Categories > Original > Sci-Fi > Explorers: The Last Bastion
Chapter 3
After assembling in the hanger, the hit team (consisting of 25 young warriors) loaded themselves and their gear into the Scorpion Assault Vehicles again, and drove round what remained of the town's bypass to the old school playing field. When they reached the narrow entrance, near the burnt-out building that used to serve as a sports pavilion, they all dismounted, grabbed their gear and started moving down towards the main school via a now little-used footpath.
When they reached the bottom, Ollie gestured to the rest of the group to stop, and so everyone halted, poised to react to any perceived threat. Ollie called Nick, Ed and Claire forward, and pointed out the group of 3 chav sentries standing behind what remained of the old 6th form centre. The entire team dropped to the ground, and Ollie crouched, lining his rifle up with one of the chav's forehead. The bullet exploded from the silenced barrel, accompanied by an incredibly quiet puffing sound, and flew the 50 yards in a dead straight line before splattering grey matter all over the run-down building. The other two chavs shouted when they saw their comrade fall, but as they went for their weapons bursts of fire from Nick and Ed cut them down before they could draw them.
The team moved forward, with Marc taking a small team off to secure the old language and technology block. After clearing out the 6th form centre with no resistance they set up a small communications and medical station, with Ellie and a couple of others staying to man it. As they ran towards the science block, a set of bullets tore into the old brickwork behind them, and they all dropped to the floor. After a quick look around, Ollie spotted a team of 3 chavs lying on the roof of the old science block, with a set of old-school Lee-Enfield rifles, one with a scope on. Claire dived to the side, rolled and came up shooting. Within a scant few seconds the chavs were dead; their bodies riddled with bullets from Claire's Desert Eagles and more than a few bloody rents from Ed and Nick's assault rifles. They ran swiftly alongside the science block, to enter by the stairs at the bottom of the language block. After Nick kicked the door down, Ed swung his gun round the door, covering the small team of explorers as they made their way into the block. Room-by-room searches showed that there was little to suggest that anyone had been here recently; they were obviously not using these classrooms.
As they passed the old library, they heard loud music playing from inside. Emma, one of the younger explorers, ran up to the windows next to the library doors, smashed the glass with the butt of her rifle, and threw a grenade through the shattered remains of the window, and over the charred remains of the bag racks. A loud thump was heard, and the music stopped. Cautiously, Ed and Emma made their way through the doors to inspect the remains of the room. The old easy chairs had been grouped round a Hi-Fi placed on the old librarian's desk, and there were shredded remains of bodies lying over and around the chairs and desk. Clearly the chavs had never seen anything coming.
***
After blowing the door to the language and technology block down with a well-placed explosive charge, Marc and his small team made their way into the lower floor. Cautiously poking his head up looking through the windows by the entrance to the main technology area, Marc could see that the chavs had turned the old DT machines to making weapons of war; one across the back wall was moulding bullets and slotting the bullets into gunpowder-filled cartridges; another was mixing various liquids in what Marc guessed to be an attempt at manufacturing their own explosives. Feeling slightly out of place without his customary rocket launcher (they had thought that there would be no need for heavy weaponry due to a general lack of armour noticed by aerial reconnaissance), he decided that they would have to try and capture it rather than just blow it to bits as he would normally choose to do.
He gestured at two explorers, one to kick open the door, and the other to cover him. The first explorer, Clive, kicked the door open and was immediately hit in the shoulder by a bullet fired by a chav hidden behind one of the machines. Marc dived forward, grabbed Clive by the back of his webbing and dragged him back behind the scant protection offered by the wooden walls, whilst the other explorers took cover, firing bursts through the windows into the room in an attempt to force the chavs to keep their heads down.
Marc surveyed the damage to Clive's shoulder. It looked nasty, but actually the bullet had done relatively little damage, passing clean through the tissue just under the shoulder blade, narrowly missing an artery. There was a lot of blood though, and Marc stuck a field dressing over the wound, rolled him onto a fold-out stretcher and called to one of the other explorers - a relatively new member named George - to get the other end of the stretcher. They quickly got him over to Ellie, who was still holed up in the 6th form centre.
Ellie took one look at him and put him straight on the makeshift operating table, yelling at Marc to get out and give her some room. Marc ran out, and looking over his shoulder he saw her pulling the remains of the bullet out of Clive's shoulder. Not having time to think about it, he ran back towards the fight in the technology block, with George hot on his tail. Despite being fairly small and lightly built, George was far stronger than he looked, and had little difficulty running and fighting under the weight of his webbing, backpack and gun. He and Marc sprinted back in; and while George dropped straight down on one knee and resumed firing on the chavs inside the room, Marc threw his gun off to one side, pulled out a pair of grenades, pulled the pins out and dived forward, sliding on his side along the lino floor. As he passed the open doors, which were by now riddled with bullets, he threw both the grenades into the room.
