Industrious: Engineering Marvels - Chapter 25

“I mentioned that blighter, Baron Blood, to my father when I happened to stop in on the family, you know?”

I looked over from where I was stretching, the full accounting of my gear laid out before me on a tarp as I prepared for the battle to come. “Oh really?”

Monty nodded, a distracted look in his eye. “Turns out the bastard is evidently a great uncle of mine. A dark blotch on the family record, as it were.”

“That wouldn't happen to come with a magic compass or something to tell us where he is?” Logan snarked as he chambered a round and began to load up a few more in his rifle.

“You know, I actually asked a similar question?” Monty replied, a trace of ironic amusement in his posh accent. “But no such luck, sadly. My father did have something, though...”

I watched as the man reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a tiny crystal with a vial of red liquid sealed inside. Now that my attention was directed towards it, I could feel a very faint something surrounding and infusing it, the kind of minor enchantment that, if I was measuring against my experience with chakra...

Well, it would probably protect against cavities, at most.

“...was a crystal vial of his blood that, according to family legend, was enchanted by a gypsy to remain red until the bastard died,” Monty grinned.

I hummed, flexing another muscle group in a long stretch that left me sighing with relief after a night on the cold, hard earth. “Well, I suppose it's good to know that he's still out there, at least. Did you tell Steve about this?”

Monty chuckled and flipped the small charm back into his pocket. “Done and done, good fellow. Would have told all three of you at once, but you were out taking care of the boy of yours. No shame on it, of course, even if it makes my already failing character look positively reprehensible by comparison.”

I snorted. “I'd think a war hero and an elite soldier of a classified strike team directly serving joint high command would earn you some slack with your old man.”

Monty sighed and shrugged theatrically. “Alas, I'm afraid I've well and truly earned the label of the family's black sheep. Dear Old Dad did say that if I managed to kill a certain vampire I'd be written back into the will, so... who knows? The future's looking that bright, at least.”

“Odds are we'll see him again,” I sighed. “Did your father tell you anything else about him?”

Monty cocked his head, thinking for a moment as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it up. “Just that, if we do manage to kill Old Uncle John... we need to make damn sure he's dead. Apparently the bastard took an arty strike back in the Great War and showed up a month or two down the line sucking his way through a French trench.”

I thought about suppressing the juvenile response that popped into my head...

...then decided I didn't care all that much.

“Sucking down an entire trench of Frenchmen?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at the castoff noble. “Well, that just goes to show he's got terrible taste in allies and men.”

Monty stared at me for half a moment, then began laughing so hard he almost choked on his smoke. I even got a rare chuckle out of Logan, who stood and clapped me on the shoulder as he walked off, rifle in hand. “We get out of this in one piece, wanna' ask you about something, bub.”

I grunted and nodded. “Sure.”

I shook my head and looked back to my laid-out gear. Resolving not to worry about that when the time came, I returned to ensuring everything was in good working order. The only real change was an additional sidearm that I'd special-ordered to fit high-caliber rifle rounds. It was an over-engineered mess of a gun that was utterly impractical – or outright dangerous – for any normal person to use, but I was tired of my fists being more lethal than the sidearm I was carrying. That, and I occasionally needed to put very big holes into things and didn't want to injure my soul any further in the name of desperate violence.

I sighed and slipped it into its holster in the hollow of my back, then put my smaller-caliber handgun into the holster at my hip.

After all, just because I want to be able to kill monsters doesn't mean I won't also need to kill a few humans too.

That was my lot in life. A tool to be wielded by-

I shook the thought off and started sheathing my kunai and shuriken. Once that was finished, I packed in the vials of holy water, the packs of mixed salt and crushed glass, and the other nasty surprises I had in store for supernatural bullshit. I was specifically looking forward to what thermite would do to an elder vampire when paired with a magnesium fuse. Finally, my sword, bow, and quiver.

