"Oh, the old 'let's ask the girl with the fucked-up arm painful questions while she's jacked up on meds' trick?" She gives Davis a genuinely pleasant smile, although that might be the painkillers.
"Honestly, I feel like I've been tricked into this whole thing. The thing is, I think you were right about all that shit you told me. I just never thought I'd end up a terrorist. If there's a soft landing after re-entry for me here, it's after this shit with the Imperium is settled. So no, I don't want to be here, but I should be here."
"As far as Harlon goes, I finally figured it was Semo's cannon what turned him into meat. That score doesn't concern you Davis, and it's not gonna be an issue on the mission."
Davis laughs at her first remark. "Yeah, this is how I meet women. Spies don't get a lot of dating opportunities, we have to take what we can get."
He then waits for her to finish talking. "I'm sorry that you feel tricked, but it's good to hear that you feel that you belong here. In my experience, the line between someone fighting for their rights and freedoms and what people call a terrorist is sometimes vanishingly thin, and what separates one from the other is only an issue of perspective and tactics. We're trying to avoid civilian casualties, or any casualties at all, for that matter, so I'd like to think we're keeping to the right side of that balance. I might be counting on you in the future, Ngawai, to help me tell the difference."
He pauses for a second, and sighs. "As for Harlon, I truly am sorry about what happened to him. I don't know how funerals work out here, but at the first opportunity we have, we'll take care of his body however you see fit. It might not be enough, but it's the best I can do." He takes her left hand. "Thank you, Ngawai, for choosing to come with us. You've been more helpful than we could have possibly hoped, and after we get back to Earth, I'd love it if you would stay with me and help us with our mission."
Angel leaves Max and Arketta in good cover behind a shelf of larger rocks and heads back the way they came first. Speed first, to backtrack their trail and leave a scrub branch broken or scratch marks on a rock, something a good tracker would notice, something that would funnel a good tracker into an ambush. And this guy must know something about trailcraft if he picked up on their movements where the drones failed.
Angel wishes Stanhill didn't have the last two claymore mines.
After he figures his signs should at least puzzle the hunter, Angel heads downslope into the trees off the ridge. He's moving slowly now, stalking towards his prey back up the slope. The night noises of the Aikoro hills are disconcerting. Faint wet pops replace the cricket's chirp and snakelike hisses come from overhead.
Angel's creeping back up to the level of his prey, stalking around one of the ubiquitous toothy rock slabs when he hears the hunter's footsteps skritch on loose rock. He spots the cloak-blur about 10 meters away, still following the trail. It's a human, and the man doesn't appear to have noticed Angel's movement. Now that he's closer, Angel can make out the outline of Turai-style armor as well as the brace of javelin-type spear-bombs on the hunter's back.
At least he's not a Whiirr.
The armored hunter hisses now, a near-perfect copy of the local wildlife, and gets a series of pops in return. Angel curses silently - there's at least one more hunter following the leader. Angel chances a peek towards the source of the animal call. It's hard to make out, but he does spot two more cloaked hunters about... 40 or 50 meters farther back. One is up higher on the slope and moving a little forward of the third, who's pretty much following the same line as the leader but who now starts making his way down towards the trees now that they're off the ridge.
Angel creeps up from below the ridge, sidling along one of the slabs. His quarry kneels down to inspect one of Angel's purposeful signs. Angel crouch-walks behind the armored man, waiting for him to get up. The hunter uses his carried spear for leverage - a weary sign they've been out here for a while, pushing up with his other hand on his left knee. Angel darts in from behind, grabs the armored helmet, yanks back, and stabs hard with his combat knife. He knows the undersuit's armored too, but his blade tears through suit and flesh alike. He pulls the hunter's head hard to the left, drawing his blade through the man's neck rather than across it. Blood sprays over the rocky ground and Angel's victim dies without even a sound.
One down, two to go.
Angel quickly moves the corpse behind one of the granite slabs. It won't fool the man's comrades for long, but at least he's out of sight for the time being. The hunter's wearing Turai-issue armor with intricately carved reinforced joints. The normally blank faceplate is engraved with some sort of wild creature. The man carried a "quiver" of six spear-bombs, a stinger, and a beam rifle with an unusual sensor pod.
