SNAFU: Hunters

Apex Predator N.X. Sharps & Tim Marquitz

“Target confirmed. Operation Mousetrap is a go.” The crisp, mechanical voice of the commander cut through the headset. “You will link up with local assets and infiltrate the mining camp. Eliminate the rogue and dispose of any evidence. Our presence in the area cannot be exposed. Do you read me, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t underestimate the target, Sierra. He might well be an older model but you know damn well no one survives long in this line of work without a few tricks up their sleeve. Memphis out.”

Staff Sergeant Sierra growled under her breath after the comms went silent. She knew well enough what she was up against and didn’t need Memphis’s warning. Sierra was no cub to be led about by the scruff. She turned to her pack, huddled tight in their drop seats, awaiting orders.

“We’ve got the green light.” Wide, toothy grins met the announcement. She gave them a moment to revel in it before holding her hand up to quiet them. “Now bring it in, we’re almost there.”

Sierra led her pride in prayer as the suborbital insertion craft began the re-entry sequence. The six women asked not for forgiveness, nor did they beg salvation. Instead they entreated upon their Goddess that their aim be true, their guns functional, and their blades sharp. Sierra felt the pressure of gravity reasserting its hold but disregarded the gentle creak in her bones while the pride lifted their voices in unison to praise the Mistress of Dread, the Lady of Slaughter, She Who Mauls.

The commandos brought the prayer to an end with a roar while the insertion craft banked to port, indicating glide and circle sequence. Aware that a single flaw in the craft’s stealth package would invite interception by Chinese surface-to-air missiles, Sierra had her pack concentrate on performing a final account of their gear in case they needed to drop early. They did so in contemplative silence. This wasn’t their first suborbital insertion but death was never far from the thoughts of soldiers such as these. The goal was always to provide the Goddess sufficient sacrifices to spare the pack any losses. The Lady of Slaughter cared not who met their end upon the field, only that she earned her rightful blood-price in battle.

Staff Sergeant Sierra scrutinized her pride as they went about their business. To her right sat Sergeant Charlie, eyes scanning her wrist-screen, checking for deviations in the signal. Charlie was the pride’s dedicated micro-drone operator, acting as the eyes in the sky. While all of the women were capable of utilizing the quadrotor, named Horus, Charlie was by far the most gifted operator. Horus was her child.

On Sierra’s left was Corporal Foxtrot, the squad’s designated marksman. Foxy held a rifle scope up to her eye, peering through while making a series of adjustments. Across the aisle sat Specialists Juliet, Tango, and Victor, fighting against seat restraints to tighten the straps on their battle rattle. Sierra offered a sympathetic nod at seeing the stiffness in their postures, the budding frustration in their eyes. Despite the layers of thermal clothing and ballistic plating that covered the women Sierra knew they felt naked without their weapons in their hands; procedure demanded all small arms be secured to prevent them from becoming airborne hazards during descent.

The women sat in barely restrained excitement — a trio of killers desperate to be about their work. Staff Sergeant Sierra knew her sisters on a primal level. Her enhanced senses accentuated their peculiarities, processing the scents and sounds that identified each as surely as any fingerprint or blood sample.

“The LZ is hot. I repeat, the LZ is hot,” came the voice of the insertion craft’s pilot over the comms. “We’ve got SAMs incoming.”

Sierra scowled as the craft juked to avoid the inbound missiles. She heard the pilot launching chaff to distract the radar guidance and ground her teeth together, reminded once more that the shuttle was unarmed due to payload restrictions. She hated their reliance on the man piloting the craft. Modifications aside, he was not one of them, not one of the pride. And now that the stealth approach had proved ineffectual, her sisters’ lives were in the hands of the First Lieutenant’s nerves and augmented reflexes; a situation far from ideal. A near miss on the starboard side a moment later sent a shudder through the fuselage and confirmed Sierra’s doubts.

“Staff Sergeant, we are approaching the LZ but you’ve got to unload on the double. I’ve ditched the SAMs but this area is crawling with hostiles and I want to get the hell out of Dodge,” announced the First Lieutenant.

“Roger that.” Sierra cut the link on the comms before her fury bled through. It did no one any good to antagonize their ride home. Her lips peeled back to reveal a feral smile of dominant canines and sharpened incisors. “You heard him, ladies, we’ve got a date with the Mistress of Dread and she will not be kept waiting.”

The commandos roared, releasing their restraints and snatching the weapons and packs stashed above their seats. The starboard flank of the insertion craft peeled away with a metallic hum, exposing the pride to a blast of piercing wind. It was bracing after the warm confines of the shuttle. Sierra crouched before the opening as Foxy led the deployment. As soon as the craft leveled the corporal leapt through the door, weapon leading the way. The pride followed with Sierra bringing up the rear.

