A group of soldiers use an APC to tear down the door that Emi and Tomio broke through the day before. A lot of the damage caused by that assault is still being worked on around the fortress. A new iron bar gate sits on the gravel by the entrance. New guards have been positioned with M2 Brownings Heavy Machine Guns behind some sandbags by the gate. The original checkpoint has been reinforced with barbed wire and more troops. They stand at the ready when a lone soldier dressed in black approaches on a motorcycle. When they realize who he is, they get on their knees and bow.
”Count Lucius. You may proceed.” The tire spikes laid out on the path after the checkpoint are quickly pulled out of the way. Lucius cruises through the path leading to the opening of the fortress. The guards on duty kneel and bow as he drives past them. He pulls up next to the HQ building after getting through the courtyard, parking his motorcycle next to a black Mercedes Benz G300 Pritschenwagen. Lucius dismounts and makes his way into the HQ. He approaches the receptionist in the lobby who is painting her fingernails.
“Is her highness in the firing range?”
“She’s currently running drills with some new hardware, my Count. Were you looking for her?”
“I must speak with the Highness.”
“If you insist, my Count. You know the drill. Make your way through security, proceed through the armory, put on your hearing protection and you’ll find the firing range door. It’s not hard to miss.” She goes back to painting her nails.
Lucius makes his way past the social media offices on the left side. He comes across a security checkpoint with an intern checking for IDs. Lucius doesn’t have to show any identification and the intern allows him to make his way down a flight of stairs which leads into an underground bunker. He opens a heavy duty iron door with a bullet proof viewport. Inside the armory is a row of lockers, separated by caliber, weapon type, and sectioned off areas for different rankings. Some are restricted only to recruits while some rows of lockers are specified for elite soldiers. It’s almost like a library but for firearms and explosives. Lucius comes across Lilith who is not wearing her vampire mask or helmet. She has her brown hair covered by a bandana and her fatigues are rolled up by the arms as she does some maintenance work on Lucius’s rifle. A Colt Canada MRR C8 rifle carbine with Magpul furniture and a lightweight monolithic upper receiver with Mlok slots. She is using a bore snake to clean out the upper receiver and barrel which has been detached from the lower. The chrome carrier group is laid out and disassembled on her work bench, disassembled with the firing pin placed on a metal tray.
“Is her highness busy?” Lucius asks Lilith. “I must speak to her about the tournament match. I missed out on the briefing yesterday. I was on a flight overseas but I just got back into the country.”
Lilith lowers the upper receiver and barrel onto the table. “Her highness is testing out a new toy for our next match. I bet you can barely hear it. Listen.” The two stay silent as they try to listen to the nearby firing range. A faint, repetitive clapping like sound can be heard. It sounds suppressed but not too suppressed. The rate of fire appears to be slower than that of an assault rifle or submachine gun. “Her highness dumped a lot of money into it. You should have a look.”
“Lucius approaches the firing range door which is heavily reinforced. He grabs a pair of noise cancelling headsets from the nearby rack before opening the door. He walks into a small room chamber with another door leading inside. There’s a couple of warning signs about wearing hearing protection, watching your aim, and unloading your firearm before entering and leaving the firing range. He opens the next door into a concrete row of firing ranges. The blasts coming from Asura’s new weapon are now more apparent now that he’s inside. He looks over at the cardboard targets across the range. Some of them look like they have been completely sawed in half with close groupings of buckshot pellet holes scattered in a linear pattern. Another target is completely ripped to shreds in automatic fire and Lucius is astonished by the firepower Asura is wielding. “That has to be one really bad gun.” He thinks to himself as he walks over to Asura’s firing lane.
Asura has a couple of large box magazines set in a crate with what appears to be subsonic buckshot shells loaded into each mag. She’s loading a new magazine into her new weapon. A drum magazine with what looks like is loaded with 20 shells. She turns her head over to Lucius who is standing behind her from a safe distance. He can spot the model of the automatic shotgun she’s wielding which is labeled on the buttock on the rifle. AA12.
Lucius whistles low under his breath, impressed despite himself. "That's a hell of a weapon, your Highness. Isn’t that a little overkill for our match?”
“Perhaps.” Asura smirks admiring her new weapon. “But it’s perfect for putting Team Lonestar in their place.” Her gloved hands run through the shotgun’s exterior. “Fully automatic, low recoil, equipped with a red dot sight and a Salvo 12 suppressor. She’s expensive…but she’s my new darling. Watch this!” She aims her AA12 at a row of cardboard targets and lets out a hail of buckshot pellets in front of her. The cardboard targets are shredded into confetti and even with a suppressor, the range shakes with the raw power of the shotgun throwing heavy pellets into the targets. The suppressor seems to do a good job hiding the flash, which may as well be an automatic cannon. When her drum magazine runs empty. The cardboard targets are no longer recognizable. “Impressive, eh?”
