It didn't take us long to reach the enemy encampment, even though we were on foot. Vortex, Taro and the older reborn we'd picked up had taken a sniper post a ways away from the camp while my Dad, Void, Mercury and the younger reborn approached from the front of the camp, which was swarming with Reborn's and X-01's. There were at least six guys guarding the front entrance on the ground, two in sniper towers and two in pill boxes armed with MG42's. In camp I was able to tag about 17 more Reborn's, 21 humans and 12 X-01s along with a few militia units.

The camp itself consisted of three, slummy looking two story building's with rusty sheet metal roofs and gun emplacements in the windows. The shipping crates that were our targets were stacked by three's in a corner of the camp, there were nine of them.

"Enemy concentration is rather high", my Dad said, "this should be fun."

"Intel was way off", Void snarled, "fucking hell."

"Alex did say BR presence was high", Hunter said from the other end of the radio.

"How's that artillery gun?", I asked.

"Ready to rock and roll", Calen said, "we'll dig in here and burn through these shells."

"I'm sending you target points for an attack", I said typing the location of the towers and the middle of the base into my PDA, putting it into a folder and sending it to Calen.

"Got ya", he said, "fire package inbound, danger close."

"Get to a safe distance", I said, "artillery strike inbound."

My friends and I retreated about a hundred yards back, digging down a bit into a hole that was already present.

"Send it", I said into the radio.

"Rodger", Calen replied.

It wasn't long after that when we heard what you could mistake for faint thunder in the distance, then we heard the whistling of the shells for a brief second before they slammed into the two sniper towers and the middle of the BR camp. Most of the Humans were killed outright and the rest were so badly fucked up that they had no chance of ever fighting again. The shells killed seven of the X-01s and wounded two, which quickly recovered, while most of the Reborn's simply got back up, their armor having protected them from the shock wave and shrapnel.

"Where the fuck did that come from!?", one of the Reborns shouted.

"Move in", I said, 'take 'em, Vortex, your weapons free."

"Was that ours!?", another asked, "why are our own guns sho..."

The man was cut off as one of Vortex's .338 Lapua rounds ripped through the side of his head. He wobbled on his feet a minute before falling to the ground, not even twitching.

"SNIPER!", another reborn shouted, "TAKE COVER!"

The remaining Reborn's darted for cover as the X-01's smelled us coming and turned to attack us without any thought, Void too charged straight into the fray, grabbing the closest neck he could find.

"Five contacts coming from the front gate!", one of the Reborn's shouted as we instantly split up, diving into the ruins of the pillboxes and towers for cover.

"You are weapons free for all contacts!", I told my team.

The others began engaging the Reborn's while Mercury and I assisted Void with the Reborns. Hard as their hides were, burning through enough .30-06 eventually led us to to victory. The last X-01 fell under Mercury's 220 just as mine was ready for another round. With the X-01's out of the way, I opened the tac visor to asses the situation. The remainder of the enemy forces were well dug into a couple of houses that had sandbags lining the walls, our most powerful weapons, my and Mercury's 220's, probably couldn't punch through it without expending a large amount of ammunition, so I began looking for a possible flank route, which I did find. If I went to the edge of the base and went around behind the houses, I could get to them. I tagged all the targets with orange, had the system mark the best possible path to avoid getting shot to pieces and then grabbed Mercury.

"Mercury", I said pulling him down, shouting over the gun fire, "pop smoke and give me surpressive fire, I'm going to flank around."

"Rodger!", Mercury said throwing a M18 smoke in front of both houses. While the gun fire from my side quieted down considerably as they used their visors to take precise shots, the Reborn's amped up the amount of lead they were spraying, most of it was wasted, but a few of those rounds hit their marks.

"Mother fucker!", My Dad shouted as the arrow in my visor that pointed to him turned red and showed, "Assist."

"Dad!", I said into the radio as I turned around the corner of the first house, pulling a grenade out of my kit, "where are you hit!?"

"It was just a flesh wound", My Dad quickly returning to the fight, "I'm still in this!"

"Avoid firing on the furthest house on the right", I said, "moving into clear."

'Rodger that", my team responded.

I kicked open the back door of the first house, drawing the attention of two Reborn's inside who were hiding behind sandbags. I didn't give them any time to respond to me as I opened up, using 15 rounds to kill the both of them and my teeth to maul a third one who jumped out at me with a knife. I tossed a flash bang up the stairs and then scaled it as quickly as I could, checking each corner with my finger hovering over the trigger, ready to cut loose if anything so much as looked at me funny. In the two rooms upstairs were three Human soldiers who were trying to ready another Mg42 to fire. When they saw me, two of them reached for their guns, while the third turned that 42 on me. We both looked through the sights of our weapons at what had to be the same time, but the operator of the 42 was slightly faster on the trigger and what had to be two hundred rounds attempted to rip through my body. My vest didn't eat too many of them before I started feeling the insanely painful sting of getting shot I'd come to know in Basic, so I assumed they must have been running AP ammo, though it didn't make much of a difference. Though nothing went through my scales, the pain was so bad I slumped onto my back, acting like I was dead.

