Tactical operations

Deep down, in my heart, I knew it would never be as simple as just flying to Persephone, giving Imrhien's father the bride price, and flying home with her. I knew it wouldn't be so simple. He'd included the Feds in that wave and with them being right there, it was no surprise they showed up on his doorstep with the reward money for Imrhien's paper. Alexandra's. Whatever. Didn't matter what they called her. They had her and we were going to get her back.

Got a wave from Duncan en-route too, saying he was burning core on Raivenn on the way over from his last job. While I appreciated the help and knew Duncan'd be worth his weight in gold in a fight, I didn't see as how it would come to a firefight. If we started shooting up a Fed law enforcement station, we 'd have every Marshal in the area on our tails. I thanked him for the concern and promised to keep him informed on our status, but if it didn't work out to be a simple buy and run I was planning to keep it intimate.

Not surprisingly, the Feds beat us to the draw on picking her up. Having a local presence has its advantages. Of course, it was probably a good thing that I didn't set Wave Equation down in the man's front yard. Wouldn't have been polite anyway. Though hearing him say "Too late. The Feds anted up before you did." didn't help my mood any.

Since she was in Fed custody, we would have to change our tactics. My first thought was to play the Superior Officer card, but ultimately thought better of it. Playing that card would have undesirable consequences and it was something I would much rather hold in reserve. Which left us with a more direct approach.

We had several options for getting her out without playing the Superior Officer card. We could go in, shoot up the place, take Immi and run. Which would work, but would leave dead Feds, our faces all over the security feeds, and paper out on all of is that the Feds would have a powerful need to serve. Not a good option.

Second option was some kind of diversionary tactic. We could send someone, or someones, in to make some noise and then break Imrhien out during the commotion. It was workable, but not very subtle. Also had the problem of them having us on the security feeds and directly linked to Immi's escape. Again, not a good option. Better than shooting up the place, but the risks were higher than they needed to be.

The preferred option would have no casualties on either side, ideally with the Feds never knowing how Imrhien got away form them. That would require planning and a good deal of stealth and the ability to cleanly bypass their security systems. Fortunately, that was something we could do and do well.

It was what I did.

Getting the layout and good surface information on the area around the local Fed station wasn't difficult. Getting a plan together before they decided to move her to the District office would be the hard part. I'd fought beside Sabrina and Belize before, but I'd only done field operations with Td. That was in the distant past though, when he went by a different name and we were both very different people. Still, he knew what we had to do and would be able to help the planning.

I'd do the intrusion alone. Minimal footprint and it was something I was very, very, good at. There were a number of potential entry points that weren't well defended and getting in would be considerably easier than, say, sneaking aboard the Sun Tzu with a staple gun. Also playing into our favor was that the installation was lightly manned. It wasn't like rural Persephone was a major hotbed for Crimes against the Alliance.

While she'd never filled the position before, I asked Sabrina to be Archangel for me. While Td had the experience for it, there was no one's voice I'd rather hear in my headset feeding me tactical information during the Sneak.

That left Belize and Td on the Overwatch and Extraction points. I trusted them both and if we needed a diversion I knew I could count on them to be creative and low risk. The name of the game was minimal impact, zero casualties. We had a number of options there too, since the Fed installation fronted onto an urban street in town and backed onto an alley. The street scene let them get into position to provide overwatch and, even better, gave multiple opportunities to provide a diversion if something came up that wouldn't involve anyone dieing.

The other advantage to having Sabrina along was she was even more creative than I was when it came to rigging kit. There wasn't a lot of surveillance, but it would be nice to be able to take out their comms and security feeds at a critical moment.

With all the basics in place, I moved Wave Equation to a small commercial shuttleport at the edge of down. Once there, it was a simple matter to jack into the local communication net while Bel and Td acquired some transportation for us. Nothing fancy, of course, but it wasn't like we could walk or take the boat into town if we were about to extract someone from a Fed jail cell.

It took another two hours to get set up. I had Belize and Td do the initial recon of the site and place our kit (Buddha bless the inventor of small smokeless incendiary charges), while I gave Sabrina insight into the finer points of being my Angel. Didn't matter she hadn't done it before. This was a good Op for her first time in the control chair.

We had to wait for early evening to do the Op. Too early, we wouldn't have the advantage of natural darkness. To late, any sort of diversion became a good deal more suspicious. Plus, we wanted enough time for the marshal's on shift to be well settled in, but not late enough that the next shift would be coming on line soon.

I had Belize drop me off several blocks from the Fed's station in a small shopping plaza. It gave me a chance to test comms with Sabrina and get a feel for the general area as I worked my way closer to my chosen entry point on the Fed building, while finding a good place to ditch the street clothes I'd put on over my undersuit. I wasn't going with full Thermoptic camoflage here. Not for a small police station. That was just overkill. But my undersuit was matte black with thermal dampers, so in the natural darkness I'd be almost invisible anyway.

