D'khara blundered through the underbrush, yanking at the thorns that snagged his shirtsleeve and stomping the brush flat.

"Wow," Roger said with genuine awe. "You are loud."

"You're loud," D'khara growled. It was a bald-faced lie; Roger slipped smoothly from cover to cover while barely disturbing a single leaf or blade of grass. The woods seemed to avoid him. D'khara, on the other hand, was no friend of the forest. Branches and thorns and leaves with velcro surfaces reached out to grab him as he passed.

He blasted through another clump of foliage, cursing and trailing vegetation. The mosquitoes, unfazed by his swearing, supped freely from his exposed flesh. He swatted ineffectually at them. Roger, of course, was unaffected by the insects. Whether through affinity or disinterest, the mosquitoes left him alone.

"Are we close to the first cache, at least?" D'khara groused.

Roger gazed at the map on his datapad, thought about it for a moment, then turned the datapad upside down. With a birdlike tilt to his head, he studied the map some more.

"There," he hissed, pointing one finger-claw at a small hump of land in the middle of an endless, stagnant body of water.

"On that island? Why would they put a weapons cache on an island? And how are we supposed to get out there?" But Roger was already splashing into the water.

D'khara grimaced. He stepped experimentally into the muddy water. His boots vanished as soon as they sank beneath the muddy brown surface. He stepped further forward into the murk and the water rose to his calves.

Setting his jaw, he stomped forward, diligently ignoring the water pouring in over the tops of his hobnail boots.

As he soldiered forward, the water didn't get any deeper, but stayed about at the same level. The whole area was like a huge shallow lake, dotted with cypress trees, with this one bit of land rolling up out of the middle of it.

D'khara found himself tripping on cypress knees, old roots that grew up beneath the lake but stayed just below the surface of the water. After the third one of these near misses, he was pouring out a steady stream of quiet curses, feeling his way with each foot before stepping forward.

He raised his eyes to gauge his distance to the island, and spotted Roger at the top of the tallest tree on the island, hanging dramatically from the tree with his legs and one hand wrapped around the trunk, leaning out with the other hand shading his eyes.

"Roger!" D'khara yelled as quietly as he could. "What are you doing?"

"I'm a pirate!" Roger called back in a loud clear voice.

"Get down! Someone is going to see you!"

"But. So many skies!"

"Get! Down!"

Roger blew a raspberry at him, and dropped from the tree, causing D'khara's heart to stop for a brief moment. Roger lazily caught himself with one hand around another branch further down, swinging himself to another, then another, making his way down.

D'khara stomped forward, prepared to give Roger a piece of his mind, and firmly set his foot on top of one of the round, slippery cypress knees.

His foot shot out from under him, and he slammed face-first into the swamp so hard that his head rammed the silty ground under the water.

He yanked himself back up, coughing and sputtering, with siltwater streaming from his sinuses. He sat in the swamp, gasping and coughing for several minutes as he regained his equilibrium.

When he was able to breathe more or less normally again, he found Roger sitting on the sandy bank nearby, looking concerned.

"Miss Crawly is in love with me," Roger confided.

"Let's just find the weapons cache, all right?"

----------------------------------------

The weapons cache on the island was, fortunately, unguarded, otherwise Roger and D'khara's performance would have drawn a crowd. Drab black fiberglass crates were stacked haphazardly in a clearing, with no apparent rhyme or reason.

"Now we're talking," D'khara said, rubbing his hands together.

"I wasn't talking," Roger said.

Ignoring this, D'khara popped the clasps on one of the crates. Lifting the lid revealed a row of three rifles racked in the case.

D'khara pulled out the pouch of tools he'd brought with him and considered the weapons. He lifted the first of the rifles from the crate. A Borka Automat, but a much more recent model than anything found in the Riotfish HQ. The fundamentals didn't change much, though. With practiced ease, he field-stripped the weapon, lifting out the trigger group, and using a punch and hammer from his kit, drove one of the pins out of the machinery. He slotted the trigger group back into place and re-assembled the rifle.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"See Roger, without that retention pin, the trigger won't re-engage with the sear once the action is cycled, so it won't reset. They'll be able to fire the first shot, but then they won't be able to pull the trigger again. Neat, huh?"

"I'm magical!"

D'khara did the same to the other two rifles in the crate and moved on to the next crate, which was smaller than the one he'd just gone through.

He popped the latches and lifted the lid. The crate held a single large weapon. D'khara's breath caught.

"That's beautiful," he breathed.

Nestled in the crate was a classic weapon from the Second Corporate War, a Strauss .30 caliber machine gun. He reverentially lifted it out.

The bluing caught the harsh sunshine and smoothed it along the barrel, turning it into a gentle gleam that shone off its clean lines and heavily chamfered edges. The weapon was designed to be belt-fed, but it could also take a comical rotary magazine mounted on top.

"I can't destroy this," he said. "It's a work of art. Not many of them have survived this long."

