Ngh. Why’d he have to get all dramatic?

Dylus laid the body carefully on the ground. There was no use dragging it off somewhere to hide, not with his tight schedule. Seeing that his eyes were still open, frozen in terror, the mercenary closed them and stood up, scanning the area. As he did so, he sightlessly cleaned his arm-blade and retracted it back into his wrist module.

Can’t have blood clogging up his gears, he mused.

“Now where’s that damn crocodile?”

He whistled softly. Someone whistled back louder. Dylus knew exactly where the noise came from and crept through the jungle to find his comrade. His mood foul, the mercenary grumbled over his antics until he stepped through something soft.

Dylus didn’t have to look down all the way to know he just stepped through something’s leg. Luckily for him, his sense of smell had been dulled by the river water still in his nose. His vision, however, was in perfect form. It allowed him to see the mess his partner had made.

“Wally.”

Behind the carcass of a dead beast- presumably a guard dog of some kind- the egg-shaped head of a bright green caricature appeared with bloodied hands. It nervously grinned, shrugging as it tried to wipe off the blood off its face. Dylus frowned.

“I get that you’re hungry, dude, but did you really have to eat the thing immediately?”

The answer was a barely suppressed burp. His frown became a disgusted grimace.

“I… uh… natural instincts?”

“Right, instincts,” said Dylus, “putting messy fucking eating next to the impulsive spending instincts and the flirting-with-my-students instincts on the list.”

“When you put it that way,” Wally said as he abandoned the carcass, waddling up to Dylus. He was only tall enough to reach the mercenary’s waist, yet heavy enough to give the mercenary problem as he picked the caricature up, “you make me seem like a problem.”

“Well, you are my problem,” Dylus sighed, “and sometimes my solution.”

When he looked at Wally again, he could see his eyes welling up with the most blatantly fake tears he had ever seen. A soft whimpering escaped Wally as he sniffed, “Hey, man, I ain’t a problem. That hurts a lot, y’know.”

“Oh for Tuah’s sake, please don’t start this shit with me now. I need my stuff from your place ASAP.”

Wally folded his arms and shook his head, “Nuh. Say sorry.”

This cheeky little fucker. This cheeky little motherfucker.

Though his prosthetic arm buckled under Wally’s weight, it held up long enough for Dylus to ‘discipline’ his friend- mainly involving a very, very hard pinch to its snout.

“Ow, ow! Cut it out, man!”

“Stop fucking around, little dude.”

“Okay! Okay, just stop that!”

Dylus relented. Wally tried to look fierce in response. He backed down when the mercenary delivered one hell of a death glare, complete with his eyes flaring up in a deep shade of emerald. When it was clear he was just short of picking up the skull cap on his head, Dylus carried Wally a little higher. With the cap secured, the mercenary let him down and watched as Wally dug through the eye socket of the skull. While it seemed that the crocodile was just poking his hand through the hole, Dylus knew that if one looked a little lower below the sharp teeth and long maw, Wally’s hand didn’t come out from below.

Not the only thing that made him utterly bizarre even in this world, but the rest wasn’t relevant until the siege began.

“Nope, that’s not it. Nah, that’s the Karasawa rifle… Where the heck did your stuff go?”

“Faster, Wally.”

“Hey man, you try looking through my store room sometime,” said Wally, not looking at Dylus, “It’s like a friggin’ maze and- bingo! There’s the goods.”

From the skull cap, Wally plucked out several large pieces of equipment. All of them seemed to come from thin air, impossibly stored in a skull that was in no way big enough to contain it all. Dylus used to question its logic constantly, seeing if there was a way he could access this pocket dimension himself. He stopped trying a year in and simply used it to ensure his stuff was safe on long contracts. For his river crossing, he had asked Wally to stow away his revolver and long rifle, their ammunition, his radio pack and headset. After quickly checking them and realising he’d have to make do with animal blood on most of them thanks to Wally’s bloodied hands, Dylus loaded up and twisted his metal arm backwards.

