282 Purge 1

Sitting in the back of an unmarked van clutching his personal rifle he had been through countless battles with as a member of Division 14, an elite police special action unit. Douglas recognized his current situation as nothing that much out of the ordinary, in fact, it was quite ordinary to deploy that way, what was abnormal was who was leading the current group.

"Don't look at me, I've nothing to do with… That."

Glancing towards the rear of the van, Douglas made sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, but nevertheless his breach leader this time was a child, a child with large, dog like ears to be exact. To make matters even worse, the child was no doubt a Hellwalker, not just judging from her uniform, but also the refined bloodlust she was emitting while she sharpened her knives. The day had turned bizarre like that for Douglas about 4 hours ago when instead of the routine training which was planned for the day, a group of Hellwalkers showed up with their 'I can do whatever I want license' and shoved them all into unmarked vehicles before giving an extremely lacking explanation on what they were doing. In addition to the dog eared child, there also was another Hellwalker in the van with Douglas and his fellow members of Division 14, but she was wearing some kind of black facemask and hadn't said anything at all, so it was hard for Douglas to get a read on her.

"We're arriving."

Even with her voice muffled by the facemask she was wearing, it was clear to Douglas that there was zero tension in the Hellwalkers voice, it was like she was going on a Sunday picnic instead of leading a raid on domestic terrorists.

"Objective is the grey storehouse, there's a high chance it is hiding some sort of underground facility connected to the illegal slave trade, not all subjects on the premises may be hostile, check your fire."

Having completely turned her attitude around, the masked Hellwalker now radiated the kind of authority Douglas subconsciously reacted to, even as her voice continued to sound relaxed, almost bordering on indifferent.

"What about confirmed hostiles?"

"Shoot to kill, even if they try to surrender. While you guys are police units, this is a spec op navy operation. We're not here to serve a warrant and there's no need to take prisoners, we're here to purge hostiles of the Galactic Empire."

With the Hellwalker's brief explanation finished, the van suddenly came to a stop. Deploying what turned out to be a narrow alley, the Division 14 members stacked up on a corner behind the two Hellwalkers.

[Target 12 o'clock. Deploy in a fan formation, civ's inside the wire. Safeties off.]

[On me, go.]

Watching the two Hellwalkers disappear around the corner, Douglas clicked the fire select on his weapon from safe to semi automatic before tapping his own helmet with a closed fist, indicating to his comrades behind him to follow as he rounded the corner himself.

(Oh, this is some absolute bullshit!)

Recognizing his current location as a warehouse district near one of the Capital's larger slums, the street they need to cross was filled with civilians going about their daily life, this was absolutely not a place for a firefight. 

"Contract front! Clear out the Civ's!"

Nevertheless, that is exactly what happened the very next second. Having spotted a figure with a firearm taking cover in a window frame on the second story of the target building, Terra didn't hesitate as she pointed her rifle towards them and opened fire as the street descended into chaos.

(Tch, armoured.)

"Suppressive fire!"

"Suppressing!"

Finding the decrepit old warehouse deceptively armoured like a fortress, Terra's preemptive fire failed to kill the shooter who immediately stuck his rifle out the window and opened fire down on the busy street with little care for the civilians caught in the crossfire.

"Keep him down!"

"Roger!"

Continuing to suppress the shooter together with Mare and half of the police forces while the rest quickly evacuated the civilians caught in the crossfire, Terra got a flashbang ready.

"Mare!"

"Mmm!"

While Terra hurled the flashbang into the second story window, Mare discarded her rifle as she drew a pistol and a bayonet, sprinting halfway across the street she launched from the ground and landed in the window frame just after the flashbang detonated. Judging from the cut short scream and spray of blood which immediately followed from the window, the police unit quickly judged that the threat had been eliminated as they froze up with gaping mouths.

"Stack up for breach!"

Snapping the so called elite Division 14 members out of their collective daze, Terra set up for entry.

---

"Wow, they are not holding back, are they? And getting hostages that fast was a smart move..."

"This really is not the time to be commending the enemy!"

While Mare and Terra's team had made entry and started their raid on time, the group Dax was leading with Solaris in tow had run into significantly more resistance at their site which had up until a few minutes ago looked like an ordinary high density residential block. In reality, the small apartment highrise was a fortress that the criminal elements and Hellwalker imitations who inhabited it had spent a long time and money to perfect. The building's outer facade had been armoured to resist even high calibre armor piercing rounds while balconies had been turned into camouflaged machine gun nests and the first floor lobby had turned into a truly excellent kill zone where armoured gunmen hid behind human shields. The raid had been botched even before it happened, as somehow the criminals knew they were coming, leading to their current situation where Dax, Solaris, and their allied police units had been pinned down behind their own transport and quickly deteriorating concrete blocks.

"There's not really time for anything else Solaris, we can't do shit at the moment with how perfect their suppression is."

Nevertheless, Dax didn't seem that worried about their current predicament as he continued complimenting the empty behind his quickly disappearing concrete cover.

"Are you for real!?"

"W-what are we going to do!?"

While Solaris and a policeman who shared Dax's cover were both starting to lose their cool under the sustained suppression of multiple machineguns, Dax continued to listen to the constant barrage of fire as a grin slowly formed on his face.

"This is a good opportunity to learn Solaris, what kind of machine guns are they using? If you focus a bit you should be able to hear their mechanical actions from here."

While the policeman seemed to think Dax had gone mad under fire, Solaris started getting what Dax was trying to say.

"... They're using triple sevens?"

Focusing her ears using magic, Solaris recognized the sound the enemy machine guns were making as the same kind of weapon Dax liked to use.

"Exactly. And just because we're lucky they're also using continuous magazines, most likely with 5000 or more rounds between reload… Officer, how long has it been since they started firing?"

"5 minutes at least!"

"You see what I'm getting at Solaris?"

With a grin on his face, Dax switched his rifle to semi automatic as it all suddenly clicked for Solaris. While the Rex-0777 was good at continuous fire due to its active cooling, that cooling still had its limits.

Keeping up a suppressive field of fire for that amount of time was bound to heat up the weapon significantly, severely degrading their accuracy. 

"I'll take out the two on the left, you go for the right ones."

Not waiting for Solaris' response, Dax rose from his cover as a bullet flew right past his head, grazing his cheek without even making Dax flinch. Setting his sight accurately, every time Dax squeezed the trigger the unmistakable wet popping sound of a headshot could be heard as Dax ruthlessly silenced the machine gun nests together with Solaris before he completely abandoned cover, taking out the shooters in the lobby with machinelike accuracy.

"Move up for breach! First team take the east stairway, second team take the west one! Let's clear out these lowlifes quickly so I can get back in time for dinner, I have a roast in the smoker!"

With the hostile fire silenced, Dax's sharp orders seemed to be the only thing that rang out in the street as he reloaded his now empty rifle.