"Do you want it?" Roger asked, making an outrageous face.

D'khara grew very still.

"Well, I hadn't thought about it, but now that you mention it, yes, I want it. I want it very much. It wouldn't be a danger to us back at the camp, would it? Do you think Fleer would mind? I mean, it's a little silly but--"

His eyes fell on another crate, identical in size, and an idea sparked in his brain.

"We're taking these two back with us," he said firmly.

"Only if, you have pants!" Roger said.

"Roger, do you ever say anything that makes sense?"

"Always! I'm a logician! A logicician! A logograph! I'm smarty!"

D'khara sighed, and started opening the next crate.

----------------------------------------

Little Timmy and Oliver peeped over one of the equipment crates surrounding the enemy location. They'd found a few encampments, mostly for sleeping and eating, but this seemed to be the primary base of operations.

Soldiers lounged around the grassy area, napping near the campfire or idly playing with their datapads. Weapons lay scattered around, some laying on the ground, some leaning against trees, and almost none within arm's reach of anyone. Uniforms, where they were worn, were sloppy and ill-kempt, and the whole area reeked of laziness and indiscipline.

There were perhaps fifteen soldiers here. Clearly, they were not the only ones, some drifted out while others drifted in. Little Timmy didn't recognize the uniforms. They were starkly generic, and the only markings were the requisite logos-- a left-pointing arrow followed by the letters "R/I".

The open area was part of an open stretch in the woods, a gently winding line of cut trees and cleared vegetation wide enough for a cargo truck to pass through. Some shells and gravel had been brought in to firm up the muckier parts of the ground.

"Interesting," Oliver said. "This entire clearing is almost complete. I think they're nearly ready to begin their operation."

Little Timmy rolled his eyes.

"Uh, no? The gash dead-ends before Cryocorp. They still have hundreds of feet of woods to clear. Remember? Like, we just looked at it?"

"That's deliberate, on their part. If they make too much noise, or break through early, Cryocorp will know they're coming. That will ruin their element of surprise. They'll probably finish opening that up while they attack. They've certainly got the manpower for it."

"Whatever. Who are these guys anyway?"

"I don't recognize the logo. Probably mercenaries of some ilk. Judging by the quality of their uniforms, I can't imagine they're very expensive mercenaries."

"Ha! Losers."

"To be fair, Little Timmy, we're not very expensive mercenaries."

"Yeah, but we're awesome."

"Hmm. In any case, it's an odd choice for them to put their base of operations right here where the gold will be coming through. I wonder if they have some other encampments further out."

"Uggggh. Look, you've been dragging me all up and down this gash all day. I say we call it done."

"I find it hard to believe, but you may be right. This looks like an ideal spot for an ambush. The trees close together here, and there's rough land on both sides of the clearing."

"Gash," Little Timmy corrected.

"Hm. In any case, that should keep them from trying to bull through the forest directly. The, uh, road, if you will, curves west here. That will limit the ability of the ends of the convoy to support each other."

Oliver thought for a minute.

"Mining would work well here. We could place a few mines just around that bend. When the lead vehicle sets them off, I can disable the trailing vehicle with my Zentech cannon. That will trap the entire convoy between the wreckage, since the path here isn't wide enough for any vehicles to move past each other or turn around. Of course, that only works if they're driving very close to one another. It will make our job more difficult if they're experienced enough to spread out."

One of the soldiers, with a "Hey guys, watch this!" took a running start to leap over the campfire. Just before his jump he tripped, sprawling full-length onto the fire. He rolled out with a scream, patting out his clothes to the laughter and jeering of his peers.

"Then again," Oliver amended, "they don't strike me as forward thinkers."

Oliver nodded as he thought through the plan some more.

"Yes. We could place ourselves here along the east side, and start picking them off from cover. That will encourage them to flee on foot toward the west, and the road. Better if they can escape; our goal is to get rid of them, not necessarily kill them. After that, of course, we have the problem of what to do with the gold. We'll have some time to work with that once the soldiers have departed. Hopefully they won't decide to send in a second raid to retrieve it. Hm."

In the gash, two of the soldiers got into an argument, then a fistfight. The others gathered around, egging them on. The fight was painfully awkward to watch. Neither combatant fought with any finesse, it was all haymakers and wild swinging. Nobody stepped in to break up the fight or discipline the two. In a minute, one of them reeled away, bleeding.

"Bizarre," Oliver said. "I wonder who's running this show. Definitely more of a hands-off management approach. Have you ever seen anything like that?"

Little Timmy responded with a gentle snore. Oliver looked down to see him leaned up against the stack of crates, napping.

"Hey, wake up!" Oliver hissed, tapping the recumbent mercenary with the back of his hand. Little Timmy started awake, dislodging the top crate. It slid off the stack and clattered to the ground.

With a mild oath, Oliver grabbed up Little Timmy by the back of his shirt and ran off into the woods.