“Alright everybody, gather 'round and we've got some special weaponry to hand out before we head out,” Bucky called, waving us over in the light of the setting sun.

Dougan, Frenchie, Monty, Morita, and the rest of the motley crew started gathering around, including our newest addition.

Steve knelt down and pulled off the lid to a wooden crate, inside was a mix of tightly-packed woolen stuffing and a variety of gear. “Okay, first up. Dougan, Morita... you two get one of these each-”

Two over-large grenades emerged, being passed to the two men, who carefully looked the weapons over.

“They're full of tiny silver ball bearings made from a blessed church cross donated to the war effort by a Catholic Priest,” Bucky stepped up and explained, pulling out an additional two and adding them to his waist. “Only use them in case you run into vampires, werewolves, or something else that stepped out of a fairy tale.”

Steve sighed. “It's more like we don't actually know if they're going to be effective and they're expensive to create, so this is kind of a trial run for them. All of you get one of these stakes, though. They've been fire-hardened and quenched in holy water and blessed by three different denominations. They burned Nina-”

The part-time supernatural member of our team shifted as the men glanced her way, but she held her head high. “Completely voluntary testing.”

The big boy scout we called our leader frowned, but nodded. “-so they should work just fine, even if you don't have particularly strong faith.”

Stakes were passed out to everyone except Nina, obviously, before the next set of gear was unveiled. This time, it was knives.

“This is where the rest of that silver cross went,” Bucky stated as he began passing out knives, most of the team getting a single blade, Victor and Logan getting a pair each. “They're only silver-plated, but they should do the trick.”

“And on Ray's advice...” Steve sighed. “We also have a set of six cold-forged iron daggers. Just in case we run into an actual fairy tale.”

I chuckled as I accepted one of each silver and iron, forged into a different style than the others. The style of folded-steel katana didn't mesh all that well with silver-cladding steel or cold-forged iron, but I was still more adapted to curved blades than straight.

Testing the weight of them, I nodded as I spun them and let them momentarily rest on my wrists, palms, the backs of my hands, my fingers, and made a few test-strikes with them. I nodded firmly. “They're good. Usually I'd insist on making them myself, but I just couldn't find the time. Whoever they found is an acceptable smith, though.”

“So glad it meets with your approval, sir,” Morita rolled his eyes, his voice dry as a desert as everyone on the team strapped sheathes onto their bodies. Nina, I noticed, had taken a pair of the cold iron daggers.

“Last but not least is silver-tipped blessed ammunition,” Bucky stated, pulling out a pair of ammo crates. “General Philips managed to get a second cross and our resident science whiz cooked up something that made these actually fly straight, but there's still actual silver in them. So don't fucking waste these on anything that isn't undead.”

Greedy hands reached out and, soon enough, both ammo boxes were reduced to a bare few rattling bullets that Bucky and Steve split between themselves. The vast majority went into pockets or spare clips rather than the guns themselves, though I noticed a few men slotting them into an extra sidearm on their hip, ankle, or back.

“Alright, grab what you need, take a shiii-er,” Bucky paused, his eyes glancing towards Nina.

“A shit. Take a shit if you need to, children,” the woman stated dryly. “Women have the same bodily functions as all you boys.”

Dino turned away to unsuccessfully hide his snort and I grinned as Steve desperately looked at me for help.

“You heard the lady,” I called out, pulling my mask on and throwing up my hood. “Potty break, fill your canteens, we roll out in five. If you're late, Steve will be very disappointed in you and none of us wants that.”

Steve no longer looked as though he wanted my help.

That probably meant I'd done a good job, right?

Last minute preparations complete, we rolled out in a pair of stolen Nazi jeeps graciously provided to us by our Resistance contacts a few moments later. The ride was mercifully short and thankfully quiet as the air started to thicken with building pre-battle tension. A few men muttered prayers, some checked their weapons compulsively, smokes and small bottles of liqour were passed around, and the last few sat in meditative silence.