Foxy hit the ground first and shouldered her rifle, scouring the LZ for hostiles. She found one almost immediately. The report of her rifle announced the death of an enemy combatant hunkered on the ridge even before Sergeant Charlie touched down behind her. The other commandos followed in sequence, dropping into crouches to return fire as rounds zipped through the air to clank off the shuttle’s hull and peck at the ground around them. Sierra waved the First Lieutenant off and, without delay, the insertion craft shot away with a surface-to-air missile on its tail.

Sierra joined her fire to that of the pride, sending carbine rounds at the rocky outcropping shielding an unknown number of hostiles. The commandos spread out and increased the tempo of the fusillade, causing the enemy to hunker down in the face of withering fire. Charlie, given a reprieve, pulled Horus from her pack and spread his stabilizers, bringing him online. The quadrotor zipped into the blistering mountain air with the faintest of hums.

In no time Horus’s sensor suite generated a real-time evaluation of the field and beamed it directly to the wrist-screens worn by each member of the pride. Appraising the display showed them everything they needed to know regarding the battle zone.

“We’ve got eight shooters armed with assault rifles and a single belt-fed spread out on the ridge above. The approach is steep but Horus has highlighted a more accessible path we could use to flank them,” Charlie told the group.

“Charlie, Foxtrot, Juliet, Victor, keep them occupied. Tango, follow me,” Sierra ordered, scrutinizing her own wrist-screen for the flanking path.

In unison, Sierra and Tango shrugged out of their packs, slung their firearms, and dashed across the broken terrain, devouring the distance in a fast and low stride while their sisters provided cover fire. The mountain air was thin and clawed at the back of Sierra’s throat with every breath but it was the least of her concerns. Gunfire from the ridge resumed as the pair reached the mouth of the pass. They paused there to catch their breath. The belt-fed opened up and Tango flinched on reflex though the two had yet to be seen. Sierra grinned. No amount of combat experience ever fully settled a warrior’s nerves.

Another look at the wrist-screen told the Staff Sergeant the enemy had spread even further along the ridge in an effort to counter her people, making their task all the harder. Sierra prayed the Goddess remember the sacrifices of her sisters and keep them from harm. She unslung her carbine and took point, trading speed for discretion on the ascent. Farther down the mountain Foxy’s rifle spoke, silencing the enemy machine-gun emplacement. Sierra swept her aim from side to side as she advanced, confident Tango would catch anyone she might miss in her advance.

They found the first hostile precisely where Horus indicated he would be — kneeling behind a boulder and fumbling a reload. Sierra sent him sprawling with a trio of 5.56 rounds, painting the rocks with his blood. She and Tango sniffed out the next soldier on their own as Horus met with some unknown interference, the target blinking in and out at random. They spied the hostile peeking out of a shallow recess in the mountainside, firing and ducking back under cover to avoid the quadrotor’s scanners. Sierra and Tango lit him up the next time he materialized. He slithered back into his hole, his life draining away.

The commandos resumed their advance along the trail, heads on a swivel and sniffing the air to find the six remaining enemies. Nictitating membranes shielded their large, sensitive eyes allowing them to absorb more light than human standard, providing an unparalleled view of the environs. Their mobile ears swiveled and rotated, tracking for any signs of danger that might have eluded the quadrotor.

‘Hostile MG active, hostile MG active, hostile—’

A peal of thunder erupted forty meters up the ridge, interrupting the urgent missive from Horus. Sierra and Tango dropped and narrowly avoided the high caliber penetrators directed at them. The machine-gun scythed into their earthen cover, spitting a rain of stony splinters over the prone commandos.

“Suppress that damned gun,” Sierra demanded over the comms.

The staccato of gunfire intensified as the pride renewed their suppressive fire. The belt-fed redirected its attention back down the slope to silence the barrage and Sierra took advantage of the opportunity and raised her head for a look.

“Specialist, what’s your condition?” she asked.

“Pissed myself a little, Staff Sergeant, but am otherwise intact.”

Sierra chuckled despite herself. Modified they may be but the pride were still fundamentally human.

Tango shook her head. “Might not want to laugh too hard, Staff Sergeant. It looks like you took some shrapnel. You’re bleeding through your pants leg.”

Sierra grunted and reached for her calf, feeling the lacerations she hadn’t noticed. They stung at her touch but she diagnosed them as superficial. She grinned. Better a little blood than wet panties.

‘Four hostiles headed your direction’, Horus said through the implants in their ears, which kept them in contact even if the rest of their comms broke down.

Sierra glanced at the wrist-screen, viewing four thermal signatures through the drone’s sensor suite. She snapped her carbine up in time to catch the first combatant in her optics. Cross dot merged with silhouette and jacketed lead punched through yielding flesh. Momentum carried the combatant backward a short distance, rifle clattering from his hands. The three other hostiles took notice and ducked back, stopping short of entering the Staff Sergeant’s line of sight.

“I’ll keep their heads down. You go pay a visit and share the good word of our Lady of Slaughter.”

“My pleasure, Staff Sergeant,” Tango replied with a purr, rising to sling her carbine.

