NORTHERN MARKETS
Episode 61: Costly Streetwar

8:57 AM
7ung-Hwang District 119 (Wan Chai), Yazhou County
(25 miles north of Kerning City)

The snow covered Kankoku Mountain was the first thing touched by the Sun’s light every morning. First, it glowed red, then orange, then pink, then orange, and eventually yellow, and soon the mountain glowed white; basking the whole valley in it’s bright light. By nine in the morning, the sun light would reach over the mountains to the south east and begin to spread over the Toa-Payoh and Naples valleys.
When the mountain snow reflected orange early in the dawn, the sky changed from night to early day.
It was just a few minutes before nine, and the mountain snow gleamed a pale yellow over the valleys.

It was cold as hell out right now, and even though there was a thin layer of snow on the ground and rooftops, a thick layer of frost had grown on every exposed surface.
On the roof of the 60-floor Ertong Dasha building, over 400 feet up, a lone cop belonging to the Kerning City Police’s SWAT Division sat under one of the giant air-conditioning machines, shivering in the freezing morning air.
The cop sat leaning against the wall behind him under the AC unit, staring out westward at the mountain.
Out in the open, two frozen bodies, both clad in ranger fatigues, and now covered in frost, lay heaped up against eachother by the north chimney. During the night, the chimney shadow hid the dead rangers from the moonlight.
The cop shivered miserably as he checked his watch. It was a few minutes past nine. Even though he was
cold, starving, tired, and miserable, the man was happy his ordeal will soon be over; the next team is going on duty and he’ll soon be out of here.

Rusty Miller, level 28, long brown hair, light skin, slim build but with a belly, and the face of a Permanoob, had been with the Kerning City Police for five years now; mostly in the SWAT Division fighting on the front lines against the city’s legions of dangerous criminals and whackoes. For the better part of the year, he was re-assigned to AzaTeam7, a 28 member unit mixed with Victorians and SEA Landers, patrolling mostly Yazhou County’s fringe districts, and Kerning City’s outer towns just across the Janzsoon River. Their duties consisted of taking out mob bosses, illegal operations such as drug rings, cex slave rings, drug labs, and keeping the peace. Whenever a high profile dispute broke out between gangs in these parts, the SWAT is on the scene.

Ever since the Year’s End holidays began, most of the Azn units; hell most of the SWAT force were fighting against
the religious groups who waged their crusades of terror across the city. On New Year’s, the antagonistic terrorists concentrated most of their efforts against Azn interests in towns on both sides of the river. After New Year’s, the Justice Arrow’s forces re-emerged from the shadows and resumed their war against the SEA Landers, fighting alongside and supporting the maniacs.
Miller remembered his boss promising AzaTeam7 that in January, they would have the last week of Year’s End off, but that all changed when the JA returned and and the local gangs attacked the invaders full force; shattering any faint hopes for peace.

AzaTeam7 had been on duty for over 22 hours now. When they started yesterday at 11am, the whole team stormed a JA barricade; totally catching the bowmen off guard and took them down. They were to arrest them, but the SEA Lander gang that helped storm the barricade killed them all. In the afternoon, they took control of the local communications center and turned it over to the phone company so their 50,000 cell phone customers could get their service back. The last few days, the SWAT teams and gangs totally blitzed out against the enemy and managed to flush most of them out, but somewhere, something went wrong and now the Azn kids were shooting at the SWAT.

Last night when Miller held his position and guarded the roof of the Ertong Dasha [children’s building], he popped two rangers who tried to take him out. The rest of the night, he had to hide in the shadows because the kids who hid in the shadows of other buildings tried to kill him. Even though he killed those two rangers, Miller dared not look at them, even though they were dead, the two stiffs horrified him, and the mere thought of it all threatened to put him on a guilt trip, which he spent the entire early morning resisting along with the hypothermia which also threatened to consume him.

