LINX

Karl's Fortress

Chapter 8

The jet engine swirled in full throttle, cruising through the high altitude above the mountainous areas of Zortan, they had a mission to fulfill and a few lives to save.

The mission was simple they had to get into Karl's headquarters, get the hostages to safety, arrest the boss and get him to the base. An easy rescue mission it would seem at first sight. But the problem was  they did not have a proper inventory, neither enough time to devise a strategy.  Just faith that they succeed and break information out of Karl Zine in time.

The plane was a passenger carrier, they were cruising at high altitude to prevent detection by enemy troops.

They were going down in a halo jump. They were ten seconds away from drop-off, the posterior gates of the plane opened, it was mid-day so there were no sun direct on the eyes. They put on their oxygen supply mask, pumped in the protection fluid into the suit, so as to prevent any mechanical shock. Checked their weapon status, their SNS functionality.

 The wind swayed through their suits, they had to maintain their complete body weight to prevent themselves from flying backwards and colliding with the front deck. They walked slowly to the edge of the doorway. The countdown began for ten seconds to drop off. As soon as the countdown was done Fazil jumped into the thin air of the mountains, followed by the other five team members.

They were cruising at high velocity through the air, just barely maintaining body posture so as to prevent rotating on themselves and causing damage to the spinal cord. They were going into nose dive to fasten their descent, to prevent being picked up by the sharp sights of the enemy infantry. The fast wind muffled their senses and blanketed their hearing, it almost felt like the world had gone mute around them,  even if something exploded near them they could surely not hear it.

 They extended their arms to sway through the lower atmosphere that blanketed the enemy territory. After falling through the cloud surface, they saw the vastness of the enemy territory. It was a fortress with two mansions in it, five to six completed barracks and few other structures still being constructed, the outer walls of the fortress had many watchtowers, tanks, soldiers, turrets, anti-infantry cannons any weapon you name it, they had it.

But the time bracket of the visibility of the fortress was very limited about a minute at maximum, they then deployed their chutes which opened up and covered their entire body like a ball, thus nullifying the effect of the fall. They bounced once, from within the ball sprung out three high tension cables with hooks at their ends that dug into the ground at first contact and became taut soon after. Preventing the chute from rolling into some unwanted trouble.

Fazil pulled the latch that was present on his waist, deflating the chute. Now it came down and settled like a cloth, he ripped it apart to come out of it. He looked around and saw the wilderness, it was lush green, depicting summer time, the birds were chirping, the squirrels off on their busy schedule. He looked into the sky to see the two suns of the Quartan solar system.

He looked down checking the integrity of his suit. The suit was of the traditional forest stripes, it had an exosuit layout to enhance mobility and power. External steel rods extending over the framework giving him a firm body posture, his hands were mechanized to hit harder and throw better .The boots were laid with pressure transducers and additional spring padding to ease the pressure a fall could take on a person. The outer layer of the suit had a mechanical fluid flowing through that was meant to keep the suit intact and provide extra insulation to the body to protect from external fire damage or any other sorts of mechanical shock. The helmet had a laser glass that covered one eye and had a human computer interface specifying different parameters such as distance, location data etc.