It was the next morning. The six warriors were at the Riotfish camp, preparing to move out. They'd paired off: Fleer and Daugereaux to start, Oliver and D'khara, and after some concerned consideration on Fleer's part, Roger and Little Timmy.

The weather was already warm, and a thick fog had settled over the swamp, diffusing the light and lending an eerie feel to the proceedings. A rich, organic odor filled the stagnant air.

Everyone finished gearing up. They gathered together in the growing, amorphous light.

Fleer addressed his misshapen, unlovely crew.

"Fellows, we're going to do something today that rarely happens any more. We're going to start a war. We all know the stakes. Our lives, and the Daugereaux', depend on us winning. There's no second place now.

"Be careful," Fleer said quietly. "These are not your typical grunts. They're highly-trained and well-equipped, real heavy hitters. Fall back or run away if you need to, but don't surrender. They're not here for prisoners. And if you see an opportunity to take one out from behind, don't get confused by any notions of fair play or honest chances. We're outmanned and outgunned, and I can assure you they're not going to be fair to you. That is all."

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

Little Timmy gazed around in the dim morning light. Roger had run off again, but the occasional giggle in the fog reassured Little Timmy that he was close by.

Little Timmy blundered through the underbrush. Woods were not his thing. Bugs were not his thing. Fog and mornings in general were not his thing. Bodies of water were most definitely not his thing. He was not made for stealth in the woods. He was made for shrieking across a desert landscape in a bespoke vehicle fighting for gasoline, and was intensely uneasy around growing, creeping things.

"Roger?"

The Dipso shimmied down out of a nearby tree.

"Zip! Zip!" Roger said.

"Have you seen any sign of these black ops? I'm starting to get the creeps."

"Yep!" Roger chirped, holding up his bloody knife. "A-one, and a-two, and a one-two-three-four!"

"You... four? You took out four of them? How?"

"Marvelous darling distraction! They follow you! I follow them! Pokeys!"

Little Timmy blanched.

"I don't like that approach."

"Them neither!" giggled Roger, as he melted back into the fog.

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

Antone and Ricardo, dressed in black, sat on their haunches in the swamp. They shared a hot mealpak, designed to produce warm food without a visible fire. The fog was starting to burn off, and visibility was improving. They would be heading out to hunt soon.

"Somebody got Reynolds," Antone said.

"'Bout time. He was a disaster waiting to happen," Ricardo responded.

"Myra found him. His body. She said it looked like somebody went crazy on him with a knife."

"Huh. And here I always thought one of his nutty exes would do him in."

Antone shrugged.

"We all gotta go sometime. You ever think about how you'll eat it?"

"Me? I'm gonna retire. Little cabin in the woods, garden out back. Gonna take it easy."

Antone laughed.

"Retire? You? You'll be doing this 'til the day you die."

"Nah. Maybe. It's nice to think about though."

"Yeah. Say, do you think--"

There was a muted cough from the fog.

"What was that?"

Antone was answered by the roar of a Zentech cannon. The shaped-explosive warhead blew through the both of them sitting there, not detonating until it impacted a tree in the distance, exploding in a huge shower of sparks and flaming foliage that sizzled as it settled on the damp ground.

The only things left where they had been squatting were two pairs of smoking boots, and a very wide mess.

The noise of the cannon echoed through the woods.

"Was that really necessary?" D'khara asked, coughing again. He had a tickle in his throat that wouldn't go away.

"Sorry. The Zentech's what I've got."

"Well there are no tanks out here to use it on. Let's move, that's sure to have drawn attention." They trudged through the woods for a bit, when D'khara came to a decision.

"You know what? Actually, let's head back to camp. We forgot something."

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

Back at camp, D'khara rooted around in the equipment pile for a minute, pulled something out, and returned to Oliver, looking as shifty as if he were preparing for an illicit transfer of company stocks.

"Oliver, I have something for you." D'khara glanced around.

"Oh? For me?"

"Yeah. You know how you've been saying you need a machine gun, but it's not in the budget? Well I found some stuff in one of the caches, and Fleer said it was okay, and Daugereaux let me into his workshop to run the arc welder and use some tools, and well... here."

D'khara handed Oliver a long object wrapped in a dirty cloth. Puzzled, Oliver slowly unwrapped it. Nestled within was the oddest looking gun Oliver had ever seen. He lifted it clear of the cloth and his breath caught.