Miller shivered as he gazed out at the mountain from his hiding spot under the AC machine. He lifted his sniper rifle and aimed it at the mountain, just so he could look at it through the scope. He was happy it was morning; he survived the night.
At 3 in the morning, the AC units shut down; the building was full of warm air, and stopped blowing stale but warm air down on him. At 5am, the temperature plunged, and now it felt like -20C.
Miller spent the last four hours in the crawlspace rolling around; moving his good arm and legs; doing whatever to fight the cold. He sat there now shivering, shaking and miserable. Snot dripped from his nose and froze, and his whole face stung in the cold air.
He wanted to get up and go, but he dared not move. It was light out now; the sun light hit the rooftops around the Dasha.
If the SEA Lander gangs were still out to kill him, they’d have him the instant he came out from under the AC unit.

Miller heard footsteps, and guys talking in Singlish. They were on his roof!
“Kao, lah! Look! Two of them dead!”
“O.m.g! We search all night for them! They killed Brother Chee zuo tian.”
“No one else saw ranger. Who kill?”
“Maybe a cracker killed ranger liao.”
“Any more?”
“We got em. They at fire rocket place. Old Man Zhu blow them up lah!”

The two Azns kept talking while they searched the bodies. They walked around looking for the weapons which Miller stashed under the AC. They walked around till they were standing by the AC machine. Miller’s heart raced as he saw the guys’ feet crunching on the frost in front of him. All they had to do to find him was look under. But they moved on.
The two Azns climbed a ladder to the balcony of the building on the northern side, then withdrew the ladder.

10 minutes later, Miller slowly emerged from the crawlspace, grunting as he forced his stiff muscles to work.
He accidentally banged his right elbow on the metal floor, and stifled a yelp. His arm was so numb he forgot about the lead arrow tip lodged in there.
Using the sniper rifle as a support, Miller pulled himself to his feet, and staggered around, breathing in the icy air. His lungs stung like hell as he peered out at the buildings that towered over the Dasha. They were all 80 floors or higher and much wider. Miller expected to be shot, but there was no one out. Those two guys who walked around probably told everyone this roof was clear. Suddenly, gunfire rang out from the street below.
Then Miller heard the high pitched whistling of arrow rain. These ‘arrows’ formed out of thin air and shot downward into the street. Rangers were still here!

Miller threw himself against frosty roof and slowly crawled over to the edge. Miller stared right down into the street below. A SWAT team and gangsters were shooting at some Rangers who kept setting off Arrow Rain at them. Five guys dropped instantly; blood spilling out of them.
“Mo####f###!” Miller grunted, aiming the sniper rifle at the rangers. He aimed till the big Ranger who was casting the arrow rain was at the center of the scope.
Miller fired. The rifle shook as it blasted out several bullets.
The steel bullets whizzed through the icy air, winding their path around the arrow rain and hit their target!

The ranger cried as the bullets pierced through his head and chest and cut downward through his body; shattering all of his organs. He dropped. Dead.
The sniper woman stared up and saw Miller. In a panic, he squeezed the trigger before he even had the scope on her.
The bullets razed the ground around the sniper and she set off her Arrow Eruption. Wind arrows shot upward from the ground, and Miller bent to fetal position as the arrows strafed the edge of the roof.
The cop squeezed his eyes shut as he expected to be fully pierced by the wind arrows!

“Shoot her, dammit!” The SWAT captain shouted. In an instant, his troops jumped out from behind the dumpsters, corners and van and all opened fire. The sniper woman didn’t even see it coming and she fell to the ground dead.
All that happened in a split second.

“What the hell?” the captain breathed. A second ago, both bowmen had his team pinned down and suddenly the ranger dropped, and yeah. The guys were also surprised.
“Well, then!” the captain said.

