SNAFU: Hunters

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.”