Operation: Home Front, Preparations (part 2)

By Trooper Cecrops

   Cecrops waited for the Eighth Division to arrive in the mess
  hall for an impromptu briefing. Since he had no experience in
  the matter of command, or in any matter of military save the
  battle in Petaluma, he would just have to wing it. The tables
  were still arranged in a jumbled cluster formation, which could
  do for the briefing. In short order the soldiers marched into
  the hall and took seats around Cecrops.
   When Cecrops was satisfied that all of the men had arrived, he
  began. "Okay... Uhh, there
  has cropped up, one of which I was unaware of until just minutes
  ago."
   One of the soldiers asked, "Is this what Fadaus thought was so
  important?"
   Cecrops answered this. "Um, yes, yes it is." He was very
  nervous. "What has happened is there is a plan by Spongin forces
  to spongify the entire Earth at once."
   The assembled soldiers were either shocked or amazed by the
  plan. A murmuring arose as they began to converse among
  themselves about it. Cecrops waited a few seconds and then
  cleared his throat.
   "Ahem..." The soldiers quieted down. "Now, how they plan to do
  this is, they have, or are setting up, spongification arrays
  around the world. The arrays are code-named Real Big Nice Making
  Arrays, but we can call them RBNMAs for short. The number of
  these things around the world is unknown, but from what I know,
  there are a lot of them out there."
   "What do they look like?" asked a soldier who Cecrops
  recognized as Private Rooke
   "Oh, well..." Cecrops started, then realised he didn't know. "I
  was not given that information. I guess we'll have to find one
  of them before we know"
   Another question came from the assembled soldiers. "How are we
  supposed to find them if we don't know what they look like?"
   Cecrops dealt with this question easily. "Oh, there's going to
  be a bunch of grinning idiots standing around them." The men got
  a good laugh out of this. Cecrops continued the briefing. "We
  know the general, but not the exact locations of these things.
  We will have to do reconaissance sweeps to find their exact
  position. This could consume a good deal of time. What I need to
  know is, how is our status as for vehicles? How many do we
  have?"
   Rooker stood up to answer this. "Most of us drove our own cars
  here, and the base has a couple of Jeeps."
   "Okay, good. For the sweep, get yourselves into groups of two
  to four and pick one of you to be the driver. You will likely be
  driving your own vehi
  you are to look for any signs of Spongin activity, or anything
  out of the ordinary. If you find something.. Rooker, what is our
  status as to communications equipment?"
   Rooker answered, "We have quite a few old CB radios, we could
  use those."
 Cecrops asked him, "How good are they?"
   "Top of the line in their time, sir, they can transmit and
  recieve over several miles. Mind if I ask, but just where are we
  going to be conducting our patrol?"
   Cecrops realised he hadn't mentioned this. "Well, we have
  several local areas where these things are supposed to be, but I
  was thinking of searching Petaluma. I know the area well. That's
  unless Fata.. Fadaus is there. He hasn't told me where he is
  going, and if that is the case, then I think Point Reyes should
  be our secondary target. If any of you find anything, get on the
  CB and call the rest of us out there. If you try to go it
  without backup, you will most likely be badly ou
  outgunned. We do have guns at this base?"
   Rooker smiled. "Yes, of course, we have plenty of guns, nothing
  fancy though. No energy weapons, mostly conventional projectile
  weaponry."
   "Good, I want to take a look at those stores myself, see what
  we have. We will be leaving tomorrow morning at 10 AM, be ready
  to go then."
   A soldier asked, "Sir, if this is so important, shouldn't we be
  leaving earlier? Like, right now?"
   "Well..." Cecrops began to reason this out. "There are still
  some things I need to plan out... And I figure we should all get
  a good night's sleep before we leave." 'Especially me,' Cecrops
  thought. "Tell the KP to have breakfast ready at 8:30, instead
  of whenever it is usually ready."
   One of the soldiers grumbled quietly, "We need to get a
  McDonalds in this base."
   Cecrops continued. "Until then, you are pretty much free to do
  what you want. Just be on the ready, I might call another
  unannounced briefing or two tonight
  There were none. "Dismissed." The soldiers stood up and began to
  walk quietly out of the room.