9:35 AM
Miller hid in the corner of two chimneys not daring to move. That brush with death was way too close.
Suddenly, the service door by the AC machines burst open and slammed into the wall.
“Fan out!” a man’s voice ordered.
Oh crap! Miller thought. He didn’t know if it was another SWAT team or the JA. He didn’t want to find out.
“We got two stiffs over here! Both of them rangers, but somebody took their weapons!”
“Screw it, take them down already!”
Could be the SWAT-

“Freeze, you heathen!”
Miller snapped his head up and found himself staring down the shafts of several diamond arrows; all of them cocked in the fearsome gleaming arund bow. Holding it with the string back was a big buff tall Ranger dressed in heavy duty green Ades armor. His black patriot cap shadowed the guy’s face and made him look all the more horrifying.
“You’ve had it! Game over! Any last words before I blow your ass to hell?” The Ranger said with a sick smile on his face as he powered up the bow to strafe Miller to shreds.

A tear came to Miller’s eye. This was the end, and he was about to die. He gathered the guts to say,
“### you, you insane white trash terrorist! When I see you in hell, Im’ a jam that pretty bow right up your ###!”
The Ranger growled in rage. Any respectful ranger would never tolerate hostile insults to the Justice Arrow.
“Do it, ###ker! Come on! Wha? Can’t look at me as you shoot that arrow through my head? Coward!”
Miller shouted. He coughed up a loogy and spat it at the Ranger.
“Your dear leader’s a ###! He takes it up the ass from hackers every night! When Jalonska went to give his wife 0ral at night, turns out he accidentally performed it on his kid!”

The Ranger stopped preparing the strafe and took the arrows out, laughing loudly.
“What..?” Miller breathed.
“Boy, I had you going, didn’t I?” The guy said as he laughed. Miller heard laughter from some other guys too.
“You should have seen the look on this guy’s face! HE actually thought I was one of them!”
“Who are you?!” Miller retorted lamely. He just got owned big time and he knew it.

“Frank Chippinwaga, SWAT Underground Squadron Team-7. You?”
“Rusty Miller, Asia Team 7.”
Chippinwage grabbed Rusty’s bad arm and pulled him to his feet. “Yeow! my arm, it’s busted!”
“What happened?”
“I got shot during the night. There’s a lead arrow top right under the elbow joint, and it hurts like hell, you moron!”
“Hey! Watch yourself, guy, you;re talking to an officer in a superior unit!” Chipp shouted.
“Geez! Sorry!” Miller muttered. He looked at the other guys in Chipp’s team- they also were wearing JA equipment and held bows, but with their guns and staffs slung over their backs. The crossbows these guys had were modified: Rapid-fire guns were fixed in and the xbows fired bullets instead of arrows.

Miller told Chipp of the night’s events.
“So it was you who popped these two?”
“Uhh, yeah,” Miller said, not looking at the frozen stiffs.
“You idiot! They were in my unit and good friends of mine!” Chipp shouted, grabbing Miller by the shirt.
[Oh crap! They WEREN’T JA?! Now I feel even worse!] — (Miller’s split second thought right there)
“They were trying to kill me!” the young cop protested.

But Chipp just started laughing his ass off again. “Oh my god, guy, I got you again! Yer so jumpy this morning!”
“What?!”
“Relax! Those two in fact were from the JA, not an under cover unit. We checked them out, it’s all good.”
Miller did not heave the sigh of relief he expected; his guilt was agitating him for a very different reason.
“Allright, this place is clear! Let’s go!”

Miller was escorted down the 60 flights of stairs to the ground floor. The street was also coated in thick frost. Police cars from Kerning and Yazhou were idling out front, and a SWAT van was parked in front of the 7Elevin store.
“Etrong Dasha clear, boss!” Chipp said to the man in the suit.
“Rusty Miller, Asia Team 7, sir,” Miller said automatically to the man in the suit.
“You were ordered to guard this building at the roof?”
“Yes, sir. If I may ask, sir, I lost contact with the rest of Asia Team 7 at 10pm last night. Where did they go?”
“They’re dead, mate!” The inspector snapped. “The Arrow launched a fast one and wiped out your entire unit.
we got them, but paid a high price in blood. Did the locals fire at you?”
“Yes…they did, sir”
“That’s because they are enraged over the heavy losses they sustained during the night! I see your arm is busted. Get this guy to a vet! When you’re patched up, report to the police station at Shrek and Chang. now move out!”