The Scorpion Tails
Written by DAWUSS

There they were, the Scorpion Tails. All 6 of them. John Schween, Arkady Ganofsky, Tim Nolting, Brian Edwards, Gordon Johnson, and Lisa Mann. They were Nod's elite squadron. Their duties began where the Black Hand's ended. Failure was not an option for them. They were the Scorpion Tails, Nod's uppermost squadron. They were the equivalent of GDI's Dead-6. Very little was known about them, even to the Nod Officers that knew about everything else the Nod head honchos (Kane and his trusted ministers and generals) were doing. The Scorpion Tails were on board a Transport Helicopter heading toward an undisclosed location. Stealth was an essence to them. Silent. Invisible. Lethal. They clinched their weapons in their hands; they were approaching the insertion point. They were to find 2 Nod spies, Marvin Goldsmith and Alice Dorsey.

They reached the insertion point. No man's land, as Schween put it. It was a large field with no foliage whatsoever to run under to avoid possible GDI fire. They were in the prone position in the middle of a field in the middle of the night. They moved where they saw a section of lights far away. Since it was a town (or at least had the appearance of one), they groveled toward it while still on their bellies in the prone position. Anyone could pop out of the night and ambush them.


A while later, they reached the outskirts of the town. It was still dark. They had until morning to find those spies and get out of there. Once morning came, it would be all over as they would have no shadows to lurk under, and then they would have to worry about the civilians going from here to there. They moved from here to there. Then they stopped at a usual suspecting place, the local bank. They would have to get up one way or another, and they didn't want to disturb anyone, since stealth was of the essence. They went north to Kriegsvich Square, where they found a dumpster lined up against a short wall. It was their best chance. They climbed up and went up the roof and onto a balcony that had a ladder. They took the ladder, and used it to gain higher access. They were high enough to spot that bank again. Now they had rooftop access to it for a much better entrance.

On the roof of the bank, they found a ventilation shaft that they could enter with. They barely had enough space in the vents, and had a bit of relief when they dropped quietly into a small room. Apparently it was the security room. Strangely, there was no one in there besides them. There was a computer active and there was a phone. Ganofsky went to the phone and began checking it. He flipped the ringer off and began adding 2 of Nod's wiretaps into the line. He just hoped it wasn't pre-wiretapped by someone else. Realizing that calling someone was still useless (they could figure out where he dialed), not that he would do it anyway, he'd rather take a GDI Communications Center and use it to contact his Nod buddies and give them a nice building in the process. Schween was on the computer, looking for whatever information he could on the 2 spies. He found some when he was replaying the security cameras. "Guys, Goldsmith clocked out 16 hours ago. Looks like GDI got to him before we did. Can't find Dorsey, though."

Mann rushed over. "Yeah, that's Goldsmith alright. Who's that other guy? The guy who looks like he's in charge of the whole thing?"

"Dunno. I think I can make out of the license plate on the car he gets into. 30K98NHI42."

They began taking stilled snapshots of certain points in the clip between Goldsmith's death and that guy walking into the car with the license plate 30K98NHI42. They were stored onto one of Mann's Floppies, and was labeled with the date. The Floppies she carried were easy to destroy, thanks to a little button on the side of the disk, which shreds the thin black disc of which all the contents are stored. They deleted the copies that were still in the computer when the disk was taken out. Covering up evidence was critical. They did turn off the night vision mode left in the cameras, since all the lights were off. Luckily for them, they set the time off for 30 minutes before the night vision would be reactivated. They moved to the front door, when they spotted a Mammoth Tank passing by. They thought they'd been discovered! Since it didn't fire, it was no point to go ahead and give the tank proof that they were there. When it seemed safe, they crept out. They moved quickly to another location, in search of that license plate.

"Just a question," Johnson asked, "what if the guy we're looking for isn't with his car?"

"Either a driver's there or we'll camp out in a hiding spot until he does show up." Schween replied

"The second idea's too risky, John," Ganofsky replied, "We don't know who's all guarding him."

"I'd rather leave a corpse than a witness. A corpse can't talk. A witness can."


They found a parking place after a bit of moving around. None of which they were looking for. One came close, 30K14298KD. It looked nothing like the car in the video. Then they heard footsteps. Schween and Mann quickly ducked under an SUV, which they noticed had the keys still in them, Ganofsky and Nolting went under a police car, and Johnson and Edwards went under the car right next to them. This was as bad as the airvents in the bank. They heard a car door shut. And it wasn't under the cars they were under! What a relief! They got out when the person drove past a certain distance away from them. They spotted 2 GDI Soldiers walking into a building- their next objective: Find out what's in that building! They saw the car they were looking for drive away from the area. That was it, since their target person was gone, they were going to use any means necessary in that building to find out what was going on in there. They stormed in, killed the 2 GDI Soldiers, and searched the entire building before they found Dorsey at gunpoint. The gunman was taken care of easily with a few Tiberium bullets to the head. She told them that the person driving off was Dimitrius Hunt, who was with his driver, Michael Williams, and General James Irvin. The only thing she might think he was planning on doing was based on the fact that he put a note in a soldier's pocket, and claiming that he was "The Autumn Wind". The 7 of them searched for the soldier who still might be carrying that note. Dorsey remembered what he looked like, so it made the hunting around easier since they didn't have to search everyone's pockets- yet. They found him- he was that soldier that nearly raised the alarm on the second floor. He had a note alright. The note simply stated:

The Autumn Wind is a pirate

Blustering in from sea

With a rollicking song he sweeps along

swaggering boisterously

His face is weather beaten

He wears a hooded sash

With his silver hat about his head

And a bristly black moustache

He growls as he storms the country

A villain big and bold

And the trees all shake and quiver and quake

As he robs them of their gold

The Autumn wind is a Raider

Pillaging just for fun

He'll knock you 'round and upside down

And laugh when he's conquered and won

"I don't get it," Edwards stated.

"You're not SUPPOSED to get it," Schween replied back. He then grinned to himself. He'd have to pay a visit to his twin brother after this...




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