This text has been written at 1 am, and the writer is not responsible for any typoes or logical errors.
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Lieutenant Jason Lyndon, also known sometimes as "Liquid", walked into the Colonel's sand brown tent. They were in some nameless spot of land some miles south of the town of As Sallum. The Battle of El Alamein had come to a brief pause as Rommel's Afrika Korps had withdrawn to Tobruk. The Germans were licking their wounds in the confines of the Libyan town, waiting for the next British attack. And apparently, Talent commandos were needed to ensure the success of that attack. Again.
"Sir," Lyndon said, snapping a sharp salute at the officer. Colonel Winston waved it away, and spoke.
"I am going to be brief, because we do not have much time. We just received word that one of our planes crash landed in the desert some twenty miles south of Tobruk. The pilot sent out a distress signal and his coordinates on an open frequency, so the Germans probably got them, too. The pilot was carrying important missives from London to General Montgomery. Your squad will retrieve them, before the Germans get there. On your way, Lieutenant," the heavyset man finished, handing the rather leaner Talent a map with the crash site marked in the appropriate coordinates.
"Yes, Sir." Lyndon saluted again and left the tent on swift feet.
His squad was ready to act at once, as always. The five Talents were soon in their halftrack and busily raising a dust cloud on the clear sky of North Africa. It was dwarfed by the great plumes of greasy black smoke that rose from the burning tanks and other vehicles that dotted the landscape, destroyed by the tanks and artillery of the Eighth Army. The heavy vehicle left a broad track in the soft sand of Sahara (2).
Lyndon sat in the front seat with Sergeant William "Goggles" Beckinhurst. Beckinhurst was the best driver in the squad, and had eyes sharp enough to spot a man five miles away, tell the colour of his eyes, and put a bullet between them. The man had gone through Oxford before manifesting his extraordinary eyesight and immediately enlisted in the army.
They sat in the halftrack surveying the horizon for signs of life, as their vehicle made its way towards the crash site. The ground had gradually transformed from the soft, fine sand to a more rocky soil (4). The tracks made a terrible noise as their rolled over the stones. The Talents were nearly at the spot marked by 'X', when Goggles spoke.
"Sir, there is a dust plume in the horizon, moving in a north-south line towards the wreck. I'd say it's the jerries."
The Lieutenant peered at the horizon through his binoculars, and sighted the small cloud.
"One vehicle only. Good job, Goggles. Now step on it and get us there before the krauts."
Goggles saw the wreck soon, too. It was a small, fast two-man plane, though only one of the pilots was visible, and making great efforts to hide. The other vehicle also came soon to view, and was revealed to be a truck bearing the markings of the Third Reich and Afrika Korps.
"We've got company, lads!" Lyndon shouted to the four other Talents sitting in the back of the track.
"Oi, watch who yer callin' lad, boy!" came an indignant response in a thick Scottish accent. It was Corporal Kenneth "Illusionist" Wallace. The red bearded man claimed the legendary William Wallace was a direct ancestor of his, and certainly both shared the same dislike for English authority figures. Only his skill in creating large, credible illusions had kept him from facing the Court Martial for insubordination.
The halftrack drew up to the wrecked plane, while the truck full of Germans stopped some 120 feet away, turning a broad side to the British Talents. Lyndon recognized the maneuver.
"They've got a machine gun!" he cried, not a moment too soon. A flap in the German truck's cloth opened, and a Maschinengewehr-42 began its death rattle, spewing hot lead at the plane and the halftrack. Goggles ducked his head as the track's windows were shattered and the bullets began pounding the heavily armoured driver's compartment. Lyndon threw his door open and jumped out, placing the track's steel bulk between himself and the Germans.
The Lieutenant snuck a glance from under the track, and saw the German soldiers disembark from their truck, four in all. The machine gun required two men, plus the two in the driver's cabin… For a total of eight men. Easy, the lieutenant thought, as he took aim, removed the safety on his Thompson, and pulled the trigger.
The long burst took down both of the men at the machine gun, killing at least one of them instantly, Lyndon saw. Not many men lived after three bullets hit them in the face. After the burst, the Germans took quickly cover behind dunes, sending the occasional rifle shot at the halftrack but doing no real damage to anything other than the paint job.
Then, all of sudden, an enormous skeleton, ten feet tall, with eyes glowing hellfire and dark smoke pouring from its fanged maw, appeared in front of the Germans. It wielded a shot spear with a viciously barbed tip. It brandished the weapon menacingly, and started towards the Germans cowering in the sand. And, just as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared with a fizzle.