(Toughness rolls fail me once again. Angel maxed out his damage from the unaware attack and the hunter rolls a 1)
Unsure whether the spears are armed, if the guncam was recording, and at any rate not qualified to strip out the IFF components, Angel leaves the corpse and heads up the slope. The higher-altitude hunter'll have the best chance of spotting Angel's handiwork, and if Angel moves on the lower hunter first it's almost certain he'd be spotted.
Angel flattens behind a short rock shelf after a slow, harrowing crawl up the slope. He can hear the hunter's feet making soft sounds on the ground. The hunter moves cautiously with a measured pace. Angel explodes into the hunter's left side, pulling the victim's left arm down and plunging his knife towards the man's neck. The hunter falls backwards, stopping his fall by thrusting his spear into the rock. Angel's knife slashes through the undersuit but only draws a pencil-line of blood. The hunter staggers back, Angel still up close, and stabs Angel right above the left hip with the spear. Angel's vision blurs from the pain but he grabs the spear-haft to keep the hunter's weapon tied up and with desperate speed slams his knife up through the hunter's jaw and into his skull. Angel and the dead man hang there for a moment, both locked on the other's blades. The twitching hunter finally collapses and Angel hits the ground soon after. He finds the strength to move after several seconds. Blood pounds in his ears. He can't think whether their struggle was loud enough to alert the third man. Did the hunter scream or shout at the first assault? Did I?
Angel painfully but silently sits up, scanning the lower trail for the third hunter. Nothing... nothing... there! The hunter's about 20 meters away, climbing up to check on the disturbance. From the rock-gray and dirt-brown silhouette, Angel figures this one's favoring a rifle. He's moving from rock to rock, trying to stay under cover from the higher ground.
As Angel bleeds hundreds of kilometers away, Ngawai looks askance at Davis.
"Vidas Lam, Davis, you sound like you're asking me on a date. You're fucking insane. Go find your lost scrofa out in the woods, I'll cremate my LAST boyfriend, we can blow up Napai and then we'll go out to a nice eatery. Maybe some dancing, maybe some murder."
Davis laughs. "Sounds like a great time. Anyway, I probably won't be going anywhere after our little excursion earlier today, so we'll both be stuck here for the time being." He stands up. "I'll get One-Ton to help you with Harlon. You want anything else while I'm up?"
"Where the hell is he? He should have been back by now." whispers Max to Arketta, the NV goggles doing nothing to stave off the tension as the Action Scientist nervously grips his Russkie pistol.
"You wish to go back for him?" Arketta whispers. She too has donned her NVG and is double-checking her gear for anything that might have come loose during their trek.
Angel - urrrgh - gets to a crouch and aims down the PB6P9's sights, hoping the telltale he's about to shoot is the soft undersuit and not the nigh-bulletproof plating.
pwip
He's rewarded with a spray of red that conveniently marks the third hunter. Said hunter staggers back, trying to get to full cover. Angel crosses the last 15 meters or so at a lopsided run and crashes into the hunter.
Max hears the rainstick sound of a small cavalcade of gravel and loose stones sliding, then the heavy sound of an NFL-worthy tackle.
Angel's knife scores a line up the hunter's faceplate instead of his neck as the two men go down and roll a few times. The hunter's rifle lies forgotten on the ground at the rocks he was hoping to hide behind. It looks like Angel's shot tore through the armored man's arm - the hunter tries to wrest Angel's knife away but his right arm's got no strength to it.
The melee continues. Angel plunges the knife downward, powering through the hunter's weakened defense. The knife scrapes along the man's winged breastplate without purchase. Angel aborts another stab as the hunter frees his sword and tries to add another abdominal wound to the Delta scout. Angel's got the man's sword hand pinned under his left knee for the moment, but the armored bastard's got his wrist with his good arm. The knife quivers, edging closer to the hunter's neck. Angel oofs as armored knees slam into his lower ribs and armpits. The hunter rolls Angel off - now the two combatants struggle for their respective blades. Angel scores another hit with the knife that opens the skinsuit above the hunter's left elbow but is forced to back out of knife range as the sword swings up again. They're half on their feet, half-wrestling, still locked in a stalemate when Max slides down the slope and puts his PB6P9 to the back of the hunter's helmet.
