“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.