Sierra released a burst of rounds to discourage curiosity as Tango set to scaling the rocky incline. The staff sergeant watched as Tango crawled up and over, disappearing behind the jagged rise. The belt-fed proceeded to spit certain death downrange. When Horus confirmed Tango was perched above the three hostiles exchanging shots with the Staff Sergeant, Tango unsheathed the Kukri from her thigh and drew the .45 from her hip holster.

“On three,” she subvocalized to Sierra through the comms.

One.

Two.

At three Sierra ceased fire and watched with amusement as Tango dropped into the midst of the hostiles. Death from above. The specialist struck with knife and pistol in a savage, whirling sequence worthy of the Goddess’s praise. Blindsided, the combatants died without struggle, major arteries severed and critical organs punctured in the blink of an eye, the walls of their makeshift cover painted in wet and dripping crimson. Tango ran her tongue along the flat of her knife, no doubt savoring the copper sacrament.

Sierra rushed by at a near sprint. “Vicky is hit,” she said between breaths.

Tango sheathed her knife and followed the Staff Sergeant, swapping pistol mags on the fly. They closed in on the last two enemies in the battle zone, snapping off shots as they navigated the uneven footing. Hollow points from Tango’s .45 connected with the nearer of the two, expanding upon penetration and disrupting soft tissue. The machine gunner pivoted, hefting the belt-fed to fire along the path they tread, finger jammed against the trigger in desperation.

From there on, the trail offered no further concealment for Sierra and Tango. They unloaded on the gunner the instant they broke cover. Several bullets found their mark, hammering into the hostile’s torso, but he remained upright. Staggering, he braced to continue his stream of fire. Sierra let go of her carbine and drew her sidearm, expecting the 7.62 to shred her before she could get another shot off.

To their mutual astonishment the gunner’s head cratered in a puff of red mist and gray pulp and he crumpled in a heap of ruined flesh.

‘All threats neutralized. Battle zone clear. Initiating patrol sweep’, Horus broadcast.

“Sorry, Staff Sergeant, you were taking too long,” Foxy said over the comms, “Thanks for setting up the shot though.”

“That was your handiwork?” asked Sierra.

“Affirmative.”

Sierra thanked her and got back to the business at hand. “How’s Vicky?”

“Alive,” Specialist Victor answered over the link. “MG winged me but the weave deflected the worst of it. Hurts like a mother but I’ve suffered worse.”

Sierra breathed a sigh of relief. The pride was intact. “In that case haul ass up here and bring our packs,” she ordered.

“Yes, Staff Sergeant, on our way.”

Sierra kicked the belt-fed away from the dead gunner and knelt to examine him. He was considerably larger than the others and he must have been ugly even before Foxy evacuated his brain pan. His torso bore seven entry wounds but barely a dribble of blood at each. Sierra probed his chest, validating her suspicion. The gunner had a sub-dermal ballistic weave of his own. He was a mod like she was, though a poor imitation of the meticulous care and state-of-the-art technology that had gone into crafting her own body.

“What do you make of these combatants, Specialist?” she asked.

“Collateral damage,” replied Tango over by the gunner’s associate.

“Elaborate.”

Tango dropped to her knees, opened the corpse’s mouth and set to prying a tooth out.

“They’re armed with cheap AK variants, wearing rags, and I’ll bet my favorite knife that big fella you’re poking has black market mods all through him. This guy here does too.”

The tooth popped out and she stowed her trophy in a vest pouch. “They aren’t People’s Liberation Army and they’re definitely not Eight Immortals Group, which means we probably just killed our contacts who were supposed to help us infiltrate the mining camp. Blue on blue,” Tango finished.

“Blue on fucking blue,” cursed Sierra, though she couldn’t bring herself to be disturbed by what they’d done. The pride had defended itself and that was all there was to it. “Something spooked this lot.”

“Care to take a guess?” asked Charlie.

“I’ve a good idea.”

Sergeant Charlie and the rest of the pride crested the ridge right then. Foxy and Juliet passed Sierra and Tango their rucksacks. Vicky sat on a boulder and clasped a hand to her side where she’d taken a glancing blow from the MG. Tango inspected the damage, prodding the torn skin meant to cover the now visible ballistic weave. The move elicited a yelp from her patient. Vicky shoved her aside and slapped a length of duct tape on the wound.

“We don’t have time for all that. I got this from Horus.”

Charlie consulted with Sierra, sharing a video clip on her wrist-screen. Horus hovered dozens of meters over the ridge, showing a clear view of the ravine on the other side. The drone’s optics scanned the topography for several seconds before highlighting patterns the quadrotor’s programming deemed as aberrations. Horus zoomed in, magnifying the anomalies: bodies, five of them.

“Let’s take a closer look,” Sierra said.

“I should properly dress your leg first, Staff Sergeant.” Tango gestured to her wound, concern apparent in her eyes.

