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[Y] SINC Leona.
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SINC Leona. N/A Views 2140 Votes 1 Comments 0
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Continuation of "The Snipers." I introduce an important character who has been in several roles in a large proportion of my high school years, and we get to understand the (thusfar) obscure man, who calls himself Johannes, and his role in the story... presumably. Oh, you also get to meet a foxy pilot named Minna!!
[Y] SINC Leona.
Part One.Ghillies in the mist.      Chernobyl; Christmas for the bad guys. Even a decade after the disastrous melt down at the plant a lot of them used it to get their hands on nuclear material… a lot of them including one Petyr Inovovich Chekov. Well… we couldn’t just let that happen. Cash for spent fuel rods? That’s one hell of a recipe for destruction. So we went in after him.     The Americans would take the commander; the British would take one lieutenant; we Germans would take out the other lieutenant. The old cut the head off the snake routine. With the three senior authority figures out of the picture, the entire pro-communist party would crumble under its own weight… all we had to do was knock out the right support beams.     I was just a newly promoted First Luftennant back then, doing some ‘wetwork’ under the command of Captain Marcus Karl Miller, the founder of the 425th sniper gruppen outside of my hometown; Steinherring, Germany. I remember the mission like it was yesterday… SINC LEONA.VIR Day -28.     SECOND IN COMMAND LEONA F. HUGHES WAS TALL FOR A FEMALE. She stood at six feet three inches to the top of her skull and six feet nine inches to the tips of her ears. That and her very thick soled boots clocked her in at just shy of seven feet tall, overall. But that was not the circumstance as of this moment.      She stood on the balls of her feet as she often did in the privacy of the officers living quarters, scantily dressed in a pair of crimson red panties with a matching full coverage bra. Standing only on the balls of her feet she stood a mere five feet seven inches to the tips of her ears, an overall less intimidating stance matched by the gorgeous tangerine orange fur that covered her perfectly formed body. She tugged at her terra cotta brown hair with a brush in one of her black hands, a seasonal abnormality, as the black stockings on her legs and fore-arms only appeared during the winter as the color black. During the rest of the year those stockings would be either light-brown or just as tangerine as the rest of her body.      It was a routine thing for her. Wake up at five, brush her hair, take a shower, brush her hair, dry off, brush her hair, wait until her hair was dry, and brush it again. The end result was a head of hair that was absolutely perfect in appearance relative to her overall appearance as a young, beautiful woman who never had to use any product to maintain her beauty. She was on the last step, having waited for the better part of an hour for her hair to dry completely.      She shrugged on a black shirt with short sleeves, pulled on the one size too large grey Kreigsmarine flight suit bottoms, tucked in the shirt, and then answered a knock at her door. It was a young male desk sergeant coming to ask if she needed anything, courtesy of Captain Miller of the 425th sniper gruppen. She asked if there was a coffee machine, the sergeant said yes, and she told him that she would help herself later on. The sergeant went away, and she shut the door.      She finished dressing by pulling on a grey flight suit top and zipping it to the very top, clamping a L2A2 vitals collar around her neck, and donning her extra intimidating campaign hat. She had her hair up in a pony-tail, as was protocol, and fixed her ears in the slats of the large, black hat on her head. Once satisfied that she could hear out of the hat, she pulled it off and got into a set of woodland camouflaged BDUs that covered her flight suit. She took her time blousing her pants in her black zip-and-buckle boots, and then grabbed her hat and stepped out of the door.      As soon as she was out the door she began to walk on her toes as a furry does, her tail balancing her so she didn’t fall over. It was a long, low building that housed the officers living quarters, much like a regular barracks, but with walls separating it into several twelve by twelve spaces. The appearance of the place was extremely plain, as all military structures often are, the only exception being the door, which said “COMPLACENCY KILLS” in blood red print. She shoved the door open violently and was greeted by a loud shout.      “Platoon attention!!!”There was a sudden mad dash for everyone to hop up on their feet and stand at the perfect position of attention and not make a sound at all. She stood in the door for a moment, making sure that no one was sitting down and that no one was moving.      “Carry on,” she said calmly and quietly.      “Carry on!!”      