Operation Phoenix: Aruba gets a visit

        Leiutenant JG Aruba, known to his friends more simply as Alan, was
bored out of his mind.  At that particular moment he was in his
Assembly Language class, learning the particulars of moving binary
strings around in the CPU.
        "Beautiful, now I can play on the system level.  How FUN", he thought.
        His mind drifted off, aided by the droning of his professor, to the
complete lack of communication with TRES Corps that had ensued
recently.  Aruba was curious as to what had happened to the Corps.  He
imagined that this was simply due to the real life affairs that his
fellow warriors all shared.  Despite this self assurance, Aruba
decided to check in anyway.

        Aruba walked home from class, enjoying the beautiful spring day.  As
such, he was totally taken off gaurd when his JihadLinker went
berzerk.   Silencing its strident beeping, the suprised lieutenant
slipped the device out of his backpack to discover the display covered
with emergency teltails and SOS calls.
        "Holy shit!  What the hell is going on?"
        He burst into the fraternity house that was his own, kicking in his
door and striding into the room.  Aruba opened the closet, and being
very thankful that his room was sheetrocked instead of paneled, booted
in the back wall.  Clearing away the debris from the wall, the TRES
junior officer retrieved a thin armorshirt, a pair of pistols, and
several magazines for each.  Giving thanks that the weather was cool,
and not the sweaty Alabama weather he was used to, Aruba sliped the
armorshirt over his torso, and strapped the pistols on, one under his
left arm, the other on his right hip.  Covering his heavily armed
form, the lieutenant grabbed a few other personals and stepped out the
door.
        A sponge minion was waiting on him.
        Aruba scrabbled for his pistol, and the sponge minon punched him in
the face.  He was knocked back into the room, and landed in a heap in
the middle of the floor.  The minion stalked inside just in time to
get blown backwards by the AP slug that had just been fired from
Aruba's pistol.  The minion's body burst as the tiny rods contained in
the slug exploded outward.  Aruba leapt out of his doorway and into
the hall just in time to almost kill two of his fraternity brothers.
        "Get the fuck back inside!" he yelled.  The sight of an armed man
leaving behind a very messily killed body convinced them very quickly.

        Aruba stepped out into the main hall.  Six minions leapt through
windows, doors and walls, all intent on very thoroughly killing him.
Aruba shot one of them and then dropped to the floor as a hail of
gunfire reduced the wall behind him to rags.  Two more exploded under
the effects of Aruba's sabot rounds.  The remaining three immediately
became more cautious, taking cover themselves and poping off
occasional shots.  The sight of the minions behind the furniture made
Aruba's trademarked evil grin appear as he shot through the couches
and disintegrated the remains of the remaining assassins.
        "This is a frat house dumbasses!  Do you really think we have STURDY
furniture?!" he inquired of the corpses surrounding him.  A quick
examination of the bodies made Aruba's brow furrow.  These creatures
were well equipped, and by the look of what was left of their bodies,
far more able and well trained than the flabby sponge minions he had
experience with.  Aruba had only been in combat with the Jihad once
before, on the assault on Stryfe's supersub.  These warriors were far
superior to the one's he had fought that time.  The thought of
actually having an intelligent foe sent a sharp stab of fear through
the young junior officer.  Aruba fought that down and thought about
what to do next.
        "First I need support.  That means linking up with Kappa Squad.  But
how to get to them?" he thought.  Aruba, who lived on his college
campus as well as worked there, had no means of transportation.
Looking out the window he saw a nondescript purple Ford idling in the
street.  The evil grin returned.
        "How thoughtful to leave me a getaway car...Mu ha haaa" he snickered.
        Two minutes later, the driver of the idling car was suprised to hear a
tap on his window.  He turned in horror to see Aruba'a pistol butt
right before his eyes.  The driver was trussed, thrown in the back
seat, and Aruba had his transportation.  He tore off down the road in
search of Kappa Squad And TRES to find out why all hell had broken
loose.

to be continued