N! News Service brings you the latest news from the nova battles in
Kashmir! With commentary for the attached video we bring you
Aaron "Mental" Goldenberg

So, what do you want to know? You've already seen the tape, you want
the insider's commentary? Fine, fuck if I care. He's dead, the
funeral's this weekend and I just want to crawl in a hole. He was a
friend and he got killed.

We were sent to Kashmir just a couple days ago. His third time there
this year. He's always liked his tours in Kashmir. Sick, I know. But
he did. He tended to do real well. He'd just wade into the fray with
a smile on his face. Not a sick smile. Not like some of those freaks
like `Thug' Peters or that psycho Mara. Those guys smile like a wolf
on speed. Nah, he smiled like he was alive, really and truly alive.
For him, it wasn't about killing. He saw other elites as brothers.
He just thought it was cool to beat the shit out of your brother for
a little fun, that's all.

Well, third time out in a year and you gotta expect a rep. He'd hit
Top Forty a couple months back and if he had a good run he had a
pretty good chance of jumping a good four, maybe five spots. More
than that if he saw Sakki. He really hated that guy. You don't know
him? Oh, well not real surprising. Just one of a hundred or so
bastards out there, he's got a name in Japan, but man, every nova has
got a name over there. Sakki worked for the Janissaries, and no one
at DeVrye's really has a lot of respect for them. That Arab chump
who owns the company, he's just pathetic. I mean, Carrington may be a
baseline, but he's still the man, that Arab, he's just a wannabe. So,
Sakki's a Janissarie, first strike against him. Second, he's a
headhunter and a cherry picker. His first two missions out and he
whacks two of ours, guys fresh out of training. He didn't have to
either, he just got off on the blood. So, boom, two strikes. Third,
he's been talking' shit. Saying stuff all over the place, saying
shit like `Vile Bill? Nah, more like Mild Bill.' Man, call him ugly,
stupid or mean, Vile could handle that, but call him a pussy and you
were asking for it.

By the time I show up, Vile'd been in country for about three days
already. He'd already done one op with a buncha newbies and Stryker.
He'd already gotten a mask off some dork who had the balls to go
by "El Zorro" so he was happy. He got pulled off of their group and
teamed up with me and Slamdance. We pulled a pretty basic job and got
sent out in a nice gunship.

So, we touch down. We already know the score; Three, maybe four
novas, Janissaries from the intel, are heading up an armor column.
Thirty tanks, some artillery and a few hundred crunchies running the
show. Vile was just itching for it. He'd spent a couple months
working with Tommy Orgy on a bodyguard detail and he hadn't seen
action that entire time. The only thing he'd had in months was a
little two-hour op in Guatemala. Like I said, we touch down and he's
out the door and pounding feet up over the ridge. We'd come in
undetected it looked like, hit them head on with their pants down,
they were totally fogged. There were only three novas we could see;
GoreHound, Ernesto Colosimo and Sakki himself. This was cool, there
were three of us so we each took a guy. I focused on GoreHound, he
was the most experienced of the bunch so if we took him out, the
other two would be rattled. I reached out and let The Mind take hold.
Gore found himself about a foot off the ground and I gave him a quick
grin before The Mind sent him arcing out over the horizon.

Man, taking out a third of your opponents in one shot like that, we
knew we had it made. Gorehound is a tough sonofabitch and to punk him
out like that, treat him crunchie, that just made my day. We had the
cameras with us too. Now I had that for my highlight reel. I peeled
off and started flip flopping tanks, give the zips something to run
from. Slamdance went after Colosimo. Both of them started pumping
up, getting big n' bad. Colosimo got a little bigger and a little
badder, but Slamdance was smarter. Most guys his size don't bother
trying to get real good at fighting. They figure, they just gotta
throw a punch, ain't nothing going to stand up to them. Not Slam,
he's a black belt in about three different styles. The Lady likes to
point him out as `a shining example of the dedication to perfection
that makes DeVryes the preeminent firm that it is.' Still, trained
or not, when you're duking it out with a guy forty feet tall when
you're only thirty, it's gonna take some time. That left Sakki to
Vile, just the way Bill wanted it.

Now, don't let the tape fool you. It was over the second Vile saw
Sakki. He'd been looking forward to this one for three months.
Sakki was tough, I'll give you that. Tough, smart and skilled, he
probably could have been top notch if he didn't piss people off. He
wasn't no wannabe, eve if he did work for one. Right when Vile saw
the three of them he called out our game plan, #4, which had me and
SlamDance doing what we did. Vile jumped up into the air, not too
high, only a couple hundred feet or so. But, he jumped up into the
sun, so Sakki was staring into the noonday sun looking for Vile to
come down. Well, Vile wasn't the first thing that came down. He'd
gotten Rachel to let him test a whole bagful of toyz with the promise
that he'd use every one. And he had every intention of using all of
them to make Sakki look like a total punk before he ripped his head
off. So, first thing he does is chuck down a passel of nasties Rachel
calls NovaBooms, like a flashbang but cubed and then squared. These
things land all around Sakki and just go off. Two seconds into the
fight and he's blind and deaf.
Vile lands right behind him and catches him with a nasty shot to the
back of his leg. Three seconds, Sakki is now blind, deaf, and
hobbled. His shin bone is jutting out the front of his leg and
something important is pumping scarlet out in a pretty arc. Vile
whips out another goodie, this ones called a Hellstick. He's
hanging back for a second while Sakki unleashes his `Three Hells
Burning Death Roar' on everything in a 90-meter radius. End result?
A buncha dead crunchies, some melting tanks and Vile Bill, grinning
like it was Christmas morning and he just found a Playboy centerfold
beneath his tree. So, Vile darts in and lays the Hellstick across
Sakki's good leg. Hellstick's only good for one shot, but some kind
of neural flaming jolt goes off and every nerve in Sakki's good leg
just got melted. Five seconds and we have a blind, deaf, crippled
Japanese nova who is very likely regretting his career choice. He
starts yelling out that he gives, he even tears off his own mask,
thus earning him status as Vile's bitch for all time. Well, Vile
don't speak Japanese and Sakki's too hurt to be thinking about
speaking English. Not like it would've mattered. Vile backs off for
a minute, letting Sakki completely lose it. Sakki starts pumping his
node like there was no tomorrow and totally spills himself into
his `Bloody Sunfire Eruption'. This time, 180 meters of landscape is
torched so bad that I can feel the hairs on my arms sear off and I'm
twice that distance away. Colosimo was right on the edge and he
nearly lost his leg to it. Vile though, he had leapt away at the last
second and managed to roll with most of the blast. It mussed his hair
and he lost his hat, but he was fine.