She made her way to the opposite end of the room, which by her own judgment was a mess hall or a DFAC, whichever term was appropriate, and found a coffee machine gargling away. It was a standard Bunn flask, one of the big ones that could hold over a hundred cups of the brown liquid, and it was accompanied by two other units of the same make, model, and capacity. Her tail brought her a cup from the other end of the counter the flasks were sitting on, the white object held firmly by the fluffy appendage.       “Thank you,” she whispered.      She poured as much coffee into the cup as it could possibly hold, downed it, and repeated the process twice more. Across the DFAC or, mess hall, or whatever the fuck it was, two men were watching her with amazement in their eyes. She turned and watched them back, her deep blue eyes stripping away their flesh with their intensity.      One of them was a red fox, like her. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties wearing a campaign hat with a Captain’s insignia in the very precise center of the bulge. He was also wearing a pair of dark aviators. Perched in his hands were a fork and knife, and not the plastic kind, actual tangible pressed-steel items. He seemed to be eating a type of fish, or at least he had been eating, until he caught sight of her. He gawked his head at her slightly. Ma’am?      The other man was very tall in stature, standing he could have been easily seven or more feet in the air. He had a small patch of black fur under his chin. His eyes were a very light blue color, almost grey, and there was more iris than white showing in them. His pupils were two black circles about the size of an American dime, and they were fixed on her like two tiny black holes on a sheet of paper. In the two minutes they had their eyes locked, his never blinked. His brown hair was short and neat between his large ears, which twitched to catch sounds coming at him from every direction. Their eyes remained locked. His fur was a very dark grey color, reminding her of the American’s F-15E fighter jet that was really more of a strike aircraft. “Gunship Grey” is what they called that color, right?      Leona poured herself another cup, downed it, and flipped the cup into a recycling basket. All of her biomechanical body parts made it halfway between impossible and impractical to try and get her caffeine fix. All of the filters in her blood stream and the biomechanical “bones” and “muscles” were profoundly efficient filters of their own. When it all came down to it though, the Anites did the best job.      The Anites were the “blood” for biomechanical parts, similar in size and shape to actual blood cells, with over ten times the capability to carry around oxygen, and they fed off of any and all toxins that entered the body. These nanotechnology robots were what kept a woman as highly technologically modified as Leona alive; she was very grateful for them. When she was a new pilot, a mere Second Luftennant back in those days, her aircraft lost power and she crashed head-on into the tree line after takeoff. The injuries she sustained were massive.      She was rushed to the base hospital where the first biomechanical limbs had been perfected. Her legs had to be replaced, and the surgery took the better part of three days, as the doctors had to isolate certain nerves and connect them to the biomechanical limbs without causing further damage. She woke four days later and was going through physical workouts to get the feel for her new legs inside a week. Though the legs gave her a second chance at flying, it was the invariably adaptable Anite fuel that the new limbs needed to function that saved her life. En route to the hospital, Leona lost almost half of the thirteen pints of blood in her body, and her blood type was so rare that the blood bank didn’t have any to speak of on hand. Had she not been as fortunate as to work on the base that had the best scientific research going on at the time, she would not have lived to be what she had become today.      But Leona liked her coffee. Her caffeine addiction made a dedicated heroine user look like a cheap Japanese Godzilla movie next to a piece of pure biotechnology like herself. She had once downed seventeen cups of black coffee in one sitting just to show people she could, and that was before her accident. So in this respect, she hated the Anites. It took three cups of coffee just to get the caffeine dosage of a teaspoon of the brown liquid.      Her tail grabbed at a coffee pot sitting in its own dedicated percolator as she slowly weaved her way through the tables and chairs, scooping up a larger plastic cup on her way to the two men at the table. As she drew near both of them stood up at the position of attention and waited for the most feared woman in the world to sit down and grant them permission to sit as well. She stole a seat out from under a nearby sergeant; he hit the ground with quite a thud and she placed herself gently down in the warm seat.      “You may be seated, gentlemen,” she said, taking the coffee pot from her tail,” and you have my full permission to speak freely.”      The two men sat down and watched her pour the coffee into the cup.      “Pardon me, ma’am,” said the fox,” but what is your name and how shall we address you?”      She sipped the brown liquid,” My name is Leona Falken-Raven Hughes. I am Second in Command of all of our forces in the field, and I have the ability to unleash thermonuclear holocaust on the world with press of a button, or a simple telephone call. Now… what is your name and how shall I address you?”      The fox spoke first,” Ma’am, I am Captain Marcus Karl Miller, I am the founding father of this military unit, and I am very pleased to have such a reputable member of our Bundeswher here to grace said unit.”      The wolf was still looking at her. He spoke slowly and very softly,” Ma’am, my name is Johannes von Ackerman. I am a First Luftennant in the 425th sniper gruppen, pupil to this man, Captain Miller.”      Miller asked,” Do you know that this woman is the most feared woman in all of Europe?”      “Not just Europe,” said von Ackerman,” the entire world is scared of her. But… I can’t understand why. How could anyone be scared of a creature with such beautiful blue eyes?”      Leona almost choked on her drink, and had the kid not been such a sweetheart she probably would have pile-drove his testicles into the ground.       “I’m flattered,” she said,” but I have to warn you, Luftennant, I’m not that easy.”      “Of course not, ma’am. I didn’t mean to imply as such, but I figured a woman should be told about her beauty. If I said you were a cow I’d be in an ER room in a bucket, and I’d be a liar.”      He looked at her with those big blue eyes, with a sort of energy behind them that she couldn’t explain.      “You wouldn’t want to call me a liar,” he asked,” would you?”      She shook her head,” No, that would make me a liar too.”      Miller took a bite of his fish, the smell of it hit Leona’s heightened senses like a freight train.      “Jesus,” Leona said,” what the hell is that?”      “Two day old tilapia,” Miller said with a sense of irony in his voice.      “Any good?”      “Better than three day old tilapia.”      He took another bite. Leona met Johannes’ eyes again, and suddenly it occurred to her that he hadn’t taken his eyes off of her. She blushed a little, idiot, she thought.      “May I inquire, Luftennant,” she started slyly,” why are you so infatuated with me?”      He was not quick to respond. She noticed his eyes soften even further to a point of almost puppy love.       “It is not just you that I am infatuated in,” he said, and he did not continue on any further.      The conversation was going nowhere and Leona gave up trying to talk with the two men. She stood up and left the room, taking the coffee pot with her, back through the bland hallway, through the “COMPLACENCY KILLS” door, and through another bland hallway to her room. As soon as her door was closed she wandered over to the bed and sat down in thought.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------        “MY PROBLEM IS THAT I AM A REAL LADIES MAN,” SAYS VON AKCERMAN.     He lays the single white rose on to the grave of a woman named Cherrie Svetlana Tupikov. He stands up and salutes the grave rigidly.      “In all of my years of service,” he says,” I have been personally responsible for the deaths of well over a solid thousand men. I have issued orders to my subordinates that have laid thirty or more thousand soldiers of various armies to waste. I have given seven such orders making me responsible for at least two-hundred-ten-thousand deaths in some way or another. But in all of this bloodshed, I have never laid a finger on a female with the intent of harming her.”      He executes a perfect right-face and we walk onward. I dare to ask as to what significance the woman, Tupikov, holds with him.      He laughs…      “I’ll get to that part,” he says,” but we’re still at the beginning. Right at this point of my life only three women hold my interest. They were my mother first and fore-most, my colleague Dominique Khole Fieseler, and Second in Command Leona F. Hughes. She was a pilot, but she knew that even though fighter jets and whirly birds were sexy as hell, they can’t win a whole war by themselves. She knew the value of a good, solid infantry; she knew the advantage of our armored boys; she sure as shit knew the value of a big ass boat out in the ocean; and she knew how to make them all work together as a team.”  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------        “OKAY, SETTLE DOWN GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE SOME THINGS TO GO OVER.”     Captain Miller stood at the front of the room in front of a video screen that hung from the ceiling, a big cigar trapped between his teeth. Miller was the founder of the 425th, and even though he was outranked by at least a dozen people on the base, everyone knew that you didn’t mess with Captain, Senior Grade, Marcus Karl Miller. What he said, is what you did.      Miller was born to a German father and a Scottish mother in Scotland, and he spent enough of his childhood there that some words still had the tangible Scottish accent even after he moved to France and then to Germany. He was a tall man, six foot three, with the broad shoulders and narrow waist of a former football player. He had taken a liking to American football early on and became quite good at it. But ultimately it was his eyes that made him right for shooting.      