The grenades flew in a steep arc, flying through the air to land in the far corners of the room. One landed in the vat that appeared to be mixing explosives. Marc's eyes widened; he jumped up, grabbed his gun and ran, yelling at the other explorers to follow him. George, the last explorer out, was flung onto the grass outside by the explosion, which flattened the building. Other than a few minor scratches and scrapes from flying glass and some bruising on George where he landed roughly, everyone seemed to have escaped pretty much unscathed. After quickly checking themselves over, they reloaded their weapons and pushed on, running down the side of the science block and the library to the rear entrance to the old music and drama block.
***
After clearing the library, Nick, Claire, Ed, Ollie and the rest of the explorers rapidly moved on to clean out the rest of the upper end of the school, with little resistance. The two old computer rooms were completely abandoned, and most of the rest of this end of the school looked like it had seen little use.
They ran into some trouble at the top of the old maths corridor, near the entrance to one of the towers. A group of chavs had set up a barrier of tables and other large objects across the corridor, after hearing the gunfire and explosions from the rest of the school. It seemed harmless at first, and so the group moved cautiously towards it. As they were passing the entrance to the old staff room a machine gun barrel suddenly appeared above the blockade, and a shaved head popped up behind it. All hell broke loose, as the chav on the machine gun started firing, forcing the explorers to scatter for what little cover was available, and more chavs appeared to take up positions along the barricade
After diving to the side into the little hallway at the top of the steps, Claire quickly assessed the situation. A head-on charge would be catastrophic, and they would likely lose more than a few lives in such a suicidal charge on a well-defended position, and they had no rocket launchers or heavy weaponry at all, bar Nick's oversized and overpowered assault rifle, but that was designed to chew through flesh, body armour and light vehicles, not tear down barricades. The grenades they were all carrying were anti-personnel, and to try to lay an explosive charge close enough to the barricade would be suicide. There was only one solution available to her.
She quickly ran out of the double doors and onto the path that led back to the 6th form centre, and snuck down to the left, onto the grass behind the old maths classrooms. She smashed a window with one of her pistol butts, then dived through to pop up in the classroom that opened onto the corridor just behind the barricade. Quietly running over to the door, she peeked through the hole that was left of the window in the door. The chavs in the hallway were clearly busy with the rest of the explorers, so she was under no threat whatsoever. Pulling back slightly, she sprinted at the door, diving shoulder-first into it and busting the hinges so the door fell completely through the frame, then rolling out the other side. Before the chavs even had time to swing their weapons round, Claire had propped herself up on one knee and was shooting with deadly accuracy, literally decapitating one or two of the chavs with the raw power of her Desert Eagles. By the time the smoke cleared all that was left of the ex-defenders of the barricade were a set of bloody corpses - some headless - strewn across the floor.
They rapidly moved out, sweeping through the maths classrooms, finding more chavs in some of them, but dispatching them without difficulty they quickly moved up through the towers, which were again empty. There seemed to be a distinct lack of chavs compared to the numbers they were expecting, so quietly they swept forward into the canteen, and found that the doors to the great hall were closed, with the curtains pulled across them.
Nick signalled for the others to pull back and sweep what remained of the school to make sure that they had not missed anything vital, though it appeared any resistance would be fairly light due to what appeared to be a large gathering in the main hall. After Ollie led the rest of the group out to sweep the old reception area and the interview rooms Nick, Claire and Ed crept forward, guns at the ready. Nick quietly opened one of the doors at the back to find that the chavs were all sitting in a very rough arc around a table at the front of the hall, where a group of chavs were explaining something whilst pointing to a map on the wall. Judging by the amount of Bling around the necks and fingers of the chavs standing up they were fairly important people, so rather than charge in, kill them and get gunned down by the remaining horde of very angry chavs, Nick decided to back off and call in an airstrike from Rufus and the rest of the attack squadron that were sitting in their planes ready for the orders. He grabbed Claire and Ed and, after a quick explanation of what was going to happen, they all made their way back to cover the escape routes. Claire went outside to cover the fire door out by the old car park, Ed to cover the other fire door out by the gym and Nick to the back of the canteen to cover the main entrance. Nick pressed the talk button on his wrist computer, and started talking to HQ through his headset.
