Before they even got close to Point Beta, Jacob’s assignment was updated.

[ASSIGNMENT: FATEFUL HOUR]

[DANGER RATING: HURRICANE]

[OBJECTIVE 1: ASSIST LOCAL FORCES IN REPELLING ENEMY URGEK ASSAULT]

Optional: Eliminate Warchief Garugor, local urgek commander; dead preferable.

[REWARDS:]

2 000 000fl

[OPTIONAL REWARDS:]

1 common Relic from reward pool

Someone had already taken out the warchief. Jacob groaned inwardly. Aside from having an excuse to shed some blood, that Relic was the biggest reason why he had come along in the first place. And if the warchief was already dead, that probably meant the defenders were launching a successful counterattack. His chances of getting to do any actual fighting were looking slimmer by the second.

They arrived at Point Beta about an hour before dawn. Days on Rust were approximately 32 hours long, so it was later in the day than it felt.

The camp was on fire. Lanky demons wandered among the burning tens, silhouetted by the orange light. Only a smattering of bright muzzle flashes near the center gave any indication that there were survivors left at all.

Jacob had worried for nothing. It certainly didn’t look like their side was winning.

Steelfeather set the Dancer down along with the other ships. Seven heroes formed up with a company of soldiers. Two of the ships took to the sky again to offer fire support.

Jacob pulled on his blindfold and engaged his Nethersight, allowing the soldiers to begin engaging the nearest stray demons with focused bursts of automatic rifle fire that proved reasonably effective.

A thick blanket of death essence still hung over the ruined encampment, allowing him to get a decent overview of the surroundings. He quickly became aware of a larger-than-average signature some distance off that might have been the warchief, and whistled for Fenris to follow him.

A group of hairless, hunch-backed demons halted their advance. Jacob ripped the eyes out of the first one, leaving it howling and kicking its legs on the ground in agony. He had the wolf to dispense with the other three, letting him gnaw at the corpses once he was done as a treat.

Despite the state of the camp, there were less attackers than he would have expected. Dead urgeks littered the place, but he saw no live ones. No sign of downed warships, either. He couldn’t imagine that this was all of them. Were they waiting somewhere in ambush for reinforcements to arrive? That would be awfully clever for their kind.

After two more run-ins with weak strays, they began to flee at the sight of him. Depressingly boring. He found the corpse he was looking for, a huge blubbery mountain of an urgek clad in ornate armor. One of his arms had been hacked off, and his head had been torn from his shoulders, along with several deep gashes along his body and slivers of fat and muscle sheared off.

That could only be Warchief Garugor. He wondered what hero had done that to him. Most he knew of were a little too PG to leave an enemy in that state.

Steelfeather had the camp cleared out quickly with only marginal assistance from the others, popping the completion notification. Jacob joined the others to question the survivors. There were a little under three hundred of them, some being injured or non-combatants. The general in charge had been killed, and the highest ranking officer still alive was one Captain Vickers.

Once he had received basic care inside one of the intact tents, Vickers was questioned about how the situation had gotten so bad. He explained that Warchief Garugor had waded through gunfire and shattered the shield himself, allowing his cohorts to enter the camp and tear through the defenders. Most heroes had been killed, including Bombardier, one of the big-shot heroes from Mars.

“So… who killed Garugor, then?” Jacob asked. “I saw the body. It didn’t look close. Someone tore through him, literally.”

“It was one of their own,” Vickers replied. “I’ve got no idea why. I didn’t get a great look, but it looked like just a regular grunt that did it. I guess he was the guy in charge after that, because the urgeks fell back by his order and exfilled in one of those warships, leaving the demons behind to keep us pinned down.”

“I can’t say I’m an expert, but I imagine power struggles like this might be common among urgeks,” Steelfeather said. “That being said, a threat like the one you described being taken down in such a fashion warrants immediate action. I’ll head out to deal with him.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

There was no assignment involved with that, and Jacob wasn’t feeling quite so bloodthirsty as to work for free, so he let Steelfeather go off on his own after Vickers told him the vague direction that the urgeks had fled in. He disappeared on the Dancer, and the others set about extinguishing fires and re-establishing defenses to help the defenders get back on their feet.

Jacob wouldn’t be getting paid for that, either, but he imagined he would look like the worst kind of heartless bastard if he didn’t help out, so he put his back into it. The burned woman was there, too. Interestingly enough, she didn’t put out the fires directly despite her fire-related powers, suggesting that she couldn’t manipulate it entirely at will.

He hadn’t trapped a non-demon before, but he approached Garugor’s body while the last of his essence was still leaking from him and tried using the Deady Bear. After a bit of prodding, he got the Relic to suck up what remained of the alien’s soul. Maybe he could get some sellable intel out of him later.

