SNAFU: Hunters

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.”