“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.