My Milf Conqueror System

[Jake’s POV]

The sudden plunge into total darkness stripped the attacking triad soldiers of their only advantage: numbers.

The lights didn’t flicker. They didn’t dim. They died.

One second the broken neon from across the street was leaking red and blue through the cracks in the steel shutters. The next, it was gone. Absolute black. The kind of black that presses on your eyes.

Through the green phosphor glow of my night vision goggles, the ground floor of the Golden Koi looked like a chaotic, frozen tableau.

The Iron Fists and Jade Tigers who had been preparing to rush the shattered front doors were suddenly blind. I watched them through the NVGs as they stumbled over the debris of the barricades. A boot caught on a sandbag. A shoulder slammed into a mahogany table. They shouted confused orders in Cantonese, voices sharp and high with adrenaline, bouncing off the walls and making it impossible to tell where anyone was.

Flashlight beams began to cut through the dust-choked air. Ten. Twenty. Erratic and uncoordinated. White circles jerking across the ceiling, across the floor, across each other’s terrified faces. In NVG they looked like small suns burning in the green.

The dust from the explosion still hung in the air. It caught the light and turned every beam into a solid column.

"Hold your fire," I ordered over the radio. My voice came out calm. Deliberate. I made it that way on purpose. "Let them push inside. Wait until they hit the base of the stairs."

I crouched behind the heavy wooden banister on the second-floor landing. The wood was cold under my forearm. Old. It smelled like varnish and gun oil. Ethan was positioned on the opposite stairwell. In NVG I could see the faint outline of his rifle resting on the railing. The barrel wasn’t shaking. Good.

The Golden Koi soldiers were spread out along the balcony. Twenty men. No night vision. But they didn’t need it. They knew this parlor. They knew how many steps it was from the front door to the center of the room. They knew where the pillars were. Where the cover was.

We had home-field advantage and they didn’t even know it yet.

"They’re moving in," Ethan whispered over the comms. Barely audible.

A group of about twenty men pushed through the ruined front entrance. They had to step over the wreckage of the delivery truck. Metal groaned under their boots. They used the beams of their flashlights to navigate the overturned mahjong tables. Slow. Weapons raised. Sweeping the empty ground floor in jerky, terrified arcs.

"Where did they go?" one of the attackers yelled. His voice cracked. Young. His flashlight beam swept up and caught the edge of the balcony for half a second. It illuminated Ethan’s boot before jerking away.

They kept coming.

They reached the center of the room. Directly below the open balcony.

And they did the dumbest thing they could do. They clustered tightly together. Shoulder to shoulder. Back to back. Relying on each other for cover in the dark. Like that would help.

From above it looked like a perfect target. A kill box.

My finger rested on the trigger of the USP. The metal was cold.

"Now," I said.

I leaned over the banister. The wood creaked under my weight. I acquired the targets through the NVGs. Three flashlights. Three men holding them up high like beacons.

Thwip. Thwip. Thwip.

The suppressed shots were barely audible over the shouting below. The three men dropped. The flashlights fell with them. One rolled across the floor in a circle before dying. Plunging the group back into total darkness.

Screams started immediately.

Simultaneously, Ethan and the Golden Koi soldiers opened fire.

The enclosed space amplified the deafening roar of the unsuppressed weapons until it was physical. It hit my chest. Muzzle flashes strobed across the balcony in rapid bursts. Yellow light. For a quarter-second at a time the parlor was lit up like daylight.

In those flashes I saw it. Bodies jerking. Blood misting the air. Men falling over each other and being trampled. The green tables splintering.

The concentrated crossfire tore into the clustered attackers and didn’t let up.

Panic erupted on the ground floor.

Without their flashlights, the triad soldiers couldn’t see where the fire was coming from. They couldn’t see us. They fired blindly into the ceiling and the walls. Rounds chewed through the plaster twenty feet away from our actual positions. Plaster dust rained down on them in a choking cloud. Someone was screaming for his mother.

"Push them back!" Ethan yelled. He was firing short, controlled bursts. Disciplined. Brass casings pinged on the wooden floor beside him and rolled.

The attackers broke.

It wasn’t an orderly retreat. It was a rout. The surviving men scrambled backward. Tripping over the bodies of their own soldiers. Hands slipping on blood and broken glass. They were clawing at each other to get to the front doors. They spilled out onto the street, abandoning the breach entirely. Leaving their dead and wounded behind.

"Cease fire," I ordered.

The gunfire died down in waves. One rifle. Then two. Then silence.

A ringing silence took its place. It was worse than the noise. Broken only by the groans of the wounded on the ground floor. Wet, dragging sounds. The drip of blood on tile.

"Front is clear," Ethan reported. His breathing was heavy in my ear. "Holy shit. Did you see that?"

"Overwatch, what’s the status outside?" I asked. I dropped the partially spent magazine from my pistol. It felt light. I loaded a fresh one. The click was loud.

"They’re in complete disarray," Claire replied. "The blackout panicked them. Han and Lin’s lieutenants are trying to regroup the men across the street, but they’re losing control. They’re shouting at each other. They didn’t expect a fortified defense. They didn’t expect NVGs."

"They’re going to try heavy weapons next," Nia warned. Her voice was tight. "I’m seeing thermal signatures moving up to the front line. Looks like light machine guns and RPGs being unloaded from vans. If they start leveling the building from the street, the barricades won’t matter. This whole block will come down."

I looked down through the banister at the shattered front doors. At the holes in the walls. Three stories of wood and brick wouldn’t stop sustained .50 cal fire. If they set up a heavy machine gun across the avenue, they could suppress the second floor and tear the structural supports of the parlor to shreds. Bury us.

We had maybe five minutes.

"We don’t let them set up," I said. "Nia, contact Superintendent Cho. Tell her the Iron Fists and Jade Tigers are currently engaged in a massive, armed assault on a civilian business in the Outer Harbour. Give her the exact coordinates. Tell her civilians are inside."

"Sending the encrypted ping now," Nia said. I heard her typing.

"Ethan," I called out across the balcony. "Keep the men on the stairs. Do not let anyone push past the ground floor. If they breach, we fall back to the counting room."

I turned and headed down the narrow service hallway that led to the rear fire escape. The metal door was cold when I touched it. Condensation on the steel.

The second wave was coming. Heavy weapons.

And we were going to meet it in the alley before it ever got set up.