Into the Wasteland

Chapter One

A lone gunship soared over the wasteland as the sun rose over the distant city ruins, revealing the horrors of the post-apocalyptic landscape that the dark of night concealed. The plethora of ruined structures below where being slowly reclaimed by plant life. Black Phoenix squad were readying themselves inside the ship for touchdown, as was their newly hired mercenary Gen. It was a tight space as this aircraft was not really intended for troop transport. Its small cargo bay had been hastily fitted with harnesses and seats for the soldiers. Sadly, this gunship was one of the only aerial vehicles available, the others where in use or already destroyed. Upsettingly to those inside this model of craft was known affectionately as the Glass Gunship. It possessed some of the most devastating air-to-ground weaponry but lacked significant armours as the weapons already weighed too much, these included 4 .50 calibre machine guns, 12 heat seeking missiles and what was before the war, a pair of experiment laser cannons that where provably able to easily melt through armour themselves. A lot of weapons meant that if the gunship caught a foe by surprise, which its noise dampened engines were designed to allow for, it would end a conflict before it could begin. Only now it was being uses to soar across the open sky in broad daylight, carrying about 5 people too many which meant that soaring was a generous statement. The ship hung closer to the ground than the pilot liked but it was the best they had.

Lieutenant McGee's stood in the centre of the repurposed cargo bay, one hand grasping an out-of-place looking handrail above his head. He was not a fan of flying at the best of times, this whole ship made him more nervous than he was by default. His eye scanned his troops and aside from Staff Sargent Izetta who succeeded in putting on a brave face, the unit was uneasy and quite obviously anxious about the flight and the mission itself. McGee could understand why they felt this way, they were rookies for the most part and here they were being send hundreds of miles from home on what was almost certainly a suicide mission. There were at least 3 warlords in this region of the wasteland, each with a gang of at least 150 individuals under their command and these warlords were meant to target for assassination. On paper this was an easy enough thing to pull off, if McGee had his way they would attack from the air or with a larger force but things in the wasteland are never quite as easy as they sound and the President spreading the remaining forces as thin as he was did not help matters any. A few months ago, the plan was to send gunships to strafe the raider camps and then send a strike force in to eliminate the gang leaders in the chaos if the gunships did not kill them in the initial attacks. This tactic had worked on gangs closer to home, but that was because those gangs where smaller and differed significantly from those here when it came to weaponry. This new region, before the war, was comprised of several military bases that surrounded what McGee understood was a capital city. A previous team discovered this and worse still they learned that almost all these stocked-up military bases had been overrun and raided. The gangs around here now had access to anti-aircraft turrets and where happy to use them. So far, of the 4 gunships that were deployed to the region only 1 managed to come back but hardly in one piece. It's pilot and one of the crew lived but they did not live well. That gunship was like a piece of flying swiss cheese that had had been gnawed at by starved rodents, the cockpit was half-exposed, and the pilot was so shaken that they ended up as a stress casualty, but since his arm and leg had to be amputated anyway his career as a pilot was probably over regardless.

"We'll be touching down in 2 minutes. Our L.Z will be something marked as... Metro Street." Said McGee checking the map he had been given by the survivors of this regional scouting operation, it was far from comprehensive, but it would have to do. Metro Street as it had come to be called with a somewhat more intact section of town, it had access to a central hub for a mostly collapsed underground train station that originally linked to the capital as well as several other major cities back in the day, across the road from the entry was a hospital and beside that was a department store. There were 2 blocks of flats on the train-station entrance's side of the road, which itself was host to the remnants of a pre-war military blockade. A lone tank and some ruined barriers where all that was left of it. It was far enough away from the raider gang camps that it was supposed to be safe from any sort of anti-air weapon and it was infested with mutants which was usually enough of a deterrent.