'This is Nightseraph to Voyager Base, requesting an airstrike at the coordinates currently being transmitted.'
'Roger that Nightseraph, what is the target's composition?' A disembodied voice manning the HQ support room answered.
'Target is an unarmoured structure, with a large quantity of hostile personnel inside.'
'Roger that, birds are in the air, ETA to your target 1 minute 30 seconds. Voyager Base out.'
With that, Nick sprinted to the back of the canteen, into the kitchen and dropped to one knee behind the counter that was used to serve the food through. He propped his assault rifle up on the counter, and waited for the airstrike.
***
Ed was crouched down on the grassy area behind the old computer suite that overlooked the hall. In the distance he could hear the distinctive thrumming of the Attack craft's Slush-Hydrogen Pulse Detonation Wave engines. He could make out a set of three silvery shapes in the distant sky that were rapidly becoming bigger as they approached the target. The three planes dived sharply, and a set of bombs and rockets detached from them with a clear trajectory that dropped them directly onto the school hall. There was an enormous explosion that completely gutted the school hall, and it was quickly apparent that there would be no survivors for him to eliminate. Rather than just wait for Nick and Claire to come up to meet him before making their way to the extraction point, he decided to quickly check the old computer suite to make sure nothing had been missed, as it seemed to be an ideal location to house any sort of computing equipment that the chavs might still be using.
Quickly shooting out the lock that held the doors closed still, he could quickly see that the various teams had yet to clear out this particular part of the school. He could hear the deep humming of big computer fans coming from the other side of the double doors that led to the computer area. After checking the conference room to make sure that there were no nasty surprises waiting for him, he kicked down the left of the double doors and burst through into the main area. What he found blew him away.
The chavs had somehow managed to cobble together a massive mainframe from the parts that used to make up the old computers here. It was a complete tangle of machinery and wires, but it seemed to be working. Ed was amazed that the chavs had people with the knowledge to be able to do this amongst their ranks, because your average chav was worse than stupid, but clearly they had someone.
He radioed for the others to come and meet him, and then radioed HQ to ask them to send additional vehicles to allow them to transport all this back with them, to allow them to analyse the data on the numerous hard drives. He figured that they had found something major, but he truly had no idea just how important this find was.
After assembling in the hanger, the hit team (consisting of 25 young warriors) loaded themselves and their gear into the Scorpion Assault Vehicles again, and drove round what remained of the town's bypass to the old school playing field. When they reached the narrow entrance, near the burnt-out building that used to serve as a sports pavilion, they all dismounted, grabbed their gear and started moving down towards the main school via a now little-used footpath.
When they reached the bottom, Ollie gestured to the rest of the group to stop, and so everyone halted, poised to react to any perceived threat. Ollie called Nick, Ed and Claire forward, and pointed out the group of 3 chav sentries standing behind what remained of the old 6th form centre. The entire team dropped to the ground, and Ollie crouched, lining his rifle up with one of the chav's forehead. The bullet exploded from the silenced barrel, accompanied by an incredibly quiet puffing sound, and flew the 50 yards in a dead straight line before splattering grey matter all over the run-down building. The other two chavs shouted when they saw their comrade fall, but as they went for their weapons bursts of fire from Nick and Ed cut them down before they could draw them.
The team moved forward, with Marc taking a small team off to secure the old language and technology block. After clearing out the 6th form centre with no resistance they set up a small communications and medical station, with Ellie and a couple of others staying to man it. As they ran towards the science block, a set of bullets tore into the old brickwork behind them, and they all dropped to the floor. After a quick look around, Ollie spotted a team of 3 chavs lying on the roof of the old science block, with a set of old-school Lee-Enfield rifles, one with a scope on. Claire dived to the side, rolled and came up shooting. Within a scant few seconds the chavs were dead; their bodies riddled with bullets from Claire's Desert Eagles and more than a few bloody rents from Ed and Nick's assault rifles. They ran swiftly alongside the science block, to enter by the stairs at the bottom of the language block. After Nick kicked the door down, Ed swung his gun round the door, covering the small team of explorers as they made their way into the block. Room-by-room searches showed that there was little to suggest that anyone had been here recently; they were obviously not using these classrooms.