Finally, we pulled off the road right before a winding hill and the drivers steered the vehicles into deep brush before we unloaded out the back and looked around for a few limbs to cover our rides more completely. While the rest of the men did that, Steve, Bucky, and I walked up the steep hill before dropping to our bellies and pulling out binoculars in the last fading rays of the sun's light.

“That's our target, then,” Steve stated.

“Not much to write home about,” Bucky chimed in.

I was silent on the subject, the historian in me impressed with the aging fortification that had been repurposed from the Great War. It might not have been anything grand these days, but it would have been a marvel of engineering three decades ago. Squat, wide, and dug into the rolling hills of northern France, now covered with thick vegetation, the exposed sections were simple blocky concrete with thin slits to aim machine guns out of. In another age, they would have been known as 'murder holes.'

 If I had to guess, it had been left standing after the war simply due to the sheer mass of reinforced concrete that made it up. Like its more modern fascist counterparts, this base just wasn't economical to dismantle. It was easier to seal it up, bury it, and do your best to forget it existed. Anecdotally, I remembered that there was an ongoing effort even in the twenty-twenties to get permission from various governments to explore and document extant, known Nazi bases.

It would take centuries for the elements to finally tear down what heavy artillery and explosives couldn't.

...I'm willing to put good money on there not being a single chunk of rock larger than a military jeep remaining intact after we're done here tonight.

“Thoughts, Ray?” Steve asked in a low voice, turning to look at me.

“Thinking where it'll all go wrong,” I replied evenly, frowning at the base.

“Ray-” Steve sighed.

“Right there with you, man,” Bucky nodded.

Captain America dropped his head into the cooling grass and quietly groaned. “Nothing has to go wrong. We've learned a lot from the last missions. We know to be on our toes going in. We're not sending anyone in without backup. We have the right ordinance for the job.”

“That's why you're the inspirational leader and poster boy for the military, Steve,” I replied, not taking my eyes off the fortification. “That boundless optimism.”

“You've got a way with words, Ray,” Bucky commented. “I'd have just called him hopelessly naive and left it at that.”

Steve rubbed his face through his mask, sighing again. “Let's just... get this circus moving, okay?”

“As long as Bucky's in charge of the clowns,” I replied, ignoring the man's reply of a one-finger salute. “Come to think of it, Bucky needs a mask.”

“I do not need a mask,” Sergeant Barnes replied tartly.

“Hmm... maybe later,” Steve hummed, sounding intrigued by the notion. “So... a few small changes to the plan now that we're here. I can see a side entrance that I think will be a good target...”

As the last fading bit of orange-violet light faded into true night, we finished marking out the changes to the plan and crawled back down the hill.

Then it was go-time.

Unlike the other operations, I was being kept in reserve with the main group this time. Nina was paired with Steve, Logan, and Victor as a heavy assault team that represented the most durable elements of the squad. They would compose the initial feinting attack designed to draw Hydra's attention.

By now, they would at least understand they needed to be on alert for a group of commandos coming in for a raid, if not looking out for Captain America specifically. Still, Steve would do a great job of distracting them in his highly-visible red, white, and blue outfit. His shield was completely bulletproof in a way nothing else we had was, to boot. Logan and Victor, on the other end, could just soak damage. Painful, but they'd get back up again from nearly anything we could imagine Hydra would throw at us.

Nina was the question, and the reason why she was joining their group.

If her nerve was going to break during the fight, it was better that it break while she was part of a force that was planned to retreat once their job was done instead of getting trapped in crossfire and becoming a liability we needed to dedicate time and lives to saving.

On another level, Steve and Bucky didn't exactly doubt her self-control, but were reasonably concerned about what would happen if she lost herself in a blood-frenzy.

Once she'd made it through a few fights, that worry would fade, but it would persist until then.

The one thing that I hadn't quite understood yet, though...

