The forest was quiet, there were a couple of animals here and there but nothing out of the ordinary. He noticed a couple of friendly patrols on the first few kilometers leading to the pirate base.
'At least they have proper security, I would say the base has around 200 to 500 soldiers in it.'
As they continued Xocarion signaled a stop. He moved closer, to have a better look.
Xocarion signaled him a direction and he saw it, a big predator, a strange mix of a scorpion and a mantis. Deadly to anyone that came too close. He took aim, and Xocarion did the same. It was not the first predator that they encountered, but this was the first that seemed way too dangerous to leave alive. They fired at the same time, Xocarion took the headshot, and he took the penetrating hit to the torso, using one of his explosive bullets. It worked. The big insect dropped in a couple of seconds, but it still moved a few good meters before collapsing.
They continued to move onwards, there were still 20km out form the enemy base. They had made a small camp a few hours ago, and took a well-deserved rest and ate something, but now was not the time to rest. They needed to observe and report back what they found. As they continued to advance a friendly patrol came into contact with them.
"You are almost 10km out from the base, proceed with caution, here are some of our notes and intel to guide you through the terrain, I would recommend keeping a tighter formation so that your main group doesn’t get caught by enemy patrols. There are a few but they pass quite often once you reach the 5km range of the base. Good luck"
Once the xenos finished speaking, they left and moved on, back to base he presumed. Xocarion went to search for the others and let them know of the new intel while he stood watch and studied the plans of the enemy movements.
'Hmmm these movements seem familiar, they seem well trained and must have taken a hit once to be this well prepared. Not good, they will be waiting for us then.'
As he finished studying the notes, he was making sure no one approached from the enemy side with his drone, when suddently he heard a noise. His gun aimed towards the noise ready to fire, but the display of his drone signaled it was his new unit, he relaxed. They all grouped up, and he relayed the info and the few routes that he had already planned.
"Good Logan, we will follow your lead, Xocarion will stay at the back to help us cover any tracks that we might leave. Keep 100m distance from us, or less if you wish so."
The xenos giving the orders was their platoon lead. A xenos nicknamed Heax. He was a Xuulian, with many scars visible on his face, which explained the cybernetics eye that he had. Whenever he talked Logan could tell years of experience leading ops as this one were behind his words.
They proceeded forward, Logan on point.
'Slow is smooth, smooth is fast old man, don’t rush it, you don’t know how good these xenos are, don’t need to take any risks'
He proceeded with extreme caution, with his drone following him up to a point where he decided the enemy forces might have some sensor that could detect his drone, so he called it back and stored it back into his backpack.
They were moving smoothly through the terrain; the forest was denser and then it became less and less of a deep forest and more of a small pack of trees.
'No good, we still have 1km to a nice OP ((**observation post**)), we’ll need to crouch and ghillie up.'
He waited for his squad to catch up, and explained the situation, they didn’t take it badly and he was glad to know they all had some type of ghillie all prepared for this. He put on his and went first, the progress was slow, as slow as you could get.
'You never know where the enemy is or if he is actively observing this place.'
After 5 more slow hours they made it to the OP. They made some small outpost, moved some foliage from the trees in order to cover them, they were in a 100 meter area, all of the heavy guns protecting them from the sides and Logan and Xocarion up at the hill top. The position was good, they were around 1km from the enemy base and could observe it quite well. It was big, but not a bunker, instead many smaller huts were there and a big building at the middle, around 3 stores high.
'Great they have more underground, no way they can take in the 100-200 fighters they have in those buildings and still have place for all of their stolen goods.’
The night came, Xocarion was on watch, taking notes. Meanwhile he was trying to sleep but something keeped bothering him, as if they had missed something. So far it was all going according to plan, they had avoided the patrols, but something was not right, he just couldn’t put a hold on what.
He put his drone out and configured it for stealth, he would not fly towards the enemy base, but he wanted to see that no enemy formations were approaching their position. As soon as the drone took flight, he started telling the drone to be just over the trees but not go further up. He scanned the area, there were some enemy patrols, but they followed the same perimeter, instead of sleeping he decided to observe them more.
As time passed, he noticed more and more that the patrols were looking for them, they knew they had passed but could not locate them
'Well seems the assault will not be an easy one for our boys.'
But then, he noticed something, there were a couple more patrols than usual, 3 more had arrived, and it was subtle, but they were closing ever so slightly in their position.
'Well shit, we still have 2 or 3 hours before they come anywhere close to us, we could use this and have the others storm the position when we get hit by them.'
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He went to the comms post.
The xenos there was a Parackstian at the comms, who went by Loqarth. He looked at him and signaled him what was wrong. Then the designated leader came in, a big Xuurian, named Marsqa, he was followed by Heax.
"What is wrong Logan?" asked Marsqa
"We got enemies closing in on our location, around 50. They are still a couple of hours away, but this gives us the opportunity to signal command and give the go ahead to the attack. If they have 50 out here then their base is not well defended, Xocarion noted only 50 guards at the base around the walls. Less than double of what was there when we arrived."
As soon as he finished saying this Marsqa looked over to Heax.
"Very good, I'll inform Command, and for the hostiles I guess you want to do some hunting?" said Heax.
"Yes sir, I can create some distractions while you prepare a proper ambush with some of the men. But before I do anything, we must be sure command approves, if not we could relocate and wait further orders."
After a couple of minutes, command informed them they were on their way and would begin the assault in around 2 hours. Marsqa and Heax planned more the defense and told him to pick a few of the incoming patrols where he could, they were only a dozen men in the platoon, a decent force but they didnt want any unnecessary losses. After some quick talk about their defense position, Logan took leave and went to grab some of his gear.