As they passed the old library, they heard loud music playing from inside. Emma, one of the younger explorers, ran up to the windows next to the library doors, smashed the glass with the butt of her rifle, and threw a grenade through the shattered remains of the window, and over the charred remains of the bag racks. A loud thump was heard, and the music stopped. Cautiously, Ed and Emma made their way through the doors to inspect the remains of the room. The old easy chairs had been grouped round a Hi-Fi placed on the old librarian's desk, and there were shredded remains of bodies lying over and around the chairs and desk. Clearly the chavs had never seen anything coming.
***
After blowing the door to the language and technology block down with a well-placed explosive charge, Marc and his small team made their way into the lower floor. Cautiously poking his head up looking through the windows by the entrance to the main technology area, Marc could see that the chavs had turned the old DT machines to making weapons of war; one across the back wall was moulding bullets and slotting the bullets into gunpowder-filled cartridges; another was mixing various liquids in what Marc guessed to be an attempt at manufacturing their own explosives. Feeling slightly out of place without his customary rocket launcher (they had thought that there would be no need for heavy weaponry due to a general lack of armour noticed by aerial reconnaissance), he decided that they would have to try and capture it rather than just blow it to bits as he would normally choose to do.
He gestured at two explorers, one to kick open the door, and the other to cover him. The first explorer, Clive, kicked the door open and was immediately hit in the shoulder by a bullet fired by a chav hidden behind one of the machines. Marc dived forward, grabbed Clive by the back of his webbing and dragged him back behind the scant protection offered by the wooden walls, whilst the other explorers took cover, firing bursts through the windows into the room in an attempt to force the chavs to keep their heads down.
Marc surveyed the damage to Clive's shoulder. It looked nasty, but actually the bullet had done relatively little damage, passing clean through the tissue just under the shoulder blade, narrowly missing an artery. There was a lot of blood though, and Marc stuck a field dressing over the wound, rolled him onto a fold-out stretcher and called to one of the other explorers - a relatively new member named George - to get the other end of the stretcher. They quickly got him over to Ellie, who was still holed up in the 6th form centre.
Ellie took one look at him and put him straight on the makeshift operating table, yelling at Marc to get out and give her some room. Marc ran out, and looking over his shoulder he saw her pulling the remains of the bullet out of Clive's shoulder. Not having time to think about it, he ran back towards the fight in the technology block, with George hot on his tail. Despite being fairly small and lightly built, George was far stronger than he looked, and had little difficulty running and fighting under the weight of his webbing, backpack and gun. He and Marc sprinted back in; and while George dropped straight down on one knee and resumed firing on the chavs inside the room, Marc threw his gun off to one side, pulled out a pair of grenades, pulled the pins out and dived forward, sliding on his side along the lino floor. As he passed the open doors, which were by now riddled with bullets, he threw both the grenades into the room.
The grenades flew in a steep arc, flying through the air to land in the far corners of the room. One landed in the vat that appeared to be mixing explosives. Marc's eyes widened; he jumped up, grabbed his gun and ran, yelling at the other explorers to follow him. George, the last explorer out, was flung onto the grass outside by the explosion, which flattened the building. Other than a few minor scratches and scrapes from flying glass and some bruising on George where he landed roughly, everyone seemed to have escaped pretty much unscathed. After quickly checking themselves over, they reloaded their weapons and pushed on, running down the side of the science block and the library to the rear entrance to the old music and drama block.
***
After clearing the library, Nick, Claire, Ed, Ollie and the rest of the explorers rapidly moved on to clean out the rest of the upper end of the school, with little resistance. The two old computer rooms were completely abandoned, and most of the rest of this end of the school looked like it had seen little use.
They ran into some trouble at the top of the old maths corridor, near the entrance to one of the towers. A group of chavs had set up a barrier of tables and other large objects across the corridor, after hearing the gunfire and explosions from the rest of the school. It seemed harmless at first, and so the group moved cautiously towards it. As they were passing the entrance to the old staff room a machine gun barrel suddenly appeared above the blockade, and a shaved head popped up behind it. All hell broke loose, as the chav on the machine gun started firing, forcing the explorers to scatter for what little cover was available, and more chavs appeared to take up positions along the barricade
After diving to the side into the little hallway at the top of the steps, Claire quickly assessed the situation. A head-on charge would be catastrophic, and they would likely lose more than a few lives in such a suicidal charge on a well-defended position, and they had no rocket launchers or heavy weaponry at all, bar Nick's oversized and overpowered assault rifle, but that was designed to chew through flesh, body armour and light vehicles, not tear down barricades. The grenades they were all carrying were anti-personnel, and to try to lay an explosive charge close enough to the barricade would be suicide. There was only one solution available to her.
