I wiped a streak of sweat from my brow as I pumped up the cooling from my poncho. It was still cold out, but the intense heat radiating from the Mouse was something else. I rolled out from under the truck, bringing along my tools. “Try it now!”
The driver hit the ignition. It churned for a few seconds, retching smog out the back tailpipe. Then, with a rough rumble, the Mouse roared to life. I tiredly stretched out, dropping the frown that’d been crossing my face ever since I walked into the place half an hour ago.
The driver called back. “Thank you, miss! Frank would’ve taken several more hours to get around to fixing it. Captain truly picked up a good ‘un this time.”
A hand dropped into my vision. I followed it up to an elbow and then- was that another elbow? Bizarre. It was flesh too. Not a hint of chrome in sight. I took the offered hand, popping to my feet to face the woman with interesting arms. I tried to to stare at them too much. Maybe I shouldn’t take that Double Jointed Perk after all…
She stood almost double my height, forcing me to crane my neck just to see her face. The woman smiled down at me broadly, stooping slightly to make it easier for me. “Hi! I’m Lia, one of your escort members. You’re… Zuku, right? The boss sent me over to getcha! Ah! It’s nice to meet you! Impressive work with the truck.”
Oh? I took a deeper look at her, taking in the more subtle notes of her appearance. She was startlingly beautiful, though a bit too frail and gangly. Several wands hung from her in holsters, though they looked a bit off. I checked them out with Aetherial Perception, surprisingly finding them to be almost entirely mundane in nature as if they were just sticks.
The rings on her hand, however, shined brightly. They gleamed with power, so much so that I had to momentarily shut off Aetherial Perception to get a read on their actual shapes. It was a bit difficult to tell, but they looked like maybe wolves? She was one of Wolf’s Magi then? This was my first time seeing one of them. Fox had the largest presence in Aythryn City by far.
“Yeah, nice to meet you too.” I should try to keep a good relationship with my escort. It would be a very bad idea to have a sour relationship with the people who’d be protecting me. ‘Accidents’ happen.
“You’re our new techie, right? So call how you guys can just fix stuff. Like with that truck! How’d you do it? Where’d you even learn how?! It always blows my mind how good people are at all that mechanical stuff. You look so young too!” Oh no, don’t tell me she’s one of those who just doesn’t stop talking…
I shook my head and packed up all my tools. “Chek. I uh, I learned by doing? Kinda. And I’d already driven a MOUS-345, so I had some advanced knowledge on what was probably wrong.” Land Vehicles to the rescue. That, combined with Technical Expertise, helped pinpoint exactly what was wrong and patch it up. Simple fix, really.
“C’mon, let’s head over to the Prowler. We’re Red-Six, by the way. T-1 is the big bulking APC leading the company out into the wastes, and the Golds are the Mice.” Lia stretched out her arms, the double crook of her elbows making it look like something was broken. “We’ll be heading out any minute now. We were just waiting for the Mouse to get fixed.”
”Nova.” I took one of my cheap, torn-up rags from my bag. Its original purpose was for Molotovs, though now it was delegated to life as a sweat rag. I wiped up the best I could, though I got the feeling I was just smearing the grease on my face more than anything. Maybe there was a self-grooming skill in Cleaning?
We walked around the dozen or so Prowlers, headed for the sixth back. A large man sat perched on the roof, leaning back on the mounted turret as he scratched away in a notepad- no, a sketchbook. A look of intense concentration settled on his face as he carefully sketched whatever it was that he worked on.
He looked up as we approached, though didn’t say anything as he went back to work. Lia chuckled to herself. “Oh, don’t mind him. That’s Yonrow, our resident artist. And strong silent type. He’s the gunner for the Prowler and the heavy weapons specialist as well as a host of other things. Very talented. He can put a mortar shell through a needle’s eye from miles away.”
”Over there,” Lia paused as she pointed out a man slumped over in the passenger seat. A hat covered his face as he peacefully slept without a care in the world. How enviable. “Is our leader. Sergeant Hampton. Don’t look like much, but his instincts are as sharp as a wolf’s. And last but not least-“
“Renold.” A man cut off Lia as he watched us approach. He leaned up against the driver's side door, letting out a puff of smoke as he toyed with a cigarette. His chrome hands casually twirled the thing around, flicking the butt off to the side as he withdrew another one. The top part of his thumb pulled off as a small flame burned to life. “The driver.”
Renold was entirely chrome out, every bit of exposed skin outside of his head either being metal outright or showing signs of subdermal armor. Well taken care of too. It had a glossy sheen to it as if the guy spent quite a bit of effort polishing the stuff.