"D'khara, are these Strauss machine guns?"

"Yeah, and once we're back to HQ I'll clean up the welds and re-blue the whole thing. And I didn't have any files, so I'll knock the corners off too, and it still needs some work to synchronize the timing between the two actions, but most of the--"

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"This is amazing," Oliver breathed. He shouldered the weapon.

It looked for all the world like two Strauss .30 caliber machine guns that had been welded together, because that is precisely what it was. Two barrels thrust proudly from the weapon, with circular magazines slotted into either side of the receiver. The stock had been replaced with a carved cypress knee, long enough for Oliver to shoulder comfortably with his long arms, and a pistol grip of the same wood nestled below the actions. Two triggers jutted down from the actions. The trigger guards had been cut off, being too small to admit Oliver's finger, and the triggers themselves had been welded together with a piece of bar stock in between, to turn them into a single long trigger.

"It's not quite done, but I figure this will work better out here than your Zentech."

Oliver's eyes glistened.

"Thank you very much, D'khara. This is perfect. It's better than anything I could have hoped for."

"It's... I mean, you can't say all that until you shoot it."

"It's the best because you made it for me."

D'khara, standing there in intensely embarrassed silence, had no idea what to say.

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

"You are pretty light on dem feet, chief," Daugereaux said.

"Ah, thank you," Fleer replied. "You move very quietly yourself."

They moved through the woods a bit longer.

"So how many of dem nasty black ops we got to finish off today?" Daugereaux asked.

"Hmm. I'm hoping we can take at least half of them. If we're careful, I think we easily have one day to work on them before they catch on. Then things will start to get dicey."

"Careful? Your boys don't strike me as de careful type."

Fleer grimaced.

"You're not wrong, but they're unreasonably effective nonetheless. I guess we just need body count today. Shave those numbers back."

They moved through the woods in silence, Fleer with his smooth, noiseless gait that made him look like he was at a classy ball in spite of his fatigues and rumpled air, and Daugereaux ambling along beside him, by all appearances paying no attention to his surroundings, but never stepping on a twig nor brushing against so much as a single leaf. Whereas Fleer moved in unnatural silence, Daugereaux moved with the sounds of the swamp, fitting seamlessly into his surroundings.

"So." Fleer decided to try his hand at conversation. "You have any alligators down here? I've heard stories."

"Stories is about all we got left of de gators down dis way. Dey is still a few, but dey stay well away. Last time when dem awlmen came t'rue, a couple of 'em got gator-bit. Maybe somebody encouraged dat. But den de awlmen, dey put out a bounty and shot up all de gators dey could find. It could be dat whoever encouraged de gators to go at de awlmen felt mighty ashamed of what he done, and promised himself never to use gators as a weapon no more."

"I see."

"How about you? Where you found all dem boys? You all is a strange crew."

Fleer smiled a little and nodded.

"We are. Mrs. Meade, she's not here with us, but she and Little Timmy came with the business when I bought it. I hired Oliver shortly afterward-- he was working on the Fifth District docks in Concordium, if you can imagine. All that brainpower, and they were just using him to move things around." Fleer shook his head. "D'khara is our most recent hire. He came in a few weeks ago from some bad situation. I didn't ask too many questions."

Daugereaux looked askance at Fleer.

"'Didn't axe too many questions'? Ain't dat ekzackly a kind of a thing you are supposed to do before you hire someone?"

"Maybe. But he was good at what he did, and we've been needing an armorer. And there aren't any of us that didn't come into the Riotfish from a bad situation. Even me."

"So what's your story, den? How come you ain't out schmoozin' it up wit' all de udder corporate types?"

"I-- my conscience got in the way of my work. It's a long, mostly boring story."

"And you ain't said nothin' about dat strange boy Roger. Where he come from?"

"You know, we're not having a lot of luck finding these guys traveling together. Maybe we should split up, cover more ground."

Daugereaux stared thoughtfully at Fleer.

"I think dat's maybe a good idear. I'll cover de east side, north of de house, and you can look all around in de middle."

"Yeah, that sounds good. We'll meet back up at the camp tomorrow morning, how about?"

"Dat sounds good to me. Good huntin' to you."

