Operation Fortnight

Eins: Rigged

0100 hrs, 9949

A massive oil rig in an undisclosed location somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. 

It's dark. It's also quiet. Science dictates that nothing good can possibly ever happen when those two factors come together. 

Wave upon wave of a seemingly infinite amount of water slaps against the steel frame of the rig, making a curiously lolling cadence which echoes out for miles. 

The rig is larger than one might expect, an exact measurement wasn't entirely possible from a distance, but it was definitely much too big to be simply another oil rig. twenty foot poles stretched up from each of the four corners, the ends of which sported a single flourescent lamp which focused it's beam weakly on the very center of the rig, providing the only source of light for hundreds of miles around, although it was pretty pathetic, not really doing much to illuminate the area outside of that one small area of focus, which just happened to be the door to the inner workings of the rig.

A flock of indescriminate migrant birds flutters through the unlit sky and comes to a rest on the many bars and raillings of the rig, probably to search for food. They are quickly shooed away as best as possible by a group of men who rush out from the shadows of the pitch blackness. they were mostly succesful, except to those two or three stubborn birds who simply refused to leave no matter what. 

Nothing much could be seen in the invasive darkness, but there was something a little bit off about these men. The way they moved, they clothes they were dressed in, the rifles they held. These men were guards, there could no doubt, which meant they were either militia or private contractors. Either way, it only reinforced the idea that there might be more to it than meets the eye. 

The guards, no  more than three of four, with the birds mostly gone, returned to their rounds without much of a second thought. One in particular took a flask out of his shirt pocket and took a few swigs of it before commencing with his job. 

 As he rounds the corner to head to his designated lookout, at just the point where a series of tall shipping crates and assorted machinery was blocking him from any of the other guard's direct line of sight, his footsteps suddenly stopped. Without a sound, he collapses, totally unconscious, onto the ground. An unseen force drags his body out of view. After a moment of silence, a woman steps forward into the light, removes the thick goggles which are covering her eyes and looks around to make sure that no one saw their comrade go down, then quickly rushes without even the tiniest noise to the next nearest cover, which in this case happens to be a large yellow construction crane. 

She appears to be only slightly shorter than average, even for a woman, with an athletic build. She has dark and braided hair which brushes against the bottom of her spine as it swishes back and forth with her movements, and her outfit is all grey and black, the highest military grade stealth gear, complete with a kevlar vest just in case things get a little scrappy. She's also carrying some sort of pistol, an extra long silencer attached, in her right hand. That's all the details that would have been able to be gathered from such a hasty movement, and that's only if the one doing the gathering had eyes of both a hawk and a cat. Which it could almost certainly be guaranteed that these guards did not. The average man would have simply seen the exceedingly brief movement of a distant, non-distinct shadow. Nothing more, but probably something much less. 

The only reason that I'm able to know so much about this particular woman is because that woman is me. Sneaking around in the dark, punching people out, wearing bulletproof clothing, finding myself in the middle of an oil rig in the middle of the pacific ocean, well that's all a part of the job. 

It had been one hell of a time getting here in the first place, and I secretly hoped that I would never have to swim that kind of a distance ever again, but given my current occupation, it wasn't very promising. Of course, it isn't easy climbing up steel framework when you'd just been swimming that kind of a distance, water has a tendency of preventing a person from being able to get a firm grip on slick objects like steel bars. I don't even want to think about how pruny my fingers are underneath my gloves right now. Doing all of this without even making the tiniest of sounds? It's the kind of thing only an expert could do.