There were no enemies on the supply road. Dinosaurs and Legions both kept their distance from clear-cut areas with human habitation. That was great for the Centurions supply chain. Not so great for people wanting to get into fights and score EXP. Still, it meant we made the seemingly long trip in record time. By alternating walking and sprinting, I got us to within spitting distance of Camp Goldrush within five hours.

A funny feeling started tickling the back of my brainstem when the smell of the place blew down to us on the wind. We weren’t within sight of the gates just yet, but we sure as hell were within smell of it.

“Fucking hell.” I dropped my head and snorted, padding along the forest floor. “This place we’re heading to? It smells like a damn garbage dump.”

“I don’t smell anything.” Angel was a tense weight on my back, one rifle braced against her thigh.

“Well, I sure as hell do. Rotten food scraps, human shit, dogs, used socks. And I don’t mean socks used inside of shoes. The guys here have been jerking it into the next millennium.”

“Noodles… You are screwed in the head.”

“That’s true, but it doesn’t change the fact this place smells like clogged shower drains and shame.” I dropped my head, a growl rumbling in my chest. “Are you sure Targent didn’t send us straight into a Hell Pigs orgy pit?”

Angel’s hands tightened on my shoulders. “If he did, we turn around and niner him.”

Half a dozen dogs began barking as we came within sight of the gate. Like Fort Hope, Camp Goldrush was surrounded by palisades. Unlike Fort Hope, the palisades were covered in moss and were sitting at about 30% durability. There were no human guards posted outside. Instead, there were six massive pitbull-looking dogs – chained, lunging and snarling at us at the ends of their leashes – and what looked like two crude machine gun-type things. I stared at one of them until a HUD highlight jumped up. [Crude Junk Turret: 450/450. Property of Primus Eisenblatter].

“Eisenblatter’s name gets me every fucking time.” I stared at the biggest of the dogs, the leader of the pack. He pulled his lips back, drool frothing down between his yellowed fangs. I pulled mine back as well, transforming my face into a skull-like mask, and picked up my growl into a rumbling, warning rattle. Several of the other dogs backed up, tails folding between their legs.

“Halt! Who goes there!” A man called from behind the walls, out of sight.

“Someone calling to us from the back,” I thought to Angel. “Wants to know who we are. Speak loud.”

“A Vigiles from Fort Hope!” she called back. “Captain Targent sent me!”

“Did we get word of a transfer?” I heard the man whisper to someone else.

“Don’t know,” the second man replied, too softly for human ears to hear. “Don’t think so. Go out and see if she’s hot.”

Angel, oblivious to the conversation behind the fence, patted Lulu as the slime bunkered down and quivered between my shoulder blades. “What’s the matter, Lulu?”

“Dooo,” Lulu replied miserably.

“Dogs,” I translated for Angel. “Doesn’t like ‘em, apparently.”

“Don’t worry about the dogs. Noodles will eat them all up.” Angel affectionately rubbed the slime on her ‘head.’ Lulu cooed appreciatively.

“We’ve got incoming. Two men. They both stink.” I let the tentacles out, darting them restlessly back and forth. The guard dogs went ballistic, ropes of foamy drool swinging as they lunged to the ends of their chains.

The gate opened, revealing two tired-looking Centurion soldiers in Grecian-style full face helmets. Their eyes widened as they laid eyes on me.

“Holy fuck! That’s a Reaper!” The first man – tall, gangly, with a very long neck and prominent Adam’s apple – gawped at us as he fumbled for the dog’s chain.

“Where the hell did you catch a friggin’ Reaper?” The second man belatedly noticed Angel as she dropped to the ground. He was shorter and chubbier than his buddy, and his eyes were wide and white in his face.

“What did they say?” Angel turned to me and signed. “I can’t see their lips past those stupid helmets.”

I relayed the gist of it, and Angel stiffened. She frowned at them, eyes flicking from their dirty sandals to their soiled tunics. “Are either of you officers?”

“Nope.” The taller of the pair gave her a half-hearted salute. “Cadet Colaks.”

“Cadet Ranus. U. Ranus,” the tubby guy snickered.

I felt Angel’s back stiffen, and her finger tense on the trigger of her rifle.

“Cadets Colaks and Asshole, you’ll address me as Vigiles or Ma’am,” she said crisply. “Targent sent us to assist the Primus.”

“He’ll sure be glad to meet you,” ‘Ranus’ replied, his voice dripping and oily.

“Shut up.” Colaks slapped his buddy over the back of this head. “Sorry, ma’am. Come with me. I’ll take you to the Primus.”

I eyed the cadets’ shabby uniforms. They were a far cry from the neat, disciplined soldiers of Fort Hope. I flared my nostrils, huffing out a blast of acidic air as we passed through the gates into the muddy compound beyond. “Get back on and ride in, will you? Something stinks about this place, and it’s not just the unwashed cum socks.”