Sierra grabbed the roll of adhesive from Vicky, ripped off a strip, and applied it to the lacerations on her calf. “After our little shootout these hills are going to be crawling with hostiles. We have zero time to waste. Juliet, you’re on point. Foxtrot, you bring up the rear. Everyone else, fall in.”

Without further discussion the pride struck off, summiting the ridge then sliding down the scree on the other side. They traversed the ravine in a staggered column while Horus patrolled the sky and sought out potential threats. From the tail Corporal Foxtrot kept her eyes peeled to complement the drone’s electronic vigil. Sierra gave her a grateful nod and waved the rest of the pride on. The day Foxy relied wholly upon plastic and silicon was the day she dug her own grave and placed herself in it.

Juliet located the first body, or at least fragments of it. The pride gathered around a human reduced to bloody ribbons. Shell casings punctuated the red ruin but Sierra could tell this wasn’t the work of a gun or even a knife. The destruction visited on the carcass bore animalistic qualities, gouges from tooth and claw.

“Do you smell that?” Juliet asked.

The kill was fresh and the cold had helped preserve the spoiling meat but the copper tang and voided bowels bouquet of death smothered the senses. Though somewhat masked by the heady perfume Sierra recognized the spoor of another predator. She assessed the scent, connecting it with the sample shared by Memphis during the mission briefing. The sample contained pheromones collected and catalogued so that mods could distinguish friendly mods from others on the battlefield.

Tango beat her to the punch. “The rogue was here.”

Sierra nodded.

Charlie move alongside. “Staff Sergeant, Horus is tracking two scouting parties headed straight for us and they’ve got a drone of their own.”

“Initiate Snipe Hunt Protocol,” Sierra answered.

“Already on it.” Charlie tapped a series of commands on her wrist-screen, activating Horus’s electronic warfare package, designed to shut down enemy drones and jam their sensors.

“Our quarry was careless enough to leave a trail for us to follow. Juliet, lead the way.”

Again the pride set off, loping across and out of the narrow gorge. They passed more evidence of the rogue’s presence along the way — bodies like burst melons, ravaged and discarded. Accustomed as the pride was to death they still found the overkill distasteful. It bespoke a lack of restraint, reinforcing the necessity of terminating the obsolete mod responsible.

Despite the irony of her position Sierra refused to feel shame for their role in hunting down and dispatching older mods. The unstable operators presented a liability to the Apex Program and, by extension, the security of the United States. She felt no kinship with the quarry, they were a breed and multiple generations removed. The rogue was obsolete, nothing more than a prototype. Sierra and her sisters were the future.

‘Patrol deflected. Proceed freely’, Horus transmitted after they’d traipsed along for a quarter of an hour.

Sierra called the column to a halt. “Charlie, send Horus ahead to reconnoiter. I want to know what we’re walking into.”

“Yes, Staff Sergeant.”

“Foxtrot, Tango, you’re on overwatch. Stay frosty.”

“Roger that, Staff Sergeant,” Foxy and Tango said in harmony, hustling off to take up elevated positions.

“Juliet, tend to Vicky’s wound.”

“That’s not necessary. I’m fine,” the solider answered.

“Stow it, Specialist, that’s an order. Might as well let Juliet kiss your boo-boos while we get our bearings and have a few minutes. I’ve got my own to deal with.”

Sierra sat and took a slug of water from her canteen. She removed the medical kit from her ruck before taking another swig of water. Rehydrated, she peeled back the adhesive stuck to her leg, revealing the gouges in her bloody pant leg and the subsequent lacerations in her calf. She pulled off a glove and began extracting the slivers of rock embedded in the skin with her retractable claws. Once finished she sprayed anti-bacterial over the cuts, covered it in gauze, and fastened it all together with a fresh strip of duct tape.

“Check your screens. You’re gonna wanna see this,” Charlie called out.

Sierra tugged her glove back on and viewed the live feed streaming on her forearm display while Horus recorded, the quadrotor suspended above a city in tumult. An inferno raged, engulfing the stacks of shipping containers that had been converted into residences. Figures in riot gear bearing the Eight Immortals Group device battled in the streets against men in drab jumpsuits and hard hats trading fire with automatic weapons.

Sierra watched a rebel wind-up to toss a Molotov cocktail only for it to explode in his hands, intercepted by a lucky bullet. The improvised incendiary consumed the man and those standing nearby. A mass of jumpsuits overwhelmed a detail of riot troopers on the main thoroughfare as the chaos expanded. Those few with guns used them as clubs but the majority, armed with little more than rocks, took turns pummeling the EIG contractors. Sierra snarled at being forced to watch the combat from a distance though she knew she didn’t want to be involved. Her priorities lay elsewhere.

On the screen a bulky armored personnel carrier turned the corner farther up the avenue. Several rebels retreated down back alleys or hid in domiciles but most persisted to assail their victims, oblivious to the approaching threat. The remote weapon system mounted atop the APC rotated to greet the crowd. Fifty-caliber tracer rounds lanced through soft targets, causing the mob to crumble under the pitiless barrage. The weapon system ceased firing a few moments later, the field transformed into an abattoir.