'Perfect for some hunting'
He checked his gear, grabbed everything he needed, his rifle with a supressor, put a silencer on his pistol, and checked his overall gear, and then proceeded to head out. He sent his drone out, making sure it was in stealth mode and close to him to spot any possible enemies. Xocarion stayed behind, checking if any more movement was noticed on the enemy part and to inform of any possible ambushes set by the pirates.
‘Finally some action’
He moved quietly, stealthly and went ever closer to the enemy patrols. As he could see in the drone there were always a couple of straggles here and there, these guys were not so porfessional unlike his new unit.
‘Good’
He moved closer to the first patrol. And as he got a closer look, he noticed they were Zaaliks and Parackstians. Thankfully his silenced rifle could pierce their armor. There were a total of 5 enemies in this patrol. He took position and readied his aim, he signaled the drone to take out the farthest away enemy. Good thing he still had that drone.
‘They wont know what hit them, lets see if you still have it in ya old man’
He oppened fire, 4 quick shots, relocating from enemy to enemy, from the farthest away to the closest to him. A small sound in his earpiece told him the drone had done its job. He quickly went back while still aiming and put another shot in each of them, all 5 dropped in less than 3 seconds. Now it was just a matter of time before the base was alerted and they all were hunting his new unit.
He moved in close and made sure they were all dead, putting 1 more round in each of their heads, never hurted to check if they were truly dead. Once he was happy with the downed pirates he quickly went through their kit, nothing useful for him, some ‘nades, ammo and some comms. He quickly looked at the comms and decided to listen in.
“Group 1 to base, approaching on those intruders. Good thing we managed to install those costly sensors this week, according to it there are around 10 non marked guests. Patrols 3 to 10 are moving to pin them and the rest of us will go in as backup.”
‘God they are awefull at comms, fucking pirates’
The chatter continued but he managed to pick on the most important part already. Apparently they bought a nice area scanner that alerted them whenever a non marked lifeform entered the perimeter at around 1 to 2 km from the base. Seemed like a pain in the ass for Logan, too many wild life. If he had to guess that was why the fooliage around the perimeter of their base had been cut some and made less of a jungle and more like tree patches here and there.
He kept on moving, looking for the next group. He wanted to leave an opening for when they eventually got into contact with his new unit. His plan was simple enough, destroy the patrols in the middle, creating a nice exit and lack of fire from the enemy. He had picked the middle as there were more enemies there, it was always good to actually tacke the bigger thread head on while you still could.
His drone pinged him, the next group was up ahead. He continued to move silently, quietly and checked his gear before approaching the final meters to the ambush. All was good, no need for explosives. This group was smaller, 4 enemies total. He still instructed the drone to take out the farthest away enemy. He looked at the enemy through the drone feed.
‘No humans, guess its a good thing. But we must be pretty far away from Confederation space if there arent human pirates in this group.’
He observed the leader of the group was a Xuurian. He thanked his preparedness that he had some armor piercing rounds. Those fuckers were pretty tough, he was going after him first. It was a good thing he had positioned himself almost all the way to the back, made things easier.
As soon as he peeked out from cover he fired 3 quick shots and then came back, same as before. All in all 6 shots fired, a bit less than 2 seconds. He smiled to himself as he noted he was getting more and more into the zone as his old self, the killing machine his goverment worked so hard to make. The beep from the drone alerted him of another patrol, with 10 enemies and a vehicle coming torwards this location.
‘Guess thats fucking my luck’
He quickly decided to do a dirty trick he learned while serving. He grabbed some explosives and put them under the body of the Xuurian. He put enough to blow up a good 10 meter crate around the area, but this was going to alert everyone about his prescence. He just hoped the other enemies werent as close as this unit.
‘Guess this next patrol is group 1 from earlier as they have a vehicle. If I manage to take them out then their attack will be a guaranteed loss.’
He moved farther away, keeping an eye on the ambush location with the drone and having a firing line torwards it. He put himself in an observing position and proceeded to activate his stealth mode in the suit. This would make him invisible for up to 1 hour if he didnt shoot any guns or did some quick movements. How it worked was beyong him, he knew it created some distortion of light around him which made it seem as nothing was impeding the light hence he not being there, but he couldnt run or shoot with it.
‘This should prove usefull, doubt this pirates have encountered this tech on normal intruders before’
As he laid in waiting the drone notified him of 2 more patrols coming in on his position. Perhaps he should have put more explosives on the area. He knew he had taken out someone important when he killed the Xuurian, he just hoped they would all fall for his trap.
One more minute passed, he saw the first group approach, as soon as they saw the dead men and moved to secure the area. The vehicle advanced a bit and some unkown crab looking like xenos was on the back. He went down and proceeded to move torwards the Xuurian’s dead body. Two more Xuurians followed him closely.
‘Good, was not sure if 1 shot would have been enought to kill that ugly fucker’
He watched as the three xenos approached the body, once they were close enough that the crab looking one extended what could be considered an arm he hit the detonation button. A big explossion followed suit and he opened fire on the enemy. His first couple of shots hit the xenos closest to the vehicle, then he moved to the ones closest to him. In the following seconds after the initial explosion he managed to down 5 more enemies. But as he was moving to reposition the drone fired.
‘Shit’
The drone was supposed to fire if an enemy patrol was less than 20 meters away from his location and he hadn’t instructed it to stand down. He had no time to think, his instincts kicked in and he ducked. A couple of shoots hitting were he was heading just a mere instant ago.
‘Professionals? Just my fucking luck’