 That evening:

   As he ate dinner, Cecrops thought over in his head what
  supplies the squad had. There was only one GPV left, Fadaus must
  have taken the rest. There were plenty of guns, as Rooker said,
  and Cecrops had found one of the same make as the machine gun he
  took off the Sponge Minions. He had lost that weapon but he
  still had an ammo clip left for it and he supplemented that by
  taking two more from the stores. There were enough weapons for
  everyone, and enough ammunition for all of the guns. As for the
  CB radios, Fadaus hadn't touched them, and there were more than
  enough. They looked very high-quality, as military equipment
  should be.
   The group had enough equipment to pull off the mission of
  finding the array element. As for discipline, that could be
  another matter. Fadaus was right in determining that this was a
  group with litt
  as one of them, but leading them was quite another matter. Or
  was it? The soldiers seemed to think of him as one of their own,
  the rank barrier seemed to be nonexistant.
 "Hey, Cec, anything new about the array?" Adams asked him.
   Cecrops swallowed his mouthful of potatoes. "Mmph. Not yet."
  Cecrops had not held a second briefing as he thought he might
  when he developed his plans for the mission after new
  information came through by E-mail. But he hadn't developed any
  new plans and hadn't recieved any E-mail since morning. And he
  was starting to agree with the sentiments of an anonymous
  soldier who he had overheard making a quiet remark during his
  briefing. Yes, this base definately needed to get a McDonalds.
   Two men now walked through the door into the mess hall. They
  were Dobermenschen, but Cecrops did not recognize them as Eighth
  division. He asked them, "Hey, you two, what division are you
  with?"
   One of them answ
  Marin."
 "Aren't you supposed to be with Fadaus?" Adams asked.
   "Well, yeah, but Fadaus decided we didn't measure up to his
  standards. Oh, you're having dinner, is there any food left?"
   "Plenty," Cecrops reassured them. "Come on, have something to
  eat. By the way, how would you like to join up with us? We're
  leaving at 10 tomorrow."
   "Sure, we'd be glad to. Better than sitting on out butts not
  knowing what's going on."
   "Oh!" Cecrops remembered something now. "Where did Fadaus say
  he was going?"
 "Point Reyes."

 Later that night..

   "All right." Cecrops spread out the map of Petaluma and
  surrounding area. "We will be using this location," Cecrops
  pointed to a spot on the map, "As our home base. It is a hotel
  complex. You are all to report back to the base by 11 at night,
  erm, 2300 hours. Has everyone grouped into small teams?" The
  soldiers mumbled in the affirmative. "Well, group up. I want to
  see who is in each
   The soldiers formed small groups, each of two to four people.
  "You do all have vehicle arrangements?" The soldiers nodded.
  "Well... Adams! Bring in the CBs!"
   Adams walked into the room carrying a boxful of CB radios.
  Cecrops continued talking. "I will have Adams and Dawson riding
  in the Jeep with me." Cecrops took some CBs out of the box.
  "Each of your groups will have two CB radios. We will be
  communicating on channel 12. These things are pretty strong,
  they have a range of several miles. Everyone should be able to
  be in full contact with each other for at least the first few
  days of our sweep.
   "For the first day, we will arrive in Petaluma around 10:30 to
  11, unless the traffic's a problem. That gives us nearly a whole
  day's worth of time." Cecrops called the closest group to him,
  as Dawson handed one of the group's members copies of maps of
  Petaluma and of Sonoma County. "Okay, for the first day, you are
  to patrol along these lines
  along the large city map, and the group's leader pulled out a
  pen and drew the lines on his map copy. Cecrops then called the
  other groups and gave directions to them in a similar manner.
   "You are all welcome to deviate from these paths for a short
  time. In fact, I recommend it. These are just guidelines for the
  areas in which you should search. Just make sure you make your
  full established route at least once every two hours. And check
  out everything that looks suspicious. If you run into trouble,
  I'd like to remind you, call the others on the CB. Each team
  should have one of their CBs on at all times they are out. Do
  not attack unless you are noticed, or unless the RBNMA is in
  danger of being m
  return to base immediately and we are to draw up plans for
  attack.
   "As for weapons, each person can have either a light automatic
  or a shotgun, and there are enough pistols for two people in
  each unit. Rooker, Andrews, and Nathans, your units will each be
  equipped with a rocket launcher. I do not anticipate us
  requiring anything heavier, and if we need heavier weaponry, we
  can return here until Fatass brings the heavy stuff back." The
  soldiers laughed as Cecrops unintentionally screwed up Fadaus'
  name. "Oh, umm.." Cecrops lost whatever composure that he'd had.
  After the room calmed down, Cecrops quickly finished off the
  brief

Continued in "the Search".