His family had lived out in the back of beyond; the nearest town was seventy miles away in any direction, and the family was fed largely on a deer Miller’s father had killed that week, or a duck that he himself had blasted out of the sky out back. When his father passed away, Miller became the provider for his mother, himself, and his four year old sister. Ducks weren’t going to cut it in the long run. So Miller taught himself to shoot a regular rifle, and began practicing bringing down targets before moving on to deer.      When he moved to Germany he was twenty, and Germany was about to help capitalism spark in the Soviet Union. The German military needed accomplished riflemen to begin and Miller was eager for a new job. After consistently beating the next best shooter by one-hundred or more yards, Miller was given the opportunity to start his own sniper school, and the 425th was born.       At first Miller wasn’t a teacher, he was a student, learning from World War II era British and German snipers. He had all the right ideas about shooting at extended ranges, but needed to know the history behind all the fuss about snipers and how they could bring the enemy to his knees. He was uncannily good at the last part.      “Gentlemen,” he said,” I’ve called this meeting with you seventeen men because you are the best we have in the unit.”      There was an exchange of looks in the room, a few handshakes, and a pat on the back or two then all the men refocused their attention on Miller.      “This,” Miller said pointing to the screen,” is Petyr Inovovich Chekov, the commander of the communist troops in the field.”      The man on the screen was a human in his mid-thirties, bald, and his eyes were some crazy jackal yellow color that would make most people sick. He was taller than most humans, probably six three, and he was physically fit for his age. He had on a black leather trench coat, black boots, grey pants, and a green camouflaged shirt. He also had a gleaming Desert Eagle Mk XII handgun in a shoulder holster.      “This guy has been making new alliances with small factions throughout the soon to be former Soviet Union,” said Miller,” He buys fuel rods from a source in Pripyat and then turns around and sells those same fuel rods for military support from a group of mercenaries. He’s been doing this for quite some time. Every time it seems we have him beat… he shows up with a new army and attacks us.”      The men in the room were all taking notes on pads of paper.      “Our instructions,” said Miller,” are to whack this bastard, that way we can proceed unimpeded, and not have to cover our asses behind the lines. You seventeen men are the best I have, but I am only going to need one of you-”      There was a brief murmur of discontent between the men in the room, then someone mumbled,” I bet it’ll be that von Ackerman snot.”      There was sudden outrage among the men in the room as Miller tried to get them all under control. Someone slammed their fist on the wall and yelled loudly at someone else. Suddenly there was a thunderous sound from the door, a monster boom followed by a ragged crack. The room was silent instantly.      Everyone turned to look, their eyes finding a tall figure at the door. It was the “von Ackerman snot,” dressed in full sniper camouflage that included a very well made ghillie suit and a laboriously applied dose of natural plant life. The end of his Walther WA2000 rifle smoked with some earnest caution that said I’m hot.      He spoke in his quiet, gentle voice,” Captain Miller didn’t say he was going to pick me. As I recall, you all started yelling amongst each other in discontent, cutting the Captain off. Captain, will you please finish your thought?”      “Lutennant von Ackerman is right,” Miller continued. ”I was going to say that our well-placed sources inside their battle net have a confirmed meeting outside the V. I. Lenin/Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine. The Meeting will happen in fourteen days… we have seven.”      Miller clicked a button and the projection changed to an overhead photograph of the small town called Pripyat.      “The power plant is here,” said Miller, pointing it out with a green laser,” and our firing position is over here; across the river about two miles away. The path of our line of fire is completely clear all the way to the meeting area, and the position gives us the elevation for the shot. In the next seven days, you seventeen men will be practicing that shot in our newest addition to the mock up range.”      There were groans from some of the men.      “We’re going to try out some new weapons,” said Miller,” most notably the Alexander and Alina Type-L 20mm Anti-Material-Sniper-Cannon.”      The men who were still pretending to be deaf suddenly took an interest in what Miller had just said; big guns? I want to shoot a big gun, where is it? It was a specialist rifle of destructive power, and that’s all that anybody cared about. As long as they had the opportunity to blast away with it they were happy men.      