liquidate the entire captive population, all 700 of them. Apparently not digging fast enough, they are to die at dusk and be replaced tomorrow by more freshly kidnapped from surrounding villages!”

  You could hear a pin drop, were it not for Robinton’s couch sized heart, as eyes widened, then narrowed in anger. A few stray zaps of electricity ran between horns, like a Jacob’s Ladder.

  Zorath closed his eyes, breathing in deeply several times, then opening them again, completely calmed and objective, as the room began to fill with angry chatter.

  “I call for calm along with order, because so much more is on the line now. All of us must now
FOCUS in order to continue forward”, he began.

   “All the teams will stay as planned for the members, but instead of the sequence of events we were about to create, instead we will all be assembled, all teams to counter their extermination step. We will land and debark from the HL200 just outside of the site and fly the rest of the way in. If the time is with us, they will be just preparing the massacre and there we shall meet them with steel, lead, fire and claw.” Zorath concluded. Everyone sat for a moment trying to grasp what they had just heard.

They were snapped out of it by Edge declaring “Transport will be Lifting off in 30 minutes, be there or left here!”... Followed with a large, deck-plates-shaking Hoo - Rawrrrrrr from the group!

   The original plan was to start out some 40 minutes after sunset to keep the departure from sight of most of the Rio passengers, now we would be doing so in plain sight. There was only one thing that mattered from here out. No more blood for ore.

  As surprised passengers watched from poolside and the gaming deck, a HL 200 emerged a short distance away, screaming up to full thrust then lifting away a few seconds before the elevator could fully rise. From the other side of the rear deck a pair of F-41’s took off vertically to cover the Rio, now startlingly unmasked as a Man-O-War.

   Aboard the HL200, the briefing would continue. We were 5 hours out, flying at just over the wave tops, we would skim the jungle as well to reach the captives’ camp.

  Zorath walked a smaller dragon to the open aisle ahead of the seats to introduce him as Alfredo, the stowaway who alerted us to the problem. After a round of compliments on the new form, it was noted that in his reptilian guise, a short trip into one of Doc Shinkou’s transformation chambers on the ship had speedy and useful results. “The minor health problems are abolished by taking our form, according to my tests after he was done. We may also be able to make the wingless reptilian forms safer to assume as well. The one thing that a number of the villagers want, a return to human form, is still outside of our technology or magic use at this time.” noted Doc Torkos.

   Then Alfredo voiced a request to the ear of Draco Draconis, who opened up one of several carry cases and presented Alfredo with an assault carbine. He would go in with the rest of us, soon a small group of the Assault team would outfit him with everything else he would need.

   Suddenly there was a lurch as everyone had to get seated and hold on for a rough ride. Up in the cockpit, Edge with Rex and Danielo were taking us over land at ‘zero feet’ while one was steering, another navigates by using sat photos in 3D, noting billboards, house colors and street signs for markers, while the third was purely looking for power lines, tall trees, antennas along with smokestacks. In spare moments, they operate communication jamming gear, because while they were below radar coverage, anyone with a cell phone had a perfect sighting of them!

  Things were getting busy at the captives camp, everyone had been led from the mines to here and the captives knew they were not being given the night off. Observing from nearby, both Chill with Bryce were taking up positions, sending video from their headsets to Zorath and company, on their way in.

   Suddenly Chill lurched violently as a small burst erupted from her neck, leaving a plastic dart tail stuck there, a Stun electron dart for draconian subjects. She sags to the ground, landing face up, as Bryce is enraged, he cannot go to her, the snipers are waiting for that. he calls into his mic “Chill is down, I’m trying to evade and retal” while he moves from cover to cover, it is too late, he can now smell at least 4 humans. He takes a similar round to the back of his neck and falls forward. The scheme worked, despite their great sense of sight and smell, the special long range darts fired from large Barrett bmg’s exploded, breaking the scales, These non-lethals’ would have none the less decapitated a human. The surprise attack had broken the Council’s spearhead.

  Aboard the transport, Zorath was made aware of the event, Hatkah was with them after returning by portal earlier. Crazikc was watching the mansion awaiting Hatkah’s return. At dusk he was going to saturate the mansion in flashdarks and venom canisters. Nobody was watching the main coumpound and the captives. The main force would be landing blind, with the snipers still out there, loading explosive shells.

   Edge had left Rex and Danielo up in the front office, he had an idea. As he entered the two air vehicle bays, he stopped and updated Robinton in the first bay, lying on his back, the only way he could fit into the skyhauler. Edge and Draco Draconis entered the second bay and before long Edge had his web gear on and Draco was fitting him with Magnarail guns for each arm.

  Like Robinton, Edge lay on his back, also on a drop pallet. When the transport flew over the objective and the rear doors opened, a small charge would throw a small parachute out the back, pulling them out of thier two bays. They would simply step off the pallets into flight and battle. They wanted to give the captives and the arriving team a better chance in what would become a very hot landing zone. As Rex and Danielo now pulled up to give them some diving room, Zorath stood up at the back of the cabin by the big emergency doors, equipped with explosive latches to open fast. “ONE MINUTE TO GO! CHECK YOUR GEAR! WATCH EACH OTHER! GOOD LUCK !! he yelled.