“Recall Horus,” Sierra told Charlie. “I’ve seen enough.”

If the rogue’s trail didn’t take any drastic deviations it would lead the pride right into the rapidly deteriorating situation at Ming Resources’ No. 4 Extraction Site. Memphis explained during the meeting how the escalating tension between the state-sponsored company and its workers in the territory had boiled over. The Eight Immortals Group had already stamped out insurrection at another mining location in the province but the violence was spreading. Trusted informants belonging to Memphis listed No. 4 as the next most likely to revolt, and they’d been right. And as of four hours ago it was the last known location of the rogue mod they’d been sent to eliminate. The two circumstances were not a coincidence.

“Orders, Staff Sergeant?” Charlie asked.

“Regroup, we’re moving on.”

“We’re going to just walk right into a war zone?” Juliet raised an eyebrow, barely visible through the eye slot of her balaclava.

“Nothing can be allowed to impede the mission. If anything the fighting will serve to conceal our presence. We can use the noise to our advantage.”

“And if the rebels attack us again?”

“React with extreme prejudice. Miners, EIG, PLA. Kill ‘em all and let She Who Mauls sort ‘em out.”

The pride continued on without another word being spoken. Tracking their quarry into an active warzone was far from ideal but there was no alternative. The good news was that the rogue’s trail was unmistakable. Now that the pride had a fix on him it would be nigh impossible for him to shake them. Mental state deteriorating, the mod hadn’t given any consideration to masking his path but that was generally how things went with these types of missions. The difficulty wasn’t in finding the rogues but putting them down.

The commandos made good time, reaching the outskirts of the extraction site before nightfall. They paused at the edge of the city to develop a feel for the situation before circling around the conflict in pursuit of their quarry. Rebel miners fought on in the waning light, ill-coordinated yet invigorated at having shed the blood of their oppressors. Outnumbered, the EIG contractors responded with superior firepower and training. Armored Personnel Carriers delivered shock troops to the areas of heaviest resistance and the battle spilled through the city without regard.

Any drones launched by the EIG were promptly struck from the air by miners compensating for poor accuracy with sheer volume of fire, the darkening sky streaked with tracers. Charlie set Horus to patrol above the reach of small arms fire to keep him from being spotted but the downside was that he could only provide limited support in the impending hunt. It was an inconvenience, if only a minor one. Even were they to be stripped of all weapons and gear Sierra knew her pride could overcome any foe they came across.

From the smoky shroud of gunpowder to the metallic tang of spilt blood, a multitude of odors vied for dominance. Sierra inhaled, spending several moments isolating the rogue’s spoor amid the muddle of battle and fixating on it.

“We hunt,” she said once she had locked on.

The pride dispersed into formation, the move as familiar to the commandos as breathing. Sierra locked onto their prey’s trail and followed it directly into the extraction site. Charlie and Juliet prowled at the Staff Sergeant’s left wing while Victor and Tango took her right. The four of them spread out placing several city blocks between them and the Staff Sergeant, casting as wide a net as possible with which to encircle the rogue and prevent him from slipping away. The sound of gunfire rattled around them as they advanced. Foxtrot trailed behind the squad, climbing from one elevated position to another as the pride pierced deeper into the haphazard stacks of shipping container and prefabricated buildings that made up the ragtag city.

The women crept through narrow alleys and broad avenues, dodging squads of Eight Immortals Group contractors and mobs of miners alike, both bent on racking up a body count. The battle diminished as daylight leeched away but pockets of intense fighting remained, scattered throughout the city. Black market night vision and low-light mods had allowed the miners to meet the EIG on a more level playing field but they were still losing. The pride came across mounds of their bodies scattered at nearly every turn.

The latest corpses they encountered, however, hadn’t been laid low by EIG rounds. These had the mod’s distinctive mark all over them. The slaughter matched that of the bodies they had found earlier. Four miners, weathering the riot in the presumed safety of a freight box, had been caught unaware by the rampaging mod and rendered down to scraps. Sierra drew in a deep whiff of the dead miners and seized upon the scent of the rogue’s winding trail intermingled with the carnage. It confirmed they were closing in on him. Sierra knelt and dipped her fingers into the rent flesh of a headless torso to see how long it’d been since the rogue had passed that way. The pitiful remains were rapidly cooling but still retained some warmth. In the frigid mountain air that meant only one thing. The rogue was nearby.

“Contact, engaging Immortals!” Juliet barked over the comms.

Sierra snapped her wrist-screen to eye level and got a bearing on Juliet’s location, Horus dipping lower to provide better detail. The specialist was less than a hundred meters away but separated by a row of stacked containers, pinned between two converging fire teams of EIG. Charlie, nearer to Juliet, had immediately turned to render aid and Sierra watched the pair work to extricate themselves. Two Apex Program mods against eight Immortals was a fair fight by anyone’s standards but the pride never fought fair if they could help it.