A call came from somewhere as the groups around us started to load up in their vehicles. Some looked as bleary-eyed as I felt, for better or worse.
“I call driver side!” Lia happily shouted as she raced over to her chosen seat.
Yonrow, the gunner, didn’t even look up from his sketchpad as he jumped off the Prowler. He easily slid into the middle seat, pointing towards the control console for the turret as he went.
A sigh escaped me as I realized I would be stuck behind the sleeping leader. Sure, Lia needed more space than me, almost double at that, but surely I should have that one as the guest, no?
— — —
The Sentinel Prowler bounced sharply as we hit a particularly bad pothole on the road to Stuarton. The town had been abandoned for a long time, at least according to Renold, the driver of our particular Red-Six, so the road had fallen deeply into disrepair. It used to be a major highway, but now it was more sand than pavement.
It’d been several hours since we got on the road, and I was already starting to feel the heat through the poncho’s cooling effect. Not as bad as the others in the vehicle though. We had AC, but it was a rather weak unit compared to the blistering heat of the Outlands. It had to be at least somewhere around one hundred and fifteen if not twenty.
We were just behind the last of the Mice in the caravan, so we were basically constantly inside a small sandstorm kicked up by the four Mice in front of us. Thankfully, this model of Prowler was one of the enclosed cabin types, so we weren’t constantly getting pelted with bits of sand, but it was a near thing. Red-Five, sandwiched in between two of the Mice, was an open cabin model with only a windshield. That would’ve been brutal.
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The people around me in Red-Six? Sweating out a storm. Especially Lia. She looked incredibly uncomfortable bunched up in her seat. Being incredibly tall and gangly seemed to really suck when traveling. Maybe my- erm, stature was a blessing in disguise? At least her odd mutation of double elbows helped her fold up into her seat more easily.
Anyway, Red-Six was the one supposed to protect me. Weird having a group specifically to protect me, but I wasn’t complaining. From what the ever-talkative Lia said, they were the group typically in charge of taking care of Frank when he came along on a job. I was with people well used to taking care of a non-combatant.
Being designated as a non-combatant amongst an entire PMC company was a unique experience. I still hadn’t decided if I wanted to help fight at all if it came up. On one hand, I was only paid for the tech side of stuff and bullets were expensive. On the other hand, the more I helped the less likely I was to die or end up injured in a prolonged fight. I guess I could just play it by ear.
“Ugh- are we there yet?” Lia asked for the hundredth time since we set off.
Renold, the only one other than me engaging with the woman, sighed deeply. “No.”
Lia stretched out her long arms, bending in a way that would look like the arm was broken for anyone else. ”When will we be?”
”When we get there. Stuarton isn’t even the halfway point to the Deseran Family’s temporary camp.” Renold shot a look up into the rearview mirror.
I pushed my earbuds into my ears further and turned up the music, drowning out their conversation as I looked out the window. Too bad I couldn’t be like the care-free Hampton and just go to sleep…
At least the view wasn’t atrocious. It wasn’t spectacular, but it wasn’t horrible. 'Course, I was looking through a localized sandstorm the entire time so the exact details were a bit unclear. Most of the time it was just twisting and turning dunes with the occasional broken street sine dangling in the wind. This road once saw thousands of travelers, and now it was merely a ghost of its former self.
A bullet-ridden sign, barely attached as it dangled in the wind just above the road, sat in front of us. It was once a vibrant green, but it had long been sand-stripped to a silvery hue and sun-bleached. The words that once adorned its surface were barely recognizable. Twenty miles to Stuarton.
Just as with the road to Sunderland, burned-out cars and blown-apart trucks were fairly common. Unlike the road to Sunderland, they weren’t restrained to just the sides of the roads. Occasionally a call would come from the front about debris, though mostly the obstructions were just rammed through by the Schweigon International Armored Personnel Carrier leading the caravan. It was a beast of a vehicle, and its destructive capabilities were a sight to behold as we followed its path.
Small dunes, various scattered debris covered by wind-blown mounds of sand, popped up in groups on occasion, merging into the larger dunes in the distance. So much sand. So little life out here. Though life wasn’t nonexistent. I could see cacti here and there or tracks of nocturnal wildlife. Or, even more apparent, tracks in the sand from other voyagers. Probably Nomads of some kind considering so few people leave the cities these days.
