"WOLF WOLF WOLF "

"All right boys and girls that's our cue." Rutger spoke around his half chewed cigar.

For my first OP this wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind. The wolf designation was used for the four legged warbot because we didn't have wolves in Australia, so there could be no confusion as to what the emergency call to arms meant. It didn't matter if you were already in the trenches in the thick of battle or back at HQ taking a shit. If you heard the warning then you grabbed the biggest meanest stabby shooty thing you could find and went to work. Assuming you wanted to survive of course. And here we were, hunting the fucking things.

"You good kid?" I looked up at the Sergeants scared and pockmarked face, his mechanical left eye spinning as it retracted to focus on my face. I guess the terror was hard to hide, but I nodded never the less. Were we SAS. I had volunteered for this.

He laughed mirthlessly and slapped my shoulder. "'atta boy." Before pushing me forward along the alley.

"Spud's on point, move out."

I exited the alley between the destroyed buildings, the unbelievable scene of destruction bringing my mind to a sharp focus. I'd learnt during the carter course to not flinch as artillery shells impacted. I'd learnt to discern when a screaming missile was incoming or outgoing just from the sound. I could even tell with my eyes closed if someone was firing an infantry weapon at me or someone else far less lucky, the sound less 'whistley' and more 'snapy'. I couldn't help but wonder how useful those particular skills would be when all of those sounds and more combined into the cacophony that was my first live battle field.

Six hours thirty two minutes twenty nine seconds. I have no idea why that weirdly rather specific timeline entered my head at the same moment I saw it moving through the sky in the corner of my vision. The only reason I had spotted it was because it had been silhouetted by a rather large explosion nearby and my brain hadn't simply dismissed it as flying scrap.

I tracked the objects high arc as it sailed through the air, its trajectory abruptly halted as it slammed into the front of an already ruined building a hundred meters or so to our front. I took a knee and stared at it in confusion. It looked like some sort of shipping container. Shaking the cobwebs from my head at the thought of the enemy somehow weaponising shipping containers, I was forced to quickly reassess that opinion as the sides began shifting the nearby rubble, the thick hydraulic rams of the door forcing the large chunks aside as they pulled the doors open.

I didn't know what it was exactly, but that was hardly important because I didn't need to know, I just knew it wasn't ours. I snapped up my heavy rifle.

"Contact front!" I pulled the trigger.

Then shit started getting weird. I was neither proactive nor reactive to the wolf warbots during the following engagement, it was more like I was a puppet. I had done this before, and my body simply repeated the process on autopilot, knowing exactly what to do and when to do it in order to survive as though following through with a preprogrammed sub routine. All I could do was watch as though an outside observer, but I was far from passive about it, because I knew who was going to die and when. Screaming at myself to shot that first, duck that now, break left not right. I was trying to save my squad mates that on some higher level I knew were already dead.

A shiver ran down my spine, the drawn out combat had lasted more than a couple of hours, at least that's what it felt like. Now the final moment had arrived. The warbot dropped the mangled arm it had just torn from Kelly, our heavy gunner. I pulled the trigger on the grenade launcher she had been trying to reload when the warbot took her out. It's not supposed to be like this! I killed the last wolf the first time around! For some reason in the replay I was living the grenade launcher had misfired. I didn't bother trying to clear the weapon or reload it, I knew it was the last round, and I knew it was pretty much the only thing with enough impact and penetration to kill it.

The warbot stood in the middle of the rubble strewn street thirty meters to my front, the red light of its slitted eyes highlighting the blood dripping from the twin steel jaws of maliciousness and death. In a new twist to my recurring nightmare two figures stepped from the shadows a little behind the wolf. I couldn't help but look at the pair like they were idiots, the women each running a finger almost seductively along the sharpened armour of the warbots back as they walked at a carefree pace to stand at either side of the wolf but a meter or so to its front. The wolf didn't react to their presence, its full attention focused on me. It growled.