“Converge on Juliet,” the Staff Sergeant ordered, bounding across to the tower of corrugated steel and scaling it with leonine finesse.

From her new vantage point Sierra observed three contractors closing in on Juliet’s makeshift shelter while a fourth hemorrhaged blood into the compacted dirt. From the meager protection of a flame-gutted bulldozer Juliet traded rounds with the Immortals, slowing their approach. The fire team farther down the lane, which had been maneuvering to catch her in a vice, had run afoul of Charlie’s arcing blade. She slashed through their ranks with surgical precision, severing vital arteries and sending Immortals shrieking to their deaths.

Sierra joined her fire with Juliet’s, designating a target and placing a tight grouping of rounds center mass. The EIG contractor’s forward momentum faltered; he stumbled to one knee but did not drop. Sierra howled at his defiance. The Immortals were clearly heavily armored but it was possible they’d been modified with subdermal ballistic weaves of their own. She took note and adjusted her aim, delivering a series of shots to the man’s face.

The Immortal dropped without a sound but the Staff Sergeant was already transitioning to the next target, no time to appreciate her handiwork. Juliet stole the next kill from her and together they wore down the final fire team members with a barrage of deadly hail. As soon as the last Immortal in her sights fell Sierra turned her attention to Charlie and watched as Tango and Victor joined the melee against the other troops, hacking the last of the EIG soldiers apart from behind.

“Hurt?” Sierra asked, returning her focus to Juliet, noticing the woman’s labored movements when her sister stood. Sierra dropped down off the corrugated steel to the hardpack below and approached her subordinate.

“Cracked a couple of ribs it feels like. Nothing major,” Juliet replied with a wince.

Sierra nodded, offering up a sympathetic smile for the specialist’s grit, her fingers unconsciously surveying the damage to Juliet’s side. She hopped on the comms. “Foxtrot, has our little skirmish drawn any scrutiny?” She stopped her examination of Juliet’s armor when no reply came from the pride’s marksman.

“Corporal?” she queried, an icy pall washing over her.

Sierra’s wrist-screen placed Foxy’s icon 350 meters south of their current orientation. That was well beyond the regulated spacing she was expected to maintain. Sierra glared at her screen again, almost demanding it show something different. The locator remained steady, and Sierra felt bile rise in the back of her throat as Charlie, Tango, and Victor wandered over from claiming trophies and set up a perimeter.

“Sergeant, bring Horus down to Foxy’s location. I want eyes on her now!”

Charlie didn’t argue, but Sierra knew the risks of having the quadrotor descend for an active sensor sweep and tapped a set of commands into her wrist-screen as Charlie did. Still, Charlie commanded it to do just that despite the frustration she must have felt. A sea of worry churned in Sierra’s stomach as Horus reported to its new stationing and Foxtrot failed to materialize on the wrist-screen. The quadrotor scanned a jumble of shipping crates turned mass graveyard for victims of a clash from earlier that day but no patterns emerged that might tell Sierra where the soldier had gone.

“Switch to thermal,” Sierra ordered, the words rumbling out.

Horus did as commanded and two human-shaped heat signatures bloomed on the display: one sprawled out across the ground and another, much larger than the first, fled the scene.

“Horus, tail the moving signature.” Sierra knew right then what had happened. Her heart pounding against her ribs she sprinted off in the direction of the stationary thermal sign. “Do not lose it whatever you do, you hear me?”

Horus complied, abandoning its circuit and boosting away to keep pace. The pride followed in the Staff Sergeant’s wake, abandoning caution in a reckless dash to the location of Foxy’s icon. A figure chanced crossing the route ahead, only for Sierra to light it up without pause. It proved to be an innocent bystander, an unarmed miner seeking shelter from the battle, but Sierra felt no compassion for the man, her attention fully focused on finding her sister. The memory of the incident was gone from Sierra’s mind before they’d even passed his crumpled form four strides later.

The rogue’s scent reemerged from the char and stink of the city, filling Sierra’s nostrils as they neared Foxy’s marker. That does not bode well, Sierra thought, grumbling at her own negativity. She needed Foxy to be alive but deep inside she knew otherwise, and it made her sick. The area was littered with the wreckage of bodies. They were primarily rebels but the clash hadn’t been entirely one-sided as evidenced by the twisted metal carcass of an Eight Immortals Group APC.

“Charlie, Juliet, break off and find Foxy. Tango, Vicky, you’re with me.”

Juliet and Charlie obeyed without question, angling off to find their missing sister. Sierra, Tango, and Vicky maintained a fix on the rogue, whose movements suggested severe mental degradation. He changed direction seemingly at random, weaving in and out of buildings and makeshift residences without any obvious tactical purpose. Horus drifted along in the target’s wake, reestablishing line-of-sight whenever the rogue broke from concealment until the three commandos were able to corner him in a two story pre-fab.