With that, a fine female stepped out of the shadows. She was tall and had a campaign hat atop her head that she briskly took off and secured under her right arm.      SINC Leona spoke quietly, if not ominously. “You have this week and this week only gentlemen,” she said,” and I expect results. I want this bastard splattered all over the wall, and it’s in your best interest to make it happen. He is responsible for the deaths of thousands of our own, and hundreds of thousands of Russians; military or otherwise.”      She looked at the men, her eyes pausing on each one of them for a second or two each, but only one man looked back at her and peered into her soul.      “Make it so, gentlemen,” she said,” Dismissed!!”      The men all stood up in a gaggle and left the room leaving behind a lonely Johannes von Ackerman, still watching the beautiful fox standing in the front of the room. Her eyes suddenly turned hard and cold.      “I said dismissed, Luftennant,” she bellowed at him, angrily.      He was not quick to respond still and said, almost inaudibly,” I know what you said, ma’am.”      “Then get out of here.”      He just stayed where he was.      God damn it, kid, just get out of here.      “I’m waiting for Captain Miller, ma’am,” he said softly,” he has already picked me for the shot.”      She tried not to get angry at the man who stood in the doorway, all ghillied up, ready for combat even before he needed to be.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------        “We have lock on our ass,” said the RIO in Minna’s Fox-12D.      “I confirm,” she said.      The SA-2 site fired a few seconds later from all six locations. This area had been a known trouble spot for fighter pilots for some time, now, and Minna was beginning to get pissed off that her friends were starting to disappear faster than ever. So she decided to do something about it.      Captain, Junior Grade, Minna Renkov Polinin-Hughes was the German equal to the American Wild Weasels of the Vietnam War. She was actually a normal fighter pilot, having trained on the hyper-advanced Reynard Rey-75D fighter aircraft, but as soon as she left training she had become an unofficial Red Buster with the 265th Lightening Runners. The job as a Red Buster with the Lightening Runners was simple; play a game of Russian Dodgeball with your jet and any SAM site that needed some killing. This wasn’t something that most pilots had in mind, and most of them tried to stay as far away from any SAM site that had been marked with the death of one of their friends. But not the Red Busters of the 265th. They actively sought out SAM sites so that they could destroy them, and this always ended with at least one aircraft being shot down every mission… but it paid well.      Minna had taken a liking to it almost the second she saw what a Red Buster did, and she had proven herself quite good at it, killing a total of one-hundred-seventeen SAM sites to date, the third highest kill rating in all of the Red Buster gruppens throughout the Luftwaffe. Minna was a red fox like her mother, but had the overall bodily features of her, father who was an arctic wolf, only feminized to the point of being downright sexy. She was about five feet six inches tall and weighed a scant one-hundred-fifteen pounds. Men always tried out their cat calls when she was around, much to her annoyance.      But right now Minna had six separate surface to air missiles to worry about. She attained visual within a second after the weapons had launched and she was now turning into the path of one. Close the distance, she told herself, close it and the bastard’s tracking system won’t engage. She leveled Lemon’s wings and pushed the throttle forward slowly.      Lemon was a Fichel and Oxford Fox-12D Thresher interceptor aircraft that had been designed to look like the American F-14 in the early eighties, so it could get close to bomber formations without getting shot at, but it was a little too big to be convincing at close range. At long range the two aircraft could fly side by side and look the same to a casual observer, but they were two different aircraft entirely. As with all of the 265th aircraft Lemon was painted in a dark-green tiger stripe over white arctic camouflage with a black nose cone, leading edge surfaces, and tips. Two A&A-U-1E-25 25mm cannons were under the pilot’s feet, each with five-hundred rounds. Under the body of the vehicle were three clusters of ten fifty-pound dumb bombs, and two outer hard points held on to an AIM-7L Sparrow missile and an AIM-9I Sidewinder missile each. There were one-hundred-seventeen black lines under the front canopy on the left side and seventy-two red marks under those.      Minna closed the distance between herself and the SA-2 in under three seconds, dropping below the missiles flight path just enough so that it passed a thousand feet overhead harmlessly. Then she rolled Lemon on her back and headed for the deck. The maneuver sent a second missile screaming up at her, spiraling trying to match the move, but the weapon pulled up into her flight path well after she was gone. One thing that she had stressed to rookie pilots was that a guided projectile the size of a telephone poll travelling at Mach three was not even close to as maneuverable at a jet travelling at Mach one.      