She quickly ran out of the double doors and onto the path that led back to the 6th form centre, and snuck down to the left, onto the grass behind the old maths classrooms. She smashed a window with one of her pistol butts, then dived through to pop up in the classroom that opened onto the corridor just behind the barricade. Quietly running over to the door, she peeked through the hole that was left of the window in the door. The chavs in the hallway were clearly busy with the rest of the explorers, so she was under no threat whatsoever. Pulling back slightly, she sprinted at the door, diving shoulder-first into it and busting the hinges so the door fell completely through the frame, then rolling out the other side. Before the chavs even had time to swing their weapons round, Claire had propped herself up on one knee and was shooting with deadly accuracy, literally decapitating one or two of the chavs with the raw power of her Desert Eagles. By the time the smoke cleared all that was left of the ex-defenders of the barricade were a set of bloody corpses - some headless - strewn across the floor.
They rapidly moved out, sweeping through the maths classrooms, finding more chavs in some of them, but dispatching them without difficulty they quickly moved up through the towers, which were again empty. There seemed to be a distinct lack of chavs compared to the numbers they were expecting, so quietly they swept forward into the canteen, and found that the doors to the great hall were closed, with the curtains pulled across them.
Nick signalled for the others to pull back and sweep what remained of the school to make sure that they had not missed anything vital, though it appeared any resistance would be fairly light due to what appeared to be a large gathering in the main hall. After Ollie led the rest of the group out to sweep the old reception area and the interview rooms Nick, Claire and Ed crept forward, guns at the ready. Nick quietly opened one of the doors at the back to find that the chavs were all sitting in a very rough arc around a table at the front of the hall, where a group of chavs were explaining something whilst pointing to a map on the wall. Judging by the amount of Bling around the necks and fingers of the chavs standing up they were fairly important people, so rather than charge in, kill them and get gunned down by the remaining horde of very angry chavs, Nick decided to back off and call in an airstrike from Rufus and the rest of the attack squadron that were sitting in their planes ready for the orders. He grabbed Claire and Ed and, after a quick explanation of what was going to happen, they all made their way back to cover the escape routes. Claire went outside to cover the fire door out by the old car park, Ed to cover the other fire door out by the gym and Nick to the back of the canteen to cover the main entrance. Nick pressed the talk button on his wrist computer, and started talking to HQ through his headset.
'This is Nightseraph to Voyager Base, requesting an airstrike at the coordinates currently being transmitted.'
'Roger that Nightseraph, what is the target's composition?' A disembodied voice manning the HQ support room answered.
'Target is an unarmoured structure, with a large quantity of hostile personnel inside.'
'Roger that, birds are in the air, ETA to your target 1 minute 30 seconds. Voyager Base out.'
With that, Nick sprinted to the back of the canteen, into the kitchen and dropped to one knee behind the counter that was used to serve the food through. He propped his assault rifle up on the counter, and waited for the airstrike.
***
Ed was crouched down on the grassy area behind the old computer suite that overlooked the hall. In the distance he could hear the distinctive thrumming of the Attack craft's Slush-Hydrogen Pulse Detonation Wave engines. He could make out a set of three silvery shapes in the distant sky that were rapidly becoming bigger as they approached the target. The three planes dived sharply, and a set of bombs and rockets detached from them with a clear trajectory that dropped them directly onto the school hall. There was an enormous explosion that completely gutted the school hall, and it was quickly apparent that there would be no survivors for him to eliminate. Rather than just wait for Nick and Claire to come up to meet him before making their way to the extraction point, he decided to quickly check the old computer suite to make sure nothing had been missed, as it seemed to be an ideal location to house any sort of computing equipment that the chavs might still be using.
Quickly shooting out the lock that held the doors closed still, he could quickly see that the various teams had yet to clear out this particular part of the school. He could hear the deep humming of big computer fans coming from the other side of the double doors that led to the computer area. After checking the conference room to make sure that there were no nasty surprises waiting for him, he kicked down the left of the double doors and burst through into the main area. What he found blew him away.
The chavs had somehow managed to cobble together a massive mainframe from the parts that used to make up the old computers here. It was a complete tangle of machinery and wires, but it seemed to be working. Ed was amazed that the chavs had people with the knowledge to be able to do this amongst their ranks, because your average chav was worse than stupid, but clearly they had someone.
He radioed for the others to come and meet him, and then radioed HQ to ask them to send additional vehicles to allow them to transport all this back with them, to allow them to analyse the data on the numerous hard drives. He figured that they had found something major, but he truly had no idea just how important this find was.
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