All three of us were on high alert as we headed into the camp. Superficially, it resembled a Roman camp. The tents were in lines, the officers had nicer digs than the rank and file, and it was laid out approximately in the same regimented, rectangular design. That was about all the place had going for it. There was a big trash heap inside the compound, full of [Rotten Vegetables] and [Putrid Meat]. The latrines were built inside the confines of the camp, too, which explained the smell. Angel was getting a noseful of it now, sneezing as we passed by the buzzing trench with its crude wooden toilets. The camp bustled in the way that a prison yard bustled. Men huddled together, talking quietly and smoking. There were a lot of people drinking. Lone men with slow eyes, sipping from wineskins under the cover of open tents. Groups of three or four of them around camp fires, whooping and chugging and stopping only to ogle Angel as we headed for the center of camp. They tipped their hats to her face, but stared at her back like hungry wolves.

I got a sense of just how fucked Camp Goldrush actually was when we reached middle of town. A gibbet, stocks, and several wooden cages were set only about twenty feet from the commander’s tent. There were two guys being held in the stocks, both of them stripped naked and covered in mud. At least, I hoped it was mud.

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“What a dump,” I said, as Angel gently reined me to a halt and slid from my back to the ground. She landed with a squelch, grimacing. “Now I get why Targent assigned you here.”

“You know how I said we’d go back and niner the captain if this was a Hell Pigs camp?” She signed. “Well, I’m thinking about going back and doing it anyway. What the hell is Eisenblatter DOING here?”

I took a deep breath in the direction of the tent. The mingled aromas of sweat, grease and dirt roiled out from it. “If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say our Primus has been busy squatting in a pool of his own filth for the last couple months.”

Turned out I wasn’t too far off the mark. Eisenblatter’s tent only had one guard, his Greater Legion. The brute lay in front and to the side of the tent, snoozing with his chin resting on his paws. He looked kind of like a cross between a shark and a polarbear, with a spined dorsal fin, and radiated the smell of rotten fish. A bowl of water and fishbones lay next to him. The [Kassevanto] grumbled as we pulled up, but otherwise made no move to stop Angel as she clapped outside the half-drawn tent flap. “Primus Eisenblatter? It’s Vigiles Angel Maria Nunez, reporting from Fort Hope.”

There was a yelp, then the sound of scrambling from inside. “One moment! One moment!”

I groaned. “Hold up. I’m pretty sure he’s getting his pants… well… his kilt on.”

Angel made a face.

“Alright! Come iiiiin!” The Primus trilled.

Angel opened the tent flap and recoiled like she’d been slapped as the odor of Eisenblatter rolled out into the open. I was completely unsurprised to see that our man was as rolly-poly as a beachball. Fat, and not in a ‘I have big bones’ kind of way. No: this guy was corpulent, wheezing inside the confines of his Roman-style armor. His pink skin, wisps of red hair, and shrewd, piggish eyes made me think of Baron Harkonnen, the bad guy from Dune.

“How the fuck does someone end up in this condition inside of a FRAME?” I asked, wrapping my tail around my feet and closing my nostril vents against the smell. “This is a survival game. What does he do? Roll away from the dinosaurs?”

“No. He coasts along on donations. The guy is a Sponsored,” Angel signed back morosely.

“This guy? You have to be fucking kidding me.” I focused on him, and sure enough, he had a gold rim around his nameplate and my HUD flagged him as Sponsored. Sponsored by someone with a really specific fetish, I was willing to bet.

“Ahh, you’re our new transfer! Welcome, welcome.” Eisenblatter spread his ham-hock hands and beamed over his triple chins. “Such a fine young lady, yes, yes. What’s your name?”

“Vigiles Nunez. Like I said at the door?” Her voice was thick. She was trying not to breathe in too hard.

“We don’t need to be so formal. Call me William.” He grinned at her, but his attempt at being jovial was undermined by his expression of discomfort. The guy looked like he was about to stroke out any second. Pale, sweating, brows knitted with the effort to remain upright.

“Yes, sir, we do need to remain formal,” Angel replied, biting each word off at the end. “Did the captain brief you on our mission?”

“Uhh… no. He just told me that a remarkable-but-deaf sergeant and her Legions were being transferred here.” His pale blue eyes slid past Angel to me and Lulu. “And a truly incredible Legion it is, too. What’s its name?”

“HIS name is Noodles.” Angel was struggling to position her arms. She settled for clasping them in front of her belt, like a bouncer.

“Noodles? What a strangely whimsical name for such a terrifying creature.” Eisenblatter pulled a well-used rag from thin air like a magician, and used it to mop his forehead. I sniffed, almost without meaning to, drawing air deep into my sinuses.

“He’s scared shitless of us,” I remarked to Angel. “In part because he’s lying. I’m going to sit out of sight, and see – well, smell – if it’s me or you he’s nervous about.”