At most any range other than point blank, that 9mm round would have flattened on the Turai-issue armor. This one's fired from less than an inch away. There's a clunk that's louder than the weapon's whisper and then a spongy bouncing sound. Max blinks and wipes some crimson spray off his face. Angel isn't sprayed at all - there's a slight dent in the helmet's faceplate where the round impacted after traveling through the hunter's head. Needless to say, the armored man drops, his ticket punched.
Max uses his sleeve to wipe the spattered alien blood off his face.
"We had a feeling something was going tits-up. Glad we came to investigate." says Max, relieved but at the same time unnerved by the potentiality of losing Angel.
"That being said. We should strip this sorry sack of Hunter of anything of value and get back to camp."
Hugh climbs down into the hangar, all geared up for action with pistol and assault rifle. He punches the intership vox.
"All hands, this is Captain Verrill. I'm taking Bello and Sgt. Putupu out on a retrieval mission. While I'm gone, I expect radio and signal silence. If enemy troops find you...I authorize a full retreat and breaking radio silence to inform me, Emergency Frequency 3. That's all."
"Nah, I'm good for now," Ngawai replies to the spook. "If we're going black, I'm gonna try to sleep while I can."
---
With a quick tutorial from Bello and One-Ton, Semo powers up the warsled. Davis' help in hotrodding the vehicle is apparent from the steering wheel, accelerator, and brake pedals. So far so good. There's a noisy whine as the sled's impellers kick in, then it settles down to a soft rumble. From the CIC above them, Swims cycles the cargo bay doors. The dark Aikoran canyon and the wilderness beyond stretches before them.
---
None of the dead hunters have what would truly be considered standard issue equipment. Their armor is modified with extra reinforced joints or painstakingly engraved with scenes of battle and victory or has dangling ghillie-suit tendrils attached to shoulders and waist. One hunter's helmet even has ghillie suit "dreadlocks" to obfuscate the wearer's silhouette. All the hunters are stone dead, and of the two suits with intact helmets, the voxes are shut down. The third helmet's ruined and it would take Max some time to figure out if the dead man was able to alert anyone to the situation. Arketta's out of luck, but at first glance it looks like Max and Angel could possibly fit into the suits.
As for weapons, there are ten of the telescoping spear-bombs, two swords, a stinger, and two beam rifles. All the ranged weapons have their IFF modules active, of course.
As Max loots corpses, Arketta asks him and Angel, "Do we have any medical equipment? You're bleeding rather badly, Angel."
Max looks for the jackpot - a frisbee - but these Imperials aren't carrying one. The second one, the one with the knife wound to the brain, was carrying a "standard" Imperial medkit though.
As for weapons, there are ten of the telescoping spear-bombs, two swords, a stinger, and two beam rifles. All the ranged weapons have their IFF modules active, of course.
As Max loots corpses, Arketta asks him and Angel, "Do we have any medical equipment? You're bleeding rather badly, Angel."
Max looks for the jackpot - a frisbee - but these Imperials aren't carrying one. The second one, the one with the knife wound to the brain, was carrying a "standard" Imperial medkit though.
Max is impressed with the weapons cache they were able to loot, but their is dispairaging sigh when no frisbee is found amongst the dead hunters.
"It's not a Frisbee, but it'll have to do for now, sorry." says the Action Scientist, slapping a compression bandage on the worst of Angel's wounds.
Davis nods. "Just let me know if you need anything else." He walks down the hall, to the cargo bay and watches the warsled pull out of the cargo bay and speed off into the distance. In the quiet of the Aikoran night, he steps outside, rifle in hand, and sits down on a rock, both on guard and looking at the stars and mountains around him. "Well, I'm glad that wasn't awkward in any way..." he says.
Luis likewise watches the cut down sled leave, then heads up to the bridge. He's curious about the old name of the ship, before they altered it to Morningstar, so he's going to track down One-Ton and Swims to get their story, or stories, as the case may be.