"The fuck is that thing!?", One of the humans asked.

"Is it dead?", the man with the 42 asked as he opened the dust cover.

"Nope", I said popping up and flipping my 220 to Ludicrous mode. The .30-06 ate them like wet tissue paper and they fell back in a pile against the wall.

"Moving to the next house", I said trying to catch my breath.

"You alright son?", My Dad asked.

"I just ate about 200 Armor penetrating 8mm Mauser rounds", I said, "just a little out of breath is all."

"Can I get that on tape?", Mercury asked.

"No", I said, "stop talking shit and move on these houses!"

"Rodger", Taro said, 'Ace, were coming down from the hill to lend a paw."

"How 'bout a gun?", I asked vaulting out of the second story window and slinking to the back of the house, "cause a gun be better than a paw right now."

"Good point", Taro said over the radio as he ran up to the fence that surrounded the base and vaulted over, the older Reborn close behind him.

"Put a charge on that door", I ordered.

The Reborn took a small charge of C4 from his vest and put it on the door. As soon as he pressed a button to arm it, a little yellow marker came up. Then I saw two more markers labeled "C4 Explosive-Armed" with an exact distance, down to the nearest tenth of an inch, away from me. Mako must have put a lot of work into these things.

It was only seconds after the markers came up that the Charges went. Taro, the Reborn and myself entered through the back of the middle house, while my Dad and the other reborn went in through the front and Mercury and Void went in through one of the windows of the final house. It didn't take us long to sweep and clear the houses. When the fighting was over, Black River's causality count was high and we stood at only some heavy bruising for me and a flesh wound on my Dad's arm.

"Building clear", my Dad said from upstairs.

"Building clear", Mercury said.

"We'll", A familiar voice said over the radio, the sound of a turbine in the background, "good news already."

"Nina!?", I asked, "what the hell!?"

"What?", she asked, "your not happy to hear I'm alive?"

"Morningstar told me you weren't gonna wake up!?", I stuttered.

"He was wrong", Nina said, "Mako and I are awake. He's gonna get on the coms and manage things, I'm on the strip with Carlos, Vasil and Riley waiting for the 260 to taxi down the runway, were bringing you a gift."

"What kind of gift?", I asked.

"A Nano Gun", Mako said, sounding tired as hell.

"A Nano gun?", I asked.

"Yep", Mako said, "I found out shortly after we recovered that Black River device that it shoots a jet of Nano bots out at over 30,000 FPS if you put a 9 volt charge through it. I got the Armory Master to jury rig an M220 lower recover to hold the forge and a few computer chips and we turned it into a rifle I'm sure you can get some serious use out of. Don't be afraid to beat up on it either, I'm confident it can take whatever you toss at it. Each 9 volt battery will get you about 7 shots and the bots will destroy whatever the touch in a matter of seconds, but you need to fire it slowly, no more than three trigger pulls per second or the Forge will get confused and enter a reset state which takes about two seconds."

"Thanks for that Update Mako", I said, 'what's the status on the others?"

"We don't know yet", Mako said, "Jayden's the worst off at the moment, he's running a really serious fever. I don't know if he'll pull through. Everyone else is pretty much unchanged, vitals are normal, but brain wave activity is off the charts, nightmares maybe. By the way Ace, get me a live feed of what's going on there, you should be able to stream it to me via your Visor, just open it and I'll do somethings on my end."

"Kay", I said opening the Tactical Visor. I heard typing on Mako's end before my PDA vibrated. Upon taking a glance at the screen, it said, "Overlord requests Visor feed, Accept, Decline." I hit accept and then Mako piped up.

"Okay", he said, "I can see everything you can. Yank open those crates and lets have a look."

I walked up to the crates, took a pair of bolt cutters from the Mule and cut the chain, pulling the box open, revealing the biggest bricks of cash I'd ever seen in my life.

"Holy fuckshit", Taro said going wide eyed, "can I has it?"

"How can you have a stack of cash that big and have it all be real?", I asked as I took one of the 100's out of the bricks and held it up to the sun, water mark, serial numbers, it was all there.

"Damn", I said, "I know we can't check every bill, but this one is real at least."