The resistance he got in reaching the radio pack, however, concerned him greatly. Barely halfway through and the arm suddenly froze in place, unresponsive and making unhealthy grinding noises. Wally noticed and went to attend to the arm, fetching some tools from Dylus’s pockets.

“That’s the third time this month, partner. Lucky we ain’t at the base yet or you’d be a dead merc.”

“Don’t fiddle with it. Let me fix this.”

The mercenary shut his eyes. A flash of green electricity wrapped around the prosthetic arm before focalizing around the large metal base around where Dylus’s shoulder would be. The electricity brightened before dissipating into a small, almost unseen section at the top. After that, the arm began working normally.

“So it was your powers,” Wally put that particular phrase in air-quotes in front of him, “that’s not good, not in the slightest.”

“I’m getting used to it,” Dylus grunted, adjusting his radio pack’s frequency to that of his group, “Father says it's dangerous, but I’d rather learn how to use it then be stuck draining them constantly.”

Wally hummed with concern, returning Dylus’ tools, “there’s a reason he wants them contained, not used. I agree with him.” He returned the skull cap to the mercenary, who put it on its head and adjusted it until it was perfectly snug and comfortable to his liking despite the splotches of blood on it, then continued, “even the Ishimura lady thinks it's a bad idea to start using them without guidance, or something like that.”

“You mean Yumiko?”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“Who else?”

Yumiko Haarshan. Ex-Yakuza enforcer. Tall, conventionally attractive with a short bob of brunette hair just above her nape and intimately acquainted with a dozen ways to filet a man from the inside out. That description didn’t cover what she could do with her mind. Those were the methods that kept you awake at night.

There were days Dylus scared people. With Yumiko, those days became everyday occurrences. The Sunset Coalition had absolutely no idea they were going to let her and his men in through their front door in their captured vehicles. He didn’t blame them; countering a psyker was borderline impossible unless you were one yourself. It was just a matter of time before her squad began their sabotage of the airbase.

“Boss?”

Dylus had been enamoured with the Yakuza to the point of zoning out. Brought back to reality, he let out a sigh, “Yeah, what’s up?”

“Didja hear what I said about the lady and your powers?”

“Yeah. I need a teacher, or something. Maybe more batteries. I dunno.”

Wally audibly facepalmed as he took the lead, “you’re a stubborn guy, y’know that?”

“I know,” Dylus responded, “I don’t care much about it.” he tweaked his headset and coughed into it. One of his mercenary squad leaders immediately responded. More specifically, a voice that was currently leading one end of the infiltration effort.

“Say the word, boss.”

“Give me a sitrep, Osman, over.”

Silence, then the report.

“We’ve made it to the base sewers, halfway through now, I think. Argetta’s got the map, says we’re close to the western hangars, over.”

“Good, remember that isn’t your primary target.”

“My team’s got the ammo dumps, right? Bomb senses are a little itchy though.”

“Smell of shit getting you riled up? Didn’t take you for that kind of guy.”

Osman snickered, “Not my thing, boss. The masks don’t really help to keep out what these poor dudes are eating. Cuisine on the other side of the wall must suck compared to ours.”

“This place isn’t one of their bigger jewels. Colonel’s told me this is one of their more under-maintained installations.”

“Arrogant guys we’re fighting if they think an airbase can be slacked off on.”

“Or maybe they have bigger problems,” said Dylus, “alright, going dark on this line. Remember to limit explosive deployment. Our employers want the base in repairable conditions.”

“Not looking forward to a long stay here, honestly.”

“It’s what we’re paid to do, merc.”

Click. Osman’s line shut off. Dylus switched to another line, seeing the base lights in the distance. The sounds of helicopters warming up their engines dominated the air alongside the sound of men shouting orders at unfortunate trainees. There was an unfamiliar sound in the mix as well, like heavy machinery moving along on a railway. Intel did say this base was old, not unarmed, so he expected any and every kind of military machinery to be defending this base. He focused on reaching another of his subordinates.

“Brenner?”