"Aye, aye, cap'n! Hoist the sails, you mangy wharf-rats!"
Laughing at his own joke, Semo slowly and carefully lifts the sled off the cradle. Once they're clear, he starts forward, easing the craft forward and out of the hangar, trying to get a feel for the controlls. As per orders, he hugs the ground to keep their silouette small.
As his feel for the craft improves, Semo slowly opens up the throttle. They have places to be, and he doesn't want to take forever to get there. Still, he'll keep the speed under control, as he doesn't want to risk any accidents without a good reason.
Angel grunts in pain as Max sees to his wounds. "Just as well, Frisbees give me an uncomfortableness."
"Dead or not, they weren't sorry. Best we've come across...no offense Arketta. Decent fieldcraft in addition to those fucking suits of theirs, and with the munitions they're carrying, they'd stand a fair chance of dismantling an infantry squad before they knew what hit 'um."
He shifts uncomfortably.
"So...we've got a captive, three corpses, a small arsenal, two useful suits and a serious need for a clear LZ and an extraction to... wherever the hell the rest are off at. Ideas?"
"They were likely Khiraba," Arketta adds. "Probably at least one was a local. I don't know if they had a check-in schedule or if they were truly offline," she says, inspecting one of the still-functional helmets. "But they weren't broadcasting their biomonitors. Nobody knows these first two are dead - I can't tell if the third managed to alert anyone. We could perhaps activate their voxes and trick our pursuers? That may buy us time, but it does not get us closer to our comrades. And we do not even know if they escaped."
---
The Aikoran night is cold, made colder by the high speed of the warsled. Semo's finding it a little more difficult than a car. The impellers don't care what kind of terrain you travel on, but there is a slight "momentum lag" that Semo wouldn't get with tires on asphalt. It's resulted in a few close scrapes with passing rocks and trees, but he's got it under control. The sled purrs down the canyon and meets up with a narrow river about 20 kilometers to the south.
"Do you have any way of contacting your people?" Bello shouts over the wind noise.
---
Luis finds One-Ton and Swims in the rear of the Morningstar trying to repair the damage the freighter took during their escape. He sees the shipboy again, happily climbing up into the superstructure around the cruise engine housing with a patch kit. One-Ton nods to Luis as he enters the chamber.
"Used a lot of fuel pushin' our way skyward. We can still make orbit and beyond, but our next stop after that better have refueling capabilities. One of the aft stabilizers got shot clean off... can't do anything 'bout that right now. She'll be sluggish inna turns. I'd say we got off easy."
The subject of names comes up, now that Morningstar is no doubt on the Imperium's "shoot them in the face" list. Luis inquires as to where Akamu got its first name.
"That is an irony that would not be immediately apparent to your kind," Swims explains. "Akamu was once the Hand that Guides the Sword; it was he that ordered the bombardment of Bashakra. Helo Farsad was from that world - he christened his vessel thusly as both reminder and disguise. The thinking was, no Bashakran would name his ship after the man who killed his planet. The story changed as well, depending on the audience. To the Imperium it was in honor of the general's accomplishments. To various shadowports it was a mark of solidarity or a grim reminder to a cause."
Luis has vague recollections of a cancelled sci-fi show about some Civil War in space where the main character named his ship after the battle where his side lost. He figures it's kind of like that. Like naming the General Lee "Ulysses S. Grant" and driving around the Georgia backwoods.
---
Davis listens to the otherwordly Aikoran night. Strange how it can look so familiar - trees, scrub, rocks, stars - but still be so different. The stars are unfamiliar, the sliver of a moon is tan and much smaller than Luna, and the noises are everything BUT the familiar chirps and hoots of Earth fauna.
One familiar sound does cut through the canyon; a high-altitude craft coming their way. Whatever it is, it's above the canyon, up in the air. Too slow for interceptors, too high for skimmers. It may just pass them by. It may be seeding the area with recon drones. The warsled might have met a quick end and this new arrival is tracing their path back to the ship.
Admiral Duck Sauce