"You'll find the same thing in the boxes next to and on top of this one", the Older Reborn with us said

"So now we crack open the middle box", I said cutting the chain and pulling it open, revealing the box was full of wooden crates which were marked, "Case Box-M4A1 25 count. And the piece of paper taped to the inside of the lid said there were 40 boxes inside the crate.

"Got 120 boxes of M4's", Mako said, "must have a lot of guys to arm, what's in the last three though?"

"More money if I heard it right", the Reborn Jake said.

I walked over to the last stack of boxes and had barely put the cutters to the chain when Mako piped up.

"Hold up Ace", he said, "I just got a huge radiation spike."

"How many?", I asked.

"41", Mako said.

"Anyone whose' not a dragon step really far back right fucking now!", I barked as I pulled the door open, revealing green case with a big ass radiation symbol on it.

"Nukes", I sighed, "why does it always have to be nukes!?"

"Open it", Mako said, "I've got to know if it's armed or not."

Sighing and holding my breath, I unlatched the box and attempted to open the lid, but I couldn't because of how fucking heavy it was.

"Taro, Hunter", I said, "gimme a hand with this."

My friends helped me pull the lid open, which revealed what at first glance could be mistaken for a V12 engine, but a basic inspection revealed it was a very large, heavily modified Nuclear Warhead, an MIRV possibly. It almost looked like 12 smaller bombs all primed to go off at once and everything was set up in the case, but what really set me off was the fact that there was what appeared to be a WiFi router and a motherboard inside the case with the weapon.

"That doesn't look good", Taro said.

"Mako", I said, "are you seeing this?"

"Yeah", Mako said, "but why would you need a WiFi router in a nuclear weapon?

My team and I exchanged glances as a really, really nasty thought set in.

"To talk to other warheads so they all go off at once", I said turning to the others, "get the upper crates open and see if we've got more than one of these. Double time!"

Taro, Hunter, Mercury and Vortex, who had now joined us, climbed up and started opening the other crates.

"Mako", I asked, "is it armed?"

"No", Mako said, "the weapon is registering as inactive, it seems as though it needs to be synced into a network with other warheads, but right now the router is turned off, along with the rest of the bomb."

"Ace", Mercury gulped, "there are two more nukes up here along with what's labeled as an F1 Mag Charge, it's got the same Motherboard and Router built into it that the Nukes do."

Mako swallowed hard, harder than Mercury did.

"Mako?", I asked, "care to clue me in?"

"A...a..", Mako stuttered, "A Mag charge, known to people like me as Singularity Bombs, generate mini black holes when they go off, a Charge that can yield a hole the size of a soup can could swallow New York city in a matter of minutes."

"Well this one's a lot fucking bigger", Hunter said, "can we destroy it?"

"Yes but you have to listen to me and do exactly as I say because if you don't", Mako said, "that satanic bomb will swallow the entire continent. Ace, your a sci Fi writer, do you know what a Variable Magnetic Generator is?"

"Yes", I said Climbing up to where my friends were, "all the Sci Fi stories I've read have used VMG's in Rail cannons and EMP bombs, piece of tech they developed for low speed particle colliders."

"Do you see that long silver cylinder with two blue hoses out of one end and two red ones out of the other?"

"Yes", I said.

"Okay", Mako said, "cut the blue hoses and stand the cylinder up, don't let any of the fluid inside touch the steel container if you can help it, it's probably the quickest route to death."

"Got it", I said taking out my knife. Hunter held the hoses below my knife while I pinched them off above it. I cut through the hoses without any problems and handed the now free cylinder off to Taro, which also revealed a bunch of wire's all going into what looked like a CPU.

"Mako", I said, "I'm seeing a CPU."

"Right", he said, "douse it in LN and yank it!"

Without questioning him, I sprayed the CPU in every bit of liquid nitrogen I could muster and then yanked it straight out.

"The bomb's not sending out any more signals", Mako laughed, "Thank god."

"How much do you think we just gipped black river out of?", I asked.

"Hundred billion", Hunter said, "I remember finalizing the bill to get the parts to build this."

"Do they have another one?", I asked.

"No way in this universe", Hunter said, "Two hundred billion is way to high a price for those greedy bastards."

"Where the hell was this thing being shipped anyhow?", I asked as Mercury pulled the piece of paper off the wall.

"Port Akta", Mercury said.

"That's not far", Jake said, "maybe about a 20 minute drive, really big town sits on it."

"So we wait for Nina and the Nano gun to get here", I said, "then go at night, either way, we've got to find out where all this ordinance was headed, and I can't help but think we're on a clock that's way to fucking short."