I didn't react either. I should have, the growl was new, didn't think they could do that. This was a different ending to the story I had known. I intuitively knew the women were french foreign legionaries, the french were our primary allies against the chinese invasion so their presence shouldn't have been a surprise. But their... uniforms, were far from standard issue. Covered neck to toe in skin tight body suits... no it was synth... skin... armour... how did I not know this? The tear drop shape of their smooth combat helmets hiding their faces from view. I let the thought drop of what it was they were wearing, distracted by the curves of the two women, didn't they have cybernetics under that armour as well or something? Knee high combat boots, belts hanging at odd angles from their hips with various devices of war attached, the handles of twin swords showing over their shoulders behind their heads. Oh that's right, their reapers, how could I forget that? Here to take my soul to the afterlife... no hang on, that's not right. I didn't die here.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The wolf growled again as another woman stalked forward, swaying her hips seductively as I watched. She scratched the wolf on the top of its head as though it were a pet that needed affection. She was watching me with a hunters gaze. The size of the anti materiel rifle slung across her back tried to make a mockery of her svelte, tight, hot little body. Just like the legionaries before her there was a sense of familiarity, I instinctively knew she could probably shoot of a flies foreskin at five hundred meters with that rifle if she really wanted to. Her long auburn hair tied back in a tight pony tail fell loose as I watched, covering the shaved sides of her head as she straightened. Combat boots, long pants that had been fabricated specifically for combat and to resemble antique jeans, and a black singlet top that barely covered the mounds of her breasts. The tattooed sleeves of her arms tantalisingly disappeared beneath her top to reappear and spread across her stomach and back. I knew she had been declined entry into the rapid intervention force group of the mexican special forces, just as I knew she had cute little angel wings tattooed on her shoulder blades even though I hadn't seen them yet. Perhaps she was an angel, here to take me to heaven? No... that's not right. I didn't die here.

I dragged my eyes from the mexican woman's lips as she licked them at the menacing growl of the wolf announcing a fourth girl emerging from the darkness behind it. She wasn't special forces, but I knew she was a soldier just by looking at her. The way she confidently walked past and to the front of the group, ignoring the wolf and the other women of the growing harem... err... crowd. What the fuck? That was a pretty weird and odd word mix up. Soldier she may have been, but she was clearly in civilian clothes. Well no, that wasn't right either. I knew that she and the mexican girl wore each others clothes... well except for tops. The latina girls tits were much larger, in fact she was constantly complaining she couldn't put heavy pistols in her shoulder holsters because her tits would get in the way. So to compensate she wore heavy pistols at her hips, slung on crisscrossing belts that reminded me of gunslingers from the old western movies. This woman wasn't here to reap my soul, and she wasn't here to guide me to heaven. She was here to protect me. She would always be here to protect me. Wether I wanted her to or not.

Her lips moved as she saw the realisation of what she was in my eyes. I shook my head in the negative and turned my ear to try and catch her voice on the wind, she just smirked at me as the wolf howled this time. It wasn't like the howl I had heard in the nature shows. It still brought a chill to my bones and made me want to piss myself, but it wasn't a howl intended to summon the pack. It was a howl of sorrow.

A tiny asian girl skipped from the darkness without a care in the world, huge tits, short skirt, and long pink hair bouncing all over the place in uncontrolled chaos as she danced. She twisted and twirled, cavorting and dancing merrily around the women and the wolf. It wasn't a sexual dance in any way shape or form, which was surprising considering she was dressed as what I could only describe as 'slutty businesswoman'. It was a dance of sheer joy, and she was... singing.

"My boyfriend's back and he's gonna really fuck you

Right up, right up, my boyfriend's back

When you see him comin', better hope that you can swal..."

"Baby!" She exclaimed, stopping her impromptu performance when she spotted me, a huge smile spread across her face.

When I didn't respond she tilted her head, big brown eyes watching me while she pouted at my lack of a response.

"Oh!" She twirled on the spot, the super tiny mini dress flicked up showing off her white panties cupping the perfect cheeks of her backside. I almost sighed at the sight of the mounds of side boob I could see from behind as she skipped towards the wolf. Yeah okay, so I'm a titty man, sue me. As attractive as the other women were, she was to put it quite simply... perfect in my humble opinion. That opinion was only reinforced as she stopped in front of the warbot and bent at the hips, again flashing her panties, giving me an eyeful of her sex that was framed within the perfect thigh gap.

"Mwhaa!" She kissed the wolf on the nose and stepped back, throwing me a wink over her shoulder then turning back around to watch what happened.

The wolf took a half step back and shook its head as though it had eaten something that didn't agree with its taste buds. Then it froze in place as though sensing something was wrong, or maybe it's mechanical joints had seized, it's entire body now vibrating violently. The vibrating quickly picked up in intensity, only its core visible, the edges a blur of motion. Then it just... collapsed. The individual components of its assembly separating and dropping to the ground to add to the quickly growing pile of disassembled components. Components that were somehow only electronic in nature, no armored plates.

The asian girl turned, smiling at me sweetly as she wiggled her eyebrows, clearly seeking my approval. Her body... I don't know, pixilated? Glitched? But only for a brief moment before again solidifying. If I had blinked at the time I would have missed it. The smile immediately disappeared and her eyes scanned the area suspiciously as though looking for something while her body quickly shifted between the two states for several seconds. Then she blinked and looked side to side as though noticing the other women in the ruined street for the first time.

The cute little asian girls face flushed red and became a mask of pure fury and hatred as she screamed. Drawing both arms back they morphed into long pointed blades from the elbows down. She dived at the first woman in her line of sight, intent on skewering her from behind.

"Dani!" I yelled in warning as I dove forward to save her.