“I can see the beach up ahead!” Srell said loud enough for his teammates to hear him.

“Finally.” Lorias said while he gripped his PAW tight.

They’d made it through the musty jungle, having skulked about to avoid any enemy patrols. Though their armor rendered them invisible to most forms of thermal imaging, they still had to move in a careful and coordinated manner to prevent their motion from being detected. They stuck to the most overgrown areas they could find, so that their bodies were as occluded as possible. They’d simply followed Ursun, who in turn was being led by the map displayed on the screen on his arm.

The air was hot and humid, and they’d been walking through the jungle for over twenty minutes. Each of them was beginning to feel the strain of their mission wearing them down. Jaik was the most tired of them all, as he’d carried the mysterious young man on his shoulder for what felt like a kilometer with little rest. The thought of finally being able to rest aboard the ship spurred them on, but they knew that it wouldn’t come easily.

“Enemy contact! They’re on the beach directly ahead of us, and they’ve set up anti-air artillery. The ship can’t scoop us up until we get rid of these guys.” Leanna explained their situation as it was told to her by their ship’s co-pilot.

The pilot had the ship hovering in the air high above them to provide tactical support and to avoid detection. The co-pilot maintained the line of communication between RED-1 and the Titian. To avoid their radio communication from being intercepted and decoded, Leanna and the Titian utilized a form of bio-encryption that kept their messages undecipherable to their enemy's electronic equipment. By using protein chains as encryption keys, it essentially became mathematically impossible to decrypt them without knowing the protein chains ahead of time.

Ursun and the rest of his group were still under the cover of trees, several yards away from the occupied beach where the Queen’s military force was waiting in ambush. They’d wasted no time setting up a small mobile position exactly where the Red Wolves were headed. Ursun was sure that they’d tracked their movements through the jungle. But the mercenaries had planned for that possibility.

“Are there any more of the queenies nearby?” Ursun asked Leanna, who began scanning all visible and non-visible wavelengths around them with her powerful glasses.

“Nope, just the soldiers on the beach, sir. And they don’t appear to be headed this way.“ Leanna said confidently.

“Alright, it’s howling time.” Ursun said with a wild smile on his face. “Jaik, lay the target down and wait here until we’re done. I’ll signal to you when it’s safe to bring him to the retrieval point.”

Jaik nodded silently to his commander, and did as he ordered. Jaik gently laid the slumbering man onto a soft patch of grass, and sat beside him to watch over their target. The man’s nude body had been sweating for some time, and his skin glistened in the sunlight while he remained motionless on his back. Jaik’s eyes danced across the man’s body, checking for any cuts or scrapes from their trek through the jungle. Jaik was astonished when he didn’t find any signs of even a minor injury.

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With a waving motion of his hand, Ursun signaled for the rest of his team to duck down and begin crawling along the underbrush of the wooded area they were still in. They were on slightly higher ground than the beach, so they could make out their enemy even while they crawled covertly towards them. After making it to a rocky outcrop at the edge of the tree line, they took a moment to analyze their enemy’s formation and numbers. The mercenaries were only about forty meters from the soldiers.

“Looks like twenty of them down there, with plenty of firepower already set up.” Srell said.

“Two automated turrets, an anti-air gun, and a hover-drone. They’re serious.” Leanna added.

“Get the howlers out. Lorias, shoot yours at the mobile turret on the left. Srell, shoot yours at the mobile turret on the right. Leanna, shoot yours at the largest group of soldiers at your one o’clock. I’ll shoot at the other group with mine, the group at your ten o’clock, Leanna.” Ursun ordered.

Each of the four of them withdrew a small tube attachment for their PAWs, as well as a silver, egg-shaped projectile, from their gear belts. They connected the tubes to their PAWs, and then inserted the silver ammo into the tubes. Each of them aimed and then fired their weapons immediately after Ursun fired his. When the projectiles made contact, they each created a powerful spherical shockwave that essentially pulverized anything within their blast radius. Ten of the soldiers were caught in the blasts, and were killed by the high energy noise that ripped through their bodies. The overpressure from the sound waves was so potent that it even damaged the metallic construction of the turrets, rendering them inoperable.

A howling sound could be heard at the time of each detonation, leading to the weapon’s unique name. The mercenaries each only carried one of the potent weapons each mission, as the howlers were very difficult to mass-produce.

“With me!” Ursun yelled before getting up from the ground and wielding his coilgun.

He was soon firing high-speed metal balls at the remaining soldiers, with Leanna, Srell and Lorias close behind him. Leanna shot at the hover-drone, knocking it out of the air before it could begin firing at them from its aerial position. Lorias and Srell rushed towards the car-sized anti-air artillery, shooting at whatever soldiers tried to stop them. The Red Wolves’ blitz attack caught the Queen’s forces completely off-guard, and the mercenaries dispatched the small contingent quickly. Before long, Srell and Lorias had deactivated the anti-air weapon, severing its power supply and destroying its onboard computer.

“That should do it!” Srell yelled to Ursun and Leanna once he and Lorias left the broken machine.

“Clear!” Leanna yelled after shooting the last surviving soldier before Ursun could aim his unwieldy coilgun at them.

Ursun gave each of his three teammates a congratulatory nod before making his way back to the wooded area to begin escorting Jaik and their target.

“Jaik, the coast is clear.” Ursun radioed his youngest teammate.

“Roger. On our way.” Jaik replied with a wave of his hand, barely in eye shot of Ursun.

Just when Jaik was pulling the sleeping man up onto his shoulder again, a shot rang out from a shaded area deeper within the forest. A hot pain seared through Jaik’s right thigh, and he fell hard onto his side. He tried to look down at his leg, to see the extent of the damage, but another shot loudly echoed through the forest before he could tilt his head downwards. The second shot was fired closer to him, and just nearly missed his ear. Jaik frantically began to twist his body around to face the young man he’d been charged to protect, ready to pull him out of the line of fire. But to Jaik’s further shock, the young man was gone.

Right when Jaik started to look around the area for the man, he felt a strong arm yank him across the leafy ground with impressive speed. Jaik looked up and expected to see Ursun rescuing him. But Jaik’s mouth dropped open when he instead saw his previously-asleep ward dragging him along. The arm that the mystery man was pulling Jaik with had become extremely muscular, and bulged with every step he took. Jaik also saw that the man’s eyes glowed with a bright green color. The man stared ahead towards the beach with fearless focus, even with more shots firing off behind him.

In a matter of seconds, Jaik had been dragged out of the forest and onto the beach. The strange man left Jaik at Ursun’s feet, and then stared at the mercenary team’s leader. Ursun, who was pointing his coilgun directly at the man, didn’t know how to respond, especially when he realized that the man was looking at him with eyes of gratitude. Before either of them could speak, several gunshots began to be fired their way.

The mystery man reflexively turned around and raised his hands in front of himself. His eyes flashed a bright white, and his right arm returned to its normal shape. A wall of light appeared in front of his hands and stopped the barrage of bullets that threatened to kill him, Ursun, and Jaik. Ursun stood dumbfounded at the new development that unfolded before him.

“What the…” Ursun started to say.

But before Ursun could finish, the man in front of him turned his head around enough to make eye contact with Ursun, and then said, “My name is Prism, and I won’t let them hurt any of you again.”