The remaining four missiles were tracking her, plotting intercept points to take her bird out of the sky. She hit her afterburners for five seconds pushing her speed to just above nine-hundred knots, and ducked behind a ridgeline, out of sight, out of mind. The missiles all passed four-thousand feet overhead, dumb and wild.      “Unless his loader crews are working fast today those were his only shots, and he just wasted all of ‘em,” said the backseater,” Try to get a fix on the site, I can identify the command van from there and send that information to your HUD.”      “You got it, Gunns,” Minna said,” Let’s pop up and have a look see.”      Minna pulled back on the stick and Lemon shot up to seven-hundred feet. She kept the aircraft in a wide bank but rolled her wings sharply to approximately sixty-five degrees, keeping Lemon over Mach one the whole time.      “I got the star,” said Master Gunnery Sergeant McCoy Gunns,” If those ancient Russian manuals are right the command van should be right in the dead center.”      Minna swiveled her head around to look at the formation of SA-2 SAM sites. The formation was nicknamed The Star of David because of the tendency of the six launchers to be two-hundred yards from the command van and three-hundred yards from one another made the formation look like the six points of the religious icon. Minna wasn’t a terribly politically correct person, and few flyers of her squadron were, but she tended not to call it that. She simply referred to it as The Star, and Gunns had as well when she first used the term.      “Whoa!!” He yelled suddenly,” Bastard just flicked his radar on! Ha!! Gocha’ you son of a bitch!!”      Minna’s HUD suddenly had a vector illuminated on it and she followed it with deathly precision towards her target, popping her airbrakes half a mile from the target.      “Yeah, yeah, yeah!!! Get him!!”      Minna flicked the switch on her stick to the “B” indicator,” Here we go… bombs gone.”      She depressed the button at the top of the stick and one of the ten-bomb clusters released. The munitions fell away from the aircraft as they were designed to, their poor ballistic shape slowing them down almost instantly and causing them to trail behind the aircraft the second they were released. By the time she looked back all that was left of the command van was a grey puff of smoke rising into the air. She smiled at her handy work and pushed the throttle forward an extra notch and Lemon leaped forward…      …Right into the line of fire of a marauding Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-29.      The hell did he come from?      There were seven distinctive thumps along the side of the aircraft and Minna felt every single one of them through the stick. She turned towards the incoming fighter, jettisoning her remaining bombs and flicking her selector switch to “M” for missiles. The MiG shot behind her close enough for her to see the bright red star on the pilot’s helmet. As they passed, Minna tightened her turn to get in behind him. The MiG matched the turn and they revolved around each other, a mile apart, two sky warriors sizing each other up, waiting for the other to make a mistake.      Lemon could out sprint the MiG-29 at high altitude, but the MiG-29 could out maneuver Lemon up there. Lemon could out maneuver the MiG-29 at low altitude, but the MiG-29 was faster there. Lemon had long range missiles and two guns, but the MiG-29 had its own gun and short range armament that could eviscerate Lemon in the current situation. It was time for Minna to decide.      Minna tightened Lemon’s turn. Minna began gaining ground on the MiG and flicked her selector switch to “G” for her guns.      “I’ve got a firing solution,” said Gunns, straining against the G-force,” I’ll relay it to your missiles in case he makes a break for it.”      “Keep an eye on our six,” Minna said.      She pulled back the throttle, her turn tightening even more.      Come on, just a little more…      Lemon’s nose rose just in front of the MiG…      Just a few more damn degrees…      Lemon began straining against the positive gravity.      Minna depressed the trigger and two gouts of flame burst out from Lemon’s nose. Parts of the MiG began flying off from its frame, and the pilot punched out. The MiG ripped itself apart after a few more seconds, and the ejected pilot never stood a chance; he didn’t gain separation from his seat and fell to his death at three-hundred miles per hour. Minna flinched away, catching a small glance of the terrified man. It was done. The dogfight was done and for the seventy-third time Minna emerged the victor.      Minna pulled Lemon up to four-thousand feet and leveled out, heading back to her temporary base near St. Petersburg, Russia. She kept her speed just above seven-hundred knots and flicked the selector switch back into the safe position.