“Your highness, I just got back from my flight overseas. I had to bring my VR equipment back into the country which took longer than I expected.”
“Are you glad to be back on Canadian soil again, Lucius?”
“I’m hoping my bandwidth will improve now that I’m not deployed overseas. So what is our strategy for the upcoming match? We’re not keeping the same plans as before now that Kael has been replaced with Chiara?”
Asura removes her hearing plugs and lets them hang around her neck. She places her shotgun on the table next to her magazines. “Like I said before, Kael was going to rat out our plans the moment we no longer had a need for him. That means nothing if they are all just inexperienced. Our previous plans have changed but only slightly.”
“Your highness, if I may…” Lucius clears his throat. “It would be too predictable to assault the mansion from the catacombs and rooftop. Don’t tell me we’re still going through with that plan.”
“The plans are the same my dear Lucius.” Asura waves her hand dismissively. “But we’re doing things differently from what Kael heard from our last brief. We won’t breach from the backyard with grappling hooks to the third floor. We’re going to deploy on the roof.”
“But your highness, if we deploy from our helicopter onto the roof, they’ll definitely know we’ll be coming. We’ll get completely ambushed.”
“Ah. Let me finish, Lucius.” Asura leans near the rail of the shooting lane. “Don’t worry about that for the moment. As for Chiara and the remnants of JarPig Squad, they’ll move through the catacombs and make a new entrance into the backyard, instead of going through the basement. They’ll be our mule, hauling most of our ammo and we’ll give them plate carriers for extra protection.”
“We’re putting our trust with our ammunition with them? Can we trust them? What about Chiara? Why can’t we carry the ammunition and supplies we need from the start?” Lucius’s voice hints with skepticism.
“Weight is going to be a factor when our squad deploys onto the rooftop. We have to make due with limitations with ammo and equipment until we can rendezvous with Chiara’s squad at the stairwell. From there, we reload if we have to, get our plate carriers back, and move out to clear the mansion, room to room, until we can capture Mortimer or eliminate Armadillo and Longhorn Squad.” She smirks at Lucius and taps a finger on his respirator mask. “You look confused, Lucius.”
“Well…um…I just don’t understand what you’re getting at with us starting off with less equipment, your Highness.”
“Let me put it this way, Lucius.” Asura’s voice drops to a whisper. “We’ll be deploying from our helicopter, but not over the mansion. You’re not afraid of heights aren’t you?”
“Well…no but…”
“Good, because we have something new in our inventory that will allow us to get to that rooftop without our adversaries ever knowing.”
Lucius' eyes narrow under his helmet. “You’re highness, what are you talking about?”
Asura takes out a phone she carries in-game. It has a little bat charm where the USB C port is located and is protected by a heavy duty black TPU case. She navigates to a gallery and shows her phone to Lucius. “Our scout Vlad has suggested we glide to the roof of the mansion using these state of the art glide suits.” We will fly in through the mountains in our helicopter, jump once Chiara’s squad makes it through the catacombs, and navigate our way stealthy through the mountain range until we deploy our parachutes over the mansion’s rooftop. The landing zone should be large enough for us to all land safely where we’ll penetrate the mansion through the roof once we achieve our landing.” Asura grabs the phone away from Lucius and pockets it into her plate carrier. “So, we’re going in with less supplies than we usually do. We can’t glide with all of the gear. Only what we can reasonably take including our night vision equipment, weapons, and whatever ammo we can carry. No armor or plates. Our helmets have to be composite too.”
”You highness. That’s an insane maneuver for us to pull off. Nobody in Mil-Sim Story has ever attempted a stunt like that.”
”Which is why we’re going to be the first.” Asura explains. “A stealthy incursion this way would be unexpected. Not even Chiara or her squadmates know about this. It’s our little secret and we intend to keep it that way. Team Lonestar is expecting us to come in with Chiara’s squad from the ground or from a helicopter. They will not hear us approaching this way.” She grabs the AA12 from the shooting bench and loads a drum magazine with full capacity. She brings it closer to Lucius.
”Your highness, what are you…
”Shhh…” She points the barrel directly under his chin. Do you realize the complexity of my plan for our upcoming match? This is going to be more than just a little show of force like we did at the Battle of the Dead Mall, or even our match in Neo Tokyo.” Here trigger finger twitches on her AA12. Lucius looks incredibly uneasy with Asura’s abnormal enthusiasm. “We’re going to show Team Lonestar and the rest of the participants of this tournament that we’ll go through extreme measures to get what I want.” Her voice gets more quiet and harsh as her free hand charges the bolt on her shotgun. “This Friday, we’re going to annihilate Armadillo and Longhorn Squad.” Her voice gets quieter and her finger starts to squeeze the trigger of her AA12. “And I’ll personally blast Emi and Tomio’s heads for trashing my fortress. When we reach the finals, I'll destroy Seth like a Watermelon.” She lowers her weapon and moves her finger away from the trigger. Lucius sighs in relief and almost collapses on the floor.