"You too."

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

Lucas leaned back against a tree, resting. His eyes were half-open, and his brain was half-asleep, watching and recharging at the same time. He'd been scouring the woods all day, trying to find the person or persons that were with them in the swamp. They had to make sure that every witness was accounted for. Every single one.

Thoroughness is the watchword of the Tapstrike soldier.

He reflected on the operation so far. The ambush had been straightforward enough. The Ready/Impact mannequins had boiled into the kill zone exactly as they'd planned, all bluster and noise and chaos. The cargo doors had locked down, and the Tapstrikers on the walkways overhead had dropped a series of grenades to drive the dummies into cover, cover that had been specifically set up to leave them open to fire from above.

He had not expected that part to be at all difficult, but it had been shockingly easy. Almost no fire came back at the Tapstrikers at all. He'd done his fair share of barrel-fishing, but nothing like this.

It was easy to beat soldiers that you'd hand-picked to be losers.

Tapstrike should hire all their enemies, he thought with dry amusement. It hadn't been combat; it had been a slaughter. Almost mechanical, nothing like a good blood-and-bones encounter.

The only setback had been the escapees. An unlucky bit of shrapnel had popped one of the doors loose, and a couple of Ready/Strike dummies had escaped. They'd since been accounted for, but one of them had received medical attention from someone. Which meant there were witnesses. Which meant that the job wasn't done.

Thoroughness is the watchword of the Tapstrike soldier.

Of course, some of the Tapstrikers argued that the dummy had tried to use the bandage himself, but that didn't seem likely-- why wait until he was almost dead from blood loss to figure out he needed bandaging?-- and in any case, they had to make sure.

Which was why they were canvassing the swamp, trying to figure out who else was even out here. The nearest town was dozens of miles away, and the Ready/Impact soldiers were all accounted for. Lucas was quite curious about who was out here and what they were up to.

The movement that caught his eye wasn't obvious at first. Initially his brain dismissed it as a plant shifting in the wind. The lack of wind noise was odd enough to alert him. He snapped to full consciousness, controlled his breathing, and quietly reached for his rifle.

He silently lifted his rifle to his shoulder and scanned the area. The woods were not impenetrable, but they were thick enough that visibility was limited to a couple dozen feet. Vegetation covered every square inch of ground.

Every morning, Lucas spent ten minutes silencing his gear. Everything was secured: tied down, zipped up, buckled, or packed tight in a pocket or pouch. Some of the guys thought that was over the top, but it came in handy precisely at moments like these, when you had to be able to move without making a single sound.

Holding his rifle out with one hand, he braced himself against the tree to stand. Scanning the surrounding woods, Lucas slowly raised himself to his feet.

As he straightened his legs, one tired knee cracked loudly in the stillness of the woods. A tiny rustle off in the greenery hinted that he'd been made. With a sharp grimace that spoke as clearly as a swear, he melted back into the woods.

He took only a second to consider his options. Any intruders would head to the spot where they'd heard the noise. Moving right, he swept in a wide, lateral arc through the woods, picking his way through with utmost care, to maintain silence. He set up behind a thick tree for cover and lined his sights up on the tree he'd been resting against only a minute earlier. He carefully drew his eyes back and forth across the woods, looking for any hint of movement.

One of the waist-high plants with spiky leaves near the tree shuddered slightly. It was called a palmetto plant, if he remembered correctly. Lucas immediately focused on the plant. He briefly considered spraying it down, but he held, wanting to make sure of his target. No sense in giving away his position until he had a clean shot. He watched the spiky leaves, now stock-still, with a laser focus.

The seconds ticked by, and the plant didn't move again. At sixty seconds, Lucas wondered if his prey had slipped away. By the time ninety seconds had passed, he began to worry that the palmetto had been an intentional distraction. He decided to displace, just in case.

As he moved his foot back to step away, Fleer's rifle went off, no more than eighteen inches from Lucas's ear, sending a bullet through his skull. He dropped to the ground hard and lay still.

"Agh," Fleer said.

Fleer preferred knives, not only because they were a badge of an assassin's skill, but also because you could control the spray and the spread of blood. The backsplash from the rifle had coated him with a fine mist.

At least he wasn't in a suit.

Scrubbing ineffectually at his face, Fleer faded back into the woods.