Was that with Steve off running around, Buky would therefore be in charge. Which, in and of itself, was not a major issue. Bucky was actually the more experienced soldier of the two and handled a lot of the real orders that Steve wasn't quite used to giving while not under immediate threat of death from an enemy. Bucky, however, would need a second-in-command.

Which was me.

“Okay, stow your shit and let's get going,” I ordered in a solid undertone. “Cap and his squad are going around the right to a side entrance. We're going up the left and making a hook around to the main entrance and wait for them to launch their attack.”

A chorus of grunts and affirmations left the men as Bucky steered us on the best path, his sniper's eye checking for hostile perches.

Thankfully, the perimeter of the base was fairly small and consisted only of two fences with barbed wire strung over the top. Timing it so that the sweeping lights didn't catch us, Dougan and Dino carefully cut through them and held the holes open as we hurried through to hide behind one of the low-lying hills near the base. They'd obviously attempted to flatten it to some degree, but hadn't been quite successful. Lying in its shadow, we waited.

“Fifteen meters over open ground with machine guns pointed at us,” Bucky muttered with a scowl. “This better be one hell of a distraction, Steve.”

“I'll take out the machine guns, temporarily at least,” I volunteered, shifting my sword over my back to pull free my bow and extend it properly.

Bucky turned to me, then snapped back to the thin vertical slits in the stone walls. “You can make that?”

I raised an eyebrow in the dark.

“Of course you can,” he snorted, shaking his head as I picked out the arrow for the job. “Explosive?”

“Flash-bang,” I replied, bending my head to look at the overlapping fields of fire that would catch us. Carefully sticking two more arrows into the ground where I'd be able to immediately grab them. “The explosives... I'm not sure we want to set off the ammo stores in those rooms quite yet.”

Bucky pursed his lips, looking over the hill with me and nodded. “Yeah, good call. As long as they're not shooting at us, I won't gripe. I'd rather not have to run through a field of concrete shrapnel, either.”

The meager bombs on my arrows wouldn't be able to destroy any significant part of the base, of course, but a cache of machine gun ammo cooking off? Much less the potential of three of them doing so in a chain reaction? Again, I don't think it would do serious structural damage to the building, but you didn't have to in order to turn chunks of concrete into an AOE shotgun blast of debris. You just needed a blast strong enough to blow off the weakest parts of the walls of a thirty-year-old WWI fortification.

“So, what's the signal?” Dino asked, checking his rifle again.

I looked around, waiting for the universe to take its cue...

...I am disappoint, universe. So very disappoint.

“Knowing Steve, could be anything,” Bucky stated.

 Which is, of course, when we heard the dramatic revving of an engine as a vehicle quickly crossed the short distance it needed to traverse-

-before exploding.

Okay universe, I forgive you.

“Yep, that'll do,” Bucky nodded, turning towards me as the explosion cleared and the sounds of screaming German filled the air in their place. “We wait twenty seconds.”

I nodded, fingers clenching around my bow and arrow.

Gunfire.

More explosions.

The sound of another revving engine.

Screams of alarm, pain, and death.

“Go,” Bucky ordered, but I was already rising.

Three shots in less than three seconds. The final machine gun nest just started to fire as I loosed the last arrow, but their aim was off, digging a furrow into the hill a few meters in front of me.

Flares of light and sound shot out of the thin slits, compliments to the larger destruction on the other side of the base.

“Go, Go, Go!” Bucky and I shouted in unison.

Our men went.

~~~

Another chapter that's a day later than my usual posting date. Not sure what's up with that. Just kind of tired and meh this week.

Well, I did finish it before the week was out, that's the important part. And this way maybe people who've had a sucky weekend can end on a high note. I hope there aren't too many of those.

Have fun with Ray getting back into the thick of things. Next chapter will be a LOT of combat, so be ready for that.

Regardless, I'll get to work on the next update post-haste. I want to get two chapters out this week before Friday and the new month hits. Let's see how that works out. One of them is going to be Mind Games. The other... not sure. I'm thinking Where Your God Is, though.