Brief silence.

“Send traffic, sir.”

“Status?”

“Patrol near us. Shitty time to call.”

“Ring you later then. Good luck.”

Brenner’s line went dark. Dylus and Wally were getting much closer to the base now. The darkness did little to conceal the incredibly long lines of barbed wire in the bushes, alongside the telltale signs of empty enemy foxholes. There was a rusty sign written in the Coalition’s language up ahead, dominated by the unmistakable image of a landmine. He wondered briefly how Osman’s group fared dealing with these before spending the next half an hour taking careful steps alongside Wally. By the time Dylus had crossed the area, the sky had brightened considerably. A Coalition helicopter had taken off from the airbase as well, momentarily engulfing the jungle in a fierce wind. He switched his radio frequency quickly.

“Mortar teams, heads up. Patrol chopper heading your way.”

Instead of a human response, he got an a-okay sound. It was enough for him, moving onwards. A little over ten minutes of trekking brought him to the very edge of the base, where Dylus got down on his belly and pulled out his rifle.

“Wally, pass me the telly from the cap.”

Suddenly, there was a huge weight pressing down on his back. The air in his lungs escaped from his mouth in a soft wheeze. He tried to move his shoulder blade back to make himself comfortable, but Wally was stern in having Dylus stay still.

“Don’t move, partner. My hand might go missing between the dimensions if you do.”

So Dylus stayed still. Wally took his time looking for the scope, pulling it out with a triumphant grin. He hopped down and proudly passed the attachment to his partner. His grateful response was a deathly glare that made him crawl back behind Dylus. With gritted teeth, the mercenary uttered some foul remarks and deployed his rifle. Once he was satisfied with his position, his mechanical arm twisted and tweaked with the radio pack. It took him a while to memorize the radio’s knobs and dials without a helper, but the result was being able to communicate with his squad mates without so much of a hitch.

Soon, he was on the line with Yumiko.

“Papa Gator to Momma Yakuza, do you copy?”

He thought he saw Yumiko’s stature walking on the tarmac of the base. It was just someone of her height behind a welder’s mask. Her voice came in after a few minutes of observation.

“I read you, commander. I am not responding to that callsign.”

“It’s cute, Yumi. Took me a while to think of it.”

“Incessant brat. What do you want?”

“Sitrep. Make it quick. Osman’s squad is already under the base. They should be in the ammo dumps by now. Brenner’s team are outside evading patrols, but they should make it in time to disable the SAM sites.”

The enforcer didn’t respond for a while- she was busy trying to find some place where the base soldiers couldn’t see her properly. Mind games of her caliber worked like a charm, but only if you could play the part in the open. Dylus calling made that impossible. Once she found a quiet spot, she reported back.

“Luzen and his men just got off near the comms relay. They won’t enter until you give the word.”

“Nice. Harran?”

“Squad’s split up according to plan. Targeting beacons are operating nominally near the runway. Unsure if they’ve found the power plant yet.”

“Remind them of their geiger counters when you can.The plant runs on nuclear fuel, so it's far away from the usual hotspots. What about you?”

“About to pay one of the base commanders a visit,” as if to append that statement, Yumiko slid her hand down her stolen uniform, feeling the hilt of her blades behind fabric, “security here is subpar. I am merely a ghost going through their hallways. It bores me.”

“Still got time for poking holes in anything non-Ishimuran? Good one.”

Yumiko peeked outside where she was hiding. The coast was clear to one Colonel Mali’s room. She should have a bevy of intel, the night owl she was. The ex-Yakuza ended the conversation quickly.

“I’ve got a window, moving in. See you when the bullets start flying, Captain.”

“Ganbare, Yumi-san.”

Satisfied, Dylus called the mortar team one last time and then remained put. With Wally putting some pieces of foliage in front of him, he blended into the jungle. The Coalition forces were none the wiser to their dead patrolmen or the infiltration of their airbase. It was a fact that gave Dylus warmth as he watched over the base silently.

So he did, with his finger on the trigger.