The rain was harsh, and it fell not as a storm; but as a wall of water from the sky - harsh and unrelenting through the dark, moonless night sky - from the black clouds above, onto the darkened red bricks below.
The team moved slowly and stealthily through the side streets, their stealth camo systems ajusting perfectly against the black, gray and red brick walls and high windows, illuminated with red firelight within.
They passed underneath a bridge archway, one of hundreds in the ancient capitol city of Genoad - the epicentre of the entire Genoan peoples government. Long ago half of the city had been built on land, and the other half had been endless piers and docks reaching out from the crecent moon bay that used to encompass the city, but after thier industrial revolution three centuries ago - the city had expanded tenfold, and now more than half of the city had been built onto massive stone pillars that extended down into the sea of the bay and beyond, and the city had been built on top of that again, endless houses, manufactorums and forges that made up the outskirts of the canal ridden city.
"Team one, time to objective?" A distant voice asked through the Teamcom system - the voice was genderless and synthesized, to mask all forms of incrimination in case any empire other than the Genoans just happened to be listening.
The team leader stopped for a moment, bringing the rest of his four man team to a half in the rain-ridden alleyway - four shadows halted in motion and became invisible to the naked eye.
"Team one is five kilometers away from objective. We have maintained cover." He replied, short, sharp and terse.
In the distance, one of the Genoans mighty seaborne battleships could be seen - a massive Trident shaped battleship that used anti-magnetic repulsion to hover above any body of water on the entire planet, its form clad in blue and steel metals and covered in massive cannons, ancient by modern terms - but nonetheless powerful - like everything the Genoans built, it was a mishmash of technologies that would make the other races of the now apparently life-filled gravity turn thier heads.
The most powerful gravity drives and magnetic repulsers the galaxy had ever seen, backed up with molecularly strengthened armour - but powered by coal furnaces and armed with powder cannons that fired shaped charges that where massively outclassed by modern cannons, yet somehow still able to match them shot for shot and cause damage while they did it.
All of this, from a civilisation not yet capable of producing electricity on a mass scale, let alone space travel - an utter oxymoron in the midst of a galaxy at war.
Eventually the toned voice replied in its digital rasp "Move quickly, Team Two have reported thier targets nuetralised. Make the kill order before the Genoans move en-masse."
"Yes sir" he replied, and with a series of hand motions the team resumed thier infiltration of the city.
Time passed, buildings where traversed and gaurds avoided in the rain filled night where most Genoans, Gaurds included would rather play it dumb, and play it safe than go outside into the hyperthermic cold and wet outside. Before long, the team had found thier way to the ostentasious fortress-palace of the Genoan royal families.
The Genoans, like most of the galactic civilisations had a royal family, of sorts - every family ruled a duchie, and every duchie had a family of rulers that when combined - would run the entire empire as a defacto democracy, but most of the time was spent in the palace vieing for power over each of the other families, which slowed the levels of care and attention that would spread to the duchies they ruled - this combined with an imperialistic military, no central communications beyond Government vetted courriers and an only just above industrial revolution technology base had left the entire world on the edge of an inter-family cold war that meant the rest of the world was regressing, while the worlds beyond where caught in the fires of an actual war that had only just been avoided by Scythian intervention.
But who could not notice the red ships in thier upper atmosphere, firing blasts of blue and white light into vessels from the stars above, clad in armour as black as the night and filled to the brim with invaders?
The Scythians had saved them from almost certain invasion by the "Immortals" and opened thier eyes to worlds beyond thier own, so many wonders, so many new sights, sounds, and smells - technologies that could revolutionize thier people and bring in a new golden age . . .
And all the families could do was squabble and fight like vermin over scraps on the tablecloth.
Which was when the kill order was dispatched.
He never knew who pulled all the strings - more often than not, when kill teams where dispatched - S.O.N.I spit the instructions through cells and maintained no contact between any of them - all that mattered was the goal.
The death of every Genoan royal, before the night was out.
Man, Woman and child.
With a series of hand waves, orders where given - and snatch lines where fired up the ancient, ten meter thick stone walls of the fortress - the first of three walls, each 50 meters apart that contained the central palace. Each wall lined with Gaurds and cannons and designed to hold off naval sieges for over a year, each.
This didn't stop the kill team - who simply started to climb the wall, ropes in hand, feet against the ancient stone as they moves quickly and silently up to the top of the first wall - and past the unsuspecting, feeble and lazy Gaurds - and then through the walls inner tunnels.
The Genoans had always left the tunnels painted white and unmarked - relying on sence of direction and naturally learning the basic layout to make thier own way around, while bewhildering thier enemies, leading them into waiting firetraps and fortified and baricaded barrack rooms where they could cut down thier enemies with ease.
But they had never, in the entire design stage considered a kill team of four men, four invisible men with the highest levels of technology the galaxy could offer - using sonic mapping and advanced computers to map thier exact route through the base, they moved with disturbing ease through the supposed "impenetrable" fortress - passing Gaurds by without a sight or sound to thier presence.
Soon they moved out from the dimly lit tunnels and into the courtyard at the dead centre of the palace - inside laid a single castle, designed for its archetecture rather than its defences, it was built out of stone white blocks and built as a sculpture of beauty in a garden of small ponds and green trees.
And lit by extravegant, and no doubt expensive electric lighting, primitive by other standards, but no doubt impressive considering the Genoans.
The team weaved through trees and ponds, under and over decorative bridges and arches as they reached the castle edges.
More handwaves later and the team was ready.
One final pump of a fist and the slaughter had begun.
They burst into the fortress in four different directions, starting with well placed grenades that killed a dozen Gaurds and Servants - and followed by concentrated Flachette fire.
One of the best things about working as the wetware side of S.O.N.I - getting your hands on everyone elses tech . . . of course, only after the boys in R&D had pulled it apart and put it back together again.
The effects where devastating - they tore through room after room, leaving bloodied and shredded bodies in thier wake - the ceremonial blue uniforms of Genoan soldiers, and the manyfold dresses of Dignitaries and Dukes, and the simple clothes of the servents - liad all across the castle, shredded remains cooling within them as blood pooled on cold, aged stone.
Within four minutes, every single living being larger than a microbe or bacteria was dead.
The entire Genoan monarchy had been brought to an end, with Team two also wiping out those who where not in the palace, the Genoan government no longer existed - and every sign pointed towards the Immortals as the perpetrators.
"Kill team to base - Kill order complete" He relaid back to his superiors, there was no reply - there wasn't a need for one.
The kill team sank away into darkness as soldiers moved in chaos - and the entire city seemed to spiral into madness . . .
Hours later, the Kill team had reached the waterfront - where a cloaked Diamondblack gunship was waiting for them, with a single S.O.N.I agent waited within.
The ship rose from the dock, and dissapeared into thin air, its flight never tracked - as it returned to its docking ship in orbit, also cloaked from all Scythian ships in orbit - and then the entire group dissapeared into FTL.
Back to thier master.
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(Well, it didn't take me long to start again, let me know what ya'll think - I am taking a different, but hopefully just as awesome path with this one.
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