“We’re going to practice our gliding maneuvers in private with the rest of Vampire Squad. Be ready and expect to make a few crash landings until we get it right.” She returns back to her shooting lane to go back to shredding targets. “Ask Lilith to hand over your rifle. I want to see you work on your shooting fundamentals today now that you’ve returned.”
“It…it will be done, your highness.” He bows his head towards Asura. “Our strategy for Friday will be a success. I can feel it.”
Chiara is conflicted with picking a primary for the upcoming match on Friday. She’ll be going up against her former squad. For the past few days she’s been in Vampire Squad, she has been restrained with the recruits’ M16A3. But such a weapon would be too long to wield in the mansion’s corridors and the catacombs from where her squad will be approaching from. She can always go back to using her MP5SD6 and Taurus TX22 Compact, but she’s considering other options. Lilith is there with her to give suggestions.
”You just can’t part from that MP5 of yours, Sister.” Lilith crosses her arms and leans against the weapon lockers as Chiara looks over the table with various weapons.
”I’m so used to my submachine-gun. I don’t think I can use anything else. The M16A3 I’ve been using is too unwieldy.
”What about an M4 Carbine, or a Mk18? They have standard AR controls that you’re used to with your M16A3 but are shorter. They might have a little more recoil.”
”I’m not so good with recoil, Lilith.
”Me neither.” Lilith shrugs. I’m a small girl, just like you. I usually run a H&K UMP 45. It’s kind of like your MP5. But I’m going to run a Brügger & Thomet MP45 for the match. I have to cut some weight for my gear, but you don't have to worry about that.” She looks down at Chiara's sidearm. "That plinker of yours won't cut it, I'm afraid."
”My Taurus?”
”You know first hand that 22lr is going to penetrate any ceramic plates, let alone steel plates. That thing is only good for taking out enemy pop cans. If you don’t mind, I can fetch you something fancy to your liking. These pistols have become all the rage lately.” She walks over to a small locker under her gunsmithing table. “Don’t tell her Highness about this. These pistols are expensive. I used a decent chunk of the team’s budget for one of these.” Lilith pulls out a hard case and opens it, revealing a plush interior holding what appears to be a 1911 style handgun but with a thicker grip and double stack magazines. The slide has cut serrations, a compensator much like Hikari’s P320 Spectre Comp, a bronze finish, textured grip panels, a skeletonized trigger, and Trijicon SRO optic. It has the name “Sand Viper” sketched onto the slide.
”Oh my goodness. This…this is too much.”
”Don’t worry about it, sister. Using this pistol is almost like cheating. It’s a very soft shooter for a 9mm. It’s more accurate than you’ll ever be. As long as you don’t mind it being heavy.”
Chiara wields the 2011 from the case. She racks the slide which is buttery smooth, squeezes the trigger which breaks nice and clean like glass, and looks down the optic which is clear and visible even in the bright lights of the armory room. “What’s the capacity of these mags?”
“It takes a proprietary 17 round or 22 round magazine.”
“That’s incredible. I’m used to having 10 and 13 round magazines for my TX22 Compact.”
“And this is far more capable too. That thing is leaps and bounds over your typical Glocks and CZs. You can't get a better side arm than this, Sister.”
“You seem really knowledgeable about firearms, Lilith. I had no idea.”
“It’s not by accident.” Lilith nods her head. “I’ve been researching and min-maxing equipment long before Asura brought me into the team. I like tinkering with things you know. I have a little Etsy shop of trinkets and goodies like charms, bracelets, and custom fabrics. I made this custom battle tunic myself.” Lilith shows off her sleeves of her red and black bat pattern tunic. I can even do custom work on firearms like Asura’s Luger Pistol. Her pistol has custom ivory grips and a stainless finish I’ve done myself.”
“I see…” Just as Chiara places the 2011 back into the case, Lucius comes back from the firing range through the door. He places his hearing protection around his neck.
“Lilith, is my rifle ready?”
“She’s ready to go, Brother.” Lilith pulls Lucius’ rifle from a rack on the wall. “I replaced your original chrome lined bolt carrier group for a steel Faxon lightweight one. The finish isn’t as good as your original BCG but it’ll be reliable enough and get rid of some extra weight even with a supressor. The gas system should be tuned for sub sonics.”
“Excellent.” He grabs the rifle from the rack. “And you…” He looks at Chiara. “You should get some range time behind that new pistol of yours. We only have a few days before the match.”