Chapter 81: Chapter 81: General Raddock (2)
Deep beneath the surface, inside the heavily reinforced command bunker, General Raddock was a man watching his world end.
The command center was a flurry of panicked shouting and flashing red warning lights.
The massive tactical screens on the front wall were dying one by one as the cameras above were systematically destroyed or melted.
Raddock, a man with a chest full of medals and a face carved from old leather, gripped the edge of the holotable, his knuckles white.
"Report!" Raddock bellowed, his voice booming over the klaxons. "What the fuck is hitting us?!"
A communications officer, his headset askew, looked up with terrified eyes. "Sir! We’ve lost contact with the southern perimeter! Thermal imaging shows multiple high intensity fires. We’re taking massive casualties!"
"Is it an airstrike? Artillery?" Raddock demanded, leaning over the table.
"No, sir!" a radar technician shouted. "It’s ground forces! Small arms, but they’re cutting through our armor like butter! They’ve got some kind of sonic weaponry. First Platoon just... they just liquefied, General!"
Raddock’s face went pale. Sonic weaponry.
"Who are they?" Raddock yelled, his spit flying onto the tactical map. "The Russians? The Chinese? Who the fuck attacks a United States military base on sovereign soil?!"
"Sir, they’re wearing black tactical gear, no insignia!" the comms officer yelled back.
Raddock’s mind raced. He had spent his life preparing for a conventional war. He had built this black site to house the 4th Group, to secretly train men who could fight the freaks Vought paraded around.
And now, out of nowhere, an impossibly advanced strike force was dismantling his life’s work in minutes.
"It’s a coup," Raddock muttered, his paranoia flaring. "It’s the goddamn CIA. Or it’s Vought."
He slammed his fist on the table.
"I don’t care who they are!" Raddock roared, drawing his sidearm. "This is an act of war! Send the Abrams tanks! Send everyone! I want those bastards ground into the dirt! Tell the armory to issue the heavy munitions! Do not let them reach this bunker!"
"General!" the radar tech screamed, his voice cracking an octave higher. "Sir! We have a new contact!"
"Another ground team?" Raddock asked, spinning around.
"No, sir! Altitude thirty thousand feet! Descending at Mach three! It’s... "
BOOM.
The sonic boom hit the valley like a physical hammer.
Above ground, the surviving soldiers covering the entrance to the command bunker looked up into the smoke filled sky.
The clouds tore open.
A figure dropped from the heavens, landing in the exact center of the courtyard with the force of a meteor impact.
A crater ten feet deep and thirty feet wide instantly formed, tossing heavily armed soldiers into the air like broken toys. Dust and pulverized asphalt plumed upward.
As the dust settled, the silhouette became clear.
The blue suit. The red boots. The American flag cape, billowing majestically in the wind generated by the fires.
Homelander.
He slowly stood up from the crouch. He looked around the burning base, taking in the carnage wrought by the Vought tactical team. He sneered, disgusted by the human inefficiency.
"My turn," Homelander whispered.
His eyes flared blindingly red.
Two concentrated beams of heat vision, burning hotter than the surface of the sun, erupted from his eyes. He turned his head in a 360 degree sweeping arc.
The lasers sliced through the night.
They hit an incoming Abrams tank. The beams carved cleanly through the depleted uranium armor of the chassis as if it were made of butter.
The tank kept rolling for a second, then the top half of the turret simply slid off, crashing to the ground in a shower of sparks. The ammunition inside cooked off, incinerating the crew in a localized inferno.
The beams swept across a platoon of thirty soldiers rushing to reinforce the courtyard. The heat vision hit them waist high. Men were bisected instantly.
Torsos tumbled to the asphalt while their legs remained standing for an impossible second before collapsing. The smell of instantly cauterized flesh and boiling blood overwhelmed the scent of cordite.
Homelander stopped the beams. He smiled, his teeth bright against the smoke.
"Where are they?" he yelled, his voice echoing over the screams. "Where are the replacements?!"
Suddenly, a massive gust of wind knocked a dozen soldiers off their feet. A blur of blue and white lightning tore through the courtyard.
A-Train.
The speedster was moving at speeds exceeding Mach 1.5.
A soldier raised his rifle. A-Train ran through the man.
The kinetic impact of a human body colliding with another at that velocity was catastrophic. The soldier exploded.
He turned into a red mist, a shower of bone splinters and liquefied organs raining down on his horrified comrades.
A-Train laughed, a manic sound fueled by a fresh injection of Compound V. He became a deadly pinball, ricocheting around the courtyard.
He ran through a group of five men, turning them into a spray of viscera.
He grabbed a soldier by the arm, accelerating to super speed while remaining stationary, the sheer torque ripping the man’s arm out of its socket with a tearing sound.
"Too slow! You’re all too fucking slow!" A-Train screamed, his goggles coated in a thick layer of blood.
From the roof of a nearby supply building, Queen Maeve dropped into the fray.
She landed on the hood of an armored Humvee, crushing the engine block under her boots.
A heavy machine gunner mounted on the turret swung his .50 caliber weapon toward her and pulled the trigger.
Maeve raised her bracers. The armor piercing bullets struck the metal, sparking and deflecting harmlessly into the night. She looked at the gunner, her face an unreadable mask of cynical exhaustion.
She leaped.
She crossed the distance in a fraction of a second, landing on the turret. She drove her fist straight through the bulletproof glass of the gunner’s shield, shattering it.
Her hand closed around the man’s throat. She squeezed. His neck snapped with a sound like a dry branch breaking. She casually tossed his limp body from the vehicle.
Soldiers swarmed her, firing their assault rifles. The bullets bruised her skin but they couldn’t stop her.
She moved with Spartan efficiency. A backhand shattered a man’s ribcage, driving bone fragments into his lungs. A front kick folded a soldier in half, his spine breaking audibly.
She fought mechanically, an indestructible warrior wading through a sea of fragile mortality.