They must’ve been recent too considering they had yet to be hidden by rogue gusts of sand. I wonder-
“Zuku!” Lia’s low-pitched voice squealed like a stuck ganger. “What do you think?”
”About?” I replied, forcing my gaze away from the desert surrounding us to pay attention to the Prowler’s cab.
Yonrow was still drawing away, making a particularly highly detailed sketch of… some woman? Hampton was up and active though. The team leader looked around like a wild rabbit weary of predators.
“About us slowing down… Did you not hear them on the radio? Captain Roger spotted a bunch of debris up ahead.” Lia informed me.
”And?” Ram through it like we had the past couple hours, right? Hmm… or maybe not. Let’s take a bit more critical look at this. We were a caravan transporting four Mice full of goods. Probably marked by a Hawk or other Nomad scout as soon as we left the city. Ambush? It was probably what the frontrunners suspected.
I looked out the window again, this time with a far more critical eye. What was once just tracks through the desert took on a whole different feel. It was only one vehicle’s tracks. A scout maybe? And the small dunes everywhere. Could they be ambush points?
As I started to look around, I recognized a low vibrato from Insight tingling through my body. So faint I couldn’t even feel it till now. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about my guesses, but-
“Something’s wrong,” Hampton said, his voice a low timber. He pulled out a radio from somewhere and clicked it on as he looked at the surrounding dunes. “Hey, Captain, something doesn’t feel right.”
“Chek…” A moment later, a call came once more. “All units, this is Red-Omega. Defensive positions. Suspected ambush a quarter of a mile ahead.”
There was movement in the Prowler as Yonrow finally put down his sketch pad and pulled a terminal down from the ceiling. He tapped on it several times before a whirring sound came from above. “Turret primed.”
The radio crackled to life as Hampton picked up his rifle and clicked the safety off. “T-1, pull ahead and check the wreckage. Could just be nothing. Red-One, Two, and Three get up here. Gold units, prepare countermeasures. Circle up for a blockade. The rest, prepare for engagement.”
The massive Mice shifted as their engines noisily spun to life. Instead of the mostly single file line, we’d held this entire time, the four of them pulled together, blocking in a diamond area.
Sergeant Hampton locked out at the dunes before laying down some orders. “Our priority is to protect the asset, as usual. Yonrow, shoot anything that approaches. Renold, pull us into the blockade. Lia, eyes?”
Lia gleefully laughed to herself as she clasped her hands together. A moment later, I spotted a massive wolf pop through the Aether. It was at least as big as the Prowler and had a fine silver coat. Not materialized yet, though it was close enough to do some damage if things went south. Its ferocious eyes flicked to me, pausing momentarily as our eyes met in a silent staring contest.
I won as Lia sent it a command. The wolf tilted its head toward her before nodding and breaking into a sprint towards the front. “In a sec, Sarge.”
”Chek. Uh- Zuku? If anything happens, stay in the Prowler. If, for whatever reason, you can’t and none of us are with you? Run to Gold-4 and take cover.” Hampton addressed me for once. For being passed out the entire time, he seemed oddly reliable as a leader.
”Sure.” No reason to refuse an order to run away and save myself. It did feel like I was treated like a baby who couldn’t shoot back, but whatever. I did say I wasn’t very skilled.
Lia chanted under her breath so quietly I couldn’t pick out what she was saying. It didn’t help that it sounded as if it was in another language. A moment later, the air trembled as an ethereal screen condensed in front of her. She flicked her hand forward, sending the screen to float just in front of Sergeant Hampton as it expanded to about the size of a TV.
I looked around the seat at the screen. It took a few moments before I realized we were looking through the wolf’s eyes. Could Corvid do something like this? The silver wolf watched an eight-wheeled monster of a vehicle roll forward. Its heavily armored body was painted tan, though it had the Crimson Companies large red cross painted all over it. A large turret, one that shot shells instead of bullets though was just shy of a tank’s, sat on top pointed forward.
Several other various guns poked out from all sides, giving it a look similar to a porcupine. Several other turrets—of which I recognized a majority of them typically found as automated security defenses—welded on top didn’t help the APC’s porcupine look. A massive ram was bolted on the front, and it’d definitely seen quite a bit of use since we got out here. The thing was a beast. There’s a reason it was in front.
Said beast picked up speed, intent on ramming aside the debris just like it’d done on the way out here. Ambush be damned it seemed. The APC charged as the incorporeal silver wolf adjusted positions to watch better-
A fireball exploded from underneath the APC, completely obscuring the vehicle in bolts of red flames as shouted orders erupted from the radio.