It took a few minutes to ditch the street clothes and get into position where I had quick access to the ingress points. I placed the last few pieces of kit on the way in, then contacted Sabrina.

"Archangel. I'm in position. Everything else a go?"

"Have the feeds and everyone's ready. What do you need from me?'

I could detect just a hint of nervousness in Sarbina's voice. In my gut, I figured it was more because she was my lifeline going into harm's way than any doubt about doing a good job.

"Let me know when you're showing a clear shot to the second story storage room. I'll tap their internals from there."

"Ok. You look clear now. Any time you're ready."

I acknowledged with a single tap and set the comm system to burst mode. The sound would get a little choppy, but our RF signature would get washed out by the normal background noise in town. They'd never see us coming.

Getting up to the second story was a matter of sticking to shadow, timing their security camera sweep, and moving quickly down from my perch and up the opposite wall with the climbers. Security on the window consisted of a simply bypassed closure sensor and a set of bars, also easily bypassed with a hot-wire cutter.

"Archangel, I'm in" I told Sabrina as I quickly found the comms jack for the room and socketed in the tap I'd brought for the purpose. A moment later, Sabrina acknowledged the feed and I asked her for Immi's position.

"Got her, Black Cat. Cell 2187, Block A."

I acknowledged and started working my way through the building. Inside their own installation, the Feds weren't especially careful. Not that they were ever especially careful. This was just a local Federal Police installation, not a maximum security block. Still it helped to have Sabrina in their internal feeds, letting me know when their cameras were pointing some other direction and keeping an eye out for wandering Federals.

It took about ten minutes to work my way down to the detention level, clearing our egress route on the way. There was only one guard on duty for the whole block and, apparently, he was more than a little bored paying attention to the single prisoner they had in that section.

Tapping into their internal communications gave us another advantage. We also had control over their internal lighting and HVAC controls.

"Archangel. Block A lights, please."

A moment later, the lights in the entire section went dim, then flickered to Emergency Standby mode. The guard, being fairly typical, called upstairs to see if there was a power problem then, when told no, got up to check on it himself. I'd have two minutes, maybe three, before he got to the block A panel, realized there was nothing actually wrong, and turned the lights back on. It meant I had to move very quickly.

The darkness didn't matter any to my optics. I could see as well in pitch blackness as I could during the day. Making a silent dash through the darkness for Immi's cell, I called for a low impact diversion to distract the Feds upstairs. Td and Belize had a fair number of options and I didn't care which one they decided on, though I hoped it was one that didn't involve anyone getting hurt. Especially either of them.

Imrhien was asleep in the cell. We'd disabled the alarms on the cells, but even the quiet sound of the hot wire slicing through the door lock was enough to wake her up. I was barely a shadow in the darkness. A small, nearly silent, rapidly moving shadow.

"Shhhh. Follow." I said softly, barely above a whisper. "Sea?" she asked, a hint of disbelief in her voice. "Who else? We've got to move though." I said, leading her out the cell door. "Archangel? I have the package. Heading to extraction."

"Gotcha. I'll pull the others. Want me to blow the kit?"

"Hold on the kit. Blow it when they realize we're gone." I replied, quickly leading Imrhien back out through the egress route I'd chosen and cleared. I knew she had questions. Probably starting with what the hell we were doing on Persephone in the first place, followed closely by what the hell I was doing breaking into a secure facility to break her out. But she also knew enough to hold her questions until we were some place a little safer.

Td and Belize must have pulled off their diversion, since the Egress remained clear with only one pause to let the guard who'd checked on the lights get past. We were just a moment from the door I'd chosen to leave through when I heard the alarm go off. Apparently, the guard wasn't as bored as I thought and actually went to check on the cell after getting the lights back on.

Sabrina didn't need to be told to kill the Fed's comm system, bless her heart, and the small charge I had with me was enough to deal with the locked back door. Immi fell naturally into watching our back as I lead us quickly into the back alley.

"Archangel, we're clear. Heading to extraction."

We moved rapidly through the early evening darkness, leading Immi to the place I'd stashed my street clothes and something quickly donned and concealing for her. A few minutes later, we were moving back into an evening crowd in the small shopping plaza, blending in as the few on duty Feds started to spill out of their building to search the nearby area.

By then, Sabrina had started to trigger the destruct charges on the Kit we couldn't easily recover. Working through the thin crowd with Imrhien was easy. She knew how to blend and it was only a matter of minutes before Td and Bel were there with our ride.

Twenty minutes later, it was over. We were back aboard Wave Equation clawing sky. All that remained was keeping an ear to the Cortex to see if anyone associated my boat with the prisoner escape from the Fed facility. That, and finding out what Immi had been doing to get herself caught.

All in all, a clean mission.

Just how I liked them.