"The bloody krauts've got a Zed!" came the Illusionists muffled and angry cry from within the halftrack. A Zed was a Talent who could counter the Talents of others, and could be very dangerous indeed.
The rest of his group had cut a hole in the cloth veiling the back compartment of the halftrack and come to accompany Lyndon in the cover the heavy vehicle offered. Staff Sergeant Lawrence Dorne lay next to Liquid, with his great scimitar unsheathed. The man had served in Egypt before the war, guarding the Arabian oil fields, and had received the weapon as a gift from a sheikh whose son's life he had saved. At this point of the war, Dorne had already dismantled three German Tigers and a Panther with the sword, cutting through steel as easily as flesh.
"Sir, did you see which one is the Zed?" the bald man asked.
"No. He's probably the sergeant or in the driver's cabin," Lyndon asked, spraying another ineffective burst of bullets at the Germans, laying behind the dunes. "Let's see if we can draw him out… Goggles, see if you can spot the Zed, now."
Lyndon poked his head from the cover to view the battlefield, and spied a German corpse with blood leaking from his eye socket. One of Goggles' kills, judging by the precision. The Talent lieutenant reached out a hand and closed his eyes, willing the blood to flow, and take on a form. Slowly, the red fluid drew out of the dead soldier's entire body, and shaped into a snake, rearing up from the ground to strike at the Germans. Immediately, Lyndon felt a foreign force tug at his construct of blood, and, after a few seconds, let the snake fall in the sand.
"Did you spot the man, Goggles?" he cried at the sharpshooter.
"Aye aye, sir. The one in the back, lying next to the truck.
"Good, thanks." Turning to look at one of his men, Lyndon said "Well, you heard him. Do the honours, John."
Private John Wilkins was a young Londoner who'd manifested a powerful armour against any physical harm. Bullets bounced off, blades shattered on his skin, and only a couple of days ago he'd been run over by a German command jeep, only to rise up, dust himself off, and shoot the offending vehicle's driver in the face.
Wilkins nodded, peeked out from behind the cover, flinched as a bullet bounced off his forehead, and fired.
"Got the bugger," he announced triumphantly.
"Let's finish them off, then," Lyndon replied with a feral grin.
Wilkins and Dorne rose up from the cover. Wilkins mostly served to attract fire, hitting little with his rifle. Dorne (1), however, fought for the two of them, whirling with his scimitar, cutting men to ribbons, slashing through their weapons raised in defence and swiftly cutting down those who tried to flee from this scimitar-wielding terror. With his great speed, they could not properly aim with their rifles, and the few bullets shot at the Brit flew far past their mark.
There were, however, enemies left to fight. The two men from the driver's cabin had stepped out. One of them carried a submachine gun, and the other, nothing. Alarm bells went off in Lyndon's head, and his fear was confirmed a fraction of a second later as the unarmed German raised his hands, pointing them towards his halftrack. Lyndon jumped up and to the side while letting fly with a wild burst towards the German Übermensch. A shot snapped into the man's knee, and the Nazi crumpled down in pain, but not before letting fly a ball of fire that hit the halftrack's driver's cabin. The explosion blew out what was left of the windows and incinerated Goggles. He had only time for a short and abrupt scream of agony. At least his death was swift, Lyndon reflected as he lay in the sand. He'd landed heavily on metal pieces of the airplane wreckage (5), bruising his arm.
The lieutenant rose from his position behind the wrecked airplane, shooting another burst at the Übermensch, killing the German Talent as Wallace's rifle round took his escort through the heart.
The last German was swiftly dispatched by Dorne, with a quick diagonal slash across the man's chest, cutting his upraised rifle in two like a matchstick.
The battle thus ended, Lyndon willed the blood from the slain Germans to spray over the burning driver's cabin, quenching the fire effectively though gruesomely. The lieutenant was relieved to see it had not been damaged beyond use. Driving back to base in a stolen German truck would have carried the lethal danger of mistaken identity.
The plane wreck was searched. One of the pilots had died in his seat in the cockpit, and the other lay a bit way off, his chest riddled with fresh bullet holes. A gun was in his other hand, and a black leather briefcase in the other.
Lyndon picked up the briefcase, turned it over to see the military markings, and walked back to the halftrack where the others waited.
"Let's go home."