Further reinforcements were sent out from Point Alpha and from orbit, bolstering the camp with a large force of combots as well as a group of thune mages that immediately set to work repairing the wards and raising another bubble shield.

They waited until mid-morning, but Steelfeather never returned. Then an automated System distress signal came through from his ship, which couldn’t be a good sign.

Steelfeather is the real deal, too. Could that new urgek guy really have taken him out just like that?

There was only one way to find out.

Jacob joined three other heroes in checking on the distress signal, going up in an RRH-sponsored ship. They tracked down the signal to a strip of rocky badlands, the Dancer crashed and broken into smoldering pieces. Using his Nethersight, it didn’t take Jacob long to find the S-Rank, his corpse discarded about a hundred meters from the wreckage. He had been cut clean in half, and was already cold to the touch, stone dead. There were sprays of urgek blood on the ground as well.

Jesus Christ. Steelfeather was one of the toughest heroes there is. Just what kind of strength would it take to do this to him?

Whoever this newcomer is, he’s looking more dangerous by the minute.

Interesting.

There wasn’t an official assignment for him yet, but Jacob imagined that would soon change. When the assignment came in, maybe he would try his hand at it. Steelfeather was dead, but now Jacob had learned enough not to go in half-cocked against this thing. He’d think of something a bit more clever.

It would probably mean punching above his weight regardless, but he had an urge to push his skills to the limit. He hadn’t had a decent opponent since Suttrakk.

The burned woman joined him out there, sitting down in a deep squat. Somehow it looks strange seeing her in clothes, wearing just a t-shirt and sweatpants. She extended her rough palm out towards Fenris. He sniffed her, then licked her hand.

“Interesting,” she said in her hoarse, monotone voice, nodding towards the body.

“Doesn’t freak you out?”

She poked Steelfeather’s limp cheek with a finger. “Nah. I don’t feel that kind of thing anymore.”

“Must be nice.”

She shrugged. “Boring, sometimes. At least this is looking like a change of pace.”

“If you want to kill it, you’ll have to get in line.”

She smiled an ugly, scar-stiff grin. “Only if you’re faster.”

Jacob pulled out a cigarette and fumbled for his lighter, but she lit it for him with a sparking finger. When he went to put it in his mouth, she held out her hand expectantly, and he gave it to her with a sigh. He pulled out another for himself, and she lit that one as well.

“You part of that Last Generation deal?” he asked before taking a long drag.

“Yeah,” she said with a puff of smoke. “Lucky me, right?”

“What are you supposed to be?”

“They call me the Witch.”

“On account of the fire.”

“Pretty much. And the screaming. I have a bit of a problem with that.”

“On account of being on fire.”

“Pretty much.”

“Do I need to introduce myself?”

“Nah. I know who you are.”

She finished her cigarette in silence and left. Jacob soon followed.

Steelfeather’s helper had been found in the wreckage—alive, but only barely. After fetching Steelfeather’s body, they rushed straight back to Point Gamma to have her treated. The thunes worked on her all day, and that night they announced that she was likely to pull through.

The woman—whose name was Reardon—had been Steelfeather’s handler. She was questioned by the higher-ups, and gave a brief account of what had happened to the hero. Apparently the urgek had emerged from his ship after downing the Dancer and agreed to fight one-on-one. It had been close, but the urgek got the upper hand and cut Steelfeather with a huge greatsword.

The coalition was keen to put down whoever had killed one of their best, but with no name or solid identity to put to him, they were unable to create an official assignment.

Seeing as how he had a horse in the race, Jacob thought he’d try to help them along. He pulled out the Deady Bear in his cabin on the Quickdraw and had his System set up a two-way translation.

[TRANSLATING TO/FROM URGEK COMMON…]

The purple teddy glared up at him from the floor, but seemed to understand that resistance was futile after scrunching his hopelessly soft, floppy arms.

“Warchief Garugor, is that right?” Jacob asked.

The teddy did not reply.

“You must be pretty pissed off at the guy who killed you.”

Still no response.

“If you tell me who did it, I’ll kill him for you. I’ll even let you watch.”

Nothing.

“Or I could just piss your soul away into the void. Your choice.”

The teddy looked up at him for a long while. Then, finally, he said: <>

“Very good. I appreciate your cooperation.”

<>

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

<>

“What kind of ‘something else’?”

The teddy refused to elaborate. After Jacob’s next few questions went unanswered, he eventually gave up with a sigh and shrunk the Deady Bear back into a button.

They better pay out big for this one.