CP:R - C2 Segment 2

Civil Protection: Renegade
Chapter 2
Segment 2
With the gunshots still continuing, and no further hint as to their source, Alan decided that the team continue its raid on Desmond’s hideout. They advanced again, albeit slowly, with every team member holding their sub-machine guns up ready to fire quickly, and constantly pausing to check their surroundings for anything suspicious. Most of them were growing more nervous, with only the most gung-ho and overconfident of them still eager for combat.
The raid team had moved about ten metres down when Tiller slowed down, causing the team to stall again.
Alan kept walking another metre before he noticed. “Hey, Tiller, why we stopping?” he asked, knowing that listening to others’ intuition could save a lot of grief.
“There’s more gunshots up ahead,” Tiller said, tilting his head to one side. “Sounds like the rebels are fighting, but we don’t know against what…”
“Probably against whoever, or whatever, came from that shuttle,” Alan muttered forebodingly. “But we won’t know until we find it. Like I said, team, stay cautious and fire on anything that looks suspicious and doesn’t have a mask on. Keep moving.”
The team started down the corridor again, with the sounds of gunshots becoming more audible with every metre travelled. Some of the officers with a lack of confidence began to entertain more than just anxiety, bordering on doubt and fear. Regardless of their subconscious intuition subtly telling them that they should get the fuck out of there before they got killed, they still stayed with the team, though they slowly shifted to the back of the team.
Alan and Tiller reached the corner, and Tiller signaled for Alan to take a look. He obliged, holstering his sub-machine gun and pulling out his pistol. He pressed up against the wall, feeling a sense of déjà vu as he did so, and poked his head around the corner. There weren’t any rebels in the next corridor.
“Clear,” he reported, and stepped around the corner, switching to his sub-machine gun, and waited for the bulk of the team to follow him before he began to march down the next corridor. After several warning events that still hadn’t shown their origins, the whole team was extremely cautious, moving very slowly while they looked around for anything to shoot.
Then, without warning, one of the doors burst open, and something flew out of it to collide with the opposite wall at high speed.
No chances were taken. The instant that the figure was in sight, five officers emptied ten rounds each from their sub-machine guns into it. It jerked about slightly from the impact of the bullets, but lay still against the wall.
Tiller moved towards the figure, taking a look at it. No doubt about what it was. “It’s a rebel. Judging from what I can see, he probably died when he hit that wall, at a high speed.”
“This just gets stranger,” Alan muttered, though nobody heard him through the now quite loud sounds of gunfire. “Well, I say we go through that door. That’s probably where they are.” Raising his sub-machine gun, he stepped lightly around the dead rebel, and into the doorway, with Tiller and Dan following closely.
He walked into a room that was lit by a slightly dimmed yellow light that occasionally flickered, though it was more than adequate to see into every corner of the room. What took hold of his attention first was the amount of unmoving, unconscious or dead rebels scattered around on the floor, and the amount of discarded weapons and expended cartridges lying next to the bodies. An obvious sign of a large and extended firefight.
Then his attention was drawn to the small group of rebels who were still alive and standing, but they didn’t look like they had even noticed the raid team enter the room. Instead, they seemed to be purely focused on emptying their magazines into a target that Alan couldn’t see because of the bright muzzle flashes of the rebels’ stolen Combine weaponry. He slowly stepped forward, trying to catch a glimpse.
Then the rest of the raid team entered the room.
“There they are!” one officer shouted upon seeing the rebels. “Open fire!”
Twenty CP officers opened fire on the rebels with their sub-machine guns. The rebels were slow to react, taking seconds to realize that they were even being fired upon by the raid team. By then most of them were already dead, and the remaining few were stumbling around their dead comrades, trying to escape the hail of bullets. The stragglers were quickly cut down.
“We got them,” one of the inspect-and-raid squad leaders said, smirking underneath his helmet.
“Check the surrounding rooms, there might be more,” Alan ordered, almost automatically. His squad walked forward, sweeping around with their sub-machine guns. As he stepped over a cluster of dead rebels, he caught sight of what he’d assumed to be another body moving.
He instinctively brought up his sub-machine gun and aimed down the scope, but the rebel didn’t seem to be very aware of the raid team. She seemed to be almost cowering, and from something else other than the raid team.
“Wait, guys, there’s something weird here,” he said to the rest of the team. As he moved closer, he could see her facial features thanks to the scope’s magnification, and the way she was crab-crawling backwards. He still couldn’t see what she was looking at.
“Hey, you-” he began, but stopped as what the scared rebel was seeing became clear. He couldn’t make out much detail, even through the scope, so all he saw was a roughly human-shaped figure walking towards the rebel, raising an arm up to point something at her. Alan identified it as a gun, half a second before a muzzle flash emanated from it with the accompanying unique echo of a gunshot, an event preceding the rebel’s untimely death by bullet to the brain.
“Shit,” one of the inspect-and-raid squad leaders gasped, halting and bringing his sub-machine gun up to aim at the source of the muzzle flash, with the rest of his squad following suit. “Whatever the hell is going on, I’m not going a step further.”
“Any particular reason why?” Audrey inquired, who by now had recovered enough to stand and walk around properly, and was standing near the officer.
“Yeah, try this one: we don’t wanna die,” the officer said. “I’m telling you, if we go any further, we’re gonna get fucking massacred!”
“Don’t be such a coward, man, that’s just worse,” an officer nobody could really see said.
“Right, right, let’s see how smug you are when-”
Another gunshot rang out. The panicking officer suddenly stopped mid-rant, toppling backwards to crash in a heap on the floor. Blood spurted out from two parallel holes in his helmet, beginning to stain his vest.
“Your head explodes?” Audrey said cynically, completing the now-dead officer’s sentence. “I’m still feeling smug, though probably not for long.” Reluctantly, she turned to face the source of the gunshot.