Sierra surveyed the building from her vantage point across the way. The cheaply built structure had weathered the rioting unscathed, much to her surprise, but it explained why the rogue mod had chosen it to settle in. Thermal scans peered through the roof, showing the pre-fab to be devoid of all life save a single pacing blur of warmth: their target. Sierra let out a slow, quiet snarl beneath her breath at seeing the mod’s signature light up. They had him at last.

“Charlie, what’s Foxy’s status?” Sierra asked over the comms, desperate for good news. She crouched behind her firing position, eyes never wavering from her sights.

“KIA, Staff Sergeant. He… he butchered her.”

Sierra had been prepared for the worst but the confirmation still hit like a howitzer. She swallowed against the nausea that welled up inside her, tamping it down with controlled fury.

“Staff Sergeant, she’s missing… parts,” Juliet added, the Specialist having a hard time getting the words out. “It looks like the rogue’s scavenging mods.”

Sierra stared at the pre-fab, upper lip peeled back and teeth bared. Most targets were executed with clinical detachment, their death nothing more than the job she was assigned to do, but this one was different. Sierra decided to make an exception for this senile old fuck who’d killed her sister.

“We’ve got him surrounded,” she told the pride. “If you double-time it there might be a piece of him left for you when you arrive.”

“We’ve got a problem, Staff Sergeant!” Juliet screamed in her ear. “Foxy’s comms implants are gone.”

“How observant of you,” a gravelly voice said over the line. “But don’t worry, I left something in exchange for your sister’s ears.”

“Get out of there!” Sierra roared.

Simultaneously she felt the whump of explosives detonating nearby, then another, and saw the pre-fab wall disintegrate before her eyes. A hulking form emerged from the whirling smoke and debris. There was no time to identify the rogue, though she knew him by his grotesque musculature and unkempt hair, mission details standing out in her mind. He moved with a speed that belied his size and he fell upon Vicky before either she or Sierra could deflect him. The Staff Sergeant pivoted away from the door, searching for a clear shot as the rogue engaged Vicky, the two in tight.

The specialist was unable to bring her rifle to bear, so she went for her sidearm as she struggled for space. Sierra felt a flash of feral joy as the woman pulled it loose of the holster but Vicky never got the chance to put it to use. The rogue backhanded it from her grasp and sank his pronounced canines into her neck. Vicky fought on, peeling skin from his torso with her retractable claws but it was clear she was losing. Sierra stumbled as the rogue wrenched free of Vicky, the twisting motion of his jaw tearing a section of the woman’s vertebrae out through her neck. Sierra howled at the volcano of blood erupting from her sister, the specialist’s eyes already glossing over as she went limp.

The rogue cast Vicky’s body aside only to be met by a hail of gunfire, Sierra’s finger heavy on the trigger. He shielded his head with an oversized forearm and charged forward, enduring the punishment to close the distance between them. Sierra altered her aim, shooting at his knees in hopes his joints would be less reinforced and she could bring him down. The rogue persevered despite the barrage of lead tearing through his legs. He barreled into her and ripped the carbine from her hands. She stumbled back in surprise at how easily he’d disarmed her but he gave her no opportunity to recover, clubbing her across the face with the rifle. She raised her arms in instinct to guard against a follow-up attack but he thrust the stock of the gun into her stomach, dropping her to her knees with a whuff of escaping air.

For all Sierra’s training, conditioned to withstand such violence, the force of the attack had caught her off guard. He bashed her with the rifle again and sent her crashing onto her back. The rogue stood over her, frothing at the mouth, claws poised to deliver the killing blow, when a long, curved blade bit into his neck from behind. He reared up with a roar like erupting thunder.

Tango yanked the knife from the wound, twisting it on the way out for good measure, and struck again but the rogue caught her wrist on the second swing. He reeled her in and punched her in the face over and over again with his free hand, breaking her nose and flattening it across her face as the cartilage compacted.

Sierra drew her pistol and squeezed the trigger, hitting the rogue in the side of the head. There was a metallic clang and Sierra followed her shot with another, catching him high in the cheek. The rogue huffed and whipped Tango around by the wrist, flinging her into Sierra and fouling her next shot. In the second it took the Staff Sergeant to adjust her aim their attacker had fled.

“Horus, pick him up,” Sierra groaned. She heard the whisper of the quadrotor complying somewhere above her.

Tango scrambled to her feet, oblivious to her busted nose, and offered a hand to Sierra. Once she was steady, the Staff Sergeant looked to her carbine only to find the barrel bent and stock shattered.

“Here.” Tango unslung her own gun and handed it over. “I’d much rather cut this bastard anyway. Seems to work better.”

“Vicky?” Sierra asked, though she knew she’d regret it.

“Dead.”

Sierra nodded, having presumed as much. She accessed the comms and opened a private channel to Charlie and Juliet, avoiding the frequency the rogue mod was tuned in on.