“Sure,” Angel signed back with one hand.

With Lulu still riding on my back, I rose and padded around the tent, coming to rest on the other side from the Kassevanto. If I lay down, I was able to smell the miasma wafting out from underneath the gap between the canvas and the wooden foundation of Eisenblatter’s office.

“Ooogh,” Lulu muttered.

“Yeah, I know. This is what I imagine a rhino’s taint smells like,” I thought back. “Still, it’s useful info. Targent’s setting us up for something bad, Lulu. I can feel it.”

She bobbed up and down in agreement.

“I will say that I’m very grateful the captain has sent us some new talent,” the Primus continued, voice slightly muffled by the tent wall. “You may have noticed that Camp Goldrush is, um, in rather rough shape. That isn’t because of anything I have done, you must understand. This is actually an emergency camp we set up after rebel elements managed to capture our old base, Fort Victory. We made a tactical retreat, but now we suffer near-constant incursions by these damn terrorists. The stress has bought morale to new lows.”

“Terrorists?” Angel echoed.

“They call themselves the Maroons,” Eisenblatter said. “Unaffiliated gladiators gone rogue. They’re nothing but bandits, raiders and saboteurs with no chance of taming Legions or beating the game, and because they can’t work together with normal people, they want to drag the rest of us down into the pit with them. Losers, the lot. They’re always skulking around here, picking off our patrols, laying traps. And yet, we have held the line. Very important, hmm hmm… We are a vital node in the supply chain protecting Fortuna, you see.”

The rancid air coming out of the bottom of the tent still reeked of fear. Eisenblatter’s, not Angel’s.

“Very important. Right.” Angel sounded about as dubious as I felt.

“Given you have such an exceptional Legion, I think I know the exact job for you,” Eisenblatter continued. “You see, we have been training a strike force to take back Fort Victory. Sergeant Vade is leading that team. Fantastic man. Anyway, I will have you accompany them in a combat role. How does that sound?”

“Fishier than Eisenblatter’s ass crack,” I thought to Angel.

She had to clear her throat at that one. “What are the mission details?”

“Vade’s – your – platoon will go to the Maroons base and capture as many people as possible,” Eisenblatter said. Something in his voice changed, made it sound more… conspiratorial. “We will interrogate the prisoners and see if we can win any of them over.”

“You mean torture,” Angel said flatly.

“No, no, no. Torture is the last thing on my mind,” Eisenblatter replied smoothly. “We will, uh, question them, perhaps offer them items to see if we can get them to realize how much safer the Jungle is with a strong, powerful guild like ours in control. We might even get some recruits out of it.”

“And the ones who don’t comply?”

“We will take them to Fortuna for evaluation, of course,” Eisenblatter said. “All very above board. Unlike the Hell Pigs and Maroons, we Centurions have standards for the treatment of prisoners. The point is, we need to minimize casualties, and I dare say your S-ranked friend out there has the tools to swiftly capture as many people as he has limbs.”

“Absolutely, sir.” Angel had her mask firmly on by now. She sounded both bland and chipper. “Do you have a more detailed mission brief?”

“Oh, uh… yes. I’ll send it to you. How about you and your Legions find a tent foundation and pitch camp? Take some time to settle in, maybe meet some of my boys.” The Primus sounded positively cheerful now – and the sour smell of fear was abating as his anxiety sharply decreased. He thought he’d sold her on it and was back in control.

“I’ll be sure to do that, sir.” Angel managed not to sound sarcastic as she clicked her heels. “By your leave.”

“Yes, no worries. Off you go. Uhh… dismissed, I mean.” I heard him scoot his chair back. The wooden legs groaned under his bulk.

Angel took a deep, cleansing breath of the comparatively fresh air outside as she joined us.

“The guy was sweating bullets up until the point you agreed to go on this mission, and then he suddenly relaxed.” I got to my feet, stretched, yawned, and fell into step with her as she turned and faced the camp. “Targent has been in his ear already, and you’re going to get fragged by this ‘Sergeant Vade’ guy.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re right,” she said, sweeping the camp to get her bearings. When she had then, she strode off toward one of the alleys between tents, cutting through on her way to the right row for guild members of her rank. She paused in front of an empty foundation, and set up a new, nice-looking tent on it. It came with a nameplate.

“Uooo…” Lulu peered doubtfully over my shoulder, then back toward the rest of the camp.

“You’re kidding, right?” I looked back at the few gladiators gawking at us down the row. It was like Block C at Fort Hope, but so much worse.

“It’s a decoy.” Angel drew the tent flaps closed. She scrawled her name on the nameplate with charcoal, dusted her hands, and whirled back around to march toward the camp exit. “You couldn’t pay me to sleep here. Let’s go find a big tree. I can build a hide and a bed up there.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.”