┬┴┬┴┤ ͜ʖ ͡°) Papa Rooster 7/22/19  (▀̿Ĺ̯ ├┬┴┬┴

The scramble had started and the alarms were piercing. While our luck with the initial sentries was great, the pair loitering on the compound’s main door had decided to go down loud and slow. The larger one even going as far as to clutch the trigger on his way down, sending a wild spray and another three or four hits into his adjacent and equally dead friend. It was still all the better for us, orcs are hard to put down; and even harder to keep down.

The outer courtyard wall of the three story manor was 10 feet and solid brick. We quickly set to work digging the explosives out of our pouches. Uncoiling wire as I went, I jogged down another 30 feet to a portion of the wall we had identified as being close to the groundskeeper’s shed while studying the sat imaging back at base. I’d prepared a hefty block of semtex and duct taped it to an IV bag from one of our medical kits. Water impulse charges were handy items, especially when you had to be within smelling distance of what you were blowing. The fluid being so much denser than the surrounding air (or even brick to a pressure wave), it was great at redirecting a blast away from you and toward the thing you no longer wanted to exist. Twice the bricks for them, half the bricks for me.

She was tying knots, little detonation cord loops and affixing them to the weak points on the main gate doors. She was able to thread them through a slight gap to wrap the hinges, and then tied two simple slip knots around the handle. She worked with concentration, purposely trying not to get in a hurry and make use of what fine motor skills she had with the adrenaline pumping. She pushed up her night vision device on its swivel mount to try and see better, her short skirt pulling slightly further up her back every time she bent over for a closer look. We both wore slick carriers with sling bags and belt pouches. We wanted to stay light, we didn’t intend to be here for long.

She spliced into the line I had laid out already and made her way down to my position. She came close and asked if I was ready with a bit of girlish excitement in her voice. I smiled and told her I was, winking and tapping on my PVS-14 to remind her to lower hers back down. It was too dark to tell if she blushed, but her swift giggle made me think she had. I turned towards the charge I’d set on the wall and pushed myself a few lengths away so as not to catch any traveling shockwave down the bricks. She tapped my shoulder as she ran past opposite the charge further down the wall, reaching down to put the detonator in my hand. She gained her position, IR laser beaming into the sky as she held her weapon at the CQB ready position. She gave a nod.

I nodded back and whispered harshly that there was fire in the hole. The first effects were three loud pops in quick succession, followed by a loud clanging as the steel door of the compound blew 8 feet into the courtyard and bounced around. Just as soon as it settled, gunshots flooded through the doorway. I called out fire in the hole a again, but this time shouting. The crack of a low note thumped through our chests as saline solution from the IV bag showered us and we tasted a salty, chalky mist. Without even so much as a flinch, she was first through the breach.

She pushed on her shallow angle, hugging the wall I had been huddled next to. Close behind, crossing through the new entrance, I did the same on the other wall. I raised my feet high, stepping over the uneven bricks, careful to keep my footing. We were directly behind the groundskeeper shed as we had planned. I ran to the closest corner, next to the back door. I pushed my rifle around the corner, squaring the stock firmly against the shoulder portion of my plate. I did not wear a swimmers cut at night. There was no need to acquire a sight picture when shooting off the laser. So I let the plates to the work of handling the recoil and kept my head high, scanning for threats. My side was clear into the grounds, but the report of a suppressed SCAR 17 short barrel let me know that she had some work to do. I pushed around the building, trusting no one was hiding in the bushes near the water fountain on my open side, and peered around the next corner. There was a fireteam moving in, looked to be four. While they didn’t have NODS, they did have excellent dark vision being mostly descendent of cave-dwellers. The shade of green that bounced off their skin seemed amplified in the night vision, and I picked up a target who was unaware of my angle.

I brought the rifle up and painted him with my laser. I squeezed only once as the punishing impact of a 458 SOCOM was enough to drop a grizzly, much less an orc. I took a large pivot step around the building to try and remain partially concealed. Two more were running, but this time in the direction from where they’d come. One was hobbling, and the second tried to leap over him in a move of panic. A streak of moonlit splatter flew in the air as an M993 AP 308 split his cranium like a watermelon had met a chainsaw. The other only managed to hobble another two feet before collapsing. I sent another round into his side for good measure.

She called out for a mag change, and I sent another couple rounds into the fray to keep heads ducked. When she had topped off it was quiet for a moment, then she yelled that the fourth was already down. I smirked approvingly to myself and pulled back around to the door. We heard rustling inside.

Ducking under the windows, she scurried to me and turned around. Quickly, I dove into the top pouch of her pack, pulled out a flashbang grenade and reached over her shoulder to hand it off. She accepted and I zipped her back up, noting that she had taken the time to put on the perfume she knew I liked.

She crouched back under the window and prepared for the throw as I tied a quick knot around the door knob of the back door. I pulled back away from the blast direction and gave her a thumbs up, cueing her to butt the window with the stock of her weapon and toss in the grenade. I plugged my ears.

I never quite got used to the crack of a flashbang. It made me nauseous to be in the same room. However, I resolved my will, pushed the button, and detonated the cord. The door knobs flew like cannon shots; the one outside sailing well over the wall to likely land in the nearby village. I pulled my rifle into a steady position and arced around, trying to clear the short corner with a hybrid entry. Satisfied the short end of the shed was clear, I pushed in, the whole process taking less than 3 seconds.

The inside knob had done some work for me, and had bludgeoned one poor sap in the forehead. He was sufficiently blinded and disoriented in conjunction with the flashbang, and let me line up a purposeful shot from just a few feet. I sent the round right into his nose, turning him off like a switch. As I pivoted to the left I brought my laser up on a second target but he was already falling. The blood splatters against the far wall made it obvious he’d taken two or three shots from the window, where a single night vision barrel peered back at me. I called out clear.

I swapped for a fresh magazine as she peeled in. We didn’t waste any time. She pulled the crowbar from the side straps of my pack and I started in at the floorboards. She posted up at a window looking out, anticipating a counter attack. Becoming tired, relief came on the ninth floorboard. I picked it up, breathing hard, and held it up to be seen. She brought her hands to her face and let loose a happy squeal as the sight of her diary with the lock intact. I thank our commander, who’d demanded we get the lock warded by the Brigade Wizard lest it be lost and read.

Objective completed, intel recovered. Snorts and hoots from the main building started abruptly and we heard the churn of engines starting. We needed no further invitation to leave. We left the crowbar where it lay and she pulled in just behind me as we exited the door, hitting our sharp angles and slicing the pie back towards our explosive handiwork. She kicked up rocks sprinting out of the compound and into the gully we’d approached from. We had our quads waiting there to get us to the LZ. We sprinted, letting the cool night air hit our lungs and numb them to any pain. I coughed up an update to mission control between breathes, and she told me just how much she loved date night.