“Sergeant? Specialist? Do you read me? Charlie? Juliet?”

No reply came. She waited a few seconds and tried again. The result was the same: a chilling nothingness. The explosion she felt must have been a bomb the rogue left behind with Foxy’s body. The world dropped out from beneath Sierra. The loss was too great for her to contemplate. Never before had the pride suffered such casualties. They might well be nothing more than assets to the higher ups, evidenced by the names foisted upon the women, but to Sierra they were much more than that. They were her family. And now they were gone.

“It’s just us,” she managed to spit out, the words bitter on her tongue.

“Then we make sure he pays.” Tango held her blade out, her fury evident.

“She Who Mauls will not be left wanting.” Tears stung Sierra’s eyes but she denied them. There would be time for sorrow but first came revenge.

‘Subject has entered mines, line-of-sight lost’, Horus broadcast.

The two surviving members of the pride raced toward the mine. Away from the miasma of the warzone the rogue’s spoor was so distinct Sierra could almost see it piercing deep into the mountain. The two shed any extraneous gear at the entrance, preferring to travel light — only guns and ammo and blades. If they failed to bring the rogue down now there would be no need for any of the rest.

Before they slipped into the mine, Sierra armed the self-destruct mechanism built into Horus. If they failed to return before its battery ran critical the quadrotor would detonate, erasing any evidence of their presence in the area. Likewise Charlie, Foxy, Juliet, and Vicky would decay at a hyper-accelerated rate as their cores melted down to prevent any of the Apex Program breakthroughs from falling into enemy hands. It would be a sad end to the pride’s existence, but a necessary one.

“Let’s finish this,” Sierra told her one remaining sister.

The pair forged ahead into the darkness, Sierra trusting her nose and ears to guide them to their target. The narrowness of the tunnel was suffocating, pressing in from all sides to envelope the commandos. Even the sounds were smothered by the close confines. Wooden beams set in the walls at regular intervals kept the ceiling from caving in. Glass from busted fixtures crunched underfoot. Intact lights were few and far between, bare bulbs dangling from the rafters. They moved deeper and deeper, expecting an ambush at every turn but the rogue surprised them by making no attempt at hiding.

He stood partially illuminated under a flickering light fixture. Long gray hair tinged yellow by the poor illumination draped over a face more canid than hominid. Thick blood bubbled from the gash in his neck and oozed down his bare chest. He was a monstrosity in form and spirit. Lips split in a feral grin at seeing them and Sierra unloaded without hesitation. Every bullet found its mark but he shrugged it off with nothing more than the barest of backward stumbles, regaining his footing without issue. He held a hand up, waving the sisters on.

“Let’s finish this,” the rogue told them, his sneer coated in blood and arrogance.

The Staff Sergeant dropped her rifle and brandished her Kukri, more than willing to oblige. Together she and her sister attacked. Sierra went low and Tango high. For every wound the women made on their adversary he returned it twofold. His fists were sledgehammers, brutal blows crashing into the sisters, stealing their strength and pounding flesh. His knees and elbows and feet darted like serpents to take advantage of any opening. Above all else Sierra and Tango avoided his clutching fingers. They understood that were he to grab hold of them it would mean their lives. Still they fought on, pushing him deeper and deeper into the depths of the mine.

As they battled, the sisters using speed to counter the mod’s advantage of strength and constitution, Tango landed a strike deep into the meat of the rogue’s bicep only to have her blade lodge in the bone. She lost her grip when he knocked her backwards. Sierra closed on him then, dragging her blade across the rogue’s femoral artery but he kicked her into the wall and proceeded to stamp down on her knife hand. She felt her wrist fracture and screamed in agony as her blade slipped loose of her fingers. He shattered it with his heel and backed away with a lopsided grin.

“I’m impressed, little kitties. You’ve done well,” the rogue told them, yanking Tango’s knife out with a flourish, “but not well enough.” He let loose a rumbling laugh, the sound echoing through the darkness, seeming to go on forever before finally fading. He held up the blade and inspected it, testing its balance, and then dropped into a crouch with his new acquisition gleaming out in front. “Shall we continue?”

Weaponless, injured, and flagging, Sierra glanced at her sister and whispered a farewell with her eyes. They stood no chance of defeating the rogue with only their claws and teeth but his arrogance had offered Sierra an opportunity she could not deny.

Before Tango could grasp what she intended, Sierra murmured a prayer to She Who Mauls, shoved her sister aside, and leapt at the mod. The rogue grinned and welcomed her close only to realize his error when Sierra ducked low at the last moment and crashed into his legs, taking them out from under him. Her momentum carried them forward…

…over the lip of the shaft that had preserved the rogue’s laughter a moment before, dragging it out and warning Sierra of the endless fall that lay just beyond the darkness.

She howled as the blackness enveloped them. Sierra would soon meet the Goddess but she’d do so with a smile on her lips, her sister alive in the tunnel above. That was a victory she was willing to die for.