That was pretty much the end. Vile striding through the burnt out
wasteland and tearing Sakki's arm off and using it as a club was
pretty much a given. Y'know, he didn't tend to get that viscious,
maybe there was something more about Sakki than I knew. Well, I'd
laid waste to most of the zip armor and Colosimo decided chickenshit
was the better part of valor and had taken off after getting his leg
deep-fried, so we thought it was job well done and party time.

Yeah, well, I wish it had been the end. There were four novas. One
of them just had decided that he wasn't going to hang around with
the `vermin' that he was on this op with. Yeah, you see Epoch
clearing a nearby hill and your rectum seizes up pretty damn fast.

Epoch, motherfucking Epoch. Second only to the devil in the golden
mask and honestly, I'm scared of numbers 3 through 8 too, so seeing
the big number 2 was pretty bad. When he's flying, it's just eerie.
Most guys fly, you got an idea why and how. Flame shooting out behind
them like a big ol rocket, wings, energy projections of some kind,
somethin'. Not Epoch. It's like he's just so bad he can stand in the
air and there ain't shit the world can do about it. So, he comes up
over this hill and it starts to go very bad.

Fact is, we were done. Zips were zapped and that was what the
mission was about, prevent the area from being occupied by an
opposing force. Nova's were just there to baby-sit the baseline
army. There wasn't anything wrong with us hightailing it right there.
So we tried. It didn't work. The `copter started to come in and
suddenly, it's rotors all go flying off and the body is slammed into
the ground. Dead pilot, dead support.

Thing is, it's his total casual attitude that makes Epoch so damn
scary. He's a teke' , like me. Okay, way badder than me, but still,
like me. But when I lift up a tank or start throwing some guy around
I wave my arms, or move my hands, or at least nod my fucking head.
Not Epoch. He doesn't move a muscle, shit just starts flying around.
You can't even see his face under that creepy mask. Most of the time
he doesn't even say a word. Just floats in, crushes people, overturns
trains, busts up buildings and floats on out. If he talks, you know
it's your ass. And he starts talking. To Vile.

"Your end has come failure! It is time to separate the wheat from the
chaff!"

Vile knows the man's rep, he knows the man's work. He don't get
scared, he just lets loose with that Nasty Black shit he pukes up and
it's like a firehose pumping out toxic goo. It blows out and hits
Epoch square in the chest. At least, it would have, but Epoch had a
field up and most of it just splattered around him. Most guys with
fields still get freaked at that. They can't see. Not Epoch. But,
thing is, with Vile's shit, a forcefield works, but just kinda. That
stuff has got a mind of it's own. It flows and creeps through weak
spots, cracks, whatever is between it and a target. Some of that shit
managed to get on Epoch. And Epoch got pissed. I guess physically he
ain't much, cuz he spazed when some of that sludge dripped down onto
his back.

That's just what we were looking for. The Mind reached out and tried
to break down Epoch's field. SlamDance jumped up and tried to bat
Epoch down like he was spiking a volleyball. Vile let loose with
another blast of puke, trying to knock Epoch even more off his feet.
Well, bad idea. This time Epoch sees it coming and the jet veers off
and hits me smack in the face. My field wasn't as strong as Epoch's
and I went down like a sack of bricks, trying to tear out my eyes,
screaming for a breath of air and puking, all at the same time.
SlamDance gets his smack in, but Epoch doesn't even flinch.

The rest of it, I only know from the recordings. I was out of it and
I was lucky to get my ass home in one piece. But, after SlamDance
failed to spike him, Epoch turned around and stole a page from my
playbook and sent Slam flying through the air, except, when Slam came
down, it was in a grav field about four times greater than normal.
Broke both of his legs and snapped his pelvis in half. He was in
traction for about two whole weeks. That left Vile alone with Epoch.

I gotta give it to Vile, he lasted longer with Epoch than most have.
But, he's always been a tough bastard. I think that Epoch was ready
for Vile, that or he'd been on the lookout for him for awhile. When
he realized that Vile was tough enough to handle super grav fields,
TK slams, and the occasional tank dropped on him, Epoch got
inventive. He whipped out some vitrium stakes and used his TK to
staple Vile to a tank. The bastards were barbed, and Vile couldn't
rip em out without near killing himself. After that, well, Epoch just
killed him by inches. Worst fuckin' thing I've seen in a long time.

So, that's it. My friend is dead. Like I said, funeral's this
weekend. Bill was pretty open about his will, a lot of us are, just
being realistic. He was an Elite for 5 years and worked them solid,
he had a pile of cash. I guess there's gonna be a lot of rich
hookers out there.