Nuevo Laredo, Mexico US border.
Everyone in the city heard a loud buzzing coming from the north. When they looked up, they saw one of the Edenian flying carriers, but something was different about what they had seen of them before. After scratching his head for a moment, one man in the crowd shouted, “It’s flying too low!”
The only time they had seen a carrier, it had been flying so high that it was barely the size of a book of matches and the sound of the rotors breaking through the air hadn’t reached the ground.
Although the carrier hadn’t come to a complete halt, it was moving slowly enough to see the details of its sleek hull. Though they couldn’t see the flight deck on the top of the carrier, they soon saw dozens of aircraft rising above it and streaking off in different directions.
A murmur ran through the crowd as they realized that one of them was headed toward the area controlled by Los Zetas, a cartel formed by disgraced former members of the Mexican military. Locals knew the area and avoided it at all costs, as it was home to dozens of cartel members and over a thousand of their subordinate thugs.
Moments after the aircraft left the carrier, the chopping noise of the enormous vessel’s rotors increased in intensity as the blades adjusted their angle of attack and lifted the behemoth carrier higher in the air, where it sped off into the distance.
The process repeated itself more than seventy times as the carrier flew from the northern border of Mexico all the way down to the tip of Argentina.
Everything was done without any attempt to hide from the eyes of the public, who were recording the movements and posting them on the internet. And with more and more videos of the brief stops and launches happening all across Central and South America in cities that had connections to cartels, the only people who didn’t have an idea of what was going on were those who were purposefully blind. And trolls, of course; there would always be lovers of chaos on the internet that just wanted to watch the world burn.
So the question then became why. Why was ARES deploying to deal with the cartels? The online spectators could only wish that they had more eyes with which to watch the event, as they knew that whatever ARES started, they would finish in the blink of an eye. Thus, while they didn’t want to miss it happening live, they knew they would soon receive an explanation of what was going on.
……
As expected, new information began being posted on the internet a few hours after the carrier’s series of brief stops ended. Hundreds of assault landers launched by the Edenian carrier had landed across every airport in Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Brazil, and Guatemala, each of them disgorging a squad of ARES Aegis team members dressed in neatly tailored black suits, sunglasses, and black gloves. The Aegis uniform was just as protective as any other ARES uniform, offering high resistance to slashing and piercing attacks and excellent protection from the elements, but was designed with the typical appearance of bodyguards in mind rather than flashy military dress uniforms or digital camouflage patterns.
Soon, the planes were loaded with thousands upon thousands of captured prisoners and rescued hostages. The local nyxian agents in those countries had already contacted the relatively clean government officials and received permission to extradite the prisoners captured by the reaper teams and the followup ARES troopers. Thus, in a matter of minutes, the assault landers had been filled with prisoners and they ignited their VTOL vectored thrusters and lifted straight into the air before turning and beginning their flight back to the carrier.
(Ed note: VTOL is an acronym for Vertical TakeOff and Landing. We already have a number of aircraft with VTOL capabilities, the most famous of which is the US Marine Corps’ McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II, which spawned a number of copies in NATO countries as it was developed jointly by McDonnell Douglas and Hawker Siddeley, American and British aerospace companies, respectively.)
Minutes after that, civilian planes from Icarus Airlines landed and loaded the freed hostages, providing them with luxury transport to any destination they collectively chose. If a decision couldn’t be made by the passengers that they all agreed on, the planes would first take them back to Eden before sending the individuals to their ultimate destination, all of it provided free of charge.
Once the prisoners had been sent off and the hostages rescued and in the air on their way to their next destination, General Smith’s aide-de-camp stepped into the press room in the Edenian presidential palace to issue a press briefing.
“A few hours ago, we discovered the disappearance of a number of Edenian and Esparian citizens in Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Brazil, and Guatemala. That discovery prompted us to launch an investigation into the disappearances, which led us to the discovery of a kidnap and ransom scheme by a number of Central and South American cartels. Our president immediately called for the ARES special forces branch to dispatch reaper teams to rescue the hostages and capture the criminals responsible for the heinous act.
“The operation was successfully carried out at 2000 Zulu time. Our reaper teams infiltrated the cartel strongholds where the hostages were being held and freed the hostages, capturing their kidnappers in the process. Soon after that, with permission from the affected governments, the EV Beowulf was diverted from her patrol schedule and launched a punitive assault on cartel strongholds all across Central and South America.
“The assaults were a resounding success. ARES troopers suffered zero casualties and the cartels only suffered a few hundred unavoidable casualties. No civilian casualties or damage to civilian infrastructure occurred. The total number of captured cartel members, from their top-level leaders down to the low-level soldiers and initiates, is 150,693.
“We expedited a request for extradition through the governments of each country we captured them in and, upon approval, immediately moved them to the EV Beowulf, where they will be transported to Eden and receive a fair trial for their crimes. Thank you for your time. I will be taking no questions today, as Aron Michael will be here shortly to issue a followup statement. Full details of the operation are available on our website, including a press release for publication, should you choose to do so.” With that, the man stepped down from the podium and left the briefing room.
